Moral Psychology in 3 Sentences

  1. Intuitions come first and strategic reasoning second.
    • The rider represents the rational, analytical, evidenced-based thinker and decision-maker.
    • The elephant represents the emotional, feelings, and instinctual side.
    • The rider is in service to the elephant and the elephant is mostly on autopilot.
    • If you want to persuade someone, you need to address the elephant first.
  2. There is more to morality than harm and fairness.
    • Western morality is overly focused on things like harm, rights, justice, equity, and equality but there is also courage, honesty, respect, cooperation, sharing, loyalty, etc.
  3. Morality binds and blinds.
    • It binds us into ideological teams for survival.
    • It blinds us to recognizing that each team includes good people with good ideas and good intentions.
References
  1. From "The Righteous Mind" by Jonathan Haidt.

A note on sources, acknowledgments, and references.