Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan David Haidt (born October 19, 1963) is an American social psychologist and author.

He is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at the New York University Stern School of Business.

His main areas of study are the psychology of morality and moral emotions.

Haidt's main scientific contributions come from the psychological field of moral foundations theory, which attempts to explain the evolutionary origins of human moral reasoning on the basis of innate, gut feelings rather than logic and reason.

The theory was later extended to explain the different moral reasoning and how they relate to political ideology, with different political orientations prioritizing different sets of morals.

The research served as a foundation for future books on various topics.

He received a BA in philosophy from Yale University in 1985, and an MA in psychology in 1988 and a PhD in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992.

He then studied cultural psychology at the University of Chicago as a postdoctoral fellow, supervised by Jonathan Baron and Alan Fiske (at the University of Pennsylvania), and cultural anthropologist Richard Shweder (University of Chicago).

At Shweder's suggestion, he visited Orissa, India, to continue his research.

In the 1990s, he developed the social intuitionist model, which posits that moral judgment is mostly based on automatic processes—moral intuitions—rather than on conscious reasoning.

People engage in reasoning largely to find evidence to support their initial intuitions.

Haidt's main paper on the social intuitionist model, "The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail", has been cited over 7,800 times.

In 1995, Haidt was hired as an assistant professor at the University of Virginia (UVA), where he worked until 2011, winning four awards for teaching, including a statewide award conferred by the Governor of Virginia.

In 1999, Haidt became active in the new field of positive psychology, studying positive moral emotions.

This work led to the publication of an edited volume, titled Flourishing, in 2003.

In 2004, Haidt began to apply moral psychology to the study of politics, doing research on the psychological foundations of ideology.

In 2004, Haidt began to extend the social intuitionist model to identify what he considered to be the most important categories of moral intuition.

The resulting moral foundations theory, co-developed with Craig Joseph and Jesse Graham, and based in part on the writings of Richard Shweder, was intended to explain cross-cultural differences in morality.

The theory posited that there are at least five innate moral foundations, upon which cultures develop their various moralities, just as there are five innate taste receptors on the tongue, which cultures have used to create many different cuisines.

The five values are:

Haidt and his collaborators asserted that the theory also works well to explain political differences.

Haidt has written three books for general audiences: The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (2006) explores the relationship between ancient philosophies and modern science; The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion (2012) examines how morality is shaped by emotion and intuition more than by reasoning, and why differing political groups have different notions of right and wrong; and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (2018), co-written with Greg Lukianoff, explores the rising political polarization and changing culture on college campuses, and its effects on mental health.

Haidt has critiqued the current state of universities and progressive values.

Haidt is of Jewish descent (although an atheist as regards religion ) and was born in New York City, being raised in Scarsdale, New York.

His grandparents were immigrants from Russia and Poland.

Haidt spent the 2007–2008 academic year at Princeton University as the Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching.

In 2011, after a 16-year stint at UVA, Haidt moved to New York University's Stern School of Business as the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership.

He made the move to New York City with his wife, Jayne, and 2 children.

This work led to the publication in 2012 of The Righteous Mind.

In 2013, he co-founded Ethical Systems, a non-profit collaboration dedicated to making academic research on ethics widely available to businesses.

In 2015, Haidt co-founded Heterodox Academy, a non-profit organization that works to increase viewpoint diversity, mutual understanding, and productive disagreement.

In 2018, Haidt and Richard Reeves co-edited an illustrated edition of John Stuart Mill's On Liberty, titled All Minus One: John Stuart Mill’s Ideas on Free Speech Illustrated (illustrated by Dave Cicirelli).

Haidt's current research applies moral psychology to business ethics.

Haidt's research on morality has led to publications and theoretical advances in four key areas.

Together with Paul Rozin and Clark McCauley, Haidt developed the Disgust Scale, which has been widely used to measure individual differences in sensitivity to disgust.

Haidt, Rozin, and McCauley have written on the psychology of disgust as an emotion that began as a guardian of the mouth (against pathogens), but then expanded during biological and cultural evolution to become a guardian of the body more generally, and of the social and moral order.

With Sara Algoe, Haidt argued that exposure to stories about moral beauty (the opposite of moral disgust) cause a common set of responses, including warm, loving feelings, calmness, and a desire to become a better person.

Haidt called the emotion moral elevation, as a tribute to Thomas Jefferson, who had described the emotion in detail in a letter discussing the benefits of reading great literature.

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

Haidt's principal line of research has been on the nature and mechanisms of moral judgment.