Book SummaryThe Happiness Hypothesis, by Jonathan Haidt

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Happiness Hypothesis

One of the primary human impulses is to maximize our happiness. But our satisfaction in life is driven by our emotions. And our emotions, in turn, are determined by the ways in which our mental filters cause us to interpret and react to events and situations.

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom is about how human beings can maximize happiness. It explores how different philosophical traditions have defined happiness throughout human history, places them within an evolutionary framework, and shows how there is a constant back-and-forth between reason and emotion.

Neither western ideas about the fulfillment of goals nor eastern notions about the elimination of desire as being the path to happiness are 100 percent right. The key to happiness is to strike the right balance between the two—to use reason to focus the mind away from desires that will only bring fleeting happiness, while giving in to those desires that will bring lasting fulfillment.

The Rider and the Elephant

Before we can really delve into how you can maximize your own happiness, we need to understand the basic divisions that characterize the human brain—because the brain is home to the neurological and psychological mechanisms that determine how we experience the world.

The most apt metaphor for thinking about the human mind is of a human rider sitting atop an elephant. The rider, representing reason, can do her best to attempt to direct the elephant. But the elephant, representing emotion, is far more powerful and has its own will; it will only comply with the rider’s commands if those commands are not in conflict with its desire.

But we should be careful not to overgeneralize. Reason and emotion are not mutually exclusive or engaged in some zero-sum contest against one another. While emotion is usually the senior partner in the relationship, it is a partnership nonetheless. The two work together—reason enhances our emotional intelligence and our emotional intelligence strengthens our powers of reason.

First, we’ll need to delve into some evolutionary anthropology to establish why the elephant is so much more powerful than the rider. Understanding the dynamics of this fundamental division within our brains will guide our analysis of human happiness. Once we do that, we’ll be able to explore specific strategies for maximizing happiness.

In general, these strategies are centered around:

• Overcoming negativity by moving to the upper range of your affective style
• Practicing reciprocity and tearing down self-delusions
• Desiring the right things
• Improving your relationships
• Learning to overcome adversity
• Cultivating your virtues
• Discovering the divine or sacred in your life
• Living a purposeful life

Our analysis of all these strategies will blend insights from positive psychology, ancient and modern philosophy and religion, and evolutionary anthropology.

The Primacy of Emotion

As humans, we are controlled primarily by our desires, which are driven by our emotions—not our powers of reason. Our emotions determine our opinions and positions on moral questions. It is only after we arrive at these positions that we invent reasons to justify them retroactively.

The automatic system (the elephant) simply responds to stimuli around it and forms judgments and preferences based on what it perceives. And, in a pure contest of wills, the automatic system will nearly always beat the controlled system (the rider). The key is to change the stimuli in your environment into those that will produce desires whose pursuit and fulfillment will lead to true satisfaction. You can’t master the elephant; but, perhaps, you can change what the elephant sees.

Affective Style

The elephant determines our likes and dislikes, often in ways that we’re not consciously aware of. These emotional cues color our thinking, causing the elephant to dominate the rider. A perceived threat will make us consciously evaluate all stimuli as possible threats; a rush of sadness will cause us to adopt a more bleak way of looking at the world as a whole. These are the basic mental preconditions that affect all humans.

So, in general, emotion is always a stronger force within the mind than reason. And if we delve a bit further, we discover that an individual's general emotional state isn’t solely determined by the stimuli they encounter; it’s also influenced by a genetic predisposition toward happiness or sadness known as the affective style.

However, your affective style doesn’t set your level of happiness in stone. The affective style is best thought of as a range or emotional thermostat—some people simply have higher happiness levels at the upper end of their range than others. But within those constraints, there’s still great potential for improvement. Even if you have a negative affective style, you can still become happier. Moving to the upper levels of your affective style is akin to taming the elephant and guiding it down a different path. Effective methods for doing this include meditation, cognitive therapy, and serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs).

The Reciprocity Reflex

A key factor that affects our happiness is the strength of our connections to other people. And reciprocity—the phenomenon by which we treat others as we have been treated by them—is one of the strongest ties that bind society together.

The reciprocity reflex tells us to repay others when they do something for us. From an evolutionary perspective, it works because it increases everyone’s chances of survival. The reciprocity reflex causes the other members of the group to help you if you have helped them, creating networks of mutual obligation. These are the seeds of altruism.

Self-Delusion

But there is a flaw in this. Because reality is filtered through the lens of our mental perceptions, we are vulnerable to deception. **Real altruism may not...

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary Introduction

One of the primary human impulses is to maximize our happiness. Indeed, this is the goal of the modern field of positive psychology. But in our pursuit of happiness, we also have much to learn from the philosophical and literary wisdom of past thinkers, from Buddha to Sigmund Freud.

