Jonathan D. Haidt

Winner of the Barry Prize, 2023

Dr. Haidt was interviewed by Margaret Chisolm of Johns Hopkins University about his pathbreaking research on the impact of smartphones and social media on adolescent mental health, and how it relates to his previous research on large-scale dysfunctions in modern social institutions.

The prize citation for Dr. Haidt’s Barry Prize reads:

By challenging reductionist models of human moral behavior with ingenuity, rigor, and wit, Jonathan Haidt has dramatically advanced the scientific study of moral psychology at the individual and social levels. His pathbreaking work has helped us better comprehend why human beings find it so difficult to understand, and to welcome as neighbors, those who believe differently than we do about the things that matter most to us, and to seek peaceful and productive ways of engaging fundamental differences. The Academy honors Dr. Haidt’s distinguished contributions to humanity’s capacity to discern and manage the most challenging aspects of its own social life.

Jonathan D. 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).  He has given four TED talks. Since 2018 he has been studying the contributions of social media to the decline of teen mental health and the rise of political dysfunction. In 2019 he was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 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.

November 2023

The awarding of the Barry Prize to Dr. Haidt at our 2023 ceremony at the Library of Congress: