[NB: I posted this in December of 2023. For some reason WordPress placed it back in Drafts. I reposted it when I noticed it there. A few of the examples about the 2024 election read kind of weird had this been written in 2025 as this posting date suggests].

Jonathan Haidt published the Righteous Mind in March 2012, in the midst of the presidential primaries. His subtitle, Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, portended more than a decade of the worst American politics has to offer. Looking ahead to a Trump-Biden rematch, many of us long for an Obama-Romney contest. What got us into the nasty fight of 2012—and much worse since then—is central to Haidt’s research. Haidt is a trained social-psychologist, with a focus on moral psychology; hence, much of his research centers around the social and neuro-biological aspects of moralizing behavior. 

I. Summary
I.A. Intuitions Come First, Strategic Reasoning Second
I.B. There’s More to Morality than Harm and Fairness
I.C. Morality Binds and Blinds
II. Evaluation
II.A. General Evaluation
II.A.1. Strengths
II.A.1.a. Haidt’s Humanity
II.A.1.b. Haidt and WEIRDness
II.A.1.c. Beyond Victims and Oppressors
II.A.2. Criticism
II.A.2.a. Of Descriptive vs Evaluative
II.A.2.b. Of Moral Deliberation vs Moral Evaluation
II.B. Who Has Known the Mind of Christ?
II.B.1. Lessons for Christians
II.B.2 Points of Resistance

SUMMARY

Although Haidt is a scientist, he’s unusually sensitive to his audience: each part begins with a “central metaphor” to help keep readers anchored. Throughout, he draws freely from philosophical literature, offers autobiographical anecdotes, and provides visual aids in nearly every chapter. 

Below I will focus on the major parts of the book. I will divide each into The Science and The Public, since Haidt rehearses the science and then applies it to social, political and religious issues. I will skip the introductory and concluding chapters, as they are not substantive. They primarily contain summaries with inspirational quotes as far flung Jesus and Zen teacher Sen-ts’an, Isaiah Berlin and Rodney King.

Part I. Intuitions Come First, Strategic Reasoning Second

The Science

Haidt argues that moral behavior is heavily shaped by cultural factors and emotional forces. The force of culture is unsurprising for anyone sensitive to descriptive moral relativism: moral evaluation differs significantly from culture to culture as a matter of fact. For example, Hindu Indians and secular Americans offer different verdicts on the same episodes. This doesn’t tell us anything about whether the Indian or American is correct—this is just a description of their moral behavior. 

It’s probably more surprising that emotions play such a large role in moral judgment, especially given the prominent role of reason in Western culture. Haidt argues that emotions are best understood as automatic cognitive processes, or intuitions. Emotions aren’t blind or stupid, but allow for rapid, unreflective judgments. Generally, intuitions allow us to avoid long analytical processes for every action or decision; specifically, emotions are a key intuition in moral judgments.

To establish the force of emotions, Haidt studied subjects’ reactions to disgusting thought experiments. The imaginary scenarios are designed to pull reason and emotion apart: 

• A family privately eats its dog after it was fatally injured by a car. 
• An adult brother and sister carefully use multiple forms of birth control to enjoy a single night of lovemaking.

For most subjects, their disgust overwhelms the powerful (secular) moral inference, no harm, no foul. Since these cases involve no (obvious) harm, the subjects scramble for reasons to explain how these behaviors were wrong, especially by comically hypothesizing forms of harm. Such studies and others like them demonstrate the power of intuitions: strategic reasoning is “along for the ride.” Even so, Haidt admits that there are times when strategic reasoning can steer the ship. Studies show that subjects’ reason may overtake their intuitions when they are forced by experimental design to reflect longer about the examples rather than offer an immediate reaction.

In a parallel study, Daniel Kahneman remarks:

In the context of attitudes, however, System 2 [strategic reasoning] is more of an apologist for the emotions of System 1 [intuition] than a critic of those emotions—an endorser rather than an enforcer.

Thinking, Fast and Slow, p. 103.

The Public

After watching with frustration how John Kerry conducted his 2004 campaign, Haidt realized that conservative politicians have an advantage by engaging the emotions. Looking at presidential elections since 2000, the only Democratic candidate that appealed to people’s emotions was Barack Obama. Al Gore, John Kerry and Hilary Clinton were all tepid wonks, depending on policies, education and experience to win.

A striking personal example of this came from Barack Obama’s victory speech in 2008. As a political moderate exhausted by political division, I teared up—to my own surprise—at this line:

…Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of red states and blue states; we are, and always will be, the United States of America.

