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

by Jonathan Haidt

“Can we all get along?”

Rodney King,

we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out.”

a tour of

human nature and history from the perspective of moral psychology.

We are downright lucky that we evolved this complex moral psychology that allowed our species to burst out of the forests and savannas and into the delights, comforts, and extraordinary peacefulness of modern societies in just a few thousand years.

My hope is that this book will make conversations about morality, politics, and religion more common, more civil, and more fun, even in mixed company.

My hope is that it will help us t...

I could have titled this book The Moral Mind to convey the sense that the human mind is designed to “do” morality,

I chose the title The Righteous Mind to convey the sense that human nature is not just intrinsically moral, it’s also intrinsically moralistic, critical, and judgmental.

self-righteous,

an obsession with righteousness (leading inevitably to self-righteousness) is the normal human condition. It is a feature of our evolutionary design, not a bug or error

Our righteous minds made it possible for human beings—but no other animals—to produce large cooperative groups, tribes, and nations without the glue of kinship.

our cooperative groups will always be cursed by moralistic strife.

Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.

the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant.

The rider is our conscious reasoning—the

The elephant is the other 99 percent of menta...

there’s more to morality than harm and fairness.

the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors.

harm and suffering,

fairness and injustice.

liberty, loyalty, authority, a...

six taste re...

the world’s many moral...

politicians on the right have a built-in advantage when it comes to cooking ...

Morality binds an...

human beings are 90 percent chimp and 1...

Individuals compete with individuals within every group, and we are the descendants of primates who ...

We are indeed selfish hypocrites so skilled at putting on a show of virtue that we fool even ourselves.

As Darwin said long ago, the most cohesive and cooperative groups generally beat the groups of selfish individualists.

Darwin’s ideas about group selection

We also have the ability, under special circumstances, to shut down our petty selves and become like cells in a larger body,

or like bees in a hive, working for the good of the group.

These experiences are often among the most cheris...

although our hivishness can blind us to other...

Our bee-like nature facilitates altruism, heroism, w...

our righteous minds as primate minds with a ...

religion is (probably) an evolutionary adaptation for binding groups together and helping them to create communities with a shared morality.

People bind themselves into political teams that share moral narratives. Once they accept a particular narrative, they become blind to alternative moral worlds.

we are

all self-righteous hypocrites:

Why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye? … You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take the speck out of your neighbor’s eye.

Sen-ts’an

The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease.

world without moralism, gossip, and judgment would quickly decay into chaos.

we want to understand ourselves, our divisions, our limits, and our potentials, we need to step back, drop the moralism, apply some moral psychology, and analyze the game we’re all playing.

this struggle between “for” an...

INTUITIONS COME FIRST, STRATEGIC REASONING SECOND

The mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant.