July 31, 2024 • 50 mins
This week on Givers, Doers, & Thinkers, we are opening the archive to share three particularly relevant episodes. The first episode features social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, who shares his thoughts on the moral intuitions and untruths that separate us but perhaps don't need to.
Jonathan Haidt is a You might know him from his New York Times bestseller, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. He is also a professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business. Jonathan has helped found various organizations to strengthen his corners of civil society through Let Grow, Heterodox Academy, and OpenMind.
Jeremy chats with Jonathan dive into several provocative questions, including—What is civil society’s exoskeleton? Why are white liberals more depressed? Is social media disastrous for civil society? How did the mental health epidemic among teenagers birth wokeness? What is devasting Gen-Z? How is the death of unsupervised play corrosive in the habits of a democracy? All of this and more in today’s episode with Jonathan Haidt.
We'd love to hear your thoughts, ideas, questions, and recommendations for the podcast! You can shoot Katie Janus, GDT's producer, an email anytime!
Be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and YouTube to make sure you never miss an episode!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Givers, doers and Thinkers.
Today we chat with socialpsychologist and best-selling
author, jonathan Haidt, aboutthe moral intuitions and
untruths that separate us, butperhaps don't need to.
Let's go.
Givers, doers and Thinkersintroduces listeners to the
(00:22):
fascinating people and importantideas at the heart of American
civil society.
We speak with philanthropists,reformers, social entrepreneurs,
nonprofit executives, religiousleaders, scholars, journalists
and anyone else who will help usunderstand contemporary civil
society's achievements andfailure.
My name is Jeremy Beer.
Thank you for joining us.
(00:43):
My name is Jeremy Beer.
Thank you for joining us.
All right, thank you forjoining us for another episode
of Givers, doers and Thinkers.
We are very honored today tohave a chance to speak with Dr
Jonathan Haidt, socialpsychologist at New York
University's Stern School ofBusiness.
Dr Haidt received his PhD fromthe University of Pennsylvania
(01:05):
in 1992 and taught for 16 yearsat Mr Jefferson's University,
the University of Virginia.
And just as I have turned my ownpsychology PhD into brilliant
success as a podcaster, dr Haidthas managed to find a little
success himself, most obviouslyas the author or co-author of
two New York Times bestsellersthat is, two more than I have
(01:28):
actually come to think of it andthose books are the Righteous
Mind why Good People Are Dividedby Politics and Religion and
the Coddling of the AmericanMind.
How Good Intentions and BadIdeas Are Setting Up a
Generation for Failure.
The latter book beingco-authored with Greg Lukanoff,
founder of FIRE Foundation forIndividual Rights in Education I
(01:51):
think I have that acronymcorrect.
Dr Hyde is not just a thinker,having co-founded several
organizations whose goal is tohelp people understand each
other, live and work near eachother and even learn from each
other despite their moraldifferences, and those
(02:17):
organizations include HeterodoxAcademy, open Mind and Ethical
Systems.
We'll come back and we'll betalking about Heterodox Academy,
I think, at least a littletoday, if not the others.
So welcome Dr Haidt.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Well, thank you so much, Jeremy.
I didn't know that you had aPhD in psychology.
I hope that it has at leastenriched your life and made you
much better at dealing withpeople.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Possibly.
Sometimes I am told that it has, I think, other times I am told
that it hasn't.
Yes, the University of Texas atAustin.
I started in clinicalpsychology.
After a year, my professorskindly moved me out of clinical
psychology.
I was not great.
(02:57):
I didn't like to hear people'sproblems, which turns out not to
be a great thing for someonewho's in clinical psychology.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
That's right.
That's right.
When I decided I was going togo for a PhD in psychology, my
girlfriend at the time said butJohn, you don't like people
enough.
I had to explain like no, no,it's not that kind of psychology
.
I'm going to actually try tofigure out how people work.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Right.
Exactly, not liking them mighthelp with respect to that goal
to some extent, that's true.
That's true, give you a littledistance.
No, yes, it is in psychologywhich has made me very
interested in your work eversince I first discovered it many
years ago, and it's work thathas met its moment, I think.
Luckily I mean very fortunatelyfor you, and maybe
(03:47):
unfortunately for some of therest of us, in the sense that
understanding those who aredifferent, living and working
happily with them, seems tobecome very, very hard for
people.
So it's a good time to diveinto thinking about why that
might be.
(04:07):
So I thought we'd talk aboutthose books that I mentioned in
the introduction before.
It's just sort of getting yourview on aspects of our
contemporary situation, whichhas obviously gone through a lot
of changes and crises over thelast year or so.
We'll just start with therighteous mind.
I think many of our listenerswill have, if not read the
(04:30):
entire book, then maybe haveseen your Ted talk or have read
articles related to therighteous mind.
I think the Atlantic is wherethe original article came out.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Is that right?
That was for the coddling ofthe American mind in 2015.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Okay, okay, but there you know, you've written a
number of articles related tothese theses.
I think, at least for me, therewere two, two lasting ideas,
big ideas that come out ofreading the righteous mind.
One concerns the writer and theelephant as an image that
explains how our minds work, asopposed to how we like to think
(05:03):
they work.
Perhaps I mean this as acompliment, I don't know what
you would say about this, butit's essentially an extended
elaboration on.
Well, you say this in the bookon the thought of David Hume
that we overrate the writer andunderrate the elephant.
Can you unpack this idea forpeople who are not familiar with
(05:24):
it or who haven't read yourbook?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Sure.
So I'm a social psychologistwho studies morality, and in
graduate school at theUniversity of Pennsylvania in
the early 90s I began studyingmoral psychology and at the time
everybody was focused on moralreasoning how does moral
reasoning develop in children,things like that.
But it was very clear to me inpart from beginning to work look
(05:49):
at morality across culturesthat morality is really much
more emotional and visceral.
And I grew up with two sistersand we fought all the time and
and made up all the time.
And it's just, you know, what Iwas reading in the books about
reasoning just didn't fit Like.
When you're mad at someone, allyour reasoning goes in one
direction and you cannot betalked out of it.
(06:10):
And I see that with my ownchildren.
And so I found that the ideas ofDavid Hume, the Scottish
philosopher David Hume, werejust brilliant psychologically.
Most philosophers aren't thatgood at psychology, but Hume was
great at philosophy andpsychology and he famously said
reason is, and ought only to be,the slave of the passions and
(06:32):
can never pretend to any otheroffice that to serve and obey
them.
And you know, if, if anybodydoubted that that was true back
in the 90s when I started myresearch, I would challenge
anyone to maintain in 2021 thatthat is not completely accurate.
You know, and as we know, whenyou, you know, so it's not that
(06:53):
reason doesn't matter, and it'snot that people don't change
their minds.
But in the kinds ofinteractions that we now
increasingly have with strangersand no reputational, you know,
no reward for reaching agreement, rather reward for attacking
the other person more strongly.
We'll get into this later, butsocial media has really warped
the social fabric that all theproblems that I wrote about in
(07:14):
the Righteous Mind in 2012,almost all of them are much
worse today.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, well, you've anticipated a question.
I was going to ask you like howmuch?
Okay, so explain before we goon.
Explain the image of the writerand the elephant.
So the elephant is thisemotional raw experience right
that the writer only barely hasany control over.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, so my first book, the Happiness Hypothesis,
was about 10 ancient ideas.
I read all the ancient wisdomliterature I could find, east to
west, and I took everypsychological claim and there
were 10 that were really justbrilliant, widespread.
And the first is that the mindis divided into parts that
(07:57):
sometimes conflict.
And so I think in metaphors,and when I speak and when I try
to teach students, I try to givethem metaphors and analogies.
And the analogies that theancients used often involved
animals.
They lived intimately withanimals.
We don't anymore, but they allwere familiar with trying to get
(08:18):
an ox or a cow or a sheep orsome animal to do what you want,
a cow or a sheep or some animalto do what you want.
And so Plato and many otherancients said that the mind is
like a charioteer trying tosteer his two horses.
He needs the horses to go, butyou know, they're kind of stupid
and they have minds of theirown and it's a struggle, because
(08:38):
everybody can see that peoplestruggle against their own
impulses.
So when I was writing thehappiness hypothesis, I wanted a
good metaphor, but all that wewere learning in psychology was
you know what?
The charioteer, the driver, thereason, as Plato said, is
actually not that smart, notthat independent, and that in
(09:00):
fact it's the horses that are incontrol.
But that doesn't make any sense.
That's a terrible metaphor.
So I just said well, we need amuch more intelligent animal.
So I picked an elephant.
It's intelligent, it's big, andso imagine a small boy sitting
on the back of a large elephant.
And if the elephant has nodesires and the boy tries to,
you know, tug it to the left,it'll go to the left.
(09:20):
But as soon as the elephantreally wants something, the boy
on his back can't really forceit to do anything.
So that's why I coined thismetaphor of the mind is divided,
like a rider, which isconscious reasoning, on the back
of the large elephant, which isespecially intuition.
It's all the automaticprocesses, and I found that this
(09:41):
metaphor so when I you know,when I die, you know, thomas
Jefferson had just three thingshe wanted on his grave, one of
which was that he founded theUniversity of Virginia, and so
one of mine will be he's the guywho made up the ride or an
elephant metaphor, becausepsychotherapists love it, like a
lot of people really like it,because it really helps them
understand themselves andespecially, how do you influence
other people?
(10:05):
And this is for all.
Everybody listening, foreverybody listening.
We all have to persuade people,whether it's people you're
negotiating with, or bosses, oremployees, or donors or whatever
.
And the main piece of advice Ihave for you is talk to the
elephant first.
Don't go in with here are thereasons why my proposal is good
for you.
I mean, that's better thansaying here are the reasons why
(10:25):
it's good for me.
But don't start with thereasons.
Start by appealing to theelephant.
Develop trust, develop a senseof a shared future or some sort
of bonds of the past.
Get them excited about thevision.
So if the elephant is leaningyour way, then all you need to
do is give good reasons to therider and you're done.
The deal's closed.
(10:48):
But if the elephant's leaning,against you.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
there's no amount of reasoning you can give.
That's going to close the deal.
Well, I'm glad you brought thisup, as we were talking about
just prior to recording um uh,and there are a number of people
in the world of philanthropyand fundraising who listen to
this podcast and, as part of ourtraining, when we talk, talk to
our own staff as well as umpeople who work for other uh
nonprofit organizations or inthe world of fundraising, or
even in in um uh, in programworld uh, we use your metaphor
(11:15):
all the time Talk to theelephant and people tend to yeah
, once you talk to the writer umuh, way too much or too quickly
, I guess, perhaps, rather thangetting the elephant steered in
the right direction first,that's right.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
That's right.
So, especially in politicallife, if you only talk to the
elephant, then you're ademagogue, and that's what our
founding fathers warned aboutand that's what we see with many
of the populist movements thaterupt all around the world.
But you know, if you have goodarguments and good evidence,
then just wise persuasion isfirst talk to the elephant and
(11:51):
then give all your arguments andevidence.
And if we look at America'spolitical history, we've had
three presidents in my lifetimewho were great at it, and I
imagine it's going to jump outat everyone who they were.