Obama’s 2008 Victory Speech

I don’t consider myself particularly passionate—at least not outwardly. Yet, this simple rhetorical flourish applied to an issue that mattered to me (political cooperation for effective governance) tapped into a well of emotion I didn’t know existed.

Part II. There’s More to Morality than Harm and Fairness

The Science

Part II’s central metaphor is, The righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors. The idea here is that our evaluation of moral behavior requires a broad palette and that different cultures emphasize different ones. In particular, Haidt argues that WEIRD cultures—Western Educated Industrialized Rich Democratic—tend to emphasize only harm and fairness. But from studying cultures abroad and local cultures outside of the typical university population, Haidt observed a broader set of moral polarities. Each of them has a corresponding set of virtues and emotions. What follows is an adapted form of Haidt’s table (2012, 125):

	Foundation	Emotions	Virtues	Triggers1
1	Care-Harm	Compassion	Kindness	Cute Animals, Babies
2	Freedom-Oppression	Joy, Anger	Defending the Weak, Self-Control	Bullying, Tyranny
3	Fairness-Cheating	Anger, Guilt	Justice, Trustworthiness	Marital Fidelity, Legacy Admissions
4	Loyalty-Betrayal	Group Pride, Rage at Traitors	Patriotism, Self-Sacrifice	Sports Teams, Political Parties
5	Authority-Subversion	Respect, Fear	Obedience, Deference	Top Professionals, Strong Leaders
6	Sanctity-Degradation	Disgust	Temperance, Piety, Cleanliness	Taboo Ideas (e.g. Nazism)

Returning to the unpleasant thought-experiments from above, the subjects’ reaction shows that even WEIRD populations can “taste” the Degradation in those cases, even if their moral training primarily emphasized Care and Fairness.

I personally observed a form of this narrow ethical thinking when teaching introductory ethics at Ohio State. I informally surveyed students’ reactions to an imagined destruction of a beautiful cave of crystals. I screened out a few morally confounding variables to sharpen the concern:

• Imagine that the destroyer was just a vandal, smashing the crystals, rather than harvesting them for some greater use.
• Imagine that the vandal was the one who discovered the crystals.
• Imagine that the crystals would be destroyed naturally before anyone else could discover them.

While I didn’t have the Sanctity foundation explicitly in mind, that is essentially what I was after. I wanted to see who would be bothered by such brazen destruction of beauty. Some students scoffed: it didn’t matter if no one would see it anyway. Other students seemed bothered by such wanton destruction but struggled like Haidt’s subjects to explain what was wrong.

The Public

Haidt cashes out this notion as a way forward for American politics. Conservatives have another advantage over progressives. Progressives tend to draw almost exclusively on the first 3, whereas conservatives draw on all six moral foundations. For example, consider how many conservatives are religiously oriented (activating foundations 4-6) or pro-military (activating at least 4-5). To vary the metaphor, in a multi-lingual country, progressives only speak one language. The progressives need to learn all the “languages” of their constituents.

To some extent, Haidt’s data are out-of-date given the sweeping impact of Donald Trump’s unique brand of populism on the Republican party; however, the basic shape is still true. There is no doubt that Trump’s charismatic style appeals to intuition. He’s also particularly adept at marshaling sacred symbols (e.g. the American flag, parades) to great political effect. Similarly, the current American left continues to lack the vocabulary to inspire non-WEIRD populations.

Part III. Morality Binds and Blinds

The Science

Humans are remarkably susceptible to “groupish” or “tribal” behavior­­­­­­. For example, a motorist might observe a long line forming along the highway. Without knowing where the line leads, drivers feel compelled to join the line. Sometimes this is wise: there is an accident or construction ahead one can’t see. Sometimes it’s unwise: the crowded single lane is for an exit one doesn’t need. Whether the choice is wise or not, there is a peculiar social magnetism to get in line.

Haidt contrasts this groupish behavior with the common evolutionary assumption that individuals will behave in strict (ideally, rational) self-interest in competition for resources. Studies do not support this assumption. On the one hand, there are strategic advantages to working in groups; on the other hand, the tribal behavior does not reduce to self-interest, because individuals show concern for those within their “tribe” even at great risk to themselves.

The Public

Haidt applies this research to religion and politics. Against the New Atheists, Haidt argues that religious behavior broadly serves the adaptive benefits of group-formation. Distinctively religious group formation engenders a strong cooperative motive. In favor of this conclusion Haidt draws on facts like these:

• JS Lansing’s work (described in Darwin’s Cathedral) on the role played by local shrines in Balinese irrigation cooperation. 
• Robert Sosis’ discovery that religious communes succeed far longer than secular ones. Sosis discovered that independent of the commune’s doctrines, all of them made greater demands of their members than their secular counterparts.   
• Robert Putnam and David Campbell discovered that religious practitioners in the US are more likely to be socially active (even outside of their religiously oriented activities) than those who are not religiously active. This broad social involvement is correlated not with any theology but with how tight the bond is within the religious community.

