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'The Righteous Mind': Why Liberals and Conservatives Can't Get Along

July 01, 2013 / 26:47

This episode features Dr. Jonathan Haidt from New York University discussing his book The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And Religion. Key topics include the challenges of understanding between liberals and conservatives, moral intuitionism, and the role of political reform.

Dr. Haidt explains that morality binds people into groups, which can lead to partisanship and misunderstanding. He emphasizes that both liberals and conservatives hold truths that are often overlooked by the other side. His ideological journey has led him to appreciate the perspectives of both sides.

The discussion also covers the importance of moral intuitionism, where reasoning often follows emotional responses. Dr. Haidt argues that to change minds, one must first appeal to emotions and intuitions, rather than relying solely on rational arguments.

Dr. Haidt suggests political reform as a priority for improving civil dialogue, highlighting the need for personal relationships among politicians to reduce polarization. He also discusses the challenges of teaching business ethics and the influence of situational pressures on ethical behavior.

Finally, Dr. Haidt offers suggestions for improving civic education and fostering respectful dialogue across ideological divides, advocating for a culture that values open debate and understanding.

TLDR

Dr. Jonathan Haidt discusses political division, moral intuitionism, and the need for political reform to foster understanding between liberals and conservatives.

Episode

26:47
00:00:21
Well, we're here to talk with Dr. Jonathan Haidt from New York University, about his book that came out last year, <i>The</i>
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<i>Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Politics And</i> <i>Religion</i>. It's great to have you here, John. - Thanks.
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Great to be here at Wharton. - Thank you for joining us. One of the— one of the big questions your book wrestles with is why is it so
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hard for liberals and conservatives to understand each other? Why? - Why? Well, the very nature of morality, the big thing that it
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does, that I think isn't sufficiently appreciated, is that it binds us into groups that can do things in the world.
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In the animal kingdom, the only time you get cooperation is pretty much kinship. You get pairs of individuals
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occasionally. But elsewhere in the animal kingdom, it's just family. And human beings have this incredible capacity to come
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together in groups and do big things. And when you look back at the early history of cooperation, you always find
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temples, gods, religion. People circle around sacred objects. That binds them together. But at the same time it blinds them. They
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can't think for themselves, or they become partisan, they become members of the group. Liberals and conservatives in
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America, now— each country has its own particular battles. Liberals and conservatives are bound around different sacred values, sacred
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principles, and they absolutely cannot understand each other. They are forbidden from understanding each other lest
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they be kicked out of their tribe. And you published the book last year. Have you— has anything happened
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to change your mind? Let's see. Well, since publishing the book, not really.
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I've— the book has gotten a good reception— right, left, center, libertarian—except on the far left. Some people on the far
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left hate it, and the New Atheists hate it. But those are groups that I criticize in the book. So that's not surprising.
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I changed my mind a lot while writing the book. And when I started writing the book, I still considered myself to be a
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partisan liberal. And I actually began the project— I began shifting over from just studying morality across cultures to
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studying morality across political cultures as though they were different nations. I started that after the 2004
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Kerry loss to George W. Bush. And I wanted to grab Kerry and the Democrats by the lapels and say, "Don't you know how to make
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a moral argument? Why do you keep appealing to self interest and my policy will do more for you? Can't you make a moral
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argument?" So I got into the political psychology business originally to help the Democrats. And along the way, in
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really trying to, to get inside the head of people from different moralities, I came to see that each side sees certain
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truths and insights and threats that they're right about. So you've been on an ideological journey of your own. And it is
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possible for people to change their minds? - Yes, all you have to do is study morality for 25 years, and try
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to write a book in which you state the other side's case sympathetically. It should be possible.
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I asked the question about the possibility of changing your mind because you do embrace, in the book, a fairly strong
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version of moral intuitionist theory. - Right. - Of how people work through puzzles of this sort. Could you say a few words about
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that? - Sure. - Of what moral intuitionism is, and its implications for our capacity to change. - That's right.
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So a dominant thread in the history of philosophy is rationalism, the idea that we are or at least could be
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reasoning creatures. And if we can cultivate our reason, then we will rise above the fog of emotions, see the truth, we can
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talk to each other, and we will find laden truth. And my book is a sustained argument against that. I side very much with
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David Hume, the 18th century Scottish philosopher who said that reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions.
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And so what I believe the empirical evidence from psychology shows is that our reasoning tends to be post hoc.
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Our reasoning about moral issues tends to be something we do after we already know which way we want to go. And we send our
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reasoning out like a press secretary. The President says the press secretary to say, "Justify this position." He
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doesn't say, "Go look at the notes about how we came to this position and explain that to the people." He says, "Justify this
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position, using whatever arguments you think would be most persuasive." And that's the way our reasoning is. And this
