{"id":43595,"date":"2021-07-23T06:57:51","date_gmt":"2021-07-23T10:57:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=43595"},"modified":"2021-08-03T09:09:53","modified_gmt":"2021-08-03T13:09:53","slug":"righteous-mind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/righteous-mind\/","title":{"rendered":"The Righteous Mind: Why Don&#8217;t We All Just Get Along?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Why is it so hard for us to get along? How can we understand each other better?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Righteous Mind<\/em>, a book by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, attempts to answer those questions and help us understand why hostile groups have different conceptions of what it means to be \u201cright.\u201d&nbsp;Liberals and conservatives lack a common language, and reason-based arguments about morality are ineffective. This leads to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/party-polarization\/\">political polarization<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read on to learn more about <em>The Righteous Mind<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Why It&#8217;s Hard for Us to Get Along<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Righteous Mind <\/em>explores how our divergent moralities evolved, why morality is about more than just fairness, and how we can counter our natural self-righteousness to decrease political divides. Haidt explains why people around the world, including liberals and conservatives in the United States, have different moral frameworks. He argues that moral judgments are emotional, not logical\u2014they are based on stories rather than reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Righteous Mind<\/em> builds this argument on three basic principles:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Morality is more intuitive than rational.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/li><li><strong>Morality is about more than fairness and harm.<\/strong><\/li><li><strong>Morality \u201cbinds and blinds\u201d us.<\/strong><\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Righteous Mind<\/em> uses examples from history and studies of human nature to explore why we hold the moral beliefs we do and why moral values differ so dramatically across historical, geographical, and party lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Haidt agrees with Bible verse Matthew 7:3\u2014he says we are all often self-righteous hypocrites. To understand ourselves and reach some form of enlightenment, we must drop our own moralism and examine the world through the lens of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/moral-psychology\/\">moral psychology<\/a>, which states that <strong>people are governed by different moral frameworks. <\/strong>Consequently, we have trouble understanding humans with moral frameworks that are different from ours. This leads to many of the large conflicts in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-state-of-the-world-today\/\">the world today<\/a>.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Consider whether you think these situations are morally wrong:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>A family\u2019s dog dies by no fault of their own and they\u2019ve heard dog meat is tasty, so they grill it up to find out. No one sees this happen.<\/li><li>A man buys a chicken from the supermarket before dinner, but before cooking it, he has sex with it. No one sees this happen.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>The first situation will probably seem a little less disgusting than the second, but if you\u2019re a well-educated, liberal or libertarian, non-religious Westerner, you likely evaluated both scenarios with some nuance, believing that it\u2019s not easy to place an obvious moral judgment on either case. (We\u2019ll discuss <em>why<\/em> you have trouble making these moral judgments later in the summary.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, if you do <em>not <\/em>exist in one of these categories (you\u2019re not a Westerner, or you\u2019re religious), it\u2019s likely that you think it\u2019s simply morally wrong to eat your pet dog or have sex with a chicken carcass and eat it after. As you can see, <strong>moralities are different across societies<\/strong>. Once you understand this, it becomes easier to understand and empathize with different groups of people and their moral beliefs.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Haidt argues that morality is intuitive, not rational, and that our cultures shape these intuitive moral judgments. He builds this argument on three basic principles, which make up the three parts of <em>The Righteous Mind<\/em>:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Part 1 (Chapters 1-5): Morality is more intuitive than rational.&nbsp;<\/li><li>Part 2 (Chapters 6-8): Morality is about more than fairness and harm.<\/li><li>Part 3 (Chapters 9-12): Morality \u201cbinds and blinds\u201d us.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Morality&#8217;s Origins and Evolution<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Clearly, we all define \u201cmorality\u201d differently. But why are our beliefs about what\u2019s right and wrong so different? To understand why morality is primarily intuitive, we first need to understand how morality evolved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Moral psychologists ask where morality comes from and how kids learn what\u2019s right and what\u2019s wrong. The two clear answers are <em>nature<\/em><strong> <\/strong>and <em>nurture<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>If you answer nature, you are a nativist, and you think moral knowledge is pre-loaded, potentially from God or from evolution.<\/li><li>If you answer nurture, you\u2019re an empiricist. You think children are blank slates and their morality is grafted onto them from their upbringing and their life experiences.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Moral psychologists argue that the answer is somewhere in between nativist and empiricist views. They put forth <strong><em>rationalism<\/em><\/strong><strong>, the theory that knowledge comes from reason, not experience or intuition.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>However, Haidt argues that this common theory is wrong as well. We\u2019ll move through three common arguments for rationalist thought and three counterarguments that, according to Haidt, debunk the theories of rationalism:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Rationalist argument #1: Children develop moral frameworks on their own.<\/li><li>Rationalist argument #2: Morality is only about reducing harm.&nbsp;<\/li><li>Rationalist argument #3: Morality is governed by reason.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Haidt argues that the rationalist\u2019s narrow definition of morality is not only incorrect but dangerous. <strong>The attempt to ground society in just one moral principle, like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-harm-principle\/\">preventing harm<\/a>, leads to societies that are both unsatisfying and potentially inhumane because they ignore so many other moral principles. <\/strong>In fact, the righteous mind has six \u201ctaste receptors,\u201d or foundational moral principles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The Righteous Mind<\/em> goes into depth with these six <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/moral-foundations\/\">moral foundations<\/a> and explains how different groups respond to them in different ways, causing division\u2014particularly along ideological lines.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why is it so hard for us to get along? How can we understand each other better? The Righteous Mind, a book by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, attempts to answer those questions and help us understand why hostile groups have different conceptions of what it means to be \u201cright.\u201d&nbsp;Liberals and conservatives lack a common language, and reason-based arguments about morality are ineffective. This leads to political polarization. Read on to learn more about The Righteous Mind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":43614,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,20,9],"tags":[431],"class_list":["post-43595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","category-ethics","category-psychology","tag-the-righteous-mind","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Righteous Mind: Why Don&#039;t We All Just Get Along? - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Jonathan Haidt&#039;s The Righteous Mind helps us understand why hostile groups have different conceptions of what it means to be \u201cright.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/righteous-mind\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Righteous Mind: Why Don&#039;t We All Just Get Along?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jonathan Haidt&#039;s The Righteous Mind helps us understand why hostile groups have different conceptions of what it means to be \u201cright.\u201d\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/righteous-mind\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-07-23T10:57:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-08-03T13:09:53+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/righteous-mind.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"750\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"367\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elizabeth Whitworth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elizabeth Whitworth\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/righteous-mind\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/righteous-mind\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elizabeth Whitworth\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d2928cf6c11a69ced1491d6a5b74fb13\"},\"headline\":\"The Righteous Mind: Why Don&#8217;t We All Just Get Along?\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-07-23T10:57:51+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-08-03T13:09:53+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/righteous-mind\/\"},\"wordCount\":863,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/righteous-mind\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/righteous-mind.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"The Righteous Mind\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Books\",\"Ethics\",\"Psychology\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/righteous-mind\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/righteous-mind\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/righteous-mind\/\",\"name\":\"The Righteous Mind: Why Don't We All Just Get Along? 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