Free speech isn\u2019t just a legal right. It\u2019s a psychological necessity. <\/p>\n
That’s why today’s culture of silencing, shouting down, and canceling isn\u2019t just a political problem\u2014it\u2019s a mental health one, insists Greg Lukianoff, a lawyer by training who is president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). Lukianoff has spent 25 years defending campus speech. He\u2019s also a survivor of suicidal<\/a> depression<\/a>, and what saved him wasn\u2019t censorship. It was cognitive behavioral<\/a> therapy<\/a> (CBT). <\/p>\n \u201cCBT changed\u2014and probably saved\u2014my life,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd CBT has a lot in common with freedom of speech.\u201d CBT works by challenging distorted thinking patterns, and so does free discourse. When we suppress ideas, we suppress opportunities to test reality.<\/p>\n Free Speech Is How We Find Truth<\/p>\n \u201cThe way we figure out truth is a process of checking and rechecking,\u201d Lukianoff says. \u201cAnd it doesn’t work if you just talk to people you already agree with.\u201d In other words, if you want to know the truth about the world, you have to let people contradict you. Free speech isn\u2019t just a liberty, it\u2019s a tool for cognitive calibration, Lukianoff told a recent TED audience. . <\/p>\n His observation mirrors a core principle of CBT: cognitive restructuring. To grow, we must be willing to examine and challenge distorted thoughts. Research shows that tolerating ambiguity and cognitive dissonance<\/a> is essential for critical thinking and emotional regulation<\/a>.<\/p>\n When we shield ourselves from opposing viewpoints, we may think we\u2019re trading truth for comfort. But that comfort is short-lived.<\/p>\n Free Speech Makes You Smarter and Stronger<\/p>\n Cancel culture, Lukianoff contends, is an expression of cognitive fragility. In 2024, Israeli lawyer Shlomo Bar-Yoshafat was scheduled to give a talk at the University of California Berkeley. Nearly 200 protesters showed up with the explicit intent to shut down the talk. They broke into the building where the talk was taking place, smashed two windows and a door, and forced the evacuation of the building and the cancelation of the talk. Several attendees reported being called antisemitic slurs and were physically assaulted.<\/p>\n Leaders of that protest organized the cancellation attempt because, they said, they believed what they referred to as the speaker’s \u201cgenocidal values\u201d presented a \u201cthreat to the safety and well-being of Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students on campus.\u201d <\/p>\n Such \u201cmob censorship,\u201d Lukianoff says, results in moral and logical inversions\u2014threatening and harming others while claiming to defend safety and well-being. It’s also where cancel culture and cognitive fragility collide.<\/p>\n As Lukianoff observes, today\u2019s students are often taught to avoid distressing ideas. But avoidance doesn\u2019t help anyone. Experiential avoidance\u2014dodging unwanted thoughts or feelings\u2014actually increases anxiety<\/a> and emotional reactivity.<\/p>\n In CBT, exposure to feared stimuli reduces their emotional charge over time. The same goes for speech. \u201cAvoiding uncomfortable ideas doesn\u2019t make you safe,\u201d Lukianoff warns. \u201cIt makes you fragile.\u201d<\/p>\n Free Speech Protects the Powerless<\/p>\n \u201cFree speech has always been for the powerless,\u201d Lukianoff says. Figures like Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, and Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela all championed freedom of speech. Civil rights icon John Lewis used to say that without freedom of speech, the civil rights movement would have been \u201ca bird without wings.\u201d <\/p>\n What all those transformative figures understood was that \u201cfree speech was not the weapon of the powerful,\u201d Lukianoff says. \u201cIt is the best check on power ever invented.\u201d It aigns with the concepts of psychological empowerment and internal locus of control<\/a>\u2014having a sense of agency and believing that you can influence your world. <\/p>\n Those concerned about protecting marginalized voices aren’t always aware that silencing others doesn\u2019t protect the people who don’t want to listen; it just leaves them in the dark. We can’t change minds when we can’t hear what they think. And, as Lukianoff says, \u201cYou are not safer for knowing less about what people really think.\u201d<\/p>\n Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Essential Reads<\/p>\n Even Bad People Can Have Good Ideas<\/p>\n However hard it is to accept, Likianoff says, \u201ceven bad people can have good ideas.” (The corollary is also true: Even good people can have bad ideas.) Life would be so much easier if bad people were always wrong and good people were always right. But that’s just not how the world works.<\/p>\n Cancel culture, however, thrives on moral rigidity. It treats people as either good or evil\u2014and makes ideas guilty by association with people we don’t like. Such a mindset is rooted in what social psychologist Philip Tetlock calls the \u201cintuitive prosecutor\u201d model of cognition<\/a>: We defend our side and condemn the other, when we should be open to criticizing our own side and being persuaded by the other.<\/p>\n The result is moral exclusion: the idea that certain people don\u2019t deserve to be heard. Once someone is seen as morally polluted, their arguments are dismissed\u2014even if valid.<\/p>\n Mental Health Requires Mental Freedom<\/p>\n If we want a culture that nurtures mental health, we need the strength to hear, challenge, and grow from what makes us uncomfortable.<\/p>\n When conservative pundit Anne Coulter was scheduled to speak at Cornell University a few years ago, students who disagreed with her views shouted at her, “Your words are violence.” \u201cAbout half of Americans, by some estimates, believe that words can be violence.\u201d Lukianoff said in his TED talk. But that’s an obvious falsehood. In fact, he says, \u201cfree speech cures violence.\u201d And a culture of free speech makes us safer.<\/p>\n Nor does suppression strengthen us. Dialogue does. But dialogue can\u2019t happen when people harass and intimidate others while falsely calling it \u201cfree speech.\u201d<\/p>\n Freedom of speech fosters truth-seeking. And it also fosters what psychologists call cognitive flexibility\u2014the ability to entertain multiple viewpoints, adapt to change, and tolerate discomfort.<\/p>\n