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The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
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As America descends deeper into polarization and paralysis, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt has done the seemingly impossible—challenged conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to everyone on the political spectrum. Drawing on his twenty five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, he shows how moral judgments aris
...more
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Paperback, 500 pages
Published
February 12th 2013
by Vintage
(first published March 13th 2012)
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Start your review of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Haidt is much better psychologist than political philosopher, and this book is both monumental and dangerously flawed.
On the good side: Haidt draws broadly from research in psychology, anthropology, and biology to develop a six-factor basis for morality (Care/Harm, Liberty/Oppression, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation), and show that moral judgement is an innate intuitive ability accompanied by post-hoc justifications. Morality serves to bind non-rel ...more
On the good side: Haidt draws broadly from research in psychology, anthropology, and biology to develop a six-factor basis for morality (Care/Harm, Liberty/Oppression, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation), and show that moral judgement is an innate intuitive ability accompanied by post-hoc justifications. Morality serves to bind non-rel ...more

If you are a Republican this book will make you feel very good about yourself. According to Haidt you have a more balanced morality, a realistic view of "human nature" (beware anyone who says they understand human nature), and some other good stuff I forgot about. He points the finger at liberals but seems unaware about the political dangers of conservatism. He discusses liberals with disdain. With conservatives there is a kind of awe and he rarely discusses their hypocrisies. Of course he conve
...more

I had great expectations for this book after watching the author give an introduction in the Colbert report. However, the book didn't hold up to it's name. These are some of grudges I have against this book:
1.) The author doesn't tackle conservative vs. progressive morals. He tackles left wing vs. right wing morals.
This is a typical blunder made by the average American. And I would've overlooked it, as the book is geared towards an American audience. But the author is a professor in moral psych ...more
1.) The author doesn't tackle conservative vs. progressive morals. He tackles left wing vs. right wing morals.
This is a typical blunder made by the average American. And I would've overlooked it, as the book is geared towards an American audience. But the author is a professor in moral psych ...more

Nov 02, 2013
Clif Hostetler
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
current-events
I was hopeful this book might provide me with some sociological tools and rhetorical tricks to clear away the views of those who disagree with my positions on politics and religion. Of course this book does not deliver on this unrealistic hope. What the book does provide instead is an explanation why not everybody agrees with my definition of morality. This knowledge does not make disagreements go away, so the best I can hope for after reading this book is to comprehend the intuitive motivations
...more

Feb 14, 2018
Trevor
rated it
it was ok
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
social-theory,
psychology
For a long time now I have been coming to the conclusion that if one is to believe capitalism is essentially a meritocracy - and if one is also to acknowledge that the inequities of capitalist societies mean that social mobility (particularly in the United States, for instance) is virtually non-existent, then one also needs some way of explaining how something that looks like it is without merit actually is the embodiment of merit.
And often this is where 'biology' comes to the rescue. Genes have ...more
And often this is where 'biology' comes to the rescue. Genes have ...more

I expected this book to be good, but I did not expect it to be so rich in ideas and dense with information. Haidt covers far more territory than the subtitle of the book implies. Not only is he attempting to explain why people are morally tribal, but also the way morality works in the human brain, the evolutionary origins of moral feelings, the role of moral psychology in the history of civilization, the origin and function of religion, and how we can apply all this information to the modern pol
...more

Sep 04, 2012
Eric_W
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
current-affairs,
science
"This book is about why it’s so hard for us to get along. We are indeed all stuck here for a while, so let’s at least do what we can to understand why we are so easily divided into hostile groups, . . Politics and religion are both expressions of our underlying moral psychology, and an understanding of that psychology can help to bring people together. My goal in this book is to drain some of the heat, anger, and divisiveness out of these topics and replace them with awe, wonder, and curiosity.
...more

Feb 12, 2014
Charlene
rated it
did not like it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
philosophy,
neuroscience
At first I gave this book 3 stars because I felt like I might have been too critical. After thinking about it a while, I decided I was not merely critical enough. This book should be renamed "How to Justify the Action of Oppressing Human Beings In the Name of Getting Along." You can take any of Haidt's current examples of what to him "seems" like an oppressive act, as he assures you there is some merit to the thinking of oppressive individuals, and replace it with any of the most embarrassing at
...more

