Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt is an American social psychologist and the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. His research has concentrated on moral judgment, moral emotion, culture, and the intuitive processes that often come before conscious reasoning.

He is closely associated with social intuitionism and moral foundations theory. Both approaches begin from the observation that people do not usually reach moral positions by detached calculation alone. Intuition, group loyalty, disgust, care, authority, and ideas about fairness can all shape the reasons people later give for a judgment.

Haidt's books gradually move from individual psychology toward institutions and childhood. The Happiness Hypothesis compares ancient accounts of a good life with modern research. The Righteous Mind examines political and religious disagreement. The Coddling of the American Mind, written with Greg Lukianoff, considers conflict and fragility in education.

The Anxious Generation makes his most recent large public argument: that childhood shifted rapidly from free play toward smartphones and social media, with developmental costs that appear differently across age and sex. Whether or not a reader accepts every causal claim, the book is clearest when it distinguishes a technological product from the social environment created around it.

Start with The Righteous Mind for Haidt's account of moral disagreement. Choose The Happiness Hypothesis for the broader psychological framework, or The Anxious Generation for his argument about smartphones, social media, and childhood.