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is why we are so good at giving each other reasons, but then the other person doesn't change their mind. And we think, "Well,
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they must not be sincere. I mean, this is a great argument. Why aren't you changing your mind?" The trick to changing people's
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minds is to first get them leaning your way. First, make them see a conclusion. Feel it. Think about— think about Martin
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Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. It is a kind of argument, but it's an argument couched in metaphors and soaring
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rhetoric. It opens your heart first, and then the metaphors can get in. And then you see the logic of it. So I actually do
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believe quite a lot in the importance of reason for persuasion. Just, it has to be reason that follows intuition,
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not excludes it. So if you were President of the United States right now, what would you do to encourage more civil dialogue between liberals
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and conservatives, that the current president United States is not doing? The number one top priority for this country is political
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reform, to get our political institutions working better. Everyone agrees that Congress has gotten much, much more
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polarized since the 1980s. There are a lot of reasons for that. The people have gotten a little more polarized. There's plenty
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that we could do as citizens. But the real problem is the dynamics of one institution in particular, the US Congress. So
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there's a group called No labels.org, which has a great set of solutions. We all know that we need campaign finance
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reform, we need electoral reform, these things are going to take 10 or 20 years if we ever get them at all. They have
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some simple fixes, the most important which is change the legislative calendar back the way it was before Newt Gingrich,
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which is, Washington is in session for five days a week. And then it's off for one week a month. When Newt Gingrich came
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in, he told the incoming freshmen, "Don't move to Washington." Prior to then, they all lived in Washington. They
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served on committees together on school boards, or their wives or spouses did. They knew each other. They knew each other's
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kids. They had personal relationships. Now, think about it. Politicians, what do they excel at? They're warm, incredibly,
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socially-skilled people. That's how they got into this business. They're able to make deals with each other. That's— that's their
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great skill. And you take an institution that—that has trouble as it is, that has all these divided powers as it is.
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And then you say, "How about let's separate the two sides, they no longer know each other, no friendships, they don't ride
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on the same little buses under— little train cars underneath the Capitol anymore, there's separate— separate cars for
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each. Let's end all personal relationships, and now have them work out difficult issues." It can't be done. So that's where
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we are. So there are a lot of simple fixes to Congress that would go a long way towards basically getting it to work
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better. And if Congress wasn't so polarized, that would— that would dampen down the messages out through all the polarized
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media, that we all have to hate each other and that the other side is going to destroy the country. - So
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John, at the end of chapter four of your book, you write that no one has ever invented a new business ethics class that has
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demonstrably changed the behavior of the students after the classroom experience. And now at NYU Stern, you have begun
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teaching business ethics. Why? Well, yes, they— because they asked me to, and I couldn't say
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no. And because I made it sound kind of hopeless in the book. And I stand by that, that a single standalone course,
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meeting twice a week for a semester, can't put ethics into people's heads so that when they go out into the work world,
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and they're faced with requirements or pressures to do something, falsify something, hide some information from a
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customer, they're gonna remember their ethics classes and say, "Oh, but
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this is wrong." There's no evidence that that can happen. The evidence in social psychology about the power of
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simple situational pressures is so overwhelming that I don't think an ethics class can really do that much. What I'm hoping we
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can do at Stern is— is make the class just a part of a two-year process in which we are socializing them into
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professionalism. What does it mean to be a business professional? When they first show up at Stern, like students
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all over the country at every school, there's a period of openness where everyone's trying to figure out, "How should I be?
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What's cool? What's the right way to, you know— what's the way to be successful here?" We teach our ethics class in the middle
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of the second year. It's way too late. They already know how to be a Stern student. And so what we're trying to do is get a
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lot more of the content into the very first week, move the intensive class into other parts of the first year, and then get
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some of the content in every single class, where there— where we'll discuss norms of professionalism. But even more
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important than that, because I think that we're so limited in our ability to behave ethically in the face of situational
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pressures, I want to teach our students how to do ethical systems design. How to take all the flaws and weirdnesses of
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human nature and work with them to design organizations, startup companies, where people are always concerned about the
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reputation. People are concerned about reputation even more than money, in most cases. How can we set things up so that people
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will, in a sense, guard the reputation by doing the right thing? That's the most important single principle.
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So did these liberal-conservative differences that are so pronounced in the political sphere manifest themselves in
