The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined (142 page)
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Authors: Steven Pinker
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BOOK: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined
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The emotional response to a relational mismatch depends on whether it is accidental or deliberate, which model is substituted for which, and the nature of the resource. The psychologist Philip Tetlock has suggested that the psychology of taboo—a reaction of outrage to certain thoughts being aired—comes into play with resources that are deemed
sacred
.
183
A sacred value is one that may not be traded off against anything else. Sacred resources are usually governed by the primal models of Communality and Authority, and they trigger the taboo reaction when someone treats them with the more advanced models of Equality Matching or Market Pricing. If someone offered to purchase your child (suddenly thrusting a Communal Sharing relationship under the light of Market Pricing), you would not ask how much he was offering but would be offended at the very idea. The same is true for an offer to buy a personal gift or family heirloom that has been bestowed upon you, or to pay you for betraying a friend, a spouse, or your country. Tetlock found that when students were asked their opinion on the pros and cons of an open market for sacred resources like votes, military service, jury duty, body organs, or babies put up for adoption, most of them did not articulate a good case against the practice (such as that the poor might sell their organs out of desperation) but expressed outrage at being asked. Typical “arguments” were “This is degrading, dehumanizing, and unacceptable” and “What kind of people are we becoming?”
sacred
.
183
A sacred value is one that may not be traded off against anything else. Sacred resources are usually governed by the primal models of Communality and Authority, and they trigger the taboo reaction when someone treats them with the more advanced models of Equality Matching or Market Pricing. If someone offered to purchase your child (suddenly thrusting a Communal Sharing relationship under the light of Market Pricing), you would not ask how much he was offering but would be offended at the very idea. The same is true for an offer to buy a personal gift or family heirloom that has been bestowed upon you, or to pay you for betraying a friend, a spouse, or your country. Tetlock found that when students were asked their opinion on the pros and cons of an open market for sacred resources like votes, military service, jury duty, body organs, or babies put up for adoption, most of them did not articulate a good case against the practice (such as that the poor might sell their organs out of desperation) but expressed outrage at being asked. Typical “arguments” were “This is degrading, dehumanizing, and unacceptable” and “What kind of people are we becoming?”
The psychology of taboo is not completely irrational.
184
To maintain precious relationships, it is not enough for us to say and do the right thing. We also have to show that our heart is in the right place, that we don’t weigh the costs and benefits of selling out those who trust us. When you are faced with an indecent proposal, anything less than an indignant refusal would betray the awful truth that you don’t understand what it means to be a genuine parent or spouse or citizen. And that understanding consists of having absorbed a cultural norm that assigns a sacred value to a primal relational model.
184
To maintain precious relationships, it is not enough for us to say and do the right thing. We also have to show that our heart is in the right place, that we don’t weigh the costs and benefits of selling out those who trust us. When you are faced with an indecent proposal, anything less than an indignant refusal would betray the awful truth that you don’t understand what it means to be a genuine parent or spouse or citizen. And that understanding consists of having absorbed a cultural norm that assigns a sacred value to a primal relational model.
In an old joke, a man asks a woman if she would sleep with him for a million dollars, and she says she would consider it. He then asks if she would sleep with him for a hundred dollars, and she replies, “What kind of a woman do you think I am?” He answers, “We’ve already established that. We’re just haggling over the price.” To understand the joke is to appreciate that most sacred values are in fact pseudo-sacred. People can be induced to compromise on them if the tradeoff is obfuscated, spin-doctored, or reframed.
185
(The joke uses the landmark figure “a million dollars” because it reframes a mere exchange of money into a life-transforming opportunity, namely becoming a millionaire.) When life insurance was first introduced, people were outraged at the very idea of assigning a dollar value to a human life, and of allowing wives to bet that their husbands would die, both of which are technically accurate descriptions of what life insurance does.
186
The insurance industry mounted advertising campaigns that reframed the product as an act of responsibility and decency on the part of the husband, who would simply be carrying out his duty to his family during a period in which he happened not to be alive.
