Evolutionary psychologist Jonathan Haidt wants the general reader to understand how man’s evolution has shaped his psychology, especially as it applies to “politics and religion”. He and his colleagues have considered a wide variety of theories from evolutionary psychology. He has concluded that real world men and women first have intuitive views of politics and use their “rational” skills to justify their views and avoid changing. Second, he identifies a half dozen evolutionary behaviors and thought patterns that underly most political beliefs. Third, he shares research that shows that liberals generally only emphasize 2-3 of these viewpoints while conservatives apply all 6. Fourth, he argues that humans are 90% solitary individuals and 10% collective or community animals who naturally live at both the profane and sacred levels. Fifth, he argues that religious belief has co-evolved in the last 10,000 years with the domestication of animals, increased value of assets and development of larger groups in civilization who threatened each other.

Many religious people struggle to even consider a book that uses “evolution” to outline politics and religion. Haidt does not take a determinist approach, nor does he disregard a sacred basis for religion. Many progressives, especially those who believe that only fairness and equality are proper bases for political views and who discount religion, also struggle with this book which provides a “broader” picture. I encourage readers to set aside their political views, even though Haidt shares many studies that say we are very poor at doing so, because I think that his insights into people using intuition and rationalizing, overall, are objectively true. I also think that understanding the 6 underlying thought patterns supporting our deeply held political beliefs can help to reduce our polarization and make us more accepting of the beliefs of other people [Are those who think differently from me really EVIL?].

Finally, I think that his analysis of the individual and community and the role of religious belief is applicable today as we struggle to accommodate a variety of political and religious views. I think that it is possible that we could get a consensus among 80% of Americans that we “need” some degree of community to balance a purely individualistic perspective and that religious belief is a valid worldview that is not going to disappear in the next century, so we ought to recognize, at a public policy level, that religious belief and organizations have played and can play a very constructive role in American life, with the encouragement from all, even as we preserve the “separation of church and state”, freedom of belief and a commitment to the ideals of America’s founders regarding individual rights and equality. The genius of the American political system, in my view, is that it allows us to define pragmatically effective institutions and norms, while allowing individuals to hold diametrically opposed views about politics, religion and philosophy. We can “agree to disagree” about many things while working together to make a great life for ourselves and our descendants.

Introduction: The Wisdom of Rodney King (1992)

Rodney King was nearly beaten to death by 4 LA police officers. Despite a videotape of the attack, the officers were not convicted of a crime. LA erupted in riots. King then said “please, we can get along here. We can all get along. I mean, we’re all stuck here for a while. Let’s try to work it out.” We all hold “righteous” beliefs about right and wrong, politics and religion. We’re right and the other guy is wrong.

One: Where Does Morality Come From?

Haidt provides the reader with a quick history of how psychology has treated morality as a “special way of thinking”. In the “nature versus nurture” debate, psychologists generally chose nurture. From Rousseau through Piaget, Kohlberg and Turiel, psychologists found that a “stages of growth” model effectively described the progress of moral thinking in children. The detailed research focused on perceptions of harm and fairness. The research confirmed that children universally progressed through stages of understanding leading to an “adult” level view of harm, fairness, justice and moral behavior. As Rousseau described the world in 1750, humans are born with a “blank slate” mind and easily develop language, thought and morality. In this view, society and its institutions, including parents, teachers and religion, mostly interfere with the “natural” development of children. The “conventional wisdom” through 1990 supported this worldview. Haidt deems this a “rationalist” worldview because in it all children can develop moral views rationally, through their basic interactions with the world, without need for cultural education or innate capabilities beyond general reasoning.

Haidt studied philosophy, politics, anthropology and psychology before starting to work on his doctoral thesis. Like many students in the seventies, eighties and nineties, he found the mainly behaviorist psychology of the time to simply be too “neat and tidy”, objective, simplistic, static, deterministic, dry, rational, logical, machine-like, inhuman. Input-processing-output. Homo economicus. Stimulus-response. No gap, no consideration. No social context. No biological or evolutionary basis. Certainly no religion.

