Haidt's main scientific contributions come from the psychological field of moral foundations theory,[3] which attempts to explain the evolutionary origins of human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, gut feelings rather than logic and reason.[4] 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.[5] 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,[6]The Righteous Mind (2012) on moral politics,[7] 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.
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.[8] Haidt described his upbringing as "very assimilated", identifying as an atheist by age 15.[9] His father, an Ashkenazi Jew,[10] was a corporate lawyer. The family generally were New Deal liberals.[11]
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-time professor of the university's psychology department in August 2009.[14] He remained at Virginia until 2011, winning four awards for teaching,[a] including a statewide award conferred by Governor Mark Warner.[17] Haidt also earned a reputation for challenging the general assumptions in moral psychology.[15] 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.[18]
In 1999, Haidt became active in the new field of positive psychology, studying positive moral emotions.[19] 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.[20] In July 2010, he delivered a talk at the Edge Foundation on the new advances in moral psychology.[21]
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.[11] In 2013, he co-founded Ethical Systems, a non-profit collaboration dedicated to making academic research on ethics widely available to businesses.[22] In 2015, Haidt co-founded Heterodox Academy, a non-profit organization that works to increase viewpoint diversity, mutual understanding, and productive disagreement.[23][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]
Together with Paul Rozin and Clark McCauley, Haidt developed the Disgust Scale,[25] which has been widely used to measure individual differences in sensitivity to disgust.[25] 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.[26]
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.[27] Haidt called the emotion moral elevation,[28] as a tribute to Thomas Jefferson, who had described the emotion in detail in a letter discussing the benefits of reading great literature.[29] Feelings of moral elevation cause increases in milk produced during lactation in breastfeeding mothers,[30] suggesting the involvement of the hormone oxytocin.[31]
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.[32] 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.[33]
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.[34] 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:[35]
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.[35] 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.[36] He has also made the case for Ownership to be an additional foundation.[37]
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.[38] 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.[39] This metaphor is used extensively in both The Happiness Hypothesis and The Righteous Mind.
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.[40][41] Haidt's first essay in this area was titled "What Makes People Vote Republican?"[40][42] Since 2012, Haidt has referred to himself as a political centrist.[40][43][44][45]
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.[7] 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.[46]
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".[47]
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.[48][49]
Although he is an atheist,[50] Haidt has argued that religion contains psychological wisdom that can promote human flourishing, and that the New Atheists have themselves succumbed to moralistic dogma.[50] 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.[50]
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."[52]
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.[53] 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.[54]
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: 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.[55] 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.[56]
^Haidt received three teaching awards from the University of Virginia: the Outstanding Professor Award in 1998, the All-University Teaching Award in 2003, and a second Outstanding Professor Award that same year.[14]
^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.
^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.
^Jefferson, Thomas. [1771] 1975. "Letter to Robert Skipwith", pp. 349–351 in The Portable Thomas Jefferson, M. D. Peterson ed. New York: Penguin.
^Silvers, J., and Jonathan Haidt. 2008. "Moral elevation causes lactation." Emotion 8:291–295.
Media related to Jonathan Haidt at Wikimedia Commons
Psychology
