Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan David Haidt (; born October 19, 1963) is an American social psychologist and author. He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at the New York University Stern School of Business. Haidt's main areas of study are the psychology of morality and moral emotions.

Haidt's main scientific contributions come from the psychological field of moral foundations theory, which attempts to explain the evolutionary origins of human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, gut feelings rather than logic and reason. The theory was later extended to explain the different moral reasoning and how they relate to political ideology, with different political orientations prioritizing different sets of morals. The research served as a foundation for future books on various topics.

Haidt has written multiple books for general audiences, including '' The Happiness Hypothesis'' (2006) examining the relationship between ancient philosophies and modern science, '' The Righteous Mind'' (2012) on moral politics, and '' The Coddling of the American Mind'' (2018) on rising political polarization, mental health, and college culture. In 2024, he published '' The Anxious Generation'', arguing that the rise of smartphones and overprotective parenting has led to a "rewiring" of childhood and increased mental illness.

Biography

Early life and education

Haidt was born to a secular Jewish family and was raised in Scarsdale, New York. His grandparents were Russian and Polish natives who immigrated as teenagers to the United States, where they became garment workers. Haidt described his upbringing as "very assimilated", identifying as an atheist by age 15. His father, an Ashkenazi Jew, was a corporate lawyer. The family generally were New Deal liberals.

At age 17, Haidt recalled that he experienced an existential crisis upon reading '' Waiting for Godot'' and existential literature. After attending Scarsdale High School, he was educated at Yale University, graduating ''magna cum laude'' in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, then briefly held a job as a computer programmer before pursuing graduate studies in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Master of Arts and PhD in the field in 1988 and 1992, respectively, on a graduate fellowship awarded by the National Science Foundation. His dissertation was titled "Moral judgment, affect, and culture, or, is it wrong to eat your dog?" and was supervised by psychologists Jonathan Baron and Alan Fiske. Inspired by anthropologist Paul Rozin, Haidt wrote his thesis on the morality of harmless but disgusting acts.

From July 1992 to June 1994, Haidt was an NIMH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago, where he studied cultural psychology under the supervision of cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder. Haidt called Shweder "the teacher that most affected me". At Shweder's suggestion, Haidt researched moral complexity in Bhubaneswar, India, where he conducted field studies and "encountered a society in some ways patriarchal, sexist and illiberal". From July 1994 to August 1995, he was a postdoctoral associate with the MacArthur Foundation under psychologist Judith Rodin.

Academic career

In August 1995, Haidt became an assistant professor at the University of Virginia (UVA), where he was eventually named an associate professor in August 2001, then a full professor of the university's psychology department in August 2009. He remained at Virginia until 2011, winning four awards for teaching, including a statewide award conferred by Governor Mark Warner. Haidt also earned a reputation for challenging the general assumptions in moral psychology. His research, centered on the emotional origins of morality with particular focus on the emotions of disgust and elevation, led to the publication of '' The Happiness Hypothesis'' in 2006.

In 1999, Haidt became active in the new field of positive psychology, studying positive moral emotions. This work led to the publication of an edited volume, ''Flourishing'', in 2003. In 2004, Haidt began to apply moral psychology to the study of politics, doing research on the psychological foundations of ideology. This work led to the publication in 2012 of '' The Righteous Mind''. Haidt spent the 2007–2008 academic year at Princeton University as the Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching. In July 2010, he delivered a talk at the Edge Foundation on the new advances in moral psychology.

In 2011, Haidt moved to New York University's Stern School of Business as the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership, relocating to New York City with his wife, Jayne, and two children. In 2013, he co-founded Ethical Systems, a non-profit collaboration dedicated to making academic research on ethics widely available to businesses. In 2015, Haidt co-founded Heterodox Academy, a non-profit organization that works to increase viewpoint diversity, mutual understanding, and productive disagreement. In 2018, Haidt and Richard Reeves co-edited an illustrated edition of John Stuart Mill's ''On Liberty'', titled ''All Minus One: John Stuart Mill's Ideas on Free Speech Illustrated'' (illustrated by Dave Cicirelli). Haidt's current research applies moral psychology to business ethics.

