The Righteous Mind

This is honestly one of the best books I have read in years. Haidt makes very convincing arguments for his three main points: 1) intuitions comes first, strategic reason second, 2) there is more to morality than harm and fairness and 3) morality binds and blinds. His writing style is very clear and accessible although I paused several times during the book just to explore some of the many ideas he presents. This book really opened my eyes.

Does NOT Predict July 2024 Assassination Attempt of President Trump. This is a book I've had for a few years now - apparently I purchased my copy in 2020, several years after it had been out, and I just this month read it after an Acton Institute Fellow claimed on Twitter that this book "predicted in 2012" that something like the assassination attempt of President Trump would occur.

To be clear, if there is any indication at all of such a prediction, I must have missed it somehow.

Instead, what this book *does* do is show Haidt's own work as a psychology based sociologist, studying both societies and how the brain gets to the decisions it makes. Here, Haidt actually has a lot of seemingly solid ideas... though it is clear in looking through the one star reviews that few on the left appreciate his candor, despite his own admitted background (and presumptive leanings at the time of writing this, at minimum, back in 2011 or so) being as a leftist himself.

Yet Haidt makes his points clearly and logically, and actively builds concepts up rather than just expecting the reader to understand complex points from the get-go. The narrative is well laid out, and the overall writing is such that nearly anyone should be able to follow along reasonably well.

I can't speak to the bibliography, as I listened to the Audible form of this book and thus don't have access to that particular information.

Thus, all that I can see here, all that I experienced here, was a reasonably well written, clearly thought out narrative structure that made clear Haidt's own work and the work of others in his field in a way that proves particularly illuminating and worthy of conisderation.

Indeed, in the points Haidt actually makes within this text, we can all learn to understand each other quite a bit better... which actually leans to this book *not* predicting any assassination attempts on current or former Presidents.

Still, I'm glad I finally got around to reading this book, and I absolutely recommend you do too... just don't think it makes any predictions on current events. (It doesn't.)

Very much recommended.

This is really eye-opening on what drives our morality and choices. It's a must-read for everyone who is interested in politics, society, and morality. Any of those 3.

Fantastico libro sull'evoluzione dell'uomo. Indispensabile per capire la nostra complessa società.

Overall, I liked this book a lot. I really appreciated thinking and describing ways that you could feel some outrage. I quote the Atlantic:

“That the five most important taste receptors of the moral mind are the following...care/harm, fairness/cheating, group loyalty and betrayal, authority and subversion, sanctity and degradation. And that moral systems are like cuisines that are constructed from local elements to please these receptors.”

So my major challenge with the book is that I want morality to be reason based instead of based on my monkey brain. I have a kind of stoic feel that while our feelings and passions will drive us to do things, we should constantly strive to apply reason to our feelings and live a happier life for it. This means that while I recognize and feel the moral ‘senses' of loyalty, authority and sanctity I often dismiss the feelings as not useful in modern life and a evolutionary dead end in some ways. The book doesn't seem to want to take a stand as to if these moral senses that are ignored by WEIRD people is the right thing to do. Maybe there's some cultural relativism at play here or something, IDK.

Anyways, it gave me lots to think about and was interesting and engaging so it gets full marks.

This book should be read by everyone interested in politics. Especially by activist on the left.

It provides important insights into what it is to be human and the dynamics of society.

This book has been on my list for a while. After reading Blink and Talking to Strangers from Malcom Gladwell, I can say that they are very similar writers and thinkers. I thought Haidt was much more academic which is nice, but at times the book dragged. I was still interested in the topics and kept going. However, I couldn't help but feel that the book was quite dense with information, and at times made me not want to pick it up again.

Centrist take. Maybe I missed the point of the book but the reasoning from the author to be more accommodating to the right is not convincing enough for me.

I gave up on the book when I realised the author's moral framework was based on an old skool view of reason vs emotion. The other thing that psychologists get wrong about the languaged distinction they call “morality” IMO is an implicit assumption in a single universal objective world where the authority to define what is “true” and important is always external to the individual. Presumably this authority exists in their own conceptual frameworks.

