Jonathan Haidt on the Righteous Mind

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4.7 • 4.4K Ratings

🗓️ 20 January 2014

⏱️ 63 minutes

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Summary

Jonathan Haidt of New York University and author of The Righteous Mind talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about his book, the nature of human nature, and how our brain affects our morality and politics. Haidt argues that reason often serves our emotions rather than the mind being in charge. We can be less interested in the truth and more interested in finding facts and stories that fit preconceived narratives and ideology. We are genetically predisposed to work with each other rather than being purely self-interested and our genes influence our morality and ideology as well. Haidt tries to understand why people come to different visions of morality and politics and how we might understand each other despite those differences.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Econtalk, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty. I'm your host Russ Roberts
0:07.8	of Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Our website is econtalk.org where you can
0:13.6	subscribe, comment on this podcast, and find links and other information related to today's
0:18.2	conversation. We'll also find our archives where you can listen to every episode we've ever
0:22.8	done going back to 2006. Our email address is mailadycontalk.org. We'd love to hear from you.
0:32.0	Today is January 7th, 2014, and I want to once again remind listeners to visit our archives
0:37.8	at econtalk.org. Just go to the left-hand margin, click on date, and send me a list of your five
0:43.8	favorite episodes of 2013. Send them to me at mailadycontalk.org and put favorites in the subject line.
0:52.1	I'll be closing the voting at the end of the month and letting you know later on, which episodes
0:56.0	got the most votes. My guest today is Jonathan Height. He is professor at New York University's
1:00.9	Stern School of Business. His latest book is The Righteous Mind, which is the subject of today's
1:05.6	conversation. Jonathan, welcome to econtalk. Oh, thanks Russ. Pleasure to be here. I have to say
1:11.1	at the beginning that The Righteous Mind is one of the most interesting books I've read in the
1:14.8	last 10 years. I do worry that my assessment is biased. It deals with the host of issues that come
1:20.5	up regularly here on econtalk, in particular, the limits of reason, as well as issues that I'm
1:25.7	grappling with as I work on a book on Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. So my RAV review may
1:31.6	not apply very well for you listening out there, but it might. So let's get into it. Jonathan,
1:37.5	early in your book, you ask how children come to know right from wrong, where does morality come
1:42.0	from? What's your answer? My answer is that we are products of evolution like everything else,
1:49.6	and when we have certain stuff built into us, it helps us navigate the social world. That's the
1:54.3	first part of the story, but nothing is hardwired. Evolution in people is quite flexible,
2:00.7	and the second part of the story is culture shapes us to develop certain capacities more than others.
	...

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