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the domain of business ethics? Are there some aspects of ethics that are trans-ideological and other aspects that— that polarize
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people just as political issues do? - Yes, the core issues of business ethics— again, I'm new at this.
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But from what I'm picking up, some of the core issues are things like fiduciary duty. You have an obligation to people who
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are hiring you to do a job, to fulfill a contract, to put their interests first. I don't see any partisan difference there. Other
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issues, like corporate social responsibility, are clearly partisan issues. One of the hottest topics in business
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ethics is how can we get companies to honor or maximize the triple bottom line, not just the financial bottom line, but
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also social benefit and ecological benefit? Obviously, this is going to appeal to students on the left and not on
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the right. Let's see. I don't know of issues that would appeal more to students on the right. Conservatives tend to focus more
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on personal responsibility. Liberals tend to focus more on victims and the poor. But the core of the course seems to
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be non ideological. So the Friedmanite libertarians, for example, tend to view any deviation from fiduciary responsibility to
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shareholders as a form of theft. - That's right. - De facto theft. That's— that's strong position. Is that— have you come across that
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position? And— - Oh, yeah, I do. Yes, I read— I read the article where Friedman lays that out, it's a
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very persuasive case. And I think if we truly had efficient markets, in which there were no externalities, in which there
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was no despoiling of public goods, in which there was perfect information, and people weren't allowed to deceive and
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cheat, then I think the Friedman argument would work. And I believe Friedman was very aware of that and— and wasn't saying,
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"Oh, just maximize shareholder value, no matter what the situation." If we had— if we had such good markets, where
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companies couldn't be foisting costs onto unsuspecting victims, then I think there would be a lot to be said for it. But we
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don't have such a — such a— such a system. Government regulation is necessary for— to achieve much of that. And that's what
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things are so polarized about. What's the role of government? Is it, do you have a maximal view in which government has to strain—
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restrain the corporations? Or do you have a minimal view, in which government is the problem, and the more we can shrink it
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down, the freer business will be to create value. You don't see very many companies, though, overtly
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endorsing the Friedmanite position. Virtually all companies I've come across seem to endorse some form of CSR,
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corporate social responsibility. Has that been your experience also? I mean— - Well, you know. - Putting— TJ Rodgers and so forth.
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You know, but most people are in favor of motherhood and apple pie. I mean, they have to say something. There's no cost to
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saying it. I would want to know how much they put in the way of resources towards backing that up. And I'd be surprised if it
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was uniformly the case that— or overwhelmingly the case— that companies are sincerely committed to CSR.
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Okay. So let's— let's circle back to the press secretary metaphor that you use earlier, when you were describing moral
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intuitionism. Are you able to distinguish what fraction of the embrace of corporate social responsibility is purely press
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secretary posturing, as opposed to a genuine internalization of a moral priority?
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I can't. I don't know how to do that. The main thought I've had so far in my one year in the business world, and at the Stern
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School of Business, is that whatever you want to say about business, it varies a lot by sector. So a company like Nike,
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or Starbucks, or Google, which greatly prizes its reputation with consumers, and has a tremendous cachet because of
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that reputation. Those companies are really susceptible to boycotts, public criticism. They care about the reputations. And
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so I think they do— especially when their feet are held to the fire— they really do make a sincere commitment to corporate
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social responsibility. Companies that don't face consumers— so, just from reading Michael Pollan's book <i>The Omnivore's</i>
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<i>Dilemma</i>, the big agribusiness companies. You know, Archer Daniels Midland and the other ones that, people don't even know
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their names. So I would be very surprised if they took corporate social responsibility seriously. There's not much economic
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incentive for them to do it. So again, cycling back to the press secretary metaphor, which
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is really an intriguing one. You've got the President of the United States, and you have— you have his press secretary, and the
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press secretary is there to explain and defend what the President does. He's not a policymaker, per se. He's a
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secondary justification function. And that's— that's quite explicit. So— but yet you're optimistic about attitude
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change within a moral intuitionist framework. It would be as though the press secretary were telling the President what
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to do, as opposed to the president telling the press secretary what to do. So if you look at it just as an individual, we are all so
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flawed. We're all such— so bad at reasoning when our interests or our moral values are at stake. So we're not going to get better
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reasoning and change just by helping individuals to reason better. But when you put us together into networks and
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systems and companies and juries and— and legislative bodies, that— we can correct each other's flawed thinking. Basically, the
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big problem is the confirmation bias. We're all so good at confirming what we want to believe. But if there are other
