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

Haidt refers frequently to the 18th-century philosopher David Hume, who argues that reason is the “slave” of the passions. Haidt believes Hume is right that emotion and intuitive knowledge are stronger than reason. However, Haidt objects to the term “slave,” as he does think that reason can employed if we can acknowledge the moral matrices in ourselves and others and use those foundations to change minds and opinions.

Haidt presents Kohlberg’s insights into moral psychology as a six-step process in which children move from unthinkingly following adults’ definitions of right and wrong to gradually working out their own morality based on avoiding harm and respecting the individual. While Haidt sees Kohlberg’s framework as neatly fitting into a liberal view of morality, it fails to address the other moral “taste buds,” or foundations, that comprise conservative morality.

A student of Kohlberg, Turiel expressed insights in the same vein, though more precisely targeted toward liberal moral matrices. According to Turiel’s work on moral psychology, “[c]hildren recognize that rules that prevent harm are moral rules...related to justice, rights and welfare pertaining to how people ought to relate to one another” (10). Though Turiel posits that this phenomenon happens for all children, Haidt finds that other cultures’ moral matrices, which are more sociocentric than individualistic, work quite differently.

The findings of psychological anthropologist Richard Shweder serve as the backbone of Haidt’s concepts of morality. Shweder’s findings contradict Turiel’s. In Shweder’s view, morality is not universal and reason does not triumph. Instead, Shweder finds that morality is not exclusively self-created in childhood and that it is not always centered on the individual and avoidance of harm. Sociocentric cultures create different moral foundations, and those cultures pass different moral values on to their children.

Haidt is interested in Jefferson’s ideas on the relationship between emotion and reason. Like Hume, Jefferson admits to the intense power of the passions. Like Plato, he believes that reason can and often should triumph. Jefferson advances a “divided empire” model, where in some matters (such as science, math, and philosophy) reason holds sway and in others (poetry, justice), the heart rules over the head.

Haidt has admiration for Wilson, a prominent biologist, who argues that natural selection influences human behavior, that we are genetically programmed to feel emotions such as revulsion or sympathy, and that rational justifications for these feelings are created after the fact. Haidt defends Wilson, whose ideas run counter to popular progressive thought in that his theory does not see universal rights or harm avoidance as rational conclusions that we are destined to reach. Like Hume, Wilson advocates that feeling comes first and rationalizations shore up our impressions.

A neuroscientist and author of Descartes’ Error, Damasio discovered via research that gut feelings and bodily reactions are necessary in order to think rationally and make good decisions. Damasio worked with patients who suffered from injuries in the cortex of the brain that regulates emotional response. Though the patients suffered no intellectual disability and were, in fact, of above-average IQ, they made poor decisions about relationships and daily interactions. The fact that these rational individuals experience emotional impairment gives credence to the ideas of Hume and Haidt, who find the elephant, or the emotional part of the brain, more essential than the rider, or the rational brain.

Margolis, a public policy professor, and his work on cognition are significant to Haidt and his hypotheses about the elephant and the rider because Margolis, like Haidt, believes that reasoning comes second. Margolis theorizes that judgment and justification of judgment are two separate processes. As humans, we begin with judgment, which is instantaneous. Margolis views this as “seeing as,” a pattern- or instinct-matching process that even animals partake in. After we have done the “seeing as,” we move on to the “reasoning why,” in which we shore up our “seeing as” impressions and offer rationalizations for them.

Haidt celebrates Carnegie, author of pop psychology books such as How to Win Friends and Influence People, as “one of the greatest elephant whisperers of all time” (49). Haidt thinks Carnegie was wise in acknowledging that convincing someone of an idea begins with measures such as respect, warmth, and openness. Carnegie’s title homes in on the social persuasion link that Haidt feels is vital in talking with a political opponent.

John Stuart Mill was a 19th-century British philosopher known for his promotion of utilitarian ethics. Though Haidt acknowledges that Mill’s concept of morality is firmly centered on care, harm avoidance, and the rights of the individual, Haidt admires Mill’s sense of necessary balance in thought and government. Haidt quotes Mill as stating: “A party of order or stability and a party of progress or reform are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life” (294).