What a great blend of philosophy, sociology, psychology, and biology this book has. It was interesting, challenging, and no doubt over my head at times. I still felt like I encountered some pretty obvious fallacies, especially once the book transitioned from psychology to political philosophy, but few books have made me think this much about my feelings of it after finishing. On one hand, it covers so many interesting subjects, and it was great to think about what fundamentally shapes our moral reasoning. On the other hand, it tries to neatly categorize human nature into the author's moral framework of six categories. This seems to have led to blind spots and biases, subconscious or otherwise, in order to stick to the framework.

The three main principles of The Righteous Mind:
1. Intuition comes first, strategic reasoning comes second.
2. There’s more to morality than care, fairness, and liberty (i.e., there's more than just the supposed morals that progressives value).
3. Morality binds and blinds. We like to make something sacred, we circle around it, and then we can’t tolerate any criticism about it, whether it’s true or not.

Haidt's six areas of moral judgment:
- Care/Harm
- Fairness/Cheating
- Loyalty/Betrayal
- Authority/Subversion
- Sanctity/Degradation
- Liberty/Oppression

The sixth area, Liberty/Oppression, was added after experiments with the first five "proved incomplete". And these areas of moral judgment hold equal weight in the book, despite one or two jumping out as historically not cool to prioritize.

Haidt got the idea for this book after the 2000 US election, when he wondered why conservatives seem to have a consistent advantage in elections. Through his research, he found that conservatives appeal to a broader moral palate (all six areas), while progressives only appeal to three (care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression). Now if you look back at the six areas of moral judgment above, that might seem to fit into place somewhat initially. But you can also probably think of aspects of human nature that the list oversimplifies, or misses entirely.

Example of oversimplification: I don't agree that support for pro-choice and same-sex marriage issues should cast progressives under degradation, surrendering the moral high ground to conservatives with a religion-approved version of sanctity.

Example of missing entirely: there's no version of a Truth/Hypocrisy, Reality/Fiction, or Rational/Irrational area of moral judgment. I believe that any addition like this would throw a wrench into many of the book's conclusions.

To try and summarize, looking at Haidt's thesis again: progressives tend to underperform politically because they cede the moral landscape politically. They’re only appealing to three of the moral foundations instead of the six that conservatives do. Valuing authority, religion, loyalty, and obedience makes conservatives more sensitive to disturbances in social order. This affords them a more reliable cohesiveness that progressive secularism can't reach, because they're emphasizing tolerance (i.e., subversion, degradation, and betrayal in the established moral framework).

I feel that an expansion and reframing of the moral matrix would help this book a lot. As it stands, it claims that conservatives see and value moral senses that progressives lack. Progressives still obviously have gut/moral judgments (fear, disgust, outrage, etc), but I think the difference is they often pause and reflect on those intuitions, instead of following them on a base level. I think they're better able to say "I don't think these initial reactions are a good foundation to rest on, and definitely not something that should be imposed on others".

My notes from [b:Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst|31170723|Behave The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst|Robert M. Sapolsky|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1517732866l/31170723.SY75.jpg|51808259] by Robert Sapolsky helped here. It's a great book to pair with The Righteous Mind—or read in place of—as it specifically discusses this book while including counterarguments to paint a fuller picture of the moral landscape. Sapolsky discusses snap judgments vs situational explanations between conservatives and progressives, and concludes "In other words, conservatives start gut and stay gut; liberals go from gut to head." He goes on to clarify that both camps are equally capable of thinking past the gut, but one is more motivated to push toward situational explanations.

Sapolsky also discusses a key difference that I wish was covered more in The Righteous Mind: how conservatives tend to be resistant to equality (and all discomfort associated), while progressives tend to be resistant to authority (and all discomfort associated). He says "...for example, the classical liberal view is that everyone has equal rights to happiness; rightists instead discount fairness in favor of expedient authority, generating the classical conservative view that some socioeconomic inequality is a tolerable price for things running smoothly."

The Righteous Mind was published nine years ago. A lot, to put it lightly, has happened since then. I wondered how Haidt was doing and what he thought about his six areas of moral judgment now. Luckily he sat down on the Rationally Speaking podcast on 2/18/21, and guess what? Still rock solid according to him. Our paragons of authority and loyalty are apparently still appealing to sanctity, fairness, and liberty, no problems here!