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people out there to disconfirm it, if we have no relationship with them, we just hate them and disagree with them. But if
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they're members of our company, if they're friends, if they're fellow scientists— this is why it's so important to have
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ideological diversity in the sciences. Because if everybody shares certain assumptions, and there's nobody there to question
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them, then yeah, you get bad reasoning. So I'm a big fan of thinking about institutions as ways that we've developed to put
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people together in ways that correct for or cancel out our flaws. We see plenty of moral change over time. It's not
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because of logic, I think. If you look at, for example, civil rights, interracial marriage, these were disgusting to many
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people in America 50 years ago. But over time, the attitudes change. It's not because of arguments. It's because you get
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used to it. There's a lot of research now on gay marriage. Why is gay marriage— why are attitudes about gay marriage
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changing so fast? It's not because the arguments that were made back in the '80s, suddenly, people understood. "Oh, I see."
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It's because people saw <i>Will and Grace</i>. It's because in the '80s,
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most gay people are in the closet. But since 5% of all people are gay, and now they're mostly out of the closet, suddenly,
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everybody knows seven gay people and a lot have one in their family. When you get used to something, you — it loses its
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shock value, it loses disgust value, and now you're just much more open. So moral progress is possible. And if you take an
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intuitionist view about how you've got to get the intuitions, right first, you've got to speak to the elephant as it were, not
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the rider. Speak the elephant first, get— get him going the right direction, then the rider will come along. And that's
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what's happening on gay marriage. We might might have a problem with mixing metaphors here.
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We've got elephant and rider. We've got President and press secretary, and I'm fixated on President and press secretary at
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the moment. But okay, so— so the president might— the press secretary might come back to the President and say, "I can't sell
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this anymore. The reputational cost to you, Mr. President is too great. You're going to have to change. - That's right.
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But that would be one feedback mechanism. - That's right. - Or— - Exactly. - Press secretary might quit.
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- Yep. That's right. That happens. That's right. So it's not— so when Hume said
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reason is the slave of the passions, that's too strong a metaphor. A slave doesn't talk back to its master. That's why
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I like press secretary or lawyer. A lawyer does his client's bidding, but he can say, "Excuse me, sir, I will do this, if you
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insist. But this is a losing case, and you will look bad, and it is my fiduciary duty to advise you." So there are
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feedback mechanisms like that. And again, I think we're seeing that on— you know, on gay marriage and other issues.
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People— in certain social circles, people would feel ridiculous arguing for things that they could easily have
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argued for 10 years ago. So, you obviously— your— your book has been widely read and
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widely praised. What's the best critique you've seen of your— of your position?
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Well, one critique is that I'm pretty critical of liberals. And I'm not critical enough of conservatives. And I think
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that's true. When I wrote the book, because I had been thinking so much about what liberals don't see about
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conservatives, that's sort of what I specialized in. So I really tried to help liberal— and no— and the only people I meet
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are liberals. And the people that mostly read these books are liberal. So I was kind of addressing liberals. And I
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should have said some of the things where I think conservatives are wrong. One of the main ones is that while
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liberals, I think are too quick to try to take apart the law of karma, liberals kind of want to stop bad behavior from leading
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to bad consequences. And that's a bad thing to do. Society decays when you don't have swift punishment. But conservatives
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act as though the law of karma is actually true. That is, people who are suffering now are suffering because of something
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they did in the past. And that is sometimes true. Liberals have a complete ban on blaming the victim, which means they can't
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figure out a lot of— a lot of social facts. But conservatives I think are a little too quick to blame victims, and to not see
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how a disadvantage can accumulate and lead to a downward spiral. So I do wish I had been more even-handed in my
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criticism and praise of both sides. I do praise both sides. So the concept of deservingness is a— plays a pivotal role here in—
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- Absolutely. -— in producing ideological divergence. And you're suggesting that conservatives believe too much in the concept
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of deservingness and liberals not enough? Or— -Deservingness going forward— - Split the difference? - No. Deservingness
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going forward is— is a great idea. A lot of people realize this, as I did, when you become a parent. You know, of course, I
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will never spank my child. But you want to be loving and gentle. And you discover that you get a bratty kid. And what my
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wife and I found very quickly was when we use the 1-2-3 magic method, which is when he's misbehaving, you say that's one,
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that's two, that's three, timeout. Automatic, quick, rapid punishment— doesn't have to be severe. Rapid punishment, boy do
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you get behavior change. And a lot of our liberal friends are trying to reason with the kids. They don't want to impose power,
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they don't want to punish, they said, "Was that a wise choice or an unwise choice?" So I think over and over again,
