Many of us are outraged today. We dig in our heels around our beliefs on abortion, vaccines, immigration, or gender. We believe we are morally right and the other side is wrong. And the other side also believes they are morally right and we are wrong.
Kurt Gray believes shifting our thinking away from right and wrong, black and white, to instead focus on concerns about harm could be the solution to our chronic outrage. Gray is a professor of psychology and directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His research on how we have a harm-based moral mind is explained in his recent book: Outraged: Why We Fight About Morality and Politics and How to Find Common Ground. We sat down with him to talk about Outraged.
Sahar Habib Ghazi: What are our moral minds, and what does it have to do with us being so outraged?
Kurt Gray: Our moral minds are the way that we make sense of what is right or wrong in the world. It’s how we feel about what’s permissible and what is forbidden. The moral mind is tightly tied to what we think is harmful, and what we feel is harmful.
This book is a new understanding of our minds and why we’re so divided. It’s grounded in this idea that we all want to protect ourselves from harm, and once we make sense of this deep truth about our psychology, then we can better understand who we are and we can have better relationships with other people and improve society.
SHG: How did your research around moral minds end up in you writing Outraged?
KG: Two answers to that.
First, I wanted to speak to the political moment we are in. There’s lots of division, anger, and outrage. I wanted to try to help people feel less outraged, in part by letting them know how their minds work, who we are as human beings, and what are the tips that we can use to actually have conversations about morality and come away less angry from those conversations.
Then there’s a scientific answer. I’ve been working on this for 20 years. I wanted a way to share everything I’ve learned about our moral minds, and how we make sense of the world when it comes to morality. As a scientist, I think people are better off and happier when they know how the world really works. In my field, there’s this theory called moral foundations theory that argues that liberals and conservatives have different sets of moral foundations.
My research suggests that this theory is not right, it’s not true. I think people are worse off for believing in this theory and better off for actually knowing how our minds work. The theory argues that conservatives have a different set of moral foundations to liberals. The argument is that liberals have two of them and conservatives have five of them, and so conservatives have an advantage when it comes to morality.
Scientifically, it’s just not true. If you look at the studies underlying these claims, they’re very weak; and if you design those studies slightly differently, you can get exactly opposite effects. For example, this idea that only conservatives care about purity because they are worried about premarital sex. In Berkeley, there are progressives who are drinking special juices and doing hot yoga cleanses. That’s a kind of purity, but it’s not a conservative purity. There’s no evidence that these foundations are even foundations. It’s wrong and it’s dangerous to say that one-half of America is more moral than the other; divisions like that set the stage for violence.
SHG: You write, “No matter which bumper stickers we have on our cars, where we live, or how we were raised, all human morality is driven by the same concern: harm.” Why is harm central to understanding each other?
KG: My work suggests that our moral minds are all grounded in the same thing, our understandings of harm, our perceptions of harm. We are all trying to protect ourselves at the core. We agree on about 99% of morality. We believe child abuse is wrong, abuse is wrong, or saying terrible things to your spouse is wrong. These things are clearly harmful.
The problem is in modern society, we disagree about who the real victim is and what groups are most vulnerable to harm, and that’s what leads to disagreement today. The harms are more ambiguous and more a matter of perceptions. We need to ask ourselves what harms does the other side see? What threats are they worried about? Who are they trying to protect from suffering?
By understanding what lies at the roots of our moral lives, not only can we understand how people think, it allows us to find common ground. You can say: The reason I’m concerned about this is not just because I’m blindly following some values, but because I’m really worried about protecting children from harm. We can all understand that at a deep level, even if we disagree about the assumptions being made.
So, rather than saying this person has this moral value or that moral value or is missing this moral value, we might all agree that we need to protect ourselves and society and the vulnerable from harm. What we’re disagreeing on are assumptions about harm and not the moral crux of it, which is: Let’s protect people from harm.
SHG: Speaking of being human, you write about how modern humans live in safety, but we’re hardwired to perceive threats. You discuss the evolutionary reasons why we are less predator and more prey. How do these ancestral concerns about victimization shape our modern lives and how we engage with each other?
KG: You look at old war movies and you do get the sense that we are predators in our actions. We seldom appreciate the psychology behind these actions, that we are more prey than predator. There’s all this evidence that suggests we were mostly terrified little hominids getting eaten the last millions of years by the big predators. Look at your claws. These are not the claws of a predator. We are so laughably weak and if you live in a forest, wait ’til it’s dusk, and see if you feel brave. No one feels like a predator alone in a forest.
