If you're a liberal, you may view both neighbors as equally out of touch with reality (though the woman with the theta-wave theory is more original). That's the way most academics would traditionally see it, too.
But Haidt, who works at the University of Virginia and specializes in issues of morality, says the conservative viewpoint isn't just theta waves - it's based on a moral compass that points in dimensions liberals simply don't perceive.
"There's been this enormous change in how scientists are thinking about morality," he says. He outlined the new view recently in the journal Science.
In Western societies, secular and liberal-minded people base their moral beliefs on fairness and the avoidance of harm. That explains why, in previous columns, I wrote that I saw nothing immoral about premarital sex, homosexuality or sex toys - except, perhaps, for nonrecyclable batteries.
Dozens of horrified readers quickly blasted me as disgusting.
Which Haidt says is exactly the point. Most people set their moral compasses based on their sense of disgust. This is an additional moral dimension, which he calls purity/sanctity.
But why do so many people think homosexuality is disgusting? I never had any problem with it.
University of Pennsylvania psychologist and disgust expert Paul Rozin says it's particularly a guy thing - most heterosexual men are disgusted by the thought of touching other men. Rozin recalls experiments in which researchers asked subjects how disgusted they'd be if a Q-tip that had been in the mouth of either a man or a woman was subsequently touched to their own various orifices.
Women didn't care much whether the swab had touched the mouth of a man or a woman. But it mattered to men, who - surprise! - were not at all disgusted by the Q-tip that touched a woman but totally grossed out if they thought it had touched another guy's tongue.
