For example, he points to an experiment in which subjects were hypnotized to experience disgust at certain trigger words and were then asked to judge the morality of a completely inoffensive action which invoked the trigger word.

– In using this metaphor, he overstates his case. 91) While Haidt recognizes that the ‘elephant’ of our emotions is sometimes open to reason, he tends to downplay this possibility. xxi) and that “The first principle of moral psychology is Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second… Conscious reasoning functions like a press secretary who automatically justifies any position taken by the president.” (p. He writes that “the rider’s job is to serve the elephant” (p. The elephant is our emotion and the rider is our reason. For example, the central metaphor in the first section was that of a man riding an elephant (a spoof on Plato’s Chariot Allegory). – Despite my strong agreement with Haidt on a number of issues including our tendency towards tribalism, our bent towards irrationality, and the need for viewpoint diversity, I think he greatly exaggerates his claims. Insist on diversity of thought, especially at universities, so that we can be exposed to intelligent people who disagree with us. – Haidt gives great advice on ‘intertribal’ political dialogue: Learn to empathize. Data suggest that liberals view morality primarily or even exclusively in terms of ‘harm’ while conservatives view morality more broadly. He argues that liberals and conservatives do not merely differ over issues of policy, or even over the content of moral truth, but over what constitutes morality. – He also offers an explanation for why there is such political polarization in our society. We are far more irrational than we think and we tend to automatically affirm the ideas of our ‘tribe’ while automatically rejecting the ideas of the ‘other side’ without any critical reflection.

– Haidt offers legitimate criticism of our naive optimism about our own rationality (he calls thoroughgoing rationalism ‘a delusion’ (p. For example, it can be shown experimentally that our moral judgments can be manipulated by entirely non-rational means, like exposing us to unpleasant smells. – Contains fascinating experimental data, particularly in the first section. Haidt’s three main theses, which were the subject of the book’s three sections, are: 1) our emotions drive our reasoning, 2) morality is based on more than just ‘harm’ and 3) human beings are “90% chimp and 10% bee” meaning that certain situations can enable us to experience a kind of “group consciousness.” Professor Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind explores the psychological and evolutionary roots of our beliefs about morality.

The righteous mind