185
(The joke uses the landmark figure “a million dollars” because it reframes a mere exchange of money into a life-transforming opportunity, namely becoming a millionaire.) When life insurance was first introduced, people were outraged at the very idea of assigning a dollar value to a human life, and of allowing wives to bet that their husbands would die, both of which are technically accurate descriptions of what life insurance does.
186
The insurance industry mounted advertising campaigns that reframed the product as an act of responsibility and decency on the part of the husband, who would simply be carrying out his duty to his family during a period in which he happened not to be alive.
Tetlock distinguishes three kinds of tradeoffs.
Routine
tradeoffs are those that fall within a single relational model, such as choosing to be with one friend rather than another, or to purchase one car rather than another.
Taboo
tradeoffs pit a sacred value in one model against a secular value in another, such as selling out a friend, a loved one, an organ, or oneself for barter or cash.
Tragic
tradeoffs pit sacred values against each other, as in deciding which of two needy transplant patients should receive an organ, or the ultimate tragic tradeoff, Sophie’s choice between the lives of her two children. The art of politics, Tetlock points out, is in large part the ability to reframe taboo tradeoffs as tragic tradeoffs (or, when one is in the opposition, to do the opposite). A politician who wants to reform Social Security has to reframe it from “breaking our faith with senior citizens” (his opponent’s framing) to “lifting the burden on hardworking wage-earners” or “no longer scrimping in the education of our children.” Keeping troops in Afghanistan is reframed from “putting the lives of our soldiers in danger” to “guaranteeing our nation’s commitment to freedom” or “winning the war on terror.” The reframing of sacred values, as we will see, may be an overlooked tactic in the psychology of peacemaking.
Routine
tradeoffs are those that fall within a single relational model, such as choosing to be with one friend rather than another, or to purchase one car rather than another.
Taboo
tradeoffs pit a sacred value in one model against a secular value in another, such as selling out a friend, a loved one, an organ, or oneself for barter or cash.
Tragic
tradeoffs pit sacred values against each other, as in deciding which of two needy transplant patients should receive an organ, or the ultimate tragic tradeoff, Sophie’s choice between the lives of her two children. The art of politics, Tetlock points out, is in large part the ability to reframe taboo tradeoffs as tragic tradeoffs (or, when one is in the opposition, to do the opposite). A politician who wants to reform Social Security has to reframe it from “breaking our faith with senior citizens” (his opponent’s framing) to “lifting the burden on hardworking wage-earners” or “no longer scrimping in the education of our children.” Keeping troops in Afghanistan is reframed from “putting the lives of our soldiers in danger” to “guaranteeing our nation’s commitment to freedom” or “winning the war on terror.” The reframing of sacred values, as we will see, may be an overlooked tactic in the psychology of peacemaking.
The new theories of the moral sense, then, have helped explain moralized emotions, moral compartmentalization, and taboo. Now let’s apply them to differences in moralization across cultures and, crucially, over the course of history.
Many assignments of a relational model to a set of social roles feel natural to people in all societies and may be rooted in our biology. They include the Communal Sharing among family members, an Authority Ranking within the family that makes people respect their elders, and the exchange of bulk commodities and routine favors under Equality Matching. But other kinds of assignment of a relational model to a resource and a set of social roles can differ radically across time and culture.
187
187
In traditional Western marriages, for example, the husband wielded Authority over the wife. The model was mostly overturned in the 1970s, and some couples influenced by feminism switched to Equality Matching, splitting housework and child-rearing down the middle and strictly auditing the hours devoted to them. Since the businesslike psychology of Equality Matching clashes with the intimacy that most couples crave, most modern marriages have settled on Communal Sharing—with the consequence that many wives feel that the couple’s failure to keep tabs on contributions to household duties leaves them overworked and underappreciated. The spouses may also carve out Rational-Legal exceptions, such as a prenuptial agreement, or the stipulation in their wills of separate inheritances for the children of their previous marriages.