Haidt concludes that religion is a mostly positive force in society:  

Religions are moral exoskeletons… Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We don’t really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few). 

Righteous Mind, p. 269.

Put slightly more sharply, Haidt is saying that atheistic societies are the worst evolutionarily.

Haidt concludes by linking this groupish behavior to the present political atmosphere. The left tends to ignore the force of what Haidt calls moral capital: the resources (values, norms, institutions, practices) that sustain a moral community. He notes that progressives often attempt to help disadvantaged groups with radical changes that involve majorly depleting moral capital. While that risk seems worth it at times, the unseen price is the breakdown of larger cooperation and trust.

Surprisingly, this unseen price of depleted moral capital might explain why so many “red states” have voted recently for abortion access following the dissolution of a fifty year old judicial precedent in Roe v. Wade. Even the conservative sectors of society are experiencing backlash from attempting to change too much too quickly. We’re undergoing a particularly strange political realignment (cf. Once and Future Liberal) where the progressive party is the establishment and the conservative party is anti-establishment, as David Brooks recently put it. At the least, such an odd inversion is part of the present public perception.

EVALUATION

General Evaluation

Seneca said, Quod verum est, meum est—whatever is true is mine. Haidt exemplifies this dictum. He draws freely on literature and ideas that might not be popular among the stereotypical academic. Likewise, while I don’t agree with everything he says, I feel free to lay claim to anything that I judge to be true.

Strengths

Haidt’s Humanity

Haidt practices what he preaches. He’s a master communicator, engaging the readers’ intuitions. This comes out in several ways. First, given the volume of psychological and sociological studies he examines, the central metaphors help the reader stay oriented. Second, rather than describe the current state of affairs in social psychology using direct scientific language, Haidt spells out the historical development of the ideas. People have a much easier time making sense of narrative than bare abstractions. Even when he does articulate the psychological facts, they are tied closely to concrete experiments. The reader rarely has to struggle with the abstract truths in isolation.

Haidt also exhibits a genuine concern for the health of the American republic. Academics frequently get stuck high in ivory towers debating one another on fine details. Some academic discussions don’t need to reach the public (e.g. the shape of the most efficient hydrofoil); however, there is a greater urgency to ensure that the general public can comprehend the newest research on how people reason morally or on how to get along with other members of society. Typical members of society can immediately benefit from understanding how to communicate effectively on fraught social and political issues. 

Haidt and WEIRDness

Another strength of this title is Haidt’s awareness of how WEIRD the academic community is, and the way in which he explores how blind this community is to its WEIRDness. In a piercing passage, Haidt notes: 

Liberals sometimes say that religious conservatives are sexual prudes for whom anything other than missionary-position intercourse within marriage is a sin. But conservatives can just as well make fun of liberal struggles to choose a balanced breakfast—balanced among moral concerns about free-range eggs, fair-trade coffee, naturalness, and a variety of toxins, some of which (such as genetically modified corn and soybeans) pose a greater threat spiritually than biologically.

Righteous Mind, p. 13.

Just as conservative populations subscribe to Old Testament sexual values, so progressives have dietary scruples so fine-tuned as to ironically resemble Old Testament kosher law.

Broadly speaking, academics seem to trick themselves into believing that they don’t have a culture—they stand outside of culture “objectively” assessing what they find. Of course, the goal of objectivity is not just appropriate but necessary for serious research. I am not scorning the concept of objectivity. What I’m concerned about and what Haidt highlights is the fact that academics conflate their own culture’s verdicts for objectivity. Researchers are responsible to design tools that screen out cultural and psychological biases where possible. Double-blind experimental design is one example. Experimental reproducibility is another. Haidt’s concern to do psychological studies outside of WEIRD populations is one more. Rather than seeing things as they are at first glance, members of WEIRD cultures need to see that they also inhabit a culture with its attendant blind spots and biases. This isn’t a cause for despair, but scientific caution given how many researchers are WEIRD.

