by Jonathan Haidt
Haidt argues that moral judgements are driven by intuition, not reason. We are fundamentally groupish, and understanding our innate moral foundations explains why good people disagree politically.
In this collection, The Righteous Mind references 4 other books and is cited by 11 other books.
It draws on Thinking, Fast and Slow, The Selfish Gene and The Denial of Death.
It’s picked up by Behave, This View of Life and The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human, and How to Tell Them Better and 8 others.
Scroll down to read the exact passages where other authors reference this book and what they say about it.
The Righteous Mind is the book authors turn to when they need to explain why moral and political disagreements feel so intractable, and its influence spans evolutionary biology, political philosophy, storytelling, and criminal justice. Robert Sapolsky engages with Haidt's moral foundations in Behave, David Sloan Wilson treats them as evidence for multilevel selection in This View of Life, and Will Storr uses them in The Science of Storytelling to explain why readers demand heroes who embody their in-group's sacred values.
Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy resonates with Haidt's argument that moral intuitions drive punitive politics, while Michael Sandel extends it in The Tyranny of Merit to argue that meritocracy has become its own blinding moral framework. Readers praise the book for building genuine empathy across political divides, finding it one of the rare works that helps people understand -- rather than demonize -- those they disagree with.
The books Haidt references and why each one mattered to the argument.
Haidt discusses Kahneman's dual-process theory for moral intuitions.
The Righteous Mind engages with Dawkins's gene-level selection.
Haidt references Becker's terror management theory.
Haidt references Brooks's The Social Animal on unconscious social influences.
The exact passages where other authors bring up “The Righteous Mind” and what they take from it.
Sapolsky engages with Haidt's Righteous Mind on biological morality.
Wilson draws extensively on Haidt's Righteous Mind to support the case that morality evolved as a group-binding adaptation, treating Haidt's moral foundations as evidence for multilevel selection.
Storr builds on Haidt's moral-foundations research from The Righteous Mind to explain how stories stage conflicts between tribal moralities and why readers demand heroes who embody their in-group's sacred values
Resonates with Haidt's Righteous Mind argument that moral intuitions drive punitive politics, as Stevenson documents how jurors' gut reactions override evidence in capital cases
Builds on Haidt's Righteous Mind to argue that caste operates through moral intuitions and group loyalty below the level of conscious political reasoning
Resonates with Haidt's Righteous Mind argument that moral intuitions precede moral reasoning, applied to how racist ideas rationalize pre-existing policy
How ideas flow through the citation network. Ancestors are books this title builds on; descendants are books that build on it.
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