Research contributions

Haidt's research on morality has led to publications and theoretical advances in four key areas.

Moral disgust

Together with Paul Rozin and Clark McCauley, Haidt developed the Disgust Scale, which has been widely used to measure individual differences in sensitivity to disgust. Haidt, McCauley and Rozin have written on the psychology of disgust as an emotion that began as a guardian of the mouth (against pathogens), but then expanded during biological and cultural evolution to become a guardian of the body more generally, and of the social and moral order.

Moral elevation

With Sara Algoe, Haidt argued that exposure to stories about moral beauty (the opposite of moral disgust) cause a common set of responses, including warm, loving feelings, calmness, and a desire to become a better person. Haidt called the emotion ''moral elevation'', as a tribute to Thomas Jefferson, who had described the emotion in detail in a letter discussing the benefits of reading great literature. Feelings of moral elevation cause increases in milk produced during lactation in breastfeeding mothers, suggesting the involvement of the hormone oxytocin.

Social intuitionism

Haidt's principal line of research has been on the nature and mechanisms of moral judgment. In the 1990s, he developed the social intuitionist model, which posits that moral judgment is mostly based on automatic processes—moral intuitions—rather than on conscious reasoning. People engage in reasoning largely to find evidence to support their initial intuitions. Haidt's main paper on the social intuitionist model, "The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail", has been cited over 7,800 times.

Moral foundations theory

In 2004, Haidt began to extend the social intuitionist model to identify what he considered to be the most important categories of moral intuition. The resulting moral foundations theory, co-developed with Craig Joseph and Jesse Graham, and based in part on the writings of Richard Shweder, was intended to explain cross-cultural differences in morality. The theory posited that there are at least five innate moral foundations, upon which cultures develop their various moralities, just as there are five innate taste receptors on the tongue, which cultures have used to create many different cuisines. The five values are:

# Care/harm
# Fairness/cheating
# Loyalty/betrayal
# Authority/subversion
# Sanctity/degradation

Haidt and his collaborators asserted that the theory also works well to explain political differences. According to Haidt, liberals tend to endorse primarily the care and fairness foundations, whereas conservatives tend to endorse all foundations more equally. Later, in '' The Righteous Mind'', a sixth foundation, ''Liberty/oppression'', was presented. More recently, Haidt and colleagues split the fairness foundation into equality (which liberals tend to endorse strongly) and proportionality (which conservatives tend to endorse strongly). In this work, they also developed the new revised Moral Foundations Questionnaire-2 which has 36 items, measuring Care, Equality, Proportionality, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. He has also made the case for Ownership to be an additional foundation.

"The elephant and the rider"

One widely cited metaphor throughout Haidt's books is that of the elephant and the rider. His observations of social intuitionism, the notion that intuitions come first and rationalization second, led to the metaphor described in his work. The rider represents consciously controlled processes, and the elephant represents automatic processes. The metaphor corresponds to Systems 1 and 2 described in Daniel Kahneman's ''Thinking, Fast and Slow''. This metaphor is used extensively in both ''The Happiness Hypothesis'' and ''The Righteous Mind''.

Political views

Haidt describes how he began to study political psychology in order to help the Democratic Party win more elections, and argues that each of the major political groups—conservatives, progressives, and libertarians—have valuable insights and that truth and good policy emerge from the contest of ideas. Haidt's first essay in this area was titled "What Makes People Vote Republican?" Since 2012, Haidt has referred to himself as a political centrist.

Haidt has participated in efforts to reduce political polarization in the United States. In 2007, he founded the website ''CivilPolitics.org'', a clearinghouse for research on political civility. He is on the advisory boards of RepresentUs, a non-partisan anti-corruption organization; and Braver Angels, a bipartisan group working to reduce political polarization.

