As part of my education requirements, I was tasked with reading the Happiness Hypothesis by Johnathan Haidt. This Highlighted specific skills required to be a goal oriented person. Here is my group presentation on our findings.

1. The Happiness
Hypothesis
Shelby Corner, Benjamin Miller,
Enoch Erbert

2. Synopsis
– Social psychologist, Jonathan Haidt, explores “Great Ideas” from ancient
philosophers such as Buddha and Jesus to find out what makes us happy and
ties these ideas to modern day psychology/science.
– The book follows a metaphor of a elephant and a rider to connect the ancients
ideas and psychology together.

3. Metaphor – Rider on back on
elephant
– Rider – Conscious, controlled,
rational mind
– Elephant – Unconscious, impulsive,
automatic mind

4. Divided Self
– Mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict and want different things.
– First Division – Mind vs Body
– Second Division – Left vs. Right Brain
– Third Division – Old Vs New Brain
– Fourth Division – Controlled Vs. Automatic

5. Example of Mind Vs. Body
– Michel De Montaigne, French Philosopher, suggested that each part of the body
has its own emotions and its own agenda.
– Autonomic nervous system - Facial expressions betray our secret thoughts, our hair
stands on end, our hearts race, our tongues fail to speak etc..
– Gut Brain - Bowels. They expand and contract, independent of what we want
them to do.
– The gut brain which handles the stuff that the head brain doesn’t.
– Human Heart acts independently from the mind. We cannot consciously control
our heart rate.

6. Left vs Right
Brain
– Left Hemisphere
– Takes in information from
the right half of the world.
– Specialized for language
processing and analytical
task.
– Notices details
– Right Hemisphere
– Takes in information from
the left half of the world.
– Better at processing
patterns in space

7. Example of Left vs Right Brain
–

8. Old Brain vs New Brain (Frontal
Cortex)
– Our brains have expanded and undergone growth of the frontal cortex.
– Older structures are the limbic system are in charge of our basic instincts
(animalist instincts like sex and hunger)
– New structures are the neocortex controls which is in charge of our reasoning,
and emotion. This structure keeps our animalist instincts in check.

9. Example of Old vs New Brain
– School teacher in 40’s suddenly has huge influx of hypersexuality to the point
he is arrest
– Day before sentencing - he went to hospital due to pounding headache and
constant urge to rape his landlord lady.
– Doctor did a brain scan and found a enormous tumor on his frontal cortex that
squeezing everything.
– This tumor was preventing the frontal cortex from doing its job inhibiting
inappropriate behavior and thinking about consequences.
– Tumor removed - hypersexuality vanished

10. Controlled Vs. Automatic
– Two processing systems working in the mind at all times; controlled processing
and automatic processing.
– Automatic Processing – Most mental processes happen automatically the need
for conscious attention or control and most automatic processes are completely
unconscious. (Elephant)
– Controlled Processes – The kind of thinking that takes some effort, that
proceeds in steps and that requires consciousness. (Rider)

11. Key Concept of Divided Self
– We can direct things but only when the elephant doesn’t have desires of his
own. When the elephant really wants to do something, we are no match.
– The rider (conscious self) must learn to train the elephant (unconscious self)
for self improvement .

12. Where does happiness come
from?

13. According to Buddha, in order to be happy you must
rid yourself of attachments that bind us to pleasure,
achievement, reputation, and life. With attachments,
brings suffering. (Eastern World way of thinking).

14. Western world way of thinking is that happiness
comes from things. New cars, homes, clothes, etc.

15. Key - Finding and striving for the right attachments brings
happiness. Yes, attachments bring pain, but they also bring our
greatest joys, and there is value in the very variation that the
philosophers try to avoid.

16. Negativity Bias
– Generally there are two types of people who seek out therapy
– People who need tightening
– People who need loosening
– For many people, the elephant see too many bad things and not enough good things.
– The human mind reacts to bad things more quickly, strongly, and persistently than to
equivalent good things.
– In marital interactions, it takes at least 5 good or constructive actions to make up for the damage
done for 1 critical or destructive act.
– It takes 25 acts of life-saving heroism to make up for one act of murder.
– Essentially, we are wired to find and react to threats, violations, and set backs.

17. Concept of the Cortical Lottery
– Happiness is one of the most highly heritable aspects of personality.
– Some brains are preconfigured to see good in the world.
– People showing more of a certain kind of brainwave coming through the left
side of the forehead reported feeling more happiness in their daily lives and less
fear, anxiety, and shame than people exhibiting higher activity on the right side.

