The DOI matches its Crossref record; 5 of the 5 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: The limits of Haidt: How his explanation of political animosity fails
Abstract
Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind seeks to explain why it is difficult for liberals and conservatives to get along. His aim is not just explanatory but also prescriptive. Once we understand that the differences between disputants spring from distinct moral views held by equally sincere people, then we will no longer have reason for deep political animus. Conservatives and Liberals have distinct (although somewhat overlapping) moral views and they understand human nature differently. He claims that these differences are best understood by consulting an array of psychological studies, key genetic findings, and the theoretical underpinnings of sociobiology. After summarizing his arguments, we isolate and discuss the three most important and contentious issues in his book. We argue that although the project's motivation is noble and some of his findings are insightful, his key explanations, inferences, and prescriptions are wanting. We end by suggesting a way he could defend a weaker version of his view.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: a critique of the adaptationist programme
Gould, S. J., & Lewontin, R. C. (1979) · Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B. Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rspb.1979.0086 · Cited by 7,770 · cited 3×
“However, Haidt never considers alternative explanations (like cultural transmission), nor does he consider the possibility of “production of nonadaptive structures by developmental correlation with selected features” (Gould & Lewontin, 1979).”
BackgroundMethodConvergent adaptation of human lactase persistence in Africa and Europe
Tishkoff, S. A., Reed, F. A., Ranciaro, A., Voight, B. F., Babbitt, C. C., Silverman, J. S., Powell, K., Mortensen, H. M., Hirbo, J. B., Osman, M., et al. (2007) · Nature Genetics · doi:10.1038/ng1946 · Cited by 1,615
Niche construction, biological evolution, and cultural change
Laland, K. N., Odling-Smee, J., & Feldman, M. W. (2000) · Behavioral and Brain Sciences · doi:10.1017/s0140525x00002417 · Cited by 1,103
The self and social cognition: the role of cortical midline structures and mirror neurons
Uddin, L. Q., Iacoboni, M., Lange, C., & Keenan, J. P. (2007) · Trends in Cognitive Sciences · doi:10.1016/j.tics.2007.01.001 · Cited by 704
Modulating social behavior with oxytocin: How does it work? What does it mean?
Churchland, P. S., & Winkielman, P. (2012) · Hormones and Behavior · doi:10.1016/j.yhbeh.2011.12.003 · Cited by 464
Research works printed but not linked: 17
- 10.1098/rstb.2010.0268 · DOI · Paper page
- Haidt J., 2012, New York Times
- 10.1017/S0022381610001015 · DOI
- 10.1038/nrn2024 · DOI · Paper page
- Kant I., 1999, (3rd ed., J.W. Ellington, Trans.)
- 10.1038/nrg2734 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1002/bs.3830240103 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee575 · doi:10.1002/9781444367072.wbiee575
- 10.1515/9781400856138 · doi:10.1515/9781400856138
- Odling-Smee, J. (1988). Niche-Constructing phenotypes. In H. C.Plotkin (Ed.), The role of behavior in evolution (pp. 73–132). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- Price M. E., 2012, Evolutionary Psychology, 10, 45, 10.1177/147470491201000106 · DOI
- 10.1016/j.tics.2003.11.002 · DOI · Paper page
- Stocker, M. (1989). Plural and conflicting values. Oxford: Clarendon.
- 10.1017/CBO9780511613500 · DOI · Paper page
- 10.1017/S0140525X00432413 · doi:10.1017/s0140525x00432413
- 10.1017/S0140525X00036104 · DOI · Paper page
- Wilson, E. O. (1975). Sociobiology: The new synthesis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
Cited by
Pennycook, G., & Rand, D. G. (2019) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2018.06.011 · Cited by 2,022
The social dilemma of autonomous vehicles
Bonnefon, J.-F., Shariff, A., & Rahwan, I. (2016) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.aaf2654 · Cited by 1,527
Identifying effective climate change education strategies: a systematic review of the research
Monroe, M. C., Plate, R. R., Oxarart, A., Bowers, A., & Chaves, W. A. (2019) · Environmental Education Research · doi:10.1080/13504622.2017.1360842 · Cited by 1,368
The varieties of self-transcendent experience
Yaden, D. B., Haidt, J., Hood, R. W., Vago, D. R., & Newberg, A. B. (2017) · Review of General Psychology · doi:10.1037/gpr0000102 · Cited by 701
Ideological Asymmetries and the Essence of Political Psychology
Jost, J. T. (2017) · Political Psychology · doi:10.1111/pops.12407 · Cited by 696
Metadata
- Authors
- LaFollette, H., & Woodruff, M. L.
- Venue
- Philosophical Psychology
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2013-09-13
- Volume
- 28
- Issue
- 3
- Pages
- 452-465
- ISSN
- 0951-5089 (ISSN-L)
- 1465-394X
- OpenAlex
- W1539094103
- Cited by
- 1,387
- References
- 5
- FWCI
- 21.04
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: The limits of Haidt: How his explanation of political animosity fails. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1080/09515089.2013.838752
- The paper
- LaFollette, H., & Woodruff, M. L. (2015). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion: The limits of Haidt: How his explanation of political animosity fails. Philosophical Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2013.838752
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