Alternative linkages between a relational model and a resource or set of social roles define how cultures differ from one another. The members of one society may allow land to be bartered or sold, and be shocked to learn of another society that does the same with brides—or vice versa. In one culture, a woman’s sexuality may fall under the Authority of the males in her family; in another, she is free to share it with her lover in a Communal relationship; in still another, she may barter it for an equivalent favor without stigma, an example of Equality Matching. In some societies, a killing must be avenged by the victim’s kinsmen (Equality Matching); in others, it may be compensated with a wergild (Market Pricing); in still others, it is punished by the state (Authority Ranking).
A recognition that someone belongs to a different culture can mitigate, to some extent, the outrage ordinarily triggered by the violation of a relational model. Such violations can even be a source of humor, as in old comedies in which a hapless immigrant or rural bumpkin haggles over the price of a train ticket, grazes his sheep in a public park, or offers to settle a debt by betrothing his daughter in marriage. The formula is reversed in
Borat
, in which the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen pokes fun at the willingness of culturally sensitive Americans to tolerate the outrageous behavior of an obnoxious immigrant in their midst. Tolerance may run out, however, when a violation breaches a sacred value, as when immigrants to Western countries practice female genital cutting, honor killings, or the sale of underage brides, and when Westerners disrespect the prophet Muhammad by depicting him in novels, satirizing him in editorial cartoons, or allowing schoolchildren to name a teddy bear after him.
Borat
, in which the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen pokes fun at the willingness of culturally sensitive Americans to tolerate the outrageous behavior of an obnoxious immigrant in their midst. Tolerance may run out, however, when a violation breaches a sacred value, as when immigrants to Western countries practice female genital cutting, honor killings, or the sale of underage brides, and when Westerners disrespect the prophet Muhammad by depicting him in novels, satirizing him in editorial cartoons, or allowing schoolchildren to name a teddy bear after him.
Differences in the deployment of relational models also define political ideologies.
188
Fascism, feudalism, theocracy, and other atavistic ideologies are based on the primal relational models of Communal Sharing and Authority Ranking. The interests of an individual are submerged within a community (
fascist
comes from an Italian word for “bundle”), and the community is dominated by a military, aristocratic, or ecclesiastical hierarchy. Communism envisioned a Communal Sharing of resources (“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”), an Equality Matching of the means of production, and an Authority Ranking of political control (in theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat; in practice, a nomenklatura of commissars under a charismatic dictator). A kind of populist socialism seeks Equality Matching for life’s necessities, such as land, medicine, education, and child care. At the other pole of the continuum, libertarians would allow people to negotiate virtually any resource under Market Pricing, including organs, babies, medical care, sexuality, and education.
188
Fascism, feudalism, theocracy, and other atavistic ideologies are based on the primal relational models of Communal Sharing and Authority Ranking. The interests of an individual are submerged within a community (
fascist
comes from an Italian word for “bundle”), and the community is dominated by a military, aristocratic, or ecclesiastical hierarchy. Communism envisioned a Communal Sharing of resources (“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”), an Equality Matching of the means of production, and an Authority Ranking of political control (in theory, the dictatorship of the proletariat; in practice, a nomenklatura of commissars under a charismatic dictator). A kind of populist socialism seeks Equality Matching for life’s necessities, such as land, medicine, education, and child care. At the other pole of the continuum, libertarians would allow people to negotiate virtually any resource under Market Pricing, including organs, babies, medical care, sexuality, and education.
Tucked in between these poles is the familiar liberal-conservative continuum. In several surveys, Haidt has shown that liberals believe that morality is a matter of preventing harm and enforcing fairness (the values that line up with Shweder’s Autonomy and Fiske’s Equality Matching). Conservatives give equal weight to all five foundations, including In-group Loyalty (values such as stability, tradition, and patriotism), Purity/Sanctity (values such as propriety, decency, and religious observance), and Authority/Respect (values such as respect for authority, deference to God, acknowledgment of gender roles, and military obedience).