Certainly Ronald Reagan andBill Clinton.
And Barack Obama was brilliantas an orator, although and he
really understood this but hewas not quite as much of a
(12:12):
genius in just dailyconversation as were Reagan and
Clinton.
But those three really knew howto talk to the elephant.
The Democrats kept nominatingpeople like Michael Dukakis or
Al Gore or John Kerry, who werejust not very good at it.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yes, a little more writer-focused than they were.
That's right Not to leave thismetaphor too quickly, and this
is going in a little bitdifferent direction than the
were.
That's right Not to leave thismetaphor too quickly, and this
is going in a little bitdifferent direction than the
political.
But it seems.
This is why it seems to me thatancient writers, philosophers
or thinkers let's put it thatway would insist on moral
(12:50):
education as being essential tobeing able to do good.
Moral reasoning Is that right,like an education of the
emotions and habits is the onlyway you can actually think
rightly is to get that right.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Absolutely, absolutely.
And I noticed on your web page,where you have the About Us
section, our philosophy Inoticed that you quote
Tocqueville and you quote one ofmy favorite sociologists,
robert Nisbet, and so I think,yes, it looks from your side.
Is that you really understandwhat the ancients understood
(13:25):
about society and about the needfor people to be bound into a
society?
And so I just want to give youthis.
There's one quote.
Oh, here it is.
Yes, so the ancients.
So, all over the world, the waythat children have always been
educators, with stories, oftenwithin a religious context and
with an overarching framework ofvirtue, ethics, that is the
(13:47):
goal of child rearing.
The goal of education is tocultivate virtues, and America
dropped that, especially in the60s and 70s.
We had this ridiculous thingcalled the values clarification
movement, and, oh, we shouldn'ttell children what to think.
We should tell them, teach themhow to think, and, of course,
they have to figure out theirown values, which is like
telling children we shouldn'tteach them English.
(14:09):
They should develop their ownlanguage no no you're being
prepared to be successful in asociety, you've got to learn
that you know you have tounderstand what the virtues are
and how to cultivate them andwhy they're good for you.
So moral instruction kind offell out in the late 20th
century and that's why we sawthe rise of character education.
So I think there was a lot ofphilanthropic interest,
especially on the right in the80s and 90s, as a way to fill
(14:32):
that void.
And now, ironically, all thesecular schools that were
supposed to be going in forsecular education a lot of them
have adopted thisquasi-religious indoctrination
system of well, wokeness is thecasual, is the common term for
it.
But it's a real problem becauseit really does have a lot of
the hallmarks of a religion.
(14:52):
And my daughter right now islearning.
She comes home, they'relearning about religion in sixth
grade and they learned aboutJainism and Hinduism and, you
know, soon they'll be learningabout Judaism, and so that's
great.
I want them to learn about allsorts of religions.
And my high school kid I'mhappy to have him learn about
(15:13):
critical race theory and otherthings.
But you know I don't want theschool to like require my kid to
be a Jain or a Hindu or aMormon, or to embrace, you know,
these new ideologies.
So maybe we're jumping ahead ofourselves.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
But this is very much on my mind.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I imagine it's on the mind of a lot of your listeners
too.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
I imagine it is too.
It's certainly much on my mind,and, from what I hear from our
listeners, it's on their mind aswell.
And is that the best way, thento?
I was going to ask you thisquestion how do you understand
the wokeness phenomenon,essentially filling this void,
this vacuum of moral, giving theelephant direction?
I don't want to keep mixing themetaphor.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I'll handle it for you.
When Greg Lukianoff and I wrotethe Coddling the American Mind,
it's because Greg started tosee some weird stuff happening
on campus in 2014.
He saw students for the firsttime.
Students were demandingprotections from books and
speakers and ideas.
They were demanding triggerwarnings, safe spaces,
microaggression, training, bias,response teams all this stuff
(16:18):
that was nowhere to be seen in2011, 2012.
And then suddenly, 2013, 2014,.
Greg starts seeing all thisstuff.
And Greg, who had learned CBT orcognitive behavioral therapy,
when he had a suicidaldepression in 2007, greg saw
students making the exactcognitive distortions that he
had learned to stop doing.
And so Greg came to me withthis idea that somehow colleges
(16:41):
are making students sick, thinkin distorted ways and this is
going to lead to them beingdepressed.
And I thought this was a greatidea and I suggested we write it
up and we submitted to theAtlantic.
Well, we didn't know it at thetime.
This is 2015.
We didn't know it at the time,but the mental health epidemic,
(17:02):
the depression and anxietyepidemic, had begun in 2012,
2013 among American teenagers.
We were among the first toreally see the full force of it
on college campuses because, allof a sudden, all of our mental
health centers were floodedRight around.
2015 is when the flood hit andwe began to see this weird moral
(17:24):
system that had no name at thetime, but it was later called
wokeness.
And then, only a year or twoago, did we get the data from
2015, that show that somethingstrange happened to white people
, to white liberals, especiallywhite liberal women, that their
attitudes really, really changedon matters of race and
immigration in 2015.
And it's stunning the graphs soanyway.
(17:47):
In other words, white liberalssuddenly moved to the left of
African Americans on all kindsof questions about race, racial
justice and immigration.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Right and this is pre-Trump.
This is not 20th centuryExactly.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
That's right.
That's right.
So this is called the GreatAwokening.
Matt Iglesias at Vox coined theterm because it was like a
religious revival, and some ofthe doctrines of it are you know
, everything is to be understoodthrough the lens of power and
privilege.
Everyone can be assignedidentities, you know, white or
non-white, male or non-male,tall or not tall, fertile or not
(18:25):
fertile almost anything you canimagine Make it a binary
dimension.
And the people who have thepowerful side are the bad people
who oppress everyone else.
So everyone else has to uniteagainst the bad people.
So the victims are the goodpeople.
Anyway, it's you know.
It's not that there's zerotruth to this way of looking at
things, but if this is theprimary lens that young people
are adopting in college, youknow they're crippling their
ability to understand the worldor to influence it or to enjoy
(18:47):
it.
And here's the most stunningthing, which in this was not
known a year ago, and I've justbeen digging into the data
recently.
When you look at the mentalhealth crisis and you zoom in on
what's happened, it turns outthat there's a correlation with
ideology.
So people who say they'reliberal are more depressed, but
this is only true for whitepeople.
(19:08):
And so when Zach Goldberg, agraduate student, first put this
out on Twitter, digging intopublic data sets from Pew and
American National ElectionSurvey, when he first put this
out, I said, you know.
I said, can you zoom in?
You know, zoom in for justwomen and then just young women,
because Gen Z is really wherethe most problems, the problems
(19:30):
are.
The depression is.
Most problems the problems arethe depression is.
And it turns out that thepercentage that have a mental
disorder, that say that theyhave a mental disorder, goes up
and up and up so that when youlook at just so, no group is
above 35% saying yes, I have amental disorder, and the
conservative groups are allbelow 25%.
But if you zoom in on young, so, uh, 18 to 30 years old, uh,
(19:56):
women who say white women, whosay that they are on the left,
you get 54 percent of them saythey've been told they have a
mental disorder.
And this it's unbelievable,it's absolutely stunning.
But this really vindicatesgreg's initial idea that if you
embrace this way of thinking,you know that as American
(20:16):
society has gotten better andbetter, fairer and fairer, more
civil rights for everyone, youknow amazingly speedy increase
in rights for LGBT, so you know,everything's getting better and
better.
The environment is gettingbetter other than global warming
, but there's all kinds of goodthings happening is getting
better other than global warming, but there's all kinds of good
things happening as this ishappening.
(20:40):
If some young people buy intothis ideology that everything is
power structures, everything isshot through with white
supremacy, well yeah, of coursethey're depressed.
You know they're missing thegreatest.
You know what Deidre McCluskeyhas called the great enrichment
that began in the 1600s.
Like you know, it's.
Things are getting better andbetter.
Poverty is going down.
All sorts of good things arehappening, but some people are
(21:00):
trapped in this ideology thattells them not just everything
is terrible, but that the powerstructures hate them and will
only pay them 78 cents for everydollar that they will pay to
the man next to them, which isnot true at all.
That wage gap statistic is onlytrue if you just look at raw
numbers and you don't takeaccount of hours worked or
occupation worked in.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Anyway, sorry I'm going on.
No, this is great.
So my question to you aboutthat is do you think it is
actually a higher incidence ofmental disorder, or is it also
by both both and a highembracing or looking for mental
disorder in the sense thatvictimization now confers
(21:41):
prestige and status?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yes, that's right.
So I see the point of yourquestion.
That's a very good question.
So first, is it just thatbecause it's prestigious to be,
to to be mentally ill or to havedepression, anxiety, um, it's
prestigious to be a victim?
Is it just that people areclaiming this but they're not
really depressed or anxious,they're not really feeling like
that, to which I would say firstum, there's a lot of research
(22:06):
in psychology, includingclinical psychology, that when
you label people and theyembrace the label, it becomes
self-fulfilling.
So it is incredibly foolish, youknow.
I mean the idea of encouraging.
You know, if a gay studentcomes to NYU, this is like the
most gay-friendly school in themost gay-friendly neighborhood,
the West Village.
You know that you couldpossibly find.
(22:27):
But if a gay student comes toNYU, that student will be, will
refer to him or herself as amarginalized student.
I am marginalized, I have amarginalized identity, you know.
So the point is, if you couldlabel people and then they
embrace it, it actually becomesself-fulfilling.
The second thing is we knowthat the mental illness stats
(22:47):
it's not just that they'rechanging the threshold or
they're changing their embracingidentity, because you see the
same pattern for self-harm andsuicide.
Those are not self-report.
Those are hard data on hospitaladmissions and actual deaths.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yes, and that's what I actually thought of that after
I asked the question that onedoesn't fake that sort of thing.
That is, they say hard datadoesn't self-report.
At the same time, isn't it alsothe case and I like that we're
just sort of veering wherever wewant to go here?
Isn't it also the case thatisn't suicide and certainly
lifespan suicide up and lifespandown among white males?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yes, that's right.
That's a somewhat differentproblem that I'm not at all an
expert in, but yes, lifeexpectancy is decreasing among
non-college educated people,particularly white people,
particularly white men, andthat's in part because of the
opioid crisis.
It's also partly the collapseof institutions back to 1960, I
(23:50):
think it is.
If you look at the top quarterand the bottom quarter, the
income distribution, theirlikelihood to be married wasn't
very different.
Their likelihood to be going tochurch regularly or religious
worship regularly wasn't verydifferent, and since then, many
people have observed that thecollege educated have stayed
(24:10):
with these good habits.
The college educated, you knowthey might talk like liberals on
matters of sex and marriage,but they act like conservatives,
whereas you know more theworking class and in some cases
you know some conservatives willtalk like conservative, acts
like libertines.
And so, getting back again toyou, know what you write about,
about the importance of meetinginstitutions and civil society,
(24:33):
about churches, synagogues,rotary clubs.
These are the in the righteousmind.
I call these the moralexoskeletons that we need, that
human beings can't just figureout their own morality.
