Quotessence
Home / Authors / Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt

Jonathan Haidt Quotes

Psychologist

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleMoralMoralityThinkingPsychologyIfsEvolutionary PsychologyHumansGroupsMindCommunityWorldGivingBelieveBrainFeelingsHappinessSexShouldSociety

Famous Jonathan Haidt Quotes

“Sports are not exactly spiritual, but playing them depends on some of spirituality’s key ingredients for bonding people together, like coordinated and collective physical movement and group celebrations. Research consistently shows that teen who play team sports are happier than those who don’t. humans are embodied; a phone-based life is not. Screens lead us to forget that our physical bodies matter.”

ReligionCommunitySocietyRitualEvolutionary PsychologyBondCohesionCollective Effervescence
Book:The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Create image

“The simple act of eating together, especially from the same plate or serving dish, strengthens that bond and reduces the likelihood of conflict. This is one deficiency the virtual world can never overcome, no matter how good VR gets.”

ReligionCommunitySocietyRitualEvolutionary PsychologyBondCohesionCollective Effervescence
Book:The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Create image

“In short, there is no consensual structuring of time, space, or objects around which people can use their ancient programming for sacredness to create religious or quasi-religious communities. Everything is available to every individual, all the time, with little or no effort. There is no Sabbath and there are no holy days. Everything is profane. Living in a world of structureless anomie makes adolescents more vulnerable to online recruitment into radical political movements that offer moral clarity and a moral community, thereby pulling them further away from their in-person communities.”

CommunitySocietyRitualEvolutionary PsychologyBondCohesionSmartphonesGen ZVirtual Life
Book:The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Create image

“Children need a great deal of free play to thrive. It’s an imperative that’s evident across all mammal species. The small scale challenged and setbacks that happen during play are like an inoculation that prepares children to face much larger challenges later.”

PlayRelationshipsCommunityEvolutionary PsychologySocial AnxietyLeisure TimeSocial RelationsMental Development
Book:The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Create image

“The key factor is the commitment required to make relationships work. When people are raised in a community that they cannot easily escape, they do what our ancestors have done for millions of years: They learn how to manage relationships, and how to manage themselves and their emotions in order to keep those precious relationships going. There are certainly many online communities that have found ways to create strong interpersonal commitments and a feeling of belonging. but in general, when children are raised in multiple mutating networks where they don't need to use their real names and they can quit with the click of a button, they are less likely to learn such skills.”

RelationshipsCommunityEvolutionary PsychologySocial AnxietySocial RelationsMental Development
Book:The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Create image

“…overprotection in the real world and underprotection in the virtual world-are the major reasons why children born after 1995 became the anxious generation.”

RelationshipsCommunityEvolutionary PsychologySocial AnxietySocial RelationsMental Development
Book:The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Create image

“Gen Z became the first generation in history to go through puberty with a portal in their pockets that called them away from the people nearby and into an alternative universe that was exciting, addictive, unstable, and- as I will show-unsuitable for children and adolescents. Succeeding socially in that universe required them to devote a large part of their consciousness-perpetually-to managing what became their online brand. This was now necessary to gain acceptance from peers, which is the oxygen of adolescence, and to avoid online shaming, which is the nightmare of adolescence. Gen Z teens got sucked into spending many hours of each day scrolling through the shiny happy posts of friends, acquaintances, and distant influencers.”

RelationshipsCommunityTeensEvolutionary PsychologySocial AnxietySocial RelationsGen Z2010Mental DevelopmentWoke Generation
Book:The Anxious Generation: How the Great Rewiring of Childhood Caused an Epidemic of Mental Illness
Create image