The Happiness Hypothesis: OBOC
Chapter Summaries
Author Jonathan Haidt provides a concise summary of each chapter.
Ch. 7 The Uses of Adversity
Posttraumatic Growth: Positive Changes in the Aftermath of CrisisHaidt explains that the "benefits" of severe stress are often referred to as posttraumatic growth, a focus of this chapter. This book provides an overview.
Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl's account of his time in Nazi concentration camps, and his exploration of the human will to find meaning in spite of the worst adversity. Haidt identifies Frankl as one of the early pioneers of research in posttraumatic growth.
Ted Talk: The Best Gift I Ever Survived, Stacey Kramer 2010 (3:02)
Marketing strategist Stacey Kramer offers a 3-minute parable that shows how an unwanted experience -- frightening, traumatic, costly -- can turn out to be a priceless gift.
Ch. 9 Divinity With or Without God
- Approaching Awe, A Moral, Spiritual and Aesthetic EmotionA review of research on awe across many disciplines by Haidt and Keltner in the journal Cognition & Emotion (2003).
- Disgust and Elevation: Opposing Sources of ‘Spiritual Information’Haidt's article on divinity in C. L. Harper, Jr. (Ed.), "Spiritual Information": 100 perspectives. Philadelphia, PA: Templeton Foundation Press (2005).
- Intuitive Ethics: How Innately Prepared Intuitions Generate Culturally Variable VirtuesIn this article in the journal Daedalus, Haidt & Joseph Craig present a general theory of where morality comes from, and why sets of virtues differ across cultures, even though the foundations of morality are universal.
Ch. 8 The Felicity of Virtue
- Character Strengths TestsTake the VIA Survey of Character Strengths mentioned in the book, to diagnose your strengths and find ways to cultivate excellence.
- The Autobiography of Benjamin FranklinHaidt refers to Benjamin Franklin's main psychological claim as the "virtue hypothesis."
- Volunteer Work and Well-beingThis journal article (2001) presents the longitudinal study Haidt mentions that found when a person increased volunteer work, all measures of happiness and well-being increased, especially in the elderly.
Ch. 10 Happiness Comes from Between
Optimal Human Being by Explains how individuals can integrate the different facets of themselves to achieve "optimal human being" and how researchers can integrate different levels of analysis within the human sciences to understand "optimal human being" in general.
