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

This is a brilliant book very insightful

Excellent livre de sociologie sur les comportements humains dans les relations interhumaines et sociales

Written from scientific, not political or sensational perspective. Well backed with facts, without hype or propaganda. If one is interested in psychology, and not headlines, this is a have to have book. In today's world of bombardment informed and uninformed opinions, often tainted with political radicalism, and emotional slant, this book is a refreshing return to facts derived from science. It does make one to step back from being hijacked by emotions, after reading online opinions, and get into understanding of human psyche, and into cerebral instead of triggered space. Hope it makes sense.

I bought this book because I went through some lectures of Jonathan Haidt, thanks to youtube algorithm and I was really interested to read a book written by him. The title immediately caught my attention. This book changed the way I think. If you frequently find yourself disagreeing with people around you on the need for the having a religion given the chaos in the world or that which side of the political view is morally correct, I would highly recommend this book.. Needless to say the author gives wonderful examples, goes into detailed understanding of psychology and data to confirm his years of research. It questions so many of our innate biases. He will take you to journey of mankind from stone ages to present day to help you understand the context and how our mind functions mostly not as rational as we think it to be. This book will always stay with me. At times, I was so engrossed in the book that I stayed up all night to finish the chapter.

As someone who sees themselves as a conservative with little background on the area of psychology I found this book very interesting. I would like to read it a second time, though, as there were a lot of new concepts to take in. Haidt, himself a liberal, puts forward his theories based on life experience and reading books from conservative authors. He draws his conclusions from Darwin, Shweder, Hume, Glaucon, Durkheim and others. His key points ideas include 1. Intuition drives strategic reasoning 2. His Moral Foundations Theory and how this explains the differences between liberals, libertarians and conservatives 3. We are products of multi level (personal and group) selection - and how we are 90% chimps and 10% bees. My key takeaway, overall, is how liberals and conservatives have become evermore tribe like. So the next time we are next next to someone from the other ”side”, start by finding out what you both have in common - not what separates you. Very interesting and balanced read indeed.