"The most brilliant and lucid analysis of virtue and well-being in the entire literature of positive psychology. For the reader who seeks to understand happiness, my advice is: Begin with Haidt." —Martin E.P. Seligman, University of Pennsylvania and author of Authentic Happiness The Happiness Hypothesis is a book about ten Great Ideas. Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world's civilizations—to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the lessons that still apply to our modern lives and illuminate the causes of human flourishing. Award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt shows how a deeper understanding of the world's philosophical wisdom and its enduring maxims—like "do unto others as you would have others do unto you," or "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger"—can enrich and transform our lives.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.

Explores ten great insights about man, the purpose of life, and happiness selected from diverse traditions and uses current scientific research to question and discuss the ideas.

Something is going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and afraid to speak honestly. How did this happen? First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt show how the new problems on campus have their origins in three terrible ideas that have become increasingly woven into American childhood and education: what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; always trust your feelings; and life is a battle between good people and evil people. These three Great Untruths are incompatible with basic psychological principles, as well as ancient wisdom from many cultures. They interfere with healthy development. Anyone who embraces these untruths—and the resulting culture of safetyism—is less likely to become an autonomous adult able to navigate the bumpy road of life. Lukianoff and Haidt investigate the many social trends that have intersected to produce these untruths. They situate the conflicts on campus in the context of America’s rapidly rising political polarization, including a rise in hate crimes and off-campus provocation. They explore changes in childhood including the rise of fearful parenting, the decline of unsupervised play, and the new world of social media that has engulfed teenagers in the last decade. This is a book for anyone who is confused by what is happening on college campuses today, or has children, or is concerned about the growing inability of Americans to live, work, and cooperate across party lines.

Why is marriage worth £200,000 a year? Why will having children make you unhappy? Why does happiness from winning the lottery take two years to arrive? Why does time heal the pain of divorce or the death of a loved one – but not unemployment? Everybody wants to be happy. But how much happiness – precisely – will each life choice bring? Should I get married? Am I really going to feel happy about the career that I picked? How can we decide not only which choice is better for us, but how much it's better for us? The result of new, unique research, The Happiness Equation brings to a general readership for the first time the new science of happiness economics. It describes how we can measure emotional reactions to different life experiences and present them in ways we can relate to. How, for instance, monetary values can be put on things that can't be bought or sold in the market – such as marriage, friendship, even death – so that we can objectively rank them in order of preference. It also explains why some things matter more to our happiness than others (like why seeing friends is worth more than a Ferrari) while others are worth almost nothing (like sunny weather). Nick Powdthavee – whose work on happiness has been discussed on both the Undercover Economist and Freakanomics blogs – brings cutting-edge research on how we value our happiness to a general audience, with a style that wears its learning lightly and is a joy to read.

A fresh reflection on what makes life meaningful Most people, including philosophers, tend to classify human motives as falling into one of two categories: the egoistic or the altruistic, the self-interested or the moral. According to Susan Wolf, however, much of what motivates us does not comfortably fit into this scheme. Often we act neither for our own sake nor out of duty or an impersonal concern for the world. Rather, we act out of love for objects that we rightly perceive as worthy of love—and it is these actions that give meaning to our lives. Wolf makes a compelling case that, along with happiness and morality, this kind of meaningfulness constitutes a distinctive dimension of a good life. Written in a lively and engaging style, and full of provocative examples, Meaning in Life and Why It Matters is a profound and original reflection on a subject of permanent human concern.

Why are so many people frustrated with life so much of the time? While there are times we experience moments of true joy, true love, true happiness, why don't they last? Why are they the exception rather than the rule? Unlike wealth, happiness cannot be inherited. We have all heard the well-worn axiom, "Money can't buy you happiness". If it could, only the wealthy would be happy, and this we certainly know is not true. Throughout the journey of this book, we will explore common sense reasons why so many other books on finding happiness do not work. You read them, and for a day or so they help, but soon after you have forgotten their quotes and exercises and find yourself in even deeper despair. While we cannot always cause events outside ourselves to come together to produce the right circumstances for continuous happiness, we can attempt change the way we react to them. Only this creates a deep and emotional foundation on which this book is based.