They need a sort of a moralexoskeleton that's given to them
by religion or something,attempt is given to them by
(24:56):
religion or something, and ifthere's nothing there, if you
tear down religion, as hashappened in a stunningly rapid
turn since 2000,.
Recent data just came out lastweek showing a stunning decline
in people who even identify asbelonging to a religion.
It dropped below 50%, I believe, just recently.
So if you have this quick dropin religion, many have been
writing about including me andGreg about how people still have
(25:19):
religious minds and whatthey're going to do is they're
going to embrace something thatfits the same slots as religion
but is not tested by time, andthat is wokeness.
You know it's also on the farright, you also have all kinds
of crazy conspiracy theories andyou have neo-Nazis.
So you know I'm a nonpartisan.
I see the madness on bothextremes.
(25:40):
But yes, wokeness I do believefunctions structurally just like
a religion and specificallyChristianity.
It's kind of a form ofChristianity with no grace, no
redemption, no forgiveness, justbitterness.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
None of the good stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
None of the good stuff.
You got it.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
That's right, that's right, We'll be right back with
Dr Jonathan Haidt and he keepstalking about his book, the
Righteous Mind and the coddlingof the American mind, what they
mean for the Art of Association.
Here in a second the Americanmind of what they mean for the
Art of.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Association here in a second.
Hi, this is Joe Gerecht, thedirector of the Center for Civil
Society.
The Center for Civil Society,also known as C4CS, is proud to
produce the Givers, Doers andThinkers podcast.
At C4CS, our mission is tostrengthen civil society.
We do this by conductingprograms and activities that
(26:37):
increase the knowledge andefficacy of America's nonprofit
organizations, charitablefoundations and individual
donors.
We offer classes, webinars,conferences and more to help
your organization have a biggerimpact.
If you'd like to learn moreabout the Center for Civil
Society and our programs, pleasevisit us online at
(27:00):
centerforcivilsocietyorg.
Thank you for listening to theGDT podcast.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
All right, we are back with Dr Jonathan Haidt,
social psychologist at New YorkUniversity, author of the
Righteous Mind, also co-authorof the Coddling of the American
Mind.
There's a I want to talk aboutone.
There's a lot to talk about andwe've been going all over the
place, which is great.
One part of the calling of theAmerican mind that I want to
(27:31):
make sure that we do talk about,because it's um very germane to
um our concerns about civilsociety and mediating
institutions and that sort ofthing, and it's um about play.
It's very surprising.
It's one of the um.
I guess when you hear it it'snot surprising, but I was
surprised to read it on how umsurprised to read it on how the
(27:52):
death of unsupervised play,unscheduled play, is very
corrosive and it turns out inthe art of democracy the habits
of democracy that we need tocultivate in order to have a
democracy.
Can you?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
explain that.
Yes, so this was the most funchapter to write all the
research on the effects of play.
And so the thing to realize isthat we're mammals and all
mammals play.
So if you look at, you knowbaby mice, baby dogs, baby
whales.
If you're a mammal, you havethis big brain, comparatively,
(28:33):
and you have an extendedchildhood in which your mother
or parents invest a lot in youin order to grow your brain.
But if you just stay with yourparents, you don't get to grow
your brain.
That's where you're safe.
So mammals are programmed toyou know you find your safe to
grow your brain.
That's where you're safe.
So mammals are programmed toyou know you find your safe base
, your parent, your attachmentfigure, and then that gives you
(28:53):
the confidence to go out intothe world, at first just a
little bit at a time, and thenyou get more confidence to go
out further and further.
And this is the way mammalsalways have been, and this is
the way Homo sapien mammals wereup until about 1990.
And so I was born in 1963.
And so my entire life.
There was a giant crime wave.
(29:13):
It began in the late 60s and itjust vanished mysteriously
during the 90s.
So even Gen X.
I'm at the end of the babyboomers.
But baby boomers and Gen X andthe early millennials we all
went out to play between ages ofsix and eight is when we were
let out.
I've done this poll all overthe country.
It was, you know, first it'sfirst, second or third grade.
(29:36):
That's when kids got to playwithout supervision.
And when you're playing withoutsupervision you have to make
the rules consensually.
You have to learn to enforcethe rules.
You have to learn that.
You know what.
Sometimes there are reasons tohave exceptions to the rules.
You know, this kid has a brokenleg so we'll give him an extra
five seconds or whatever it is.
So you learn.
Kids learn so much by having towork out problems and conflicts
themselves.
(29:56):
And we did that all during thecrime wave.
And then suddenly in the 1990swe began to freak out about
child abduction.
Now there are almost no childabductions in this country other
than by the non-custodialparent in a divorce case.
It's 100 times a year.
A stranger kidnaps a kid.
It's almost unheard of, butbecause of cable TV we suddenly
(30:18):
all heard about it all the time.
So we freak out that we thinkif your kid is outside
unsupervised they'll be snatched.
So we lock them up, we don'tlet them out, and so, anyway, I
could go on and on about this.
But the point is, the point isthat free play is as essential,
it's much more essential thanvitamin C.
I mean, well, okay, you needvitamin C, it's as essential as
(30:40):
vitamin C.
And it would be as if, in theearly 90s, we just decided no
more vitamin C because therewere three cases of kids who
overdosed on vitamin C.
So no more vitamin C.
And I think that's what the CDCwould say if they were in
charge of things back then.
But anyway, just referring tothe fact that they just
suspended the Johnson andJohnson vaccine because there
were six cases of blood clots,yeah, out of millions and
(31:04):
millions of doses given, therewere six cases in which there
were blood clots and two of themwere somewhat serious.
Anyway, don't get me started onthat.
But actually you know what?
Again, it is this safety as amindset.
It's this mindset let's alwaysgo for the worst.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
That would be.
The next word I introduced intoour discussion is safetyism.
This is sort of a brutalistideology that cuts across even
partisan lines in many ways,doesn't it?
Speaker 2 (31:30):
So safetyism is the irrational worship of safety.
Of course we want our kids tobe safe and I'm glad that
consumer products are safer forkids.
But as the world's gottenphysically safer and safer and
safer and safer from crime,we've lowered the bar and we
freak out about any conceivablerisk to our kids, not realizing
that by overprotecting them, bydenying them free play, by
(31:52):
protecting them from stress, byprotecting them from insults, by
protecting them from unpleasantsituations, it's as if we are
preventing them from walking.
You know, if we said, oh,walking is too dangerous because
you might fall, well, thatwould be really stupid and in a
sense we're saying free play istoo dangerous because you might
get hurt.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
So anyway, is our conception of health just too
narrow.
It's only biological health.
You've already brought up allthese real mental health
epidemics and crises that don'tseem to me get all that much
attention.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I would say that our conception is not at all just
physical.
It's become very much aboutemotional, mental health, which
in general I'm in favor of, butonly if it's done right.
And what we've done is we haveembraced some kind of wacky
California.
You know psychological,progressive ideas about stress
and self-esteem.
You know that was a terriblemistake to embrace self-esteem
(32:48):
in the 1980s.
Yeah, you know, healthy peoplehave higher self-esteem, but
it's because they did things toearn it.
If you just tell kids you'regreat and they don't learn how,
to earn it.
You're setting them all self upfor disappointment and failure.
So, anyway, and then we did thesame thing with stress.
Yes, stress is bad, but onlychronic stress.
Chronic stress, you know, ifyou keep your stress systems
(33:10):
turned on every day, you know,for months, yeah, you're going
to get stress-related disordersand your brain is going to
change and see the world as morethreatening.
And you might be right thatit's more threatening.
So chronic stress is bad.
But we overcorrected and we gotthe stupid idea that stress is
bad.
No, stress is essential.
Kids have to experience stress.
And then they learn thatsituations, uh, they can face
(33:33):
situations, and then they're not.
They're not stressed about them, Uh.
And so we, we see the thingslike it's freaky.
You know, kids come to collegenow and they'll freak out if
they if you know, if there's acockroach in their room or if
there's a mouse or something youknow, they'll call the police
because they've been protectedfrom things, They've never had
to deal with things.
So I don't want to be criticalof Gen Z, because it's not at
(33:55):
all their fault.
They are the generation that hadthe bad luck to be born, just
as their parents and everyoneelse in America and Canada and
the UK to some extent, werefreaking out about smaller and
smaller and non-existent fears,and then they got anti-bullying
policies after Columbine.
So that was 1999.
By 2001, most states havemandated anti-bullying, and
(34:18):
while I can't prove that this iscausal and of course bullying
that goes on for more than a dayis terrible and should be
stopped but what happened onceagain was conflict is often seen
as bullying.
The bar for what counts asbullying has come down so low
that kids don't get practice andconflict resolution.
So the subtitle of our book ishow good intentions and bad
(34:42):
ideas are setting up ageneration for failure.
And that's exactly what we'vedone over and over trying to
help kids without a properunderstanding that they're
anti-fragile, they needchallenge, they need free play,
they need to sometimes be afraidof something and overcome it.
Not realizing all of thesethings.
We've protected them andprotected them and protected
them, and now they're moreanxious than ever and more
(35:05):
fragile.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
What has the role of?
You mentioned social mediaearlier.
One of my questions I was goingto ask you is on a one to 10
scale, how much of a disasterhas social media been for
humanity?
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, so there's two different major harms.
So just to be clear, theinternet is absolutely fantastic
.
It does some bad things, butthe cost benefit ratio for the
internet is wildly positive.
Now let's zoom in on socialmedia, that is, platforms on
which users create content andothers, including strangers,
rate and evaluate that content.
Are we better off because wehave that?
(35:38):
Well, you know, maybe there aresome things that are good about
it, but there are clearly somethings that are terrible about
it, especially for teenagers andespecially for teenage girls.
And so on the democracy front,social media has made it really
easy to tear things down.
We thought in the beginning ofthe Arab Spring back in 2009,
many people thought that socialmedia was going to be a great
(36:00):
boon for democracy.
It's going to depose tyrants.
But it turns out social mediais really good at tearing things
down, but it never.
It builds up.
So we have more and moreinstability, more and more
distrust of everything andeveryone, almost all
institutions, and so socialmedia, I believe, has been
terrible for democracy andterrible for the United States.
(36:20):
All kinds of conspiracytheories, all kinds of
polarization, hatred.
So that's one battle I'mfighting is to find ways to
reform social media, since it'snot such an outrage platform,
but the other domain in whichit's harmful is mental health,
and we have a sudden, very steep, almost like a hockey stick
(36:41):
shaped graph of depression,anxiety and self-harm for girls
girls even more than boys.
It begins in 2020.
Uh, plus or minus a year,depending on whether you're
where you are in the us, orcanada or the uk.
Um, so it just comes out ofnowhere, starts shooting up, and
that's what greg began to seein 2013-14 and, not
(37:02):
coincidentally, even thoughsocial media comes out in the
early 2000s, it only gets reallyengaging between 2009, 2011.
Because that's when Facebookintroduces the like button,
twitter copies it.
Twitter introduces the retweetbutton, facebook copies it and
suddenly there's a lot morefeedback and we turn an entire
generation of kids.
They flood onto social mediaaround 2010, 2011.
(37:23):
They're all on it every day,daily, by 2011,.
They weren't on it daily 2008.
