Summary Of The Righteous Mind By Jonathan Haidt

PART IV – The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt Out of all the books we covered, this was probably the hardest to read. However, the insight it provided was worth the time investment, and this Part will explain how. The overreaching topic is how our morality is formed. Haidt proposes three avenues to explain where is comes from. The first theory is that morality is taught to us, by our parents and our education system. The second theory is that morality is embedded in us from the day we are born. The last theory is that morality is learnt by experiencing different situations and figuring out for ourselves how situations are moral or not. Although no theory is the right one, I think morality is a mix of those three, but more specifically a mix of the 1st and 3rd theories.
Haidt explains how accountability can drive people to think rather than acting right away. It makes sense after all, if you know you are going to be held accountable for your actions, you will inevitably be more reluctant to act spontaneously. You are more likely to evaluate the pros and cons of how your actions are going to impact those around you. For instance, in compensation packages, there this common knowledge that people should be rewarded or penalized according to what they can control, what they are accountable for. Let’s take the example of stock option plans. Are they really all that good? Sure, they align the interest of the management with the company’s, but management doesn’t control 100% of how the stock price will behave. A good part of how the stock price moves is related to how the market perceives it, not necessarily due to how the management takes