Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan David Haidtis a social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. His academic specialization is the psychology of morality and the moral emotions. Haidt is the author of two books: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdomand The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, which became a New York Times bestseller. He was named one of the "top global thinkers" by Foreign Policy magazine, and...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPsychologist
Date of Birth19 October 1963
CountryUnited States of America
The big breakthrough for me was, once I stopped disliking conservatives and could actually see what they were right about, they showed me a lot of things that liberals were wrong about. But at the same time, I think there are some things that liberals are right about that conservatives have trouble seeing.
We humans are really good at forming groups to compete, and then dissolving the groups and reforming them along different lines to compete in a different way.
When I think about life on Earth, there should not be a species like us. And if there was, we should be out in the jungle killing each other in small groups. That's what you should expect.
My early research - I'm a social psychologist, and my early research was on how people make moral judgments. When I entered the field in 1987, everybody was looking at moral reasoning - how do kids reason about a moral dilemma? Should a guy steal a drug to save his wife's life?
The most important thing to realize is we're not blank slates at birth. We don't start off with nothing in our heads, and then get imprinted entirely by our environment. There's something in our heads on the day we're born, and then we grow up and make choices.
Empathy is an antidote to righteousness, although it's very difficult to empathize across a moral divide
Diversity is not a virtue. Diversity is a good only to the extent that it advances other virtues, justice or inclusiveness of others who have previously been excluded.
I'll suggest that the happiness hypothesis offered by Buddha and the Stoics should be amended: Happiness comes from within, and happiness comes from without. We need the guidance of both ancient wisdom and modern science to get the balance right.
Understanding the simple fact that morality differs around the world, and even within societies, is the first step toward understanding your righteous mind.
Groups create supernatural beings not to explain the universe but to order their societies.
science is a smorgasbord, and google will guide you to the study that's right for you.
While it is useful to rebut charges and get your arguments out in circulation, you have to understand that arguments and evidence have little impact on people as long as their feelings tilt them against you.
America is very much about individual happiness, the right to expression, self-determination. In America you do need to point to harm befalls victims before you can limit someone else's rights.
Legalizing homosexuality is not the first step on a slippery slope to legalizing everything.