Applying theories from Haidt and Lakoff to the issue of immigration.

Reaction Paper written by a student, with additions made by myself:

Through these first few weeks of the course I have learned a lot of interesting information that opened my eyes, not only about policies, but also about how situations and morals can influence someone’s actions or beliefs. I used to think that everyone had different morals and no one had the same as me. When we got our assignment that we were to complete for week three, it included taking a few moral foundations tests. The moral foundations theory was created by Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues (and George Lakoff has developed a theory about metaphors and moral narratives that people use to interpret and filter information about the world and how they should evaluate policies and behaviors). The moral foundations theory originally theorized that everyone has the same five more foundations, but people over the past few years have argued there was a sixth moral foundation (for liberty, against oppression), and perhaps a seventh (for conservation, against waste and destruction). The first five moral foundations are care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and purity. 

After taking the moral foundation tests my eyes were opened. Through these tests, I have learned what are my strongest moral foundations. My three strongest moral foundations are care, fairness, and liberty. My scores for these three moral foundations were 83.3% for care and 72.2% for fairness and liberty. Along with the moral foundations tests, we were also instructed to read and learn about George Lakoff’s theories about metaphorical understanding of reality. Even after reading the information on George Lakoff’s moral narratives theory, I was still confused on what exactly it all meant. During class we discussed in depth George Lakoff’s moral foundations theory and went over what our scores meant. After learning what exactly the moral foundations theory meant and going over scores and comparing ours to others, I began to realize that we all had different levels of how much we cared about each moral foundation. I compared mine to my three of my classmates and the person I was closest to in class I found had about the same exact scores as mine for their moral foundations. As we learned about our moral foundations, we were able to better understand how it made us libertarian or conservative. We were able to see how each moral foundations fit into being a libertarian or conservative. I kept receiving scores on our political tests as a left-liberal. I began to understand exactly what it meant. My top three moral foundations reinforced my liberal views. 

We then went over situations on policies that our moral foundations fit into. One example is, we went over the example of what types of moral foundations a person would have if they were for immigration and what a person would have for moral foundations if they were against immigration. People who are for immigration might have strong moral foundations in care, fairness, and liberty. These people care for others and want to help the immigrant. These people believe that everyone deserves the fair chance to come into this country and gain citizenship. These people believe that everyone has a right to liberty and freedom. People who were against immigration might have strong moral foundations in authority, purity, and loyalty. These people would believe that authority should control immigration, and feel that immigration without following the laws is a transgression that cannot be allowed. Their loyalty values lead them to emphasize that we need not worry about the immigrants, and should instead care most about protecting and supporting the current citizens. These people have a lot of trust in the government as an institution that ought to enforce the laws and protect citizens from immigrants who could compete for resources. These people would also possibly believe we need to keep our country pure and not let outsiders in; they might feel uncomfortable about the “impurity” of seeing people all around them who have different cultures or values, who speak non-English languages, or who have unusual religious beliefs. These people would have a large amount of loyalty in the government and a vision of “traditional” America with its old values and cultural practices, and so they want to have the government strictly control immigration and enforce laws against undocumented immigrants. Anti-immigrant beliefs could also be informed by the justice moral foundation, as the persons who oppose immigration might be concerned that those who “cheat” by staying in America without following the law are getting advantages over those who obediently wait for their paperwork to allow them to legally immigrate here, and so it does seem unfair that cheaters would get ahead of those who are playing by the rules. 

From Lakoff’s theories, we can see that the pro-immigrant position is informed by an idea that the government ought to act like nurturing parents, and the government ought to take care of everyone who lives in our country and contributes to our society, and that would include an obligation to treat undocumented immigrants with kindness and benevolence.  The anti-immigrant position is informed by the metaphor that the American government (and perhaps the “free market”) ought to act like a strict father who imposes discipline. In this view, the government must step in to protect the “real” children (American citizens and legal immigrants) from the neighborhood children who have come to live in our household instead of staying in the households where they belong, and the government ought to force the undocumented immigrants to go back where they came from. 

