The righteous mind - book overview

Worked through this book, picked up from the Ara library, over a wettish weekend.

The Righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics and religion, by Jonathan Haidt. Published by Random House, 2012.

There is an overview on wikipedia.

Reviews are in the main, positive with examples from The Guardian and the New York Times.

The book is written in an accessible prose, using metaphors to illustrate his argument through the book.

The central theme is that we are the product of evolution. As such, our thinking (and intuition) are flawed as they are based on biological agents, which rely on making patterns gathered through our experiences and perspectives.

The book, sets out to explain, to 'liberal' readers, why the mindset of conservatives is as it is. The 'moral foundations theory' is proposed as one way to compare the differences between people's moral foundations.

The 6 are:-
Care - cherishing and protecting others from harm
Fairness or proportionality - the provision of justice according to shared  understanding of rules
loyalty or ingroup - ones standing within your group, family, nation etc.
authority or respect - submitting to tradition and authority
sanctity or purity - how certain foods, actions etc. are perceived, based on societal ideas
liberty - how the above affects the domination of one group over another

The above are proposed to have evolved through human history especially once hunter/gatherer groups began to have to liaise to form larger groups as the agricultural lifestyle took root.

The methods used to undertake the research are interesting. Based on using narratives as starting points by interviewers to collect interviewees' impressions. There is some cross cultural basis as the initial work was undertaken in Brazil, US of A and in India. Studies replicated recently in Korea, Sweden and NZ also show similar trends.

In a nutshell, conservatives take a stand on ALL six of the moral foundations. Liberals tend to be sensitive to Care and Fairness. Which makes sense as the nature of being a 'liberal' is not to take things at face value, but to weight up pros and cons and justify ones decisions.

Haidt proposes the need for liberal politicians to better understand how conservative voters think as without doing, they will never 'appeal' to these voters.

All in, a worthwhile read.