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

Beginning in the 1990s, people became concerned because 4 in 1,000 children are allergic to peanuts and began protecting kids from any exposure to the legume. By 2008, peanut allergies increased to 14 in 1,000. Scientists discover that “peanut allergies were surging precisely because parents and teachers had started protecting children from exposure to peanuts” (20).

Parents have become overly protective of their children, but this can increase their risks: “Human beings need physical and mental challenges and stressors or we deteriorate” (22). Professor Nicholas Taleb believes people are “antifragile”: they need “stressors and challenges in order to learn, adapt, and grow” (23).

Improvements in safety have caused childhood death rates to plummet. On college campuses, however, these protections have come to include students’ “emotional safety” (24). One college, on the use of gender pronouns—“for example, ‘zhe’ or ‘they’ for students who don’t want to be referred to as ‘he’ or ‘she’” (24)—warns that “a professor who uses an incorrect pronoun ‘prevents or impairs their safety in a classroom’” (25).

“Trauma” refers to sudden physical damage, but by the early 2000s, psychologists use it for anything “experienced by an individual as physically or emotionally harmful [...] with lasting adverse effects on the individual’s functioning and mental, physical, social, emotional, or spiritual well-being” (26). This definition relies on the individual’s own evaluation: “If a person reported that an event was traumatic (or bullying or abusive), his or her subjective assessment was increasingly taken as sufficient evidence” (26).

College speakers sometimes express views painful to students, many of whom try to have those speakers denied entry, which raises the question: “[S]hould college students interpret emotional pain as a sign that they are in danger?” (27). People who suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) tend to get better over time and re-learn how to deal with the normal stresses of everyday life, but “[a]voiding triggers is a symptom of PTSD, not a treatment for it” (29).

A culture of “safetyism” holds that “‘[s]afety’ trumps everything else, no matter how unlikely or trivial the potential danger” (30). Overprotecting children from emotional pain can lead to greater and greater sensitivity to smaller and smaller stressors, “which then makes them even more fragile and less resilient [...] the ‘cure’ turns out to be a primary cause of the disease” (30).

The cohort of people born after the mid-1990s “suffers from far higher rates of anxiety and depression” (30) and tend to believe that “one should be safe not just from car accidents and sexual assault but from people who disagree with you” (31).

Boethius, a prominent 6th-century Roman, is sent to prison for crossing the ruler. While incarcerated, Boethius imagines a conversation with Lady Philosophy, who “helps him to reframe his thinking and shut off his negative emotions” (34).

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) posits that people sometimes hold irrational negative beliefs—“‘I’m no good,’ ‘My world is bleak,’ and ‘My future is hopeless'” (36)—that distort their perceptions. Like a rider on an elephant, the conscious mind has limited control over the much vaster unconscious processes, and once a “schema” of negative thinking gets embedded in the unconscious mind, it commands behavior. CBT trains people to question these irrational thoughts and replace them with more reasonable alternatives “such as ‘I can handle most challenges’ or ‘I have friends I can trust’” (37). This process calms the emotions.

Cognitive distortions include: emotional reasoning (“I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out”); catastrophizing; overgeneralizing; all-or-nothing thinking; mind reading (“He thinks I’m a loser”); labeling (“I’m undesirable”); negative filtering; discounting positives; and blaming (“My parents caused all my problems”) (38). Everyone succumbs to these distortions from time to time, and college itself can be an antidote: “[A] good college education should improve the critical thinking skills of all students” (39).

Recently, however, some college policies amplify these distortions. One example is to define small slights, delivered either intentionally or unintentionally, as “microaggressions” (40). The problem is that “aggression is not unintentional or accidental”; nevertheless, bad intent is now determined “entirely in terms of the listener’s interpretation” (40). Some slights are, indeed, deliberate, but “it is not a good idea to start by assuming the worst about people” (41). Even CBT can be considered a microaggression if it calls into question people’s emotional certainty about others’ misdeeds.

Assuming the worst about others can stifle open communication on campus: “[W]e want students to freely engage with one another rather than keeping their thoughts hidden” (43). Yet, at a diverse school, the “potential for offense-taking is almost unlimited” (43). Some colleges offer students “microaggression training and encourage them to report microaggressions” instead of “advice on how to be polite and avoid giving accidental or thoughtless offense […] and interpreting everyone’s actions in ways that elicit the least amount of emotional reactivity” (43).

The shift in thinking puts emphasis on impact rather than intent: “If a member of an identity group feels offended or oppressed by the action of another person […] that other person is guilty of an act of bigotry” (44). The authors reason that “[i]f someone wanted to create an environment of perpetual anger and intergroup conflict, this would be an effective way to do it” (46).

Excessive blaming of others can cause people to feel they have little control over situations. Encouraging, instead, a sense of ability to deal constructively with situations improves a person’s “internal locus of control,” which “leads to greater health, happiness, effort expended, success in school, and success at work” (46).

Disinvitations of speakers whose ideas are considered dangerous have been increasing, and a majority of college students believe it is “important to be part of a campus community where [they are] not exposed to intolerant and offensive ideas” (48).

An administrator at Claremont McKenna College and a lecturer at Yale University each write letters in support of minority students, but each is excoriated and hounded by students for writing in ways deemed by the protesters as condescending or racist. The criticism is unrelenting; both resign their positions.

An explanation for these occurrences may lie in human tribal instincts: “In tribal mode, we seem to go blind to arguments and information that challenge our team’s narrative” (58). Peaceful times, on the other hand, “generally turn down the tribalism,” and “there is more freedom for a creative mixing of people and ideas” (59).

“Identity politics” forms around issues such as race, gender, and sexual identity; “common humanity identity politics” (60) expresses these issues as arising among fellow human beings rather than among enemies. Civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King takes the common-humanity approach, reminding everyone that they are part of the human family with shared religious values. In 2012, the gay marriage campaign similarly appeals to shared values: “Instead of shaming or demonizing their opponents, they humanized them and then relentlessly appealed to their humanity” (62).

On the other hand, “common-enemy” politics has taken hold on many campuses: “Identifying a common enemy is an effective way to enlarge and motivate your tribe” (63). Often, “when power is perceived to be held by one group over others, there is a moral polarity: the groups seen as powerful are bad, while the groups seen as oppressed are good” (64).

Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse argues in 1965 that institutionalized tolerance in an unequal society merely protects the power structure, and that intolerance toward the powerful is the only way to remedy things. He writes: “Moreover, the restoration of freedom of thought may necessitate new and rigid restrictions on teachings and practices in the educational institutions” (66). Marcuse’s vision is taken up by the New Left of the 1960s and 1970s, many of whom are professors today.

A theory from 1989, intersectionality, becomes important on campuses in the 2010s. Intersectionality describes how discrimination multiplies against people who are part of two or more oppressed groups, such as black and female. Recent interpretations of intersectionality indicate that, for example, whites, males, heterosexuals, and the able-bodied are privileged, while blacks, females, gays, and the disabled are oppressed, and, in the case of girls and women, a “colonized population” (69).

However, “these axes are inherently moral dimensions. The people on top are bad, and the people below the line are good” (70). This reinforces the third Great Untruth, that “life is a battle between good people and evil people” (70).

Another trend is the “call-out culture” of publicly shaming others for “small offenses” (71). The authors detail how “[l]ife in a call-out culture requires constant vigilance, fear, and self-censorship” (72). Out of necessity, participants tend to adopt nearly identical views, and there is little or no dissention: “It is difficult to imagine a culture that is more antithetical to the mission of a university” (73).