The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

The goal of Haidt’s book is to better understand morality and ethics. While he defines morality in his text, his definition is not prescriptive, but functional. Morality is determined by what he calls moral matrices: “interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible” (270). These moral matrices vary from one culture or subculture to the next, and individuals working from different moral matrices often have difficulty understanding one another’s choices. 

As an example of a radical divergence between moral matrices, Haidt narrates his time in the small Indian city of Bhubaneswar. Though his hosts in Bhubaneswar treat him with great kindness and hospitality, Haidt finds himself troubled by many aspects of their society, including the conventions that servants should never be thanked and that women should never look men in the eye. Haidt theorizes that such conventions appear morally wrong to him because he comes from a “WEIRD” (Western, educated, industrialized, rich, democratic) society, in which personal autonomy and the avoidance of harming others are paramount values. Since the conventions of Bhubaneswar appear to discount the individual rights of some members, they clash with WEIRD values. However, as an unWEIRD society, Bhubaneswar values social cohesion above individual autonomy. Neither society is immoral, Haidt concludes—instead, each founds its morality on a different moral matrix. 

While this may sound like moral relativism, Haidt emphasizes the difference between relativism and pluralism. Relativism, he explains, involves viewing all practices and beliefs as equal. It involves not taking a stand on whether an action or conviction is wrong or right. Haidt stresses that pluralism is something else entirely. Rather than simply seeing belief systems as equal or unable to be weighed, Haidt’s pluralistic model of seeing and assessing morality involves acknowledging different moral matrices. As with relativism, the goal is not judgment. However, pluralism works to understand what moral “taste buds,” or foundations, are most engaged in a culture or society, and to set in motion moral beliefs. 

In Haidt’s own home country, the United States, political divisions can be understood according to this same framework. In an era of intensifying political polarization, American liberals and conservatives increasingly see themselves as engaged in a Manichean battle between good and evil. Haidt argues that in reality, neither group is more moral than the other. Instead, each operates from a different, culturally defined set of moral values—a moral matrix. For example, political liberals emphasize fairness and care for the vulnerable as the most important moral values, while political conservatives tend to value authority, loyalty, and sanctity. Political persuasion must begin not in defining the other side’s beliefs as wrong, but in seeking to understand how they arrive at their ideas of right and wrong. By understanding the values on which political opponents base their morality, Haidt suggests, we can craft arguments that will more effectively reach them.