../book-review-happiness-hypothesis

Book summary: The Happiness Hypothesis

Published:

Happiness Psychology

Overview

The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt discusses the use of positive psychology to make oneself happier. Having recently finished reading it, I want to document my takeaways.

Takeaways

One: Relationship between Rider & Elephant

The mind has two modes: the Elephant that makes snap decisions and judgements, and the Rider that does slow, deliberate thinking. The Elephant dictates our immediate feelings and emotions, and is also used by the Rider for heuristics and taking short-cuts. The Elephant has a huge impact on the Rider. Likewise, the Rider, can also slowly and deliberately change the behavior of the Elephant.

Personal opinion: Compare with Rationality

The rationalist community, including Eliezer Yudkowsky, focus a lot on having an accurate model of the real world, which requires continually changing our beliefs as we get new evidence.

This begs the question: does changing one's belief affect the Rider or the Elephant?

I recently read a book about an ongoing conflict. Before reading the book, my Elephant had strong opinions about the topic, without any real knowledge. My Rider couldn't really break out of this unconscious bias until my wife called me out on it by asking some questions which I didn't have great answers to. Reading a book patiently while actively engaging my Rider caused it to realize the truth, which changed my beliefs and ended up affecting the Elephant. In order to change your beliefs, you will usually utilize the Rider. If your Rider is successful in changing your belief, then the Elephant is also affected.

I think beliefs reside closer to the Elephant than the Rider. The Rider can try to take steps to change beliefs, but "belief in belief" isn't real. Your actions are the ultimate say in whether or not your beliefs have changed, and the Elephant likely affects most of your day-to-day actions and behavior.

Note that Elephant's insights are valuable to the Rider too. It's not a one-way street where we want to always update Elephant based on rational reasoning from Rider. We usually don't have time to rationally think about every action from first principles. Rider will thus use the Elephant to short-circuit; it'll make use of heuristics, feelings, gut instinct, etc. This can lead to biases so the Rider must watch out for them, but the goal isn't to fully control the Elephant. It's to be more aware of what the Elephant is doing, and why, and change our beliefs so it takes more desirable actions on its own.

Two: Formula for Happiness

The author presents a formula for happiness:

Happiness = Setpoint + External Conditions + Voluntary Activities

We don't set weights on any of the variables, as how much each variable contributes to your happiness will likely change constantly.

However, the first variable, Setpoint, has the largest impact to your happiness. Each person is pre-disposed to a feel a certain amount of happiness most of the time. If something good happens to you, you become a lot happier for, say, a few minutes or a few hours, and then get back to your "normal" (aka Setpoint) level of happiness. Vice-versa, if something negative happiness. Setpoint is very hard to change, tho the author believes meditation, Prozac, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy can help.

External conditions also affect happiness. For example, noise, commute time, appearance, love, relationships have a huge impact too. I can tell that I am markedly happier after I met my wife.

Finally, voluntary activities also have a huge impact on our happiness. Meditation and mindfulness--for example, writing a introspective diary frequently--have been known to make people more grateful. Purusing hobbies and making progress towards a goal too--even if you never actually achieve it--are valuable in keeping us happy.

Behavioral changes

Some behavioral changes I plan to enact are listed below: