The Happiness Hypothesis
Encyclopedia
The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom is a psychology
book for the general reader by Jonathan Haidt
, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia
. In it Haidt aims to identify some of the most important psychological ideas discovered by thinkers of the past - Plato
, Buddha
, Jesus
and others - and to examine them in the light of contemporary psychological research, extracting from them any lessons that still apply to our modern lives. Central to the book are the concepts of virtue, happiness
, fulfillment, and meaning.
Haidt focuses on this last division, between the conscious/reasoned processes and automatic/implicit processes. He uses Buddha's metaphor of a rider on the back of an elephant in which the conscious mind is the rider and the unconscious mind is the elephant. The rider is unable to control the elephant by force: this explains many puzzles about our mental life, particularly why we have such trouble with weakness of will. Learning how to train the elephant is the secret of self-improvement.
) guide us throughout our lives. People even tend to choose mates, and professions, whose names resemble their own. Though there is a bias towards negativity
, some people are optimists and others pessimists. Haidt discusses three ways of changing those automatic reactions: meditation
, cognitive therapy
, and SSRI
medications such as Prozac.
's "six weapons of influence", Haidt describes ways in which understanding the deep workings of reciprocity can help to solve problems in our social lives and guard against the many ways that we can be manipulated.
has to say about this, beginning with the work of Daniel Batson
on cheating and self-justification, mentioning Robert Wright
's description of our "constitutional ignorance" of hypocrisy in The Moral Animal
, and moving on to work by Deanna Kuhn and David Perkins on confirmation bias
and Roy Baumeister's work on "The Myth of Pure Evil" Haidt then discusses ways of taking off "the moral glasses" and seeing the world as it really is.
) that external conditions are not what matters. But Haidt argues that we now know that some external circumstances do matter. He identifies ways of improving happiness by altering these, including spending money well, and argues that the Western emphasis on action and striving is not without merit.
's World Health Organization
-sponsored study and report, "Maternal Care and Mental Health"
in 1950, and the subsequent work with monkeys by Harry Harlow
. Understanding the different kinds of love, he writes, can help explain why people make so many mistakes with love, and why philosophers hate love and give us bad advice about it.
wrote, "What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger", but this is not true for everyone; adversity may result in post-traumatic stress disorder
. Haidt discusses how and why some people grow from their suffering, along with ways of improving one's chances of finding post-traumatic growth. Adversity at the right time in life, as Robert Sternberg
's research on wisdom shows, can make people more compassionate and better able to balance the needs of self and others.
as an example, Haidt looks at how success can follow virtue, in the broad sense of virtue that goes back to the Ancient Greek
arete
, excellence. The ancients, according to Haidt, had a sophisticated psychological understanding of virtue, using maxims
, fables and role-models to train "the elephant", the automatic responses of the individual. Though the beginnings of Western virtue lie in Homer
, Aesop
and the Old Testament
, the modern understanding of it has much to do with the arguments of Kant
(the categorical imperative
) and Bentham
(utilitarianism
). With these came a shift from character ethics to quandary ethics, from moral education to moral reasoning.
To address the question of how a common morality can be forged in a diverse society, Haidt turns to positive psychology
, specifically to
Seligman
and Peterson's work on virtues and strengths.
, Haidt argues that the perception of sacredness and divinity is a basic feature of the human mind; the emotions of disgust, moral elevation, and awe tell us about this dimension, but not everybody listens. The "religious right
" can only be understood by acknowledging this dimension, which most liberals and secular thinkers ignore or misunderstand. The work of William James
and of Abraham Maslow
(on "peak experiences") shows ways in which this dimension is also relevant to the non-religious.
, Howard Gardner
and William Damon
established the concept of "vital engagement" which characterises work with the most sense of purpose. "Cross-level coherence" within one's self and life is also vital, coherence between the physical, psychological and socio-cultural levels. Religion is an evolved mechanism for creating this coherence.
turns out to be the wisest idea of all. We need, he writes, the perspectives of ancient religion and modern science; of east and west; even of liberal and conservative. "Words of wisdom really do flood over us, but only by drawing from many sources can we become wise."
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
book for the general reader by Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt
Jonathan Haidt is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. His research focuses on the psychological bases of morality across different cultures and political ideology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992. He was awarded the Templeton Prize in Positive...
, Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia
University of Virginia
The University of Virginia is a public research university located in Charlottesville, Virginia, United States, founded by Thomas Jefferson...
. In it Haidt aims to identify some of the most important psychological ideas discovered by thinkers of the past - Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
, Buddha
Buddha
In Buddhism, buddhahood is the state of perfect enlightenment attained by a buddha .In Buddhism, the term buddha usually refers to one who has become enlightened...
, Jesus
Jesus
Jesus of Nazareth , commonly referred to as Jesus Christ or simply as Jesus or Christ, is the central figure of Christianity...
and others - and to examine them in the light of contemporary psychological research, extracting from them any lessons that still apply to our modern lives. Central to the book are the concepts of virtue, happiness
Happiness
Happiness is a mental state of well-being characterized by positive emotions ranging from contentment to intense joy. A variety of biological, psychological, religious, and philosophical approaches have striven to define happiness and identify its sources....
, fulfillment, and meaning.
Ch.1: The divided self
Haidt looks at a number of ways of dividing the self that have existed since ancient times:- mind vs body:
- left brain vs. right brain: (lateralisation of brain functionLateralization of brain functionA longitudinal fissure separates the human brain into two distinct cerebral hemispheres, connected by the corpus callosum. The sides resemble each other and each hemisphere's structure is generally mirrored by the other side. Yet despite the strong anatomical similarities, the functions of each...
) - old brain vs. new brain (frontal cortex)
- controlled vs. automatic
Haidt focuses on this last division, between the conscious/reasoned processes and automatic/implicit processes. He uses Buddha's metaphor of a rider on the back of an elephant in which the conscious mind is the rider and the unconscious mind is the elephant. The rider is unable to control the elephant by force: this explains many puzzles about our mental life, particularly why we have such trouble with weakness of will. Learning how to train the elephant is the secret of self-improvement.
Ch.2: Changing your mind
The automatic emotional reactions of the "elephant" (affective primingPriming (psychology)
Priming is an implicit memory effect in which exposure to a stimulus influences a response to a later stimulus. It can occur following perceptual, semantic, or conceptual stimulus repetition...
) guide us throughout our lives. People even tend to choose mates, and professions, whose names resemble their own. Though there is a bias towards negativity
Negativity bias
Negativity bias is the name for a psychological phenomenon by which humans pay more attention to and give more weight to negative rather than positive experiences or other kinds of information...
, some people are optimists and others pessimists. Haidt discusses three ways of changing those automatic reactions: meditation
Meditation
Meditation is any form of a family of practices in which practitioners train their minds or self-induce a mode of consciousness to realize some benefit....
, cognitive therapy
Cognitive therapy
Cognitive behavioral therapy is a psychotherapeutic approach: a talking therapy. CBT aims to solve problems concerning dysfunctional emotions, behaviors and cognitions through a goal-oriented, systematic procedure in the present...
, and SSRI
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor
Selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors or serotonin-specific reuptake inhibitor are a class of compounds typically used as antidepressants in the treatment of depression, anxiety disorders, and some personality disorders. The efficacy of SSRIs is disputed...
medications such as Prozac.
Ch.3: Reciprocity with a vengeance
Many species have a social life, but among mammals, only humans in particular are ultra-social – able to live in very large cooperative groups. The Golden Rule, supplemented with gossip, is the secret of our success. Calling on Robert CialdiniRobert Cialdini
Robert B. Cialdini is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University.He is best known for his popular book on persuasion and marketing, Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion. Influence has sold over 2 million copies and has been translated into twenty-six...
's "six weapons of influence", Haidt describes ways in which understanding the deep workings of reciprocity can help to solve problems in our social lives and guard against the many ways that we can be manipulated.
Ch.4: The faults of others
Part of our ultra-sociality is that we are constantly trying to manipulate others' perceptions of ourselves, without realizing that we are doing so. As Jesus said, we see the faults of others clearly, but are blind to our own. ("Why do you see the speck in your neighbour’s eye, but do not notice the log in your own eye?") Haidt looks at what social psychologySocial psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
has to say about this, beginning with the work of Daniel Batson
Daniel Batson
C. Daniel Batson is an American social psychologist. He holds both doctoral degrees in Theology and Psychology . He obtained his doctorate under John Darley and has taught at the University of Kansas...
on cheating and self-justification, mentioning Robert Wright
Robert Wright (journalist)
Robert Wright is an American journalist, scholar, and prize-winning author of best-selling books about science, evolutionary psychology, history, religion, and game theory, including The Evolution of God, Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, The Moral Animal, and Three Scientists and Their Gods:...
