Morality, Haidt argues, doesn’t arise from reason, and besides, humans aren’t winning any prizes for rationality. At the moment, we aren’t doing such a good job of this. He points out that in order to thrive, we have to appreciate our complex, interactive natures and see each other more clearly and empathetically – an observation that may be especially useful at a time when threats like climate change and the concentration of money and power threatens all of us, no matter who we are or what groups we belong to. For him, the key to getting to know ourselves properly lies with moral psychology, a newish strain that pulls together evolutionary, neurological, and social-psychological research on moral emotions and intuitions.Īs Haidt sees it, we are creatures driven by moral intuition and attuned to both our personal interests as well as what’s good for the groups with which we identify. In his 2012 book, The Righteous Mind, New York University social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explored why so many perfectly intelligent people have misread human nature– and not just economists, but plenty of psychologists and even (shocker!) people who identify as politically liberal. But if you ask a question as simple as how to price a used car, you quickly find that moral concerns and economic activity happen together all the time. Typically, economists aren’t that keen on admitting that their work is deeply connected to morality - never mind that Adam Smith himself was a moral philosopher. Unfortunately, many economists still plug this flawed view of people into computer models that determine all kinds of things that impact our lives, from how much workers get paid to how we value life or common goods, such as a clean environment. ![]() ![]() But more recently his territory has shrunk as experts on human nature have demonstrated what any decent novelist could have told them: our real selves are nothing like this. Since the 1950s, this mono-motivated, self-seeking figure has stalked the pages of economics textbooks, busy deciding each action according to a rational calculus of personal loss and gain. ![]() For a fictional character, homo economicus has had a pretty good run.
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