The Righteous Mind

Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

By: Jonathan Haidt

Narrated by: Jonathan Haidt

Length: 11 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's summary

Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens?

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition - the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong.

Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right. He blends his own research findings with those of anthropologists, historians, and other psychologists to draw a map of the moral domain, and he explains why conservatives can navigate that map more skillfully than can liberals. He then examines the origins of morality, overturning the view that evolution made us fundamentally selfish creatures.

But rather than arguing that we are innately altruistic, he makes a more subtle claim - that we are fundamentally groupish. It is our groupishness, he explains, that leads to our greatest joys, our religious divisions, and our political affiliations. In a stunning final chapter on ideology and civility, Haidt shows what each side is right about, and why we need the insights of liberals, conservatives, and libertarians to flourish as a nation.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©2012 Jonathan Haidt (P)2012 Gildan Media LLC

Critic reviews

"Haidt is looking for more than victory. He's looking for wisdom. That's what makes The Righteous Mind well worth reading…. a landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself.” ( The New York Times Book Review)

Good read

I started reading with the intention to disagree, yet I agreed (I needed 4 more words to finish my review)

Exactly what we need now

Everywhere I go there’s political division and intolerance of the other side. Families members are judging one another and wondering if they ever knew them in the first place. It’s a sad time especially with everyone masked and socially distanced. Do we need more separation??? Thank you for this book. I hope that more people will spread this message of understanding the values of others.

Great Book

Jonathan Haidt hits a home run with tho book. with a great ability to sum up the pros/cons similarities, and differences while providing outline for why competition among groups is a good thing to an extent

A little repetitive, but great!

A little repetitive, but a great presentation on the research and theory. I wish all politicians would read it.

Life changing

I only wish I had read this earlier in life. It changed the way I see myself and the world.

Insightful

If there were four books I would recommend for Americans of all political position this would be number one. I started to read it and after the first two chapters could not out it down.

great read

reads more like a college textbook. Lots of detail very in-depth. But fascinating all together

Truly thought provoking!

it is to soon to tell, but this book may have forever altered my perspective.

very important work!

great book! I learned a ton and I feel like I have an increased knowledge of human nature that is helping me understand myself and my neighbors. very profound!

in depth and bias free

the writer goes to great length to make sure that all viewpoints are covered equally and keeps the book on topic in a slightly political analysis of the relevant morality involved.