's description of our "constitutional ignorance" of hypocrisy in The Moral Animal
The Moral Animal
The Moral Animal is a 1994 book by Robert Wright. The New York Times Book Review chose it as one of the 12 best books of 1994; it was a national bestseller and has been published in 12 languages....
, and moving on to work by Deanna Kuhn and David Perkins on confirmation bias
Confirmation bias
Confirmation bias is a tendency for people to favor information that confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true.David Perkins, a geneticist, coined the term "myside bias" referring to a preference for "my" side of an issue...
and Roy Baumeister's work on "The Myth of Pure Evil" Haidt then discusses ways of taking off "the moral glasses" and seeing the world as it really is.
Ch.5: The pursuit of happiness
It is a commonplace that happiness comes from within and can't be found in external things. For a while in the 1990s, psychologists agreed with ancient sages (such as Buddha and EpictetusEpictetus
Epictetus was a Greek sage and Stoic philosopher. He was born a slave at Hierapolis, Phrygia , and lived in Rome until banishment when he went to Nicopolis in northwestern Greece where he lived the rest of his life. His teachings were noted down and published by his pupil Arrian in his Discourses...
) that external conditions are not what matters. But Haidt argues that we now know that some external circumstances do matter. He identifies ways of improving happiness by altering these, including spending money well, and argues that the Western emphasis on action and striving is not without merit.
Ch.6: Love and attachments
There are many kinds of love, but, Haidt asserts, they all begin to make sense when you see where love comes from, and what it does. To do this he examines John BowlbyJohn Bowlby
Edward John Mostyn "John" Bowlby was a British psychologist, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, notable for his interest in child development and for his pioneering work in attachment theory.- Family background :...
's World Health Organization
World Health Organization
The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...
-sponsored study and report, "Maternal Care and Mental Health"
Maternal deprivation
The term maternal deprivation is a catch-phrase summarising the early work of psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, John Bowlby on the effects of separating infants and young children from their mother although the effect of loss of the mother on the developing child had been considered earlier by Freud...
in 1950, and the subsequent work with monkeys by Harry Harlow
Harry Harlow
Harry Frederick Harlow was an American psychologist best known for his maternal-separation and social isolation experiments on rhesus monkeys, which demonstrated the importance of care-giving and companionship in social and cognitive development...
. Understanding the different kinds of love, he writes, can help explain why people make so many mistakes with love, and why philosophers hate love and give us bad advice about it.
Ch.7: The uses of adversity
NietzscheFriedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...
wrote, "What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger", but this is not true for everyone; adversity may result in post-traumatic stress disorder
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Posttraumaticstress disorder is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma. This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity,...
. Haidt discusses how and why some people grow from their suffering, along with ways of improving one's chances of finding post-traumatic growth. Adversity at the right time in life, as Robert Sternberg
Robert Sternberg
Robert Jeffrey Sternberg , is an American psychologist and psychometrician and Provost at Oklahoma State University. He was formerly the Dean of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University, IBM Professor of Psychology and Education at Yale University and the President of the American Psychological...
's research on wisdom shows, can make people more compassionate and better able to balance the needs of self and others.
Ch.8: The felicity of virtue
Taking Benjamin FranklinBenjamin Franklin
Dr. Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat...
as an example, Haidt looks at how success can follow virtue, in the broad sense of virtue that goes back to the Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek is the stage of the Greek language in the periods spanning the times c. 9th–6th centuries BC, , c. 5th–4th centuries BC , and the c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD of ancient Greece and the ancient world; being predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek...
arete
Arete
Areté is the term meaning "virtue" or "excellence", from Greek ἈρετήArete may also be used:*as a given name of persons or things:**Queen Arete , a character in Homer's Odyssey.***197 Arete, an asteroid....
, excellence. The ancients, according to Haidt, had a sophisticated psychological understanding of virtue, using maxims
Aphorism
An aphorism is an original thought, spoken or written in a laconic and memorable form.The term was first used in the Aphorisms of Hippocrates...