Beyond Victims and Oppressors

Haidt’s dicussion of the plurality of moral foundations is much needed in today’s political environment. The basic narrative of victim-oppressor has taken on an oversized role in American self-conception in the past decade or so. Within an identity political environment, the logic of victim-oppressor is the anvil upon which all other moral concepts are beaten flat. This trend is obvious on the left, but David Brooks draws attention to the way that right wing voices have drawn on this narrative:

The right-wing victimologists feel beset by hidden forces trying to oppress them, by a culture that conspires to unman them, dark shadowy conspiracies all around. Donald Trump sets the world record for whining about how unfair the world is to him.

This is not just about the political arena. Victim stories are everywhere. Britney Spears and Paris Hilton serve as helpful, if bizarre, illustrations. In the early 2000s, these two were near the zenith of visibility, both making and spending lots of money. After over a decade of invisibility, both of them have returned to the spotlight by releasing tell-alls about how they were victimized. Now, I am NOT saying they didn’t suffer in some sense—I’m certain that fame is horrible for people, especially young people. What I am saying is that our society is keenly interested in stories of victimization. I am also saying it’s bitterly ironic when a wealthy heiress who—in spite of the image of power, privilege and sexual freedom she projected—can persuade the world that she was actually a victim all along, enslaved by nefarious forces. Likewise, when Free Britney swept the Internet, she wasn’t exactly living in a shack in Mississippi.

The pervasiveness of this victim identity is dangerous:

1. There are few controls on who gets to claim victimhood. Rather than taking the form of a definable social-psychological concept (e.g. gross annual income below the poverty line, clinically diagnosed with PTSD), the victim-oppressor narrative has a simple shape that almost anyone can adopt for almost any issue. A society of victims leads to a Mexican standoff of finger-pointing: any positive social movement is impossible.
2. Just like when everything matters, nothing matters, so too if everyone is a victim, no one is. Some people have been truly mistreated and abused. Real victims rarely have a voice. Meanwhile the wealthy and privileged put on a hypocritical show for our entertainment. Nevermind those who’ve witnessed their families killed in war, or who went without shelter or food as children.
3. Even if everyone sees themselves as victims, someone still has power. In From Beirut to Jerusalem, Thomas Friedman made the following disturbing remarks concerning the combination of power and a victim self-perception:
   
   But what made [Prime Minister Menachem] Begin even more dangerous was that his fantasies about power were combined with a self-perception of being a victim. Someone who sees himself as a victim will almost never morally evaluate himself or put limits on his own actions. Why should he? He is the victim. (Friedman, 144)
   

Coming to appreciate Haidt’s work on moral foundations is a good step away from such a cynical image of ourselves and others.

Criticism

Haidt is a skillful scientist and so the general criticisms are minor, primarily involving framing or presentation. 

Of Descriptive vs. Evaluative

Haidt describes the practice of morality without much engaging it. There is nothing wrong with this per se: he’s a social-psychologist scientifically studying moral behavior. The problem is that ordinary people believe others should act a certain way. Our descriptions of others’ behavior are frequently loaded with evaluations. It isn’t until the second-to-last chapter that Haidt clarifies that he’s simply describing how people behave rather than offering an evaluation of that behavior. This is particularly dizzying because he’s describing how people evaluate. While this is not a serious methodological error, this is one area where I think his communication could have been sharper. After all, is doesn’t imply ought.

Of Moral Deliberation vs. Moral Evaluation

Haidt speaks about moral behavior generally, even though most of his energy is focused on moral evaluation. That is, the studies he conducts involve people reacting to various scenarios. These are fine for that narrow purpose. The problem is that a significant aspect of moral behavior extends beyond evaluation to deliberation, viz. cases where one must carefully select the right course when it’s not obvious. Haidt is not ignorant of such cases: Haidt and Lukianoff address the importance of seeing shades of grey in Coddling of the American Mind. My complaint is that he presents the dominant role of intuition and emotion (in contrast to strategic reasoning) as applying to all moral behavior. The only example Haidt offers where strategic reasoning is engaged is another experiment concerning moral evaluation. Regardless of how it’s framed, most of us are primarily concerned with our actions, not reactions.

Who Has Known the Mind of Christ?

Christian readers might find Haidt’s work puzzling. The lack of clarity on is vs. ought can be disorienting for a few reasons. First, Christians believe that moral change is both desirable and possible. Haidt’s research implies that we’re less in control of our behavior than we’d like, and are even highly vulnerable to manipulation. Second, Christians believe we have come under God’s influence which seems at odds with Haidt’s research on the influence of emotions. I’ll engage this more below, but the is-ought distinction should already help the reader realize that what actually influences us, and what should influence us aren’t always the same.

