Quotes from Jonathan Haidt

Human nature is a complex mix of preparations for extreme selfishness and extreme altruism. Which side of our nature we express depends on culture and context. When opponents of evolution object that human beings are not mere apes, they are correct. We are also part bee.

Self-interested employees are Glauconians, far more interested in looking good and getting promoted than in helping the company.43 In contrast, an organization that takes advantage of our hivish nature can activate pride, loyalty, and enthusiasm among its employees and then monitor them less closely.

transformational leadership)44 generates more social capital—the bonds of trust that help employees get more work done at a lower cost than employees at other firms. Hivish employees work harder, have more fun, and are less likely to quit or to sue the company.

The moral matrix of liberals, in America and elsewhere, rests more heavily on the Care foundation than do the matrices of conservatives

Sages in many societies have converged on the insight that feelings are always compelling, but not always reliable. Often they distort reality, deprive us of insight, and needlessly damage our relationships.

It is vain to say that human beings ought to be satisfied with tranquility: they must have action; and they will make it if they cannot find it." (CHARLOTTE BRONTË, 1847)46

Asking children to grow virtues hydroponically, looking only within themselves for guidance, is like asking each one to invent a personal language?a pointless and isolating task if there is no community with whom to speak.

Societies that forgo the exoskeleton of religion should reflect carefully on what will happen to them over several generations. We don't really know, because the first atheistic societies have only emerged in Europe in the last few decades. They are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources (of which they have a lot) into offspring (of which they have few).

It's a great example of how "innate" refers to the first draft of the mind. The final edition can look quite different, so it's a mistake to look at today's hunter-gatherers and say, "See, that's what human nature really looks like!

In later studies, Mischel discovered that the successful children were those who looked away from the temptation or were able to think about other enjoyable activities.

leadership on virtue can never come from the major political actors; it will have to come from a movement of people, such as the people of a town who come together and agree to create moral coherence across the many areas of children's lives.

Durkheim's idea that we are Homo duplex; we live most of our lives in the ordinary (profane) world, but we achieve our greatest joys in those brief moments of transit to the sacred world, in which we become "simply a part of a whole.

But from the perspective of Moral Foundations Theory, rural and working-class voters were in fact voting for their moral interests. They don't want to eat at The True Taste restaurant, and they don't want their nation to devote itself primarily to the care of victims and the pursuit of social justice.

But instead of talking about religions as parasitic memes evolving for their own benefit, Atran and Henrich suggest that religions are sets of cultural innovations that spread to the extent that they make groups more cohesive and cooperative.

Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think."40

You've got to look at the ways that religious beliefs work with religious practices to create a religious community.11 Believing, doing, and belonging are three complementary yet distinct aspects of religiosity

By the standards of our great-grandparents, nearly all of us are coddled. Each generation tends to see the one after it as weak, whiny, and lacking in resilience. Those older generations may have a point, even though these generational changes reflect real and positive progress.

leadership can only be understood as the complement of followership.45 Focusing on leadership alone is like trying to understand clapping by studying only the left hand. They point out that leadership is not even the more interesting hand; it's no puzzle to understand why people want to lead. The real puzzle is why people are willing to follow.

Angry gods make shame more effective as a means of social control.

Love is a kind of insanity, and many people have, while crazed with passion, ruined their lives and those of others.

Often a moment comes when a person consumed by years of resentment, pain, and anger realizes that her father (for example) didn't directly hurt her when he abandoned the family; all he did was move out of the house. His action was morally wrong, but the pain came from her reactions to the event, and if she can change those reactions, she can leave behind twenty years of pain and perhaps even get to know her father.

This is what we mean when we talk about safetyism. Safety is good, of course, and keeping others safe from harm is virtuous

Morality binds and blinds. This is not just something that happens to people on the other side. We all get sucked into tribal moral communities. We circle around sacred values and then share post hoc arguments about why we are so right and they are so wrong. We think the other side is blind to truth, reason, science, and common sense, but in fact everyone goes blind when talking about their sacred objects.

Gods and religions, in sum, are group-level adaptations for producing cohesiveness and trust. Like maypoles and beehives, they are created by the members of the group, and they then organize the activity of the group. Group-level adaptations, as Williams noted, imply a selection process operating at the group level.