Why is America so polarized? Why are our politicians so dysfunctional? Why do they sometimes even seem to downright hate each other?
In this episode of Inquiring Minds, moral psychologist and bestselling The Righteous Mind author Jonathan Haidt explains that our differences are, at root, the result of sharply contrasting moral systems and the emotions that underlie them. These emotions differ from left to right. And in politics, we feel first and think later.
As a result, even though political partisans today tend to think their adversaries are wrong and immoral, the truth is actually that they are too moral, albeit in a far more visceral than intellectual sense.
This episode also contains a discussion of Glenn Beck's recent flubbing of basic statistics, and of why a primate species—the marmoset—may in some ways be better at communicating than today's Democrats and Republicans.
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