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Jonathan Haidt
Haidt in 2012
Born (1963-10-19) October 19, 1963 (age 61)
New York City, U.S.
EducationYale University (BA)
University of Pennsylvania
(MA, PhD)
Known for
Notable workThe Happiness Hypothesis (2006)
The Righteous Mind (2012)
The Coddling of the American Mind (2018)
The Anxious Generation (2024)
AwardsTempleton Prize in Positive Psychology (2001)
American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2019)
Scientific career
FieldsSocial psychology
Moral psychology
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago
University of Virginia
New York University
ThesisMoral Judgment, Affect, and Culture, or, Is it Wrong to Eat Your Dog? (1992)
Doctoral advisorJonathan Baron
Alan Fiske
Websitejonathanhaidt.com

Jonathan David Haidt (/haɪt/; 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.[1] His 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,[2] which attempts to explain the evolutionary origins of human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, gut feelings rather than logic and reason.[3] 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.[4] 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,[5] The Righteous Mind (2012) on moral politics,[6] 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 have led to a "rewiring" of childhood and a rise in mental illness.

Biography

Early life and education

Haidt was born in New York City to a secular Jewish family and 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.[7] Haidt described his upbringing as "very assimilated", identifying as an atheist by age 15.[8] His father, an Ashkenazi Jew,[9] was a corporate lawyer. The family generally were New Deal liberals.[10]

At age 17, during his senior year of high school, Haidt recalled that he experienced an existential crisis "after reading Waiting for Godot and other existential literature".[9] He was educated at Yale University, graduating magna cum laude in 1985 with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy, then pursued graduate studies in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a Master of Arts and Ph.D. in psychology 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.[11]

After obtaining his Ph.D., Haidt studied cultural psychology at the University of Chicago as a postdoctoral fellow, during which period he trained at the National Institute of Mental Health under the supervision of cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder from July 1992 to June 1994.[11] At Shweder's suggestion, Haidt further researched moral complexity in Bhubaneswar, India,[12] where he conducted field studies and "encountered a society in some ways patriarchal, sexist and illiberal".[10] From July 1994 to August 1995, he was a postdoctoral associate with the MacArthur Foundation under psychologist Judith Rodin.[11]

Career

In 1995, Haidt was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Virginia (UVA), where he worked until 2011, winning four awards for teaching, including a statewide award conferred by the Governor of Virginia.[13] 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.[14]

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.[10][1] In 2013, he co-founded Ethical Systems, a non-profit collaboration dedicated to making academic research on ethics widely available to businesses.[15] In 2015, Haidt co-founded Heterodox Academy, a non-profit organization that works to increase viewpoint diversity, mutual understanding, and productive disagreement.[16][self-published source] 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.[1]

Research contributions

Haidt speaking at the Miller Center of Public Affairs in Charlottesville (March 19, 2012).
Haidt speaking at the Miller Center of Public Affairs in Charlottesville (March 19, 2012).

Haidt's research on morality has led to publications and theoretical advances in four key areas.[17]

Moral disgust

Main article: Disgust § Morality

Together with Paul Rozin and Clark McCauley, Haidt developed the Disgust Scale,[18] which has been widely used to measure individual differences in sensitivity to disgust.[18] 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.[19]

Moral elevation

Main article: Elevation (emotion)

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.[20] Haidt called the emotion moral elevation,[21] as a tribute to Thomas Jefferson, who had described the emotion in detail in a letter discussing the benefits of reading great literature.[22] Feelings of moral elevation cause increases in milk produced during lactation in breastfeeding mothers,[23] suggesting the involvement of the hormone oxytocin.

Social intuitionism

Main article: 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.[24] 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.[25]

Moral foundations theory

Main article: Moral foundations theory
A simple graphic depicting survey data from the United States intended to support 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.[26] 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:[27]

  1. Care/harm
  2. Fairness/cheating
  3. Loyalty/betrayal
  4. Authority/subversion
  5. 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.[27] 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.[28] He has also made the case for Ownership to be an additional foundation.[29]

"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.[30] 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.[31] This metaphor is used extensively in both The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind.

Non-academic works

Haidt has authored the following non-academic books for general audiences, related to various subjects in psychology and politics.

