282: Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt is a Social psychologist at NYU-Stern. He’s the author of The Righteous Mind, and his latest book The Coddling of The American Mind. 

We are a few weeks out from an election here in Australia so I couldn’t think of a better time to get someone on the show to help us explore how our thinking is being swayed from outside influences, why we are getting just so super-sensitive to things we never used to be sensitive about, and indeed what we stand to lose by protecting ourselves from and avoiding things that make us uncomfortable. 

We talk about what’s wrong with trigger warnings, and how we as a society have been slowly getting more and more polarised. 

I hope this conversation helps you in your decision this election - helps you make a choice that isn’t influenced by things you’ve read on Facebook that are written to fire you up but don’t really reflect reality or indeed the nuance of the argument. 

I hope this conversation encourages you to explore just that - the nuance of the issue at hand, not the knee-jerk emotional response that we seem to have been drawn into more and more in this FB like-button world of calling out perpetrators to our team and finding offence to something as small as a lower-case proper noun (which I have been called out for). 

Jonathan is just fascinating and I highly recommend you track down his books which you can find out more about at righteousmind.com and thecoddling.com

If you like what you hear - let him know on twitter @jonhaidt he’s touring Australia in July you can get tickets to his talks at thinkinc.org and please enjoy this conversation with Jonathan Haidt.

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