#happinesshypothesis

An elephant and its rider are trying to get somewhere 1. The Rider has no clue where he wants to go – he and the elephant meander needlessly. 2. The rider knows his destination, but cannot decide which route to take – he and the elephant stay in the same place. 3. The Rider knows where he is headed and has a path to get there, but the elephant is stubborn and does not want to move. 4. The Rider…

“We are in a way like residents of Jorge Luis Borges's Library of Babel—an infinite library whose b o o k s contain every possible string of letters and, therefore, somewhere an explanation of why the library exists and how to u s e it. But Borges's librarians s u s p e c t that they will never find that book amid the miles of n o n s e n s e ...Yet, b e c a u s e our library is a l s o effectively infinite -- no one person can ever read more than a tiny fraction — w e f a c e the paradox of a b u n d a n c e : Quantity u n d e r m i n e s the quality of our engagement”

“ I could not say it any more concisely than Shakespeare: "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”

“from the world's three great zones of classical thought: India (for example, the Upanishads, the Bhagavad Gita, the sayings of the Buddha), China (the Analects of Confucius, the Tao te Ching, the writings of M e n g Tzu and other philosophers), and the cultures of the Mediterranean (the Old and N e w Testaments, the Greek and Roman philosophers, the Koran)... Every time I found a psychological c l a i m — a statement about human nature or the workings of the mind or heart—I wrote it down”

Core truths of Human minds/behaviour

“the first truth is the foundational idea of this book: The mind is divided into parts that sometimes conflict. Like a rider on the back of an elephant, the conscious, reasoning part of the mind has only limited control of what the elephant does... T h e second idea is Shakespeare's, about how "thinking makes it so." (Or, as B u d d h a 4 said, Our life is the creation of our mind.") But we can improve this ancient idea today by explaining why most people's minds have a bias toward seeing threats and engaging in useless worry. We can also do something to change this bias by using three techniques that increase happiness, one ancient and two very new.”

“just two truths, widely known but not sufficiently appreciated. On e is the Golden Rule. Reciprocity is the most important tool for getting along with people, and I'll show you how you can use it to solve problems in your own life and avoid being exploited by those who use reciprocity against you. However, reciprocity is more than just a tool. It is also a clue about who we humans are and what we need, a clue that will be important for understanding the end of the larger story. The second truth in this part of the story is that we are all, by nature, hypocrites, and this is why it is so hard for us to follow the Golden Rule faithfully. It is also a clue about who we humans are and what we need, a clue that will be important for understanding the end of the larger story. The second truth in this part of the story is that we are all, by nature, hypocrites, and this is why it is so hard for us to follow the Golden Rule faithfully”

“If you know what your mind is up to, and why you so easily see the world through a distorting lens of good and evil, you can take steps to reduce your self-righteousness.”

Happiness Hypotheses

“Where does happiness come from? There are several different “happiness hypotheses” One is that happiness c o m e s from getting what you want, but we all know (and research confirms) that such happiness is short-lived. A more promising hypothesis is that happiness c o m e s from within and cannot be obtained by making the world conform to your desires. This idea was widespread in the ancient world: B u d d h a in India a n d the S t o i c philosophers in ancient G r e e c e and Rome all counseled people to break their emotional attachments to people and events, which are always unpredictable and uncontrollable, and to cultivate instead an attitude of acceptance. This ancient idea deserves respect, and it is certainly true that changing your mind is usually a more effective response to frustration than is changing the world... I will present evidence that this second version of the happiness hypothesis is wrong... One of these conditions is r e l a t e d n e s s — t h e bonds we form, and need to form, with others. I'll present research showing where love comes from, why passionate love always cools, and what kind of love is "true" love. I'll suggest that the h a p p i n e s s hypothesis offered by Buddha and the Stoics should be a m e n d e d : H a p p i n e s s c o m e s from within, and happiness comes from without.”