In a 2011 Ted talk, Haidt argued that liberals and conservatives differ in their value systems and that disciplines like psychology have biases against conservative viewpoints.

In 2019, Haidt argued that there is a "very good chance American democracy will fail, that in the next 30 years we will have a catastrophic failure of our democracy".

Reception

Haidt was named one of the "top global thinkers" by ''Foreign Policy'' magazine in 2012, and one of the "top world thinkers" by '' Prospect'' magazine in 2013.

Although describing himself in 2007 as an atheist, Haidt argued at that time that religion contains psychological wisdom that can promote human flourishing, and that the New Atheists have themselves succumbed to moralistic dogma. These contentions elicited a variety of responses in a 2007 online debate sponsored by the website '' Edge''; PZ Myers praised the first part of Haidt's essay while disagreeing with his criticism of the New Atheists; Sam Harris criticized Haidt for his perceived obfuscation of harms caused by religion; Michael Shermer praised Haidt; and biologist David Sloan Wilson joined Haidt in criticizing the New Atheists for dismissing the notion that religion is an evolutionary adaptation.

David Mikics of ''Tablet'' magazine profiled Haidt as "the high priest of heterodoxy" and praised his work to increase intellectual diversity at universities through Heterodox Academy.

In 2020, Peter Wehner wrote in ''The Atlantic'', "Over the past decade, no one has added more to my understanding of how we think about, discuss, and debate politics and religion than Jonathan Haidt." He added that, "In his own field, in his own way, Jonathan Haidt is trying to heal our divisions and temper some of the hate, to increase our wisdom and understanding, and to urge us to show a bit more compassion toward one another."

Selected publications

Books

*
*
*
*

''The Happiness Hypothesis''

''The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom'' (2006) draws on ancient philosophical ideas in light of contemporary scientific research to extract potential lessons and how they may apply to everyday life. The book poses "ten Great Ideas" on happiness espoused by philosophers and thinkers of the past – Plato, Marcus Aurelius, Buddha, Jesus, and others – and then considers what modern scientific research has to say regarding these ideas.

''The Righteous Mind''

''The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion'' (2012) draws on Haidt's previous research on moral foundations theory. It argues that moral judgments arise not from logical reason, but from gut feelings, asserting that liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have different intuitions about right and wrong because they prioritize different values.

''The Coddling of the American Mind''

''The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure'' (2018), co-written with Greg Lukianoff, expands on an essay the authors wrote for ''The Atlantic'' in 2015. The book explores the rising political polarization and changing culture on college campuses and its effects on mental health. It also explores changes in childhood, including the rise of "fearful parenting", the decline of unsupervised play, and the effects of social media in the last decade.

''The Anxious Generation''

''The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness'' (2024) examines the impact of modern technology and parenting trends on children's mental health. Haidt posits that two major factors have contributed to a significant shift in childhood experiences and a subsequent increase in mental health issues among young people: The widespread adoption of smartphones and the rise of overprotective parenting styles. He suggests that these factors have fundamentally altered how children grow up, leading to what he terms a "rewiring" of childhood. He argues that this transformation began late in the first decade of the 2000s and has had detrimental effects on children's well-being.

A review of ''The Anxious Generation'' by journalists Michael Hobbes and Peter Shamshiri on the If Books Could Kill podcast purported that many of its cited studies are methodologically weak, and do not support the claims Haidt makes in the book.

Articles

*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*

Footnotes

References

Additional sources

*

External links

*
*
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Haidt, Jonathan
21st-century American Jews
American atheists
American moral psychologists
American people of Polish-Jewish descent
American people of Russian-Jewish descent
American political psychologists
American social psychologists
Centrism in the United States
Date of birth missing (living people)
Evolutionary psychologists
Jewish American psychologists
21st-century American psychologists
Jewish atheists
Living people
New York University Stern School of Business faculty
Place of birth missing (living people)
Positive psychologists
Scarsdale High School alumni
Scientists from New York City
University of Pennsylvania alumni
University of Virginia faculty
Yale University alumni