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

We do moral reasoning not to reconstruct the actual reasons why we ourselves came to a judgment; we reason to find the best possible reasons why somebody else ought to join us in our judgment.

if this is true, then it would explain why extreme partisans are so stubborn, closed-minded, and committed to beliefs that often seem bizarre or paranoid. Like rats that cannot stop pressing a button, partisans may be simply unable to stop believing weird things. The partisan brain has been reinforced so many times for performing mental contortions

BORN TO BE RIGHTEOUS

For example, people cheat more on a test when the lights are dimmed.27 They cheat less when there is a cartoonlike image of an eye nearby,28 or when the concept of God is activated in memory merely by asking people to unscramble sentences that include words related to God.

The Liberty/oppression foundation, I propose, evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of living in small groups with individuals who would, if given the chance, dominate, bully, and constrain others. The original triggers therefore include signs of attempted domination. Anything that suggests the aggressive, controlling behavior of an alpha m

A recent study even found that liberal professors give out a narrower range of grades than do conservative professors. Conservative professors are more willing to reward the best students and punish the worst.

The various moralities found on the political left tend to rest most strongly on the Care/harm and Liberty/oppression foundations. These two foundations support ideals of social justice, which emphasize compassion for the poor and a struggle for political equality among the subgroups that comprise society. Social justice movements emphasize solidar

With the help of our press secretary, we are able to lie and cheat often, and then cover it up so effectively that we convince even ourselves.

For example, if you hear someone running up behind you on a dark street, your fear system detects a threat and triggers your sympathetic nervous system, firing up the fight-or-flight response, cranking up your heart rate, and widening your pupils to help you take in more information.

So far in this book I’ve painted a portrait of human nature that is somewhat cynical. I’ve argued that Glaucon was right and that we care more about looking good than about truly being good.2 Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. We lie, cheat, and cut ethical corners quite often when we think we can get away with it, and then we use o