Concept
Jonathan Haidt
Overview
Jonathan David Haidt ( HYTE; 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. Haidt's 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, which attempts to explain the evolutionary origins of human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, gut feelings rather than logic and reason. 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. 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, 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.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
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Yet those who know the habits of the continent of Europe are aware how apparently small a motive often outweighs the desire of money getting, even in the operations which have money getting for their direct object. The more highly the science of ethology is cultivated, and the better the diversities of individual and national character are understood, the smaller, probably, will the number of propositions become…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Jonathan Haidt is; the author is tied to Jonathan Haidt in the knowledge graph.
In psychology, his fundamental doctrine was the formation of all human character by circumstances, through the universal Principle of Association, and the consequent unlimited possibility of improving the moral and intellectual condition of mankind by education. Of all his doctrines none was more important than this, or needs more to be insisted on; unfortunately there is none which is more contradictory to the…
John Stuart Mill, Autobiography
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In the former case, it would note the occasions of incident and circumstance, the reactions of mind and environment, under which the ideas were formed. Such a psychological genesis of several ideas is found in the Second Book of Locke’s Essay. In the latter case, the account would be more concerned with the inner movement, the action and reaction in ideas themselves, considered not as due to casual occurrences, but…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Philosophy of Mind
Close in meaning to Jonathan Haidt; the term itself is not named.
Philosophers who discussed Jonathan Haidt
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Place in the tradition
Part of Morality.