The Righteous Mind, like much of moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s writing and speaking, is a thoughtful and original contribution to the massively important conversation around why we are so divided.
The central question of the book, “can’t we all just get along?” is basically answered by saying we are hard-wired not to because we have different conceptions of morality.
Where does morality come from? Most people want to think they get their sense of right and wrong by reasoning their way to the correct answer, but in reality, we have very little control over our moral foundations. In fact, many judgments are innate (even genetic) and many others come from social learning, but we do very little moral reasoning.
In many cases, you will make an intuitive moral judgment of something without reasoning at all, then your mind will come up with an appropriate reason for why this is indeed morally right or wrong. It is very similar to the phenomenon that Daniel Kahneman writes about in Thinking, Fast and Slow. Your system one makes a decision, and your system two justifies it to yourself.
Rory Sutherland says, to a similar effect, "the conscious brain thinks it is the Oval Office, but is really the press office, hastily assembling plausible explanations for decisions taken elsewhere.”
Haidt conceptualizes the mind as a tiny, rational rider on an enormous, intuitive elephant. The rider can have some influence on the elephant’s course, but, for the most part, the elephant is going to go in the direction it wants.
Haidt then goes on to say that “there’s more to morality than harm and fairness.” These are the two most common flavors of moral judgment here in the west. If you ask someone why they find something to be morally wrong, their answer is usually based on that thing being unfair to a certain party or doing harm in some way. He says there are actually five “moral foundations” that can be thought of like tastebuds on our tongue - different individuals and cultures will rely on a mix of different foundations and weigh them differently in order to determine morality.
These are the five moral foundations and Haidt’s explanation as to how they came about:
Care/harm
evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children. It makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need; it makes us despise cruelty and want to care for those who are suffering.
Fairness/cheating
evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of reaping the rewards of cooperation without getting exploited. It makes us sensitive to indications that another person is likely to be a good (or bad) partner for collaboration and reciprocal altruism. It makes us want to shun or punish cheaters.
Loyalty/betrayal
evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions. It makes us sensitive to signs that another person is (or is not) a team player. It makes us trust and reward such people, and it makes us want to hurt, ostracize, or even kill those who betray us or our group.
Authority/subversion
evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forging relationships that will benefit us within social hierarchies. It makes us sensitive to signs of rank or status, and to signs that other people are ( or are not) behaving properly, given their position.
Sanctity/degradation
evolved initially in response to the adaptive challenge of the omnivore’s dilemma, and then to the broader challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. It includes the behavioral immune system, which can make us wary of a diverse array of symbolic objects and threats. It makes it possible for people to invest in objects with irrational and extreme values - both positive and negative - which are important for binding groups together.
The last section of the book, titled “morality binds and blinds,” explains how group morality allows us to reap the benefits of being social animals. The act of worshiping a deity can be a positive in that it allows a large group of individuals to collaborate toward a common goal, but it can also be a negative in that it creates irrational us-vs-them conflict.
Haidt argues we are “90% chimpanzee and 10% bee” pointing to what he calls the “hive switch,” which can turn us from selfish maximizers to groupish collaborators.
The book’s subtitle is “Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion.” A good portion of the book is dedicated to applying his framework of moral psychology to explain why each political party and religion truly feels that they are morally right and the opposing sides are morally wrong.
I find that, after reading this book, I have a new sort of lens that I view divisive things like politics through. It becomes so obvious when you see friends or pundits arguing and talking past each other that they simply have different value systems - one may be maximizing for freedom while the other is more concerned with equality. As Haidt would put it, they have different moral matrices.
Haidt stops short of laying out a method for resolving these conflicts, but I think having an understanding of the framework in this book goes a long way. I often catch myself coming up with post hoc reasons about why something is “wrong” and then thinking about where that belief comes from and why a person on the other side of the world might have a different one. Just knowing that your mind has evolved to be righteous should make you think twice before believing your moral judgment to be the true right or wrong.
I would place this book, similar to Thinking, Fast and Slow or Fooled by Randomness, in the category of books that expose something about our nature or that of the world we live in where, after reading it, it feels like a veil has been lifted that still hangs over those who have not.
Or right-mind. His dichotomies are nicely consistent with, “The Master and His Emissary, The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World”, by Dr. Iain McGilchrist and my work on the neognostic model of the brain:
Neurons Create Knowledge - https://suddendisruption.blogspot.com/
Thanks for the review.