Richard Shweder challenged the consensus view of how people conceive of morality in 1987. He started from an anthropological perspective. Successful cultures all find a way to balance the needs of the individual and the community. Most choose to emphasize the needs of the community. Only a few, mainly modern Western ones, strongly prioritize the needs of the individual. The modern West had doubled down on the individualistic view in the 18th and 19th centuries with the growth of Protestant religious sects, science, capitalism and new individual based political systems. In the 20th century, the extreme “social” views of fascism and communism were rejected, reinforcing the individualist perspective. Shweder saw that the progress of modern psychology was based solely on the individualistic perspective. His research showed that moral views differed by culture and that both harm/fairness and social conventions matter.

Haidt’s dissertation research pushed this a little further along. He emphasized moral stories that could trigger reactions of disgust or disrespect. He found that the US and Brazil, urban and rural, upper- and lower-class people had quite different moral views. There was no single moral conclusion.

Haidt also found that individuals were strongly predisposed to justify their moral views, no matter how normal or unusual they appeared to the interviewer. We all need to believe and feel that our moral views are “righteous”, no matter where they came from. He quotes David Hume (Rousseau’s contemporary) that “reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them”.

Morality includes factors from both individual and social community perspectives. Individualistic and abstract fairness, harm and justice are not enough. Social taboos, food prohibitions, sexual taboos, hierarchy, loyalty and family ties also matter.

Moral views in traditional, social based communities are generally quite similar. They are very different from individualistic societies.

Haidt is working hard to be an objective scientist, describing how moral views exist, not how they “ought to be”. Social centered communities have quite different views. These “traditional” views continue to be held by some, even in modern, individualistic societies.

Haidt rejects the psychological mainstream view. Individuals do not simply “figure it out” rationally. They are shaped by logic/reason, social influences and innate thought patterns.

Two: The Intuitive Dog and Its Rational Tail (Tale)

How do people really address moral decisions? Philosophers tend to emphasize individual rationalism, even though Plato’s discussion, Q&A, social model was the beginning of modern philosophy. They emphasize reasoning (the head) and mostly or totally ignore emotion (the heart). While philosophers were aware of Hume’s view of reason as a slave to the passions, they ignored this possibility. As noted in chapter one, psychologists followed the “rationalists” until 1990, when some challenges arose.

Frans de Waal documented that chimpanzees possessed most of the building blocks human use to build communities and moral systems: feelings of sympathy, fear, anger and affection. Feelings might matter more.

Antonio Damasio documented a type of brain damage in humans that reduced their emotional skills to near zero. This caused them to lose their ability to make rational decisions about daily choices. Without a gut level, intuitive sense, they were overwhelmed by the complexity of making common daily rational decisions. Emotions are part of decision making.

Edward O. Wilson proposed in his 1975 book Sociobiology that natural selection influenced human behavior. He argued that there is in some sense a human nature that rationality and social pressures cannot simply ignore. The response from the “rational” psychology community and many others holding Rousseau’s “blank slate” view of the mind as a necessary underpinning for their political views was extremely negative, making the idea “untouchable” for more than a decade. A number of researchers quietly picked up Wilson’s approach and renamed it evolutionary psychology. New research defined hypotheses that could be scientifically tested.

In 1987 Howard Margolis, a public policy professor published Patterns, Thinking and Cognition. He demonstrated that there is a clear difference between the quick, intuitive cognition of pattern matching (seeing-that) and the slower, conscious, more complex and formally rational logic used to reason or justify (reasoning-why). Both are forms of cognition, but they use different parts of the brain.

Haidt developed experiments to help distinguish between the roles of the head and the heart, reason and emotions. He first found that individuals can make moral decisions just as well when being stressed by other demands on their thinking (a heavy load). Moral judgements seemed to match Margolis’ intuitive, pattern matching, quick, subconscious form of cognition. He next found that in a wide variety of cases, initial moral judgments could not be changed even with the strongest forms of logic, evidence and persuasion. Participants stuck with their initial choices. They defended themselves with good and bad reasons. When their bad logic was challenged, they doubled down with new reasons or just claimed that they didn’t need to justify their choices.

In his 2006 book The Happiness Hypothesis, Haidt consolidated this thinking into the analogy of an elephant (automatic processes, including emotion, intuition, and all forms of “seeing-that” and a rider of the elephant (controlled processes, including reasoning-why). In behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman’s 2011 work Thinking, Fast and Slow, he calls them simply system 1 and system 2. The rider can see into the future, learn new skills, master new technologies, consider complex situations and justify or rationalize choices. For most moral decisions, individuals react intuitively and rationalize their gut feelings. Hence, a simple model has the individual interacting with the environment, the elephant/heart/emotions/intuition making moral judgements and the rider justifying the choices.