“We have also all heard repeated urgings to cultivate virtue in ourselves, because virtue is its own reward, but that, too, is an oversimplification”

“Words of wisdom, the meaning of life, p e r h a p s even the answer sought by Borges's librarians—all of these may wash over us every day, but they can do little for us unless we savor them, engage with them, question them, improve them, and connect them to our lives”

“H u m a n thinking depends on metaphor. "We understand new or complex things in relation to things we already know.”

Freud

“Freud said that the mind is divided into three parts: the ego (the conscious, rational self); the superego (the conscience, a sometimes too rigid c o m m i t m e n t to the rules of society); and the id (the desire for pleasure, lots of it, sooner rather than later ... For Freud, the goal of psychoanalysis was to escape this pitiful state by strengthening the ego, thus giving it more control over the id and more independence from the superego”

“T h e social sciences were unit-ing under the idea that people are rational agents who set goals and pursue them intelligently by using the information and resources at their disposal Modern theories about rational choice and information processing don't adequately explain weakness of the will.”

“T h e image that I c a m e up with for myself, as I marveled at my weakness, was that I was a rider on the back of an elephant. I'm holding the reins in my hands, and by pulling one way or the other I can tell the elephant to turn, to stop, or to go. I can direct things, but only when the elephant doesn't have desires of his own. W h e n the elephant really wants to do something, I'm no match for him.”

Montaigne

“M o n t a i g n e was most fascinated by the independence of the penis:

We are right to note the license and disobedience of this member which thrusts itself forward so inopportunely when we do not want it to, and which so inopportunely lets us down when we most need it. It imperi-ously contests for authority with our will... Montaigne also noted the ways in which our facial expressions betray our secret thoughts; our hair stands on end; our hearts race; our tongues fail to speak; and our bowels and anal sphincters undergo "dilations and contractions proper to [themselves], independent of our wishes or even opposed to them." S o m e of these effects, we now know, are caused by the autonomic nervous system—the network of nerves that controls the organs and glands of our bodies, a network that is completely independent of voluntary or intentional control.”

Human Brains

“T h e left h e m i s p h e r e takes in information from the right half of the world (that is, it receives nerve t r a n s m i s s i o n s from the right arm and leg, the right ear, and the left half of e a c h retina, which receives light from the right half of the visual field) and s e n d s out c o m m a n d s to move the limbs on the right side of the body. T h e right hemisphere is in this respect the left's mirror image, taking in information from the left half of the world and controlling movement on the left side of the body... The left hemisphere is specialized for language processing and analytical tasks... Th e right hemisphere is better at processing patterns in s p a c e , including that all-important pattern, the face”

“This finding, that people will readily fabricate reasons to explain their own behavior, is called "confabulation."”

“Gazzaniga refers to the language centers on the left side of the brain as the interpreter module, whose job is to give a running commentary on whatever the self is doing, even though the interpreter module has no a c c e s s to the real causes or motives of the self's behavior”

Split-brain studies are important for this book because they show in such a dramatic way that one of these m o d u l e s is good at inventing convincing explanations for your behavior, even when it has no knowledge of the causes of your behavior. Gazzaniga's "interpreter module" is, essentially, the rider ... 

T h e forebrain of the earliest m a m m a l s developed a new outer shell, which included the hypothalamus (specialized to coordinate basic drives and motivations), the hippocampus (specialized for memory), and the amygdala (specialized for emotional learning and responding). T h e s e structures are sometimes referred to as the limbic system (from Latin limhus, "border" or "margin") because they wrap around the rest of the brain, forming a border....

 This neocortex (Latin for "new covering") is the gray matter characteristic of human brains. T h e front portion of the neocortex is particularly interesting, for parts of it do not appear to be dedicated to specific tasks (such as moving a finger or processing sound). Instead, it is available to m a k e new associations and to engage in thinking, planning, and decision making—mental processes that can free an organism from responding only to an immediate situation... We can call this explanation the Promethean script of human evolution, after the character in G r e e k mythology who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. In this script, our ancestors were mere animals governed by the primitive emotions and drives of the limbic system until they received the divine gift of reason, installed in the newly expanded neocortex... 

