Book Summaries: The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt

Intro The Righteous Mind is a book that I simply couldn’t stop talking about for the past week. I even mentioned it in a college interview when the interviewers asked me what books I was reading. We ended up having a great discussion on morality and politics.

What is it about? The Righteous Mind is a book on the origins of morality that uses the author’s foundation of morality theory to explain the reasoning for many political ideologies (liberal, conservative, and libertarian) and why people have such different understandings of morality on politics and religion. The author, Jonathan Haidt, is a professor of moral psychology studying the psychology behind morality. He is also currently the Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. Key Takeaways

Intuition trumps reason. We use our intuition and emotion to come up with a conclusion and use reason to justify these conclusions. For example, in the book Haidt describes an experiment he did where he asked people questions about morality. When they scanned their brains, their answers and patterns in their brains showed that they came to their own conclusions rapidly and later used reason to justify these conclusions they made. Scenarios they used that are baffling and hilarious but also intensely strange and uncomfortable included: Is it wrong to eat your dog? Have sex with a sibling? Have sex with a dead chicken? Many people came to the conclusion that these scenarios were morbid and wrong but couldn’t explain why. They often said that it “felt wrong” but “didn’t know why”.Morality is more than care and harm. Haidt proposes that there are six fundamental ideas that underlie our moral systems: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority and sanctity. When he tested these foundations of morality and tried to see which political ideologies favored which foundations he found that liberals  when tested across polls is typically focused on care and oppression and typically detests authority and sanctity while conservatives typically covered all six foundations.People in different cultures focus on different foundations of morality.

For example, in the west in people from cultures that are western educated industrialized rich and democratic (acronym WEIRD) the more people see the world as full of separate objects than relationships. Therefore, they tend to focus more on harm and fairness that protect individuals and their individual rights than cultures that see relationships, contexts, groups and institutions. In these more “sociocentric morality” they place the needs of groups and institutions first and focus more on social harmony resulting in morality that focuses on a broader foundations that include sanctity and authority.

What resonated with me the most?

The care and harm foundations of western morality: I now understood why I was bothered by the immorality of incest. The moralities of conservatism and liberalism: Haidt described the flaws in liberal and conservative ideologies and why we often perceive different issues to be important or controversial. A better future: ​Having a better understanding of morality and where it comes from can help us to have a society where we can better understand one another. 

Conclusion I loved this book and definitely give it a 5 stars out of 5. Reading it has transformed my mindset about open discussion and being open minded in general. This book is a book that I cannot recommend enough for people to read across the political spectrum as it will dig deeper into the human understanding of why we think the way we do about political and religious issues in our everyday lives. Sadly, I’m too young to actually participate in their surveys and research online (just a few more months) but you can at yourmorals.org! The website was designed to have people participate in surveys on morality, ethics and values to contribute to their social psychology research. They also provide tools and suggestions for how people with different moral ideas can interact healthily in society at civilpolitics.org. Now onto his other book: The Coddling of the American Mind!