Haidt argues that few moral decisions involve rational choices, and few decisions are revised by individual reconsideration. On the other hand, he notes that man is a social animal who wants to be held in high esteem by his peers and looks to them for feedback on a variety of topics including moral decisions. Hence, Haidt’s model of moral decision making adds a feedback loop from society to the individual. This is about social pressure that can persuade an individual to reconsider the basis for a moral decision and potentially provide a different intuition that replaces the old one.

On the one hand, individuals make subconscious, intuitive moral decisions rapidly without the benefit of “logical” thought and tend to “stick to their guns”. On the other hand, individuals are capable of logical introspection and they can be influenced by others and they can consider new or competing models, insights, perspectives, paradigms, etc. Individuals tend to have “their minds made up” on moral issues (politics and religion), but there is some ability to consider the views of others and to reconsider moral insights.

Three: Elephants Rule

Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second. The social intuitionist model is summarized in just 6 words.

Hypnotized subjects instructed to feel a flash of disgust by a word evaluated stories containing the word more negatively. Even a story with no moral violation triggered such a response in 30% of subjects and they tried to rationalize their initially stated feelings.

Brains evaluate instantly and constantly. The founder of experimental psychology, Wilhelm Wundt, in 1890 described affective primacy. Individuals feel small positive or negative flashes of emotion with most perceptions and impressions. Feelings are associated with perception. Although the feelings may be weak and fleeting, they are triggered hundreds or thousands of times a day. In 1980, Robert Zajonc demonstrated that we attach mini feelings even to neutral objects like made-up words, Japanese characters and shapes. We are built to respond emotionally to the world.

Social and political judgements are particularly intuitive. Research shows that the positive or negative connotations of words effect our ability to interpret the positive or negative nature of a second, following word. The pair “love-cancer” requires extra mental energy and time to evaluate the emotional nature of “cancer”. Negative prejudices have also been shown to impact our reactions to succeeding pictures, stories or events. Liberal and conservative biases have been demonstrated using these techniques. Other research shows that research participants make several intuitive judgements of photos in a very short period of time. Subjects’ evaluations of “competence” allowed them to predict 2/3rds of political elections.

Our bodies guide our judgments. We use “affect as information”. Positive or negative feelings generated by smells or objects change perceptions. Subjects who wash their hands evaluate stories with higher moral intensity. Immorality makes people feel dirty. The link between the body and morality flows in both directions.

Psychopaths reason but don’t feel. Their lack of social feeling leaves them without a moral compass. Their “logical” brain merely pursues self-interest, treating others as objects. Feelings matter for moral judgments.

Babies feel but don’t reason. Six-month-old infants have innate understanding of basic physical movements and will respond to anomalies by staring longer. In a similar fashion, such infants understand “niceness” and respond differently to nice and “not nice” puppets. Even before they have reasoning abilities, babies have some ability to reason morally.

Affective reactions are in the right place at the right time in the brain. Damasio’s studies of brain damaged patients without emotions have been followed by related studies on “normal” individuals. Stories that involved direct personal harm triggered negative reactions, while those with only impersonal conflict situations triggered much less of a response. Other games, experiences and situations have been presented and subjects’ brains measured. Emotional areas are triggered by such personally impactful experiences leading to greater degrees of moral evaluations as predicted.

Elephants are sometimes open to reason. The intuition does not always “win”. The rational mind is always tempted to defend the intuitive response. If given time to consider, it is more likely to look at a variety of factors and may become more independent of the elephant’s initial reaction. The “rider” is also attentive to social pressures, reactions, influences and arguments and will consider the thoughts, stories and reasons of others that it considers socially influential.

Four: Vote for Me (Here’s Why)

Haidt begins the chapter with another trip to philosopher land. He presents Plato’s story about Glaucon who claims that people are virtuous only because they fear the consequences of being caught. The legal/criminal consequences; but especially the social consequences that will interfere with their social standing and ability to work within the community as a trusted member. Glaucon describes the mythical gold ring of Gyges, which allows an individual to be invisible at will. He claims that anyone possessing such a ring would do as he pleases, without regard to any notion of morality. Haidt believes that Glaucon is right, and that Plato and subsequent philosophers have been caught up in a delusion that rational thinking is and can be the basis for outstanding morality.