Knowing the moral foundations theory and Lakoff’s theories about metaphors and moral narratives can help us understand why people have different views from each other and what they believe in and what they don’t. While some of us may strongly support better policies to help most undocumented immigrants, others may just as strongly desire that all undocumented immigrants be forced to depart. It is not the case that one side is moral, while the other side is selfish or foolish and immoral.  Both sides have moral reasoning and value assumptions that make their positions seem correct, and the other positions seem irresponsible or wrong. While I may strongly support one side on some policy issue, it’s important to listen to what the other side says, and consider what they believe, so that I will not demonize or dismiss the concerns of the other side.  Only by understanding the assumptions and values of all sides can we be persuasive and thoughtful in debate about policies.

I contributed significantly to the middle (third paragraph, and wrote most of the fourth and fifth paragraphs.  The student wrote the first two paragraphs, and I only slightly edited those, and contributed most of the third paragraph.  

Student reacts to ideologies

Here is a student reaction paper:

My reaction paper will be about the group exercise we recently did in Social Welfare & Policy Services class. It was quite interesting to me because it gave me an inside look on politics and how people make emotional decisions about any policy, or how they go back and forth trying to find great reasons to support the policies they like, or why it might be a bad idea if they don’t like it.

The class was broken up into groups and given each a card to decide what role we will be playing in the group. One of my group members had to come up with a social welfare policy. We decided to make a policy in where substance abusers were able to receive health care without having to wait. Another member had to play the role of an authoritative father figure that is in favor of the new policy and have their reasons. My fellow classmate stated “It isn’t their fault, being a substance abuser is an illness”. Another person in the group had to role-play a person opposed to the policy using the authoritative father figure model, and that was my role.  I said that I was not in favor simply because substance abusers know what they are doing, and they know drugs are bad, so if they have decided to break the law and do something wrong like use drugs, why should we bother help them, and if they keep doing the same mistake over and over they clearly lack wisdom or self-discipline, and that is their fault, not ours. If we help them, we may allow them to persist in their perverse abuse of drugs. The last person was to demonstrate the nurturing parenting style in which she claimed that we are all equal, and if being addicted to a drug is an illness, than those with such an illness deserve to be helped as others are helped when they are sick. This was an equality ethic argument.

            Both of these ideologies of strict father and nurturing parenting styles come from George Lakoff, he uses these metaphors for politics.  He explains that the strict disciplinarian father figure metaphor parallels conservative ideology. While the nurturing empathetic collaborative parents’ metaphor parallels progressive ideology. He explains the way politics have a moral base, but each ideology frames the message of morality differently. The strict father holds the discipline and morality in which if you’re not disciplined, you can’t be moral, in which case you deserve to be in poverty. Meanwhile the nurturing side is more empathetic and shows social responsibility.

            This exercise showed me a better visual way of how politics work, and it’s much more clear now why they (conservatives and liberals) question all the if’s and but’s to every policy thrown out there. And it’s understandable because every person is different and they think differently, so they might agree or disagree. It’s all about the pros and cons to every situation, and how you identify pros and cons based upon the moral framework you use and the preferential biases you have in the metaphorical narratives you use to interpret the world. If this information was thrown at me through a book or slide in class, I wouldn’t have understood it as much as I do now, because through the exercise I put myself in every shoe, and I thought to myself the same thing, “why should we help substance abusers if they don’t even care about themselves, then why should we?” But then, that’s thinking selfishly. And then the nurturing part comes out and tells you, “of course we should help them; if they were part of your family you would want someone to help them too.” Plus, they’re human and everyone deserves a second chance to achieve something better their lives.  It must be difficult to decide, because both of these moral perspective can be true, but at least I have an idea how the system works.

 REFERENCES

Strict Father And Nurturant Parenting Styles: Metaphors For Political Ideologies with George Lakoff, Ph.D. | New Dimensions Radio. (2015, February 18). Retrieved March 11, 2016, from http://newdimensions.org/strict-father-and-nurturant-parenting-styles-metaphors-for-political-ideologies-with-george-lakoff/