The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion:
Book Review
By Emily Johns
The year 2020 somehow managed to compress a lifetime’s worth of social, political, and psychological turmoil into one year. I, like many others, found myself consuming an alarming amount of news about major social injustices and political events. During this time, I found myself constantly questioning “how can people think this is okay?”, “why don’t people see that this is a major problem” and “how can people be so blinded by their own convictions that they think they are right?”. When I was particularly desperate I heard myself ask the clichéd question “why can’t we all just get along?”. Jonathan Haidt’s book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion aims to answer this overused yet incredibly relevant question in just 500 pages.
The Righteous Mind unfolds through 3 primary observations: (1) intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second; (2) there’s more to morality than harm and fairness; and (3) morality binds and blinds. In the first part, Haidt argues that when it comes to making moral decisions (i.e., what is right and wrong) our gut feeling or instinct is what ultimately determines our morality. When I first read this claim, my knee-jerk reaction was “of course that’s not true! I am a reasonable person who solves problems in terms of logic!” However, I decided to give Haidt a meaningful listen.
He makes a compelling and well-supported argument about the primacy of intuition through the metaphor of a rider and elephant. The elephant, as Haidt (2012) describes, is our gut instinct or unconscious, automatic brain processes. The rider is our conscious, reasoning intellect, our resident public relations manager who rationalizes the elephant’s actions but does not control them. As an exercise to demonstrate this idea, while reading this review notice any time your emotions flare up (i.e., if you get angry, upset, defensive, etc.), and then pay close attention to the story you told yourself about why you felt this emotion to see your rider and elephant in action. To further demonstrate this, Haidt provides us with an example of a “harmless taboo” story used in his research to gauge people’s moral reactions and subsequent reasoning:
Julie and Mark, who are sister and brother, are traveling together in France. They are both on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie is already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy it, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other. So what do you think about this? Was it wrong for them to have sex? (p. 45)
After hearing the story, 80% of participants said that it was wrong for Julie and Mark to have sex. However, Haidt notes that even though none of the participants were able to make a sound argument for why they thought it was wrong, their judgment did not change. This example perfectly illustrates the rider and elephant analogy: people make moral judgments immediately based on emotion and intuition; reasoning, even poor reasoning, was just along for the ride.
Calling on various areas of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and sociology research, Haidt concludes this first section by warning readers against the worship of reason, which is rather popular in scientific and academic communities when thinking about morality. He advises readers to take a more humble, intuitionist approach to moral reasoning that acknowledges our morals are shaped by biology as well as the social contexts and systems in which we are immersed (Haidt, 2012).
In the second part of the book, Haidt gets more specific about where our intuitions come from or to keep with his metaphor, why the elephant steers us in such directions. He also maps out the aspects of morality and shows us where conservatives and liberals live in this moral world. In the chapter titled, “Taste Buds of the Righteous Mind,” Haidt (2012) likens our moral minds to a tongue with six taste receptors: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, liberty/oppression (p. 146). Haidt artfully explains the evolutionary demands that shaped these moral foundations and how they are triggered in the modern world. However, he also acknowledges that our moral and therefore political preferences are shaped by our personality traits, which are largely static throughout our lifetime. Haidt then characterizes liberal and conservative morality by describing which moral foundations or “taste buds” the individuals in these groups tend to most use. Individuals who identify as “liberal” or politically left rest most of their political beliefs on the moral foundations of care/harm, liberty/oppression, and fairness/cheating and significantly less on the other three dimensions. This makes sense when we consider the general liberal ideology of decreasing suffering through altruism, advocating for the oppressed, and karma (in the sense that people should be rewarded for their good deeds and punished for their bad ones). Individuals who identify as “conservative” or politically right, on the other hand, have a much broader moral palate relying on all six moral foundations or taste buds. Unlike the politically left, conservatives base their belief not only on the care/harm, liberty/oppression, and fairness/cheating foundations but also on the loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation moral foundations. To make sense of this, consider some conservative stereotypes: a strong belief in hierarchical structure (authority/supervision), a tendency toward tribal beliefs (loyalty/betrayal), and rigid political, cultural, and religious beliefs (sanctity/degradation).