18. How to change your Affective
Style
– Meditation - Sit still and focus on the awareness of your breathing, or a word,
image, and let no other words, ideas, or images arise into consciousness.
– Meditation tames and calms the elephant. Proof of taming is the breaking of
attachments.
– Cognitive Therapy
– One of the most effective treatments available for depression, anxiety, etc.
– Trains people to catch thoughts, write them down, name the distortions, and find
alternative and more accurate way of thinking.
– Teaches rider how to train the elephant rather than defeat it. Rider is unaware that
the elephant is controlling him.
– Prozac - Medication

19. Happiness Set Point
– This idea comes from the fact that us humans adapt to our conditions.
– For example, someone who won the lottery and someone who becomes a
quadriplegic will return to their normal set point of happiness
– Quadriplegic takes a huge happiness loss up front. He has nowhere to go but up.
– Lottery Winner’s will adapt to the new situation and will return to baseline
happiness.
– Good Fortune or bad, you will always return to your happiness set point (brain's
default level of happiness which is determined largely by your genes).

20. Hedonic Treadmill
– Hedonic Treadmill – Like an exercise treadmill, you can increase the speed all
you want, but you stay in the same place
– You can work hard, accumulate all the riches but cannot get ahead.
– You can’t change your natural and usual state of tranquility
– Riches you accumulate will raise your expectations and leave you no better off
than you were before.
– KEY - New things are not the answer to our happiness

21. Happiness Formula
– H = S + C + V
Happiness Set Point
Adaption/natural point
Conditions
Things you can and
can’t change. Ie) race,
sex, age, wealth, marital
status, where you live
Voluntary Actions
Things you can do to be
happy such as go to the
gym, read books, etc.

22. Types of Love
Passionate Love
– Wildly emotional state
– Type of love is compared to
cocaine since it is addictive but it
does wear off
– Passionate love is “fire”
– Easy to think of this as the
notebook kind of love.
Companionship Love
– Affection we feel for those with
whom our lives are deeply
intertwined.
– Grows slowly over the years as
lovers apply their attachment and
caregiving systems to each other
– Companionship love is vines
growing, intertwining, and
gradually binding 2 people
together

23. Time Scale for
Two Types of
Love (Short
Run)
Danger Point #1 - Passionate love
ignites and reaches its maximum
temperature within days.
Sometimes a commitment to
marriage occurs.
Danger Point # 2 - The day the drug
weakens its grip and break up occur.

24. Time Scale for
Two Types of
Love (Long
Term)

25. What deprives your happiness?
– Noise:
– Research shows that people who must adapt to new and chronic sources of
noise (i.e - living next to a busy intersection) never fully adapt and can have
impaired cognitive task, concentration, and increased stress.
– Commute Time
– People do not usually fully adapt to the longer commute especially when it involves
heavy traffic.
– Lack of Control
– Nursing Home Example - Residents at Nursing Home who had choices had better
health and half as many deaths that the residents who did not have choices. Also
with the increased control, residents were happier, more active, and more alert.

26. – Shame – Reducing shame will increase happiness.
– Dysfunctional Relationships
– Good relationships make people happy, and happy people enjoy more and better
relationships that unhappy people.
– Examples in conflicts in relationships - annoying office mates or roommate, or having
a chronic conflict with your significant other is a sure way to reduce happiness
– Can never adapt to interpersonal conflict
– This is HUGE for the “C” (conditions) in the happiness formula.

27. Things that Increase your
Happiness
– Strong Marriages
– Happy people marry sooner and stay married longer than people with a lower
happiness set point, both because they are more appealing as dating partner and
because they’re easier to live with as spouses.
– Dependable companionship.
– Physical Touch – Hugs, pat on back
– Infants who are not touched, development is skewed
– Meaningful Relationships - Strengthens immune system, extends life, reduces
risk of depression and anxiety disorders
– Religious Affiliation
– Religious people are happier on average than no religion people

28. Valuing Constraints
– People has have less restraints, bonds, and obligations are more likely to
commit suicide.
– We need constraints and obligations to provide structure and to have thing
worth living for.

29. Goal Attainment
– Pre-Goal Attainment
– Post- Goal Attainment
– We are more happy when working toward a goal (pre-goal attainment) than
when we achieve the goal.
– After achieving a goal, oftentimes we go through a “now what” feeling.

30. Class Exercise
-The Elephant was described earlier as unconscious, impulsive, automatic mind
-Three ways to develop the elephant described by Haidt are
– Meditation
– Cognitive Therapy
– Prozac
- Cognitive therapy takes continuous practice
- Prozac requires a doctor's recommendation and prescription
- Meditation can be self taught and perfected through simple practice.

31. Meditation
- A simple exercise in meditation is a way that we all can experience an aspect
of this book.
- This is a voluntary Activity that takes concentration and a conscious effort to
focus on pushing out the bothersome self.
- The process is easy. We are going to close our eyes and concentrate on our
breathing. We will attempt to push out the thoughts that plague us.
- We will attempt to non-analytically focus our attention. Try and focus on
nothing but our breath, and block out the distractions.

32. Works Cited
Haidt, Jonathan. The Happiness Hypothesis. New York, Basic Books,
2006.