happiness hypothesis quotes

22 Top Quotes From The Happiness Hypothesis

In "The Happiness Hypothesis," Jonathan Haidt, a renowned social psychologist, embarks on a captivating exploration of happiness and the human condition, drawing wisdom from ancient philosophies and contemporary scientific research. Haidt skillfully weaves together insights from Eastern and Western traditions, offering a fresh perspective on what it means to lead a fulfilling life.

Throughout the book, he delves into the complex interplay between the mind and emotions, dissecting topics such as the nature of happiness, the importance of cultivating virtues, and the role of social relationships in our well-being. By examining age-old concepts like the power of meditation, the impact of self-control, and the allure of materialism, Haidt crafts a profound and accessible narrative that leaves readers with a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. "The Happiness Hypothesis" is a timeless and thought-provoking read that invites introspection, encouraging readers to seek harmony between ancient wisdom and modern science in their quest for genuine happiness and meaning in life. ( The Happiness Hypothesis Summary )

The Happiness Hypothesis Quotes

2. "Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses."

3. “Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.”

4. "Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger."

5. "You don’t really have to be good at everything. Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness.”

6. "We get more pleasure from making progress toward our goals than we do from achieving them"

7. “Those who think money can't buy happiness just don't know where to shop.."

8. “Human thinking depends on metaphor. We understand new or complex things in relation to things we already know.”

9. “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

10. “Idealism easily becomes dangerous because it brings with it, almost inevitably, the belief that the ends justify the means. "

11. “Letting off steam makes people angrier, not calmer. "

12. “We've all heard that what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, but that is a dangerous oversimplification. Many of the things that don't kill you can damage you for life.”

13. Adversity may be necessary for growth because it forces you to stop speeding along the road of life, allowing you to notice the paths that were branching off all along, and to think about where you really want to end up.”

14. "Activities connect us to others; objects often separate us."

15. “It is not clear that married people are, on average, happier than those who never married, because unhappily married people are the least happy group of all and they pull down the average.”

16. “Gossip is a policeman and a teacher. Without it, there would be chaos and ignorance.”

17. "You should learn the terrain, pick a direction, find some good traveling companions, and enjoy the trip, because there may be nothing at the end of the road.”

18. "To cut off all attachments, to shun the pleasures of sensuality and triumph in an effort to escape the pains of loss and defeat—this now strikes me as an inappropriate response to the inevitable presence of some suffering in every life.”

19. "If the metaphor for passionate love is fire, the metaphor for companionate love is vines growing, intertwining, and gradually binding two people together.”

20. “Variety is the spice of life because it is the natural enemy of adaptation.”

21. “We assume that there is one person in each body, but in some ways we are each more like a committee whose members have been thrown together to do a job, but who often find themselves working at cross purposes.”

22. “The wise man chooses not the greatest quantity of food but the most tasty.”

― Quotes from the book The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt

Who is the Author of The Happiness Hypothesis?

Jonathan Haidt, a prominent social psychologist and author, has become renowned for his insightful work on human morality and the psychological underpinnings of political and social divisions. In his influential book "The Righteous Mind," Haidt delves into the evolutionary origins of moral beliefs and how they shape our behavior and political ideologies. He argues that understanding the moral foundations of different groups can bridge the gap between conflicting viewpoints and foster more constructive dialogues. Haidt's research helps us comprehend the tribal nature of human societies and provides a framework for cultivating empathy and tolerance towards differing perspectives. By appreciating the diverse moral landscapes that shape our world, we can strive for a more compassionate and interconnected society.

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30 Best The Happiness Hypothesis Quotes With Image

1) Happiness is not solely dependent on external circumstances but also on our internal mindset and perspectives. The book emphasizes the importance of cultivating positive attitudes, gratitude, and meaningful relationships to enhance happiness.

2) Our minds are not always rational, and we are often influenced by unconscious biases and emotions. Understanding the workings of our mind can help us make better decisions and overcome negative thought patterns.

3) Happiness is a skill that can be developed through intentional practices. The book explores various ancient philosophies, such as Buddhism and Stoicism, as well as modern psychology, to provide practical strategies for increasing well-being and life satisfaction.

4) Social connections and belongingness are fundamental to human happiness. The book delves into the importance of strong social bonds, empathy, and altruism, highlighting the positive impact they have on our well-being.

5) Finding meaning and purpose in life plays a significant role in our overall happiness. The book explores different sources of meaning, including work, relationships, and personal growth, and provides insights on how to cultivate a sense of purpose.

Introduction

5 key lessons from the happiness hypothesis, 30 best the happiness hypothesis quotes, related quotes.

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The Happiness Hypothesis Quotes by Jonathan Haidt

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Are you looking for The Happiness Hypothesis quotes? Do you want explanations of Jonathan Haidt’s psychology of happiness?

Here are six quotes from The Happiness Hypothesis with thorough explanations. These quotes represent the ideas of the main themes and concepts in the book.

Continue on for the best quotes from The Happiness Hypothesis .

The Happiness Hypothesis Quotes

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.

Below are some of the best The Happiness Hypothesis quotes:

“The rider evolved to serve to 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, 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. 

“Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.”

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.

“Those who think money can’t buy happiness just don’t know where to shop … People would be happier and healthier if they took more time off and spent it with their family and friends, yet America has long been heading in the opposite direction. People would be happier if they reduced their commuting time, even if it meant living in smaller houses, yet American trends are toward even larger houses and ever longer commutes. People would be happier and healthier if they took longer vacations even if that meant earning less, yet vacation times are shrinking in the United States, and in Europe as well. People would be happier, and in the long run and wealthier, if they bought basic functional appliances, automobiles, and wristwatches, and invested the money they saved for future consumption; yet, Americans and in particular spend almost everything they have – and sometimes more – on goods for present consumption, often paying a large premium for designer names and superfluous features.”

Conspicuous consumption naturally leads to an endless competitive cycle—in response to your purchase, someone else buys something even more expensive, leaving you dissatisfied because it devalues your own purchase. The only way you can regain that happiness, of course, is by purchasing your next big-ticket item.

Inconspicuous consumption, by contrast, refers to the kind of spending we do for our benefit, on things that make us intrinsically happy. These are things that we value for their own sake, not for what they convey about us relative to other people. Positive psychology research suggests that money spent on experiences like vacations is far less likely to fall into the conspicuous consumption trap than money spent on material objects like cars or expensive watches. People tend to compete with one another over who owns the biggest house or the nicest car; they don’t, however, try to one-up each other with who took the longest vacation or who traveled the furthest. 

“Finding fault with yourself is also the key to overcoming the hypocrisy and judgmentalism that damage so many valuable relationships. The instant you see some contribution you made to a conflict, your anger softens—maybe just a bit, but enough that you might be able to acknowledge some merit on the other side. You can still believe you are right and the other person is wrong, but if you can move to believing that you are mostly right, and your opponent is mostly wrong, you have the basis for an effective and nonhumiliating apology.”

While we may enjoy pointing out the hypocrisy of others and relish the feeling of moral superiority that it gives us, we are all hypocrites, excoriating others for behavior that we ourselves engage in. We are able to do this without suffering cognitive dissonance because we are masters at inventing rationales for why whatever we’re doing is virtuous (or at the very least justifiable).

“If you are in passionate love and want to celebrate your passion, read poetry. If your ardor has calmed and you want to understand your evolving relationship, read psychology. But if you have just ended a relationship and would like to believe you are better off without love, read philosophy.”

Love researchers identify two types of romantic love—passionate love and companionate love. Passionate love is the all-consuming kind that new lovers fall into and is often romanticized in songs and films. It is addictive, triggering dopamine releases in the brain just as narcotics like heroin and cocaine do. And like all drugs, it can lead to withdrawal symptoms; the highs eventually wear off as your body develops a higher tolerance. When we are in the throes of passionate love, the elephant is in full stampede—with the rider gleefully spurring her along.

Companionate love, on the other hand, is the stable kind of love we feel for those whose lives are inextricably linked to ours. It is based on caregiving and attachment. These are the lasting bonds that sustain marriages for decades and give us the kind of rich and fulfilling relationships that form the bedrock of so much of our happiness.

“If you want your children to grow up to be healthy and independent, you should hold them, hug them, cuddle them, and love them. Give them a secure base and they will explore and then conquer the world on their own.”

Attachment theory states that children have two primary needs—safety and exploration . From an evolutionary perspective, both are necessary. Safety guarantees survival, while exploration enables children to develop the skills they need to succeed as adults and have children of their own.

The two work in tandem. When the safety level drops too low during exploration or play, the child instinctively cries out for its parent to restore safety to the right level (children do this instinctively when they reach their arms up for their parents to hold them when they are distressed). 

