The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

by Jonathan Haidt

Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party, or the conservative position on controversial current events. Being liberal was cool; being liberal was righteous. Yale

were alternative moral worlds in which reducing harm (by helping victims) and increasing fairness (by pursuing group-based equality) were not the main goals.

Baron-Cohen has shown that autism is what you get when genes and prenatal factors combine to produce a brain that is exceptionally low on empathizing and exceptionally high on systemizing.

They find a close match on the main diagnostic criteria, including those involving low empathy and poor social relationships.

Altruism toward kin is not a puzzle at all. Altruism toward non-kin, on the other hand, has presented one of the longest-running puzzles in the history of evolutionary thinking.

We’re usually nice to people when we first meet them. But after that we’re selective: we cooperate with those who have been nice to us, and we shun those who took advantage of us.

We feel pleasure, liking, and friendship when people show signs that they can be trusted to reciprocate. We feel anger, contempt, and even sometimes disgust when people try to cheat us or take advantage of us.16

The current triggers of the Fairness modules include a great many things that have gotten linked, culturally and politically, to the dynamics of reciprocity and cheating. On

The virtue of loyalty matters a great deal to both sexes, though the objects of loyalty tend to be teams and coalitions for boys, in contrast to two-person relationships for girls.21

Inferno, Dante reserves the innermost circle of hell—and the most excruciating suffering—for the crime of treachery. Far worse than lust, gluttony, violence, or even heresy is the betrayal of one’s family, team, or nation.

The left tends toward universalism and away from nationalism,26 so it often has trouble connecting to voters who rely on the Loyalty foundation.

Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism.27

I discovered that I was wrong. Fiske’s theory of the four basic kinds of social relationships includes one called “Authority Ranking.” Drawing on his own fieldwork in Africa, Fiske showed that people who relate to each other in this way have mutual expectations that are more like those of a parent and child than those of a dictator and fearful underlings:

“The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.”

koala bear’s sensory systems are “structured in advance of experience” to guide it to eucalyptus leaves.

Omnivores therefore go through life with two competing motives: neophilia (an attraction to new things) and neophobia (a fear of new things).

Liberals score higher on measures of neophilia (also known as “openness to experience”), not just for new foods but also for new people, music, and ideas.

Conservatives are higher on neophobia; they prefer to stick with what’s tried and true, and they care a lot more about guarding borders, boundaries, and traditions.38

we had no sense of disgust, I believe we would also have no sense of the sacred. And if you think, as I do, that one of the greatest unsolved mysteries is how people ever came together to form large cooperative societies, then you might take a special interest in the psychology of sacredness.

The only ethical question about abortion becomes: At what point can a fetus feel pain?

Doctor-assisted suicide becomes an obviously good thing: People who are suffering should be allowed to end their lives, and should be given medical help to do it painlessly.

repugnance

The Care/harm foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of caring for vulnerable children. It makes us sensitive to signs of suffering and need; it makes us despise cruelty and want to care for those who are suffering.

The Fairness/cheating foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of reaping the rewards of cooperation without getting exploited.

The 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 (or is not) a team player. It makes

The Authority/subversion foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of forging relationships that will benefit us within social hierarchies. It

The Sanctity/degradation foundation evolved initially in response to the adaptive challenge of the omnivore’s dilemma, and then to the broader challenge of living in a world of pathogens and parasites. It includes the behavioral immune system, which can make us wary of a diverse array of symbolic objects and threats.

I showed how the two ends of the political spectrum rely upon each foundation in different ways, or to different degrees. It appears that the left relies primarily on the Care and Fairness foundations, whereas the right uses all five.

Conservatives are conservative because they were raised by overly strict parents, or because they are inordinately afraid of change, novelty, and complexity, or because they suffer from existential fears and therefore cling to a simple worldview with no shades of gray.17

“Lack of compassion fits them [Republicans], and narcissists are also lacking this important human trait.” He thought it was “sad” that Republican narcissism would prevent them from understanding my perspective on their “illness.”

evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of living in small groups with individuals who would, if given the chance, dominate, bully, and constrain others. The original triggers therefore include signs of attempted domination. Anything that suggests the aggressive, controlling behavior of an alpha male (or female) can trigger this form of righteous anger, which is sometimes called reactance. (That’s the feeling you get when an authority tells you you can’t do something and you feel yourself wanting to do it even more strongly.)35

The flag of my state, Virginia, celebrates assassination (see figure 8.3). It’s a bizarre flag, unless you understand the Liberty/oppression foundation. The flag shows virtue (embodied as a woman) standing on the chest of a dead king, with the motto Sic semper tyrannis (“Thus always to tyrants”). That was the rallying cry said to have been shouted by Marcus Brutus as he and his co-conspirators murdered Julius Caesar for acting like an alpha male.

This may be why the left usually favors higher taxes on the rich, high levels of services provided to the poor, and sometimes a guaranteed minimum income for everyone.

reciprocal altruism was the source of moral intuitions about equality.

But egalitarianism seems to be rooted more in the hatred of domination than in the love of equality per se.

Liberal moral matrices rest on the Care/harm, Liberty/oppression, and Fairness/cheating foundations, although liberals are often willing to trade away fairness (as proportionality) when it conflicts with compassion or with their desire to fight oppression. Conservative morality rests on all six foundations, although conservatives are more willing than liberals to sacrifice Care and let some people get hurt in order to achieve their many other moral objectives.

presented the Durkheimian vision of society, favored by social conservatives, in which the basic social unit is the family, rather than the individual, and in which order, hierarchy, and tradition are highly valued.

contrasted this vision with the liberal Millian vision, which is more open and individualistic. I

these revisions, Moral Foundations Theory can now explain one of the great puzzles that has preoccupied Democrats in recent years: Why do rural and working-class Americans generally vote Republican when it is the Democratic Party that wants to redistribute money more evenly?

Morality binds and blinds.

reciprocal altruism augmented by gossip and reputation management. That’s the message of nearly every book on the evolutionary origins of morality, and nothing I’ve said so far contradicts that message.

Individuals compete with individuals, and that competition rewards selfishness—which includes some forms of strategic cooperation (even criminals can work together to further their own interests).7 But at the same time, groups compete with groups, and that competition favors groups composed of true team players—those who are willing to cooperate and work for the good of the group, even when they could do better by slacking, cheating, or leaving the group.8

The first step was the “social instincts.” In ancient times, loners were more likely to get picked off by predators than were their more gregarious siblings, who felt a strong need to stay close to the group. The second step was reciprocity. People who helped others were more likely to get help when they needed it most.

saw natural selection as a design process. There’s no conscious or intelligent designer, but Williams found the language of design useful nonetheless.

gave examples from across the animal kingdom, showing in every case that what looks like altruism or self-sacrifice to a naive biologist (such as that termite specialist) turns out to be either individual selfishness or kin selection (whereby costly actions make sense because they benefit other copies of the same genes in closely related individuals, as happens with termites).

Richard Dawkins did the same thing in his 1976 best seller The Selfish Gene, granting that group selection is possible but

Theories in a wide variety of disciplines rest on the assumption that ‘man is selfish.’ ”25 All acts of apparent altruism, cooperation, and even simple fairness had to be explained, ultimately, as covert forms of self-interest.26

Of course, real life is full of cases that violate the axiom. People leave tips in restaurants they’ll never return to; they donate anonymously to charities; they sometimes drown after jumping into rivers to save children who are not their own.

Our “moral qualities” are not adaptations, as Darwin had believed. They are by-products; they are mistakes.

Morality, said Williams, is “an accidental capability produced, in its boundless stupidity, by a biological process that is normally opposed to the expression of such a capability.”