In this summary, we’ll survey the world’s intellectual, philosophical, and theological ideas on happiness, from ancient India and Greece to the present day. But we won’t just explore these ideas in isolation—we’ll integrate them with one another and evaluate them using the insights we’ve gained from modern psychology. Using our better understanding of how the human mind really works, we will figure out how we can best use these ideas to gain the most joy out of our own lives.

As we’ll see, **our satisfaction in life is driven...

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary Chapter 1: The Split Mind

Have you ever wondered why we do harmful or destructive things even when we know we shouldn’t? Or why we think about saying outlandish or offensive things in situations where we know it would be inappropriate to do so? This is because the mind is not really one unified entity. Instead, it’s split between reason and emotional impulse.

In this chapter, we’ll explore the nature of the divided mind and the consequences it has for our thoughts and actions. As we’ll see, the divided mind is the key to understanding the mental processes that govern our perception of the world. This is important, because those mental processes play a large role in determining our overall level of happiness.

The Rider and the Elephant

The most apt metaphor for thinking about the human mind is of a human rider sitting atop an elephant. The rider, representing reason, can do her best to attempt to direct the elephant. But the elephant is far more powerful and has its own will; it will only comply with the rider’s commands if those commands are not in conflict with its desire. Thus, the rational part of ourselves can advise and guide our emotional core; but in a pure contest of wills,...

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary Chapter 2: Overcome Negativity

One major stumbling block on our road to happiness is our negativity bias. As we saw in the last chapter, our perceptions and interpretations of the events that we witness determine our reality—not the events themselves. And unfortunately, those interpretations tend toward pessimism and negativity. The key is to shift our mental structures and patterns of thought so that we have more positive and fulfilling interpretations of the events in our lives. In this chapter, we’ll analyze why we have such a strong negativity bias and explore some strategies for overcoming it.

Negativity Bias

The elephant determines our likes and dislikes, often in ways that we’re not consciously aware of. For example, studies have shown that white Americans have an automatic negative reaction when they’re shown black faces or symbols of black culture.

Similarly, people tend to be drawn to things that sound like their own names. People named Dennis are surprisingly overrepresented in the field of dentistry and married couples have been shown to be disproportionately likely to have first names that share the same first letter (like Dan and Dana or Jason and Jessica). Thus, even major life...

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary Chapter 3: Do Unto Others

Another key factor that affects our happiness is the strength of our connections to other people. And reciprocity—the phenomenon by which we treat others as we have been treated by them—is one of the strongest ties that bind society together. In this chapter, we’ll explore the origins of reciprocity, why it acts as such a strong binding agent, and how it shapes and governs our happiness by strengthening our relationships with other people.

The Reciprocity Reflex

Kin altruism is the mechanism by which individuals care for and protect individuals within their kin group (those with whom they share a blood relation). It’s observed in the behavior of many non-human animals and can be explained by simple Darwinian instincts: if the ultimate goal is to ensure the survival of one’s genes, it makes sense to be altruistic toward other members of the kin group.

But this does not fully explain the human phenomenon of reciprocity as we observe it. Humans, unlike other animals, work with, care for, and protect people with whom they have minimal or no blood relation. If anything, such behavior cuts against Darwinian impulse, as these other people are our “competitors” for...

Shortform Exercise: Overcome Self-Delusion

Think about how you can readjust your perceptions.

Think of a past instance in which you behaved selfishly. How did you rationalize that behavior to yourself at the time?

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary Chapter 4: Adjusting Your Happiness

A cornerstone of Buddhist belief, and that of many other Eastern religious traditions, is that the striving for status and possessions will leave you spiritually unfulfilled and, ultimately, joyless.

These faiths encourage breaking all emotional attachment to things and refraining from trying to attain what you don’t have. The striving, according to this view, is the root of human unhappiness.

And it’s true that we often feel hollow and unfulfilled even after we get the things that we want (or, at least, we think we want). But the self-denying philosophy of Buddhism gets some things wrong about human psychology. It turns out that some things are worth striving for. The key is not to eliminate desire; it’s to start desiring the right things.

The Fleeting Joy of Achievement

Before we delve into what we should be striving for, it’s worthwhile to explore why so many of the things we do strive for leave us feeling unfulfilled. We often experience only brief, temporary happiness when we achieve some long-held goal like landing a promotion, getting a new car, or getting good grades. Soon after, we feel the unquenchable urge to reach the next milestone. Why are we...

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary Chapter 5: Attachment

In previous chapters, we’ve touched upon how our social attachments and relationships are central to our happiness and speak to a basic human need.

This is not a new insight by any means. In the 19th century, sociologist Emile Durkheim’s studies showed that people with fewer social attachments were more likely to die by suicide. And people with lots of meaningful relationships and connections to other people have been shown to have better health outcomes and report being happier.

