The author's core idea is that we don’t reason our way to morals; we feel first and justify later—especially in politics and religion.

In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt shows how our “elephant” (intuition) moves before the “rider” (reason). Using Moral Foundations Theory, he maps six moral taste buds: care, fairness, liberty, loyalty, authority, sanctity—and reveals how left, right, and different cultures season them differently. Some societies tilt toward individual harm and fairness whereas more Durkheimian communities prize cohesion and the sacred. Humans are also “groupish”: flip the hive switch and we cooperate, ritualise, and sometimes collide.

Haidt offers tools to bridge divides: widen your moral palate, seek understanding before persuasion, and hold convictions with humility. Grasp these dynamics and you too can navigate polarisation with more empathy, sharper analysis, and fewer futile arguments.