The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting up a Generation for Failure

by Jonathan Haidt

Among the most universal psychological insights in the world’s wisdom traditions is that what really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves but the way in which we think about them, as Epictetus put it. CBT is a method anyone can learn for identifying common cognitive distortions and then changing their habitual patterns of thinking. CBT helps the rider (controlled processing) to train the elephant (automatic processing), resulting in better critical thinking and mental health. Emotional reasoning is among the most common of all cognitive distortions; most people would be happier and more effective if they did less of it. The term “microaggressions” refers to a way of thinking about brief and commonplace indignities and slights communicated to people of color (and others). Small acts of aggression are real, so the term could be useful, but because the definition includes

accidental and unintentional offenses, the word “aggression” is misleading. Using the lens of microaggressions may amplify the pain experienced and the conflict that ensues. (On the other hand, there is nothing “micro” about intentional acts of aggression and bigotry.) By encouraging students to interpret the actions of others in the least generous way possible, schools that teach students about microaggressions may be encouraging students to engage in emotional reasoning and other distortions while setting themselves up for higher levels of distrust and conflict. Karith Foster offers an example of using empathy to reappraise actions that could be interpreted as microaggressions. When she interpreted those actions as innocent (albeit insensitive) misunderstandings, it led to a better outcome for everyone. The number of efforts to “disinvite” speakers from giving talks on campus has increased in the last few years; such efforts are often justified by the claim that the speaker in question will cause harm to students. But discomfort is not danger. Students, professors, and administrators should understand the concept of antifragility and keep in mind Hanna Holborn Gray’s principle: “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think.”

Reality is always more complicated than the narrative,

There is a principle in philosophy and rhetoric called the principle of charity, which says that one should interpret other people’s statements in their

best, most reasonable form, not in the worst or most offensive way possible.

“Free speech and the ability to tolerate

offense are the hallmarks of a free and open society.”

It’s as though some of the students had their own mental prototype, a schema with two boxes to fill: victim and oppressor. Everyone is placed into one box or the other.

We just don’t feel as much empathy for those we see as “other.”

The bottom line is that the human mind is prepared for tribalism.

Human evolution is not just the story of individuals competing with other individuals within each group; it’s also the story of groups competin...

“morality binds and blinds,”

Any kind of intergroup conflict (real or perceived) immediately turns tribalism up, making people highly attentive to signs that reveal which team another person is on.

When a community succeeds in turning down everyone’s tribal circuits, there is more room for individuals to construct lives of their own choosing; there is more freedom for a creative mixing of people and ideas.

So what happens to a community such as a college (or, increasingly, a high school33) when distinctions between groups are not trivial and arbitrary, and when they are emphasized rather than downplayed?

What happens when you train students to see others—and themselves—as members of distinct groups defined by race, gend...

factors, and you tell them that those groups are eternally engaged in a zero-sum conflict...

“Identity politics”

“political mobilization organized around group characteristics such as race, gender, and sexuality, as opposed to party, ideology, or pecuniary interest.”

Politics is all about groups forming coalitions to achieve their goals.

Instead of shaming or demonizing their opponents, they humanized them and then relentlessly appealed to their humanity.

the rapid rise of a very different form that is based on an effort to unite and mobilize multiple groups to fight against a common enemy.

Identifying a common

enemy is an effective way to enlarge and motivate your tribe.

Marxist approaches to social and political analysis. It’s a set of approaches in which things are analyzed primarily in terms of power. Groups struggle for power. Within this paradigm, when power is perceived to be held by one group over others, there is a moral polarity: the groups seen as powerful are bad, while the groups seen as oppressed are good. It’s a variant of the pathological dualism

Herbert Marcuse,

His writings were influential in the 1960s and 1970s as the American left was transitioning away from its prior focus on workers versus capital to become the “New Left,” which focused on civil rights, women’s rights, and other social movements promoting equality and justice.

Marcuse argued that tolerance and free speech confer benefits on society only under special conditions that almost never exist: absolute equality. He believed that when power differentials between groups exist, tolerance only empowers the already powerful and makes it easier for them to dominate institutions like education, the media, and most channels of communication. Indiscriminate tolerance is “repressive,” he argued; it blocks the political agenda and suppresses the voices of the less powerful.

If indiscriminate tolerance is unfair, then what is needed is a form of tolerance that discriminates. A truly “liberating tolerance,” claimed Marcuse, is one that favors the weak and restrains the strong.

For Marcuse, writing in 1965, the weak was the political left and the strong ...

Marcuse associated the right with the business community, the military, and other vested interests that he saw as wielding power, hoarding wealth, and working to block social change.52 The left referred to students, intellectuals, and minorities of all kinds. For Marcuse, there was no moral equivalence between the two sides. In his view, the right pushed for war; ...

when the majority of a society is being repressed, it is justifiable to use “repression and indoctrination” to allow the “subversive majority” to achieve the power that it deserves.

Marcuse argued that true democracy might require denying basic

rights to people who advocate for conservative causes, or for policies he viewed as aggressive or discriminatory, and that true freedom of thought might requir...

The end goal of a Marcusean revolution is not equality but a reversal of power.

Marcuse was known as the “father” of the New Left; his ideas were taken up by the generation of students in the 1960s and 1970s who are the older professors of today, so a Marcusean view is still widely available.

“where there’s no name for a problem, you can’t see a problem, and when you can’t see a problem, you pretty much can’t solve it.”

FIGURE 3.1. Seven intersecting axes of privilege and oppression. According to intersectionality, each person’s lived experience is shaped by his or her

position on these (and many other) dimensions.

Most of those schools once excluded women and people of color. But does that mean that women and people of color should think of themselves as “colonized populations” today? Would doing so empower them, or would it encourage an external locus of control? Would it make them more or less likely to engage with their teachers and readings, work hard, and benefit from their time in school?

what will happen to the thinking of students who are trained to see everything in terms of intersecting bipolar axes where one end of each axis is marked “privilege” and the other is “oppression”?

“Well, homosexual . . . it doesn’t matter . . . white males are at the top of the hierarchy.”

as a result of our long evolution for tribal competition, the human mind readily does dichotomous, us-versus-them thinking. If we want to create welcoming, inclusive communities, we should be doing everything we can to turn down the tribalism and turn up the sense of common humanity.

Imagine an entire entering class of college freshmen whose orientation program includes training in the kind of intersectional thinking described above, along with training in spotting microaggressions.

By the end of their first week on campus, students have learned to score their own and others’ levels of privilege, identify more distinct identity groups, and see more differences between people.

They have learned to interpret more words and social behaviors as...

They have learned to associate aggression, domination, and oppression w...

They have learned to focus only on perceived impact and...

The combination of common-enemy identity politics and microaggression training creates an environment highly conducive to the development of a “call-out culture,” in which students gain prestige for identifying small offenses committed by members of their community, and then publicly “calling out” the offenders.

Life in a call-out culture requires constant vigilance, fear, and self-censorship. Many in the audience may feel sympathy for the person being shamed but are afraid to speak up, yielding the false impression that the audience is unanimous in its condemnation.