Moral Tribes ― Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

A pathbreaking neuroscientist reveals how our social instincts turn Me into Us, but turn Us against Them?and what we can do about it

Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us), and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern life has thrust the world’s tribes into a shared space, creating conflicts of interest and clashes of values, along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground.

A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights the way forward. Here the human brain is revealed to be like a dual-mode camera, with point-and-shoot automatic settings (?portrait,” ?landscape”) as well as a manual mode. Our point-and-shoot settings are our emotions?efficient, automated programs honed by evolution, culture, and personal experience. The human brain’s manual mode is its capacity for deliberate reasoning, which makes our thinking flexible. Our point-and-shoot emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fight, sometimes with bombs, sometimes with words, and often with life-and-death stakes. Drawing inspiration from moral philosophy and cuttingedge science, Moral Tribes shows us when to trust our instincts, when to reason, and how the right kind of reasoning can move us forward.

Moral Tribes is the work of Professor Joshua Greene, the director of Harvard University’s Moral Cognition Lab, a pioneering scientist, a philosopher, and an acclaimed teacher. The great challenge of Moral Tribes is this: How can we get along with Them when what they want feels so wrong? Ultimately, Greene offers a surprisingly simple set of maxims for navigating the modern moral terrain, a practical road map for solving problems and living better lives.

A major achievement from a rising star in a new scientific field, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them will refashion your deepest beliefs about how moral thinking works and how it can work better.

JOSHUA GREENE is the John and Ruth Hazel Associate Professor of the Social Sciences and the director of the Moral Cognition Lab in Harvard University’s Department of Psychology. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the MacArthur Foundation. Greene has appeared on Charlie Rose and Scientific American Frontiers, and his work has been featured in The New York Times, Discover magazine, WNYC’s Radiolab, and NPR’s Morning Edition.