Always look on the bright side of life: UVA prof Jonathan Haidt found that if you want to get happy, start thinking positive.
Are you happy? The question blares at us from magazine covers and pharmaceutical commercials, but most of us realize that true happiness isn’t as simple as a fad diet or a popped pill.
In his new book, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom, UVA psychology professor Jonathan Haidt looks at happiness through the viewpoint of ancient philosophers and modern scientists, and he discovers that their ideas about what makes people happy are quite similar. The journal Nature called Haidt’s book “the most intellectually substantial book to arise from the ‘positive psychology’ movement” (an area of study that tries to provide scientific insight into the nature of happiness, creativity and fun). Since those things seem to be in short supply these days, we asked Haidt to lay some positive psychology on us. Here’s some of what he said.—John Borgmeyer
C-VILLE: What is the happiness hypothesis?
Jonathan Haidt: The book is about 10 ancient psychological ideas. One of the ideas is that happiness comes from within—that you should not change the world to meet your desires, you should change yourself. Is it true? Well, the Buddha is correct. You should work on yourself. But the real answer to happiness is that it comes from between: between the right engagements between yourself and others, yourself and your work, yourself and something larger than yourself. We only get energized from engaging with things outside ourselves.
What misunderstandings do we have about happiness?
There’s a long list of answers to that one. We think happiness means feeling lots of pleasant emotions all the time. That’s not true. A flourishing life is going to have some richness and texture to it, ups and downs. Happiness is about the conditions of the journey.
You write a lot about self-righteousness. In today’s political climate, we could all use some help with that.
One thing I, as a liberal, learned doing this book is that both sides make a lot of sense. We all want to save the world and make America a better place, but our moral psychology blinds us to the other side, and makes us see only evil motives. Bush is a paragon of this thinking, when he sees world events through the lens of good versus evil. Research shows that liberals are a little more open-minded, but, at the extremes, the Left is just as bad as the Right. This is why I support Mark Warner, because he can see the wisdom on both sides and compromise. The party that learns to speak to Americans’ noble aspirations will win. You can bury the hatchet and praise your opponent and still stick to your principles.