Haidt says that humans are the world champion of cooperation beyond kinship. We work effectively in formal and informal systems of accountability, defined as the “explicit expectation that one will be called upon to justify one’s beliefs, feelings or actions to others”. In later chapters Haidt digs into the evolutionary basis for this remarkable social ability, supported by natural capabilities. Haidt cites researcher Phil Tetlock who sees the world as Haidt does, describing how we act like intuitive politicians striving to maintain appealing moral identities. In simplest terms, we could not work in large, non-kinship based, organizations without having the common ability to interact on a basis of trust, including feedback loops that build such skills and reinforce the incentive to build trust. Tetlock’s research shows that when experimental subjects know that they will have to explain their decisions, they think more systematically and self-critically, avoiding the many “sloppy thinking” errors typically found in experimental psychology settings. When socially required, humans can focus, self-evaluate and justify adequately their reasoning. He argues that conscious reasoning is carried out largely for the purpose of persuasion, not finding truth.

Researcher Mark Leary developed experiments that demonstrated that all individuals, even those who claim that they ignore the opinions of others, see and respond to negative feedback from others, even anonymous others. Leary says that at a nonconscious and pre-attentive level we continuously scan the social environment for any negative feedback.

Haidt uses the presidential press secretary to illustrate our tendency and ability to justify any previously expressed conclusion. Research in 1960 by Peter Wason defined the idea of “confirmation bias”. When asked to brainstorm or defend a position we can easily generate many new related ideas. We prefer to generate confirming ideas and evidence while neglecting contrary evidence. Researcher David Perkins demonstrated that higher IQ individuals generated more arguments to support their views, but not more contrary hypotheses or evidence.

Haidt summarizes the United Kingdom’s Parliament scandal of 2009, when it was revealed that nearly all members, given an opportunity to be reimbursed for nearly any expense, made claims at this scale for years and were surprised by the public’s very negative response to their egregious behavior. Humans can easily rationalize their opinions and behavior, even convincing themselves of its righteousness. Psychologists have emphasized the role of “plausible deniability” in shaping immoral or borderline immoral decisions and actions. Dan Ariely’s more recent experiments show that nearly all people with secrecy and plausible deniability will cheat, not greatly, but somewhat. Ouch.

Social psychologist Tom Gilovich studies the cognitive mechanisms of “strange beliefs”. He finds that such individuals employ a double standard. When an individual wants to believe something, a small amount of roughly plausible evidence will suffice. When opposing evidence is presented, any possible reason to discount the evidence is considered conclusive. Psychologists have deep evidence of our ability and propensity to pursue “motivate reasoning”. People can see what they want to see, given just a little ambiguity. Hence, they can discount scientific studies and mainstream media and political opponents.

Political scientists, following economists, once believed that people voted, volunteered and donated out of individual self-interest. Most political scientists today would at least say that people are also motivated by their groups’ best interests. People belong to various groups with various degrees of attachment. They participate for both their own self-interest and their groups’ interest. Haidt claims that the group dimension is very dominant.

Haidt directly attacks the “rationalist delusion” that the ability to reason well about ethical issues causes good behavior. No surprise, he has research studies that demonstrate that elite moral philosophers behave no differently from other people. He also cites Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber who summarized the research on motivated reasoning and reasoning biases/errors stating, “skilled arguments … are not after the truth but after arguments supporting their views”. Haidt claims that no teaching method has been developed to overcome the confirmation bias since it is so strong. [TK doubts this based on personal experience]

The author then reclaims his scientific authority and allegiance to reason. “We must be wary of any individual’s ability to reason”. Most individual people, 80%, 90%, 95% or more remain trapped, most of the time, in non-self-aware decision making about moral situations. However, social processes (science, structured decision making, projects, political systems?) can be structured to overcome the individual biases. This requires a structure, individual buy-in, communications, techniques, trust, leadership, participation, etc. Most individuals, even highly educated, intelligent, experienced ones tend to make moral, religious and political decisions without challenging their intuitions. Yet, individuals can be self-reflective and social systems can improve outcomes.

Five: Beyond WEIRD Morality

Most psychology research is based on individuals who are Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic (WEIRD). How could it possibly represent universal, scientific truths?

