Jonathan Haidt

The Happiness Hypothesis:  Putting Ancient Wisdom and Philosophy to the Test of Modern Science (2006)

In a paragraph

Psychological findings provide a distinctive picture of human nature which can be compared with ancient wisdom and used to provide guidance on how to live.  Conscious reasoning is like a rider on the elephant of the unconscious mind.  Happiness can come from creating good relationships with love, work and something larger, but can only be achieved by training the elephant.

Key points

• The central metaphor of the book is that reasoning is like a rider on the elephant of the unconscious mind. The elephant is superbly evolved, fast, intuitive and dominant.  The rider evolved to serve the elephant and has limited power.

• There are divisions between mind and body, between the left and right brains, between new and old parts of the brain and between controlled and automatic processes.

• The most important idea in pop psychology is the ancient idea that ‘there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so,’ but there are limits to how we can change our conscious minds.

• We have an evolved negativity bias that may be countered by meditation, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy or Prozac.

• Human tit-for-tat instincts, gratitude, vengeance, gossip, language and mimicry seem to have evolved to permit living in groups of around 150 individuals.

• We are good at seeing the fault in others but bad at seeing the fault in ourselves. This probably has arisen to stop us from incriminating ourselves in playing a reputation-based Machiavellian version of tit-for-tat. We can apply the myth of pure evil to our enemies and become self-righteous. But, against this, there is a power to being non-judgemental.

• The Progress Principle is that there is more happiness from the journey of doing than from achievement – ‘Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing’

• The contributors to happiness can be considered using the Happiness Formula: Happiness = Set point + Conditions + Voluntary activities

• The rider should steer as the elephant may want things other than happiness. The environment should be arranged to increase pleasure and engaged activities.

• The Buddhist and Stoic view that happiness comes from within and cannot be found by making the world conform to your wishes is alluring. But it is an overreaction as passion is part of a human life, and variety and balance are possible.

• Humans have complementary attachment and caregiving systems and a separate mating system. Romantic love involves fiery passionate love and intertwining companionate love. Love as attachment between two people is a human need, which Plato and Christianity were wrong to downplay.

• Adversity is more likely to be beneficial for young adults with good social and psychological resources.

• The turn from virtue ethics to quandary ethics has weakened morality, limited its scope and is bad psychology.

• Divinity, with feelings of disgust and elation, is a third dimension to moral thought besides closeness and hierarchy.

• Even if there is no purpose to life, there can be purpose within life. Modern science and ancient wisdom allow us to better understand our nature and so get towards an answer.

• Haidt’s Happiness Hypothesis is that happiness comes from between. We should aim to get right our relationships with love, work and something larger, not by will power but by training the elephant.

Comments

I found The Happiness Hypothesis an inspiring book, full of fascinating and important ideas about evolved human nature and how we should live.  It is throughout of the highest quality, engaging and lucid, and wears its learning lightly.

The book sets out psychological findings about important aspects of human nature and the implications.  The central idea is that the conscious mind has evolved as a limited servant of the dominating non-conscious mind, as illustrated with the metaphor of the rider on the elephant.  Another important idea is that although we are naturally cooperative, we are judgemental and don’t see our own faults. The various psychological finding are set out and compared with views from the ancients, and then conclusions about how to live are presented.  Numerous findings are mentioned, but Haidt consolidates them into a coherent picture of human nature.

The title, which may be an editor’s invention, refers to the quest to work out how to achieve happiness.  The author’s conclusion is that happiness can be found by concentration on our relationships with love, work and with something larger.  Success comes from understanding and training the elephant, rather than from willpower.

The Happiness Hypothesis is complementary to Haidt’s later book ‘The Righteous Mind.’  I admire both books, but as there is some overlap, I suggest that the later book be regarded as the primary introduction to Haidt’s thinking. 

The Happiness Hypothesis is also complimentary to two other of my favourite books. Kahneman’s ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’ also deals brilliantly with the psychological dual purpose theory, and Layard’s Happiness: Lessons From A New Science is a good summary of the applications of positive psychology. 

Links

The Happiness Hypothesis on Amazon UK

Jonathan Haidt website

My notes on The Righteous Mind

My notes on Thinking Fast and Slow

My notes on Happiness: Lessons From a New Science

Extracts from the Book

Introduction: Too Much Wisdom

Are the truths of folk wisdom really true?

1. The Divided Self

Elephant metaphor.  Plato two horses. Freud backseat driver.  Car. Computer.

Why do we do such stupid things? Can ignore desserts on menu but not on table.

Mind v Body.  Montaigne; facial expressions, penis.  Gut second brain.  Three lower chakras energy centres. St Paul flesh v spirit.

Left v Right. Joe Bogen. Michael Gazzaniga.  Left analytic, language. Confabulation.