So kids are flooding onto itand it's a system in which other
kids are doling outreinforcements and punishments,
just like bf skinner trainingpigeons.
And what is he training andwhat is he training?
What are people training eachother to do?
Um, well, um, especiallyinstagram.
(37:45):
Um, you know instagram, whichis visual.
Instagram has a.
You know twitter is, which isvisual.
Instagram has a.
You know Twitter is a dumpsterfire.
Twitter is full of nasty stuff.
Instagram is not.
But it turns out that even thenice stuff is really bad for
young girls because all theseother girls are showing off
their perfect lives and if Imean, they're just stunning
demonstrations of the beautyfilters so girls now are.
(38:07):
They show themselves as beingmuch more beautiful than they
are in real life, which you know.
Girls already had huge problemswith eating disorders, social
comparison, objectification.
Social media multiplies all ofthat by 10.
So it's not a coincidence thatthe girls' rate goes up much
higher than the boys'.
It's not a coincidence that thesteepest percentage increase
(38:27):
are the 10 to 14 old girls, thepreteens who should not even be
on social media.
But they just lie about theirage.
There's no stop, there's nocheck, there's no obstacle.
They just lie about their age.
They're on Instagram by sixthgrade, at least in New York City
, by kids school.
So anyway, I could talk foreverabout this.
But social media, social media,it wasn't bad until 2009.
(38:48):
And by 2012, it has changed thefabric of social space-time.
So everything is going haywireOur politics, politics and
democracies around the world,misinformation, teen mental
health, craziness atuniversities.
We now live in a topsy-turvyworld that is rapidly changing,
in which truth is hard to findand in which there is no more
(39:09):
authority, no more trust.
Now ask me what I think aboutsocial media.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
I think that gets to some of the major points.
Yeah, just somewhat disastrousfor both our civic health and
mental health, especially incertain demographics.
But you mentioned let's just goon to this at this point um, is
there anything that can be doneabout it?
You said you were.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You mentioned just in passing that there was
something you were trying to, uh, to do with respect to it I
spent my career at theuniversity of virginia in the
psychology department and in2011, I moved to nyu stern to a
business school.
Um, just sort of a fluke that Ithat I came here and they liked
me.
I like them.
Once I got here, I I decided towrite a mission statement,
because, you know, in businessyou have a mission statement and
(39:52):
all that.
So my mission statement, um, isto use, uh, my research and
that of others in moral andsocial psychology to help
important institutions workbetter.
So I wrote that in 2012, whichis actually just before
everything got weird, but Ithink it really has stood the
(40:13):
test of time as to what I canfocus on and what America can
focus on, because we have tolook institution by institution
and strengthen them.
And then we have to look at thecauses, especially of what is
devastating Gen Z.
So let's start with the Gen Zthing.
So, if there are two majorcauses, there's the vast
(40:34):
overprotection and there's thetoo early exposure to social
media.
Well, for the overprotection, Ico-founded an organization with
Lenore Skenazy, the wonderfulwoman who wrote the book Free
Range Kids, wonderful woman whowrote the book Free Range Kids,
and so if listeners go toletgroworg, they'll find all
(40:55):
kinds of great ideas, especiallyif your kids are under 12,
elementary and middle school.
All kinds of great ideas forhow to help your kids become
healthy mammals who have learnedhow to deal with things and do
things themselves, and your ownlife will be happier and
there'll be less conflict andyour kids will actually be
successful as adults rather thanmiserable failures.
So I would urge people to go toletgroworg and, on the social
(41:15):
media thing, there are a varietyof organizations that are
working on this.
If listeners go tothecoddlingcom the website for
my book with Greg and then theyclick on solutions better social
media We've got a lot moreinformation there they can they
can learn about and it'll helpthem set policy in their own
homes if they have teams.
(41:38):
And then we have to work oninstitution by institution.
So that means we have to lookat K-12 schools.
We have to look at universities.
So I co-founded HeterodoxAcademy in 2015,.
Not because of the students, itwas originally just because I
noticed that the social sciencesI'm a social psychologist and
in all the social sciences theylean very far left.
(42:00):
Now, leaning is okay as long asthere are people on the other
side to push back, but in manyfields there's nobody on the
other side to push back.
But in many fields there'snobody, and so all of these are,
I think you say in your book.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
the average ratio is like three or four to one or two
or three to one.
Three or four to one is fine.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
We'd be fine if we had three or four to one left or
right, but in my field it'sover 20 to one and in fact I
know the one guy.
There's only one.
No, I'm joking.
There's several, but there'sonly one who's out.
There's only one who's publiclyknown to be conservative.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
I knew him when I was in graduate school too.
Yeah right.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
That guy, yeah.
And so we advocate forincreasing viewpoint diversity,
not as an end in itself, notbecause we love conservatives
I'm a centrist Democrat myselfbut because we need viewpoint
diversity.
We need people to challengeviewpoint diversity.
We need people to challenge.
Otherwise we get ridiculous,poorly thought out, dogmatic,
(42:54):
politicized thinking about themost important social problems
like race and gender andimmigration and child rearing
and everything else.
I know many philanthropistsgive to their alma mater.
Many philanthropists probablythe majority seem to be
interested in education.
If you're interested insupporting improvements to
education, the educationalclimate, I urge you to check out
heterodoxacademyorg.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Consider supporting our work, learn more about it,
yeah it's a fantasticorganization, and then we just
add on.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
So, within Heterodox Academy, something that we
created was called Open Mind.
It's a program to actuallyexpose people to the best
thinking left, right andlibertarian and teach them how
to deal with it.
Teach them why we draw a lot onJohn Stuart Mill.
He said, well, you're betteroff engaging with people who
think differently than you thanpeople who think just like you.
And so we ended up spinning itout.
(43:44):
It's its own 501c3, because itturns out, even though we
created for college students, itturns out the need for in the
corporate world is explodingbecause gen z, gen z you know
kids born in 1996 and later theygraduated from college.
In 2018, they began to graduateand enter the work world, and
so, just after our book waspublished in 2018, suddenly
(44:07):
we're hearing all these reportsfrom corporate, from the
corporate world, about studentswho, you know, they get a bad
performance review and theyfreak out and their mother calls
them.
So all kinds of weird thingsare happening in not in all
industries, but in industriesthat hire from the most
progressive elite, liberal artsschools and top universities.
Those industries the creativeindustries, tech and many
(44:31):
nonprofits are really sufferingfrom a huge rise of internal
conflict as they try to figureout how to incorporate Gen Z.
So openmindplatformorg isanother organization that I
co-founded to try to strengtheninstitutions.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
What is your thought about the future here, besides
the kind of work you're doingfront lines, these organizations
, all of which are clearly doingwonderful work is a way to kind
of overcome these really bad,health-inducing trends lie in
that kind of work, or is thereany kind of course?
Do you see any sort of internal, intrinsic sort of course
(45:05):
corrector that will kick in atsome point?
You know, you feel like it's sounhealthy, so mentally, you
know, distraught, so muchdisorder, before people sort of
light bulbs go on in a kind of amass way.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
So I used to.
I used to sort of leanpessimistic, but with with some
real hope and some clear visionsof how things could turn around
.
Now that I see just how muchsocial media has destroyed any
possibility of shared truth, ofshared facts, of consensus, now
(45:40):
I'm more pessimistic.
So I think that if we look inon America in 30 or 40 years,
things will probably be better.
Things will probably be muchbetter, just because things
generally do get better overtime.
I agree with Steve Pinker andvarious others who pointed out
that every age people thinkthings are going to hell.
But yet you know, century aftercentury, life gets better and
(46:02):
better.
But I think for the next fiveor 10 years, I suspect, things
are going to get worse, worsefor mental health, worse for
increasing conflict in ourschools and institutions,
corporations, and worse in ourpolitics.
So I don't see anything turningaround very soon.
But when it does turn around, Ithink what will need to happen
is that the new dynamics thatsocial media has really given a
(46:25):
huge megaphone to the far rightand the far left, to extremists,
people who are angry, peoplewho are posturing and virtue
signaling and great research byMore in Common, if listeners
Google the Hidden Tribes Report,a brilliant report going into
exactly what are the differentsubgroups, politically and
psychologically, of Americans,and so the extremes are only
(46:47):
about 12%, 13% of the country,and the rest of us are what they
call, or almost the rest of usare what they call, the
exhausted majority.
And so and that includes, sothat includes, you know, what
I'm hoping is that basicallycenter left and center right and
a large number of people whoaren't really affiliated can
(47:07):
really come together and standup to their extremes.
Now we're not seeing that.
On the right, I mean, we areseeing a few people have stood
up to the kind of the Trumpist,you know, conspiracy theory
stuff.
There are a few in the SenateHouse who've done that, but not
very many.
And on the left, we're seeingit.
We're seeing a few professorsstanding up to the sort of the
(47:28):
woke mania, the critical racetheory stuff, but it's very few.
And because people are afraid,I mean your reputation can be
destroyed, and it's not justyour reputation.
Things are so nasty now.
Person left stands up to thefar left like you're actually
putting your family at a littlebit of risk, like people, you
(47:48):
know people will sendthreatening letters and death
threats.
Um, I don't know if anyone'sbeen murdered yet because of
this, but it's very scary tohave people threatening the life
of your children so, and thathappens, so I don't know what.
You know how we get past this.
I'm thinking a lot about victornavalny these days, the russian
dissident who has just riskedhis life over and over again,
and I'm trying to use him forinspiration to be a little
(48:10):
bolder myself.
But it's good, I think, if thecenter left and center right and
I think here philanthropy couldreally do a lot, and we're
seeing some of this.
We are actually seeing somereally nice collaborations, you
know, like the Koch Foundationand Soros.
Thankfully.
Yes, koch and Soros, thank you.
Yes, koch and Soros teamed up alot, and we are seeing.
(48:32):
When I've been to events fordemocracy, I'm very involved
with various efforts to improveAmerican democracy and we often
do see center-right andcenter-left coming.
You don't see, I don't know anyfar-right foundations, but the
far-left ones tend not to showup.
But I do think thatphilanthropy can play a big role
in building bridges, and theyare.
There actually is a lot ofsupport for bridge-building
(48:53):
organizations such as Open Mind.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
Dr Haidt, thank you for being with us today.
Where can people find youonline?
Are you in the dumpster fireknown as Twitter, or do you stay
away from that dumpster fire?
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Yeah, no, I'm in it and stay away from that.
Yeah, no, I'm, I'm in it and I,you know I've kind of enjoy and
hate it at the same time.
And you know, if you're ajournalist or a social scientist
, you kind of need to be.
But my homepage isjonathanheitcom and that links
to all the other pages and again, the it's heterodoxacademyorg
and openmindplatformorg are myphilanthropic projects that are
(49:28):
trying to address these problems.
So thank you very much, jeremy,for giving me this chance to
talk to your listeners and totalk with you.
As you can see, I kind ofenjoyed talking about you.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
I was very much the pleasure.
It was ours.
Thank you so much.
It was an honor to talk to youand good luck with your work.
Thank you for joining us fortoday's episode.
If you enjoyed it, we inviteyou to subscribe and or rate and
review this discussion on Apple, spotify or wherever you listen
to our podcasts and have aguest you'd like to hear from.