While this may sound quite surprising, even more surprising are the results of a study Haidt includes about moral stereotypes. Graham and colleagues (2012) found that when liberals were asked to answer moral questions as a “typical conservative” would, they were way off the mark from how actual conservatives answered. Controversially, when conservatives were asked to answer the same questions as a “typical liberal,” their answers aligned with actual liberals (warning: you may have found some information in this paragraph to be enraging, or at least inconvenient; pay attention to that feeling (your elephant)). In sum, Haidt explains how moral foundations theory can help us understand the real differences between political sides and why people vote the way they do, giving us a glimpse into the moral minds of those with whom we may disagree.
The third and final part of the book operates on yet another analogy: “we are 90% chimp and 10% bee” (Haidt, 2012, p. 217). Through this metaphor, Haidt argues that we are a mix of selfishness (chimp) and “groupishness” (bees). We possess very strong individualist values, working for what is best for ourselves and our progeny, but we also rely on hierarchical, cohesive groups to survive evolutionary competition with other groups. In this way, we find groups that share our moral values, which in turn, binds us to that group and simultaneously blinds us to other ways of moral reasoning (think of religious groups and political parties as examples). This moral psychological perspective helped me to more effectively understand the origins of dysfunction and polarization in American politics. In the end, Haidt encourages readers to have more constructive disagreements by listening to their argument openly and determine which of the six moral foundations they are drawing upon the most. While this may not lead you to an agreement, at the very least it may help you see a controversial issue in a new light and encourage you to more respectfully engage with beliefs different from your own.
Haidt clearly and comprehensively organizes the text into three major sections, beginning each with a central metaphor, and ending with an “In Sum” section highlighting the most essential evidence and arguments. This book was not only informative but incredibly entertaining because of the diverse and paradigm-shifting evidence presented. Haidt expertly intertwined philosophy, neuroscience, sociology, evolutionary biology, ancient history, and psychology to produce a work that changed the way I view politics, religion, my own moral instincts, and identity. While The Righteous Mind was published nearly a decade ago, I believe that in today’s socio-political climate, it is absolutely critical to understand why people are divided by political and religious alliances through the understanding of moral psychology that Haidt offers.
About the Author
Emily Johns is a senior at Harvard College concentrating in Neuroscience and Classics.
References
Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., & Haidt, J. (2012). The moral stereotypes of liberals and conservatives: Exaggeration of differences across the political spectrum. PloS One, 7(12), E50092.
Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.
The Righteous Mind unfolds through 3 primary observations: (1) intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second; (2) there’s more to morality than harm and fairness; and (3) morality binds and blinds. In the first part, Haidt argues that when it comes to making moral decisions (i.e., what is right and wrong) our gut feeling or instinct is what ultimately determines our morality. When I first read this claim, my knee-jerk reaction was “of course that’s not true! I am a reasonable person who solves problems in terms of logic!” However, I decided to give Haidt a meaningful listen.
He makes a compelling and well-supported argument about the primacy of intuition through the metaphor of a rider and elephant. The elephant, as Haidt (2012) describes, is our gut instinct or unconscious, automatic brain processes. The rider is our conscious, reasoning intellect, our resident public relations manager who rationalizes the elephant’s actions but does not control them. As an exercise to demonstrate this idea, while reading this review notice any time your emotions flare up (i.e., if you get angry, upset, defensive, etc.), and then pay close attention to the story you told yourself about why you felt this emotion to see your rider and elephant in action. To further demonstrate this, Haidt provides us with an example of a “harmless taboo” story used in his research to gauge people’s moral reactions and subsequent reasoning:
Julie and Mark, who are sister and brother, are traveling together in France. They are both on summer vacation from college. One night they are staying alone in a cabin near the beach. They decide that it would be interesting and fun if they tried making love. At the very least it would be a new experience for each of them. Julie is already taking birth control pills, but Mark uses a condom too, just to be safe. They both enjoy it, but they decide not to do it again. They keep that night as a special secret between them, which makes them feel even closer to each other. So what do you think about this? Was it wrong for them to have sex? (p. 45)
After hearing the story, 80% of participants said that it was wrong for Julie and Mark to have sex. However, Haidt notes that even though none of the participants were able to make a sound argument for why they thought it was wrong, their judgment did not change. This example perfectly illustrates the rider and elephant analogy: people make moral judgments immediately based on emotion and intuition; reasoning, even poor reasoning, was just along for the ride.
