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. He earned his doctorate in psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and taught at the University of Virginia for sixteen years before joining NYU Stern in 2011.

His nonfiction brings psychological research into conversation with philosophy, religion and public life. The Happiness Hypothesis tests ten enduring ideas about living well against modern research. The Righteous Mind turns to moral intuition, using memorable images such as the rider and the elephant to explain why reasoning often follows instinct, and why political opponents can inhabit sharply different moral worlds.

Haidt later co-wrote The Coddling of the American Mind with Greg Lukianoff and examined smartphones, social media and adolescent well-being in The Anxious Generation. The Righteous Mind became a New York Times bestseller, while The Coddling of the American Mind was a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award in nonfiction. Haidt was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2019.

Begin with The Righteous Mind if you want his central work on morality and political division. Its combination of experiments, evolutionary arguments and concrete metaphors makes a large theory unusually approachable. Choose The Happiness Hypothesis first if your interests lean toward happiness, meaning and the meeting point between ancient counsel and contemporary psychology.