This knowledge that the parent will always be there to act as a guardrail gives the child the sense of security she needs to develop independence. Accordingly, when children are deprived of their attachment figures, they become insecure and unable to develop the emotional security and independence needed to thrive in adulthood.

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Hannah graduated summa cum laude with a degree in English and double minors in Professional Writing and Creative Writing. She grew up reading books like Harry Potter and His Dark Materials and has always carried a passion for fiction. However, Hannah transitioned to non-fiction writing when she started her travel website in 2018 and now enjoys sharing travel guides and trying to inspire others to see the world.

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Jonathan Haidt - The Happiness Hypothesis (2006)

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The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom Paperback – December 1, 2006

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A “wonderfully smart and readable” (Washington Post) book that combines philosophical wisdom and scientific research, revealing surprising insights about how to live a meaningful life

• Print length 320 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Basic Books
• Publication date December 1, 2006
• Grade level 11 and up
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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Basic Books; 1st edition (December 1, 2006)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0465028020
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0465028023
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13 years and up
• Grade level ‏ : ‎ 11 and up
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 13.8 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches
• #15 in Consciousness & Thought Philosophy
• #24 in Ancient Greek & Roman Philosophy
• #1,138 in Health, Fitness & Dieting (Books)

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About the author

Jonathan haidt.

Jonathan Haidt is the Thomas Cooley Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and then did post-doctoral research at the University of Chicago and in Orissa, India. He taught at the University of Virginia for 16 years before moving to NYU-Stern in 2011. He was named one of the "top global thinkers" by Foreign Policy magazine, and one of the "top world thinkers" by Prospect magazine.

His research focuses on morality - its emotional foundations, cultural variations, and developmental course. He began his career studying the negative moral emotions, such as disgust, shame, and vengeance, but then moved on to the understudied positive moral emotions, such as admiration, awe, and moral elevation. He is the co-developer of Moral Foundations theory, and of the research site YourMorals.org. He is a co-founder of HeterodoxAcademy.org, which advocates for viewpoint diversity in higher education. He uses his research to help people understand and respect the moral motives of their enemies (see CivilPolitics.org, and see his TED talks). He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom; The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion; and (with Greg Lukianoff) The Coddling of the American Mind: How good intentions and bad ideas are setting a generation up for failure. For more information see www.JonathanHaidt.com.

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Quotes from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

Jonathan Haidt ·  297 pages

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“If you are in passionate love and want to celebrate your passion, read poetry. If your ardor has calmed and you want to understand your evolving relationship, read psychology. But if you have just ended a relationship and would like to believe you are better off without love, read philosophy.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger. It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Those who think money can't buy happiness just don't know where to shop … People would be happier and healthier if they took more time off and spent it with their family and friends, yet America has long been heading in the opposite direction. People would be happier if they reduced their commuting time, even if it meant living in smaller houses, yet American trends are toward even larger houses and ever longer commutes. People would be happier and healthier if they took longer vacations even if that meant earning less, yet vacation times are shrinking in the United States, and in Europe as well. People would be happier, and in the long run and wealthier, if they bought basic functional appliances, automobiles, and wristwatches, and invested the money they saved for future consumption; yet, Americans and in particular spend almost everything they have – and sometimes more – on goods for present consumption, often paying a large premium for designer names and superfluous features.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Love and work are to people what water and sunshine are to plants.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“The rider evolved to serve to the elephant.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses. How many of your New Year’s resolutions have been about fixing a flaw? And how many of those resolutions have you made several years in a row? It’s difficult to change any aspect of your personality by sheer force of will, and if it is a weakness you choose to work on, you probably won’t enjoy the process. If you don’t find pleasure or reinforcement along the way, then—unless you have the willpower of Ben Franklin—you’ll soon give up. But you don’t really have to be good at everything. Life offers so many chances to use one tool instead of another, and often you can use a strength to get around a weakness.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Letting off steam makes people angrier, not calmer. Pennebaker discovered that it’s not about steam; it’s about sense making. The people in his studies who used their writing time to vent got no benefit. The people who showed deep insight into the causes and consequences of the event on their first day of writing got no benefit, either: They had already made sense of things. It was the people who made progress across the four days, who showed increasing insight; they were the ones whose health improved over the next year.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Each of us thinks we see the world directly, as it really is. We further believe that the facts as we see them are there for all to see, therefore others should agree with us. If they don’t agree, it follows either that they have not yet been exposed to the relevant facts or else that they are blinded by their interests and ideologies.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“The word “coherence” literally means holding or sticking together, but it is usually used to refer to a system, an idea, or a worldview whose parts fit together in a consistent and efficient way. Coherent things work well: A coherent worldview can explain almost anything, while an incoherent worldview is hobbled by internal contradictions. … Whenever a system can be analyzed at multiple levels, a special kind of coherence occurs when the levels mesh and mutually interlock. We saw this cross-level coherence in the analysis of personality: If your lower-level traits match up with your coping mechanisms, which in turn are consistent with your life story, your personality is well integrated and you can get on with the business of living. When these levels do not cohere, you are likely to be torn by internal contradictions and neurotic conflicts. You might need adversity to knock yourself into alignment. And if you do achieve coherence, the moment when things come together may be one of the most profound of your life. … Finding coherence across levels feels like enlightenment, and it is crucial for answering the question of purpose within life. People are multilevel systems in another way: We are physical objects (bodies and brains) from which minds somehow emerge; and from our minds, somehow societies and cultures form. To understand ourselves fully we must study all three levels—physical, psychological, and sociocultural. There has long been a division of academic labor: Biologists studied the brain as a physical object, psychologists studied the mind, and sociologists and anthropologists studied the socially constructed environments within which minds develop and function. But a division of labor is productive only when the tasks are coherent—when all lines of work eventually combine to make something greater than the sum of its parts. For much of the twentieth century that didn’t happen — each field ignored the others and focused on its own questions. But nowadays cross-disciplinary work is flourishing, spreading out from the middle level (psychology) along bridges (or perhaps ladders) down to the physical level (for example, the field of cognitive neuroscience) and up to the sociocultural level (for example, cultural psychology). The sciences are linking up, generating cross-level coherence, and, like magic, big new ideas are beginning to emerge. Here is one of the most profound ideas to come from the ongoing synthesis: People gain a sense of meaning when their lives cohere across the three levels of their existence.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Words of wisdom, the meaning of life,perhaps even the answer sought by Borges's librarians—all of these may wash over us every day, but they can do little for us unless we savor them,engage with them, question them, improve them, and connect them to our lives” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“What we are today comes from our thoughts of yesterday, and our present thoughts build our life of tomorrow: our life is the creation of our mind. —BUDDHA” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Finding fault with yourself is also the key to overcoming the hypocrisy and judgmentalism that damage so many valuable relationships. The instant you see some contribution you made to a conflict, your anger softens—maybe just a bit, but enough that you might be able to acknowledge some merit on the other side. You can still believe you are right and the other person is wrong, but if you can move to believing that you are mostly right, and your opponent is mostly wrong, you have the basis for an effective and nonhumiliating apology. You can take a small piece of the disagreement and say, “I should not have done X, and I can see why you felt Y.” Then, by the power of reciprocity, the other person will likely feel a strong urge to say, “Yes, I was really upset by X. But I guess I shouldn’t have done P, so I can see why you felt Q.” Reciprocity amplified by self-serving biases drove you apart back when you were matching insults or hostile gestures, but you can turn the process around and use reciprocity to end a conflict and save a relationship.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“conflicts in relationships—having an annoying office mate or room-mate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse—is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness. You never adapt to interpersonal conflict;45 it damages every day, even days when you don’t see the other person but ruminate about the conflict nonetheless.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“The point of these studies is that moral judgment is like aesthetic judgment. When you see a painting, you usually know instantly and automatically whether you like it. If someone asks you to explain your judgment, you confabulate. You don’t really know why you think something is beautiful, but your interpreter module (the rider) is skilled at making up reasons, as Gazzaniga found in his split-brain studies. You search for a plausible reason for liking the painting, and you latch on to the first reason that makes sense (maybe something vague about color, or light, or the reflection of the painter in the clown’s shiny nose). Moral arguments are much the same: Two people feel strongly about an issue, their feelings come first, and their reasons are invented on the fly, to throw at each other. When you refute a person’s argument, does she generally change her mind and agree with you? Of course not, because the argument you defeated was not the cause of her position; it was made up after the judgment was already made.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“If the only effect of these rampant esteem-inflating biases was to make people feel good about themselves, they would not be a problem. In fact, evidence shows that people who hold pervasive positive illusions about themselves, their abilities, and their future prospects are mentally healthier, happier, and better liked than people who lack such illusions.20 But such biases can make people feel that they deserve more than they do, thereby setting the stage for endless disputes with other people who feel equally over-entitled.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“An important dictum of cultural psychology is that each culture develops expertise in some aspects of human existence, but no culture can be expert in all aspects. The same goes for the two ends of the political spectrum. My research3 confirms the common perception that liberals are experts in thinking about issues of victimization, equality, autonomy, and the rights of individuals, particularly those of minorities and nonconformists. Conservatives, on the other hand, are experts in thinking about loyalty to the group, respect for authority and tradition, and sacredness.4 When one side overwhelms the other, the results are likely to be ugly. A society without liberals would be harsh and oppressive to many individuals. A society without conservatives would lose many of the social structures and constraints that Durkheim showed are so valuable. Anomie would increase along with freedom. A good place to look for wisdom, therefore, is where you least expect to find it: in the minds of your opponents. You already know the ideas common on your own side. If you can take off the blinders of the myth of pure evil, you might see some good ideas for the first time.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“life is much like a movie we walk into well after its opening scene, and we will have to step out long before most of the story lines reach their conclusions. We are acutely aware that we need to know a great deal if we are to understand the few confusing minutes that we do watch. Of course, we don’t know exactly what it is that we don’t know, so we can’t frame the question well. We ask, “What is the meaning of life?” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Does helping others really confer happiness or prosperity on the helper? I know of no evidence showing that altruists gain money from their altruism, but the evidence suggests that they often gain happiness. People who do volunteer work are happier and healthier than those who don’t; but, as always, we have to contend with the problem of reverse correlation: Congenitally happy people are just plain nicer to begin with,24 so their volunteer work may be a consequence of their happiness, not a cause. The happiness-as-cause hypothesis received direct support when the psychologist Alice Isen25 went around Philadelphia leaving dimes in pay phones. The people who used those phones and found the dimes were then more likely to help a person who dropped a stack of papers (carefully timed to coincide with the phone caller’s exit), compared with people who used phones that had empty coin-return slots. Isen has done more random acts of kindness than any other psychologist: She has distributed cookies, bags of candy, and packs of stationery; she has manipulated the outcome of video games (to let people win); and she has shown people happy pictures, always with the same finding: Happy people are kinder and more helpful than those in the control group.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“When bad things happen to good people, we have a problem. We know consciously that life is unfair, but unconsciously we see the world through the lens of reciprocity. The downfall of an evil man (in our biased and moralistic assessment) is no puzzle: He had it coming to him. But when the victim was virtuous, we struggle to make sense of his tragedy. At an intuitive level, we all believe in karma, the Hindu notion that people reap what they sow. The psychologist Mel Lerner has demonstrated that we are so motivated to believe that people get what they deserve and deserve what they get that we often blame the victim of a tragedy, particularly when we can’t achieve justice by punishing a perpetrator or compensating the victim.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Leo Tolstoy wrote: “One can live magnificently in this world, if one knows how to work and how to love, to work for the person one loves and to love one’s work.”19” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“With such a vast and wonderful library spread out before us, we often skim books or read just the reviews. We might already have encountered the Greatest Idea, the insight that would have transformed us had we savored it, taken it to heart, and worked it into our lives.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“changing an institution’s environment to increase the sense of control among its workers, students, patients, or other users was one of the most effective possible ways to increase their sense of engagement, energy, and happiness.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well. —EPICTETUS” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“So now you know where to shop. Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. Stop wasting your money on conspicuous consumption. As a first step, work less, earn less, accumulate less, and “consume” more family time, vacations, and other enjoyable activities.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“People would be happier, and in the long run wealthier, if they bought basic, functional appliances, automobiles, and wristwatches, and invested the money they saved for future consumption; yet, Americans in particular spend almost everything they have—and sometimes more—on goods for present consumption, often paying a large premium for designer names and superfluous features.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“to really get a mass atrocity going you need idealism—the belief that your violence is a means to a moral end. The major atrocities of the twentieth century were carried out largely either by men who thought they were creating a utopia or else by men who believed they were defending their homeland or tribe from attack.30 Idealism easily becomes dangerous because it brings with it, almost inevitably, the belief that the ends justify the means. If you are fighting for good or for God, what matters is the outcome, not the path. People have little respect for rules; we respect the moral principles that underlie most rules. But when a moral mission and legal rules are incompatible, we usually care more about the mission. The psychologist Linda Skitka31 finds that when people have strong moral feelings about a controversial issue—when they have a “moral mandate”—they care much less about procedural fairness in court cases. They want the “good guys” freed by any means, and the “bad guys” convicted by any means. It is thus not surprising that the administration of George W. Bush consistently argues that extra-judicial killings, indefinite imprisonment without trial, and harsh physical treatment of prisoners are legal and proper steps in fighting the Manichaean “war on terror.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“The effectance motive helps explain the progress principle: We get more pleasure from making progress toward our goals than we do from achieving them because, as Shakespeare said, “Joy’s soul lies in the doing.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Even if we take Nietzsche figuratively (which he would have much preferred anyway), fifty years of research on stress shows that stressors are generally bad for people,3 contributing to depression, anxiety disorders, and heart disease.” ― Jonathan Haidt, quote from The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

