In his new book, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Religion and Politics, Jonathan Haidt, a social psychology professor at University of Virginia, argues that our intuitions come before our reasoning and our reasoning is usually a post-hoc justification for those intuitions. As a result, humans do a horrible job at understanding those with whom they disagree.

Haidt’s research uncovered six moral foundations that are innate to human nature: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity and liberty.

• Care is sensitivity to the suffering and need of others.
• Fairness is sensitivity to reciprocal altruism and makes us want to punish cheaters.
• Loyalty is the need to form and maintain coalitions. It rewards team players and seeks to ostracize those who betray the group.
• Authority is sensitivity to signs of rank or status, and to when someone is not behaving according to their status.
• Sanctity initially evolved as a revulsion toward objects that would make us sick, via pathogens or parasites, but also came to include an appreciation for the sacred — some objects would be designated a special position in society. Sacred objects help bind moral communities together.
• Liberty is sensitivity to signs of attempted domination or oppression by others.

Liberals, Haidt found, mostly pay attention to just three moral foundations — care, fairness and liberty. Conservatives, though, especially social conservatives, pay attention to all six. As a result, Haidt argues, liberals have to work harder to understand conservatives than vice versa. Haidt also believes that conservatives have an advantage in elections because they are better equipped to speak to all six moral foundations.

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