The Happiness Hypothesis

The question

Jonathan Haidt, then a social psychologist at the University of Virginia, wrote The Happiness Hypothesis, his first book, in 2006. He had studied moral emotions, especially disgust and elevation, and had become involved in the positive psychology movement, which studies what makes life go well rather than only what goes wrong.

His question is whether the wisdom of the ages is true. Philosophers and religious teachers from Buddha and Confucius to the Stoics, the Hebrew prophets and Jesus offered advice about how to live and be happy. Much of it is familiar. Haidt selects ten great ideas from these traditions and asks, for each, what modern psychology says: is it right, partly right, or wrong?

The path through it

The first idea is that the self is divided. Haidt introduces his image of the rider and the elephant: the conscious, reasoning mind sits on top of a much larger automatic mind, the elephant, which mostly goes where it wants. Plato’s charioteer, the Buddha’s wild elephant and Saint Paul’s struggle between flesh and spirit all describe the same division. Psychology confirms it, and adds that the rider is more of an adviser than a master.

The second is that changing one’s mind is possible but hard. Haidt surveys three methods that work on the elephant: meditation, cognitive therapy and, more controversially, medication. Each changes the automatic mind indirectly, as reasoning alone cannot.

The third is reciprocity. The golden rule, found in many traditions, rests on a deep instinct to return favours and harms. Psychology shows how powerful it is, and how it can be used to manipulate.

The fourth is the faults of others. Jesus asked why we see the speck in our brother’s eye and not the plank in our own. Research on self-serving bias and naive realism confirms that people are reliably blind to their own faults and quick to see others’.

The fifth is the pursuit of happiness. Haidt draws on research showing that people adapt quickly to most changes in circumstances. A famous 1978 study found that lottery winners and people who had become paralysed in accidents returned, over time, closer to their previous levels of happiness than anyone would expect. He presents a formula from positive psychology: happiness depends on a biological set point, on conditions of life and on voluntary activities. Some conditions do matter, among them noise, commuting, lack of control and, above all, relationships, and some activities, such as gratitude and kindness, reliably help.

The sixth is love and attachment. Drawing on John Bowlby’s attachment theory, Haidt argues that human beings are deeply social and that strong relationships are among the most important sources of happiness.

The seventh is the uses of adversity. Nietzsche’s claim that what does not kill us makes us stronger is partly true: some people grow after trauma, especially when they can make sense of it. But not everyone does, and Haidt is careful not to romanticise suffering.

The eighth is the felicity of virtue. Ancient thinkers held that virtue leads to happiness. Haidt argues that modern Western ethics lost this idea by focusing on rules and dilemmas, and that positive psychology’s research on strengths and virtues restores part of it.

The ninth is divinity, with or without God. Many people experience a vertical dimension of life, a sense of elevation and sacredness, which Haidt treats as a real feature of human psychology whatever one believes about religion.

The tenth is that happiness comes from between.

Where it arrives

Haidt arrives at his own hypothesis. Earlier views held that happiness comes from within, by changing oneself, as the Buddha and the Stoics taught, or from without, by getting what one wants. Haidt proposes that happiness comes from between: from getting the right relationships between oneself and others, between oneself and one’s work, and between oneself and something larger. People need love, meaningful work and a sense of connection to something beyond themselves, and these cannot be produced by an individual alone.

What remains open

Some of the research Haidt drew on has been revised since 2006. The happiness formula he presents, including its estimate that around forty per cent of happiness depends on intentional activity, was later criticised by Nicholas Brown and Julia Rohrer, and the figure is now treated with caution. Findings on adaptation have been refined: people adapt less fully to some events, such as unemployment or disability, than early studies suggested.

The book also leaves open how far ancient wisdom and modern psychology really converge. Haidt chose ideas that fit; other traditions, or other parts of the same ones, might fare less well.

What it asks of someone deciding

The book asks whether you are addressing the rider or the elephant. Arguments and instructions speak to the rider. Lasting change, in individuals and teams, comes from habits, environments and relationships that shape the elephant.

It asks what conditions people work in. Haidt’s list of conditions that reliably reduce happiness, including noise, long commutes and lack of control, is a practical checklist for anyone who designs workplaces.

And it asks whether your work connects people to something between them: to each other, to the work itself and to a purpose beyond the self. The site’s idea page Wanting What We Want to Want explores the difference between what people pursue and what they would choose on reflection.