About the author

Jonathan Haidt Born place: in Scarsdale, New York, The United States Born date October 19, 1963 See more on GoodReads

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The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt - Summary and Book Notes

Haidt explores different paths to happiness, examines them through the lens of modern research, and proposes a revised 'Happiness Hypothesis'.

This is a great rundown of positive psychology's main findings. Haidt writes clearly while backing up his arguments with research. The book has solid recommendations for improving happiness levels.

Highly recommend for anyone who:

• Wants to understand how happiness works
• Wants to shape their lives to improve well-being
• Has limited knowledge of psychology

Psychology majors could probably skip this one.

Quick Summary

Good fortune or bad, you will always return to your happiness setpoint—your brain’s default level of happiness—which was determined largely by your genes.

• Attachments bring pain, but they also bring our greatest joys
• People need obligations and constraints to provide structure and meaning to their lives
• The turn in philosophy from character to quandary was a profound mistake
• The human mind does perceive “divinity.”
• "Why are we here?" and "How ought I to live?" are separate questions, don't conflate them.
• Vital engagement does not reside in the person or in the environment; it exists in the relationship between internal and external factors.
• People gain a sense of meaning when their lives cohere across the three levels of their existence
• The final version of the happiness hypothesis is that happiness comes from between . You have to get the conditions right and then wait.

If you are a pessimist:

• consider meditation , cognitive therapy , or even Prozac .
• Second, cherish and build your social support network .
• Third, religious faith and practice can aid growth, both by directly fostering sense making and by increasing social support

Buy The Happiness Hypothesis on Amazon.

Recommendations for Further Reading

The following are rough notes I took while reading. These are mostly paraphrased or quoted directly from the book.

we have a deep need to understand violence and cruelty through “the myth of pure evil.”

The myth of pure evil is the ultimate self-serving bias, the ultimate form of naive realism . And it is the ultimate cause of most long-running cycles of violence because both sides use it to lock themselves into a Manichaean struggle.

Baumeister found that violence and cruelty have four main causes:

• greed/ambition (violence for direct personal gain, as in robbery)
• sadism (pleasure in hurting people).

greed/ambition explains only a small portion of violence, and sadism explains almost none.

• high self-esteem
• moral idealism.

when someone’s high esteem is unrealistic or narcissistic, it is easily threatened by reality; in reaction to those threats, people—particularly young men—often lash out violently.

Baumeister questions the usefulness of programs that try raise children’s self-esteem directly instead of by teaching them skills they can be proud of.

to really get a mass atrocity going you need idealism —the belief that your violence is a means to a moral end.

the world we live in is not really one made of rocks, trees, and physical objects; it is a world of insults, opportunities, status symbols, betrayals, saints, and sinners. they are a consensual hallucination.

once anger comes into play, people find it extremely difficult to empathize with and understand another perspective.

The Pursuit of Happiness

recent research in psychology suggests that Buddha and Epictetus may have taken things too far. Some things are worth striving for, and happiness comes in part from outside of yourself

THE PROGRESS PRINCIPLE

The elephant and the rider metaphor : The rider represents the conscious controlled processes and the elephant represents all of the automatic processes.

here’s the trick with reinforcement: It works best when it comes seconds—not minutes or hours—after the behavior.

The elephant works the same way: It feels pleasure whenever it takes a step in the right direction. The elephant learns whenever pleasure (or pain) follows immediately after behavior, but it has trouble connecting success on Friday with actions it took on Monday.

when it comes to goal pursuit, it really is the journey that counts, not the destination.