New v Old. Old, limbic, neocortex, frontal cortex. Prometheus. Antonio Damasio.  Human rationality depends critically on sophisticated emotionality

Controlled v automatic.  John Bargh automatic processes, priming. The earth is full of animals with extraordinarily sophisticated automatic abilities. Controlled processing requires language.  There are still bugs in the reasoning and planning programs.

We can make computers to solve maths problems but not to walk through the woods – our perceptual and motor systems are superb.

The rider evolved to serve the elephant, an adviser to help make better choices.

Frees from stimulus control, escape tyranny of present, imagine alternatives, think long term, learn from others.

But controlled system has limited power to change behaviour.

Walter Mischel Delayed Gratification. Power of stimulus control – change environment, [habits] or conscious thoughts.

Edgar Allan Poe.  The Imp of the Perverse.

We identify with conscious verbal thinking, but this is only one corner of the mind’s vast operation and surprised when urges emerge from elsewhere.

2. Changing Your Mind

‘The whole universe is change, and life itself is but what you deem it.’  Marcus Aurelius

‘There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so’ Hamlet

The most important idea in pop psychology.

Boethius.  Lady Philosophy reinterpretations. Reframes change as normal.

But ‘Lasting change can come only by retraining the elephant, and that’s hard to do.’

Like-o-meter. Flashes of pleasure/displeasure rather than weighing or reasoning.  Affective priming.

Negativity bias. Bad is stronger than good.

Two kinds of people seek therapy: those who need tightening, and those who need loosening.

Amygdala as unconscious shortcut

Identical twins.  Giggle twins.

Left rather than right frontal cortex for happiness. Balance between approach and withdrawal systems.

Change affective style not by force of will.  Eg because of marriage dressed better.

Meditation.  Cognitive therapy. Aaron Beck. Personalization, over-generalization, always/never thinking, magnification, arbitrary inference.  CBT.

Prozac. selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs. Benefit after 4/6 weeks.  Prozac is a way to compensate for the unfairness of the cortical lottery. Driving for years with the emergency break halfway engaged. Like contact lenses.

3. Reciprocity with a Vengeance

The Godfather.

Ultrasociality.

Tit for tax strategy built in.

Dunbar.  Brains grow to manage larger groups.  Chimps 30, humans 150.  Language,

Vengeance and gratitude responses needed. Gossip is a policeman and a teacher. Mimicry is a kind of social glue.

4. The Faults of Others

Machiavellian tit for tat – reputation as trustworthy, whatever reality

Robert Wright put it in his masterful book The Moral Animal, “Human beings are a species splendid in their array of moral equipment, tragic in their propensity to misuse it, and pathetic in their constitutional ignorance of the misuse.”

Curing hypocrisy is much harder because part of the problem is that we don’t believe there’s a problem. We are well-armed for battle in a Machiavellian world of reputation manipulation, and one of our most important weapons is the delusion that we are non-combatants.

We judge others by their behavior, but we think we have special information about ourselves— we know what we are “really like” inside, so we can easily find ways to explain away our selfish acts and cling to the illusion that we are better than others.

I picked the things I cared about—such as keeping the refrigerator clean— and then gave myself an A plus in that category.

When husbands and wives estimate the percentage of housework each does, their estimates total more than 120 percent.

The Myth of Pure Evil.  Zoroastrianism.  Manichaeism.

“Man is an animal suspended in webs of significance that he himself has spun.”

The power of standing non-judgmentally. Sen-ts’an, The Perfect Way is only difficult for those who pick and choose; Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart; If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease.

5. The Pursuit of Happiness

‘All was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.’ Ecclesiastes

The Progress Principle. The journey counts.

The elephant feels pleasure when it takes a step in the right direction

Richard Davidson. Pre-goal attainment positive affect more important than post-goal.

‘Things won are done, joy’s soul lies in the doing’ Troilus and Cressida.

Adaption

Happiness comes from within, and it cannot be found by making the world conform to your desires.  Buddha, Epictetus.

Twin studies hit psychology showing nature against Freud.

Martin Seligman. Positive psychology late 1990s.

Happiness formula.  Happiness = Set Point + Conditions + Voluntary Activities

Less adaption to noise, lack of control, shame, relationships.  Some externals matter.

Experience sampling showed bodily pleasure and gratification (engaged activities, flow) matter.  Arrange day and environment to increase both. Elephant overindulges so rider must encourage to move on. Gratifications ask more of us.

Catalogue of strengths.

Misguided pursuits. Doing v having. Prestige v happiness. Paradox of choice, satisficing.

Advertisers know what the elephant wants – and it isn’t happiness.

Found Buddha alluring but thinks an overraction.  A life without passion is not a human life.  Variety and balance.