The Happiness Hypothesis

Main article: 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.[32] 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.[33]

The Righteous Mind

Main article: 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

Main article: 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.[34] 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.[35]

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.[36][37] Haidt's first essay in this area was titled "What Makes People Vote Republican?"[36][38] Since 2012, Haidt has referred to himself as a political centrist.[36][39][40][41]

Haidt is involved with several efforts to help bridge the political divide and reduce political polarization in the United States. In 2007, he founded the website CivilPolitics.org, a clearinghouse for research on political civility.[6] He serves on the advisory boards of RepresentUs, a non-partisan anti-corruption organization; the Acumen Fund, which invests in companies, leaders, and ideas that are changing the way the world tackles poverty; and braverangels.org, 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.[42]

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".[43]

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.[44][45]

Although he is an atheist,[46] Haidt has argued that religion contains psychological wisdom that can promote human flourishing, and that the New Atheists have themselves succumbed to moralistic dogma.[46] 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.[46]

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.[47]

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."[48]

Selected publications

Books

  • 2006. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Basic Books. ISBN 978-0-465-02802-3.
  • 2012. The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pantheon. ISBN 978-0-307-37790-6.
  • 2018. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure, co-written with Greg Lukianoff. New York City: Penguin Press. ISBN 978-0-73522489-6. OCLC 1007552624.[49]
  • 2024. The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness. Penguin. ISBN 978-0-593-65503-0.