“the progress principle”: Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them. Shakespeare captured it perfectly: “Things won are done; joy’s soul lies in the doing.”4

THE ADAPTATION PRINCIPLE

We are bad at “affective forecasting,” that is, predicting how we’ll feel in the future. We grossly overestimate the intensity and the duration of our emotional reactions.

Within a year, lottery winners and paraplegics have both (on average) returned most of the way to their baseline levels of happiness.

When we combine the adaptation principle with the discovery that `people’s average level of happiness is highly heritable , we come to a startling possibility: In the long run, it doesn’t much matter what happens to you.

“hedonic treadmill.”

Men have more freedom and power than women, yet they are not on average any happier. (Women experience more depression, but also more intense joy). People who live in cold climates expect people who live in California to be happier, but they are wrong.

at the lowest end of the income scale money does buy happiness. once you are freed from basic needs and have entered the middle class, the relationship between wealth and happiness becomes smaller.

Only a few activities avoid the adaptation principle:

• dependable companionship, which is a basic need; we never fully adapt either to it or to its absence.
• religious people are happier, on average, than nonreligious people.

This effect arises from the social ties that come with participation in a religious community, as well as from feeling connected to something beyond the self.

THE HAPPINESS FORMULA

Yes, genes explain far more about us than anyone had realized, but the genes themselves often turn out to be sensitive to environmental conditions .

each person has a characteristic level of happiness, but it now looks as though it’s not so much a set point as a potential range or probability distribution .

Whether you operate on the high or the low side of your potential range is determined by many factors that Buddha and Epictetus would have considered externals.

Voluntary activities, therefore, offer much greater promise for increasing happiness while avoiding adaptation effects.

One of the most important ideas in positive psychology is what Lyubomirsky, Sheldon, Schkade, and Seligman call the “happiness formula:”

The level of happiness that you actually experience (H) is determined by your biological set point (S) plus the conditions of your life (C) plus the voluntary activities (V) you do.

There really are some external conditions (C) that matter:

people who must adapt to new and chronic sources of noise (such as when a new highway is built) never fully adapt. Noise, especially noise that is variable or intermittent, interferes with concentration and increases stress.

Even after years of commuting, those whose commutes are traffic-filled still arrive at work with higher levels of stress hormones.

• Lack of control.

People who undergo plastic surgery report (on average) high levels of satisfaction with the process, and they even report increases in the quality of their lives and decreases in psychiatric symptoms (such as depression and anxiety)

• Relationships.

conflicts in relationships—having an annoying office mate or room-mate, or having chronic conflict with your spouse—is one of the surest ways to reduce your happiness.

in the happiness formula, C is real and some externals matter.

FINDING FLOW

Two different kinds of enjoyment. One is physical or bodily pleasure. At meal times, people report the highest levels of happiness, on average.

The other is Flow : the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities.

The keys to flow: There’s a clear challenge that fully engages your attention; you have the skills to meet the challenge; and you get immediate feedback about how you are doing at each step (the progress principle).

In the flow experience, elephant and rider are in perfect harmony.

distinction between pleasures and gratifications: Pleasures are “delights that have clear sensory and strong emotional components."

Gratifications are activities that engage you fully, draw on your strengths, and allow you to lose self-consciousness.

Seligman proposes that V (voluntary activities) is largely a matter of arranging your day and your environment to increase both pleasures and gratifications

You can find out your strengths by taking an online test at www.authentichappiness.org .

people experienced longer-lasting improvements in mood from the kindness and gratitude activities than from those in which they indulged themselves.

Choose your own gratifying activities, do them regularly (but not to the point of tedium), and raise your overall level of happiness.

MISGUIDED PURSUITS

Evolution seems to have made us “strategically irrational” at times for our own good;

People would be happier if they reduced their commuting time, took longer vacations

Conspicuous and inconspicuous consumption follow different psychological rules. Conspicuous consumption is a zero-sum game

Activities connect us to others; objects often separate us.

“consume” more family time, vacations, and other enjoyable activities.

The elephant cares about prestige, not happiness,

" Paradox of Choice ”: We value choice and put ourselves in situations of choice, even though choice often undercuts our happiness.

paradox mostly applies to people they call “maximizers"

"satisficers”—are more laid back about choice. They evaluate an array of options until they find one that is good enough, and then they stop looking. Satisficers are not hurt by a surfeit of options.

THE HAPPINESS HYPOTHESIS RECONSIDERED

Most people (with the exception of homeless people) are more satisfied than dissatisfied with their lives.

Another reason for Buddha’s emphasis on detachment may have been the turbulent times he lived in

Yes, attachments bring pain, but they also bring our greatest joys

would like to suggest that the happiness hypothesis be extended—for now—into a yin-yang formulation: Happiness comes from within, and happiness comes from without.

Buddha is history’s most perceptive guide to the first half; he is a constant but gentle reminder of the yin of internal work.

But I believe that the Western ideal of action, striving, and passionate attachment is not as misguided as Buddhism suggests.

Love and Attachments

“contact comfort” is a basic need that young mammals have for physical contact with their mother.

the attachment of mother and child is so enormously important for the survival of the child that a dedicated system is built into mother and child in all species that rely on maternal care.

Bowlby’s grand synthesis is called Attachment Theory .

two basic goals guide children’s behavior: safety and exploration. A child who stays safe survives; a child who explores and plays develops the skills and intelligence needed for adult life.

These two needs are often opposed, however, so they are regulated by a kind of thermostat that monitors the level of ambient safety. When the safety level is adequate, the child plays and explores. But as soon as it drops too low, it’s as though a switch were thrown and suddenly safety needs become paramount.

If you want your children to grow up to be healthy and independent, you should hold them, hug them, cuddle them, and love them.

Give them a secure base and they will explore and then conquer the world on their own.

Harlow, Bowlby, and Ainsworth can help us understand grown-up love.

Some people change style as they grow up, but the great majority of adults choose the descriptor that matched the way they were as a child.

How did human females come to hide all signs of ovulation and get men to fall in love with them and their children?

the most plausible theory in my opinion begins with the enormous expansion of the human brain

There were physical limits to how large a head hominid females could give birth to and still have a pelvis that would allow them to walk upright.

our ancestor—evolved a novel technique that got around this limitation by sending babies out of the uterus long before their brains were developed enough to control their bodies. Humans are the only creatures on Earth whose young are utterly helpless for years, and heavily dependent on adult care for more than a decade.

active fathers, male-female pair-bonds, male sexual jealousy, and big-headed babies all co-evolved—that is, arose gradually but together.

But from what raw material could a tie evolve between men and women where one did not exist before?

It didn’t take much change to modify the attachment system, which every man and every woman had used as a child to attach to mom, and have it link up with the mating system

TWO LOVES, TWO ERRORS

Take one ancient attachment system, mix with an equal measure of caregiving system, throw in a modified mating system and voila, that’s romantic love. I seem to have lost something here; romantic love is so much more than the sum of its parts.

myth of “true” love—the idea that real love burns brightly and passionately, and then it just keeps on burning until death

But if true love is defined as eternal passion, it is biologically impossible.

two kinds of love: passionate and companionate.

Passionate love is the love you fall into.

companionate love, in contrast, as “the affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply intertwined.”

if passionate love is a drug—literally a drug—it has to wear off eventually.

Passionate love and companionate love are two separate processes, and they have different time courses.

People are not allowed to sign contracts when they are drunk, and I sometimes wish we could prevent people from proposing marriage when they are high on passionate love

The other danger point is the day the drug weakens its grip.

True love, the love that undergirds strong marriages, is simply strong companionate love, with some added passion, between two people who are firmly committed to each other.

WHY DO PHILOSOPHERS HATE LOVE?

In the ancient East, the problem with love is obvious: Love is attachment.

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

several reasons why real human love might make philosophers uncomfortable. First, passionate love is notorious for making people illogical and irrational,

two less benevolent motivations are at work. First, there may be a kind of hypocritical self-interest in which the older generation says, “Do as we say, not as we did.”

second motivation is the fear of death.

when people are asked to reflect on their own mortality, they find the physical aspects of sexuality more disgusting,

FREEDOM CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH

people who had fewer social constraints, bonds, and obligations were more likely to kill themselves.

people need obligations and constraints to provide structure and meaning to their lives

Having strong social relationships strengthens the immune system, extends life (more than does quitting smoking), speeds recovery from surgery, and reduces the risks of depression and anxiety disorders.

As a character in Jean-Paul Sartre’s play No Exit said, “Hell is other people.” But so is heaven.

The Uses of Adversity

“ Adversity hypothesis ,” which says that people need adversity, setbacks, and perhaps even trauma to reach the highest levels of strength, fulfillment, and personal development.

When is adversity beneficial, when is it harmful?

