Your morals ≈ your value to society?

Research in moral psychology suggests that people can be surprisingly cleanly divided into two groups:

1. People who (a) tolerate hierarchies and inequalities, (b) resist change, and (c) care about group loyalty.
2. People who don’t.

For convenience, let’s call the first group ‘conservatives’ and the second group ‘liberals’.

This division has many implications, only one of which I will discuss here. I want to discuss what this division means for careers.

As an employer, the people you hire are ideally both loyal to the company and tolerant of change. But the Division of Morality theory suggests that you can’t have it both ways – each employee will either be loyal OR tolerant of change. The best an employer can do is hire some mix of liberals and conservatives to create the ideal ratio of loyalty to change tolerance, and it’s interesting to think about how the ideal ratio might vary with different contexts...

Start-Ups Herd Cats

The start-up's objective is fast iteration. The final product is rarely what the entrepreneur originally envisioned (at least if he’s doing it right). In fact it is a bit of a misnomer to say ‘final product’ because in start-up philosophy there is no such thing as a final product. The only constant is change. If the Division of Morality theory is correct, and if start-ups operate efficiently, you would expect that the employee composition in start-ups is highly liberal. My very rigorous empirical analysis confirms this hypothesis:

Most entrepreneurial cities: San Francisco, Boulder, Austin, NY
Most liberal cities: San Francisco, Boulder, Austin, NY

A second prediction regarding start-ups is that, since they lean heavily liberal, they would have a very flat hierarchical structure. My rigorous empirical analysis again confirms this hypothesis:

Google, while not exactly a start-up anymore, relies heavily on innovation (change), and therefore employs a bunch of liberals. Google also has an extremely low manager to employee ratio (something like 1 to 30?) – therefore I am right.

Bankers and Dry Cleaners Are Patriotic

In contrast, companies who have followed pretty much the same business model since the early 1800s probably value loyalty above innovation. The Division of Morality theory therefore predicts that banks and dry cleaners will primarily employ conservatives, and their structure will be strongly hierarchical. It predicts that car companies who design the cars (requiring innovation) will be highly liberal and flat, while the car dealerships that sell the cars (ancient business model) will be highly conservative and hierarchical. It predicts that architecture firms (requiring innovation) will be highly liberal, and construction companies (ancient business model) highly conservative.

In most cases, a company is going to be highly liberal or highly conservative – seldom will the equilibrium hover somewhere in the middle. Examples of in-between companies might include companies whose business models are tried and true but who need to stay keenly aware of trends in order to capitalize on changes. Maybe big retail chains or publishers are examples.

CEOs are Liberals, Factory Workers are Conservatives

The Division of Morality theory has allowed me to make a prediction that would normally seem passé and discriminatory (but, hey, it’s science!): The greater the need for innovation, the more liberal the employee composition. There will be pockets in large companies with more liberal and conservative employees. CEOs, designers, and “knowledge workers” will be heavily liberal while managers, bean counters, and factory workers will be heavily conservative.

Here is where the typical Conservative Republican / Liberal Democrat line gets muddied: Many CEOs vote republican (but probably for tax reasons), and many factory workers vote democrat (but probably because democrats are more generous to the working poor). My bet is that if CEOs took Jon Haidt’s morality test, most would be liberals, and if factory workers took the test, most would be conservatives.

The prediction can be extended another step to make an even more passé claim: Innovation being what drives wealth, the world’s wealth creators are primarily liberal. (I just saved you from reading all the books in the Creative Class series and watching as Richard Florida daintily skirts around this very statement. You’re welcome.)

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If this post offended you, please direct your hate mail to Jonathan Haidt -- I am only extrapolating from his research. (Like how I deflected that?)

(P.S. - On the moral foundations test linked to above, I scored as very liberal. I was on par with conservatives on harm and fairness, slightly below liberals on loyalty, and way below both liberals and conservatives on authority and purity. That might not be unusual for a libertarian. While we libertarians (lowercase 'l') typically think of ourselves as conservatives and vote republican, by the moral definition, we are, on average, (although I know there are many different types of libertarians) even more liberal than your typical liberal democrat.)

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Perhaps related: Authoritarians and Party Alliances