Worldviews matter. Moral worldviews matter. Richard Shweder’s 1991 publication spanned anthropology and psychology, termed cultural psychology. He and his colleagues said that the two fields are intertwined. You can’t study mind alone, because it is situated within a culture. You can’t study culture alone, because many of its views, myths and beliefs are generated from the common views of minds.

Shweder described 3 different varieties of fully functioning moral worldviews: the ethics of autonomy (individual), community and divinity (infinite, beyond). All of anthropology supports the view that different moral worldviews exist. Haidt asks that we defer discussions of which are “best” or “right” until later after we have learned about them, appreciated them and learned about methods to not simply defend our worldview and criticize all others.

[Yes, Haidt is an unusual academic. He shares his own liberal leaning political views. In the end, he believes that learning and cooperation can help us all to get along. But he relies on scientific evidence from anthropology, biology, psychology, political science, behavioral economics, philosophy, social psychology and sociology, even when it does not support his political leanings or academic theories. Hence, he is criticized both as a “closet conservative” and as a “secular utopian”]

The ethic of autonomy is our world, especially the upper middle class professional world epitomized in Haidt’s U Penn Ivy League students. They strongly believe in the classic liberal worldview expressed by John Stuart Mill in 1859: “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others”. This is the modern mainstream Western, English and American worldview. The world is comprised of individuals first and foremost. Individuals have inalienable rights. Political and moral systems must protect these rights. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. First, do no harm. Contract theory of politics. Individual rights. Human rights. Freedom and liberty. Libertarianism. Utilitarianism focused on the best summarized results treating each individual as equally valuable.

The ethic of community begins with the community, relationships, structures, institutions and roles first. The whole is greater than the sum of the individuals and distinctively different. Haidt points to Asia for examples. He could have pointed to pre-Enlightenment, pre-Reformation, pre-Renaissance Europe. In this world, people are first and foremost members of larger entities such as families, teams, armies, companies, tribes and nations. People have an obligation to the groups. Moral concepts of duty, hierarchy, respect, reputation and patriotism matter greatly.

The ethic of divinity envisions people as temporary, immaterial components of a comprehensive divine whole. The whole world is infused with the divine spirit. Individuals are also divine objects with a divine purpose. There is a hierarchy of most divine and least divine or degraded things. Disgust at despicable, dirty things is natural. The body is a temple when alive and even after death. Moral concepts of sanctity and sin, purity and pollution, elevation and degradation are employed. Again, Europe before 1500 qualifies as following this ethic. See Charles Taylor’s 2018 A Secular Age. My grandmother from rural Hungary, near Ukraine, brought this worldview with her to America in 1903 and still followed it when she died in a small Ohio village in 1966.

Haidt relates his personal story. A New York Jew, descendant of Russian grandparents, garment industry workers, Haidt inhaled the liberal air, FDR’s semi-divine status and the undergraduate Yale University atmosphere. Stops at the Universities of Pennsylvania and Chicago reinforced the “conventional political consensus”. Democrats were right/correct. Republicans were wrong/right/evil/fooled/deluded/impaired. Haidt was attracted to philosophy, psychology, biology, anthropology, etc. He was a free thinker. Good academic, trying to find a multidisciplinary perspective that would provide new, better scientific insights.

Shweder’s work was a breakthrough for Haidt, psychology, cultural psychology and evolutionary psychology. His work provided a paradigm shift, first described by Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962. Science moves forward incrementally and smoothly until … it doesn’t. For Haidt, mid-way through writing his dissertation after finishing his field research, it provided a framework for his provocative moral stories that were viewed so differently by different nations, classes and regions. His “best” stories were either those of disrespect that violated the ethics of community or those of disgust or carnality which violated the ethics of divinity.

Even is a modern WEIRD society, some individuals did not conform to the prevailing individualistic/autonomous norms. They were greatly offended by violations of community and divinity-based norms and taboos. Cultures and individuals have multiple moral worldviews innately!!!!

Haidt provides more details about his 1993 research in India, where the ethics of community and divinity prevail. He was able to appreciate how these systems create an internally consistent society that meets most social needs. He sees how these ethics do not mesh well with the ethic of autonomy, but learns to see the value, beauty, worth, history, results, flexibility, hope, ideals and reality of India at that time. He returns to the US and can appreciate the views of social conservatives. He is released from partisan anger.