Send your requests to ourproducer, katie Janus, at
(50:05):
kjanusatamphilcom.
That's K-J-A-N-U-S at amphilcom.
Welcome to Givers, doers and Thinkers.
Today we chat with socialpsychologist and best-selling
author, jonathan Haidt, aboutthe moral intuitions and
untruths that separate us, butperhaps don't need to.
Let's go.
Givers, doers and Thinkersintroduces listeners to the
(00:22):
fascinating people and importantideas at the heart of American
civil society.
We speak with philanthropists,reformers, social entrepreneurs,
nonprofit executives, religiousleaders, scholars, journalists
and anyone else who will help usunderstand contemporary civil
society's achievements andfailure.
My name is Jeremy Beer.
Thank you for joining us.
(00:43):
My name is Jeremy Beer.
Thank you for joining us.
All right, thank you forjoining us for another episode
of Givers, doers and Thinkers.
We are very honored today tohave a chance to speak with Dr
Jonathan Haidt, socialpsychologist at New York
University's Stern School ofBusiness.
Dr Haidt received his PhD fromthe University of Pennsylvania
(01:05):
in 1992 and taught for 16 yearsat Mr Jefferson's University,
the University of Virginia.
And just as I have turned my ownpsychology PhD into brilliant
success as a podcaster, dr Haidthas managed to find a little
success himself, most obviouslyas the author or co-author of
two New York Times bestsellersthat is, two more than I have
(01:28):
actually come to think of it andthose books are the Righteous
Mind why Good People Are Dividedby Politics and Religion and
the Coddling of the AmericanMind.
How Good Intentions and BadIdeas Are Setting Up a
Generation for Failure.
The latter book beingco-authored with Greg Lukanoff,
founder of FIRE Foundation forIndividual Rights in Education I
(01:51):
think I have that acronymcorrect.
Dr Hyde is not just a thinker,having co-founded several
organizations whose goal is tohelp people understand each
other, live and work near eachother and even learn from each
other despite their moraldifferences, and those
(02:17):
organizations include HeterodoxAcademy, open Mind and Ethical
Systems.
We'll come back and we'll betalking about Heterodox Academy,
I think, at least a littletoday, if not the others.
So welcome Dr Haidt.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Well, thank you so much, Jeremy.
I didn't know that you had aPhD in psychology.
I hope that it has at leastenriched your life and made you
much better at dealing withpeople.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Possibly.
Sometimes I am told that it has, I think, other times I am told
that it hasn't.
Yes, the University of Texas atAustin.
I started in clinicalpsychology.
After a year, my professorskindly moved me out of clinical
psychology.
I was not great.
(02:57):
I didn't like to hear people'sproblems, which turns out not to
be a great thing for someonewho's in clinical psychology.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
That's right.
That's right.
When I decided I was going togo for a PhD in psychology, my
girlfriend at the time said butJohn, you don't like people
enough.
I had to explain like no, no,it's not that kind of psychology
.
I'm going to actually try tofigure out how people work.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
Right.
Exactly, not liking them mighthelp with respect to that goal
to some extent, that's true.
That's true, give you a littledistance.
No, yes, it is in psychologywhich has made me very
interested in your work eversince I first discovered it many
years ago, and it's work thathas met its moment, I think.
Luckily I mean very fortunatelyfor you, and maybe
(03:47):
unfortunately for some of therest of us, in the sense that
understanding those who aredifferent, living and working
happily with them, seems tobecome very, very hard for
people.
So it's a good time to diveinto thinking about why that
might be.
(04:07):
So I thought we'd talk aboutthose books that I mentioned in
the introduction before.
It's just sort of getting yourview on aspects of our
contemporary situation, whichhas obviously gone through a lot
of changes and crises over thelast year or so.
We'll just start with therighteous mind.
I think many of our listenerswill have, if not read the
(04:30):
entire book, then maybe haveseen your Ted talk or have read
articles related to therighteous mind.
I think the Atlantic is wherethe original article came out.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Is that right?
That was for the coddling ofthe American mind in 2015.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Okay, okay, but there you know, you've written a
number of articles related tothese theses.
I think, at least for me, therewere two, two lasting ideas,
big ideas that come out ofreading the righteous mind.
One concerns the writer and theelephant as an image that
explains how our minds work, asopposed to how we like to think
(05:03):
they work.
Perhaps I mean this as acompliment, I don't know what
you would say about this, butit's essentially an extended
elaboration on.
Well, you say this in the bookon the thought of David Hume
that we overrate the writer andunderrate the elephant.
Can you unpack this idea forpeople who are not familiar with
(05:24):
it or who haven't read yourbook?
Speaker 2 (05:27):
Sure.
So I'm a social psychologistwho studies morality, and in
graduate school at theUniversity of Pennsylvania in
the early 90s I began studyingmoral psychology and at the time
everybody was focused on moralreasoning how does moral
reasoning develop in children,things like that.
But it was very clear to me inpart from beginning to work look
(05:49):
at morality across culturesthat morality is really much
more emotional and visceral.
And I grew up with two sistersand we fought all the time and
and made up all the time.
And it's just, you know, what Iwas reading in the books about
reasoning just didn't fit Like.
When you're mad at someone, allyour reasoning goes in one
direction and you cannot betalked out of it.
(06:10):
And I see that with my ownchildren.
And so I found that the ideas ofDavid Hume, the Scottish
philosopher David Hume, werejust brilliant psychologically.
Most philosophers aren't thatgood at psychology, but Hume was
great at philosophy andpsychology and he famously said
reason is, and ought only to be,the slave of the passions and
(06:32):
can never pretend to any otheroffice that to serve and obey
them.
And you know, if, if anybodydoubted that that was true back
in the 90s when I started myresearch, I would challenge
anyone to maintain in 2021 thatthat is not completely accurate.
You know, and as we know, whenyou, you know, so it's not that
(06:53):
reason doesn't matter, and it'snot that people don't change
their minds.
But in the kinds ofinteractions that we now
increasingly have with strangersand no reputational, you know,
no reward for reaching agreement, rather reward for attacking
the other person more strongly.
We'll get into this later, butsocial media has really warped
the social fabric that all theproblems that I wrote about in
(07:14):
the Righteous Mind in 2012,almost all of them are much
worse today.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Yeah, well, you've anticipated a question.
I was going to ask you like howmuch?
Okay, so explain before we goon.
Explain the image of the writerand the elephant.
So the elephant is thisemotional raw experience right
that the writer only barely hasany control over.
Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yeah, so my first book, the Happiness Hypothesis,
was about 10 ancient ideas.
I read all the ancient wisdomliterature I could find, east to
west, and I took everypsychological claim and there
were 10 that were really justbrilliant, widespread.
And the first is that the mindis divided into parts that
(07:57):
sometimes conflict.
And so I think in metaphors,and when I speak and when I try
to teach students, I try to givethem metaphors and analogies.
And the analogies that theancients used often involved
animals.
They lived intimately withanimals.
We don't anymore, but they allwere familiar with trying to get
(08:18):
an ox or a cow or a sheep orsome animal to do what you want,
a cow or a sheep or some animalto do what you want.
And so Plato and many otherancients said that the mind is
like a charioteer trying tosteer his two horses.
He needs the horses to go, butyou know, they're kind of stupid
and they have minds of theirown and it's a struggle, because
(08:38):
everybody can see that peoplestruggle against their own
impulses.
So when I was writing thehappiness hypothesis, I wanted a
good metaphor, but all that wewere learning in psychology was
you know what?
The charioteer, the driver, thereason, as Plato said, is
actually not that smart, notthat independent, and that in
(09:00):
fact it's the horses that are incontrol.
But that doesn't make any sense.
That's a terrible metaphor.
So I just said well, we need amuch more intelligent animal.
So I picked an elephant.
It's intelligent, it's big, andso imagine a small boy sitting
on the back of a large elephant.
And if the elephant has nodesires and the boy tries to,
you know, tug it to the left,it'll go to the left.
(09:20):
But as soon as the elephantreally wants something, the boy
on his back can't really forceit to do anything.
So that's why I coined thismetaphor of the mind is divided,
like a rider, which isconscious reasoning, on the back
of the large elephant, which isespecially intuition.
It's all the automaticprocesses, and I found that this
(09:41):
metaphor so when I you know,when I die, you know, thomas
Jefferson had just three thingshe wanted on his grave, one of
which was that he founded theUniversity of Virginia, and so
one of mine will be he's the guywho made up the ride or an
elephant metaphor, becausepsychotherapists love it, like a
lot of people really like it,because it really helps them
understand themselves andespecially, how do you influence
other people?
(10:05):
And this is for all.
Everybody listening, foreverybody listening.
We all have to persuade people,whether it's people you're
negotiating with, or bosses, oremployees, or donors or whatever
.
And the main piece of advice Ihave for you is talk to the
elephant first.
Don't go in with here are thereasons why my proposal is good
for you.
I mean, that's better thansaying here are the reasons why
(10:25):
it's good for me.
But don't start with thereasons.
Start by appealing to theelephant.
Develop trust, develop a senseof a shared future or some sort
of bonds of the past.
Get them excited about thevision.
So if the elephant is leaningyour way, then all you need to
do is give good reasons to therider and you're done.
The deal's closed.
(10:48):
But if the elephant's leaning,against you.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
there's no amount of reasoning you can give.
That's going to close the deal.
Well, I'm glad you brought thisup, as we were talking about
just prior to recording um uh,and there are a number of people
in the world of philanthropyand fundraising who listen to
this podcast and, as part of ourtraining, when we talk, talk to
our own staff as well as umpeople who work for other uh
nonprofit organizations or inthe world of fundraising, or
even in in um uh, in programworld uh, we use your metaphor
(11:15):
all the time Talk to theelephant and people tend to yeah
, once you talk to the writer umuh, way too much or too quickly
, I guess, perhaps, rather thangetting the elephant steered in
the right direction first,that's right.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
That's right.
So, especially in politicallife, if you only talk to the
elephant, then you're ademagogue, and that's what our
founding fathers warned aboutand that's what we see with many
of the populist movements thaterupt all around the world.
But you know, if you have goodarguments and good evidence,
then just wise persuasion isfirst talk to the elephant and
(11:51):
then give all your arguments andevidence.
And if we look at America'spolitical history, we've had
three presidents in my lifetimewho were great at it, and I
imagine it's going to jump outat everyone who they were.
Certainly Ronald Reagan andBill Clinton.
And Barack Obama was brilliantas an orator, although and he
really understood this but hewas not quite as much of a
(12:12):
genius in just dailyconversation as were Reagan and
Clinton.
But those three really knew howto talk to the elephant.
The Democrats kept nominatingpeople like Michael Dukakis or
Al Gore or John Kerry, who werejust not very good at it.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yes, a little more writer-focused than they were.
That's right Not to leave thismetaphor too quickly, and this
is going in a little bitdifferent direction than the
were.
That's right Not to leave thismetaphor too quickly, and this
is going in a little bitdifferent direction than the
political.
But it seems.
This is why it seems to me thatancient writers, philosophers
or thinkers let's put it thatway would insist on moral
(12:50):
education as being essential tobeing able to do good.
