April 20, 2012

Haidt’s anti-hate

By Don Kirk in Human Identity Formation, Political Psychology

Just sent to Amazon a five-star review of Dr. Jonathan Haidt’s latest book, The Righteous Mind, a truly remarkable work by the eminent moral and evolutionary psychologist. A few weeks ago when this book first came out, I watched the Bloggingheads video of an interview with Haidt by ‘The Atlantic’ writer Robert Wright, author of The Moral Animal. My impression of the interview is that Wright’s moral animal lost. Wright’s personal moral biases (or his published research) were apparently so undone by Haidt’s recent research that Wright during the entire one hour interview looked as if he had been kicked in the stomach by a mule.

Disclosure: I’ve had some small amount of mutually complimentary personal correspondence with Jon Haidt.