Jonathan Haidt
About
Social psychologist known for the view that moral judgment is driven by intuition then rationalized
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Claims by Jonathan Haidt (20 of 149)
Polarization is the great challenge of the next decade
Rising national polarization will get worse, not better, so the great challenge of the next ten years is for all institutions — churches, synagogues, corporations, high schools, colleges — to adapt to life in a more polarized, hate-filled society by becoming more civil and recognizing that everyone is morally motivated.
Teen mental health crisis since 2011-2012
There has been a skyrocketing of depression, anxiety, and suicide among teenagers, especially teenage girls, with the increase beginning only around 2011-2012 and becoming clear only two or three years ago, which the book ties to the same generational shift.
Campus problem began with students arriving in 2013
The intolerance phenomenon is not about millennials but about iGen/Gen Z students who began arriving on campus around 2013, because none of these behaviors (safe spaces, trigger warnings, demands to remove curriculum) appear before 2013 and they all emerge between 2013 and 2015.
Problem is dynamics not the average student
The campus intolerance problem is not due to a change in the average student but a change in group dynamics, where a subset of very angry students who hold certain bad ideas is now allowed to ride roughshod over everyone else because people are afraid to stand up to them.
Small minority can change group behavior
A small minority — even one or two percent of fellow students who would publicly shame and mob you — is enough to change everyone's behavior, because the threat of being called out for a single word affects how people act even when most people would never do that to you.
Follow the prestige to understand call-out culture
To understand call-out culture, follow the prestige rather than the money: since 2013-2014 a new economy of prestige has grown in which people gain status by calling out others as racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted, which creates a negative externality borne by everyone being accused — like being paid by the bullet regardless of where it hits.
Bigotry should be defined by hostile intent
Bigotry should be centrally defined by intent and an element of hostility, contempt, or negative evaluation; microaggression could be a useful term if limited to small acts conveying hostility, but acts that merely cause discomfort without hostility (like repeatedly asking where someone is from) should be called a faux pas, not aggression.
Morality is an adaptation for cooperation
Normal human morality is an adaptation shaped by natural selection to facilitate cooperation — it is about having traits and character that make you a good partner for cooperation — which is why intent matters: deliberate harm signals bad character while accidental harm does not, and writing off everyone who accidentally hurts you would destroy all relationships.
No diversity training reliably improves racial climate
As far as the research literature shows, there are no diversity training methods demonstrated to reliably improve racial interactions and climate; Starbucks had the largest possible opportunity to run an experiment testing what works but instead did a showy uniform national training, so nothing was learned.
Universities run the truth game, not the war game
Universities are specialized institutions built for the 'truth game' (hypothesis, argument, evidence, counter-evidence, going back to Socrates), but they cannot handle the 'war game' of our-side-versus-your-side aiming to inflict maximum damage; free exploration dies the instant the war game comes to campus, which is what burst out widely around 2015 driven by rising cross-party hostility.
Stereotypes track real correlations and can't be unseen
Because there really are correlations in the world (such as higher violence rates among young black men in some inner cities), there is no way to stop people from noticing them; a decent educated person is one who knows when to suppress and not act on such stereotypes, and shame at a misunderstanding can itself be a measure of someone not being racist in the primary sense of wanting a fair world.
Resume studies show shared, not white-only, stereotypes
Resume audit studies that change only the applicant's name do find discrimination, but crucially the race or sex of the person doing the judging tends not to matter much — it's not that white men are bigots against everyone else, but that evaluators across demographic groups share similar stereotyped expectations based on race or gender.
Avoiding triggers worsens rather than treats trauma
Trigger warnings and trigger avoidance run opposite to effective psychology: avoiding triggers is a symptom of PTSD, not a treatment for it, because the established way to overcome a phobia or PTSD is graduated systematic desensitization — exposure to the very reminders so that, by Pavlovian conditioning, the fear drops; trauma is common but actual PTSD is rare.
First untruth: fragility / safetyism
The first great untruth is the untruth of fragility — 'what doesn't kill you makes you weaker' — which treats kids as fragile rather than anti-fragile (not growing from adversity but scarred by it); the resulting culture of safetyism, combined with kids born after 1995 being raised with little unsupervised play and constant danger messaging, teaches them to fear negative experiences and makes them more fragile.
Paradox of progress drives coddling
There is a paradox of progress: as civilization makes life dramatically safer and child mortality plummets, the goalposts shift, families shrink to one or two children, and those children become prestige projects, so parents crack down on unsupervised play and over-invest in safety — making the coddling impulse a downstream effect of genuine progress.
Concept creep has expanded bullying and trauma
Concept creep has expanded 'bullying' to include mere unpleasant confrontation, name-calling, teasing, or exclusion, when real bullying requires a power imbalance and repetition over days such that a child fears going to school; treating exclusion or teasing as bullying requiring adult intervention teaches kids that being left out is a problem adults must fix, which is poor preparation for life.
Intersectionality is valid but can be weaponized
The core of intersectionality is valid — identities interact in statistical 'interaction effects' such that a black woman is treated in specific ways not reducible to being black plus being a woman — and Crenshaw presents it without demonizing straight white males, but on campus students learn to see everything as dimensions of oppression (white oppresses black, male oppresses female, straight oppresses others), which turns the framework into a tool for tribal judgment.
Common-humanity vs common-enemy identity politics
Identity politics is necessary in any organization, but there are two kinds: common-humanity identity politics (Martin Luther King and Pauli Murray drawing ever-larger circles of inclusion using the moral resources of Christianity and patriotism), which wins because it is emotionally powerful, versus common-enemy identity politics (uniting marginalized groups around shared hatred of the straight white male), which can build a majority coalition but leads only to eternal conflict.
Third untruth: life as good vs evil people
The third and most pernicious great untruth is that life is a battle between good people and evil people; this taps the basic social-psychological ease (Tajfel minimal-group experiments) of forming in-groups that dislike out-groups, and the postmodern/power lens that sorts everyone into oppressor or oppressed turns up tribalism in young people who already evolved for tribal warfare.
Audience size changes communication and perspective-taking
Communication fundamentally changes with audience: private talk allows perspective-taking, an audience changes what's said, and a giant invisible audience you can never read leaves you hearing only from the fringes who say the most horrible things, so two people stop talking to each other and instead each performs for their respective audiences — rewiring society.
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