The Righteous Mind
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt
🚀 The Book in 3 Sentences
Our intuitions drive our moral psychology not our strategic reasoning
Morality is not fixed, it varies based on time, place, culture.
We need to speak to peoples intuitions, not reasoning, when understanding opposing views on politics and religion.
🎨 Impressions
This was an interesting read, deeply analysing moral psychology in a well constructed, logical way. The overall messages and drawn conclusions were thoughtful and logical - although there were unnecessary, overly detailed passages in the book.
How I Discovered It
This book was recommended to me by Ali Abdaal.
Who Should Read It?
If you are interested in politics and understanding opposing views. If you are keen to understand more deeply why you have certain views, moral outlooks. This book should help you be more compassionate in understanding others opposing viewpoints.
✍️ My Top 3 Quotes
If you think that moral reasoning is something we do to figure out the truth, you’ll be constantly frustrated by how foolish, biased, and illogical people become when they disagree with you.
The human mind is a story processor, not a logic processor.
Our moral thinking is much more like a politician searching for votes than a scientist searching for truth.
📒 Summary + Notes
1. Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second
Where does morality come from
Standard answers are that morality is innate or from childhood learning. Rationalists believe that morality is self-constructed by children on the basis of their experiences with harm.
However this book concludes:
the moral domain varies by culture. In Western, educated and individualistic cultures it is more narrow whereas in Sociocentric cultures the moral domain encompasses more aspects of life.
people sometimes have gut feelings - that can drive their reasoning. Moral reasoning is sometimes a post rationalisation
morality cannot be entirely self-constructed by children based on their growing understanding of harm - cultural learning and guidance plays a larger role.
Haidt explains how morality can be innate (a set of evolved intuitions) and learned (as children begin to apply those intuitions within a particular culture)
The Rider and the Elephant Model
The mind is divided into 2 parts. A rider (controlled provesses) and an elehant (automatic processes). The rider has evolved to serve the elephant.
People have strong gut feelings about what is right and wrong but struggle to construct justifications for those feelings. Even when there is no reasoning, the intuition doesn't change.
Moral reasoning is like it is to gain friends and influence people not finding the truth.
Therefore, if you want to change someones mind about a moral or political issue, you need to speak to the Elephant first.
Why our Elephants rule
This is demonstrated through the following:
Brains evaluate instantly and constantly.
Social and political judgements depend heavily on quick intuitive flashes.
Our bodily states sometimes influence our moral judgements. Bad smells and tastes can make people more judgemental.
Psychopaths reason but don't feel (and are severely morally deficient).
Babies feel but don't reason (and have the beginnings of morality).
Affective reactions are in the right place at the right time in the brain.
The elephant and automatic processes are where most of the action is in moral psychology. The elephant begins to lean immediately and the rider who is trying to anticipate the next move begins looking around for ways to support that move.
Searching to be liked, not for the truth
The reasons that moral thinking is like a politician searching for votes not a scientist searching for the truth:
We are obsessively concerned with what others think of us, although much of that concern is unconscious and invisible to us.
Conscious reasoning functions like a press secretary who automatically justifies any position taken by the president.
We are able to lie and cheat often and then cover it up so effectively that we convince ourselves.
Reasoning can take us to any conclusion we want to reach.
In moral and political matters we are often groupish, rather than selfish. We deploy our reasoning skills to support our team.
2. There's more to morality than harm and fairness
WEIRD morality
People who grow up in Western, educated, industrial, rich and democratic (WEIRD) societies are statistical outliers on many psychological measures including morality.
The WEIRDer you are, the more you perceive the world full of separate objects rather than relationships.
The moral domain is unusually narrow in WEIRD cultures, largely limited to the ethic of autonomy
Morality blinds and binds people - so it's difficult for people to consider the possibility that there may be more than one form of moral truth, or more than one valid framework for judging people or running a society.
Moral Foundations and how they evolved
What 'more' there is other than harm and fairness
Care/harm foundation evolved in response to adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children. It makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need; it makes us despite cruelty and care for those who are suffering.
Fairness/cheating foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of reaping rewards for cooperation without getting exploited. It makes us sensitive to indicators that another people is likely to be goof partner for collaboration. It makes us want to punish cheaters.
Loyalty/betrayal foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forming and maintaining coalitions. It makes us sensitive to signs that another person is a team player. It makes us trust and reward such people and hurt those that betray our group.
Authority/Subversion foundation 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 behaving properly given their position.
Sanctity/degradation foundation evolved initially in response to the adaptive challenge of the omnivores dilemma and then to the broader challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites.
The different ends of the political spectrum rely on each foundation in different ways, to different degrees. The left primarily rely on care/fairness whereas the right uses all five.
Moral psychology can help explain why the Democratic party have had more difficulty connection to voters. Republicans speak more directly to the elephant and better understand the moral foundations to trigger all of them
3. Morality binds and blinds
Most of human nature was shaped by natural selection operating at the individual level. But we have a few group related adaptions. We are selfish primates who long to be a part of something bigger and more noble than ourselves. When the conditions are just right we switch to being more groupish and less individual.
We have the ability under special circumstances to transcend self-interest and lose ourselves in something larger than ourselves.
Conclusion
Takeaway 1: View ourselves as a small rider on a large elephant. The action in moral psychology is not really in the pronouncement of the rider.
Takeaway 2: Beware of anyone who insists there is one true morality for all people, times and places. Human societies are complex and their needs and challenges variable.
Takeaway 3: We spend a lot of time advancing our own interests but we all have the capacity to transcend self-interest and become simply a part of a whole.
This book explains why people are divided by politics and religion. The answer is not that some people are good and some are evil. Instead, that out minds were designed for groupish righteousness. We are deeply intuitive creatures who's gut feelings drive our strategic reasoning. That makes it difficult - not impossible - to connect with those who live in other matrices, often built on different configurations of the available moral foundations.
