The Coddling of the American Mind
The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation For Failure
By: Jonathan Haidt (& Greg Lukianoff)
“Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.”
This book, written in 2018, was an expansive follow-up to their 2015 article in The Atlantic. The premise is even more relevant now than it was then. Greg, a First Amendment lawyer & fighter for academic freedom and freedom of speech on campus, and Jon, social psychologist, have teamed up together to develop and explore this statement: “Many university students are learning to think in distorted ways, and this increases their likelihood of becoming fragile, anxious, and easily hurt.”
Greg and Jon discuss three underlying ‘Untruths’ found woven into the ways we think that influence how we interpret and react when faced with uncomfortable situations or opposing viewpoints. They expose ways we react that are harmful and dangerous (physically and ideologically) and they trace six threads in an attempt to solve the mystery of how we got to where we are now. Finally, they wrap up with advice and action steps to correct our thinking and ways of engaging with others, in parenting and in our education systems.
They say, “We will show how well-intentioned overprotection—from peanut bans in elementary schools through speech codes on college campuses—may end up doing more harm than good.” The result is a culture of ‘safety.’
The Untruths are:
What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker (fragility),
Always trust your feelings (emotional reasoning)
Life is a battle between good people and evil people (us vs them)
You may read those and think- those are ridiculous, I don’t actually operate from that mindset! But as you read from their research, experience, and psychological knowledge, we function from the Untruths a lot more than we realize! Jon and Greg include a list of distorted automatic thoughts people have that I thought was super helpful and eye-opening to the way I often perceive things I read or hear. Every person should engage in recognizing these in themselves. They talk a lot about Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) which is a therapy that helps people identify destructive thought patterns that result in negative emotions and give examples throughout the book of how this plays out. (i.e. labeling, dichotomous thinking, overgeneralizing, catastrophizing, etc)
I found this to be a fascinating, jarring, and helpful book. I minored in Psychology so maybe I’m biased to this method of analysis and was geeking out too much (“Correlation does not equal causation!”) but I would highly recommend this book to all people. I don’t agree with everything they say in the book, especially in terms of their evolutionary explanations, but this is an intelligent and perceptive discourse that must be taken seriously. Many reviewers claim the article was sufficient and find the book superfluous and repetitive, but I don’t agree. Though I have not read the article, I believe every part of the book to be advantageous, relevant, and necessary in supporting the premise of the book.
Our minds are powerful and if we can’t recognize when we are falling into distorted thinking patterns, our relationships and our world as a whole are worse off. The most prevalent and obvious evidence to that effect is the severe political polarization happening in America. If Jon and Greg thought everything leading up to 2015 was bad, think of what would be included with another 6 years of data!
So what qualifies these statements to be untrue? Jon and Greg give us three criteria:
contradicts ancient wisdom (ideas found widely in the wisdom literature of many cultures)
contradicts modern psychological research on well-being
harms the individuals and communities who embrace it
Before I impart some of the more notable findings and remarks, I’ll offer two disclaimers. One: I wouldn’t classify this as a partisan political endeavor. Both authors align with Democrats on a lot of social issues and have never voted Republican, but I believe they offer a fair assessment of all political parties and critique interactions from all sides. And Two:
“To repeat, we are not saying that the problems facing students, and young people more generally, are minor or “all in their heads.” We are saying that what people choose to do in their heads will determine how those real problems affect them.”
Society has advanced in the last couple decades to increase safety for our kids- like better medicines, seat belts, etc., but if we take away all opportunities to experience risk, we are preventing our children from growing experiences.
Developmental psychologist, Alison Gopnik, says, “Thanks to hygiene, antibiotics and too little outdoor play, children don’t get exposed to microbes as they once did. This may lead them to develop immune systems that overreact to substances that aren’t actually threatening—causing allergies. In the same way, by shielding children from every possible risk, we may lead them to react with exaggerated fear to situations that aren’t risky at all and isolate them from the adult skills that they will one day have to master.”
The concept of ‘safety’ has also evolved. Even though our society is overall safer than it was 20 years ago, what constitutes as ‘safe’ has broadened.
“A culture that allows the concept of “safety” to creep so far that it equates emotional discomfort with physical danger is a culture that encourages people to systematically protect one another from the very experiences embedded in daily life that they need in order to become strong and healthy.”
“If we protect children from various classes of potentially upsetting experiences, we make it far more likely that those children will be unable to cope with such events when they leave our protective umbrella. The modern obsession with protecting young people from “feeling unsafe” is, we believe, one of the (several) causes of the rapid rise in rates of adolescent depression, anxiety, and suicide.”
So if safety is now determined by emotional comfort levels, then feelings become very powerful. Feelings start to dictate to us what is true or moral. But that hinders our ability to learn and consider opposing viewpoints or contrary evidence.
