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

by Jonathan Haidt

CBT teaches you to notice when you are engaging in various “cognitive distortions,” such as “catastrophizing” (If I fail this quiz, I’ll fail the class and be kicked out of school, and then I’ll never get a job . . .) and “negative filtering” (only paying attention to negative feedback instead of noticing praise as well).

If students succeeded in creating bubbles of intellectual “safety” in college, they would set themselves up for even greater anxiety and conflict after graduation, when they will certainly encounter many more people with more extreme views.

more likely to succeed in pursuing your own goals if you do the opposite of what Misoponos advised. That means seeking out challenges (rather than eliminating or avoiding everything that “feels unsafe”), freeing yourself from cognitive distortions (rather than always trusting your initial feelings), and taking a generous view of other people, and looking for nuance (rather than assuming the worst about people within a simplistic us-versus-them morality).

Human beings need physical and mental challenges and stressors or we deteriorate.

In complex systems, it is virtually inevitable that unforeseen problems will arise, yet we persist in trying to calculate risk based on past experiences. Life has a way of creating completely unexpected events—events Taleb likens to the appearance of a black swan when, based on your past experience, you assumed that all swans were white.

Avoiding triggers is a symptom of PTSD, not a treatment for it.

Trigger warnings are counter-therapeutic because they encourage avoidance of reminders of trauma, and avoidance maintains PTSD.

These therapies involve gradual, systematic exposure to traumatic memories until their capacity to trigger distress diminishes.32

Their focus on “emotional safety” leads many of them to believe that, as Twenge describes, “one should be safe not just from car accidents and sexual assault but from people who disagree with you.”36

Shakespeare (“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so”)

feelings are always compelling, but not always reliable. Often they distort reality, deprive us of insight, and needlessly damage our relationships.

He changes the ways in which he interprets things, which causes his emotions to change, which then causes his thinking to change even further.

With CBT, there is no need to spend years talking about one’s childhood.

EMOTIONAL REASONING: Letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.” CATASTROPHIZING: Focusing on the worst possible outcome and seeing it as most likely. “It would be terrible if I failed.” OVERGENERALIZING: Perceiving 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 (also known variously as “black-and-white thinking,” “all-or-nothing thinking,” and “binary thinking”): Viewing events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.” MIND READING: Assuming that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.” LABELING: Assigning global negative traits to yourself or others (often in the service of dichotomous thinking). “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” 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.” DISCOUNTING POSITIVES: Claiming that the positive things you or others do are trivial, so that you can maintain a negative judgment. “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.” BLAMING: Focusing on the other person as the source of your negative feelings; you refuse to take responsibility for ch...

In moral judgment as it has long been studied by psychologists, intent is essential for assessing guilt.

A portion of what is derided as “political correctness” is just an effort to promote polite and respectful interactions by discouraging the use of terms that are reasonably taken to be demeaning.

Teaching students to use the least generous interpretations possible is likely to engender precisely the feelings of marginalization and oppression that almost everyone wants to eliminate.

The concept of “locus of control” goes back to behaviorist days, when psychologists noted that animals (including people) could be trained to expect that they could get what they wanted through their own behavior (that is, some control over outcomes was “internal” to themselves). Conversely, animals could be trained to expect that nothing they did mattered (that is, all control of outcomes was “external” to themselves).25 A great deal of research shows that having an internal locus of control leads to greater health, happiness, effort expended, success in school, and success at work.26 An internal locus of control has even been found to make many kinds of adversity less painful.27

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.

discomfort is not danger.

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.

Had Olivia been taught to judge people primarily on their intentions, she could have used the principle of charity in this situation, as Karith Foster did in the situation described in the previous chapter. If a student in Olivia’s position was in the habit of questioning her initial reactions, looking for evidence, and giving people the benefit of the doubt, that student might get past her initial flash of emotion and avail herself of an invitation from a dean who wanted to know what she could do to address the student’s concerns.

moral polarity: the groups seen as powerful are bad, while the groups seen as oppressed are good.

Marcuse argued that tolerance and free speech confer benefits on society only under special conditions that almost never exist: absolute equality.

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.

During my first days at Smith, I witnessed countless conversations that consisted of one person telling the other that their opinion was wrong. The word “offensive” was almost always included in the reasoning. Within a few short weeks, members of my freshman class had quickly assimilated to this new way of non-thinking. They could soon detect a politically incorrect view and call the person out on their “mistake.” I began to voice my opinion less often to avoid being berated and judged by a community that claims to represent the free expression of ideas. I learned, along with every other student, to walk on eggshells for fear that I may say something “offensive.” That is the social norm here.

The rationale, as an essay in the Berkeley op-ed series argued, is that physically violent actions, if used to shut down speech that is deemed hateful, are “not acts of violence” but, rather, “acts of self defense.”

As Marcus Aurelius advised, “Choose not to be harmed—and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed—and you haven’t been.”89

There are two ideas about safe spaces: One is a very good idea and one is a terrible idea. The idea of being physically safe on a campus—not being subjected to sexual harassment and physical abuse, or being targeted specifically, personally, for some kind of hate speech—“you are an n-word,” or whatever—I am perfectly fine with that. But there’s another view that is now I think ascendant, which I think is just a horrible view, which is that “I need to be safe ideologically. I need to be safe emotionally. I just need to feel good all the time, and if someone says something that I don’t like, that’s a problem for everybody else, including the [university] administration.”90

I don’t want you to be safe ideologically. I don’t want you to be safe emotionally. I want you to be strong. That’s different. I’m not going to pave the jungle for you. Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity. I’m not going to take all the weights out of the gym; that’s the whole point of the gym. This is the gym.

Speech is not violence. Treating it as such is an interpretive choice, and it is a choice that increases pain and suffering while preventing other, more effective responses, including the Stoic response (cultivating nonreactivity) and the antifragile response suggested by Van Jones: “Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity.”

said had become the norm by the 1990s for families in the middle class and above. This time-intensive, labor-intensive strategy involves overprotecting, overscheduling, and overparenting children in hopes of giving them an edge in a competitive society that has forgotten the importance of play and the value of unsupervised experience.

That is the epitome of safetyism: If we can prevent one child from getting hurt, we should deprive all children of slightly risky play.

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

Trial and error is a slower but usually better teacher than direct instruction.

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.

TED Talk titled “On Being Wrong.”24 The speaker, Kathryn Schulz, begins

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.25

The school operates on a foundation of three core values that are antithetical to the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: a culture of thinking (ask questions, seek understanding, and practice the habits of good thinking), self-knowledge (practice ongoing self-reflection and self-awareness), and openness and respect (strive for a strong sense of community marked by collaboration, empowerment, and intentional openness and respect for the thinking of others; this is also an antidote to the Untruth of Us Versus Them).

teach students the difference between evidence and opinion, and how to evaluate the legitimacy of sources.

6. Support a New National Norm: Service or Work Before College

Karith created and teaches the C.A.R.E. model (Conscious Empathy, Active Listening, Responsible Reaction, and Environmental Awareness) in her workshops and presentations.