POSTTRAUMATIC GROWTH

Psychopaths are not violent (although most serial murderers and serial rapists are psychopaths). They are people, mostly men, who have no moral emotions, no attachment systems, and no concerns for others.

One of the most common lessons people draw from bereavement or trauma is that they are much stronger than they realized, and this new appreciation of their strength then gives them confidence to face future challenges.

The adversity hypothesis has a weak and a strong version . In the weak version, adversity can lead to growth, strength, joy, and self-improvement

The weak version is well-supported by research, but it has few clear implications for how we should live our lives.

The strong version of the hypothesis is more unsettling: It states that people must endure adversity to grow , and that the highest levels of growth and development are only open to those who have faced and overcome great adversity.

Psychologists often approach personality by measuring basic traits such as the “ big five ”: neuroticism, extroversion, openness to new experiences, agreeableness (warmth/niceness), and conscientiousness

psychologist Dan McAdams has suggested that personality really has three levels, and too much attention has been paid to the lowest level, the basic traits.

second level of personality, “characteristic adaptations,” includes personal goals, defense and coping mechanisms, values, beliefs, and life-stage concerns (such as those of parenthood or retirement) that people develop to succeed in their particular roles and niches.

The third level of personality is that of the “life story.” The life story is written primarily by the rider.

You create your story in consciousness as you interpret your own behavior , and as you listen to other people’s thoughts about you. It is more like a work of historical fiction that makes plenty of references to real events and connects them by dramatizations and interpretations that might or might not be true to the spirit of what happened.

Most of the life goals that people pursue at the level of “characteristic adaptations” can be sorted—as the psychologist Robert Emmons has found—into four categories:

• work and achievement
• relationships and intimacy
• religion and spirituality
• generativity (leaving a legacy and contributing something to society).

People who strive primarily for achievement and wealth are, Emmons finds, less happy, on average, than those whose strivings focus on the other three categories

At the third level of personality, the need for adversity is even more obvious: You need interesting material to write a good story.

people who are mentally healthy and happy have a higher degree of “ vertical coherence ” among their goals. Higher-level (long term) goals and lower-level (immediate) goals all fit together well so that pursuing one’s short-term goals advances the pursuit of long-term goals.

BLESSED ARE THE SENSE MAKERS

When bad things happen to good people, we have a problem.

Psychologists have devoted a great deal of effort to figuring out who benefits from trauma and who is crushed. Optimists are more likely to benefit than pessimists.

When a crisis strikes, people cope in three primary ways:

• active coping (taking direct action to fix the problem),
• reappraisal (doing the work within—getting one’s own thoughts right and looking for silver linings)
• avoidance coping

If you are a pessimist, you are probably feeling gloomy right now. But despair not! If you can find a way to make sense of adversity and draw constructive lessons from it, you can benefit, too. And you can learn to become a sense maker by reading Jamie Pennebaker’s Opening Up .

Pennebaker asked people to write about “the most upsetting or traumatic experience of your entire life,” preferably one they had not talked about with others in great detail. He gave them plenty of blank paper and asked them to keep writing for fifteen minutes, on four consecutive days.

The people who wrote about traumas went to the doctor or the hospital fewer times in the following year.

it’s not about steam; it’s about sense making.

You have to use words, and the words have to help you create a meaningful story.

• The second step is to cherish and build your social support network .

And finally, no matter how well or poorly prepared you are when trouble strikes, at some point in the months afterwards, pull out a piece of paper and start writing.

Pennebaker suggests34 that you write continuously for fifteen minutes a day, for several days. Don’t edit or censor yourself; Before you conclude your last session, be sure you have done your best to answer these two questions: Why did this happen? What good might I derive from it?

When people older than thirty are asked to remember the most important or vivid events of their lives, they are disproportionately likely to recall events that occurred between the ages of fifteen and twenty-five.

adversity may be most beneficial for people in their late teens and into their twenties.

Knowledge comes in two major forms: explicit and tacit.

Tacit knowledge is procedural (it’s “knowing how” rather than “knowing that”),

The strong version of the adversity hypothesis might be true, but only if we add caveats: 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).

The Felicity of Virtue

The Greek word aretē meant excellence, virtue, or goodness, especially of a functional sort.

Thus in saying that well being or happiness (eudaimonia) is “an activity of soul in conformity with excellence or virtue,” Aristotle was saying that a good life is one where you develop your strengths, realize your potential, and become what it is in your nature to become.

Franklin himself admitted that he failed utterly to develop the virtue of humility, yet he reaped great social gains by learning to fake it.

THE VIRTUES OF THE ANCIENTS

When we Westerners think about morality, we use concepts that are thousands of years old, but that took a turn in their development in the last two hundred years.

Most approaches then specified actions that were good and bad with respect to those virtues.

these ancient texts rely heavily on maxims and role models rather than proofs and logic. When moral instruction triggers emotions, it speaks to the elephant as well as the rider.

many ancient texts emphasize practice and habit rather than factual knowledge.

the ancients reveal a sophisticated understanding of moral psychology. They all knew that virtue resides in a well-trained elephant. They all knew that training takes daily practice and a great deal of repetition.

Why the shift away from Tacit Knowledge?

• First, the Greek mind that gave us moral inquiry also gave us the beginnings of scientific inquiry. Science values parsimony, but virtue theories, with their long lists of virtues, were never parsimonious.
• Second, the widespread philosophical worship of reason made many philosophers uncomfortable with locating virtue in habits and feelings.

Kant turned the problem around and said that people should think about whether the rules guiding their own actions could reasonably be proposed as universal laws. This simple test, which Kant called the “ categorical imperative ,” It offered to make ethics a branch of applied logic

Bentham was the father of utilitarianism

The argument between Kant and Bentham has continued ever since. Descendants of Kant (known as “deontologists” from the Greek deon, obligation) try to elaborate the duties and obligations that ethical people must respect, even when their actions lead to bad outcomes

Descendants of Bentham (known as “consequentialists” because they evaluate actions only by their consequences) try to work out the rules and policies that will bring about the greatest good, even when doing so will sometimes violate other ethical principles

They both believe in parsimony. They both distrust intuitions and gut feelings, which they see as obstacles to good reasoning. And they both shun the particular in favor of the abstract

This turn from character ethics to quandary ethics has turned moral education away from virtues and toward moral reasoning.

believe that this turn from character to quandary was a profound mistake , for two reasons.

• First, it weakens morality and limits its scope. Where the ancients saw virtue and character at work in everything a person does, our modern conception confines morality to a set of situations that arise for each person only a few times in any given week
• The second problem with the turn to moral reasoning is that it relies on bad psychology.

Many moral education efforts since the 1970s take the rider off of the elephant and train him to solve problems on his own.

Trying to make children behave ethically by teaching them to reason well is like trying to make a dog happy by wagging its tail.

THE VIRTUES OF POSITIVE PSYCHOLOGY

Peterson and Seligman suggest that there are twenty-four principle character strengths, each leading to one of the six higher-level virtues.

strengths test (at www.authentichappiness.org).

• Wisdom : • Curiosity • Love of learning • Judgment • Ingenuity • Emotional intelligence • Perspective
• Courage : • Valor • Perseverance • Integrity
• Humanity : • Kindness • Loving
• Justice : • Citizenship • Fairness • Leadership
• Temperance : • Self-control • Prudence • Humility
• Transcendence : • Appreciation of beauty and excellence • Gratitude • Hope • Spirituality • Forgiveness • Humor • Zest

Here’s my favorite idea: Work on your strengths, not your weaknesses

[In Haidt's class] the final project is to make yourself a better person, using all the tools of psychology, and then prove that you have done so. the most successful ones usually either use cognitive behavioral therapy on themselves (it really does work!) or employ a strength, or both.

HARD QUESTION, EASY ANSWERS

it true that acting against my self-interest, for the good of others, even when I don’t want to, is still good for me? Sages and moralists have always answered with an unqualified yes, but the challenge for science is to qualify: When is it true, and why?

[Children] go through a phase in which many rules take on a kind of sacredness and unchangeability. During this phase, children believe in “immanent justice”—justice that is inherent in an act itself.

In this stage, they think that if they break rules, even accidentally, something bad will happen to them, even if nobody knows about their transgressions.

HARD QUESTION, HARD ANSWERS

Does helping others really confer happiness or prosperity on the helper?

the evidence suggests that they often gain happiness.

When a person increased volunteer work, all measures of happiness and well-being increased (on average) afterwards, for as long as the volunteer work was a part of the person’s life.

The elderly benefit even more than do other adults,

two of the big benefits of volunteer work are that it brings people together, and it helps them to construct a McAdams-style life story.

THE FUTURE OF VIRTUE

Should we in the West try to return to a more virtue-based morality? I believe that we have indeed lost something important—a richly textured common ethos with widely shared virtues and values.