But we have this hardwired concern about threats we carry forward today, where we’re constantly concerned about predators, but those predators are no longer animals. Instead we think we have “moral predators,” some evil person who is trying to harm us. We are afraid of a lot of things, and these fears drive our morals, especially today when things are relatively safe. The threats that we’re worried about are more ambiguous. If the Chinese were invading us right now, we can all agree that’s a foreign threat. But if the Chinese were behind a popular app where lots of people were dancing and making money, is that evil, are they a threat? We don’t know.
Because we’re relatively safe today, we’re left to talk about more ambiguous or abstract harms. And there’s more room for differences in perception, especially when we live in separate media bubbles. Is illegal immigration the savior of the American economy or the bane of American citizens? Depends on what you listen to, but those threats are more ambiguous.
SHG: Would you walk us through the example of TikTok and how that illustrates your ideas about harm?
KG: In the case of TikTok or big tech, if you think it’s wrong, then you see evil corporate overlords who are trying to make kids suffer and subvert and pervert their minds for profit. You see that they are making kids depressed or addicted, or encouraging harm. It’s very easy to see how that is wrong.
On the other side, you think TikTok is empowering, it allows people to make money, it’s not harmful in itself, but how you use it could be harmful. It’s the argument that’s used for guns and drugs, too. Everyone’s got a choice. You can use it for ill, or you can use it for good. Just another choice in our society, in the case of social media and with many other things.
We also worry about the harmfulness of overlegislating, government creep. If my freedoms are being restricted, that’s harmful, too. There are always competing harms. That’s one thing that the book highlights. It’s important to recognize that all moral issues come down to a kind of competition in the real world, actual competitions of harm against so-called harms in our minds. It comes down to which harm should be really worried about.
SHG: Your last chapter focuses on solutions, and one of the things that you talk about is sharing personal stories of harm to bridge divides. Could you give us an example of how to go about that?
KG: We like to think that facts are important and they are, but when it comes to our deeply held moral beliefs, they’re not as relevant. No one gives up moral beliefs because of facts. If you have a deep conviction about immigration or abortion or tax and someone’s like, well, here’s this fact, you’re not going to say: You nailed it, I’m totally wrong, I give up my moral beliefs.
We should be striving for understanding in these conversations, understanding the harms that people feel and the threats people have experienced in their lives that give rise to their moral convictions. In our studies, when we compare the ability of sharing a true statistic or sharing a personal experience of suffering or harm with some of the other side, we find out that those personal experiences of suffering really create more understanding, more respect, and it does help people see you as rational. So even if they disagree with your position, they understand that it makes sense. It’s rational to want to avoid harm, if you’ve experienced any kind of real harm in your life.
SHG: You mention another tool, a framework for conversations, grounded in the acronym C-I-V: connect, invite, validate. Could you break that down?
KG: An organization called Essential Partners are pioneers in this space, the OGs. When I talked to John Sarrouf, who’s one of the leads there, he outlined some things that I think really help keep conversations civil.
I broke it down into three steps. First is “connect,” which is before you talk about politics, connect with some aspect of the human being: their family, work, community, food, music, travel, or movies they like.
And then once you do that and see them as a human being beyond politics, you can “invite” them to share their beliefs. This is not a demand, it’s more like: I know that you think a little differently when it comes to immigration and maybe you don’t feel comfortable sharing now, but I’d love to understand where you’re coming from and if you feel comfortable sharing the kind of experiences in your life that shape your beliefs.
And once they share, you can “validate” by saying: Thanks for sharing, I appreciate that and acknowledge that it was hard for you to share and you probably feel vulnerable now. Then you switch to asking questions. Part of connecting and validating is asking questions, like: If I’m really understanding, is this what you’re saying? Try to really understand, and then you can share what you believe or challenge them.
SHG: Another powerful tool in your book when confronting someone with a different view is to ask yourself, “What harm are they seeing?” Who do you think would be the ideal candidate for this kind of approach?
KG: People who are interested in improving their lives and those around them. You don’t have to be a meditation guru that just projects loving-kindness to the entire world at all times. You can just be someone who thinks: The world’s pretty divided now, and I have a dinner coming up with some colleagues who I know voted differently, but I don’t want the dinner to go off the rails, and I would just like to have a reasonable conversation with people who disagree with me. So just ask yourself: What harm do they see? Try to understand where they’re at and make sense of it in your mind.
I do think there are lots of situations where you have to figure out how to get along with someone, and those situations are less frequent as we are segregated into our bubbles. But plane rides, Uber rides, workplaces, family dinners, these are places where we want to just get along and this will help people who want to be a little less outrageous.