In his widely praised book, award-winning psychologist Jonathan Haidt examines the world’s philosophical wisdom through the lens of psychological science, showing how a deeper understanding of 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 even transform our lives.
A strange path led me to write the Happiness Hypothesis. It all started with an existential crisis in high school -- after reading "Waiting for Godot" I became convinced there was no meaning to life. So I majored in philosophy in college, which was of little help. Then I went to graduate school in psychology, where I began to study morality and culture. Then I did post-doctoral research in anthropology (including 3 months in India), then a year of research in health psychology. It felt like meandering at the time, but every period of these travels contributed many ideas to The Happiness Hypothesis, which ends with an answer to the question: What is the meaning of life?
I'm now an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia -- an idyllic university founded by Thomas Jefferson. My next projects will involve taking the insights about balance and virtue that I came to while writing the Happiness Hypothesis, and applying them to the American culture wars. I am conducting research that may help liberals and conservatives to understand each other -- and why both sides are necessary for the health of our democracy.