Moral reasoning Is that right,like an education of the
emotions and habits is the onlyway you can actually think
rightly is to get that right.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Absolutely, absolutely.
And I noticed on your web page,where you have the About Us
section, our philosophy Inoticed that you quote
Tocqueville and you quote one ofmy favorite sociologists,
robert Nisbet, and so I think,yes, it looks from your side.
Is that you really understandwhat the ancients understood
(13:25):
about society and about the needfor people to be bound into a
society?
And so I just want to give youthis.
There's one quote.
Oh, here it is.
Yes, so the ancients.
So, all over the world, the waythat children have always been
educators, with stories, oftenwithin a religious context and
with an overarching framework ofvirtue, ethics, that is the
(13:47):
goal of child rearing.
The goal of education is tocultivate virtues, and America
dropped that, especially in the60s and 70s.
We had this ridiculous thingcalled the values clarification
movement, and, oh, we shouldn'ttell children what to think.
We should tell them, teach themhow to think, and, of course,
they have to figure out theirown values, which is like
telling children we shouldn'tteach them English.
(14:09):
They should develop their ownlanguage no no you're being
prepared to be successful in asociety, you've got to learn
that you know you have tounderstand what the virtues are
and how to cultivate them andwhy they're good for you.
So moral instruction kind offell out in the late 20th
century and that's why we sawthe rise of character education.
So I think there was a lot ofphilanthropic interest,
especially on the right in the80s and 90s, as a way to fill
(14:32):
that void.
And now, ironically, all thesecular schools that were
supposed to be going in forsecular education a lot of them
have adopted thisquasi-religious indoctrination
system of well, wokeness is thecasual, is the common term for
it.
But it's a real problem becauseit really does have a lot of
the hallmarks of a religion.
(14:52):
And my daughter right now islearning.
She comes home, they'relearning about religion in sixth
grade and they learned aboutJainism and Hinduism and, you
know, soon they'll be learningabout Judaism, and so that's
great.
I want them to learn about allsorts of religions.
And my high school kid I'mhappy to have him learn about
(15:13):
critical race theory and otherthings.
But you know I don't want theschool to like require my kid to
be a Jain or a Hindu or aMormon, or to embrace, you know,
these new ideologies.
So maybe we're jumping ahead ofourselves.
Speaker 1 (15:26):
But this is very much on my mind.
Speaker 2 (15:28):
I imagine it's on the mind of a lot of your listeners
too.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
I imagine it is too.
It's certainly much on my mind,and, from what I hear from our
listeners, it's on their mind aswell.
And is that the best way, thento?
I was going to ask you thisquestion how do you understand
the wokeness phenomenon,essentially filling this void,
this vacuum of moral, giving theelephant direction?
I don't want to keep mixing themetaphor.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I'll handle it for you.
When Greg Lukianoff and I wrotethe Coddling the American Mind,
it's because Greg started tosee some weird stuff happening
on campus in 2014.
He saw students for the firsttime.
Students were demandingprotections from books and
speakers and ideas.
They were demanding triggerwarnings, safe spaces,
microaggression, training, bias,response teams all this stuff
(16:18):
that was nowhere to be seen in2011, 2012.
And then suddenly, 2013, 2014,.
Greg starts seeing all thisstuff.
And Greg, who had learned CBT orcognitive behavioral therapy,
when he had a suicidaldepression in 2007, greg saw
students making the exactcognitive distortions that he
had learned to stop doing.
And so Greg came to me withthis idea that somehow colleges
(16:41):
are making students sick, thinkin distorted ways and this is
going to lead to them beingdepressed.
And I thought this was a greatidea and I suggested we write it
up and we submitted to theAtlantic.
Well, we didn't know it at thetime.
This is 2015.
We didn't know it at the time,but the mental health epidemic,
(17:02):
the depression and anxietyepidemic, had begun in 2012,
2013 among American teenagers.
We were among the first toreally see the full force of it
on college campuses because, allof a sudden, all of our mental
health centers were floodedRight around.
2015 is when the flood hit andwe began to see this weird moral
(17:24):
system that had no name at thetime, but it was later called
wokeness.
And then, only a year or twoago, did we get the data from
2015, that show that somethingstrange happened to white people
, to white liberals, especiallywhite liberal women, that their
attitudes really, really changedon matters of race and
immigration in 2015.
And it's stunning the graphs soanyway.
(17:47):
In other words, white liberalssuddenly moved to the left of
African Americans on all kindsof questions about race, racial
justice and immigration.
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Right and this is pre-Trump.
This is not 20th centuryExactly.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
That's right.
That's right.
So this is called the GreatAwokening.
Matt Iglesias at Vox coined theterm because it was like a
religious revival, and some ofthe doctrines of it are you know
, everything is to be understoodthrough the lens of power and
privilege.
Everyone can be assignedidentities, you know, white or
non-white, male or non-male,tall or not tall, fertile or not
(18:25):
fertile almost anything you canimagine Make it a binary
dimension.
And the people who have thepowerful side are the bad people
who oppress everyone else.
So everyone else has to uniteagainst the bad people.
So the victims are the goodpeople.
Anyway, it's you know.
It's not that there's zerotruth to this way of looking at
things, but if this is theprimary lens that young people
are adopting in college, youknow they're crippling their
ability to understand the worldor to influence it or to enjoy
(18:47):
it.
And here's the most stunningthing, which in this was not
known a year ago, and I've justbeen digging into the data
recently.
When you look at the mentalhealth crisis and you zoom in on
what's happened, it turns outthat there's a correlation with
ideology.
So people who say they'reliberal are more depressed, but
this is only true for whitepeople.
(19:08):
And so when Zach Goldberg, agraduate student, first put this
out on Twitter, digging intopublic data sets from Pew and
American National ElectionSurvey, when he first put this
out, I said, you know.
I said, can you zoom in?
You know, zoom in for justwomen and then just young women,
because Gen Z is really wherethe most problems, the problems
(19:30):
are.
The depression is.
Most problems the problems arethe depression is.
And it turns out that thepercentage that have a mental
disorder, that say that theyhave a mental disorder, goes up
and up and up so that when youlook at just so, no group is
above 35% saying yes, I have amental disorder, and the
conservative groups are allbelow 25%.
But if you zoom in on young, so, uh, 18 to 30 years old, uh,
(19:56):
women who say white women, whosay that they are on the left,
you get 54 percent of them saythey've been told they have a
mental disorder.
And this it's unbelievable,it's absolutely stunning.
But this really vindicatesgreg's initial idea that if you
embrace this way of thinking,you know that as American
(20:16):
society has gotten better andbetter, fairer and fairer, more
civil rights for everyone, youknow amazingly speedy increase
in rights for LGBT, so you know,everything's getting better and
better.
The environment is gettingbetter other than global warming
, but there's all kinds of goodthings happening is getting
better other than global warming, but there's all kinds of good
things happening as this ishappening.
(20:40):
If some young people buy intothis ideology that everything is
power structures, everything isshot through with white
supremacy, well yeah, of coursethey're depressed.
You know they're missing thegreatest.
You know what Deidre McCluskeyhas called the great enrichment
that began in the 1600s.
Like you know, it's.
Things are getting better andbetter.
Poverty is going down.
All sorts of good things arehappening, but some people are
(21:00):
trapped in this ideology thattells them not just everything
is terrible, but that the powerstructures hate them and will
only pay them 78 cents for everydollar that they will pay to
the man next to them, which isnot true at all.
That wage gap statistic is onlytrue if you just look at raw
numbers and you don't takeaccount of hours worked or
occupation worked in.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Anyway, sorry I'm going on.
No, this is great.
So my question to you aboutthat is do you think it is
actually a higher incidence ofmental disorder, or is it also
by both both and a highembracing or looking for mental
disorder in the sense thatvictimization now confers
(21:41):
prestige and status?
Speaker 2 (21:43):
Yes, that's right.
So I see the point of yourquestion.
That's a very good question.
So first, is it just thatbecause it's prestigious to be,
to to be mentally ill or to havedepression, anxiety, um, it's
prestigious to be a victim?
Is it just that people areclaiming this but they're not
really depressed or anxious,they're not really feeling like
that, to which I would say firstum, there's a lot of research
(22:06):
in psychology, includingclinical psychology, that when
you label people and theyembrace the label, it becomes
self-fulfilling.
So it is incredibly foolish, youknow.
I mean the idea of encouraging.
You know, if a gay studentcomes to NYU, this is like the
most gay-friendly school in themost gay-friendly neighborhood,
the West Village.
You know that you couldpossibly find.
(22:27):
But if a gay student comes toNYU, that student will be, will
refer to him or herself as amarginalized student.
I am marginalized, I have amarginalized identity, you know.
So the point is, if you couldlabel people and then they
embrace it, it actually becomesself-fulfilling.
The second thing is we knowthat the mental illness stats
(22:47):
it's not just that they'rechanging the threshold or
they're changing their embracingidentity, because you see the
same pattern for self-harm andsuicide.
Those are not self-report.
Those are hard data on hospitaladmissions and actual deaths.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
Yes, and that's what I actually thought of that after
I asked the question that onedoesn't fake that sort of thing.
That is, they say hard datadoesn't self-report.
At the same time, isn't it alsothe case and I like that we're
just sort of veering wherever wewant to go here?
Isn't it also the case thatisn't suicide and certainly
lifespan suicide up and lifespandown among white males?
Speaker 2 (23:27):
Yes, that's right.
That's a somewhat differentproblem that I'm not at all an
expert in, but yes, lifeexpectancy is decreasing among
non-college educated people,particularly white people,
particularly white men, andthat's in part because of the
opioid crisis.
It's also partly the collapseof institutions back to 1960, I
(23:50):
think it is.
If you look at the top quarterand the bottom quarter, the
income distribution, theirlikelihood to be married wasn't
very different.
Their likelihood to be going tochurch regularly or religious
worship regularly wasn't verydifferent, and since then, many
people have observed that thecollege educated have stayed
(24:10):
with these good habits.
The college educated, you knowthey might talk like liberals on
matters of sex and marriage,but they act like conservatives,
whereas you know more theworking class and in some cases
you know some conservatives willtalk like conservative, acts
like libertines.
And so, getting back again toyou, know what you write about,
about the importance of meetinginstitutions and civil society,
(24:33):
about churches, synagogues,rotary clubs.
These are the in the righteousmind.
I call these the moralexoskeletons that we need, that
human beings can't just figureout their own morality.
They need a sort of a moralexoskeleton that's given to them
by religion or something,attempt is given to them by
(24:56):
religion or something, and ifthere's nothing there, if you
tear down religion, as hashappened in a stunningly rapid
turn since 2000,.
Recent data just came out lastweek showing a stunning decline
in people who even identify asbelonging to a religion.
It dropped below 50%, I believe, just recently.
So if you have this quick dropin religion, many have been
writing about including me andGreg about how people still have
(25:19):
religious minds and whatthey're going to do is they're
going to embrace something thatfits the same slots as religion
but is not tested by time, andthat is wokeness.
You know it's also on the farright, you also have all kinds
of crazy conspiracy theories andyou have neo-Nazis.