There is, however, a flaw in the P r o m e t h e a n script: It a s s u m e s t h a t reason was installed in the frontal cortex but that emotion stayed b e h i n d in the limbic system. In fact, the frontal cortex e n a b l e d a great e x p a n s i o n of emotionality in h u m a n s . T h e lower third of the prefrontal cortex is c a l l e d I lie orbitofrontal cortex... Th i s region of the cortex has grown especially large in h u m a n s and other primates and is o n e of the most consistently active a r e a s of the brain d u r i n g emotional r e a c t i o n s ... 

The orbitofrontal cortex plays a central role w h e n you size up the reward and punishment possibilities of a situation; the neurons in this part of the cortex fire wildly when there is an i m m e d i a t e possibility of pleasure or pain, loss or gain...

The importance of the orbitofrontal cortex for emotion has been further d e m o n s t r a t e d by research on brain d a m a g e . T h e neurologist Antonio Damasio has studied people who, b e c a u s e of a stroke, tumor, or blow to the head, have lost various parts of their frontal cortex. In the 1990s, Damasio found that when certain parts of the orbitofrontal cortex are damaged, patients lose most of their emotional lives”

Hypothesis on Life without emotional response

“So what happens when these people go out into the world? Now that they are free of the distractions of emotion, do they b e c o m e hyperlogical, able to see through the haze of feelings that blinds the rest of us to the path of perfect rationality? Just the opposite. They find themselves unable to make simple decisions or to set goals, and their lives fall apart. W h e n they look out at the world and think, " W h a t should I do now?" they see dozens of choices but lack immediate internal feelings of like or dislike.

They must examine the pros and cons of every choice with their reasoning, but in the a b s e n c e of feeling they see little reason to pick one or the other. W h e n the rest of us look out at the world, our emotional brains have instantly and automatically appraised the possibilities. O n e possibility usually j u m p s out at us as the obvious best one.”

“Reason and emotion must both work together to create intelligent behavior, but emotion (a major part of the elephant) d o e s most of the work. W h e n the neocortex c a m e along, it made the rider possible, but it m a d e the elephant much smarter, too”

Concurrent Mental Processes: Automatic and Controlled

“there are really two processing systems at work in the mind at all times: controlled processes and automatic processes...

Automatic p r o c e s s e s are completely unconscious, although s o m e of them show a part of themselves to consciousness; for example, we are aware of the "stream of consciousness"22 that s e e m s to flow on by, following its own rules of association, without any feeling of effort or direction from the self...

Bargh contrasts automatic p r o c e s s e s with controlled p r o c e s s e s , the kind of thinking that takes some effort, that proceeds in steps and that always plays out on the center stage of consciousness...

Controlled processing is limited—we can think consciously about one thing at a time only—but a u t o m a t i c p r o c e s s e s run in parallel and can handle many tasks at once...

If the mind performs hundreds of operations each second, all but one of them must be handled automatically”

“Controlled processing requires language. You can have bits and p i e c e s of thought through images, but to plan something complex, to weigh the pros and cons of different paths, or to analyze the c a u s e s of past s u c c e s s e s and failures, you need words.”

“language, reasoning, and conscious planning arrived in the most r e c e n t eye-blink of evolution. They are like new software, Rider version 1.0. T h e language parts work well, but there are still a lot of bugs in the reasoning and planning programs, Automatic processes, on the other hand, have been through thousands of product cycles and are nearly perfect”

“When language evolved, the h u m a n brain was not reengineered to hand over the reins of power to the rider (conscious verbal thinking). Things were already working pretty well, and linguistic ability spread to the extent that it helped the elephant do something important in a better way. The rider evolved to serve to the ele-phant... 

