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

by Jonathan Haidt

Free play helps children develop the skills of cooperation and dispute resolution that are closely related to the “art of association” upon which democracies depend. When citizens are not skilled in this art, they are less able to work out the ordinary conflicts of daily life. They will more frequently call for authorities to apply coercive force to their opponents. They will be more likely to welcome the bureaucracy of safetyism.

The sovereign power [or soft despot] extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules . . . it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd. ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America1

“The fundamental cause [of campus intolerance],” he suggests, “isn’t students’ extreme leftism or any other political ideology” but “a market-driven decision by universities, made decades ago, to treat students as consumers—who pay up to $60,000 per year for courses, excellent cuisine, comfortable accommodations and a lively campus life.” On the subject of students preventing certain people from speaking on campus,

For today’s students, one might say, speakers are amenities.

need to understand other forces acting on administrators, including the fear of bad publicity and threats of litigation.

From a First Amendment standpoint, however, the cases were clear-cut. The amendment’s bedrock principle is that offensiveness alone is no justification for banning or restricting speech—especially on campus.

overreaction

they are disproportionate responses to perceived offenses.

Overregulation is less about policing actual offenses than it is about preventing potential offense.

Overreaction and overregulation are usually the work of people within bureaucratic structures who have developed a mindset commonly known as CYA (Cover Your Ass).

1. Prepare the Child for the Road, Not the Road for the Child

The gift begins with the recognition that kids need some unstructured, unsupervised time in order to learn how to judge risks for themselves and practice dealing with things like frustration, boredom, and interpersonal conflict.

rules for productive disagreement:

Frame it as a debate, rather than a conflict. Argue as if you’re right, but listen as if you’re wrong (and be willing to change your mind). Make the most respectful interpretation of the other person’s perspective.

Acknowledge where you agree with your critics and what you’ve learned from them.

2. Your Worst Enemy Cannot Harm You as Much as Your Own Thoughts, Unguarded

3. The Line Dividing Good and Evil Cuts Through the Heart of Every Human Being

If only it were so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

Give people the benefit of the doubt. Use the “principle of charity.” This is the principle in philosophy and rhetoric of making an effort to interpret other people’s statements in their best or most reasonable form, not in the worst or most offensive way possible. Parents can model the principle of charity by using it in family discussions and arguments. Practice the virtue of “intellectual humility.” Intellectual humility is the recognition that our reasoning is so flawed, so prone to bias, that we can rarely be certain that we are right. For

Having people around us who are willing to disagree with us is a gift.

So when you realize you are wrong, admit that you are wrong, and thank your critics for helping you see it.

If parents and teachers can raise children who are antifragile; if middle schools and high schools can cultivate the intellectual virtues; if all high school graduates spend a year doing service or paid work away from home, before beginning college at age nineteen or later, we think most students will be ready for anything.

“telos”—its purpose, end, or goal.

If the telos of a university is truth, then a university that fails to add to humanity’s growing body of knowledge, or that fails to transmit the best of that knowledge to its students, is not a good university. If scholars do not advance the frontiers of knowledge within their disciplines, or if they betray the truth to satisfy other goals (such as accumulating wealth or advancing an ideology), then they are not good scholars. If professors do not pass on to their students a richer understanding of the truth, as it has been discovered in their discipline, along with skills and habits that will make them better able to find the truth after they graduate, then they are not good professors.

We agree with former Northwestern University professor Alice Dreger, who urges activist students and professors to “Carpe datum” (“Seize the data”).5 In her book Galileo’s Middle Finger, she contends that good scholarship must “put the search for truth first and the quest for social justice second.”

1. Entwine Your Identity With Freedom of Inquiry

2. Pick the Best Mix of People for the Mission

Include viewpoint diversity in diversity policies.

We suggest that universities add “viewpoint diversity” to their diversity statements and strategies.

3. Orient and Educate for Productive Disagreement

A university devoted to the pursuit of truth must prepare its students for conflict, controversy, and argument.

“One’s voice grows stronger in encounters with opposing views. . . . The collision of views and ideologies is in the DNA of the academic enterprise. We do not need any collision avoidance technology here.”

We cannot absolutely prove that those are in error who tell us that society has reached a turning point, that we have seen our best days. But so said all who came before us, and with just as much apparent reason. . . . On what principle is it that, when we see nothing but improvement behind us, we are to expect nothing but deterioration before us?1

The more serious a problem gets, the more inducements there are for people, companies, and governments to find innovative solutions, whether driven by personal commitment, market forces, or political pressures.

Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy.

CBT takes discipline, work, and commitment.

Categories of Distorted Automatic Thoughts MIND READING: You assume that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.” FORTUNE-TELLING: You predict the future negatively: Things will get worse, or there is danger ahead. “I’ll fail that exam,” or “I won’t get the job.” CATASTROPHIZING: You believe that what has happened or will happen will be so awful and unbearable that you won’t be able to stand it. “It would be terrible if I failed.” LABELING: You assign global negative traits to yourself and others. “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” DISCOUNTING POSITIVES: You claim that the positive things you or others do are trivial. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.” NEGATIVE FILTERING: You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”

OVERGENERALIZING: You perceive a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.” DICHOTOMOUS THINKING: You view events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.” SHOULDS: You interpret events in terms of how things should be, rather than simply focusing on what is. “I should do well. If I don’t, then I’m a failure.” PERSONALIZING: You attribute a disproportionate amount of the blame to yourself for negative events, and you fail to see that certain events are also caused by others. “The marriage ended because I failed.” BLAMING: You focus on the other person as the source of your negative feelings, and you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.” UNFAIR COMPARISONS: You interpret events in terms of standards that are unrealistic—for example, you focus primarily on others who do better than you and find yourself inferior in the comparison. “She’s more successful than I am,” or “Others did better than I did on the test.” REGRET ORIENTATION: You focus on the idea that you could have done better in the

past, rather than on what you can do better now. “I could have had a better job if I had tried,” or “I shouldn’t have said that.” WHAT IF?: You keep asking a series of questions about “what if” something happens, and you fail to be satisfied with any of the answers. “Yeah, but what if I get anxious?” or “What if I can’t catch my breath?” EMOTIONAL REASONING: You let your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.” INABILITY TO DISCONFIRM: You reject any evidence or arguments that might contradict your negative thoughts. For example, when you have the thought “I’m unlovable,” you reject as irrelevant any evidence that people like you. Consequently, your thought cannot be refuted. “That’s not the real issue. There are deeper problems. There are other factors.” JUDGMENT FOCUS: You view yourself, others, and events in terms of evaluations as good–bad or superior–inferior, rather than simply describing, accepting, or understanding. You are ...