About the YourMorals Blog

February 14th, 2010 by Jonathan Haidt

There are thousands of blogs about political and moral issues, so why should you read ours? Because the main rule at the YourMorals Blog is that posts must explore or apply empirical research on moral psychology.

YourMorals.org is a collaboration among a group of social psychologists who conduct research on moral psychology and its applications to politics (see us here). We do this research in order to publish articles in the top academic journals. (See our publications here.) Our research findings often shed light on the controversies we read about in our morning newspapers, but the academic world moves slowly—it takes a year or two from the time we collect data to the time an article appears in a journal. We therefore created this blog as a way to apply research—our own and that of other social scientists—to current events.

Important Facts about this Blog:

–We strive to be non-partisan. Our goal is not to take sides or argue for liberal or conservative positions. Some posts may present liberals or conservatives in a bad (or good) light, but if you read many of our posts, or our academic articles, you will see that our goal is to help people understand each other across the political divide. (See our related project at Civilpolitics.org.) Of course, striving does not guarantee success, and because most of us lean liberal, it is inevitable that we will sometimes fail to present one side fully or fairly. We therefore welcome comments and criticisms, particularly from conservatives, to help illuminate our own biases so that we can do better research.

Each post is signed, and it reflects the opinion of the author(s), not the whole YourMorals team, unless it is signed by the whole team.

The Blog is available to any researcher working with Moral Foundations Theory, or with any other theory. Most postings are from our core group of six researchers, but we welcome guest postings from anyone who has collected data on moral and political psychology. Because, to repeat,

the main rule at the YourMorals Blog is that posts must explore or apply empirical research on moral psychology.

We hope you enjoy our blog, and we welcome your responses.

—Jonathan Haidt, Ravi Iyer, Pete Ditto, Jesse Graham, Sena Koleva, and Matt Motyl (i.e., the core YourMorals team)

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2 Responses to “About the YourMorals Blog”

  1. James Freeman says:

    Dr. Haidt,

    I was a big fan of your book The Happiness Hypothesis, and as a parent (in Canada), was particularly intrigued by your assessment of the teaching of moral thinking since the 1960’s not through virtue ethics but rather through evaluation of moral dilemmas.

    This morning, I encountered the Ten Commitments, from the American Humanist Association, which does seem to be an attempt to shape moral education by focussing on underlying virtues.

    I am interested in your thoughts. Here is the link:

    http://www.americanhumanist.org/What_We_Do/Education_Center/Commitments

  2. James Freeman says:

    I apologize for posting here, and not under one of the themed areas. I just noticed them in the collumn to the right as I scrolled further down on my iPad.

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