The Righteous Mind

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion
First edition (US)
AuthorJonathan Haidt
LanguageEnglish
SubjectSocial psychology, evolutionary psychology, political psychology, moral psychology
Published2012
PublisherPantheon Books
Publication placeUnited States
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages419
ISBN978-0307377906
OCLC713188806
Websiterighteousmind.com
A simple graphic depicting survey data from the United States intended to support moral foundations theory [citation needed]

The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion is a 2012 social psychology book by Jonathan Haidt, in which the author describes human morality as it relates to politics and religion.

In the first section, Haidt demonstrates that people's beliefs are driven primarily by intuition, with reason operating mostly to justify beliefs that are intuitively obvious. In the second section, he lays out his theory that the human brain is organized to respond to several distinct types of moral violations, much like a tongue is organized to respond to different sorts of foods. In the last section, Haidt proposes that humans have an innate capacity to sometimes be "groupish" rather than "selfish".