Jonathan Haidt at TED

Jonathan Haidt on "The real difference between liberals and conservatives"

A 19:00 video of his talk/PowerPoint presentation at the March 2008 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference.

A lot of psychology is actually sleight of hand and tends to require a lot of unpackaging for it to be useful. His definition of "cooperation," for example, was particularly dishonest. He restricted his view of "cooperation" to communal behaviors and ignored reciprocating behaviors (like voluntary exchange). The study he mentioned about how communal sharing through a big common pot can only be maintained through the administration of punishment is useful information (and would be a very good piece of evidence for showing that socialism must descend into authoritarianism), but you have to keep in mind what the study doesn't show you lest you get the wrong picture. Psychologists love to aggregate data and arrange them in a way that seems to give an answer that fits the zeitgeist, but that doesn't mean they understand cause and effect. They're very similar to mainstream economists in that way.

Which is funny, because the two groups aren't on good terms. They don't even talk to each other if they can help it.