The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt is a 2006 psychology book written for a non-academic audience, with insights that remain relevant today. Haidt takes 10 classic great ideas from Eastern and Western philosophy and applies these to modern life, while adding context from contemporary psychology.

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, and taught for 16 years in the department of psychology at the University of Virginia.

Haidt’s research examines the intuitive foundations of morality, and how morality varies across cultures––including the cultures of American progressive, conservatives, and libertarians. Haidt is the author of three books:  The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom; The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion; and The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (co-authored with Greg Lukianoff). The last two books each became New York Times bestsellers.

At NYU-Stern, he is applying his research on moral psychology to business ethics, asking how companies can structure and run themselves in ways that will be resistant to ethical failures (see EthicalSystems.org). He is also the co-founder of HeterodoxAcademy.org, a collaboration among nearly 2500 professors who are working to increase viewpoint diversity and freedom of inquiry in universities. From https://jonathanhaidt.com/bio/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24853310-the-happiness-hypothesis

Audio production by Graham Stephenson

Episode music: Caprese by Blue Dot Sessions