So you know I'm a nonpartisan.
I see the madness on bothextremes.
(25:40):
But yes, wokeness I do believefunctions structurally just like
a religion and specificallyChristianity.
It's kind of a form ofChristianity with no grace, no
redemption, no forgiveness, justbitterness.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
None of the good stuff.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
None of the good stuff.
You got it.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
That's right, that's right, We'll be right back with
Dr Jonathan Haidt and he keepstalking about his book, the
Righteous Mind and the coddlingof the American mind, what they
mean for the Art of Association.
Here in a second the Americanmind of what they mean for the
Art of.
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Association here in a second.
Hi, this is Joe Gerecht, thedirector of the Center for Civil
Society.
The Center for Civil Society,also known as C4CS, is proud to
produce the Givers, Doers andThinkers podcast.
At C4CS, our mission is tostrengthen civil society.
We do this by conductingprograms and activities that
(26:37):
increase the knowledge andefficacy of America's nonprofit
organizations, charitablefoundations and individual
donors.
We offer classes, webinars,conferences and more to help
your organization have a biggerimpact.
If you'd like to learn moreabout the Center for Civil
Society and our programs, pleasevisit us online at
(27:00):
centerforcivilsocietyorg.
Thank you for listening to theGDT podcast.
Speaker 1 (27:08):
All right, we are back with Dr Jonathan Haidt,
social psychologist at New YorkUniversity, author of the
Righteous Mind, also co-authorof the Coddling of the American
Mind.
There's a I want to talk aboutone.
There's a lot to talk about andwe've been going all over the
place, which is great.
One part of the calling of theAmerican mind that I want to
(27:31):
make sure that we do talk about,because it's um very germane to
um our concerns about civilsociety and mediating
institutions and that sort ofthing, and it's um about play.
It's very surprising.
It's one of the um.
I guess when you hear it it'snot surprising, but I was
surprised to read it on how umsurprised to read it on how the
(27:52):
death of unsupervised play,unscheduled play, is very
corrosive and it turns out inthe art of democracy the habits
of democracy that we need tocultivate in order to have a
democracy.
Can you?
Speaker 2 (28:09):
explain that.
Yes, so this was the most funchapter to write all the
research on the effects of play.
And so the thing to realize isthat we're mammals and all
mammals play.
So if you look at, you knowbaby mice, baby dogs, baby
whales.
If you're a mammal, you havethis big brain, comparatively,
(28:33):
and you have an extendedchildhood in which your mother
or parents invest a lot in youin order to grow your brain.
But if you just stay with yourparents, you don't get to grow
your brain.
That's where you're safe.
So mammals are programmed toyou know you find your safe to
grow your brain.
That's where you're safe.
So mammals are programmed toyou know you find your safe base
, your parent, your attachmentfigure, and then that gives you
(28:53):
the confidence to go out intothe world, at first just a
little bit at a time, and thenyou get more confidence to go
out further and further.
And this is the way mammalsalways have been, and this is
the way Homo sapien mammals wereup until about 1990.
And so I was born in 1963.
And so my entire life.
There was a giant crime wave.
(29:13):
It began in the late 60s and itjust vanished mysteriously
during the 90s.
So even Gen X.
I'm at the end of the babyboomers.
But baby boomers and Gen X andthe early millennials we all
went out to play between ages ofsix and eight is when we were
let out.
I've done this poll all overthe country.
It was, you know, first it'sfirst, second or third grade.
(29:36):
That's when kids got to playwithout supervision.
And when you're playing withoutsupervision you have to make
the rules consensually.
You have to learn to enforcethe rules.
You have to learn that.
You know what.
Sometimes there are reasons tohave exceptions to the rules.
You know, this kid has a brokenleg so we'll give him an extra
five seconds or whatever it is.
So you learn.
Kids learn so much by having towork out problems and conflicts
themselves.
(29:56):
And we did that all during thecrime wave.
And then suddenly in the 1990swe began to freak out about
child abduction.
Now there are almost no childabductions in this country other
than by the non-custodialparent in a divorce case.
It's 100 times a year.
A stranger kidnaps a kid.
It's almost unheard of, butbecause of cable TV we suddenly
(30:18):
all heard about it all the time.
So we freak out that we thinkif your kid is outside
unsupervised they'll be snatched.
So we lock them up, we don'tlet them out, and so, anyway, I
could go on and on about this.
But the point is, the point isthat free play is as essential,
it's much more essential thanvitamin C.
I mean, well, okay, you needvitamin C, it's as essential as
(30:40):
vitamin C.
And it would be as if, in theearly 90s, we just decided no
more vitamin C because therewere three cases of kids who
overdosed on vitamin C.
So no more vitamin C.
And I think that's what the CDCwould say if they were in
charge of things back then.
But anyway, just referring tothe fact that they just
suspended the Johnson andJohnson vaccine because there
were six cases of blood clots,yeah, out of millions and
(31:04):
millions of doses given, therewere six cases in which there
were blood clots and two of themwere somewhat serious.
Anyway, don't get me started onthat.
But actually you know what?
Again, it is this safety as amindset.
It's this mindset let's alwaysgo for the worst.
Speaker 1 (31:18):
That would be.
The next word I introduced intoour discussion is safetyism.
This is sort of a brutalistideology that cuts across even
partisan lines in many ways,doesn't it?
Speaker 2 (31:30):
So safetyism is the irrational worship of safety.
Of course we want our kids tobe safe and I'm glad that
consumer products are safer forkids.
But as the world's gottenphysically safer and safer and
safer and safer from crime,we've lowered the bar and we
freak out about any conceivablerisk to our kids, not realizing
that by overprotecting them, bydenying them free play, by
(31:52):
protecting them from stress, byprotecting them from insults, by
protecting them from unpleasantsituations, it's as if we are
preventing them from walking.
You know, if we said, oh,walking is too dangerous because
you might fall, well, thatwould be really stupid and in a
sense we're saying free play istoo dangerous because you might
get hurt.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
So anyway, is our conception of health just too
narrow.
It's only biological health.
You've already brought up allthese real mental health
epidemics and crises that don'tseem to me get all that much
attention.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
I would say that our conception is not at all just
physical.
It's become very much aboutemotional, mental health, which
in general I'm in favor of, butonly if it's done right.
And what we've done is we haveembraced some kind of wacky
California.
You know psychological,progressive ideas about stress
and self-esteem.
You know that was a terriblemistake to embrace self-esteem
(32:48):
in the 1980s.
Yeah, you know, healthy peoplehave higher self-esteem, but
it's because they did things toearn it.
If you just tell kids you'regreat and they don't learn how,
to earn it.
You're setting them all self upfor disappointment and failure.
So, anyway, and then we did thesame thing with stress.
Yes, stress is bad, but onlychronic stress.
Chronic stress, you know, ifyou keep your stress systems
(33:10):
turned on every day, you know,for months, yeah, you're going
to get stress-related disordersand your brain is going to
change and see the world as morethreatening.
And you might be right thatit's more threatening.
So chronic stress is bad.
But we overcorrected and we gotthe stupid idea that stress is
bad.
No, stress is essential.
Kids have to experience stress.
And then they learn thatsituations, uh, they can face
(33:33):
situations, and then they're not.
They're not stressed about them, Uh.
And so we, we see the thingslike it's freaky.
You know, kids come to collegenow and they'll freak out if
they if you know, if there's acockroach in their room or if
there's a mouse or something youknow, they'll call the police
because they've been protectedfrom things, They've never had
to deal with things.
So I don't want to be criticalof Gen Z, because it's not at
(33:55):
all their fault.
They are the generation that hadthe bad luck to be born, just
as their parents and everyoneelse in America and Canada and
the UK to some extent, werefreaking out about smaller and
smaller and non-existent fears,and then they got anti-bullying
policies after Columbine.
So that was 1999.
By 2001, most states havemandated anti-bullying, and
(34:18):
while I can't prove that this iscausal and of course bullying
that goes on for more than a dayis terrible and should be
stopped but what happened onceagain was conflict is often seen
as bullying.
The bar for what counts asbullying has come down so low
that kids don't get practice andconflict resolution.
So the subtitle of our book ishow good intentions and bad
(34:42):
ideas are setting up ageneration for failure.
And that's exactly what we'vedone over and over trying to
help kids without a properunderstanding that they're
anti-fragile, they needchallenge, they need free play,
they need to sometimes be afraidof something and overcome it.
Not realizing all of thesethings.
We've protected them andprotected them and protected
them, and now they're moreanxious than ever and more
(35:05):
fragile.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
What has the role of?
You mentioned social mediaearlier.
One of my questions I was goingto ask you is on a one to 10
scale, how much of a disasterhas social media been for
humanity?
Speaker 2 (35:16):
Yeah, so there's two different major harms.
So just to be clear, theinternet is absolutely fantastic
.
It does some bad things, butthe cost benefit ratio for the
internet is wildly positive.
Now let's zoom in on socialmedia, that is, platforms on
which users create content andothers, including strangers,
rate and evaluate that content.
Are we better off because wehave that?
(35:38):
Well, you know, maybe there aresome things that are good about
it, but there are clearly somethings that are terrible about
it, especially for teenagers andespecially for teenage girls.
And so on the democracy front,social media has made it really
easy to tear things down.
We thought in the beginning ofthe Arab Spring back in 2009,
many people thought that socialmedia was going to be a great
(36:00):
boon for democracy.
It's going to depose tyrants.
But it turns out social mediais really good at tearing things
down, but it never.
It builds up.
So we have more and moreinstability, more and more
distrust of everything andeveryone, almost all
institutions, and so socialmedia, I believe, has been
terrible for democracy andterrible for the United States.
(36:20):
All kinds of conspiracytheories, all kinds of
polarization, hatred.
So that's one battle I'mfighting is to find ways to
reform social media, since it'snot such an outrage platform,
but the other domain in whichit's harmful is mental health,
and we have a sudden, very steep, almost like a hockey stick
(36:41):
shaped graph of depression,anxiety and self-harm for girls
girls even more than boys.
It begins in 2020.
Uh, plus or minus a year,depending on whether you're
where you are in the us, orcanada or the uk.
Um, so it just comes out ofnowhere, starts shooting up, and
that's what greg began to seein 2013-14 and, not
(37:02):
coincidentally, even thoughsocial media comes out in the
early 2000s, it only gets reallyengaging between 2009, 2011.
Because that's when Facebookintroduces the like button,
twitter copies it.
Twitter introduces the retweetbutton, facebook copies it and
suddenly there's a lot morefeedback and we turn an entire
generation of kids.
They flood onto social mediaaround 2010, 2011.
(37:23):
They're all on it every day,daily, by 2011,.
They weren't on it daily 2008.
So kids are flooding onto itand it's a system in which other
kids are doling outreinforcements and punishments,
just like bf skinner trainingpigeons.
And what is he training andwhat is he training?
What are people training eachother to do?
Um, well, um, especiallyinstagram.
(37:45):
Um, you know instagram, whichis visual.
Instagram has a.
You know twitter is, which isvisual.
Instagram has a.
You know Twitter is a dumpsterfire.
Twitter is full of nasty stuff.
Instagram is not.