This book was a fascinating dive into the reasons we as individuals have the political leanings that we do. I feel the author did a fantastic job of not beating down one side or the other overwhelmingly (though if there is a lean it is to the left). The tone of the book is very nonpartisan and scientific, which is what I expected after seeing many lectures by him on YouTube. His writing style is interesting and holds the attention well. Every so often he slips in some wry humor, which helps.

But you're probably reading this book to see why your side or some other side thinks the way they do. And this book really delivers. The concepts are clearly illustrated (textually) and I really don't know how this book could be any better.

Baloney. Begin with false assumptions and you arrive at false conclusions.

Be warned that this book is massive, but so good. For anyone wanting to understand the divisiveness of the current political climate, this is a must read. He does a good job of explaining how we use intellect to justify our preconceived notions, then lays out the moral framework those notions originate from.

For anyone reading certain other reviews, I felt he was respectful and fair throughout the book.

A good read to develop more tolerance toward different and often opposing ideas.

One of my Favorite Books of 2018

6/5 stars! A wonderful, enlightening look at moral psychology and how it explains religious and political divides, especially those in the US.

I had low expectations for this book's explanatory power, but I reckoned it would be interesting to read anyway. But no! It really does explain things! Very convincingly! A lot of Haidt's interpretations of experimental psychology really resonated with my life experiences (n=1).

The main crux of the argument is that our moral sense evolved to have six dominant “tastes”: a taste for Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Loyalty/betrayal, Authority/subversion, Sanctity/degradation, and Liberty/oppression. If you're very WEIRD (Western educated industrialized rich and democratic) and left-leaning, then you only really “taste” two of them - care and fairness - and kinda throw out the rest (e.g. authority is just a means to oppression and not something to be intrinsically valued; it's OK to sacrifice overall liberty if it protects disadvantaged groups). If you're more conservative (on the US political spectrum), then you taste all six, fairly equally. If you're NOT WEIRD, then you taste all six, also fairly equally.

This was so interesting! And YES, I THINK IT'S TRUE.

Haidt talks about how his work in Orissa, India, helped him to wake up to non-WEIRD more-than-just-those-2 moral tastes. And YES, I remember that the only time I really emotionally understood the more communal/social, less individualistic, morality that prizes respect for authority and loyalty to your in-group was the wonderful Hindi movie, Virasat (ugh, I need to fix my blog pics). Virasat is a moral fable that pits “Western individualism” against “Eastern communalism”. I mean, lots of Hindi films did and do that, but Virasat was the first that opened my eyes to the moral failings of Western individualism and the, well, righteousness of “dharma” (i.e. your role/duty).

I loved, actually, how Haidt also centralized these moral philosophical distinctions in the Enlightenment, when individualism exploded into the Western consciousness as a dominant cultural force - a force more morally powerful than family ties, the Church's moral authority, and so on. Sometimes it's funny to realize your highly specific, individual thoughts are actually the product of centuries of philosophical debate and cultural groove-making. Or, in other words, sacred values are man-made and culturally agreed-upon!

This also helpfully explained my blindness (and liberals' collective blindness), as I've found it harder and harder to understand conservative Republicans in the US (especially in the age of Trump). “Why would ANYONE choose to be Republican?” I would often ask myself. I tried listening to the Intelligence Squared podcast debate, Do liberals hold the moral high ground? But even with David Brooks articulating conservative POVs pretty well, I nodded in agreement MUCH more with the liberal side (led by Howard Dean, who made some great points also about the #MeToo movement and current LGBT political issues as a culture-wide renegotiation of gender). But this book! It made me understand! Not only did I better understand WHY some people are conservative (they have the six tastes!), but it helped me understand why I couldn't understand them (liberals are actually worse at understanding conservative viewpoints than vice-versa!).

Another thing I've ALSO often wondered about is, “Why am I a Democrat?” As they say, my earliest memories are of liberal issues. I was a tiny conscientious Democrat at age 10 - reading 50 Simple Things You Can Do To Save the Planet, wearing my “color blind” t-shirt (with cartoon kids of different races holding hands), and participating in Amnesty International letter-writing campaigns to release political prisoners. I mean. I was 13 MAX. WTF was I doing?! My parents, fwiw, were and are not liberals. No one in my family is. SO WHAT HAPPENED?! Where did my political beliefs - which were always so strong - come from!?!