Anomie is the condition of a society in which there are no clear rules, norms, or standards of value . In an anomic society, people can do as they please; but without any clear standards or respected social institutions to enforce those standards, it is harder for people to find things they want to do. Anomie breeds feelings of rootlessness and anxiety and leads to an increase in amoral and antisocial behavior.

the history of America ever since has been one of increasing diversity. In response, educators have struggled to identify the ever-shrinking set of moral ideas everyone could agree upon.

This shrinking reached its logical conclusion in the 1960s with the popular “values clarification” movement, which taught no morality at all.

(For a sensitive analysis from a more liberal perspective of the need for “cultural resources” for identity creation, see Anthony Appiah’s The Ethics of Identity .)

We have paid a price for our inclusiveness, but we have bought ourselves a more humane society,

I wondered whether celebrating diversity might also encourage division,

two main kinds of diversity—demographic and moral. Demographic diversity is about socio-demographic

nobody can coherently even want moral diversity.

Liberals are right to work for a society that is open to people of every demographic group, but conservatives might be right in believing that at the same time we should work much harder to create a common, shared identity .

Divinity With or Without God

In all human cultures, the social world has two clear dimensions: a horizontal dimension of closeness or liking, and a vertical one of hierarchy or status.

My claim is that the human mind perceives a third dimension, a specifically moral dimension that I will call “divinity.”

the human mind simply does perceive divinity and sacredness, whether or not God exists.

The logic of disgust.

Disgust was originally shaped by natural selection as a guardian of the mouth:

But disgust doesn’t guard just the mouth; its elicitors expanded during biological and cultural evolution so that now it guards the body more generally.

THE ETHIC OF DIVINITY

when people think about morality, their moral concepts cluster into three groups, which he calls the ethic of autonomy , the ethic of community , and the ethic of divinity .

educated Americans of high social class relied overwhelmingly on the ethic of autonomy in their moral discourse, whereas Brazilians, and people of lower social class in both countries, made much greater use of the ethics of community and divinity.

Purity is not just about the body, it is about the soul. If you know that you have divinity in you, you will act accordingly:

the ethic of divinity had been central to public discourse in the United States until the time of the World War I, after which it began to fade (except in a few places, such as the American South—

Eliade says that the modern West is the first culture in human history that has managed to strip time and space of all sacredness and to produce a fully practical, efficient, and profane world.

had never even wondered whether “uplift” is a real, honest-to-goodness emotion.

Jefferson went on to say that the physical feelings and motivational effects caused by great literature are as powerful as those caused by real events. He even said that it was the opposite of disgust. He chose the word “elevation,”

moral elevation appears to be different from admiration for nonmoral excellence.

Witnessing extraordinarily skillful actions gives people the drive and energy to try to copy those actions. Elevation, in contrast, is a calmer feeling, not associated with signs of physiological arousal.

Although people say, in all our studies, that they want to do good deeds, in two studies where we gave them the opportunity to sign up for volunteer work or to help an experimenter pick up a stack of papers she had dropped, we did not find that elevation made people behave much differently .

oxytocin might be released during moments of elevation. Oxytocin causes bonding, not action. Elevation may fill people with feelings of love, trust, and openness, making them more receptive to new relationships. yet, given their feelings of relaxation and passivity, they might be less likely to engage in active altruism toward strangers.

For many people, one of the pleasures of going to church is the experience of collective elevation.

This love has no specific object; it is agape. It feels like a love of all humankind

AWE AND TRANSCENDENCE

Something about the vastness and beauty of nature makes the self feel small and insignificant, and anything that shrinks the self creates an opportunity for spiritual experience.

Drugs in this class [have the] ability to induce massive alterations of perception and emotion that sometimes feel, even to secular users, like contact with divinity, and that cause people to feel afterwards that they’ve been transformed.

When people bring a reverential mindset and take the drugs in a safe and supportive setting, as is done in the initiation rites of some traditional cultures, these drugs can be catalysts for spiritual and personal growth.

William James analyzed the “varieties of religious experience,” including rapid and gradual religious conversions and experiences with drugs and nature. James found such extraordinary similarity in the reports of these experiences that he thought they revealed deep psychological truths.

we experience life as a divided self, torn by conflicting desires.

Religious experiences are real and common, whether or not God exists , and these experiences often make people feel whole and at peace.

In the rapid type of conversion experience, the old self, full of petty concerns, doubts, and grasping attachments, is washed away in an instant, usually an instant of profound awe.

Maslow suggested that all religions are based on the insights of somebody’s peak experience. Peak experiences make people nobler, just as James had said, and religions were created as methods of promoting peak experiences and then maximizing their ennobling powers.

Religions sometimes lose touch with their origins , however; they are sometimes taken over by people who have not had peak experiences—the bureaucrats and company men who want to routinize procedures and guard orthodoxy for orthodoxy’s sake.

But what is most surprising in Religions, Values, and Peak Experiences is Maslow’s attack on science for becoming as sterile as organized religion.

scientists and philosophers had traditionally held an attitude of wonder toward the natural world and the objects of their inquiry. But in the late sixteenth century, European scientists began to look down on wonder.

THE SATANIC SELF

the development of the self may have been crucial to the development of human ultrasociality. the self also gave each one of us a personal tormenter.

It is important to note that the self is not exactly the rider—much of the self is unconscious and automatic—but because the self emerges from conscious verbal thinking and storytelling, it can be constructed only by the rider.

The self is the main obstacle to spiritual advancement,

But I am trying to understand the mutual incomprehension of the two sides in the culture war, and I believe that Shweder’s three ethics—particularly the ethic of divinity—are the key to it.

Many of the key battles in the American culture war are essentially about whether some aspect of life should be structured by the ethic of autonomy or by the ethic of divinity.

liberals were much more permissive and relied overwhelmingly on the ethic of autonomy; conservatives, much more critical, used all three ethics in their discourse.

I do not entirely lament the “flattening” of life in the West over the last few hundred years. An unfortunate tendency of three-dimensional societies is that they often include one or more groups that get pushed down on the third dimension and then treated badly, or worse.

Because the culture war is ideological, both sides use the myth of pure evil.

Happiness Comes from Between

There appear to be two specific sub-questions to which people want answers, and for which they find answers enlightening. The first can be called the question of the purpose of life: “ What is the purpose for which human beings were placed on Earth? Why are we here? ”

Either you believe in a god/spirit/intelligence who had some idea, desire, or intention in creating the world or you believe in a purely material world in which it and you were not created for any reason;

The second sub-question is the question of purpose within life: “ How ought I to live? What should I do to have a good, happy, fulfilling, and meaningful life? ”

When people ask the Holy Question, one of the things they are hoping for is a set of principles or goals that can guide their actions and give their choices meaning or value. Aristotle asked about aretē (excellence/virtue) and telos (purpose/goal), and he used the metaphor that people are like archers, who need a clear target at which to aim. Without a target or goal, one is left with the animal default.

In my adolescent existentialism, I conflated the two sub-questions. Because I embraced the scientific answer to the question of the purpose of life, I thought it precluded finding purpose within life.

religions teach that the two questions are inseparable.

For the rest of this chapter I will ignore the purpose of life and search for the factors that give rise to a sense of purpose within life.

LOVE AND WORK

The computer metaphor has so pervaded our thought that we sometimes think about people as computers, and about psychotherapy as the repair shop or a kind of reprogramming. But people are not computers, and they usually recover on their own from almost anything that happens to them .

think a better metaphor is that people are like plants.

If people are like plants, what are the conditions we need to flourish?

Love and work are, for people, obvious analogues to water and sunshine for plants. people and many other mammals have a basic drive to make things happen.

Karl Marx’s criticism of capitalism was based in part on his justified claim that the Industrial Revolution had destroyed the historical relationship between craftsmen and the goods they produced.

most people can get more satisfaction from their work.

Take the strengths test and then choose work that allows you to use your strengths every day, thereby giving yourself at least scattered moments of flow.

If you are stuck in a job that doesn’t match your strengths, recast and reframe your job so that it does.

Work at its best, then, is about connection, engagement, and commitment. As the poet Kahlil Gibran said, “Work is love made visible.”

Happiness comes not just from within, as Buddha and Epictetus supposed, or even from a combination of internal and external factors. Happiness comes from between.

Vital engagement does not reside in the person or in the environment; it exists in the relationship between the two.

CROSS-LEVEL COHERENCE

If your lower-level traits match up with your coping mechanisms, which in turn are consistent with your life story, your personality is well integrated and you can get on with the business of living.

People are multilevel systems in another way: We are physical objects (bodies and brains) from which minds somehow emerge; and from our minds, somehow societies and cultures form.