“[W]hen a group of people make something sacred, the members of the cult lose the ability to think clearly about it. Morality binds and blinds.”
― Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind

Jonathan Haidt give a nice social science explanation for how we align politically and how we are built to disagree. This is one of those books that seems to fit in the same evolutionary psychology space as Bob Wright's The Moral Animal. It is a combination of ethnography + evolutionary psychology + experimental psych ...more
― Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind

Jonathan Haidt give a nice social science explanation for how we align politically and how we are built to disagree. This is one of those books that seems to fit in the same evolutionary psychology space as Bob Wright's The Moral Animal. It is a combination of ethnography + evolutionary psychology + experimental psych ...more

On page 88 the author writes: "As an intuitionist , I'd say that the worship of reason is itself an illustration of one of the most long-lived delusions in Western history: the rationalist delusion."
Apparently he hasn't noticed that reason has taken us to the moon, given us longer and healthier lives, allowed us to travel the world, to communicate with loved ones over vaste distances, even allowed his book to exist ...
The author is a dim witted charlatan and spends the rest of the book making a ...more
Apparently he hasn't noticed that reason has taken us to the moon, given us longer and healthier lives, allowed us to travel the world, to communicate with loved ones over vaste distances, even allowed his book to exist ...
The author is a dim witted charlatan and spends the rest of the book making a ...more

"We are 90% chimp and 10% being."
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion is much more than just about "Why good people are divided by politics and religion". It is a detailed, descriptive and a very interesting facts-based investigation and research into the origins of morality and righteousness. Morality is explained and defined in different ways in this book.
"There is more in man than the breath of his body."
"We, humans, have extraordinary capability to care ab ...more
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion is much more than just about "Why good people are divided by politics and religion". It is a detailed, descriptive and a very interesting facts-based investigation and research into the origins of morality and righteousness. Morality is explained and defined in different ways in this book.
"There is more in man than the breath of his body."
"We, humans, have extraordinary capability to care ab ...more

Despite some painful infelicities of style, this book is compelling and generally well-argued. Two aspects irritated me -- I thought several of the author's chosen analogies were dreadful -- clunky and not particularly apt. The silliness of the metaphor that humans are Homo Duplex -- "90% chimp, 10% bee" -- is just so jarring that it distracts the reader from the argument. Similarly, I found his other recurrent metaphor, that for our rational and intuitive mental processes -- "The mind is divide ...more

There were many points as I was reading this that I had to check my assumptions and back down. Automatic groupings based on similarities tend to almost ALWAYS lead every single one of us to post hoc reasoning.
What do I mean?
Everyone jumps to conclusions based on their intuition. That feeling of rightness then leads us to find reasons and arguments why it is so.
Unfortunately, this is proven to be the means of how almost every single one of us uses reason. Over and over, we're constantly reminded ...more
What do I mean?
Everyone jumps to conclusions based on their intuition. That feeling of rightness then leads us to find reasons and arguments why it is so.
Unfortunately, this is proven to be the means of how almost every single one of us uses reason. Over and over, we're constantly reminded ...more

It's maybe not a stretch to say this book blew my mind, and in the best possible way. Some context: I'm a liberal far to the left of Obama, and I religiously read the New York Times and the Guardian - so I'm true blue pink. However, 30% of the country in which I live, including many well educated and erudite people hold views that I find completely incomprehensible, if not reprehensible. But, I think it's fair to say that they actually honestly believe they are right. Haidt promises to explain h
...more

This book is well-written, edited, and well-organized. Each chapter explores a concept, followed by a nice summary. The book is a mixed bag for me. Some parts are fascinating, while other parts are a bit technical and dry. But so much of it is original and fresh, that I give the book five stars.
Haidt proposes six foundations of morality; care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Haidt claims that liberals (Democrats) are i ...more
Haidt proposes six foundations of morality; care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. Haidt claims that liberals (Democrats) are i ...more

Aug 25, 2012
Thomas
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
psychology,
nonfiction
From a psychological standpoint, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion earns five stars. The book loses some of its appeal when Jonathan Haidt veers into political philosophy, however - especially when he raises the biased question "why are religious people better neighbors and citizens?"
Let me backtrack. The Righteous Mind is split into three sections. The first focuses on how intuitions come first and are followed by strategic reasoning, the second shows that ...more
Let me backtrack. The Righteous Mind is split into three sections. The first focuses on how intuitions come first and are followed by strategic reasoning, the second shows that ...more

The main selling point of the book is the controversial thesis that conservatives have a more sophisticated and complete "moral matrix" than liberals. Haidt says conservatives have a complete sense of taste whereas liberals can only taste sweet. This implies that liberals have a dangerously inaccurate version of reality that they are using when deciding what ideas to swallow and what to spit out.
Such a bold claim should be backed up with solid proof. Haidt needs to show where the "complete" mat ...more
Such a bold claim should be backed up with solid proof. Haidt needs to show where the "complete" mat ...more

As a liberal westerner, I think it is a natural reaction to perceive hierarchical systems, ideas of loyality, and ideas of sanctity as intellectually flawed and oppressive concepts. Jonathan Haidt tells us how such reactions are generally much more intuitive than they are rational. Most rationalization is often post hoc, and is also often used as a tool to intellectualize intuitive beliefs. Therefore, it would be erroneous to assume that people of conservative views are wrong and perhaps stupid
...more

Don't be put off by the title of this book (or the subtitle 'why good people are divided by politics and religion'). Although they are technically correct they don't give a full sense of the glory of what is certainly the best popular science book I have read this year, and comes easily into my top ten ever.
Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist who specializes in morality. We are inundated with books about human behaviours and traits - and many of them are rather tedious - but this is a totally diffe ...more
Jonathan Haidt is a psychologist who specializes in morality. We are inundated with books about human behaviours and traits - and many of them are rather tedious - but this is a totally diffe ...more

This book has many qualities, but ultimately its negatives outweighed its positives for me. First of all, I must give poor marks to his driving metaphor of the elephant and rider. It seemed counterintuitive as an example and wasn’t helpful to me at all in illustrating or clarifying his main point (which I actually understood just fine) that “intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.”
Secondly, early on in the book Haidt tells an anecdote about his time in the field where he displays suc ...more
Secondly, early on in the book Haidt tells an anecdote about his time in the field where he displays suc ...more

Aug 05, 2017
Trish
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Recommended to Trish by:
Bruce Katz
Ordinary people like myself occasionally glimpse pieces of truths we believe are important to explain how we live and understand the world but we never seem to get enough distance, or time, or examples to really state definitively what it is that makes us happy, or contentious, or willing to put ourselves out for another. Jonathan Haidt, fortunately, knows how to excavate the origins of our value systems, and has worked with colleagues to theorize and test what we believe and why and to discover
...more

Nov 20, 2012
Jan Rice
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
science-math,
psychology
First of all, some people get annoyed with Jonathan Haidt. I didn't have that reaction to The Righteous Mind. I guess I got rid of it with The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. It just seemed like he was selling something or trying to convert me to his point of view. He can rub people that way. If you have tried to read Haidt and have had that reaction, I suggest reading Thinking, Fast and Slow first. Daniel Kahneman has the ability to teach similar topics, in the fie
...more

After this year's presidential election I emailed my sister, a smart, super-competent, true-blue, bleeding-heart, save the weeds and snails, liberal, who volunteered to do campaign work for Hilary Clinton in Colorado during the 2008 Democratic primaries and, of course, voted loudly for Obama.
"Are you kidding me?" I asked. "How can anyone who doesn't have a carrot for a brain want more of the same? I don't get it. Obama? How can so many Americans be that gullible? I'm totally baffled." And that p ...more
"Are you kidding me?" I asked. "How can anyone who doesn't have a carrot for a brain want more of the same? I don't get it. Obama? How can so many Americans be that gullible? I'm totally baffled." And that p ...more