189
The American culture war, with its clashes over taxes, medical insurance, welfare, gay marriage, abortion, the size of the military, the teaching of evolution, profanity in the media, and the separation of church and state, is fought in large part over different conceptions of the legitimate moral concerns of the state. Haidt notes that the ideologues at each pole are apt to view their opposite number as amoral, whereas in fact the moral circuitry in all of their brains is burning just as brightly, while filled with different conceptions of what morality comprises.
189
The American culture war, with its clashes over taxes, medical insurance, welfare, gay marriage, abortion, the size of the military, the teaching of evolution, profanity in the media, and the separation of church and state, is fought in large part over different conceptions of the legitimate moral concerns of the state. Haidt notes that the ideologues at each pole are apt to view their opposite number as amoral, whereas in fact the moral circuitry in all of their brains is burning just as brightly, while filled with different conceptions of what morality comprises.
Before spelling out the connections between moral psychology and violence, let me use the theory of relational models to resolve a psychological puzzle that has been left hanging from earlier chapters. Many moral advances have taken the form of a shift in sensibilities that made an action seem more ridiculous than sinful, such as dueling, bullfighting, and jingoistic war. And many effective social critics, such as Swift, Johnson, Voltaire, Twain, Oscar Wilde, Bertrand Russell, Tom Lehrer, and George Carlin have been smart-ass comedians rather than thundering prophets. What in our psychology allows the joke to be mightier than the sword?
Humor works by confronting an audience with an incongruity, which may be resolved by switching to another frame of reference. And in that alternative frame of reference, the butt of the joke occupies a lowly or undignified status.
190
When Woody Allen says, “I’m very proud of my gold watch. My grandfather sold it to me on his deathbed,” listeners are at first surprised that an emotionally precious heirloom would be sold rather than given, particularly by someone who cannot profit from the sale. Then they realize that the Woody Allen character is unloved and comes from a family of venal oddballs. Often the first reference frame, which sets up the incongruity, consists of a prevailing relational model, and to get the joke the audience must step outside it, as in the switch from Communal Sharing to Market Pricing in the Woody Allen joke.
190
When Woody Allen says, “I’m very proud of my gold watch. My grandfather sold it to me on his deathbed,” listeners are at first surprised that an emotionally precious heirloom would be sold rather than given, particularly by someone who cannot profit from the sale. Then they realize that the Woody Allen character is unloved and comes from a family of venal oddballs. Often the first reference frame, which sets up the incongruity, consists of a prevailing relational model, and to get the joke the audience must step outside it, as in the switch from Communal Sharing to Market Pricing in the Woody Allen joke.
Humor with a political or moral agenda can stealthily challenge a relational model that is second nature to an audience by forcing them to see that it leads to consequences that the rest of their minds recognize as absurd. Rufus T. Firefly’s willingness to declare war in response to a wholly imagined insult in
Duck Soup
deconstructs the Authority Ranking ethos of national grandeur and was appreciated in an era in which the image of war was shifting from thrilling and glorious to wasteful and stupid. Satire also served as an accelerant to recent social changes, such as the 1960s portrayals of racists and sexists as thick-witted Neanderthals and of Vietnam hawks as bloodthirsty psychopaths. The Soviet Union and its satellites also harbored a deep underground current of satire, as in the common definition of the two Cold War ideologies: “Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man; Communism is the exact opposite.”
Duck Soup
deconstructs the Authority Ranking ethos of national grandeur and was appreciated in an era in which the image of war was shifting from thrilling and glorious to wasteful and stupid. Satire also served as an accelerant to recent social changes, such as the 1960s portrayals of racists and sexists as thick-witted Neanderthals and of Vietnam hawks as bloodthirsty psychopaths. The Soviet Union and its satellites also harbored a deep underground current of satire, as in the common definition of the two Cold War ideologies: “Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man; Communism is the exact opposite.”
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