To understand ourselves fully we must study all three levels—physical, psychological, and sociocultural

[People gain a sense of meaning when their lives cohere across the three levels of their existence](/cohesion) .

You can’t just invent a good ritual through reasoning about symbolism. You need a tradition within which the symbols are embedded, and you need to invoke bodily feelings that have some appropriate associations. Then you need a community to endorse and practice it over time.

Meaning and purpose simply emerge from the coherence, and people can get on with the business of living. But conflict, paralysis, and anomie are likely when a community fails to provide coherence , or, worse, when its practices contradict people’s gut feelings or their shared mythology and ideology.

GOD GIVES US HIVES

Do humans compete, live, and die as a group?

As long as each human being has the opportunity to reproduce, the evolutionary payoffs for investing in one’s own welfare and one’s own offspring will almost always exceed the payoffs for contributing to the group; in the long run, selfish traits will therefore spread at the expense of altruistic traits.

human beings evolve at two levels simultaneously: genetic and cultural.

Cultural elements, however, don’t spread by the slow process of having children; they spread rapidly whenever people adopt a new behavior, technology, or belief.

groups that parlayed those beliefs into social coordination devices (for example, by linking them to emotions such as shame, fear, guilt, and love) found a cultural solution to the free-rider problem and then reaped the enormous benefits of trust and cooperation.

HARMONY AND PURPOSE

From Wilson’s perspective, mystical experience is an “off” button for the self. When the self is turned off, people become just a cell in the larger body, a bee in the larger hive.

Newberg believes that rituals that involve repetitive movement and chanting, particularly when they are performed by many people at the same time, help to set up “resonance patterns” in the brains of the participants that make this mystical state more likely to happen.

THE MEANING OF LIFE

The final version of the happiness hypothesis is that happiness comes from between. You have to get the conditions right and then wait.

Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger.

It is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, between yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.

Conclusion: On Balance

Psychology and religion can benefit by taking each other seriously, or at least by agreeing to learn from each other while overlooking the areas of irreconcilable difference.

But the most important lesson I have learned in my twenty years of research on morality is that nearly all people are morally motivated. Selfishness is a powerful force, particularly in the decisions of individuals, but whenever groups of people come together to make a sustained effort to change the world, you can bet that they are pursuing a vision of virtue, justice, or sacredness .

Each culture develops expertise in some aspects of human existence, but no culture can be expert in all aspects.

liberals are experts in thinking about issues of victimization, equality, autonomy, and the rights of individuals, particularly those of minorities and nonconformists. Conservatives, on the other hand, are experts in thinking about loyalty to the group, respect for authority and tradition, and sacredness.

good place to look for wisdom, therefore, is where you least expect to find it: in the minds of your opponents.

## Further Reading

• The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt - Haidt explores morality and it's effects on politics and religion.
• Book Notes on Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari - More on the history of humankind
• More on Cohesion for the self.
• The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz - More on satisficers and maximizers

You might also like...

2021 annual review, why i love capybaras, mechanical keyboards, existential productivity with khe hy, member discussion.

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TOBY SINCLAIR

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• Toby Sinclair
• Feb 23, 2020

Happiness Hypothesis Summary - Jonathan Haidt

Updated: Jun 2, 2021

Buy Happiness Hypothesis on Amazon | Read on Blinkist for Free

⭐ Toby's Rating: 7/10 - Recommended For: Everyone

3 Big Ideas:

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary:

Happiness Formula (H = S + C + V) - Happiness = Set Level + Conditions + Voluntary activities

Set Level -The set-point theory of happiness suggests that our level of subjective well-being is determined primarily by heredity and by personality traits ingrained in us early in life, and as a result remains relatively constant throughout our lives

Conditions – Relationships(connection) is one of the most important conditional factors to happiness. You can never adapt if you lose connections.

Voluntary activities – Focus on activities that bring joy to others. Such as showing gratitude, kindness, favours.

Retrain the Elephant – A strong metaphor throughout. Rider = Rational Brain Elephant = Compulsive, Irrational brain. Lasting happiness does not occur through an epiphany. It occurs through focusing on the relationship between rider and elephant and retraining the elephant. You need to consistently act your way to change through tiny habits.

Coherence is a strong theme throughout. Living coherently leads to happiness. This includes coherence between different levels of your personality, personal values, the environment you live and work within, relationships you have.

The Happiness Hypothesis Quotes:

“Happiness is not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you. Other conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger “

“Work less, Consume less, Attach less, Connect more”

Tobys Takeaway:

The biggest takeaway from the Happiness Hypothesis:

Focus on building good relationships in my life.

Relationships between myself and others, between myself and work, between myself and a greater purpose.

Buy Happiness Hypothesis on Amazon

Big Ideas Expanded

The Happiness Hypothesis Summary of ideas expanded:

The brain sends bad feedback signals quicker than good. We are wired for negativity bias.

Three beliefs depressed people hold:

I’m no good

My world is no good

My future is hopeless

Three best ways to change thought patterns:

CBT (Cognitive Behavioural Therapy)

Throughout the Happiness Hypothesis, this metaphor is used. The rider and the elephant.

The rider and the elephant are often in conflict. The elephant usually wins.

Streetlight Effect: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect

You can’t change your mind(or anything else) through willpower alone. You need to act your way to changes through tiny habits done consistently such as meditation and thinking habits formed through CBT

Our search for knowledge is flawed. We search for facts that confirm our position and once found we stop thinking and looking for alternatives (Confirmation Bias)

Our perception of others is often correct. Our perception of self is flawed. We have significant blind spots. The ego is strong. We see ourselves through rose-tinted spectacles

Naive Realism – we see the world objectively, everyone else is wrong!

Progress Principle – Joy comes through the journey towards the goal not the achievement of the goal.

Of all the things that can boost emotions, motivation, and perceptions during a workday, the single most important is making progress in meaningful work

Adaptation Principle – In the long run, it doesn’t matter what happens to you, good or bad, you will ultimately return to your happiness equilibrium which is largely influenced by your genes. Also referred to as Hedonic Treadmill

Relationships(connection) is one of the most important factors to happiness. You can never adapt if you loose connections.

Experiences, such as going to a concert, give more happiness due to their social value. They bring connection

Voluntary Activity essential is to your daily habits. Build reciprocal habits can have the biggest effect. Such as showing gratitude, kindness, favours for others

Happiness = work less, consume less, attach less, connect more

3 levels of personality (McAdams):

Basic internal traits (having)

Personal values, goals, projects (doing)

Life Story (making)

Coherence between the 3 levels is essential for happiness

3 typical responses to tragedy :

Active response(taking action)

Reframing (such as into a positive)

4 types of Life Goals :

Work/Achievement – People least happy if they drive towards this goal

Relationship

3 ways to manage your environment :

Adapt – respond to changing environment

Shape – changing the environment to suit needs

Select – choosing the environment to work within

People are not computers. The technology metaphor is now so pervasive we see people as machines. And therapy as the repair shop. Our metaphors are wrong. People are more like plants

Most plants will come back to life without repairing plant. Focus on

the conditions. Fix the environment the plant(person) will naturally spring back to life.

vital conditions for humans to flourish:

Social connection (love)

Compelling purpose or goal greater than ourselves

Vital Engagement = Flow + Meaning

Coherence is important for individuals happiness. Coherence at the three levels of your personality. If you do not have coherence, it is likely you will be tormented . Without good skills to diagnose your personal system, you may struggle to find the problem You need coherence with your personal “optimisation” goal.

When you do find coherence, it may be one of the most profound moments in your life.

Items which need coherence: – Habits – Goals – Values – Work – Love

These items are always in healthy tension but importantly there needs to be coherence.

Coherence needed at all levels:

Psychological

We have an internal desire to share learning and ideas. The desire to reciprocate shares this even further and creates a virtuous cycle. Helping others succeed is hard-wired into humans.

