What is Jonathan Haidt’s Happiness Hypothesis?

From Jonathan Haidt’s “Happiness Hypothesis.”

What is Jonathan Haidt’s Happiness Hypothesis?

“people today devote themselves to the pursuit of goals that won’t make them happier, in the process neglecting the sort of inner growth and spiritual development that could bring lasting satisfaction.” (p. 89)

“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.” (p. 240)

Chasing Wealth and Prestige Will Make You Unhappy.

• “Chasing after wealth and prestige, for example, will usually backfire. People who report the greatest interest in attaining money, fame, or beauty are consistently found to be less happy, and even less healthy, than those who pursue less materialistic goals.” (p. 94)
  
  
  
• “People who strive primarily for achievement and wealth are, less happy, on average, than those whose strivings focus on the other three categories. The reason takes us back to happiness traps and conspicuous consumption (see chapter 5): Because human beings were shaped by evolutionary processes to pursue success, not happiness,” (p. 143)
  
  
  
• “People who worry every day about paying for food and shelter report significantly less well-being than those who don’t. But once you are freed from basic needs and have entered the middle class, the relationship between wealth and happiness becomes smaller.” (p. 88)

Beware of the Hedonic Treadmill.

• “we are all stuck on what has been called the “hedonic treadmill.” On an exercise treadmill you can increase the speed all you want, but you stay in the same place.” (p. 86)
  
  
  
• “In life, you can work as hard as you want, and accumulate all the riches, fruit trees, and concubines you want, but you can’t get ahead. Because you can’t change your “natural and usual state of tranquility,” the riches you accumulate will just raise your expectations and leave you no better off than you were before.” (p. 86)
  
  
  
• “Yet, not realizing the futility of our efforts, we continue to strive, all the while doing things that help us win at the game of life. Always wanting more than we have, we run and run and run, like hamsters on a wheel.” (p. 86)
  
  
  
• “a larger home, more cars, televisions, and restaurant meals, better health and longer life—but these improvements became the normal conditions of life; all were adapted to and taken for granted, so they did not make people feel any happier or more satisfied.” (p. 89)

Good Relationships is Perhaps the Most Important Factor for Happiness

• “The condition that is usually said to trump all others in importance is the strength and number of a person’s relationships. Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better relationships than unhappy people. This effect is so important and interesting that it gets its own chapter—” (p. 94)”
  
  
  
• “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.” (p. 94)
  
  
  
• “If you want to predict how happy someone is, or how long she will live (and if you are not allowed to ask about her genes or personality), you should find out about her social relationships. 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.” (p. 133)
  
  
  
• “An ideology of extreme personal freedom can be dangerous because it encourages people to leave homes, jobs, cities, and marriages in search of personal and professional fulfillment, thereby breaking the relationships that were probably their best hope for such fulfillment.” (p. 133)

Try to Find Your Calling, and Pursue the Right Goals.

• “having and pursuing the right goals, in order to create states of flow and engagement. In the modern world, people can find goals and flow in many settings, but most people find most of their flow at work.” (p. 219)
  
  
  
• “If you see your work as a calling, however, you find your work intrinsically fulfilling—you are not doing it to achieve something else. You see your work as contributing to the greater good or as playing a role in some larger enterprise the worth of which seems obvious to you. You have frequent experiences of flow during the work day, and you neither look forward to “quitting time” nor feel the desire to shout, “Thank God it’s Friday!” You would continue to work, perhaps even without pay, if you suddenly became very wealthy.” (p. 221)
  
  
  
• “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.” (p. 222)
  
  
  
• “Love and work are crucial for human happiness because, when done well, they draw us out of ourselves and into connection with people and projects beyond ourselves. Happiness comes from getting these connections right.” (p. 223)

Your Environment Has Little Effect on Happiness.

• “The second biggest finding in happiness research, after the strong influence of genes upon a person’s average level of happiness, is that most environmental and demographic factors influence happiness very little.” (p. 87)
  
  
  
• “People who live in cold climates expect people who live in California to be happier, but they are wrong.” (p. 88)
  
  
  
• “People believe that attractive people are happier than unattractive people, but they, too, are wrong.” (p. 88)
  
  
  
• “People are often surprised to hear that the old are happier than the young because the old have so many more health problems, yet people adapt to most chronic health problems” (p. 88)
  
  
  
• “Wealth itself has only a small direct effect on happiness because it so effectively speeds up the hedonic treadmill.” (p. 89)

Having Flow in Your Life Will Make You Happier.

• “Csikszentmihalyi’s big discovery is that there is a state many people value even more than chocolate after sex. It is the state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities. It is what people sometimes call “being in the zone. Csikszentmihalyi called it “flow” because it often feels like effortless movement” (p. 95)
  
  
  
• “And flow can happen during solitary creative activities, such as painting, writing, or photography. 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).” (p. 95)

Reaching Your Goal Won’t Give You Lasting Happiness, It’s the Journey That Counts.

• “when it comes to goal pursuit, it really is the journey that counts, not the destination. Set for yourself any goal you want. Most of the pleasure will be had along the way, with every step that takes you closer.” (p. 85)
  
  
  
• “The final moment of success is often no more thrilling than the relief of taking off a heavy backpack at the end of a long hike. If you went on the hike only to feel that pleasure, you are a fool.” (p. 85)
  
  
  
• “Yet people sometimes do just this. They work hard at a task and expect some special euphoria at the end. But when they achieve success and find only moderate and short-lived pleasure, they ask (as the singer Peggy Lee once did): Is that all there is? They devalue their accomplishments as a striving after wind.” (p. 85)

Look For Gratifications by Using Your Strengths.