6. Love and Attachments

Harry Harlow – Cloth mother. John Bowlby –  Attachment theory, safety and exploration.  Ainsworth – secure, avoidant and resistant.

Attachment and caregiving systems.  Separate mating system.  Romantic partners become attachment figures. 

Passionate and companionate love. Fire v intertwining vines. Two separate processes – graph.  Myth of true love.  A mistake to end when magic ended.

Plato. The essential nature of love as an attachment between two people is rejected; love can be dignified only when it is converted into an appreciation of beauty in general.

Christian fear of love.  Christian love is love stripped of its essential particularity, its focus on a specific other person.  Why? Irrational passions, death/bodily disgust.

Monkeys and people need close and long-lasting attachments to particular others.

Durkheim.  Suicide lower where constraints. Absence of relationships bad.

Hell is other people: so is heaven

7. The Uses of Adversity

What doesn’t kill me makes me stronger Nietszche

Posttraumatic growth v Posttraumatic stress disorder

Resilience.  Hidden abilities. Filters relationships. Changes priorities and philosophies

Adversity can lead to growth, but is it required for growth?

Three levels of personality. Base personality, life, story. Cohere.

Value of writing about trauma.  Why? What good possible?

Children protected not spoiled. Identity formation memory bump age 15 to 25.  Better if embedded in social groups. Tacit and explicit knowledge, need to experience.

Ignorant people see everything in black and white—they rely heavily on the myth of pure evil—and they are strongly influenced by their own self-interest.

For adversity to be maximally beneficial, it should happen at the right time (young adulthood), to the right people (those with the social and psychological resources to rise to challenges and find benefits), and to the right degree (not so severe as to cause PTSD).

8. The Felicity of Virtue

What is the arete of a person? 

Ancient wisdom: Virtue resides in a well-trained elephant.

McIntyre. Modern philosophy: reason and parsimony single principle. Kant and Bentham.  Parsimony.  Reasoning not intuitions.

Quandary ethics. Actions not character.

Children to learn to think rather than be taught character.  But weakens morality, limits scope and bad psychology

Practical Ethics.  Brief vegetarianism. Needed emotion.

Seligman list of strengths and virtues. Work on your strengths not your weaknesses.  Excellences.

Children believe in ‘immanent justice’—justice that is inherent in an act itself.

It just won’t work to turn God into Santa Claus, a moral accountant keeping track of 6 billion accounts, because most lives can’t be placed definitively in the naughty or nice columns.

With its exhortation to “give blood; all you’ll feel is good,” is the American Red Cross telling the truth? Yes

Costs and benefits of moral progress. Lack of moral coherence.

9. Divinity With or Without God

Edwin Abbott. Flatland

Closeness/liking, hierarchy/status and third dimension, divinity/noble

Disgust.  From food safety, to body preservation to keeping clean from our animal natures, a temple that sometimes gets dirty.

Animals below,  Gods above.  Preserve divinity in each person. Crypto-religious behaviour.

Studying elevation. Oxytocin. Awe. Peak experiences Maslow.

Lack of awe in science and reasoning.

Mark Leary The Curse of the Self.  Holds down.

If divinity part of our nature, should accept and study it.  If religion produces happiness, we should try to learn from it.

10. Happiness Comes From Within

Yearbook.  Woody Allen ‘so why bother shaving’

Adolescent existential depression.  But no strings, no test at end, just an opportunity.

Philosophy major.  But philosophy sterile as linguistic analysis and lacked passion and psychological understanding

Psychology and science have now revealed so much that an answer is possible.

What is the meaning of life? The Holy Question. Joke answers: ‘42’, ‘Try to be nice to people’

Science shows no purpose of life but can find purpose within life.

People are more like plants than computers. Love.

Goals.  Purpose. Effectance.  Avoid lethargy.  Work. A job, a career or a calling.  Strengths test. Vital engagement.  Flow and meaning. Healthy work has alignment between doing good and rewards.

Coherence.  Physical, psychological, social. Cross disciplinary.

Darwin group selection. Kin altruism and reciprocal altruism. Cultural evolution. David Sloan Wilson suggests some group evolution. William James ‘cosmic conciousness’

The answer to the question of purpose within life. Understand ourselves and the ways we are divided. Both selfish and hive creatures. Social and industrious. Rider and elephant harmony.

By drawing on ancient wisdom and modern science we can find compelling answers to the question of purpose within life.

Happiness comes from between.  Need love, work and a connection to something larger. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.

Draw on balanced wisdom – ancient/new, East/West, liberal/conservative

We can’t simply select a destination and then walk there directly—the rider does not have that much authority. But by drawing on humanity’s greatest ideas and best science, we can train the elephant, know our possibilities as well as our limits, and live wisely.