The Righteous Mind

published

2021-09-03

rating

4

This book talked about the moral foundations that produce different political views. It says that the morality of liberals is based on care/harm and fairness/cheating, whereas the morality of conservatives encompasses those plus authority/subversion, loyalty/betrayal, and sanctity/degradation. Haidt suggests that these are genetic traits that evolved to adapt to our ancestor's environments. He also seems to admit that as he studied this topic he began to see more value in some conservative views despite being a liberal. Interestingly he said that conservatives are more sensitive to threats including pathogens. He also said that libertarians have lower concern for the three conservative moralities, like liberals, though they have other differences with liberals: "... libertarians consistently come out as the most cerebral, most rational, and least emotional. On a very crude problem solving measure related to IQ, they score the highest. Libertarians, more than liberals or conservatives, have the capacity to reason their way to their ideology." (https://righteousmind.com/largest-study-of-libertarian-psych/).