Review of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt

I had unreasonable hopes for gaining compassionate understanding of disparate political views through reading Haidt's book. I was interested in the theories he explores but was left feeling that the 2012 work couldn't have predicted--and therefore doesn't address--our current era of willful misinformation, and that factor is essential to the present climate of outrageous claims, bluster, and active lying.

I...began to think about liberal and conservative policies as manifestations of deeply conflicting but equally heartfelt visions of the good society.... It felt good to be released from partisan anger. And once I was no longer angry, I was no longer committed to reaching the conclusion that righteous anger demands we are right, they are wrong.

I was hoping for a similar revelation while reading Jonathan Haidt's 2012 book The Righteous Mind. He uses his decades of research into moral psychology to explore a timely, potent issue: the power in conflicting opinions on politics and religion between friends, family, coworkers, and neighbors. And while an attempt to understand the underpinnings of these conflicts feels more timely than ever, I did feel while reading this book that in terms of the intensity of present-day vitriol, misinformation, antagonism, dismissiveness, and mutual contempt, 2012 Haidt couldn't imagine what was to come.

Haidt explores why gut feelings and intuition often drive moral judgments, and why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians may use the same facts to come up with vastly different conclusions.

Liberalism seemed so obviously ethical. Liberals marched for peace, workers' rights, civil rights, and secularism. The Republican Party was (as we saw it) the party of war, big business, racism, and evangelical Christianity.

Haidt works to answer questions such as "Why do rural and working-class Americans generally vote Republican when it is the Democratic Party that wants to redistribute money more evenly?" He tracks historical concerns, ways of thinking, and trends in political parties. "Democrats often say that Republicans have duped these people into voting against their economic self-interest. But from the perspective of Moral Foundations Theory, rural and working-class voters were in fact voting for their moral interests."

I was particularly interested in the history of political leanings and the reasoning for the entrenched views of and essential issues for those in different political parties. I was intrigued by Haidt's explanation of theories like Care/harm foundation, the Liberty/oppression foundation, and Moral Foundations Theory. I also found it illuminating to consider his rider and elephant analogy to understand how my impulses to feel strong opinions (these are the elephant) might lead me to think through and sometimes rationalize justifications (as the rider) for holding those opinions.

The author examines "how moral diversity can so easily divide good people into hostile groups that do not want to understand each other." (Because "morality binds and blinds.") Yet Haidt acknowledges that "the country now seems polarized and embattled to the point of dysfunction."

When people work together on a task, they generally want to see the hardest workers get the largest gains.... When a few members of a group contributed far more than the others--or, more powerfully, when a few contributed nothing--most adults do not want to see the benefits distributed equally.

Within a section about when regulation really may solve major problems, Haidt notes a fascinating theory that the EPA's 1970s elimination of lead resulted in dramatic drops in 1990s crime through improvements in neural development of a new generation of young men. (Others might put forward different factors as key to this.)

But despite its multiple gems of insight, I often found the book clunky, with extensive forays into so many topic areas, the key points felt obscured. I also didn't feel as though the summary recaps were efficient or that they reflected what seemed to me to be the essential elements,

I was hoping to find within The Righteous Mind reasons to feel more compassion and understanding toward those on the other end of the political spectrum from me. But things have become more charged and more complicated since the book's publication. The current political climate feels so devoid of checks and balances, level-headed thought, care, compassion, and reason, and so full of destructive pride, cruel and limiting actions, performative shows of force, nonsensical declarations, and willful ignorance, I didn't experience the revelation of understanding I had perhaps irrationally hoped for while reading the book.

The key aspect of all of this mess and conflict that 2012 Haidt didn't address is one he could likely not have anticipated--our current-day shocking lack of truth-telling and accountability, so that any repeated bluster of lies is likely to be supported by those already inclined to sympathize with the speaker, without consequences for malicious consequences. When misinformation, censorship, bullying, and active lying rule the day, there's no potential for finding common ground around reason. After all, who can identify reason anymore?

I alternated between reading a physical copy and listening to The Righteous Mind as an audiobook.

Jonathan Haidt is also the author of The Anxious Generation.