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conservatives stand up for equity. That is, if you do something bad, you should be punished. If you do something
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good, you should be rewarded. In fact, I show some signs in the book and in my talks, a sign from the Tea Party, "Stop punishing
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success, stop rewarding failure." That's about as direct a plea for the law of karma as you could have. Conservatives— I'm sorry.
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Liberals, in contrast— I have a sign, "Tax the wealthy, fair and square. How can they let us go hungry?" See, if there are people
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who are hungry, well, then, of course, the rich should pay more taxes, we need to be equal." So liberals value equality. And if
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you push for equality, that often requires you to violate equity. And we see that in affirmative action, we see that
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in Title Nine, which mandates almost equal outcomes in sports, so that all of our schools are desperate to try to get women
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into sports, and they're trying to push men out. They don't have enough money to pay for the men. So we don't have equal
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access to sports in a lot of our schools, because Title Nine is an effort to get equality of outcomes. Conservatives are
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livid about that. And liberals think, "Oh, well, why isn't there equality of outcome? It must still be sexism."
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So you're able to weave together these conflicting strands of argument in a very sophisticated, integratively complex way. How—
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but most people don't think that way. Right? If you're a partisan, then you cannot think that way. The press
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secretary tends not to say, "Well, on the one hand, the Republicans are right about this, but the Democrats are
00:21:49
right about that." If he does that, he's fired. So if you're partisan, you cannot think in an integrative— that's what your
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research shows. The further you are out to the extremes, the lower integrative complexity tends to go on most issues. And
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most Americans are not that extreme. Most Americans will put themselves on one side or the other. But they're not that
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extreme. Our political life is dominated by more extreme elements, bolstered by the media, which has a business
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model that also does not cater to integrative complexity. So we're bathed in arguments from people who are not integratively
00:22:22
complex. I think it takes some doing, some seeking, some effort to find ideas on— on the other side. And when you do, I mean,
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that, to me, has been the great enlightenment. I'm very familiar with liberal ideas. I've been reading them my whole life. When
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I started reading conservative ideas about social order, about the value of tradition, about how easy to to lose social order,
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they really struck me as a revelation. And same with libertarian ideas. For example, here's— this is such a simple
00:22:50
formulation I heard the other day. Libertarian philosopher David Schmitz said, "A free market society is a giant game
00:22:57
in which you win by making other people better off." And that was such a simple and clear description of the way
00:23:05
libertarians see the free market, and how basically, free markets really do encourage us all to create something that other
00:23:10
people want and will pay money for. And then we're all better off because of it.
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So insofar as you believe the country would be better off, we'd be better off both as individuals and as a society if
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more people could think in these more integratively complex ways. What specific things can be done educationally and politically
00:23:31
to induce that so you get— get— get people to socialize more with each other in Congress is one thing. You've had other
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other suggestions? Could we— I think, as we conclude, it would be useful to work through the most specific suggestions you
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have for how do we can get out of this quicksand. Let's look at, what can we do as individuals and in education.
00:23:52
There's a line from one Shakespeare play, "First kill all the lawyers." That's not what I'm recommending. It's first kill
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all the math classes beyond algebra. Stop wasting so much of our students' time learning math. It's not useful, it's not
00:24:03
helpful. Teach them more civics, and in those civics classes, teach them the history of liberalism, conservatism, teach
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them ideological history, make the— get them prepared to treat these long idea— long intellectual traditions with
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respect. Second, teach some statistics. Cut the calculus. I mean, sure, if students want to take it, fine. But everybody
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should learn statistics. That actually helps you understand the data that's coming in from the social sciences and other
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places. So even in high school, we can do a lot more to prepare our students for citizenship, not for 19th century notions of
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an exercised brain that can do math and Greek. In our universities, it would be nice if we could have more open,
00:24:44
honest debate, and be a little less sensitive about people claiming hurt feelings. I think our universities should be
00:24:50
places of debate and discussion. And our culture is so litigious and has fostered the idea that everybody has a right
00:24:57
to not have their feelings hurt. This is a bad thing. This means we never get to talk with people who differ from us, we run away
00:25:03
from such discussions. So there's a lot we could do to help our thinking. But I don't think we— we don't need to all
00:25:11
become more integratively complex to get better outcomes. Our political institutions could put together simple-minded
00:25:17
thinkers in ways that get integrated with complex outcomes, as long as they don't demonize. So that to me is the
00:25:23
key. I'm not out to change people's minds and move everybody to the center. I'm out to make people stop demonizing the other
00:25:29
side. To say, "I disagree with you." You know, "You and I disagree about the right way to help the poor," or whatever the
00:25:35
issue is, or the environment. "But I see that you have ideas that draw on certain— your side is sensitive to certain threats
00:25:46
that my side doesn't see very well." So I would urge— urge viewers to go to Asteroids club.org, the website I started, that
00:25:55
helps people see that each side perceives asteroids coming towards the Earth that the other side just has its head in the
00:26:00
sand, it won't even acknowledge. So I think there is a lot that we can do to stop demonizing, and come to at least respect our
00:26:08
intellectual differences. - Thank you. Thank you so much, John, for joining us. The book is <i>The</i>
00:26:13
<i>Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided By Politics and</i> <i>Religion</i>. It's been great talking with you and
00:26:20
we wish you well. Thanks so much, Phil.