Wow. Wonderful, lucid, important and challenging work.
In these days, when it comes to political opinions, "You’re an idiot!” has everything necessary to be considered the ultimate representation of Internet discourse.
If you care to better understand why, within yourself, people who disagree with you on politics or religion tend to be categorized as human beings with a profound intellectual disability (maybe today more than ever), this is the perfect book for you.
At the very least, if you read ...more
In these days, when it comes to political opinions, "You’re an idiot!” has everything necessary to be considered the ultimate representation of Internet discourse.
If you care to better understand why, within yourself, people who disagree with you on politics or religion tend to be categorized as human beings with a profound intellectual disability (maybe today more than ever), this is the perfect book for you.
At the very least, if you read ...more

Jun 21, 2014
Mara
rated it
really liked it
Shelves:
behavioral-economics,
non-fiction,
money-and-mind,
2016-reads,
audiobooks,
2014-reads,
psychology,
science
n.b. This is a “pre-review” — see full explanation below.
Recommended required reading:
Before I begin anything that bears even a slight resemblance to a review, I want to say that I am incredibly grateful that a friend (a real, live human one at that) suggested I read (or re-read, as it were) Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow before taking on Haidt's oevre. I wholeheartedly endorse the aforementioned recommendation, so do with that what you will.
Excuses, excuses:
I am absolute ...more
Recommended required reading:
Before I begin anything that bears even a slight resemblance to a review, I want to say that I am incredibly grateful that a friend (a real, live human one at that) suggested I read (or re-read, as it were) Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow before taking on Haidt's oevre. I wholeheartedly endorse the aforementioned recommendation, so do with that what you will.
Excuses, excuses:
I am absolute ...more

I enjoyed Haidt's approach to the psychology and if you'd asked me my opinion of the book during the early psychology chapters, I'd have said this is a four star book.
But when Haidt starts going into the political philosophy of liberalism vs. conservatism, things start going downhill in a hurry. I'll agree that liberals don't respond to one of the points on his Six Foundations of Morality Theory; the Authority/Subversion scale. Okay, sure. But two of the points (Loyalty/Betrayal and Sanctity/Pro ...more
But when Haidt starts going into the political philosophy of liberalism vs. conservatism, things start going downhill in a hurry. I'll agree that liberals don't respond to one of the points on his Six Foundations of Morality Theory; the Authority/Subversion scale. Okay, sure. But two of the points (Loyalty/Betrayal and Sanctity/Pro ...more

People on polar opposite sides of ideological debates tend to think of their opponents in terms of pathology rather than as people animated by different, yet still potentially legitimate, beliefs. Published in 2012, this book by Haidt is a great effort to turn down the crippling levels of polarization in U.S. politics. Unfortunately, it seems that things have only gotten worse since then, which I think has something to do with the rapidly evolving technological context of society. Nonetheless, h
...more

This review is too long – I indulged myself to serve my own purposes and it got soft in the middle. It is the longest I’ve written because for me this was highly consequential book. When I finished, I returned here to the top and now provide a bulleted summary. (this is only about half of what I could fit, so it ends abruptly).
• The last 200 years of moral philosophy has overlooked several key foundations for morality by largely focused on Utilitarianism, the idea that what does the most good fo ...more
• The last 200 years of moral philosophy has overlooked several key foundations for morality by largely focused on Utilitarianism, the idea that what does the most good fo ...more

Feb 02, 2021
Charlie Miller
rated it
it was amazing
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
non-fiction-various
Very impressive, a masterpiece perhaps. Since the 8+ years of its publication I'm not aware of any sizeable, research-backed takedowns of the major findings, although I may be wrong. You don't have to be too much of an egghead to get through this, but I certainly benefitted from pacing myself and mulling over each chapter. Amongst others, he references the W.E.I.R.D work of Joseph Henrich- you'll see what I mean if you look it up. Last year this was also published as an accessible mass release t
...more
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Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. He is the author of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion and The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. He lives in New York City.
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“Morality binds and blinds. It binds us into ideological teams that fight each other as though the fate of the world depended on our side winning each battle. It blinds us to the fact that each team is composed of good people who have something important to say.”
—
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“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.”
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