T h e controlled system allows people to think about long-term goals and thereby escape the tyranny of the here-and-now, the automatic triggering of temptation by the sight of tempting objects”

“For although the controlled system does not conform to behaviorist principles, it also has relatively little power to cause behavior. T h e automatic system was shaped by natural selection to trigger quick and reliable action, and it includes parts of the brain that make us feel pleasure and pain (such as the orbitofrontal cortex) and that trigger survival-related motivations (such as the hypothalamus). T h e automatic system has its finger on I he dopamine release button. T h e controlled system, in contrast, is better seen as an advisor”

“T h e s e thinking skills are an aspect of emotional intelligence—an ability to understand and regulate one's own feelings and desires.29 An emotionally intelligent person has a skilled rider who knows how to distract and coax the elephant without having to engage in a direct contest of wills”

“On c e you understand the power of stimulus control, you can use it to your advantage by changing the stimuli in your environment and avoiding undesirable ones; or, if that's not p o s s i b l e , by filling your c o n s c i o u s n e s s with thoughts about their less “tempting aspects...

More important, the m o m e n t one stops trying to s u p p r e s s a thought, the thought c o m e s flooding in a n d b e c o m e s even harder to banish. In other words, Wegner creates minor obsessions in his lab by instructing p e o p l e not to obsess. Wegner explains this effect as an "ironic p r o c e s s " of m e n t a l control.-« W h e n controlled processing tries to influence thought ("Don't think nbout a white bear!"), it sets up an explicit goal. And whenever one p u r s u e s a goal, a part of the mind automatically monitors progress, so that it c a n order corrections or know when s u c c e s s has been achieved. Automatic processes continually check: "Am I not thinking about a white bear?" As the act of monitoring for the absence of the thought introduces the thought, the person must try even harder to divert consciousness...

Automatic and controlled processes end up working at cross purposes, firing each other up to ever greater exertions. But because controlled processes tire quickly, eventually the inexhaustible automatic processes run unopposed...

Yet once we have tried and failed to suppress them, they can become the sorts of obsessive thoughts that make us believe in Freudian notions of a dark and evil unconscious mind.”

Confabulation pt2

“The point of these studies is that moral j u d g m e n t is like aesthetic judgment. When you see a painting, you usually know instantly and automatically whether you like it. If someone asks you to explain your j u d g m e n t , you confabulate. You don't really know why you think something is beautiful, but your interpreter module (the rider) is skilled at making up reasons...

You search for a plausible reason for liking the painting, and you latch on to the first reason that m a k e s sense”

“Moral arguments are m u c h the s a m e : Two people feel strongly about an issue, their feelings come first, and their reasons are invented on the fly, to throw at each other. W h e n you refute a person's argument, d o e s she generally change her mind and agree with you? Of course not, because the argument you defeated was not the cause of her position; it was m a d e up after the j u d g m e n t was already made..

gut feelings, intuitions, and snap j u d g m e n t s happen constantly and automatically but only the rider can string sentences together and create arguments to give to other people...

In moral arguments, the rider goes beyond being just an advisor to the elephant; he b e c o m e s a lawyer, fighting in the court of public opinion to persuade others of the elephant's point of view...

Our minds are loose confederations of parts, but we identify with and pay too m u c h attention to one part: conscious verbal thinking Because we can see only o n e little corner of the mind's vast operation, we are surprised when urges, wishes, and temptations e m e r g e , seemingly from nowhere”

Negative Thinking Bias

“But first we have to figure out why the elephant is such a pessimist...

Events in the world affect us only through our interpretations of them, so if we can control our interpretations, we can control our world... To take something "philosophically" means to accept a great misfortune without weeping or even suffering. We use this term in part because of the calmness, self-control, and courage that three ancient philosophers—Socrates, Seneca, and Boethius—showed while they awaited their executions..

Boethius w a s fortunate; now he is not. That is no c a u s e for anger. Rather, he should be grateful that he enjoyed Fortune for so long, and he should be calm n o w that she has left him...

Nothing is miserable unless you think it so; and on the other hand, nothing brings happiness unless you are content with it...

E p i p h a n i e s can be life-altering, but most fade in days or weeks. T h e rider can't just decide to change and then order the elephant to go along.with the program. Lasting change can c o m e only by retraining the elephant, and that's hard to do.”

