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Overall Summary

In The Righteous Mind, published in 2012, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explains a new way to understand the moral divides between people. He presents three main sections of the book: an overview of how our minds work, a framework for understanding different cultures’ and political parties’ values, and some advantages and disadvantages to being part of groups. Haidt ends with a call for civil debate that takes into account all perspectives on morality.

Jonathan Haidt has a different view of the mind than most philosophers. He believes that emotions and intuition are more important in making judgments than reason is. Reason is like a rider, trying to steer the elephant—the emotional part of our minds—in the right direction. The rider also acts as a press secretary for the elephant, explaining its decisions to others. It’s difficult to change someone’s mind unless you speak directly to their emotions first; even then it might be hard because they’ll just come up with another explanation for why they’re doing what they do.

Haidt believes that there are different perspectives on morality. He calls them taste buds and says that they’re common across all cultures, though some cultures emphasize certain moral values more than others. Liberals tend to focus on Care and Fairness whereas conservatives value Authority, Sanctity, Loyalty, and other moral foundations as well. People determine their perspective based in part on whether they’re individualistic or sociocentric.

In addition, Haidt says that groups can be problematic, too. They can blind people to other ways of thinking and make them more dogmatic. Groups can also bind people together in a way that’s not always positive; they may create a sense of moral superiority or purity rather than true morality.

Haidt is interested in fostering more productive conversations among people with different views of morality. He wants to understand how people arrive at their ideas of right and wrong, and he offers a set of moral foundations as reference points for understanding other groups’ beliefs. His goal is not to prescribe or judge these beliefs but rather to better understand them so that we can talk about them more effectively.

Chapter 1: “Where Does Morality Come From?”

In the first chapter, the author lays out his goal for the book. He wants to figure out if morality is a cultural or historical construct or something else entirely. To do this, he looks at typical answers that have been given throughout history and shows why they’re not very good explanations.

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

Some people believe that human beings are innately good and don’t need to be taught what is right or wrong. People who subscribe to this belief are nativists. Nativists believe that we have a moral code programmed into us by God, which we must tap into in order to do the right thing.

Haidt compares this to those who believe that our moral understanding is learned from the experiences we have. These people are called empiricists because they think that all of our knowledge comes from empirical data, or observations and firsthand experience.

There is a third option to the nature versus nurture argument. Jean Piaget, through his research, found that children are ready at certain ages to figure out morality on their own. They use their own experiences and draw conclusions about what’s right or wrong.