The Righteous Mind

The Righteous Mind. Jonathan Haidt. Pantheon Books (ISBN: 9780307377906) 2012.

Summary: Why different poilitical and religious groups have such different beliefs about what is right and wrong.

All I need to do is scroll through my social media feeds to see how moral people have very different understandings of how to bring their religious beliefs to bear on public life, including politics. Just compare the vibe on X (formerly Twitter) and Threads. Furthermore, engaging across those differences seems virtually impossible. Why can’t reasonable people come to a meeting of the minds?

In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt examines the moral psychology behind our deepest divisions. The first part of the book shares a breakthrough in his own thinking, confirmed by research, that explains why good, rational people disagree. He discovered that moral intuitions related to gut feelings come first. Then conscious reasons follow in a post hoc fashion. We use reasons to justify our intuitions. He uses the analogy of a rider and an elephant. The elephant is our intuitions, the rider our reason. The elephant goes where it wants and the rider tends to justify where it went. In this case, the elephants rule. However, it was interesting to learn that when people were given time to rationally consider a moral situation rather than just react, reason played a more determinative role. Otherwise, intuition rules the day. You need to speak to the elephant, or even address the path.

The second part begins with observing that liberal-progressives are WEIRD. That is, Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. When he was at Penn, he discovered that a two block walk to a local McDonald’s revealed people who reasoned from very different moral foundations. He recognized that there was more to morality than the WEIRD embrace of care (vs. harm) and fairness (vs. cheating). He eventually identified three additional moral foundations on which conservatives drew for their moral intuitions: loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Eventually, he identified one more foundation they shared: liberty/oppression. This both helped explain the divides but also why conservatives enjoyed certain advantages.

The last part of the book looks at group behavior, something Haidt calls “the hive switch.” He argues on the basis of evolutionary biology that we are drawn to groupish behavior, transcending self-interest. Furthermore, groups practice binding rituals through music, movement, dance and more. The morality of the group both binds us to each other and blinds us to those not part of the group. This explains religion, sports fans, music group followers, and politics.

The explanation of evolutionary biology was the densest part of the book and seemed crucial to the third part of the book, which I felt cohered the least. It seemed speculative to me. More helpful were the descriptions of how groups bind and how this blinds us to others.

The book doesn’t say a particular group is better or worse. What Haidt does is help us understand how we are different and the different foundations that shape our moral intuitions. While conservatives emphasize three more than others, we all draw upon all six to greater or lesser extents. While it won’t resolve differences, finding common ground with someone we differ with is a place to begin. Also, the realization that all have moral foundations engenders respect as opposed to deprecation.

What the book doesn’t address is the justification of immoral actions on moral terms or deviations from a group’s moral foundations. What happens when progressives cheat? Or what happens when conservatives subvert institutional authority? Real politicians (or church leaders, for that matter) do not always act morally even by their own standards. What Haidt does help us see is how we use reasons in a post hoc fashion, but this involves a redefinition of fairness or authority. But Haidt doesn’t speak to the erosion of moral foundations. Perhaps he will one day write a sequel on the unrighteous mind.