But it turns out that even thenice stuff is really bad for
young girls because all theseother girls are showing off
their perfect lives and if Imean, they're just stunning
demonstrations of the beautyfilters so girls now are.
(38:07):
They show themselves as beingmuch more beautiful than they
are in real life, which you know.
Girls already had huge problemswith eating disorders, social
comparison, objectification.
Social media multiplies all ofthat by 10.
So it's not a coincidence thatthe girls' rate goes up much
higher than the boys'.
It's not a coincidence that thesteepest percentage increase
(38:27):
are the 10 to 14 old girls, thepreteens who should not even be
on social media.
But they just lie about theirage.
There's no stop, there's nocheck, there's no obstacle.
They just lie about their age.
They're on Instagram by sixthgrade, at least in New York City
, by kids school.
So anyway, I could talk foreverabout this.
But social media, social media,it wasn't bad until 2009.
(38:48):
And by 2012, it has changed thefabric of social space-time.
So everything is going haywireOur politics, politics and
democracies around the world,misinformation, teen mental
health, craziness atuniversities.
We now live in a topsy-turvyworld that is rapidly changing,
in which truth is hard to findand in which there is no more
(39:09):
authority, no more trust.
Now ask me what I think aboutsocial media.
Speaker 1 (39:14):
I think that gets to some of the major points.
Yeah, just somewhat disastrousfor both our civic health and
mental health, especially incertain demographics.
But you mentioned let's just goon to this at this point um, is
there anything that can be doneabout it?
You said you were.
Speaker 2 (39:30):
You mentioned just in passing that there was
something you were trying to, uh, to do with respect to it I
spent my career at theuniversity of virginia in the
psychology department and in2011, I moved to nyu stern to a
business school.
Um, just sort of a fluke that Ithat I came here and they liked
me.
I like them.
Once I got here, I I decided towrite a mission statement,
because, you know, in businessyou have a mission statement and
(39:52):
all that.
So my mission statement, um, isto use, uh, my research and
that of others in moral andsocial psychology to help
important institutions workbetter.
So I wrote that in 2012, whichis actually just before
everything got weird, but Ithink it really has stood the
(40:13):
test of time as to what I canfocus on and what America can
focus on, because we have tolook institution by institution
and strengthen them.
And then we have to look at thecauses, especially of what is
devastating Gen Z.
So let's start with the Gen Zthing.
So, if there are two majorcauses, there's the vast
(40:34):
overprotection and there's thetoo early exposure to social
media.
Well, for the overprotection, Ico-founded an organization with
Lenore Skenazy, the wonderfulwoman who wrote the book Free
Range Kids, wonderful woman whowrote the book Free Range Kids,
and so if listeners go toletgroworg, they'll find all
(40:55):
kinds of great ideas, especiallyif your kids are under 12,
elementary and middle school.
All kinds of great ideas forhow to help your kids become
healthy mammals who have learnedhow to deal with things and do
things themselves, and your ownlife will be happier and
there'll be less conflict andyour kids will actually be
successful as adults rather thanmiserable failures.
So I would urge people to go toletgroworg and, on the social
(41:15):
media thing, there are a varietyof organizations that are
working on this.
If listeners go tothecoddlingcom the website for
my book with Greg and then theyclick on solutions better social
media We've got a lot moreinformation there they can they
can learn about and it'll helpthem set policy in their own
homes if they have teams.
(41:38):
And then we have to work oninstitution by institution.
So that means we have to lookat K-12 schools.
We have to look at universities.
So I co-founded HeterodoxAcademy in 2015,.
Not because of the students, itwas originally just because I
noticed that the social sciencesI'm a social psychologist and
in all the social sciences theylean very far left.
(42:00):
Now, leaning is okay as long asthere are people on the other
side to push back, but in manyfields there's nobody on the
other side to push back.
But in many fields there'snobody, and so all of these are,
I think you say in your book.
Speaker 1 (42:09):
the average ratio is like three or four to one or two
or three to one.
Three or four to one is fine.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
We'd be fine if we had three or four to one left or
right, but in my field it'sover 20 to one and in fact I
know the one guy.
There's only one.
No, I'm joking.
There's several, but there'sonly one who's out.
There's only one who's publiclyknown to be conservative.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
I knew him when I was in graduate school too.
Yeah right.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
That guy, yeah.
And so we advocate forincreasing viewpoint diversity,
not as an end in itself, notbecause we love conservatives
I'm a centrist Democrat myselfbut because we need viewpoint
diversity.
We need people to challengeviewpoint diversity.
We need people to challenge.
Otherwise we get ridiculous,poorly thought out, dogmatic,
(42:54):
politicized thinking about themost important social problems
like race and gender andimmigration and child rearing
and everything else.
I know many philanthropistsgive to their alma mater.
Many philanthropists probablythe majority seem to be
interested in education.
If you're interested insupporting improvements to
education, the educationalclimate, I urge you to check out
heterodoxacademyorg.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
Consider supporting our work, learn more about it,
yeah it's a fantasticorganization, and then we just
add on.
Speaker 2 (43:21):
So, within Heterodox Academy, something that we
created was called Open Mind.
It's a program to actuallyexpose people to the best
thinking left, right andlibertarian and teach them how
to deal with it.
Teach them why we draw a lot onJohn Stuart Mill.
He said, well, you're betteroff engaging with people who
think differently than you thanpeople who think just like you.
And so we ended up spinning itout.
(43:44):
It's its own 501c3, because itturns out, even though we
created for college students, itturns out the need for in the
corporate world is explodingbecause gen z, gen z you know
kids born in 1996 and later theygraduated from college.
In 2018, they began to graduateand enter the work world, and
so, just after our book waspublished in 2018, suddenly
(44:07):
we're hearing all these reportsfrom corporate, from the
corporate world, about studentswho, you know, they get a bad
performance review and theyfreak out and their mother calls
them.
So all kinds of weird thingsare happening in not in all
industries, but in industriesthat hire from the most
progressive elite, liberal artsschools and top universities.
Those industries the creativeindustries, tech and many
(44:31):
nonprofits are really sufferingfrom a huge rise of internal
conflict as they try to figureout how to incorporate Gen Z.
So openmindplatformorg isanother organization that I
co-founded to try to strengtheninstitutions.
Speaker 1 (44:45):
What is your thought about the future here, besides
the kind of work you're doingfront lines, these organizations
, all of which are clearly doingwonderful work is a way to kind
of overcome these really bad,health-inducing trends lie in
that kind of work, or is thereany kind of course?
Do you see any sort of internal, intrinsic sort of course
(45:05):
corrector that will kick in atsome point?
You know, you feel like it's sounhealthy, so mentally, you
know, distraught, so muchdisorder, before people sort of
light bulbs go on in a kind of amass way.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
So I used to.
I used to sort of leanpessimistic, but with with some
real hope and some clear visionsof how things could turn around
.
Now that I see just how muchsocial media has destroyed any
possibility of shared truth, ofshared facts, of consensus, now
(45:40):
I'm more pessimistic.
So I think that if we look inon America in 30 or 40 years,
things will probably be better.
Things will probably be muchbetter, just because things
generally do get better overtime.
I agree with Steve Pinker andvarious others who pointed out
that every age people thinkthings are going to hell.
But yet you know, century aftercentury, life gets better and
(46:02):
better.
But I think for the next fiveor 10 years, I suspect, things
are going to get worse, worsefor mental health, worse for
increasing conflict in ourschools and institutions,
corporations, and worse in ourpolitics.
So I don't see anything turningaround very soon.
But when it does turn around, Ithink what will need to happen
is that the new dynamics thatsocial media has really given a
(46:25):
huge megaphone to the far rightand the far left, to extremists,
people who are angry, peoplewho are posturing and virtue
signaling and great research byMore in Common, if listeners
Google the Hidden Tribes Report,a brilliant report going into
exactly what are the differentsubgroups, politically and
psychologically, of Americans,and so the extremes are only
(46:47):
about 12%, 13% of the country,and the rest of us are what they
call, or almost the rest of usare what they call, the
exhausted majority.
And so and that includes, sothat includes, you know, what
I'm hoping is that basicallycenter left and center right and
a large number of people whoaren't really affiliated can
(47:07):
really come together and standup to their extremes.
Now we're not seeing that.
On the right, I mean, we areseeing a few people have stood
up to the kind of the Trumpist,you know, conspiracy theory
stuff.
There are a few in the SenateHouse who've done that, but not
very many.
And on the left, we're seeingit.
We're seeing a few professorsstanding up to the sort of the
(47:28):
woke mania, the critical racetheory stuff, but it's very few.
And because people are afraid,I mean your reputation can be
destroyed, and it's not justyour reputation.
Things are so nasty now.
Person left stands up to thefar left like you're actually
putting your family at a littlebit of risk, like people, you
(47:48):
know people will sendthreatening letters and death
threats.
Um, I don't know if anyone'sbeen murdered yet because of
this, but it's very scary tohave people threatening the life
of your children so, and thathappens, so I don't know what.
You know how we get past this.
I'm thinking a lot about victornavalny these days, the russian
dissident who has just riskedhis life over and over again,
and I'm trying to use him forinspiration to be a little
(48:10):
bolder myself.
But it's good, I think, if thecenter left and center right and
I think here philanthropy couldreally do a lot, and we're
seeing some of this.
We are actually seeing somereally nice collaborations, you
know, like the Koch Foundationand Soros.
Thankfully.
Yes, koch and Soros, thank you.
Yes, koch and Soros teamed up alot, and we are seeing.
(48:32):
When I've been to events fordemocracy, I'm very involved
with various efforts to improveAmerican democracy and we often
do see center-right andcenter-left coming.
You don't see, I don't know anyfar-right foundations, but the
far-left ones tend not to showup.
But I do think thatphilanthropy can play a big role
in building bridges, and theyare.
There actually is a lot ofsupport for bridge-building
(48:53):
organizations such as Open Mind.
Speaker 1 (48:56):
Dr Haidt, thank you for being with us today.
Where can people find youonline?
Are you in the dumpster fireknown as Twitter, or do you stay
away from that dumpster fire?
Speaker 2 (49:05):
Yeah, no, I'm in it and stay away from that.
Yeah, no, I'm, I'm in it and I,you know I've kind of enjoy and
hate it at the same time.
And you know, if you're ajournalist or a social scientist
, you kind of need to be.
But my homepage isjonathanheitcom and that links
to all the other pages and again, the it's heterodoxacademyorg
and openmindplatformorg are myphilanthropic projects that are
(49:28):
trying to address these problems.
So thank you very much, jeremy,for giving me this chance to
talk to your listeners and totalk with you.
As you can see, I kind ofenjoyed talking about you.
Speaker 1 (49:42):
I was very much the pleasure.
It was ours.
Thank you so much.
It was an honor to talk to youand good luck with your work.
Thank you for joining us fortoday's episode.
If you enjoyed it, we inviteyou to subscribe and or rate and
review this discussion on Apple, spotify or wherever you listen
to our podcasts and have aguest you'd like to hear from.
Send your requests to ourproducer, katie Janus, at
(50:05):
kjanusatamphilcom.
That's K-J-A-N-U-S at amphilcom.
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