The Righteous Mind

March 12, 2012
Amid America's tense culture wars, Haidt (The Happiness Hypothesis), a psychology professor at the University of Virginia, has produced this thought-provoking investigation into the innate morality of the human mind. Dismissing the notion that the human mind is fundamentally rational, Haidt briskly guides the reader through decades of psychology research in order to demonstrate that emotion and intuition determine our judgments, while reasoning is created only later to justify these judgments (Ã la Hume). From there, Haidt dispels the classic notion that morality is based upon concepts of harm or fairness and outlines the variety of moral categories before entering a discussion of how our "righteous minds" "Bind and Blind" us in politics, religion, and nationalism. But Haidt is at his best when using his comprehensive knowledge of moral psychology to explain both sides of American politics with an admirable evenhandedness and sympathy. In his two most insightful chapters, Haidt explains why conservatives have a wider moral foundation and thus, an inherent advantage in politics, and later outlines the necessities of both liberal and conservative moral systems, arguing that the two provide necessary counterbalances to one another. Blending lucid explanations of landmark studies in psychology and sociology with light personal anecdotes, Haidt has produced an imminently readable book about the complexities of moral psychology and the human fixation with righteousness. Illus.

March 1, 2012
A well-informed tour of contemporary moral psychology. Haidt (Psychology/Univ. of Virginia; The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, 2005, etc.) lays out a rich landscape of morality, presenting a cross-cultural, evolutionarily sensible scenario wherein a moral universe can be shaped from six moral foundations: care/harm, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation and liberty/oppression. Haidt examines, via a wide array of theories, research and experimentation, how various subsets--for instance, the WEIRD (Western, educated, industrial, rich, democratic) group--emphasize one or more of the foundations with respect to group traditions and evolutionary progress. He explains how he has arrived at an intuitionist's rather than a rationalist's stance regarding the elemental governing of our moral behavior--a framework with us at birth, though not deterministic--how our reasoning comes later to justify our social agenda and how moral intuitions such as loyalty, authority and sanctity gather such subjective importance and potential evolutionary value. He arrives at a broad definition of moral systems as "interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible." Haidt finds within Western democracies an ethnic and moral diversity that is best served by utilitarianism, producing the greatest total good, and that happiness comes from "getting the right relationships between yourself and others, yourself and your work, and yourself and something larger than yourself." A cogent rendering of a moral universe of fertile complexity and latent flexibility.

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Starred review from March 15, 2012
What would we think of a family that responded to the accidental death of their pet dog by cooking and eating it? By assessing diverse responses to questions such as this one, Haidt illuminates the often bewildering mysteries of human morality. Evidence from anthropology and evolutionary psychology reveals that most moral reasoning amounts to merely post hoc rationalizations of emotional intuitions. Readers learn how these intuitions develop into profoundly different moral orientations defined by divergent attitudes toward six foundational values: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and liberty. Laying these six values out in liberal, conservative, and libertarian matrices, Haidt examines the dynamics of political conflicts and the blinding zealotry of the ideological combatants. Modern research suggests that such zealotry reflects our species' genetically primed inclination to hive-like group loyalty. And though the New Atheists see only evil and oppression in religious reinforcements to such loyalty, Haidt interprets the emergence of religion as essential to human moral formation. But then atheists and believers, liberals and conservatives will all find some of their cherished tenets in jeopardy in these pages. And will all find reason to heed Haidt's concluding plea for a renewed civility born of human connections that transcend ideological disagreements. A much-needed voice of moral sanity.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)