Essays

Featured essays by Jonathan Haidt

Scrutinizing the effects of digital technology on mental health (Dialogue with Nick Allen)
(February 10th, 2020)
A collegial debate on whether social media has adverse outcomes on adolescent mental health

Why it feels like everything is going haywire (with Tobias Rose-Stockwell) (December 2019)
Explores the many ways in which today’s social-media platforms create conditions that may be hostile to democracies success

By mollycoddling our children, we’re fuelling mental illness in teenagers (January 10th, 2019)
Reviews trends in adolescent mental health and offer advice for parents on raising antifragile kids

How to play our way to a better democracy (with Greg Lukianoff) (September 1st, 2018)
Democracy demands teamwork, compromise, respect for rules and a willingness to engage with other opinionated, vociferous individuals. It also demands practice. This article explains why the playground may be the best place to practice

City Journal

The Age of Outrage: What the current political climate is doing to our country and our universities
(German translation is here) (December 17th, 2017)
This essay is an edited version of my Wriston Lecture for the Manhattan Institute, delivered on November 15th

The Fragile Generation (with Lenore Skenazy) (October 26th, 2017)
Explores how bad policy and paranoid parenting are making kids “too safe to succeed”

Trump Breaks a Taboo—and Pays the Price (August 21st, 2017)
Makes the case that taboo and sacredness are among the most important words needed to understand Charlottesville and its aftermath

Why It’s a Bad Idea to Tell Students Words Are Violence (July 18th, 2017)
Explains why the idea that “speech is sometimes violence” on college campuses will make students more anxious and more willing to justify harm

It’s disadvantaged groups that suffer most when free speech is curtailed on campus (With Musa Al-Gharbi) (July 8th, 2017)
Explains why we agree with Harvard’s President, Drew Faust, who warned in her commencement address that any effort to limit some speech “opens the dangerous possibility that the speech that is ultimately censored may be our own”

Chronicle of Higher Education

Intimidation is the new normal on campus (April 26th, 2017)
Explains why any speaker who arouses a protest may now be at risk of a beating

How to Get Beyond our Tribal Politics [Cover Story in Saturday Review] (November 5th, 2016)

When and Why Nationalism Beats Globalism (July 10th, 2016)

Hard Truths About Race on Campus [Cover Story in Saturday Review] (May 6th, 2016)

How Concept Creep is Closing Down Minds (April 10th, 2016)

Moral psychology: An exchange. [Response to T. Shaw] (April 7th, 2016)

The ethics of globalism, nationalism, and patriotism. Minding Nature, 9:3.

Donald Trump supporters think about morality differently than other voters. (February 5th, 2016)

The strongest prejudice was identified. Edge.org, annual question.

The Coddling of the American Mind [Cover story] (September 2015)

The top 10 reasons American politics is so broken (January 7th, 2015)

Wonderful vs. Wonder-Free Companies (March 5th, 2014)

Can you teach businessmen to be ethical? (January 13th, 2014)

Your personality makes your politics (January 9th, 2014)
Includes a brief on-line and indirect measure of political orientation

Of Freedom and Fairness (Spring 2013)
Gives my analysis of the new front line in the American culture war

Moral values and the fiscal cliff (November 16th, 2012)
With Hal Movius. Offers advice on how to negotiate when sacred values make compromise much more difficult.

Romney, Obama, and the new culture war over fairness (October 8th, 2012)

OpEd: We need a little fear (November 7th, 12)
Presents the “asteroids” metaphor, and the claim that each side sees some of the threats facing America but is blind to others