Six: Taste Buds of the Righteous Mind

Haidt provides an analogy between taste buds for enjoying food and evolutionarily derived “moral modules” that are used to construct real world moral cultures, beliefs, intuitions, responses and language. He returns to the history of philosophy through modern rationalist psychology once again. He notes that rationalist philosophers since the “Englightenment” have sought to derive a moral philosophy that can be reduced to a single principle, model or framework. He notes that Jeremy Bentham and Immanuel Kant were great systematizers and poor empathizers, which allowed them to propose these kinds of systems and attract followers.

He recalled that the Enlightenment has been characterized as a war between Reason and ignorant Religion, with Reason winning. He returned to David Hume’s philosophy which rejected a reductionist approach and embraced a pluralist approach, even quoting the same analogy between taste and moral philosophy. He describes utilitarianism as the “arithmetic” of pain and pleasure and Kant’s version of the Golden Rule as the “logic” of noncontradiction. He rejects both as too simple to scientifically describe how real-world moral thinking takes place.

Haidt seeks to develop a Moral Foundations Theory comprised of “moral modules” that are consistent with the main findings of evolutionary psychology and the variety of moral cultures and thinking described by anthropologists. He warns the reader 3 times that it is very easy to find a plausible evolutionary basis for nearly any observed behavior but believes that he and his partner Craig Joseph were able to identify robust rationales for 5 clusters of morality.

His model starts with the original adaptive challenge and triggers, notes current triggers of intuitive, emotional reactions, notes the primary linked emotion and the relevant virtues for 5 flavors of morality.

The first flavor is care/harm focused on the care and protection of children. A child’s suffering triggers a compassionate response which we call caring or kindness. Today baby seals or cartoon pictures might trigger the same response!

Sensitivity to fairness/cheating derives from the need to develop two person partnerships. (Anger, gratitude, guilt)

Sensitivity to loyalty/betrayal is needed for the formation of larger social groups. (group pride, rage at traitors)

Sensitivity to authority/subversion is needed to manage hierarchical relationships without constant battling. (Respect, fear)

Sensitivity to sanctity/degradation is required to avoid contaminants. (Disgust)

Haidt ends the chapter saying that “theories are cheap”.

Seven: The Moral Foundations of Politics

In this chapter, Haidt digs deeper into the proposed 5 moral foundations of politics. He wants us to agree that these “modules” drive many currently important political/moral beliefs and that they make sense in terms of key evolution developments for humans. He is also working hard to help his tribe, the liberals, truly appreciate that these are ALL legitimate moral principles held by billions around the world and how the mainstream Western liberal emphasis on just the individual and rationality, summarized in John Stuart Mill’s 1859 maxim about very limited rightful political restraints on individuals, is an outlier historically and cross-culturally. [He’s still dodging the question of whether this path of philosophy is in some sense right or better than the others].

He begins with another stab at homo economicus, the utilitarian version of man who simply maximizes personal pleasures versus pains. [We could have long discussions about the details, power and uses of the philosophy at the individual and community levels, but for now his focus is on real moral behavior and his point well taken, IMHO]. Haidt shares five paired research questions that demonstrate our inherent, innate, intuitive, subconscious, primal, unlearned, universal, easily triggered reaction to violations of moral rules or taboos on the 5 posited moral dimensions. Stick a needle into a child’s arm. Receive a stolen TV. Criticize the US on Al-Jazeera. Slap dad in the face. Attend a play of naked, grunting actors. Most of us react negatively to the stories even if intellectually we see “no real harm”.

Haidt circles back to the definition of “innateness”, emphasizing that a pre-1970 strict definition of “exactly so in every culture” is not supported by scientists today. Instead, they describe humans as 50/50 “nature versus nurture”, prewired and flexible versus hardwired, starting with some abilities but adding to them and refining them through experience. For example, we are prewired to quickly react with “fight or flight” when seeing a snake, but some people have much stronger reactions than others and this response can also be triggered by a “squiggly line”. This is critical because he is arguing that the “moral modules” are each innate, ready to be used and fine-tuned by all humans.

