The Righteous Mind. Why Good People are divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. 💙💜💖💗

I got this book to help me understand about the culture battles I see around on public and social media. Perhaps, because I haven’t been a regular user for years, I am able to catch only fragmented narratives which I struggle to put together. I have a list of other books to read but I decided to start with this one, because, first, I found it in my local bookshop and second, I thought that instead of reading about ideologies and positions I should first understand humans nature. The Righteous Mind tries to explain why we struggle to get along, understand and respect a diversity of political positions, from a biological point of view to psychological and sociological perspectives. 

The book is divided in three parts following the 3 Principles of Moral Psychology: 1) Intuitions come first, Reasoning second 2) There is More to Morality than Harm and Fairness 3) Morality Binds and Blinds. 

In part 1 Haidt explains how we form our judgements. Having carried out numerous psychological experiments to test reactions to harmless but offensive situations he concludes that the parts of the brain which manage our Intuitions (triggered by disgust, disrespect, etc.) are the first ones to react, deciding whether we like something or not. The Reasoning aspect of our Moral Judgement comes after, not to scrutinize or correct but to confirm. Haidt compares Intuitions and Reasoning with a Small Rider on an Elephant. When the elephant (Intuitions) leans toward one side of an argument the Rider leans with it, and it is hard, if not impossible to change the elephants way. Having said that, Haidt also states that cultures influence our morals. He defines 3 Clusters of Moral Themes: Ethics of autonomy predominant in educated, individualistic, western societies, Ethics of Community and Divinity predominant in the rest of the world and which give people a wider spectrum of morals foundations. Finally, Haidt defines a Social Intuitionist model which states that in order to influence other people we have to aim to their elephant, that is their intuitions not their reasoning.

In part 2 Haidt presents his Moral Foundations Theory which defines 5 moral foundations which are innate to humans. This is a pluralistic approach to morality, that is, it is not based on 1 single rule but many. The initial 5 Moral Foundations are: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion and Sanctity/Degradation. Later, after several studies, he added a sixth foundation: Liberty/Oppression. In a separate chapter Haidt discusses the first 5 foundations in the context of US politics and based on his test based studies. He arrives at 2 conclusions. First is that both extremes of the political spectrum rely on different combinations of the foundations. For Haidt Left Wing or Progressive rely primarily on the Care/Harm, the Fairness/Cheating and Liberty/Oppression foundations, whereas the Conservatives rely on all 5. From this he concludes that Progressive are at a disadvantage compared to Conservatives as the latter are able to appeal to a wider range of moralities.

Part 3 includes discussions about why humans are so groupish. Haidt discusses Darwin, individual and group level selection and opposes Dawkins view that we are selfish beings. Haidt says human culture has evolved alongside our genes. He presents some studies which show how behaviour could be adapted with breeding control in foxes for individual changes and with chickens for group changes. He then discusses the role of religion in our cultures and how they have been an important factor to keep communities alive. He doesn’t discuss or support religious dogma but their capacity to bring people together under shared moral foundations. The final chapter was my least favourite perhaps because it was too much embedded into the US political landscape. One thing I appreciate though is the authors sincerity in briefly relating his personal journey and how his own studies have affected his personal political position. Anyway, this was a great read to me. It opened my eyes to dimensions of morality I have never considered and most importantly it has given me much food for thought.

Negatives: Endnotes instead of Footnotes.