, fables and role-models to train "the elephant", the automatic responses of the individual. Though the beginnings of Western virtue lie in Homer
Homer
In the Western classical tradition Homer , is the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and is revered as the greatest ancient Greek epic poet. These epics lie at the beginning of the Western canon of literature, and have had an enormous influence on the history of literature.When he lived is...
, Aesop
Aesop
Aesop was a Greek writer credited with a number of popular fables. Older spellings of his name have included Esop and Isope. Although his existence remains uncertain and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a...
and the Old Testament
Old Testament
The Old Testament, of which Christians hold different views, is a Christian term for the religious writings of ancient Israel held sacred and inspired by Christians which overlaps with the 24-book canon of the Masoretic Text of Judaism...
, the modern understanding of it has much to do with the arguments of Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
(the categorical imperative
Categorical imperative
The Categorical Imperative is the central philosophical concept in the moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant, as well as modern deontological ethics...
) and Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He became a leading theorist in Anglo-American philosophy of law, and a political radical whose ideas influenced the development of welfarism...
(utilitarianism
Utilitarianism
Utilitarianism is an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall "happiness", by whatever means necessary. It is thus a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can...
). With these came a shift from character ethics to quandary ethics, from moral education to moral reasoning.
To address the question of how a common morality can be forged in a diverse society, Haidt turns to positive psychology
Positive psychology
Positive psychology is a recent branch of psychology whose purpose was summed up in 1998 by Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: "We believe that a psychology of positive human functioning will arise, which achieves a scientific understanding and effective interventions to build thriving in...
, specifically to
Seligman
Martin Seligman
Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman is an American psychologist, educator, and author of self-help books. His theory of "learned helplessness" is widely respected among scientific psychologists....
and Peterson's work on virtues and strengths.
Ch.9: Divinity with or without God
Using the metaphor of FlatlandFlatland
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is an 1884 satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott. Writing pseudonymously as "A Square", Abbott used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to offer pointed observations on the social hierarchy of Victorian culture...
, Haidt argues that the perception of sacredness and divinity is a basic feature of the human mind; the emotions of disgust, moral elevation, and awe tell us about this dimension, but not everybody listens. The "religious right
Christian right
Christian right is a term used predominantly in the United States to describe "right-wing" Christian political groups that are characterized by their strong support of socially conservative policies...
" can only be understood by acknowledging this dimension, which most liberals and secular thinkers ignore or misunderstand. The work of William James
William James
William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher who was trained as a physician. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and on the philosophy of pragmatism...
and of Abraham Maslow
Abraham Maslow
Abraham Harold Maslow was an American professor of psychology at Brandeis University, Brooklyn College, New School for Social Research and Columbia University who created Maslow's hierarchy of needs...
(on "peak experiences") shows ways in which this dimension is also relevant to the non-religious.
Ch.10: Happiness comes from between
Haidt discusses "the meaning of life", making the distinction between a purpose for life and a purpose within life. Love and work give a sense of meaning to life. A study by Mihaly CsikszentmihalyiMihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a Hungarian psychology professor, who emigrated to the United States at the age of 22. Now at Claremont Graduate University, he is the former head of the department of psychology at the University of Chicago and of the department of sociology and anthropology at Lake...
, Howard Gardner
Howard Gardner
Howard Earl Gardner is an American developmental psychologist who is a professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, Senior Director of Harvard Project Zero and author of over twenty books translated into thirty languages. Since 1995, he has...
and William Damon
William Damon
William Damon is a Professor of Education at the Stanford University School of Education, Director of the Stanford Center on Adolescence, and senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace...
established the concept of "vital engagement" which characterises work with the most sense of purpose. "Cross-level coherence" within one's self and life is also vital, coherence between the physical, psychological and socio-cultural levels. Religion is an evolved mechanism for creating this coherence.
Ch.11: On balance
Haidt concludes by arguing that the ancient idea of Yin and YangYin and yang
In Asian philosophy, the concept of yin yang , which is often referred to in the West as "yin and yang", is used to describe how polar opposites or seemingly contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and how they give rise to each other in turn. Opposites thus only...
turns out to be the wisest idea of all. We need, he writes, the perspectives of ancient religion and modern science; of east and west; even of liberal and conservative. "Words of wisdom really do flood over us, but only by drawing from many sources can we become wise."