By Jonathan Haidt
The origins of morality in societies
What is morally wrong varies for every society. Each collectively chooses through time to structure itself in two ways: socio-centric (group needs above one), individualistic (one's needs above the group's).
Is morality innate?
He attempts to answer the age-old question about the origins of morality: where does morality come from? Is it innate, or is it learnt in childhood? He brings up a third source, a rationalist source, that morality is 'self-constructed by children on the basis of their experiences with harm'. He later rejects this rationalist explanation because he observes similar questions answered similarly in cultures with very different conceptions of morality. He says that morality evolves innately and has a certain 'learning component' based on the experiences of children.
Intuition was here before reasoning
On an evolutionary time-scale, our intuitions and instincts were shaped long before reasoning (Fight or Flight). One important and oft-cited theory in this book is: Intuitions come first, strategic reasoning second.
Intuition can be a gut-feeling of disgust and moral/strategic reasoning can be a post-hoc fabrication of what one has experienced. People make moral judgements quickly, but moral reasoning is post-hoc. The author uses the metaphor of an elephant and its rider. The rider (reasoning => controlled process) and the elephant (intuition => automatic process). The rider evolved to serve the elephant. If you want to change someone's mind about a moral or political issue, talk to their elephant. And then re-read How to Win Friends and Influence People.
Our brains are always evaluating
Brains evaluate instantly and constantly. Look at animals for instance: The fundamental question around which animals make their decision: Approach or Avoid? It's the same for us - at least from an evolutionary context.
Historical context on the innateness of morality
Look up what Hume, Jefferson, and Plato said. Read about Glaucon. Glaucon said that people care a great deal about appearance and reputation more than about reality. Hence the most important principle for designing an ethical society is to make sure everyone's reputation is on the line all the time, so that bad behavior will always have bad consequences. That is people having Skin In the Game.
Read: Incerto series by Nassim Nicolas Taleb.
Evolution at the group level
This is still a challenging concept to comprehend, even after reading this book. The author gives his reasons for why he thinks evolution works at a group level. He says people are group-ish because of a phenomenon called shared intentionality, something that is uniquely human.
There is nothing like "for the good of the species".
Adaptations vs by-products
The question arises, are moral qualities adaptations or by-products. The author reasons that our moral qualities are not adaptations, they're by-products. Read: Mating Mind by Geoffrey Miller. In the book, he explains how every art, work literature, and many more things around us can be explained by looking at sexual selection and how these are like a peacock's tail, or what is called costly signaling (Zahavian signaling).
Other interesting concepts/ideas/questions
Human nature is 90% chimp and 10% bee
Haidt's metaphor for dual nature. Most of the time, we act like chimps (selfish, competitive, pursuing individual goals). But we also have the capacity to act like bees (suppressing self-interest to work for the collective good). This small "bee" part of our nature allows for extraordinary group cooperation but only under specific conditions (shared threats, collective rituals, moral frameworks).
Collective effervescence
Émile Durkheim's term for the energy and harmony people feel when they come together in ritual, celebration, or worship. Think of church gatherings, concerts, sports events, or political rallies. These shared experiences create a sense of unity that transcends individual identity. Haidt argues this is key to understanding religion (it's not just about beliefs, it's about creating collective effervescence).
Models of religious psychology
The New Atheist model: Believing leads to Doing. Religion is a set of beliefs, and those beliefs cause people to act. This linear model assumes you believe first, then you act on those beliefs.
The Durkheimian model: A triangular relationship between Believing, Doing, and Belonging. You do religious rituals, which helps you belong to a community, which strengthens your beliefs, which makes you want to do more rituals. It's circular and social, not linear and individual. Haidt argues this model better captures how religion actually works.
The free rider problem
An evolutionary and game theory challenge: In any cooperative group, individuals can benefit from the group's efforts without contributing their fair share. How do you prevent free riders from exploiting the system while others do the work? This problem is central to understanding how human cooperation evolved. Mechanisms like reputation, punishment, and group selection may have emerged to solve this.
Gene-culture coevolution
Genes and culture evolve together in a feedback loop. Culture creates selection pressures that favor certain genes, and genes shape our capacity for culture. Example: Cultures that domesticated cattle created selection pressure for lactose tolerance genes. For deeper exploration, Haidt recommends David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral, which argues that religions are cultural adaptations that helped groups cooperate and outcompete other groups.
Tool kits of early humans
Oldowan toolkit (~2.6 million years ago): Simple stone tools made by hitting rocks together. Basic choppers and flakes.
Acheulean toolkit (~1.76 million years ago): More sophisticated hand axes with symmetrical designs. These tools remained largely unchanged for over a million years, suggesting slow cultural evolution in early hominids. The emergence of faster cultural change marks a critical shift in human evolution.
Rubicon crossing
Refers to Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon River, an irreversible act that meant war with Rome. The metaphor: a point of no return. In evolutionary psychology, it represents a threshold after which a certain adaptation or behavior becomes locked in. Once crossed, there's no going back.
Necker Cube
An optical illusion of a wireframe cube that appears to flip orientation as you look at it. Haidt uses this to illustrate how we can see the same moral situation in different ways. The facts don't change, but our perception can suddenly shift. This shows that moral reasoning is often about which framework we're using to interpret the situation, not the situation itself.
Two types of moral incapacity
Psychopaths: Can reason about moral rules but don't feel emotional responses to harm or fairness violations. They understand the logic but lack the emotional foundation for morality.
Babies: Feel emotional responses to unfairness and harm but can't yet reason about moral principles. They have the emotional foundation but lack the reasoning capacity.
This shows that mature moral thinking requires both intuition (feeling) and reasoning working together. Neither alone is sufficient.
Social Darwinism and its perils
The misapplication of "survival of the fittest" to justify social inequality, imperialism, and eugenics. Social Darwinists argued that poverty and social hierarchy were natural results of evolutionary competition. This is a dangerous misreading of evolution (Darwin's theory explains biological adaptation, not moral rightness). The fact that something evolved doesn't make it good or desirable. This confusion led to horrific policies in the 20th century.