Jonathan Haidt

Haidt's main contributions to the field of psychology come from his theory of moral foundations, which attempts to explain the origins of human moral reasoning on the basis of innate "modules", resulting from biological and cultural evolution. The theory was later further developed to explain varitation in moral reasoning as it relates to political ideology, positing that people arrive at different political orientations due to prioritizing different sets of morals. Haidt's current research applies moral psychology to business ethics. Haidt has written multiple best-selling pop psychology books, 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. Many of his conclusions and methodologies are controversial.

Jonathan Haidt studied at Yale University, University of Pennsylvania and Scarsdale High School. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is psychology and social psychology. Residence is recorded at New York City. Employment is recorded with University of Virginia, New York University and Stern School of Business. Positions recorded include postdoctoral researcher. Works named in the authority record are The Happiness Hypothesis and moral foundations theory. Distinctions recorded are Hugh M. Hefner First Amendment Award.

• Name — Jonathan Haidt • Birth Name — Jonathan David Haidt • Born — October 19, 1963 • Birthplace — New York City, U.S. • Education — * Yale University (BA) • University of Pennsylvania (MA, PhD) • Known for — * Moral foundations theory • Social intuitionism • Haidt's theories of elevation • Notable Works — * The Happiness Hypothesis (2006) • The Righteous Mind (2012) • The Coddling of the American Mind (2018) • The Anxious Generation (2024) • Awards — * Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology (2001) • American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2019)

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 U.S., 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. His family were generally New Deal liberals. In 2024, Haidt recalled that, at age 17, he experienced an existential crisis upon reading Waiting for Godot and other existential literature. After attending Scarsdale High School, he graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a Bachelor of Arts in philosophy in 1985, 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 Ph.D. in the field in 1988 and 1992, respectively, on a graduate fellowship awarded by the National Science Foundation. His dissertation, titled "Moral judgment, affect, and culture, or, is it wrong to eat your dog?", 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.

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 organization which makes academic research on ethics more easily available to businesses. In 2015, Haidt co-founded Heterodox Academy, a non-profit organization that works to increase "viewpoint diversity" on college campuses, based on the belief that there is discrimination against conservatives at acedemic institutions. 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.

section • Illustration — Haidt speaking at the Miller Center of Public Affairs in Charlottesville (March 19, 2012) Haidt's research on morality has led to publications in four areas.

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.

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", Feelings of moral elevation cause increases in milk produced during lactation in breastfeeding mothers, suggesting the involvement of the hormone oxytocin.

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.

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.

Haidt has referred to himself as a political centrist, and expressed a desire to reduce political polarization in the United States. In 2007, he founded the website CivilPolitics.org, a clearinghouse for research on political civility. 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" citing political polarization and the "culture war". In 2022 Haidt resigned from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology after refusing to write an equity, inclusion, and anti-racism statement, which the Society requires presenters at its annual research conference to submit. Haidt has received criticism for making homophobic comments, and for promoting pseudoscientific "social contagion" theories about transgender identities in his writing. He has suggested that the underrepresentation of women in STEM fields is due to an innate difference in interests between men and women, and that the disparity is not necessarily an indication of discrimination. Haidt believes that "trigger warnings, affirmative action and accusations of sexist disparities weaken students through 'special treatment'". Haidt is a member of the advisory board of the University of Austin, an unaccredited, "anti-woke", conservative organization.

In 2026, students at New York University (NYU) objected to the school's choice of Haidt to deliver that year's commencement speech. The leadership of NYU's student government sent a letter to university officials asking them to reconsider, writing that many students "reported feelings of disappointment, disgust, unenthusiasm, defeat, and embarrassment," following the announcement, and that the school's choice of speaker did not "reflect the values and diversity of its graduates." Students also noted the hypocrisy of inviting Haidt, who is known for his advocacy for freedom of speech and diversity of thought on college campuses, as NYU had banned live student speeches at the event, following complaints the year prior about a student speaker who criticized Israel. They also noted Haidt's dissmive attitude towards student activists and his silence on NYU's treatment of pro-Palestinian protestors, who were "zip-tied and pepper sprayed by the New York Police Department [...] at Gould Plaza, just outside his office." On May 14, Haidt's speech went ahead at Yankee Stadium, where he was booed by the crowd.

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Jonathan Haidt worked in psychology and social psychology. He was employed by University of Virginia, New York University and Stern School of Business. Recorded position is postdoctoral researcher. He belonged to American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Stern School of Business. He worked at New York City.

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