When pitching Jonathan Haidt's "Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom" to friends, I often find myself explaining away the title -- no, it's not another self-help book and yes, it's about more than just plastering a silly smile on your face. With that said, the title is appropriate; Haidt is chiefly concerned with what's responsible for making humans happy.The title fails, however, to convey the breadth and depth of Haidt's search, which touches on philosophy, psychology,

As I was reading the first few chapters, I put this book on my “to buy” list, but my enthusiasm ebbed as I finished the book, and my natural inclination not to buy books I never expect to re-read has taken over.But it’s still a book I think I can recommend: it has plenty of interesting and thoughtful points to make, a few that are confusing and disconcerting, as well as some advice towards the front of the book.The early chapters have a bit of a “self-help” feel that dissipates further into the

I could probably give this book two stars if I hadn't just got my fill of evo-psy smarm from Steven Pinker. Haidt's got the same penchant to 1) explain away the cultural status quo as a natural consequence of biological human nature; 2) present all of his ideas as scientific consensus, when there are very few non-controversial conclusions in positive psychology (it's fine for him to stick with his theory, but his disinterest in bringing up these disagreements leaves me very distrustful of him);

First of all there is a tone to this book that I thought from the beginning was really going to be a problem for me. I guess that is the tone of self-help books. All the same, this book was much more interesting and much more challenging (at least, to me) than most other self-help books I’ve read. I actually found parts of this book quite confronting.The parts of this book that I liked the most were those where he was discussing his elephant and rider metaphor. Essentially, he believes that we a...

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. and if you are unsure about what category falls for you, just read this book! :D

If you read The Happiness Hypothesis after Haidt’s The Righteous Mind, then I think you are bound to be a little disappointed. Whereas the latter is informative, original, and at times challenging, this book waters down Haidt’s genuine insight with a good deal of pop psychology and self-help.According to Haidt, science has finally revealed how to be happy. All of the following factors are likely to boost happiness: enough money, ample free time, short commutes, a loving family, and meaningful wo...

The short conclusion at the end of this book was really good. I wish the rest of the book stuck to the author's concise summary a little bit better. In some of Haidt's best advice within the whole book he says, "Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger." He adds, "You have to get the conditions right, and then wait." There are a lot of other good insights in the book, but I find them to be burried in piles of other not

If I hadn't read Daniel Kahneman's Thinking, Fast and Slow, first, I may not have been able to get into The Happiness Hypothesis. Although they mine some of the same territory, The Happiness Hypothesis is an ordinary book. Kahneman's book, on the other hand, is a land mine. I think he wrote it using the knowledge that was his subject matter, giving it its penetrating power. Haidt, on the other hand, comes across as attempting to "convert" the reader, which can set up some resistance. Also, while...

Finished reading this last night. Two things first - 1) the book is not really about ancient wisdom. It's primarily about current research/thinking in the field of Psychology on emotional happiness. 2) The first third of the book is among the most depressing things I have ever read. The book starts by focusing on the view that humans have virtually no control over our own ability to be happy (or miserable). It's genetic - we are born with an innate predisposition towards personal happiness or mi...

This book starts off as great. It neatly draws from the ancient philosophy and extrapolates the relevance of ancient wisdom to modern life. For example, the elephant-rider analogy, for which it gets one star. But somewhere in the middle, it loses itself in theological arguments. The scope of the book is so broad that the title becomes misleading. The book gets another star for the valuable insights into human psychology, morality and life in general that lie interspersed in between elaborate dig...

I’ve often marveled at how seemingly rational people can forgo reason when engaged in public debate over a land use issue. A few years back I was involved in a community meeting about a new village scale project being proposed for the center of a small Vermont town. Even faced with a plethora of facts, figures and testimonials to the contrary, many people held fast to their belief that the project—designed to mimic the design and spacing of the clustered houses already in the village center—woul...

You've heard of every single study in this book--marshmallows, monkeys and moms, etc. But Haidt's book is one of the best in this genre--he mixes modern psychological research (which I think by itself does not lend to a coherent worldview though many have tried to weave one) with some ancient ideas as well as some evolutionary truths. The point of this book, as he says, is not to tell you the meaning of life (why are we here, where do we go, etc), but how to have a meaningful (or happy) life. He...

“Do people have a tendency to dump on you?Does your group have more cavities than theirs?Do all the hippies seem to get the jump on you?Do you sleep alone when others sleep in pairs?Well there’s no need to complainWe’ll eliminate your painWe can neutralize your brainYou’ll feel just fineNowBuy a big bright green pleasure machine!Do figures of authority just shoot you down?Is life within the business world a drag?Did your boss just mention that you’d better shop aroundTo find yourself a more pro

I loved Haidt's most recent book, "The righteous mind". This one (written years earlier) contains a lot of fascinating insights, but it seemed to me a little weaker. While "Righteous mind" examines the origins of morality, "Happiness" goes through some studies of happiness that I have already found or heard elsewhere, and it draws pertinent links with some ancient wisdom. According to Haidt, the ones among us who have lost at the "cortex lottery" and are therefore less naturally prone to be happ...

And thus we move, logically, to The Happiness Hypothesis. Ben Tanaka, main character of Shortcomings, could use The Happiness Hypothesis. Ginger Pye and the rest of the Pye family apparently intuitively knew The Happiness Hypothesis. Haidt looks at ancient wisdom and compares it to the result of the new science of positive psychology. Some of the things I learned from this book:*Reciprocity is the best guide to life. This is the classic “Do unto others” thought. *There are three effective ways t...

