Jonathan Haidt: "Social Psychology in an Age of Social Fragmentation"
The Great Simplification with Nate Hagens
Nate Hagens
4.8 • 554 Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2023
⏱️ 82 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, Nate is joined by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. Professor Haidt is one of the leaders in the understanding of human biases and predispositions, and how they affect cooperation, communication, and change-making. Human psychology and behavior is at the root of the larger predicament that humanity faces. Is it possible to use a better understanding of our own psychology to change our behavior and the behavior of future generations? Is social media hijacking the vulnerabilities of our social-psychological nature? How can we redesign systems technologies and systems to bring out the better sides of our natures, instead of amplifying the worst?
About Jonathan Haidt:
Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University's Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. Haidt's research examines the intuitive foundations of morality, and how morality varies across cultural and political divisions. Haidt is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis (2006) and of The New York Times bestsellers The Righteous Mind (2012) and The Coddling of the American Mind (2018, with Greg Lukianoff). In 2019 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Since 2018 he has been studying the contributions of social media to the decline of teen mental health and the rise of political dysfunction. He is currently writing two books: Kids In Space: Why teen mental health is collapsing, and Life After Babel: Adapting to a world we can no longer share.
For Show Notes and More visit: https://www.thegreatsimplification.com/episode/59-jonathan-haidt
To watch this video episode on Youtube → https://youtu.be/IB4lGwxysEk
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to The Great Simplification with Nate Higgins. |
| 0:06.1 | That's me. |
| 0:07.7 | On this show, we try to explore and simplify what's happening with energy, the economy, |
| 0:14.3 | the environment, and our society. |
| 0:17.0 | Together with scientists, experts, and leaders, this show is about understanding the bird's eye view of how everything fits together, where we go from here and what we can do about it as a society and as individuals. |
| 0:33.1 | Human behavior, the more I look at our current predicament, the more I think human behavior is at the root of our challenges. |
| 0:43.0 | Today I am joined by Professor Jonathan Haidt of the NYU Stern School of Business. |
| 0:50.9 | John is a social psychologist looking at human behavior, the evolution of morality, how morality |
| 0:56.8 | differs across cultures and political divides. |
| 1:01.1 | John is the author of the happiness hypothesis, also one of my all-time favorite science |
| 1:07.6 | books, The Righteous Mind, and more recently the coddling of the American |
| 1:12.7 | Mind. John and I discuss the impact of social media on our current political discourse, |
| 1:21.5 | the impact of technology and social media on the decline in in teen mental health and generally the rise in political dysfunction and how we might change our social media commons. |
| 1:36.8 | John is along with Sapulski and, and E.O. Wilson, kind of one of the academic heroes of how humans socially form groups |
| 1:47.5 | and make decisions and access to information. I hope this is the beginning of a series |
| 1:54.1 | because John thinks a lot like I do, and this was a wonderful conversation. Please welcome Professor Jonathan |
| 2:02.5 | Height. |
| 2:15.7 | Jonathan Haidt. great to see you. |
| 2:18.1 | Nice to see you, Nate. |
| 2:19.6 | It's been like six months this has been on the schedule. |
| 2:22.6 | Thank you so much for taking time. |
| 2:27.0 | Off camera in the sound check, we just showed each other our superorganism book by E.O. Wilson, so we are definitely of a tribe. |
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