• “Gratifications ask more of us; they challenge us and make us extend ourselves. Gratifications often come from accomplishing something, learning something, or improving something. When we enter a state of flow, hard work becomes effortless. We want to keep exerting ourselves, honing our skills, using our strengths. Seligman suggests that the key to finding your own gratifications is to know your own strengths.” (p. 97)

Use Your Strengths to Help Others.

• “You can increase your happiness if you use your strengths, particularly in the service of strengthening connections—helping friends, expressing gratitude to benefactors. Performing a random act of kindness every day could get tedious, but if you know your strengths and draw up a list of five activities that engage them, you can surely add at least one gratification to every day. Studies that have assigned people to perform a random act of kindness every week, or to count their blessings regularly for several weeks, find small but sustained increases in happiness. So take the initiative! Choose your own gratifying activities, do them regularly (but not to the point of tedium), and raise your overall level of happiness.” (p. 97)

Perform Acts of Kindness.

• “Studies that have assigned people to perform a random act of kindness every week, or to count their blessings regularly for several weeks, find small but sustained increases in happiness.” (p. 98)

Avoid Materialism. Buy Experiences Instead.

• “Those who described buying an experience (such as a ski trip, a concert, or a great meal) were happier when thinking about their purchase, and thought that their money was better spent, than those who described buying a material object (such as clothing, jewelry, or electronics). ” (p. 100)
  
  
  
• “The pursuit of luxury goods is a happiness trap; it is a dead end that people race toward in the mistaken belief that it will make them happy.” (p. 101)
  
  
  
• “After conducting several variations of this experiment with similar findings each time, Van Boven and Gilovich concluded that experiences give more happiness in part because they have greater social value: Most activities that cost more than a hundred dollars are things we do with other people, but expensive material possessions are often purchased in part to impress other people. Activities connect us to others; objects often separate us.” (p. 100)

Don’t Sacrifice a Long Commute for a Bigger House.

• “Commuting. Many people choose to move farther away from their jobs in search of a larger house. But although people quickly adapt to having more space, they don’t fully adapt to the longer commute, particularly if it involves driving in heavy traffic.” (p. 92)

Beware of Noise and Traffic in your Home.

• “Research shows that people who must adapt to new and chronic sources of noise (such as when a new highway is built) never fully adapt, and even studies that find some adaptation still find evidence of impairment on cognitive tasks. Noise, especially noise that is variable or intermittent, interferes with concentration and increases stress. It’s worth striving to remove sources of noise in your life.” (p. 92)

Pleasures Should Be Savored and Varied.

• “The French know how to do this: They eat many fatty foods, yet they end up thinner and healthier than Americans, and they derive a great deal more pleasure from their food by eating slowly and paying more attention to the food as they eat it. Because they savor, they ultimately eat less.” (p. 96)
  
  
  
• “Variety is the spice of life because it is the natural enemy of adaptation.” (p. 96)

Don’t Be a Maximimizer, be a Satisficer.

• “when people are actually given a larger array of choices—for example, an assortment of thirty (rather than six) gourmet chocolates from which to choose—they are less likely to make a choice; and if they do, they are less satisfied with it.” (p. 101)
  
  
  
• “people—“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. Maximizers end up making slightly better decisions than satisficers, on average (all that worry and information-gathering does help), but they are less happy with their decisions, and they are more inclined to depression and anxiety.” (p. 102)

Give People a Sense of Control.

• “Judith Rodin gave benefits to residents on two floors of a nursing home—for example, plants in their rooms, and a movie screening one night a week. But on one floor, these benefits came with a sense of control: The residents were allowed to choose which plants they wanted, and they were responsible for watering them. They were allowed to choose as a group which night would be movie night.” (p. 93)
  
  
  
• “On the floor with increased control, residents were happier, more active, and more alert (as rated by the nurses, not just by the residents), and these benefits were still visible eighteen months later. Most amazingly, at the eighteen-month follow-up, residents of the floor given control had better health and half as many deaths (15 percent versus 30 percent).” (p. 93)
  
  
  
• “we concluded that 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.” (p. 93)

Plastic Surgery Can Make You Happier.

• “Overall, attractive people are not happier than unattractive ones. Yet, surprisingly, some improvements in a person’s appearance do lead to lasting increases in happiness. 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) in the years after the operation.” (p. 93)

Other Good Quotes.

“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. The Chinese sage Lao Tzu warned people to make their own choices and not pursue the material objects everyone else was pursuing:” (p. 100)

“Modern life is full of traps. Some of these traps are set by marketers and advertisers who know just what the elephant wants—and it isn’t happiness.” (p. 102)

“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. The reason takes us back to happiness traps and conspicuous consumption (see chapter 5): Because human beings were shaped by evolutionary processes to pursue success, not happiness,” people enthusiastically pursue goals that will help them win prestige in zero-sum competitions. Success in these competitions feels good but gives no lasting pleasure, and it raises the bar for future success.” (p. 143)

“Psychologists have referred to this basic need as a need for competence, industry, or mastery. White called it the “effectance motive,” which he defined as the need or drive to develop competence through interacting with and controlling one’s environment. Effectance is almost as basic a need as food and water, yet it is not a deficit need, like hunger, that is satisfied and then disappears for a few hours. Rather, White said, effectance is a constant presence in our lives:” (p.220)