Jonathan Haidt

Haidt received a B.A. in philosophy from Yale UniversityYale UniversityYale University is a research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Its predecessor, the Collegiate School, received a charter in 1701. Trustees chose New Haven in 1716; the institution became Yale College in 1718 and Yale University in 1887. Yale provides undergraduate, graduate and professional education and has 14 undergraduate residential colleges. As of October 2026, its president was Maurie McInnis, who took office in July 2024. In 2026, Yale expanded aid for incoming undergraduates and celebrated its 325th anniversary.Open the full entry in 1985 and a PhD in psychology from the University of PennsylvaniaUniversity of PennsylvaniaThe University of Pennsylvania, commonly called Penn, is a private research university and Ivy League member in Philadelphia. It traces its origins to a 1740 charity-school project; Benjamin Franklin proposed his academy in 1749, classes began in 1751, and a 1791 merger established the institution under its present name. Penn has 12 schools, with undergraduate education concentrated in arts and sciences, engineering, nursing and Wharton. Enrollment totaled 29,384 in fall 2025, and the fiscal 2025 endowment was $24.81 billion. As of October 2026, J. Larry Jameson was president, with his term scheduled to end on June 30, 2027.Open the full entry in 1992, with a dissertation on moral judgment, affect and culture.⁠[1]

From 1992 to 1994 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Chicago under Richard Shweder, working on culture and emotion; in August 1995 he became an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, and he was promoted to professor in 2009.⁠[1]

He won the Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology in 2001 and served as the Laurance S. RockefellerLaurance S. RockefellerLaurance S. Rockefeller (1910–2004) was an American venture capital pioneer, conservationist, and philanthropist, and the fourth child of John D. Rockefeller Jr. He invested in emerging technology companies in fields such as aviation and electronics, helped establish several U.S. national parks, and for many years led institutions including Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; he received the Congressional Gold Medal in 1991.Open the full entry Distinguished Visiting Professor at Princeton UniversityPrinceton UniversityPrinceton University is a private university and Ivy League member in Princeton, New Jersey. Chartered on October 22, 1746 as the College of New Jersey, it moved to Princeton in 1756 and adopted its present name in 1896. Undergraduate education leads to A.B. and B.S.E. degrees and emphasizes small-group discussion, independent research and residential college life. Graduate education spans the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences and engineering. As of October 2026, Christopher L. Eisgruber was president. Its 2026–27 operating budget was $3.407 billion, including $342 million for undergraduate aid.Open the full entry in 2006–2007.⁠[2]

In 2006 he published The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.⁠[3]

In March 2008 he gave the talk The moral roots of liberals and conservatives at TED2008, presenting five moral values that underlie political choices and the values liberals and conservatives each tend to honor most.⁠[4]

On March 13, 2012, Pantheon published his The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. The publisher describes the book as arguing that moral judgments arise mainly from gut feelings rather than reasoning, and explaining why liberals, conservatives and libertarians have different intuitions about right and wrong.⁠[5]

On May 9, 2012, New York University’s Stern School of Business announced that Haidt, who had been its Henry Kaufman Visiting Professor of Business Ethics in 2011–2012, would join its faculty that fall as the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership and would create a course called “Ethical Systems Design.”⁠[2]

In 2015 Haidt founded Heterodox Academy with Chris Martin and Nicholas Rosenkranz, prompted by their view that a lack of viewpoint diversity was reducing the quality of research; the organization says that as of 2026 it has more than 8,700 members at over 2,100 institutions.⁠[6]

In September 2015, “The Coddling of the American Mind,” which he co-wrote with Greg LukianoffGreg LukianoffGreg Lukianoff is an American First Amendment lawyer and author who has been president of the free-speech organization the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) since 2006; he wrote Unlearning Liberty and co-wrote The Coddling of the American Mind with Jonathan Haidt.Open the full entry, ran as The Atlantic’s cover story.⁠[7]

On October 30, 2017, the nonprofit Let Grow was launched by Lenore Skenazy, Haidt, Peter Gray and Daniel Shuchman to make it easier for parents and society to give children back their independence. In the release Haidt said that protecting children from germs, bruised feelings and even a frisson of fear had ended up hurting them.⁠[8]

