Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He is a social psychologist whose research examines the intuitive foundations of morality, and how morality varies across cultures, including the cultures of American progressives, conservatives, and libertarians. He began his career at the University of Virginia, studying the negative moral emotions, such as disgust, shame, and vengeance, but then moved on to the understudied positive moral emotions, such as admiration, awe, and moral elevation, which got him involved with positive psychology in 1999. Haidt is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, and of the New York Times bestseller The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. He is currently writing Three Stories about Capitalism: The Moral Psychology of Economic Life.
Topics discussed on this podcast:
01:00 – on modern Academia and scholarships
17:28 – what’s messing us up as a society
23:37 – POTUS and polarization of American society
32:22 – What is good education and what makes you smart
43:15 – on racism
45:00 – describes black social media
59:41 – modern day teaching
1:10:30 – about parenting
1:21:14 – on mental illness
1:30:11 – keep your kids from getting addicted to gadgets and gizmos in bedroom
1:48:03 – can teaching be fun and motivating
1:56:20 – debate shitty ideas with arguments, not force