Geoffrey W. Sutton PhD, Psychology and Culture

Slavery, Women’s Rights, and Same-Sex Marriage:  Is There a Connection? Recent news stories continue to highlight struggles of African Americans, women, and LGBT persons.  One event garnered a lot of press as strong emotions were evoked and the recent troubles in Missouri were featured. The Blaze . Franklin Graham caused a stir over comments calling for obedience and listing “Blacks” in his list of ethnic groups. Sojourners posted an open letter of response . Universities have taken steps to deal with ongoing sexual assaults of women on their campuses. ABC news . The Presbyterians joined other mainline Christian groups supporting same-sex marriage. Huffington Post   Franklin Graham condemned the act. Gospel Herald . Bob Jones III apologizes for comments suggesting homosexuals should be stoned. CNN  This week marks the one-year anniversary of the World Vision decision to hire Christians in Same-Sex marriages and their quick reversal. Christianity T...

Can the religious be saved from tribal conflicts? Reflections on Joshua Greene's Moral Tribes How can we escape from the tragedy of religious groups in conflict? Killing, rape, and hate-filled-loud-angry-in-your-face verbal assaults routinely fill news headlines. And the sad thing is that sometimes the conflict is between religious tribes. Who would want to be a part of such a religion? Fortunately, for most of the world, the combat is more subtle. It’s more about killing reputations, insisting that God wants you to live a miserable life (strict rules against divorce or remarriage), or splitting a group over moral clashes like abortion or same-sex marriage. Understanding moral conflict is the quest of philosopher-psychologist Joshua Greene. I read his book Moral Tribes earlier this year (2014) and finally got round to writing a review. There are many ways to analyze his work. I’ll name just two. 1. People act before they think. For me, an intriguing part of t...

5-4 MORALITY, MENTAL DISORDERS, AND IQ   The 5-4 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on 27 May 2014 challenged the basis for Florida’s decision ( Hall v. Florida ). Matters of life and death are matters of morality. And the moral judgments of the U.S. Supreme Court Justices make it clear that they do not know the right answer—5 ruled one way, 4 another. Moral judgments are not easy. How do parents decide to punish? Parents are pretty quick to decide when to let their children off the hook for dropping their Sippy cups, throwing a toy, or pulling another child’s hair. Some parents laugh, some yell, some swat, and some use time out. Some do it all in an unpredictable pattern. Parents seem to have some built in sense of when a child knows better . Knowing better is the basis for holding people accountable. Kids will still go to time out for breaking a rule so they’ll learn. But serious penalties are usually reserved for intentional rule breaking th...

A Culture of Honor Each year, graduation ceremonies ripple across the landscape as waves of rented robes trimmed in colored cords declare that a mark of honor has been achieved. On Sunday 27 April, 2014, two men were declared saints by the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis. They weren’t just any two men. They were former popes . They met the criteria for sainthood and are now known as Saint John XXIII and Saint John Paul II. On 2 May, 2014, Evangel University newly retired president, Robert H. Spence, was honored with applause as he spoke at the school’s commencement following 40 years of service—the second longest tenure of an American University President. The celebrations began at Homecoming in the Fall and culminated in several events a week ago. People of many religious groups honor their leaders for consistently living according to character traits such as faithfulness, humility, loyalty, kindness, and so forth. Protestants don’t recognize saints as Catholi...

Feeding Children in South Africa WORLD  VISION, MORALITY        & RIGHTEOUS MINDS World Vision made waves earlier in the week when they announced plans to hire same-sex married couples. Multiple news sources carried stories and blog posts were filled with comments from irate donors. To be sure, there were supportive comments as well. After a few days, World Vision announced a change of heart . They issued an apology to their upset supporters. And reversed their policy . The wide variety of remarks offers a trove of data to illustrate how people focus on different aspects of a situation when reaching a moral decision. In this post I will draw on the work of Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues to frame the six dimensions of morality. QUICK THINKING MORALITY First, several researchers have written about how the mind works when thinking about anything—including morality. One of the best summaries of thinking is the book by Daniel ...