Articles

References

  1. ^ a b c "Jonathan Haidt – Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership". New York University Stern School of Business.
  2. ^ McNerney, Samuel. "Jonathan Haidt and the Moral Matrix: Breaking Out of Our Righteous Minds". Scientific American. Retrieved July 25, 2019.
  3. ^ "The moral matrix that influences the way people vote". The Guardian. November 14, 2016. Retrieved July 25, 2019.
  4. ^ Winerman, Lea. "Civil discourse in an uncivil world". American Psychological Association. Retrieved July 25, 2019.
  5. ^ Ott, Jan (February 20, 2007). "Jonathan Haidt, The Happiness Hypothesis; Putting Ancient Wisdom to the Test of Modern Science". Journal of Happiness Studies. 8 (2): 297. doi:10.1007/s10902-007-9049-2.
  6. ^ a b Saletan, William (March 23, 2012). "The Righteous Mind, by Jonathan Haidt". The New York Times. Retrieved December 19, 2018.
  7. ^ Tippett, Krista (June 12, 2014). "Jonathan Haidt: The Psychology of Self-Righteousness". On Being. Archived from the original on June 17, 2015. Retrieved April 17, 2020.
  8. ^ Wehner, Peter (May 24, 2020). "Jonathan Haidt Is Trying to Heal America's Divisions". The Atlantic. Retrieved July 17, 2024.
  9. ^ a b Oldfield, Elizabeth (March 27, 2024). "Jonathan Haidt on Religion, Psychedelics and the Anxious Generation". Theos. Retrieved July 17, 2024.
  10. ^ a b c Jenkins Jr., Holman W. (June 29, 2012). "Jonathan Haidt: He Knows Why We Fight". The Wall Street Journal.
  11. ^ a b c Haidt, Jonathan (2014). "Jonathan Haidt: Curriculum Vitae". New York University. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
  12. ^ Wade, Nicholas (September 18, 2007). "Is 'Do Unto Others' Written Into Our Genes?". The New York Times. Retrieved July 21, 2019.
  13. ^ "Governor Warner Announces TIAA-CREF Virginia Outstanding Faculty Awards Recipients for 2004". State Council of Higher Education for Virginia. January 21, 2004. Archived from the original on May 1, 2007. Retrieved July 19, 2019.
  14. ^ "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People, Particularly Intellectuals, Are Divided by Politics – An America's Founding and Future Lecture". James Madison Program. Princeton University. May 8, 2012. Retrieved April 22, 2024.
  15. ^ Brockman, John. "Jonathan Haidt, Biography". Edge Foundation, Inc. Retrieved July 20, 2019.
  16. ^ "Our Story". Heterodox Academy. Retrieved July 4, 2021.
  17. ^ Caldow, Stephanie (January 28, 2019). "Jonathan Haidt: The Contributions of a Moral Psychologist". PositivePsychology. Retrieved July 26, 2019.
  18. ^ a b Haidt, Jonathan; McCauley, Clark; Rozin, Paul (1994). "Individual differences in densitivity to disgust: A scale sampling seven domains of disgust elicitors" (PDF). Personality and Individual Differences. 16 (5): 701–713. doi:10.1016/0191-8869(94)90212-7. Archived from the original (PDF) on May 28, 2016. Retrieved July 15, 2019.
  19. ^ Haidt, Jonathan; Rozin, Paul; McCauley, Clark; Imada, Sumio (1997). "Body, Psyche, and Culture: The Relationship Between Disgust and Morality". Psychology & Developing Societies. 9 (1): 107–131. doi:10.1177/097133369700900105. S2CID 144762306.
  20. ^ Algoe, Sara B. and Jonathan Haidt. 2009. "Witnessing excellence in action: The 'other-praising' emotions of elevation, gratitude, and admiration." Journal of Positive Psychology 4:105–127.
  21. ^ Haidt, Jonathan. 2003. "Elevation and the positive psychology of morality." pp. 275–289 in Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-lived, edited by C. L. M. Keyes and J. Haidt. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
  22. ^ Jefferson, Thomas. [1771] 1975. "Letter to Robert Skipwith", pp. 349–351 in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, M. D. Peterson ed. New York: Penguin.
  23. ^ Silvers, J., and Jonathan Haidt. 2008. "Moral elevation causes lactation." Emotion 8:291–295.
  24. ^ Liao, Matthew (2011). Bias and Reasoning: Haidt's Theory of Moral Judgment. London: Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 108–127. doi:10.1057/9780230305885_7. ISBN 978-0-230-30588-5. S2CID 146369020.
  25. ^ Haidt, Jonathan (2001). "The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment" (PDF). Psychological Review. 4 (108): 814–834. doi:10.1037/0033-295X.108.4.814. PMID 11699120. S2CID 2252549.
  26. ^ Haidt, Jonathan; Joseph, Craig (2004). "Intuitive ethics: How innately prepared intuitions generate culturally variable virtues". Daedalus. 133 (4): 55–66. doi:10.1162/0011526042365555. JSTOR 20027945. S2CID 1574243.
  27. ^ a b Graham, Jesse; Haidt, Jonathan; Nosek, Brian A. (2009). "Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 96 (5). American Psychological Association: 1029–1046. doi:10.1037/a0015141. ISSN 1939-1315. PMID 19379034. S2CID 2715121.
  28. ^ Atari, Mohammad; Haidt, Jonathan; Graham, Jesse; Koleva, Sena; Stevens, Sean T.; Dehghani, Morteza (November 2023). "Morality beyond the WEIRD: How the nomological network of morality varies across cultures". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 125 (5): 1157–1188. doi:10.1037/pspp0000470. ISSN 1939-1315.
  29. ^ Atari, Mohammad; Haidt, Jonathan (October 10, 2023). "Ownership is (likely to be) a moral foundation". The Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 46: e326. doi:10.1017/S0140525X2300119X. ISSN 1469-1825. PMID 37813408.
  30. ^ McNerney, Samuel. "Jonathan Haidt and the Moral Matrix: Breaking Out of Our Righteous Minds". Scientific American (blog)). Retrieved February 2, 2013.
  31. ^ Haidt, Jonathan (October 7, 2012). "Reasons Matter (When Intuitions Don't Object)". The New York Times. Retrieved February 2, 2013.
  32. ^ Flint, James (July 22, 2006). "Don't worry, be happy". The Guardian. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
  33. ^ Carter, Christine. "Book Review: The Happiness Hypothesis". Greater Good Science Center. University of California, Berkeley. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
  34. ^ Lukianoff, Greg; Haidt, Jonathan (September 2015). "The Coddling of the American Mind". The Atlantic. Retrieved October 18, 2022.
  35. ^ Singal, Jesse (September 26, 2018). "How 'Coddled' Are American College Students, Anyway?". New York Magazine. Retrieved July 18, 2019.
  36. ^ a b c "Interview with Jonathan Haidt". Interviews with Max Raskin. Retrieved June 11, 2024.
  37. ^ Haidt, Jonathan (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pantheon Books. pp. 343–361. ISBN 978-0307455772.
  38. ^ "What Makes People Vote Republican? | Edge.org". www.edge.org. September 8, 2008. Retrieved June 11, 2024.
  39. ^ Jonathan Haidt [@JonHaidt] (January 23, 2018). "huh? I have never been right of center. I have never voted for a republican, nor given a dollar to a conservative candidate or cause. I am a centrist, a JS Mill liberal, who is now politically homeless" (Tweet). Retrieved July 27, 2020 – via Twitter.
  40. ^ Goldman, Andrew, interviewer. July 27, 2012. "A Liberal Learns to Compete". The New York Times. Retrieved July 27, 2020.
  41. ^ Weiss, Bari (April 1, 2017). "Jonathan Haidt on The Cultural Roots of Campus Rage". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved July 7, 2017.
  42. ^ Henriques, Gregg (January 1, 2012). "Jonathan Haidt's Moral-Political Psychology". Psychology Today. Retrieved March 27, 2024.
  43. ^ Kelly, Paul (July 22, 2019). "America's Uncivil War on Democracy". The Australian. Retrieved March 27, 2024..
  44. ^ "The FP Top 100 Global Thinkers". Foreign Policy. November 26, 2012.
  45. ^ "World Thinkers 2013". Prospect. April 24, 2013.
  46. ^ a b c Haidt, Jonathan (September 21, 2007). "Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion". Edge Foundation, Inc. Retrieved April 29, 2023.
  47. ^ Mikics, David (July 21, 2019). "The High Priest of Heterodoxy". The Tablet. Retrieved October 30, 2019.
  48. ^ Wehner, Peter (May 24, 2020). "Jonathan Haidt Is Trying to Heal America's Divisions". The Atlantic. Retrieved June 3, 2020.
  49. ^ Aaronovitch, David (August 18, 2018). "Review: The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt – how we raised Generation Snowflake". The Times. Retrieved August 24, 2018.
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