Author Q&A: Jonathan Haidt talks about elephants, business, and, of course, happiness.

Jonathan Haidt has a knack for taking complicated and esoteric material — religious history, science, philosophy, and the like — and making it interesting. To top things off, he can write about a saccharine subject for 300 pages without making it sound like a New Agey self-help book. In his non-fiction book, The Happiness Hypothesis, he draws on a variety of sources to offer practical advice on happiness and meaning.

The book reads like a conversation — he informs the reader and provokes discussion. Whether you agree with all of his premises or not, the Happiness Hypothesis (which was the Acton Book Club’s inaugural book) raises a ton of interesting questions, especially ones tying his conclusions to business. So we turned to Dr. Haidt with some of our questions and he graciously answered them via email. Here are some of the questions he answered from our Acton alumni:

Which lesson in the Happiness Hypothesis is the most difficult for you to apply in your life and why?

JH: It’s always hard for me to see things from my wife’s point of view when we first begin to ague. I fall into “I’m right and she’s wrong” thinking. But in part from studying moral psychology, I have gotten very good at apologizing. I still make the same old mistakes, but I’m much better at fixing them.

What are the downsides of happiness?

JH: I don’t think there are any downsides to happiness. There is a slight downside to losing variability, i.e., always being happy, rather than having fluctuations. The fluctuations can help both with personal growth and with creativity – you experience more of the range of human states. So there’s a slight downside to losing sadness and depression, but there’s no downside I know of to having a high average mood.

While reading your book, I found myself nodding my head and saying, “So true.” Yet after I finished, I realized that meant the same thing as, “Makes sense.” So I became curious about who was really driving my reaction. Do you have any comments or even cognitive tests you can suggest for readers whose riders readily embrace the arguments of your book, but fear maybe that they are doing so because it made their elephants happy?

JH: I think we are both the rider and the elephant. In my writing, I try to appeal to both. I try to cause intuitive flashes of recognition, after which I give reasons. Reasons don’t do much good if the intuitive ground has not been prepared. Of course, demagogues do this too, perhaps that’s your fear. But I’m not trying to manipulate you for any purpose, I’m trying to get you to see things in new ways. Good teaching, preaching, mothering, and writing must influence the elephant, or its effects will be few and short lived.

High-pressure [business] decisions are tricky because you’re not only dealing with your own Inner Lawyer, but also with the lawyers of everyone else who is involved. Say it’s a perfect world, where I’m able to see the flaws in my proposal and overcome my self-serving bias. Is there anything I could do to help the other people in a negotiation walk away feeling more satisfied and less resentful? Or is it every man for himself?

JH: It’s almost impossible to eradicate these biases. Many have tried. It’s almost impossible to teach critical thinking. Many have tried. Yet that doesn’t mean its “every man for himself.” Think about the way the Japanese do business: they build relationships and trust first and only much later begin to negotiate. Americans come barging in and want to negotiate on day one. If you cultivate relationships and emotions first, then negotiations are likely to go better for all.

At Acton, we learn to pursue our callings. But where do you draw the line between flow/satisfaction in your work and too much work? If an entrepreneur is working 100 hours a week doing something she loves, can that have a negative impact on her happiness? At what point is work too much, even if it’s something that uses your strengths?

JH: I think that for some people, at some times in their lives, the best thing they can do is work 100 hours a week, giving their all to achieving something, building something, creating something. I do not think life needs to be balanced at all times. I think that having a family is part of a happy life (although the evidence for that is mixed) so there are periods when one can’t work 100 hours perweek. In the long run, relationships are the most important thing for happiness, so if your calling is burning up your relationships, you shouldn’t do it for too long. But to really achieve something great, I think it is often wise and worthwhile to put everything else aside, perhaps even for a few years.

How could an enlightened business leader implement some of the wisdom in your book to make his/her customers and employees happier? In addition to taking things like commute times into account, how could someone create an office environment that is more conducive to happiness?

I have some advice posted here.

We’d like to thank Dr. Haidt for taking the time to answer our questions and adding to the discussion.

Jonathan Haidt is a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia. His research examines the emotional basis of morality and the ways that morality varies across cultures, including the cultures of liberals and conservatives. He received his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and then went to the University of Chicago for additional training in cultural psychology. He has been active in the positive psychology movement since 1999, and in 2001 he was awarded the Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology. He has received four awards for his teaching, including the 2004 Outstanding Faculty Award conferred by the Governor of the State of Virginia, Mark Warner. He was the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor at the Princeton University Center for Human Values in 2006-2007. He lives in Charlottesville, Virginia, with his wife Jayne.

Check out his TED profile for more resources.

Photo courtesy of Dom Dada.

Tags: Book Club, Happiness, Happiness Hypothesis

Posted in Books & Notes, Life of Meaning