Humans give birth to children who require 3-5-7 years of care to be able to survive. Woman and men who innately were predisposed to respond to infant signals of need were best positioned to shepherd these needy animals into early childhood survival. Psychology’s “attachment theory” says that the “serve and return” interaction of moms and children is required for development. Cute kids, dolls, cartoons and stuffed animals all trigger the loving, protective response. Liberals emphasize the “caring” dimension, applying it to disenfranchised groups of all kinds. Conservatives “care” for more closely related sets of kin, neighbors, co-religionists, racial and ethnic allies, fellow patriots, etc.

Humans evolved to function in hunter-gatherer societies and then in fixed agricultural societies. This required an ability to judge the real cooperation of others. Robert Trivers’ 1971 theory of “reciprocal altruism” agrees with much game theory research that shows that a “tit for tat” strategy of interacting with others is optimal. Individuals who took a step away from simple self-interest were able to cooperate effectively without being “suckered” by others. A genetically common group with this insight could radically outperform its strictly individualist peers. They felt “pleasure, liking and friendship when people show signs they can reciprocate … [and] .. anger, contempt and even disgust when people try to cheat us or take advantage of us.” Liberals emphasize ideal, abstract “fairness” while conservatives emphasize proportional “fairness”. Equal results versus equal opportunity and proportionate rewards for performance.

As groups further increased in size, humans required additional signals to evaluate who was “pulling their fair share” versus being a “free rider”. Individuals that actively bought into a group identity and willingly displayed this commitment were able to form larger, more tightly knit communities. On an evolution basis, they would have succeeded far more often than the pure individualists or groups with just better “one on one” bonds. Haidt points to Muzarif Herif’s 1954 research that documented the “tribal” nature of 12-year-old boys, as we still see in scout packs today. Boys want to be part of a team, to be leaders, to compete, to stake out territory, to adopt names, flags, songs and secrets. Just like irrational sports team allegiances. In a world of tribal warfare, groups that bonded together would have survived better. Identifying (loving) teammates and (hating) traitors was essential. Conservatives naturally employ this dimension. Liberals apply it to more universal groups: humanity, union brothers, seekers, the enlightened, academics, the disenfranchised, the working class.

As groups increased in size even further and necessarily became more hierarchical, individuals who could effectively navigate the two-way required dominance/submission relations became more valuable. Respecting “legitimate” authority and willingly delivering signs of respect, dominance and submission became highly valuable at the community level. We’re moving from bands of 10-20-50 to groups of 50-100-150 to communities of 250-1,000-10,000. Adam Smith outlined the advantages of specialization in larger societies in 1776, but they also applied 10-20-50-100,000 years ago. Haidt notes that “pecking order” signs are common in nature. He also emphasizes that agreement on roles reduces constant fighting between individuals and that high-ranking individuals typically take on the role of maintaining order and justice for the community. Haidt notes that this power can be abused, but it is not inherently abusive. Conservatives love this one. “Anything that is construed as an act of obedience, disobedience, respect, disrespect, submission, or rebellion, with regard to authorities perceived to be legitimate” triggers a response. Today, anything that subverts traditions, institutions or values is suspect from the right. Liberals generally struggle with the importance of this dimension.

The fifth proposed basis of morality is more fundamental. Humans are omnivores. We migrate. We eat new foods. We interact with new people. We need to know what is safe or not. The negative reactions to filth, excrement, disease, sores, pus, smells, blood, mixtures, darkness, caves, the unknown, the other, is probably one of the oldest moral foundations. It is found in most cultures and religions. “Cleanliness is next to godliness”. Dietary restrictions. God is high and the devil is low. God’s temple. Human body as a temple. Chastity. Not polluted. Unclean. Sacred and profane. Body and soul. Haidt summarizes this as the sanctity/degradation foundation. The human body/soul is more than a piece of meat. Sexual intercourse is more than animal husbandry. Sex with a relative is repulsive. Some individuals are “untouchable”. Sacred places, objects, saints, symbols, words, books, images, limits, smells, roles, and relics are … sacred. Blasphemy is “beyond the pale”, unimaginable, dead serious, unforgiveable, ruthless, diabolical. This is not just a Manichaean dualist “good versus evil” abstraction. It becomes a definition of the eternal, the infinite, the all-powerful, the best, moral excellence against its evil opposite.

Humans have intuitions about moral issues that were developed to make an increasingly complex society succeed. They are about the individual and the group, the individual and death from disease, and God. These accessible “moral modules” can be applied to current events. Wise politicians understand the strength of these modules and seek to use them to attract political support.