Using psychology, philosophy, theology*, and some biology, Jonathan Haidt digs into what brings true happiness and how we define it. I like how intellectually engaging this book was. Most of the studies, philosophies, and ideas he presents should be familiar to anyone who keeps up with the topics. However, I've never seen them combined like this. It really is about "modern truth" born from "ancient wisdom." Now, while I found this book engaging, I did not agree with all of it. This is pretty und...

I've been slogging away at this book for nearly a month, which is unusual for me. Usually, if I stall on a book (as I did with three other books I started reading over the month of February), I simply put it down with a note that it's been partially read. But The Happiness Hypothesis was so compelling that I kept coming back after putting it down and letting my mind digest the material. It's a book that's designed to be read slowly.I discovered this book through Switch, by Chip and Dan Heath, wh...

5 star, pure wisdom! This book gave me great insights on how our mind works. It's a great combination of scientific research, philosophy and psychology of today diving deep to figure out what really makes us happy. I highly recommended reading this book, if someone would say that I had only 3 books to pick for them this would be one of them. If you're wondering about the reasons for our seemingly never-ending pursuit of happiness and meaning "The Happiness Hypothesis" will give you very solid an...

Jonathan Haidt’s The Happiness Hypothesis bears the subtitle Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. Executives at Basic Books no doubt felt that this was a little too lofty and academic sounding for the average Indigo-browsing reader of pop-psychology, because the book also bears the second, much sexier subtitle Why the Meaningful Life is Closer Than You Think. Each of these three titles seems to point in a somewhat different direction. But whether wittingly or unwittingly, this veritable schiz...

Don’t be put off by the title! It sounds wishy-washy, but it’s not. Haidt’s claims are specific and empirical, and are backed-up with citations to published studies. The Happiness Hypothesis serves two functions: (1) it’s a psychology professor’s introduction to his chosen subfield (“positive psychology”), which aims to help people “find happiness and meaning” (Kindle Loc. 132); and (2) it explores the continued applicability of (mostly ancient and/or religious) philosophical and moral ideas, in...

I was a big fan of self-help books in my early 20ies and dropped them fast for they tend to be far from relating topics to any scientific reference of proof (that I tend to admire) and simply axiomatizing without any scientific reference. This book based on my experience, I initially looked at skeptically, is definitely a turnaround. For the first time, I feel like ”happiness has a scientific background in it”.

I was recommended this book by a friend. Going in, I was skeptical - the premise sounded like some sort of self-help hand wavy junk. When I realized the ambition of the book, I got much more interested. To me, the concept seemed great: "here's an ancient theory on life from an important philosopher, here's some modern science that provides empirical evidence for this theory so it seems they were correct and we should follow his / her advice." However, I think this book may have reached too far a...

I love this book. I truly do! It is a combination of the three subjects I think about most: psychology, philosophy, and religion. In the Happiness Hypothesis the (humble) author brings together theories of the past, the theories of religion, and updates them with understandings from psychology. In many ways, he either adjusts traditional thinking with science or he validates traditional thinking with science. It is an excellent approach that must have taken the author a long time to put together...

Non-fiction is not my usual milieu, but this was a gift from a family member so here I am.The author explores the nature of happiness, its properties and sources, with the end-goal of teaching the reader HOW to be happy. He searches for commonalities across ancient writings (Buddha, Confucius, the Bible, Torah, Aristotle, etc) to support his ideas, though in truth these felt superfluous to me. Haidt mostly relies on psychology and philosophy to back his assertions.The Happiness Hypothesis's big

I originally read this book for my Encounters in Humanities course. I remember settling down on the couch for a long, boring read (as I judged by the barefaced cover and a skim over the title). Although not every part is enthralling, this book has taught me, personally, so much. It also served its purpose incredibly well in the class; I was filled with questions, and insights into human nature I would have never explored on my own. The part of the book that hit me hardest was the section on lov...

Excellent. From the author of "The Righteous Mind", which I read a few years back. There is so much good stuff in this book, combining thoughts from the ancients with modern psychology, much of it new to me and the rest a good reminder. A tiny sampling of material:"But recent research in psychology suggests that Buddha and Epictetus may have taken things too far.""In fact, happiness is one of the most highly heritable aspects of personality. Twin studies generally show that from 50 percent to 80...

Claire thinks this is the best book I have put her way in recent years and now has about six of her friends reading it. I seem to get good feedback from others I have suggested it to. Basically Jon Haidt (who I have had email correspondance with about the link between his work and mine) looks at what thinkers over the last 3000 years have said about what makes us happy and then applied modern neuro-science and the emerging study of positive psychology to see what light it throws on ancient wisdo...

When you read a book for a second time, you realize how some other things you learned meanwhile has affected how you consume it and even your perception of the messages usually change, at least slightly. This is the first book ever that made me think that it has some even greater stuff inside while reading it (usually we all have that feeling that we have the right understanding of what we are reading and that we got it all right). This is the reason why I am going to reread it, probably next ye...

I intend to read this book again in a year or two. This is the first book in my life I've said that about. It is a masterpiece that integrates the best research from psychology, neuroscience with evolutionary biology and ties that into ancient philosophy and modern social theory.The most powerful metaphor of the book is the separation of the brain into two parts, the elephant and rider. The elephant represents the subconscious or impulsive patterns of thought, which "have a mind of their own." T...

An interesting book from one of my professors at UVA.Quotes I'd like to remember from the book:"Our minds are loose confederations of parts, but we identify with and pay too much attention to one part: conscious verbal thinking. We are like the proverbial drunken man looking for his car keys under the street light. (“Did you drop them here?” asks the cop. “No” says the man, “Idropped them back there in the alley, but the light is better over here.”) Because we can see only one little corner of t...