“Researchers have found that Americans of all ages, classes, and political affiliations react with a flash of negativity to black faces or to other images and words associated with African-American culture... 

People who report being unprejudiced against blacks show, on average, a slightly smaller a u t om a t i c prejudice, but apparently the rider and the elephant each have an opinion...

Life is indeed what we d e e m it, but the deeming happens quickly and unconsciously. T h e elephant reacts instinctively and steers the rider toward a new destination.”

“For most people, the elephant sees too many things as bad and not enough as good. S o m e commonalities of animal life even create similarities across species that we might call design principles. O n e such principle is that bad is stronger than good. R e s p o n s e s to threats and unpleasantnes s are faster, stronger, and harder to inhibit than responses to opportunities and pleasures”

“Over and over again, psychologists find that the h u m a n mind reacts to bad things more quickly, strongly, and persistently than to equivalent good things... 

Op p o s i n g systems push against each other to reach a balance point, but the balance point is adjustable. W h e n you move your arm, one set of muscles extends it tilul another contracts it. Both are always slightly tensed, ready for action...

Your behavior is governed by opposing motivational systems: an approach system, which triggers positive emotions and makes you want to move toward certain things; and a withdrawal system, which triggers negative emotions and makes you want to pull back or avoid other things. Both systems are always active, monitoring the environment, and the two systems can produce opposing motives at the s a m e time18 (as when you feel ambivalence), but their relative balance determines which way you move. ...

T h e withdrawal system can quickly shoot up to full power,19 overtaking the slower (and generally weaker) approach system. Although you can tell yourself that you are not afraid of snakes, if your elephant fears them and rears up, yoti'll still be thrown... 

There is a two-way street between emotions and conscious thoughts: Thoughts can cause emotions (as when you reflect on a foolish thing you said), but emotions can also cause thoughts, primarily by laising mental filters that bias subsequent information processing.”

“Feelings of sadness blind you to all pleasures and opportunities. As one famous depressive put it: "How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable seem to me all the uses of this world”

Affective Style

“A person's average or typical level of happiness is that person's "affective style." ("Affect" refers to the felt or experienced part of emotion.) Your affective style reflects the everyday balance of power between your approach system and your withdrawal system, and this balance c a n be read right from your forehead...

You can change your affective style too-—but again, you can't do it by sheer force of will. You have to do something that will change your repertoire of available thoughts. Here are three of the best methods for doing so: meditation, cognitive therapy, and Prozac. All three are effective b e c a u s e they work on the elephant.”

“Depressed people are convinced in their hearts of three related beliefs, known as Beck's "cognitive triad" of depression. T h e s e are: "I'm no good," "My world is bleak," and "My future is hopeless." A depressed person's mind is filled with automatic thoughts supporting these dysfunctional beliefs, particularly when things goes wrong...

personalization," or seeing the event as a referendum on the self rather than as a minor medical issue);

“overgenerali-zation" combined with dichotomous "always/never" thinking”

“magnification” and arbitrary inference," or jumping to a conclusion without evidence).”

“Depressed people are caught in a f e e d b a c k loop in which distorted thoughts cause negative feelings, which then distort thinking further”

”Our culture endorses both—relentless self-improvement as well as authenticity—but we often escape the contradiction by framing self-improvement as authenticity. Just as gaining an education m e a n s struggling for twelve to twenty years to develop one's intellectual potential, character development ought to involve a lifelong struggle to develop one's moral potential...

As long as c h a n g e is gradual and a result of the child's moral credit for the change, and that change is in the service of authenticity...

Horror fascinates me, particularly when there is no victim. T h e s e things just feel wrong to m o s t people, even when they can't explain why.”

”My research indicates that a small set of innate moral intuitions guide and constrain the world's many moralities, and one of these intuitions is that the body is a temple housing a soul within”

“But if this woman had previously been unhappy with her hyper-sensitive and overly inhibited personality, and if she had m a d e little progress with psychotherapy, why exactly should she be true to a self she doesn't want? Why not change herself for the better”