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Episode Highlights

  • The Righteous Mind
    Dr. Jonathan Haidt discusses his book on political division and morality.
    “It's great to have you here, John.”
    @ 00m 30s
    July 01, 2013
  • Changing Minds
    Haidt reflects on his ideological journey and the possibility of changing perspectives.
    “Yes, all you have to do is study morality for 25 years.”
    @ 03m 03s
    July 01, 2013
  • The Role of Reason
    Haidt argues against rationalism in moral reasoning, emphasizing intuition's role.
    “Reason tends to be post hoc.”
    @ 04m 06s
    July 01, 2013
  • Political Reform
    Haidt advocates for political reform to reduce polarization in Congress.
    “The number one top priority for this country is political reform.”
    @ 05m 29s
    July 01, 2013
  • Business Ethics Challenges
    Haidt explores the ideological divides in business ethics education.
    “Some of the core issues are things like fiduciary duty.”
    @ 10m 10s
    July 01, 2013
  • The Righteous Mind
    John discusses how political ideologies shape our understanding of deservingness and equity.
    “Deservingness going forward is a great idea.”
    @ 19m 45s
    July 01, 2013
  • Educational Reform Suggestions
    John suggests changes in education to foster integrative thinking and civics understanding.
    “Teach them more civics, and in those civics classes, teach them the history of liberalism, conservatism.”
    @ 24m 07s
    July 01, 2013

Episode Quotes

  • Don't you know how to make a moral argument?
    'The Righteous Mind': Why Liberals and Conservatives Can't Get Along
  • Reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions.
    'The Righteous Mind': Why Liberals and Conservatives Can't Get Along
  • Moral progress is possible.
    'The Righteous Mind': Why Liberals and Conservatives Can't Get Along
  • Stop punishing success, stop rewarding failure.
    'The Righteous Mind': Why Liberals and Conservatives Can't Get Along

Key Moments

  • Introduction00:21
  • Moral Arguments02:35
  • Political Reform05:29
  • Deservingness Debate19:24
  • Parenting Insights19:51
  • Political Complexity22:04
  • Educational Reform24:07
  • Respecting Differences25:41

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