Calling on various areas of neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, and sociology research, Haidt concludes this first section by warning readers against the worship of reason, which is rather popular in scientific and academic communities when thinking about morality. He advises readers to take a more humble, intuitionist approach to moral reasoning that acknowledges our morals are shaped by biology as well as the social contexts and systems in which we are immersed (Haidt, 2012).
In the second part of the book, Haidt gets more specific about where our intuitions come from or to keep with his metaphor, why the elephant steers us in such directions. He also maps out the aspects of morality and shows us where conservatives and liberals live in this moral world. In the chapter titled, “Taste Buds of the Righteous Mind,” Haidt (2012) likens our moral minds to a tongue with six taste receptors: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, liberty/oppression (p. 146). Haidt artfully explains the evolutionary demands that shaped these moral foundations and how they are triggered in the modern world. However, he also acknowledges that our moral and therefore political preferences are shaped by our personality traits, which are largely static throughout our lifetime. Haidt then characterizes liberal and conservative morality by describing which moral foundations or “taste buds” the individuals in these groups tend to most use. Individuals who identify as “liberal” or politically left rest most of their political beliefs on the moral foundations of care/harm, liberty/oppression, and fairness/cheating and significantly less on the other three dimensions. This makes sense when we consider the general liberal ideology of decreasing suffering through altruism, advocating for the oppressed, and karma (in the sense that people should be rewarded for their good deeds and punished for their bad ones). Individuals who identify as “conservative” or politically right, on the other hand, have a much broader moral palate relying on all six moral foundations or taste buds. Unlike the politically left, conservatives base their belief not only on the care/harm, liberty/oppression, and fairness/cheating foundations but also on the loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation moral foundations. To make sense of this, consider some conservative stereotypes: a strong belief in hierarchical structure (authority/supervision), a tendency toward tribal beliefs (loyalty/betrayal), and rigid political, cultural, and religious beliefs (sanctity/degradation).
While this may sound quite surprising, even more surprising are the results of a study Haidt includes about moral stereotypes. Graham and colleagues (2012) found that when liberals were asked to answer moral questions as a “typical conservative” would, they were way off the mark from how actual conservatives answered. Controversially, when conservatives were asked to answer the same questions as a “typical liberal,” their answers aligned with actual liberals (warning: you may have found some information in this paragraph to be enraging, or at least inconvenient; pay attention to that feeling (your elephant)). In sum, Haidt explains how moral foundations theory can help us understand the real differences between political sides and why people vote the way they do, giving us a glimpse into the moral minds of those with whom we may disagree.
The third and final part of the book operates on yet another analogy: “we are 90% chimp and 10% bee” (Haidt, 2012, p. 217). Through this metaphor, Haidt argues that we are a mix of selfishness (chimp) and “groupishness” (bees). We possess very strong individualist values, working for what is best for ourselves and our progeny, but we also rely on hierarchical, cohesive groups to survive evolutionary competition with other groups. In this way, we find groups that share our moral values, which in turn, binds us to that group and simultaneously blinds us to other ways of moral reasoning (think of religious groups and political parties as examples). This moral psychological perspective helped me to more effectively understand the origins of dysfunction and polarization in American politics. In the end, Haidt encourages readers to have more constructive disagreements by listening to their argument openly and determine which of the six moral foundations they are drawing upon the most. While this may not lead you to an agreement, at the very least it may help you see a controversial issue in a new light and encourage you to more respectfully engage with beliefs different from your own.
Haidt clearly and comprehensively organizes the text into three major sections, beginning each with a central metaphor, and ending with an “In Sum” section highlighting the most essential evidence and arguments. This book was not only informative but incredibly entertaining because of the diverse and paradigm-shifting evidence presented. Haidt expertly intertwined philosophy, neuroscience, sociology, evolutionary biology, ancient history, and psychology to produce a work that changed the way I view politics, religion, my own moral instincts, and identity. While The Righteous Mind was published nearly a decade ago, I believe that in today’s socio-political climate, it is absolutely critical to understand why people are divided by political and religious alliances through the understanding of moral psychology that Haidt offers.
About the Author
Emily Johns is a senior at Harvard College concentrating in Neuroscience and Classics.
References
Graham, J., Nosek, B. A., & Haidt, J. (2012). The moral stereotypes of liberals and conservatives: Exaggeration of differences across the political spectrum. PloS One, 7(12), E50092.
Haidt, J. (2012). The righteous mind: why good people are divided by politics and religion (1st ed.). New York: Pantheon Books.