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The Happiness Hypothesis

Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

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By Jonathan Haidt

Read by Ryan Vincent Anderson

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• Social Psychology
• "I really can't recommend this book enough. It's one of the best and most insightful books I've ever read." Joe Rogan
• "[T]he psychologist Jonathan Haidt shows in his wonderfully smart and readable The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom [that] modern science and history have a lot to say to each other." Darrin McMahon, The Washington Post
• "[An] inspiring nuanced study." People
• "[A] marvelous book.... I don't think I've ever read a book that laid out the contemporary understanding of the human condition with such simple clarity and sense." Guardian, (UK)
• "This unusual book sets itself apart from the self-help category with its extensive scientific references, and intelligent, neutral prose, while the author's illuminating illustration of how the human mind works is both educational and refreshing." Sunday Times (London)
• "With singular gusto, Haidt measures ten 'Great Ideas' against past/present research in psychology and science. LJ' s verdict: Dr. Phil et al. don't have diddly on the old-school sages. No man is an island, indeed, and no modern reader should be without this carefully considered demystification of life." Library Journal, Best Books 2006
• "This is a delightful book.... Haidt's writing embraces spiritual and mystical viewpoints while retaining scientific and rational coherence." Nature
• "A disarming, original book, reassuring to those more conversant with worriment than merriment.... Smart and serious without pomposity." Seattle Times
• "Haidt's remedy for the modern glut of frivolous self-help literature is to review and revise the classics, examining the ideas of thinkers like Plato, Buddha and Jesus in light of modern research into human behavior. Along the way, Haidt, a social psychologist, provides practical advice for parenting, romance, work and coping with the political and cultural divisions currently preoccupying the country." Psychology Today
• The Happiness Hypothesis is a wonderful and nuanced book that provides deep insight into the some of the most important questions in life--Why are we here? What kind of life should we lead? What paths lead to happiness? From the ancient philosophers to cutting edge scientists, Haidt weaves a tapestry of the best and the brightest. His highly original work on elevation and awe--two long-neglected emotions--adds a new weave to that tapestry. A truly inspiring book." David M. Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire: Strategies of Human Mating
• "This fresh and original book goes to the heart of what people have found out about happiness, across cultures and times. Enjoyable, important, and eminently readable." Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, author of FLOW
• "Jonathan Haidt leaves no doubt about the importance of emotion in the creation of personal meaning. This is a delightful and courageous book." Antonio Damasio, author of Looking for Spinoza
• "In this beautifully written book, Jonathan Haidt shows us the deep connection that exists between cutting-edge psychological research and the wisdom of the ancients. It is inspiring to see how much modern psychology informs life's most central and persistent questions." Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
• "Should we live our lives by age-old wisdom or the latest discoveries? Haidt gives us the luxury of not having to choose, bringing together both sources of insight in this sparkling investigation into the psychology of life and happiness." Daniel Wegner, author of The Illusion of Conscious Will
• "It would be something of an exaggeration to say that Jonathan Haidt has found the final answer to happiness, but he has come as close as any other writer of our times. Every page of his book provides gems of insight about the good life and where to look for it. Anyone who is interested in humannature and its potential must read this book." William Damon, Director, Stanford Center on Adolescence, and author of The Moral Child
• "An intellectual tour de force that weaves into one fabric wisdom that is ancient and modern, religious and scientific, Eastern and Western, liberal and conservative all with the aim of pointing us to a more meaningful, moral, and satisfying life." David G. Myers, Professor of Psychology, Hope College, author of Intuition: Its Powers and Its Perils
• " The Happiness Hypothesis ... has more to say about the pleasures and perils, the truths, of being alive than any book I've read in a long time." San Francisco Bay Guardian
• "Haidt's is an open-minded, robust look at philosophy, psychological fact and spiritual mystery, of scientific rationalism and the unknowable ephemeral--an honest inquiry that concludes that the best life is, perhaps, one lived in the balance of opposites." Bookpage
• "An erudite, fluently written, stimulating reassessment of age-old issues." Publishers Weekly, starred review

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The Happiness Hypothesis Summary

1-Sentence-Summary:   The Happiness Hypothesis is the most thorough analysis of how you can find happiness in our modern society, backed by plenty of scientific research, real-life examples and even a formula for happiness.

Favorite quote from the author:

Table of Contents

Video Summary

The happiness hypothesis review, audio summary, who would i recommend the happiness hypothesis summary to.

If you’re looking for a scientifically proven way to find happiness, you’ve come to the right place.

These blinks show that Jonathan Haidt , social psychologist and professor at NYU , has pulled out all the stops.

In the beginning of The Happiness Hypothesis , he establishes a metaphor, which then serves throughout the rest of the book to explain happiness in different contexts.

He says our brain is divided into two main parts.  Your limbic system is in charge of your basic instincts , the needs for sleep, food and sex.

The neocortex is, as its name suggests, a newer part of the brain, responsible for your rational thinking . It’s what keeps your limbic system in check and makes sure you don’t run around naked on the street, overeat, or sleep in when you’re supposed to go to work.

While the neocortex follows suit to your thoughts, your limbic brain doesn’t. It’s fully in charge of your heart rate, moving while you sleep or the knee-jerk reflex .

Haidt therefore describes the limbic brain as a wild elephant,  with your neocortex being  the rider , trying to control the elephant.

Unhappiness comes from the rider and the elephant disagreeing, and Haidt uses this metaphor to show you what you can do to close the gap between the two.

50% to 80% of your baseline level of happiness is determined in your genes , but by changing your thoughts you can still train the elephant .

For example, your limbic brain is trained to recognize danger everywhere, in order to survive, but by  becoming an optimist , you can lessen this behavior, which isn’t quite so useful today.

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

A large chunk of our happiness comes from our social relationships , and the first step towards improving them, is understanding them.

Reciprocity is the principle on which we interact, which is why you feel guilty if you don’t return a favor and  Sheldon feels compelled to give a gift back . We feel so strongly about it, that we’d prefer to get nothing, rather than receiving an unfair share .

You can use this principle the next time you fight with your spouse or roommate: Just admit some of the things you did wrong . Your friend will start to reciprocate and also admit what they did wrong, helping both of you to resolve the conflict.

Doing this also helps lessening your self-serving bias , since your elephant thinks it’s always right and your rider usually defends it.

Next to your relationships, your work is one of the few factors that matters a lot to your happiness.

The adaptation principle shows that whatever lucky event or adversity we face, we get used to it. This was proven in a study showing that people who won the lottery and people who became paralyzed both returned to their baseline happiness levels after one year.

However, what you spend your time working on is one of those external circumstances that has a big impact, thanks to the progress principle . It says that we draw much more happiness from working towards a goal , rather than reaching it.

So try to find meaningful work  you’re good at – as Confucius says: “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

Your most important relationship in your life will likely be the one with your partner or spouse. But on your quest for love , don’t just rely on passion . No matter how much “in love” you are at the beginning of the relationship, it naturally fades – and that’s okay.

Haidt says we must seek to develop companionate love , which is what best friends, brothers, sisters and family members share. Having someone at your side through the ups and downs of life, sharing your joy and sadness and exploring and learning together creates a much stronger bond, which can last you a lifetime, but it takes time to develop.

So don’t give up a relationship once passion fades, but give your companionate love time to develop.

The rider and the elephant might also disagree about who you are.  For example your rider can try to preserve your image of being an efficient, career-driven manager, while your elephant just wants to cut himself some slack and play soccer with his buddies.

It often takes a crisis for us to see these differences, which is why adversity can make us happier.  This is especially true for people in their teens and twenties, who spend a lot of time thinking and looking for meaning in their lives. A crisis gives you the chance to see what the elephant really wants and help the rider adjust your self-image to match your true desires.

Lastly, we need to feel connected to something greater than ourselves , which is why religion has a place in our lives. Even if you’re an atheist, you probably believe in karma, destiny or fortune. That’s a good thing! Belief gives us a sense of awe , because it makes us realize that we’re a small part of something much greater.

• Surround yourself with the people you love the most and live in accordance with reciprocity
• Do work that matters to you
• Find a partner who will stand by your side through sunshine and rain
• Allow yourself to be part of something greater

These are just some of the things I learned from these blinks, as there were so many good insights, let alone in the book.

These blinks did an awesome job. I read parts of The Happiness Hypothesis , and every page hits you with a new insight. I don’t know how I would’ve summarized it, but Blinkist did it.

I would have liked to learn about the formula here (Haidt gives a formula for happiness in the book, consisting of your biological set points, the conditions of your life, and your voluntary activities), but I don’t mind that they went for the rider and the elephant metaphor.

Using this throughout all blinks made the summary very consistent and actionable. The book is great, the summary is superb – I highly recommend you get both.

Listen to the audio of this summary with a free reading.fm account*:

The 27 year old who burns through one love relationship after another, the 47 year old who still slaves away in a corporate job she hates in hope for a good retirement and anyone who thinks happiness is just something your born with.

Last Updated on December 5, 2022

Niklas Göke

Niklas Göke is an author and writer whose work has attracted tens of millions of readers to date. He is also the founder and CEO of Four Minute Books, a collection of over 1,000 free book summaries teaching readers 3 valuable lessons in just 4 minutes each. Born and raised in Germany, Nik also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration & Engineering from KIT Karlsruhe and a Master’s Degree in Management & Technology from the Technical University of Munich. He lives in Munich and enjoys a great slice of salami pizza almost as much as reading — or writing — the next book — or book summary, of course!

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The Happiness Hypothesis

Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2006

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