In 2018 he and Lukianoff published The Coddling of the American Mind, which examines the “safetyism” that emerged on American college campuses from 2014 and argues that well-intended but misguided attempts to protect young people are damaging their development and mental health.⁠[9]

He says that in 2018 he set out to write a book on how social media was changing society and degrading democracy, intending one chapter on children, but the data on youth mental health led that chapter to become an entire book.⁠[10]

In 2019 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and named one of the world’s top 50 thinkers by Prospect magazine.⁠[3]

On April 11, 2022, he published the long essay “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” in The Atlantic, using the story of Babel as a metaphor for America’s fracturing in the 2010s.⁠[11]

On June 4, 2022, he was the guest on episode #291 of the Lex FridmanLex FridmanLex Fridman is a Soviet-born, US-raised computer scientist and podcast host who works as an MIT research scientist on human-AI interaction and autonomous driving. His Lex Fridman Podcast is known for hours-long conversations with guests including heads of state and technology leaders.Open the full entry Podcast, titled “The Case Against Social Media,” covering social media and mental health, children’s use of social media, social media and democracy, Elon MuskElon MuskElon Musk is an entrepreneur who founded SpaceX and has long served as chief executive of Tesla; he also took part in creating PayPal, OpenAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He acquired Twitter in 2022, and his businesses span spaceflight, electric vehicles, energy, artificial intelligence, and social media.Open the full entry and Twitter, anonymity and misinformation.⁠[12]

On March 26, 2024, The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Is Causing an Epidemic of Mental Illness was published. The publisher describes it as arguing that between 2010 and 2015 a phone-based childhood replaced a play-based one, disrupting development through sleep deprivation, social deprivation, cognitive fragmentation and addiction.⁠[13]

On March 29, 2024, Candice L. Odgers, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine, published a review in Nature arguing that the book’s claims that digital technology was rewiring children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness were not supported by science, that most data were correlational, and that the focus could distract from the real causes of the youth mental-health crisis.⁠[14]

On April 9, Haidt replied in his Substack newsletter After Babel, arguing that Odgers was wrong to say he had no evidence of causation and that her alternative explanation did not fit the available facts.⁠[15]

Researchers including Andrew Przybylski of the University of OxfordUniversity of OxfordThe University of Oxford is a university in Oxford, England, where teaching existed in some form by 1096; it describes itself as the oldest university in the English-speaking world and is organised as a federal system of the university and dozens of self-governing colleges.Open the full entry and Christopher Ferguson of Stetson University also questioned the book’s causal conclusions and proposals such as no social media before 16, while Haidt’s lead researcher Zach Rausch published a rebuttal to some of the critics.⁠[16]

On May 21, 2025, Rocky Pond Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers, announced The Amazing Generation, a companion to The Anxious Generation written by Haidt and Catherine Price for readers in grades 5 to 8, with release set for December 30, 2025.⁠[17]

In December 2025 Australia began barring under-16s from social media. The legislation stemmed from The Anxious Generation, which had sold 2 million copies, persuading an influential Australian politician; Haidt called the law “a game-changer,” while critics argued that legislative bans would be ineffective, create unintended consequences and infringe on civil liberties.⁠[18]

In January 2026, as Britain and France considered following Australia, the academic disagreement over the book continued; University of Queensland researcher Michael Noetel said Haidt was “more right than his harshest critics admit, and less right than his book implies.”⁠[19]

As of October 2026 he promotes reforms to address the youth mental-health crisis through the nonprofit The TAG Movement.⁠[10]

Personal website: Public link: https://jonathanhaidt.com (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

X: Public account: https://x.com/JonHaidt (opens in a new window)⁠[12]

LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry: Public profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jonathan-haidt-2a594666 (opens in a new window)⁠[10]

University of Virginia: Official website: https://www.virginia.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[3]

New York University: Official website: https://www.nyu.edu/ (opens in a new window)⁠[11]

Heterodox Academy: Official website: https://heterodoxacademy.org/ (opens in a new window)⁠[6]