Welcome

I am a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. My mission is to use research on moral psychology to help people understand each other and to help important social institutions work better. To see my current work on social media, visit anxiousgeneration.com. [En Español]

 

Bio

Substack: After Babel

Articles

Research on Social Media

Podcasts

Collaborative Review Docs

Books

The Anxious Generation Cover

The Anxious Generation

This book explains why adolescent mental health collapsed at the same time and in the same way across so many countries in the early 2010s, and what we can do to reverse these alarming trends.

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coddling mind book cover

The Coddling of the American Mind

Gen Z is suffering from rapidly rising rates of anxiety, depression, and fragility. This book explains why, and how to reverse the trends.

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Rightteous mind book cover

The Righteous Mind

This is a comprehensive yet easily readable account of human morality, which enabled us to create civilizations, but set us up for constant conflict too.

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Happiness hypothesis book cover

The Happiness Hypothesis

This book analyzes ten great ideas, discovered across cultures and millennia, and uses them to lay out a path to flourishing today.

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Videos

ExcelinEd Talk: Smartphones vs. Smart Kids

On Real Time with Bill Maher, Oct 2018

Lex Fridman Podcast: The Case Against Social Media, June 2022

RSA Talk: Why a 21st Century Enlightenment Needs Walls, Nov 2018

Major Articles

The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail

in  Psychological Review, 2001

 

The New Synthesis in Moral Psychology

in Science, 2007

 

Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-Identified Libertarians

in PLoS One, 2012, with Ravi Iyer, Spassena Koleva, Jesse Graham, and Peter Ditto

Make Business Ethics a Cumulative Science

In Nature Human Behavior, (2017), with Linda Trevino

 

Recent Essays

Girl sitting inside phone

The Terrible Costs of a Phone-Based Childhood

For a little over a decade, we have been raising children in an environment that is hostile to human development. We need to change that now.

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Illustration by Nicolás Ortega

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

How social media dissolved the mortar of society and brought us into the era of fragmentation.

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Phone Locker

Get Phones Out of Schools Now

They impede learning, stunt relationships, and lessen belonging. They should be banned.

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Projects I Co-Founded

Ethical Systems

A collaboration of 26 leading researchers studying ethics in organizations

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Constructive Dialogue Insitute

Constructive Dialogue Institute

A psychology-based educational platform designed to depolarize campuses, companies, and communities

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Heterodox Academy

A collaboration among 5000 professors promoting open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement within universities

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Let Grow Logo

Let Grow

Making it easy, normal and legal to give kids the independence they need to grow into capable, confident, and happy adults.

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Moral Foundations Theory

A collaboration among social psychologists who study the foundations of morality, in hopes of reducing conflict and polarization

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