Armchair Speculation

In 2018, I read “The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion”, by Dr. Jonathan Haidt, an academic psychologist. This book greatly influenced my thinking, so I’d like to share my book notes and responses.

Initially, I stumbled across this book in my attempt to understand why U.S. politics has been so adversarial in recent years. Dr. Haidt begins his book by asking how the workings of the human mind contributes to people’s inability to rationally discuss politics and religion. As I read, I found the book to be interesting far beyond my initial question. To answer that question, Haidt builds a comprehensive picture of the human mind, synthesizing the latest learnings of psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy. Upon finishing it, I found that Haidt’s book provided me with tremendous insights about the workings of my mind and, more broadly, human nature.

To begin his inquiry, Haidt examines the origins of our moral thought. Laying out various theories and ideas from philosophy, psychology, and sociology, he argues that humans are wired to be righteous. We just need to be taught what we should be righteous about. And our parents, peers, and cultures do that quite well.

Delving into this righteous wiring, Haidt turns to ideas about the duality of mind originating in the Western intellectual tradition. Many Western thinkers believe the mind to be divided into two parts, one rational and the other emotional. From this duality, many advocate that the rational mind should rule over the emotional one. Others, such as skeptical philosopher David Hume, posit that, no matter what we want, the emotional mind rules over the rational one.

Having laid out these views, Haidt argues that the science points to Hume’s position that our emotions rule over our reason. But, Haidt consoles, there is hope! Our emotions don’t ride completely roughshod over our rationality. He explains how this duality works with an analogy, describing the mind as an emotional elephant with a rational rider on top. The elephant, being much bigger than the rider, does what it wants. But thankfully the rider has some ability to guide the elephant.

With this elephant and rider analogy in mind, Haidt asks how our minds developed to be this way. To explain the origins of our righteous wiring, he takes an evolutionary lens: every aspect of our minds must have contributed to our success as a species, at least in our original environment. We can consider our brains and minds to be the latest iteration of billions of years of biological evolution on Earth, a refinement of the characteristics that the fittest individuals passed on to their children. For humans, this fitness exists on two levels: the group and the individual. On the one hand, humans as a species owe much of our success to our ability to cooperate with each other. On the other, as individual humans, we selfishly seek to live a good life and, ultimately, pass on our own genetic code. This conflicting tension between group needs and individual needs made us “group-ish”: individualistic but with strong group instincts under the right circumstances. He describes our individualistic instincts as chimp-like and our cooperative hive-minded instincts as bee-like.

Through examining the individual in a group context, Haidt argues that our ability for rational thought originated from the individual’s need to justify his or her actions to the group. The individual’s emotional elephant will do what it wants, rider be damned. If they upset the herd, the rational rider needs to justify the elephant’s actions to protect them both. This view stands in sharp contrast to the belief that rational thought arose to help humans make better decisions. In the best cases, Haidt argues, our rational minds help us decide the wisest course of action. In the worst, our rationality simply allows us to make good excuses.

Continuing on the topic of how evolution shapes our minds, Haidt proceeds to our instinctive sense of morality. This moral instinct stems from mechanisms that evolved to protect us from danger. To describe these protective instincts, Haidt references anthropologists Dan Sperber and Lawrence Hirschfeld’s description of cognitive modules: “An evolved cognitive module – for instance a snake detector, a face-recognition device … is an adaptation to a range of phenomena that presented problems or opportunities in the ancestral environment of the species. Its function is to process a given type of stimuli or input – for instance snakes [or] faces.” Each of these useful modules has an original set of triggers – snakes or human faces. When triggered, these modules send us signals through our emotions. When we see a snake, we feel fear. When we see a friendly human face, we feel compassion. But these cognitive modules can also be triggered by other new triggers. Perhaps we startle when seeing a twisted garden hose, or we see a human face in a plate of sunny-side-up eggs with a side of curved bacon. The ability of these cognitive modules to be activated by new triggers has helped humans adapt to new and novel situations, such as new environmental challenges when a tribe migrates from the savanna to the tundra.

As the human mind developed, Haidt argues that these modules and triggers became packaged into our sense of morality. Examining these instinctual switches and triggers in the context of morality, Haidt identifies six “moral taste receptors”: care/harm, liberty/oppression, fairness/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation.

Based on his studies of how people from different cultures and beliefs respond to these taste receptors, Haidt argues that our differing moral systems result from a differing mix of sensitivities. American Liberals, for instance, are most sensitive to only two: care/ harm and fairness/ cheating. American Conservatives, in contrast, are equally sensitive to all six.

Moreover, these combinations of moral taste receptors may be heritable. Haidt describes how we are genetically predisposed to be more open or closed to new ideas and experiences, and the response to fear and threats. These genetic predispositions manifest themselves in the sensitivity of neurotransmitter receptors in our brains: glutamate and serotonin receptors impact fear, and dopamine receptors impact openness. But being genetically predisposed is not the same as being genetically predetermined. A person’s experiences and decisions also play a role in the formation of their views.

With these six moral receptors in mind, Haidt returns to his starting question of why rational people have such difficulty discussing politics and religion. Understanding the political and religious conversation from the perspective of these six moral taste receptors helps to clarify why discussions about those topics can be difficult, if not sometimes impossible. People may operate from very different paradigms, speaking different languages and understanding the words of others with a completely different lens. When an American Conservative talks about how much he values loyalty, an American Liberal may unconsciously conjure negative associations with a terrible authoritarian regime.

These misunderstandings, stemming from different moral paradigms, become compounded by our emotional elephants and group-ish natures. When we engage with people of different moral beliefs, our emotional elephants spring into action to protect us. Our group-ish nature begins to define an in-group and out-group. The result is an unconscious, emotional aversion to their views.

America’s recent politics, according to Haidt, has contributed to the country’s increasing polarization by throwing fuel on our mental predispositions. Some political parties have encouraged weaker relationships between people of different political beliefs. As these personal relationships eroded, our mental predispositions drove a wedge through the cracks.

The antidote to this polarization, suggests Haidt, is two-fold. First, to rebuild these personal relationships with people across the political aisle. Personal relationships with people of different political stripes puts them mentally in the in-group, which improves our ability to listen to their views empathetically. Second, to view the differences between liberals and conservatives as creating a healthy tension, which generates richer political discussion and better decisions. Liberals oftentimes want to introduce new ideas and ways of doing things to society, while conservatives encourage caution to prevent self-harm through the unintended consequences of adopting these new ways. The combination of both views can help to navigate the uncertainty of the future more prudently.

In addition to providing an exciting intellectual journey, Haidt’s book has helped me better understand the workings of my mind and those of others.

Through a greater understanding of the workings of my own mind, I’ve been able to more clearly see the distortions in my thinking and, in the best cases, correct them. Understanding that my actions stem from unconscious emotional desires, and that my rational thinking has evolved to justify my actions, I can more clearly question my own motives before I act.

Through understanding how my beliefs fit into a broader context, I’ve come to see others more clearly. Understanding that we’re all working with the same raw biological material has helped me better empathize with others who hold different opinions and beliefs. With this greater empathy, I try hard to remind myself that, despite our differences of opinion, we’re all in this together. This perspective helps me to understand more empathetically and listen less judgmentally.

Published on February 9, 2018. Credit to Matt for editing and Nancy for feedback.