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1-Page Summary of Good People

Overall Summary

In his book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion (published in 2012), social psychologist Jonathan Haidt presents a new way to understand the often-contentious moral divides in politics and religion. He looks at how the mind works, different values that emerge between people from different cultures or political parties, some advantages of being part of a group as well as some limitations. He ends with a call for civil debate that factors in different moral matrices and better understanding of how moral minds work.

Haidt’s view of the mind is different from the typical rationalist beliefs of Western philosophy. He asserts that emotion and intuition play a much bigger role in how we make decisions than reason does. The elephant, which represents our emotions and intuitions, makes our judgments instantly based on feelings and bodily sensations. Reason acts as a press secretary for the elephant by explaining its decisions to others (the rider). It’s difficult to change anyone’s mind unless you talk to their emotional side first.

After presenting his view of the elephant and rider, Haidt discusses moral taste buds. He believes that people across cultures share common moral tastes, but they differ in their emphasis on different values. Liberals emphasize Care and Fairness whereas conservatives pay more attention to Authority, Sanctity, Loyalty among others. Culture plays a role in determining which values are emphasized because some cultures (i.e., individualistic) value individuals above all else while other cultures (i.e., sociocentric) value groups over individuals.

Finally, Haidt suggests that groups are not inherently bad. They can be positive because they allow individuals to connect with something greater than themselves. This is why we have religious and political groups. Groups help us create a moral matrix for ourselves and give us rules for living by it. However, morality also binds and blinds us because our group membership can prevent us from seeing the validity in other people’s morals if they differ from ours.

The author, Jonathan Haidt, is interested in understanding morality and how people arrive at their ideas of right and wrong. He believes that the best way to do this is through conversation. The elephant metaphor can be helpful when trying to persuade others because it helps you understand where they’re coming from before you try to persuade them.

Chapter 1: “Where Does Morality Come From?”

In the first chapter of book, the author explains that his goal for writing this book is to discern how people decide what’s right and wrong. He looks at typical answers to this question as well as historical examples of these answers in order to illustrate their shortcomings.

Learning right from wrong happens during childhood. Morality is established in children, and they are expected to know it by the time they reach adulthood. So then the question is: How do we learn morality? Haidt explains that traditionally—and simplistically—people have answered this question with two main ideas: nature or nurture.

For some, it is a matter of being good. They believe that people are inherently good and have God-given goodness in their soul. People must simply tap into this innate goodness to be good and do what is right.

Haidt contrasts this to those who believe that we are shaped by what happens in our childhood and not by nature. For these people, called empiricists, we learn about morality from experience and observation rather than an innate sense of right or wrong.

There’s a third option to the nature versus nurture choice, but it was made clear by Jean Piaget. His findings show that children figure out morality on their own. They draw from their own experiences and arrive at moral cognition when they’re ready.