This book even covered that! I was actually most skeptical of this section initially - where experimental psych research demonstrated genetic pre-dispositions, e.g., on threat sensitivity (conservatives are skittish; sorry, conservatives) and novelty seeking (liberals like weird stuff), but especially how initial (formative!) experiences along the 6-taste spectrum can start you on a motivated reasoning/confirmation bias until you find yourself, as an adult, firmly entrenched in a political team. (This also made me super interested in people who switch political teams as adults - e.g. Christopher Hitchens, or this person I met at a book club recently. I'd LOVE to learn more about that journey, since you're changing your in-group!)

Anyway, I would place this book somewhere between Big Gods (which wonderfully explained religion in an evolutionary psych way) and The Unwinding (about America's slow, horrible decline into political polarization). Oh yeah, and I forgot: yes, it really is all Newt Gingrich's fault. SHAME ON YOU, NEWT!!!

This book is expertly crafted, and an excellent primer on many diverse areas of Psychology, Morality and Philosophy.

The thesis of this book is, I think, extremely well supported and carefully explained. After finishing the book - I think you would be hard pressed to find any part of the book that does not present a nuanced view of what is usually a polarising issue.

Moreover I loved that Haidt seemed to genuinely want people to understand the core thesis and engage with it. The little summaries at the end of each section and the end of the book will go a long way in helping me remember the contents for, I hope, many years to come. It made the book feel accessible to a non-academic audience, and I appreciated that Haidt seemed to not be trying to convince Professors of his theory, but just normal people.

Short Review: The five stars is for impact more than anything else. It is probably a four star book, but I will be using the ideas for a while. The main theory that the Righteous Mind is describing is an adapted form of Moral Foundations Theory. This theory posits that there are six moral values that different people hold in different combinations and levels. Broadly conservatives hold all six, but with different mixes. While progressives mostly focus on Fairness, Care (and maybe Liberty). The six (as stolen from Wikipedia) are:

Care: cherishing and protecting others; opposite of harm.
Fairness or proportionality: rendering justice according to shared rules; opposite of cheating.
Liberty: the loathing of tyranny; opposite of oppression.
Loyalty or ingroup: standing with your group, family, nation; opposite of betrayal.
Authority or respect: submitting to tradition and legitimate author; opposite of subversion.
Sanctity or purity: abhorrence for disgusting things, foods, actions; opposite of degradation.

Haidt is looking at why people come to different conclusions even when we have similar backgrounds or facts. He suggests that different intuitions that are often subconscious influence how we interpret the world around us.

His central metaphor is an elephant and rider. The elephant is the intuition and the rider is the rational capacity. The rider is there and can change the direction of the elephant. But the elephant has inertia and power, which means that unless there is a reason that a change needs to happen, the intuition will often lead.

This is a concept that I think is broadly helpful. And one that I will be visiting again.

My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/righteous-mind/

A lot of people see the same things you see in society and come to totally opposite conclusions. If that confuses or frustrates you, read this. The discussion of the 5 moral foundations underlying our reactions is the key insight here.

Wish I could've enjoyed it more, but I found it too long and too dry. I'm not sure he knows his target audience: much of what he covers will only be new to the kind of people who wouldn't read his book anyway. That said, I'm glad I persevered. His elephant-and-rider metaphor (for our primitive brain, which pretty much guides our lives, and the neocortex which is often just along for the ride) is useful. His 6-axis classification of morality is elegant and promising. His political suggestions for picking the best from the left, right, and libertarian camps are shockingly close to the political views I've grown to adopt. His “hey, the other side are people too” reminder is welcome.

But I don't feel any closer to achieving a less polarized country. I don't think his message will get through to many people on any side of the rift. In fact, I actually feel much worse: Haidt posits that the Right are strongly aligned on the Loyalty to Authority and to Tribe axes (which the left identify as abhorrent, as do I even though I'm far from left). What Haidt doesn't cover is the corner case where Authority is batshit crazy. A very bad combination: sheep led by wolves. I think we're in trouble.

Couldn't decide between five stars (because of how important this material is) and three (because of my difficulty reading it) so I compromised. If you're the kind of reader who can skim easily, I urge you to pick this up and give that a try. Let me know how it goes.