In his 2012 book, The Righteous Mind, author Jonathan Haidt really does try to answer the question “What makes you so sure you’re right?”.  He tries to unravel the reasons that two equally smart people holding diametrically opposing views can each be totally convinced that they are right and the other person is wrong.

To address this issue, Haidt (who is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia) touches on psychological experiments, neuroanatomy, evolution, and more. If your initial response is like mine was, you probably think that these scientific fields have little or nothing to do with our sense of morality. Maybe, reading the last two sentences, you have already decided that Haidt is a moral philosopher who is probably dabbling in pseudo-scientific explanations.

Not so fast.

The elephant in charge. Haidt wants his readers to accept, early on, that our intuitions (which he likens to an “elephant”) shape most of our moral thinking and that reason (“the rider on the elephant”) typically figures out justifications for what our intuition has already come up with as the right answer. The idea of massively reducing the role of reason in moral decisions is a hard pill for a “thinker” like me to swallow. To be convinced, I need strong evidence-based arguments.

In writing this book, Haidt knew he’d need to convince sceptics like me, and he saved most of the scientific stuff for the middle of the book. He softened the ground in the early chapters by appealing to personal experiences—his own and those of his readers—as well as reviewing the history of moral psychology and quotations from well-known thinkers.

“My goal,” he writes, 50 pages into the book, “is to change the way a diverse group of readers—liberal and conservative, secular and religious—think about morality, politics, religion, and each other. I knew that I had to take things slowly and address myself more to elephants than to riders. I couldn’t just lay out the theory in chapter 1 and then ask readers to reserve judgment until I had presented all of the supporting evidence.”

Lots of science, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and personal examples. I can’t begin to take you through all of Haidt’s evidence for his positions—you’ll just have to read the book for that. He marshals brain studies, the anthropology of other cultures, and arguments about why morality evolved in past human societies, plus much else. But what I can say is that he has put together strong arguments, based on a very diverse set of resources.

In some cases, Haidt’s personal anecdotes bring home the practical essence of his arguments. For example, in discussing the elephant and the rider, he describes the following incident. Haidt’s wife criticized him for leaving dirty dishes on the counter where she makes baby food. He immediately feels defensive (intuition) and comes up with a reason for the dishes (reasoning) even though the reason was not true. It was only because he was writing the book that he recognized this sequence: the elephant deciding the direction to take and the rider quickly finding a justification for doing so. Normally, this would have been entirely subconscious and he would never have realized that he had instantly made up a false excuse. Hasn’t everyone experienced similar episodes? I certainly have.   

Six foundations of morality. The heart of the book is Haidt’s identification of six “moral foundations” on which our morality is based: care vs. harm, fairness vs. cheating, liberty vs. oppression, loyalty vs, betrayal, authority vs. subversion, and sanctity vs. degradation. He makes the case that Western liberals have overemphasized the first two of these and neglected the rest.

Haidt points out that most studies of how people make moral choices have involved “WEIRD” populations (Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic). In their moral considerations, this group emphasizes avoiding harm to others and acting fairly. Haidt explains the origins of this emphasis. In other cultures, various of the other four foundations are more important. An example is respect for authority, which is highly valued in many cultures and which, Haidt argues, may have played an important role in the evolutionary survival of those cultures.

Understanding your own moral foundations, as well as those of others with whom you disagree, is essential if you want to have a civil conversation. It is your moral foundations that “make you so sure you’re right”, and the same is true for the person you’re talking to.

Chimps and bees. Haidt discusses the nature of altruism at some length. Some researchers have suggested that most animals (including humans) are never truly altruistic. What appears to be altruistic behavior can be explained in terms of helping to preserve one’s gene pool (at the expense of self-preservation).

Haidt takes a more nuanced position, at least as far as humans are concerned. He believes that humans are “90% chimp” (that is, self-interested) and “10% bees” (interested in the preservation of a larger whole). He proposes a “hive switch”—a brain mechanism that, under certain conditions, triggers a focus on broader social survival. He noticed it in himself after the 9/11 attacks, which triggered in him a sudden, unprecedented emotional wave of patriotism.

Lessons for liberals. Haidt finishes the book with a discussion of how the six moral foundations show up in various political attitudes. Libertarians, for example, emphasize the “liberty vs. oppression” foundation almost exclusively. As noted, many WEIRD people, especially liberals (myself included), have focused primarily on “care vs. harm” and “fairness vs. cheating” as the basis for moral behavior and beliefs. Political conservatives, including many in the US, take in all six foundations in their considerations of morality.

If your “elephant” is only paying attention to harm and cheating, you are not going to understand where those with other moral foundations are coming from. And the intellectual arguments put forward by your “rider” will not have any impact on them. If you want to understand how others view morality, you’ll need to discover what their elephants are paying attention to. If you want to have any chance of changing their minds, you must speak to their elephants.

Those of you who have gotten involved with Braver Angels will immediately see the relevance of this advice. The Braver Angels “listen-acknowledge” process requires that you show that you understand another person’s position by being able state their position in a way that they will agree is accurate. You won’t be able to do a good job of stating their position unless you have a good sense of their elephant.