In this chapter, we’ll explore the dynamics of our attachments to others and how pioneering research transformed how we think about the importance of love to human development.

Behaviorism

Before we talk about how crucial love is to human development, however, we need to discuss how psychology used to treat love. In the early days of psychology, the school of thought known as behaviorism taught that unconditional love was something to be avoided. The behaviorists believed that human action was governed by conditioned responses to reinforcements. Accordingly, people would only engage in behaviors they associated with rewards and refrain from behaviors they associated with punishment....

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary Chapter 6: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger

In thinking about how to maximize our happiness, we have to consider what makes us unhappy. If we could design the happiest possible lives for ourselves, surely we would opt for one without any setbacks or adversity, in which we get everything we want without having to overcome any struggles.

But this would actually be counterproductive. While the behaviorists in the last chapter were certainly overstating the case when they argued that providing unconditional love to children would render them weak and undeveloped, there is some truth to the idea that human beings need some amount of struggle in their lives in order to reach their full potential.

In this chapter, we’ll explore how, under certain circumstances, adversity can be beneficial for human happiness and fulfillment.

Benefits of Trauma

Health psychologists now talk about post-traumatic growth in addition to post-traumatic stress disorder. People who suffer setbacks, even tragedies like the loss of a loved one, often find new strengths as a result of their experience.

One way that adversity helps build character is through resilience. People who’ve suffered through hardships can emerge with a new...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Adversity

Think about how overcoming challenges has shaped you.

In a few sentences, identify an incident in your life when you experienced an unexpected setback or loss.

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary Chapter 7: Cultivate Your Virtues

The concept of virtue is often associated with puritanical values and behaviors like rigid piety and abstinence from sex. But is this really the most useful way to think about virtue?

Virtue should be defined as the cultivation of the best version of oneself. It is about fulfilling your potential, engaging in constant self-improvement, and striving toward the acquisition of a set of positive attributes or qualities. The specific virtues you aim for depend on your particular strengths and interests. The key is improvement—be it moral, intellectual, or even physical.

Founding Father Benjamin Franklin was the quintessential self-improver, a man who constantly devoted himself to learning new things and acquiring new skills. Throughout his life, Franklin identified specific virtues that he actively sought to cultivate. In his later years, he looked back on his life with great satisfaction—and attributed his happiness to his relentless pursuit of virtue.

In this chapter, we’ll study this relationship between virtue and happiness, using new insights from the emerging field of positive psychology.

Ancient Virtue

Of course, the celebration of virtue is hardly new. It goes...

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary Chapter 8: Divinity

If we could plot human experience on a graph, we might define it as existing along two axes.

On the horizontal X-axis, we have the world of connection and relationships; here, we make distinctions between strangers and friends, known and unknown.

On the Y-axis, we have the world of hierarchy; those we perceive as being our social superiors or inferiors. But there seems to be a third dimension, a Z-axis. This is what we might call divinity; a sense of uplifting when we witness something extraordinary or beautiful. It is its own unique moral dimension.

In this chapter, we’ll explore this dimension of sacredness and how, by drawing closer to the divine, we can experience the joyful emotion of elevation.

The Logic of Disgust

Before we talk about spiritual uplifting, we should explore the opposite sensation. Many ancient religious texts are concerned with purity and cleanliness (i.e., rules about handling corpses, not eating certain kinds of meat, ablution rituals). There seems to be an ancient sensitivity to the emotion of disgust.

As has been the case with so many of the ancient writers and thinkers we’ve surveyed, this preoccupation with disgust actually reflects deep...

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary Chapter 9: The Purpose of Life

To discern the meaning of life, it is crucial to understand human beings as they actually are.

As we’ve seen, we are not hyper-rational beings. In most situations, the elephant is in charge, not the rider. Philosophers seeking to explain or understand the human condition need to incorporate this fundamental psychological truth into their work.

Knowing this is important because it determines what the most effective strategies are for living a purposeful life. We explore those strategies in this final chapter.

Occupational Self-Direction

One of the essential conditions for a satisfying life is meaningful work. We need to engage in pursuits that fill our lives with purpose and meaning. Work doesn’t have to be narrowly defined as a career. It can be anything that’s action-oriented and sets things in motion.

We have a need to see that our actions have an effect on the world around us. This is a psychological need known as effectancy. Anything from simple child’s play to a stable adult career can provide effectancy, satisfying our hunger to see that there are results associated with the labor we provide.

The most meaningful and satisfying work is that which people...

Shortform Exercise: Understand The Happiness Hypothesis

Explore the main takeaways from the Happiness Hypothesis.

Do you think that our perceptions and behavior are more driven by reason or emotion? Why?