“It is not acceptable for a scholar to say, “You have shown me convincing evidence that my claim is wrong, but I still feel that my claim is right, so I’m sticking with it.” When scholars cannot rebut or reconcile disconfirming evidence, they must drop their claims or else lose the respect of their colleagues. As scholars challenge one another within a community that shares norms of evidence and argumentation and that holds one another accountable for good reasoning, claims get refined, theories gain nuance, and our understanding of truth advances.”
This also plays into the newly adopted term “micro-aggression” that identifies commonplace encounters that are perceived as hostile and derogatory, usually used in terms of race. This brings up the conversation of intent vs impact. A lot of activists say that bigotry is more about impact (how it makes someone feel) instead of intent (the ‘aggressor’s’ motive.) Obviously, impact matters, but so does intent.
“If you teach students that intention doesn’t matter, and you also encourage students to find more things offensive (leading them to experience more negative impacts), and you also tell them that whoever says or does the things they find offensive are “aggressors” who have committed acts of bigotry against them, then, you are probably fostering feelings of victimization, anger, and hopelessness in your students… if someone wanted to create an environment of perpetual anger and inter group conflict, this would be an effective way to do it. 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.”
This inevitably leads to grouping people together which inevitably leads to an ‘us vs them’ mentality.
“What happens when you train students to see others—and themselves—as members of distinct groups defined by race, gender, and other socially significant factors, and you tell them that those groups are eternally engaged in a zero-sum conflict over status and resources?”
“Identity can be mobilized in ways that emphasize an overarching common humanity while making the case that some fellow human beings are denied dignity and rights because they belong to a particular group, or it can be mobilized in ways that amplify our ancient tribalism and bind people together in shared hatred of a group that serves as the unifying common enemy.”
Part II discusses violence that has resulted from all the previously mentioned ideas working together. This happens when speech is viewed as violence. A startling survey shows that 30% of undergrad students surveyed agreed with the statement: “If someone is using hate speech or making racially charged comments, physical violence can be justified to prevent this person from espousing their hateful views.” This is a dangerous road to travel down. Especially if impact reigns supreme, intent doesn’t matter, our feelings establish truth, and people are seen according to whatever group they’re part of. If it’s based on subjective interpretation and perception, it will be a small step to justify violence in almost any (personally deemed) offense.
“In 2017, 58% of college students said it is “important to be part of a campus community where I am not exposed to intolerant and offensive ideas.”
The idea that disagreement is violence is a severe detriment to learning and understanding. College years are very formative years where students learn how to learn and to seek truth and function in a group of diverse people. “Hannah Holborn Gray, the president of the University of Chicago from 1978-1993 once offered this principle: ‘Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think.’” If students can’t be exposed to opposing viewpoints or material that is (increasingly) deemed “triggering” and therefore “unsafe”, they will not learn how to handle adversity when they enter the real world, and we will be creating a politically and ideologically uniform body of people of can’t think for themselves.
[I wish I could tell you all the things, but I’m lucky if you’re even still reading this. So I’ll wrap it up. Just know that there is so much more information in the book that is definitely worth your time.]
Part III follows the six threads (below) to see how they have influenced students who are coming out of college or have recently entered the workforce. We know in psychology that correlation does not equal causation. We have to consider all of the variables and realize it’s a complex fabric that produces the tapestry of a generation.
Political Polarization
Increased Anxiety and Depression
Paranoid Parenting (I’m one of the moms who still fears my kids will be kidnapped! This was a really good chapter for me)
Decline of Free Play (Kids not getting enough unstructured, unsupervised play time to develop autonomy and the ability to assess acceptable risk)
Bureaucracy of Safetyism (Universities treating students like customers/consumers and overcompensating for potential liabilities)
The Quest for Justice (interesting studies on equal inputs/outcomes; looking for both just outcomes but also just processes that determine those outcomes)
If you are still wondering why any of this matters consider this: The broader and more subjective terms become, the more likely you are to end up on the wrong side of the majority. We don’t have to like or approve of offensive rhetoric, but who gets to decide what is offensive? How can everyone always agree? Chances are, at some point you will want to express an unpopular opinion that someone somewhere finds offensive. Would you like to be able to do that without your statement being labeled hate speech just because you are disagreeing with the majority? Free speech is paramount to maintaining a free society. Too much power on any side without the ability to publicly dispute it is a dangerous place to be, and we need to protect our right to speak, even if people use it to say some really stupid things.
Jon and Greg didn’t write this book about “snowflakes"; they don’t support the term and wanted to move past the simplistic response “Young people are too fragile” to understand what factors are shaping our young people, what could be responsible for the polarity, violence, call-out culture, and loss of civil discourse. It’s not a blame-game but an honest and introspective book that I truly believe could make a difference in our relationships and in our world.
Progressive activist Van Jones said this when speaking at a university, and I think it appropriate to end on:
“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.”
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