OtherWise

12Gut Values

Jonathan Haidt’s thick shock of black hair shows just enough salt and pepper to compensate for a boyish face and the brawny build of a jock. But no one who hears him speak—or reads one of the more than seventy-five articles he has written or cowritten since receiving his PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992—would mistake him for an overeducated frat boy.

Haidt’s PhD thesis—“Moral Judgment, Affect, and Culture, Or Is It Wrong to Eat Your Dog?”—was an early tip toward his eventual field of study, as well as the irreverent approach he would take. He studies people’s moral values and the largely unconscious norms that cause us to think something is good or bad, right or wrong, worthwhile or worthless, disgusting or … not. ...