Happiness Hypothesis — In Depth — Part 1 of 3

This is a longer review and commentary of Jonathan Haidt’s book, “The Happiness Hypothesis” (2006). I had previously posted a shorter recommendation to read the book on Medium: “Happiness Hypothesis — Book Recommendation.”

Introduction

Many self-help, oriented books deliver 80% of their interesting content in the first chapter, or so, with the remainder of the book seems to be primarily in service of rounding out a book. Haidt’s book does not fit that mold at all. Each chapter to the end is deeply engaging covering happiness-related topics from a variety of angles with a mix of neuroscience, psychology, history, philosophy, and personal reflection. In many ways, each chapter feels like a mini-set of lectures on a subject which has made trying to write a longer review of the book challenging.

In the remainder of this post, I’ll highlight some overall criticisms then comment on some of the more interesting aspects from each chapter.

Critique

For a book I overall enjoy and highly recommend, my primary critique is that particularly for the psychology studies he chooses to discuss, he is cherry picking studies that fit his narrative. While it is possible (Haidt is a professor of social psychology at NYU’s Stern School of Business) that he has picked the most appropriate study for each case, he provides no contrary viewpoints or any sense of the debate about the issue. This stood out to me most strongly in Chapter 2 which referenced the Implicit Association Test (IAT) which since its introduction in the mid-to-late 1990’s has been the subject of ongoing criticism. I recognize that it is unrealistic to expect a non-academic book to fully engage in a discussion of all of the criticisms of the study but a bit of context on some of the studies used as chapter themes, or a link to “read more,” might have helped.

Moving to the positives, I will highlight some of what I found particularly interesting on a chapter-by-chapter basis.

1-Divided Self

Haidt’s largest contribution which ties the book together is a metaphor: think of humans and our experience as a combination of an elephant and the elephant rider. We are not one or the other, but both together.

This general idea is not unique to him, and he acknowledges Plato’s earlier similar metaphors. However, his use of the metaphor to unify the discussion of the book is unique and helpful.

He gets to this analogy from starting to observe how theories about information processing and rational choice fail to explain weakness of will, while realizing that older metaphors about controlling an animal work well:

I was a rider on the back of an elephant. I’m holding the reins in my hands, and by pulling one way or the other I can tell the elephant to turn, to stop, or to go. I can direct things, but only when the elephant doesn’t have desires of his own. When the elephant really wants to do something, I’m no match for him. (p 4)

For me personally, this metaphor is quite helpful and worth thinking about.

The metaphor also provides explanatory power to observed measured phenomenon first observed in split-brain patients (and occurring in us all) like “confabulation,” the way people will fabricate reasons to explain their behaviors (elephant reaches conclusion, rider interprets it).

Example (p 21), when you see a painting you usually know how you feel about it, but when asked to explain, confabulations comes into play as you fabricate an explanation for why you find it beautiful.

This in turn explains why many arguments do not move the needle:

[A]rguments 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. (p 21)

There is a lot to digest there.

Certainly explains a lot of my Facebook wall both leading up to, and certainly following, the Nov 2016 election: arguing with the rider gets you nowhere, you need to move the whole person: elephant and rider.

2-Changing Your Mind

Which ultimately leads to this observation about happiness, depression and so forth:

You can change your affective style [typical level of happiness] too — but again, you can’t do it by sheer force of will. You have to do something that will change your repertoire of available thoughts. Here are three of the best methods for doing so: meditation, cognitive therapy, and Prozac. All three are effective because they work on the elephant. (p 35)

Or my shorthand: “meditation, therapy, or antidepressants pick at least one.” Haidt’s openness about his own depression and anxiety together with the pluses and minuses of Prozac for him were helpful.

If one stopped reading this book here, one would walk away with more than from a lot of self-help books.

This review has two more parts coming soon discussing the remainder of the book. Read part 2 now…