Lessons for Christians

Biblical readers should not feel threatened by the idea that our minds contain depths we can’t readily access, or that our decisions are influenced by such depths. This is the biblical view! Haidt’s research on the opacity of the mind fits well with the following biblical teaching:

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?

[The Gentiles] are darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in them due to the hardening of their hearts. Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, and they are full of greed.

Jeremiah 17:9; Ephesians 4:18-19 NIV

These passages show that our minds can be “darkened” by the will surrendered to sin. So much of what Haidt says fits closely with biblical teaching on how a corrupt will overwhelms the mind. A thorough-going biblical worldview lines right up with Haidt’s research. Without spiritual intervention, our moral lives will be subject to forces significantly out of our control, and our minds will often follow those forces rather than the truth revealed in nature or in God’s word (Cf. Romans 1:18-23; 2:12-16).

After centuries of philosophical individualism, Christians should celebrate when secular researchers attend to the role of groups in the human experience. God relates to individuals (Abraham, Moses), but he also relates to nations in ways not reducible to the individual members of those nations. The Exodus narrative is filled with examples of this: God redeems all of Israel from Egyptian slavery, and judges the nation of Egypt, not as individuals (Ex 3:8-10; 4:22, 23). The Passover celebration also implies that God judges or forgives humans in groups: the household is treated as a whole, not members in isolation (Exodus 12:3, 13). No doubt: individuals are also accountable to God (Rom 2:6-11). I’m merely saying that the biblical portrait of moral agents extends beyond the individual (cf. Lev 4:13, 27), and this fits naturally with Haidt’s research.

Points of Resistance

I want to begin with a minor quibble, but that impacts the read. In a graduate philosophy seminar, my (atheist) professor complained about what he called evolution-of-the-gaps, the naturalistic equivalent of God-of-the-gaps. Instead of offering evolutionary explanations founded on robust data sets, thinkers speculate freely using evolutionary concepts to make sense of certain observable phenomena. Put another way, evolution frequently—not always—operates for secular naturalists at the level of a worldview rather than at the level of strict scientific method. This phenomenon is pervasive in Haidt’s title and could be distracting. Of course, Haidt is an atheist and it’s no surprise that he’d write that way. What’s surprising is the rest of what he says, given his views. Nevertheless, readers should anticipate Haidt littering his work with evolutionary vocabulary without linking it to specific research.

Haidt’s discussion of moral behavior makes no reference to the Holy Spirit who plays a central role in New Testament moral teaching. Again, why would an atheist do that? But critically-minded Christians need to make sense of the relationship between serious research and what they find in the Bible. The Holy Spirit plays an essential role in moral psychology of Christianity. He plays a cognitive role (cf. 1 Cor 2:11-16) regenerating the mind once darkened by sin (Romans 8:5-11). But he also plays a behavioral role. As the years go by, those who walk in step with Spirit will witness an overflowing cornucopia of moral fruit:

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.

Galatians 5:22-25 NIV

Finally, forgiveness is conspicuously absent in a title about people learning to get along. Given how even-minded Haidt is, I’m sure he would welcome the suggestion that our society is in need of forgiveness. But for Christians this is not just a nice suggestion. A fundamental teaching of Christianity is that we have been forgiven by God, and therefore we are called to forgive others (Eph 4:32). Sadly Christians are not known for their mercy or forgiveness. Americans who identify as Christians are among the most noisy, vengeful members of the electorate. The impact would be considerable if all those who call themselves Christians freely offered forgiveness to their political opponents. Some gestures of forgiveness can be dishonest and manipulative. But when trust is low and love is cold, cynical ice thaws under the warmth of genuine, heart-felt forgiveness. Sadly many American Christians do not evoke their name-sake. More often they resemble the bellicose Romans or the self-righteous Pharisees. For further reading on this, see Tim Keller’s excellent swan-song.

Conclusion

To see the urgency of Haidt’s research, consider the following excerpt from Obama’s 2008 victory speech:

I just received a very gracious call from Sen. McCain. He fought long and hard in this campaign, and he’s fought even longer and harder for the country he loves. He has endured sacrifices for America that most of us cannot begin to imagine, and we are better off for the service rendered by this brave and selfless leader. I congratulate him and Gov. Palin for all they have achieved, and I look forward to working with them to renew this nation’s promise in the months ahead.

Obama’s 2008 Victory Speech

Fifteen years on, such warmth and collegiality seems unimaginable. Even if the rest of our country can’t get along, may Jesus’ followers heed his teaching:

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God… Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

Matthew 5:9, 44-45

1. Haidt uses “trigger” to mean what activates these emotions and/or moral judgment, not the pop-culture use of this expression. ↩︎