The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

our hands.

[The pair then moved over to the sinks]

INTERVIEWER:

 Dad, what would happen if I pooped in the sink?

SUBJECT:

 The people who work here would get mad at you.

INTERVIEWER:

 What would happen if I pooped in the sink at home?

SUBJECT:

 I’d get mad at you.

INTERVIEWER:

 What would happen if you pooped in the sink at home?

SUBJECT:

 Mom would get mad at me.

INTERVIEWER:

 Well,  what  would  happen  if  we  all  pooped  in  the  sink  at

home?

SUBJECT:

 [pause] I guess we’d all get in trouble.

INTERVIEWER:

 [laughing] Yeah, we’d all get in trouble!

SUBJECT:

 Come on, let’s dry our hands. We have to go.

Note the skill and persistence of the interviewer, who probes

for a deeper answer by changing the transgression to remove

the  punisher.  Yet  even  when  everyone  cooperates  in  the  rule

violation  so  that  nobody  can  play  the  role  of  punisher,  the

subject  still  clings  to  a  notion  of  cosmic  justice  in  which,

somehow, the whole family would “get in trouble.”

Of course, the father is not really trying to demonstrate his

best  moral  reasoning.  Moral  reasoning  is  usually  done  to

in uence other people (see 

chapter 4

), and what the father is

trying to do is get his curious son to feel the right emotions—

disgust and fear—to motivate appropriate bathroom behavior.