how to make friends and influence people

When you try to expand your ego at the expense of another, the other person's ego feeling that someone has encroached upon it, will do everything in its power, to make up for what has been lost--most likely, by trying to bring you down.

But when you are humble around others, and their egos have not been offended so to speak, they will not react like this. In fact, often when you decrease yourself by being modest, they will raise you up.

However, there are people out there, whose egos are avaricious by nature and encountering people who are modest, take advantage of the opportunity to dominate and to increase their egos even more. For these people, one must avoid, deceive, and if necessary, confront. If not, they will bring you down to their level and worse, create the same disharmony that exists in them, in you.

context matters, everything is relative

Let me start with a fundamental observation: most people don’t know what they want unless they see it in context. We don’t know what kind of racing bike we want--until we see a champ in the Tour de France ratcheting the gears on a particular model. We don’t know what kind of speaker system we like--until we hear a set of speakers that sounds better than the previous one. We don’t even know what we want to do with our lives we find a relative or a friend who is doing just what we think we should be doing. Everything is relative, and that’s the point. Like an airplane pilot landing in the dark, we want runway lights on either side of us, guiding us to the place where we can touch down our wheels.

Can we do anything about this issue of relativity? The good news is that we can often control the “circles” around us; moving toward smaller circles that boost our relative happiness. If we are at our class reunion, and there’s a “big circle” in the middle of the room with a drink in his hand, boasting of his big salary, we can consciously take several steps away and talk with someone else. If we are thinking of buying a new house, we can be selective about the open houses we go to, skipping the houses that are above our means. If we are thinking about buying a new car, we can focus on the models that we can afford, and so on.

A few decades ago. the naturalist Konrad Lorenz discovered that goslings, upon breaking out of their eggs, become attached to the first moving object they encounter (which is generally their mother). Lorenz knew this because in one experiment he became the first thing they saw, and they followed him loyally from then on through adolescence. With that, Lorenz demonstrated not only that goslings make initial decisions based on what's available in their environment, but that they stick with a decision once it has been made. Lorenz called this natural phenomenon imprinting. Is the human brain, then, wired like that of a gosling? Do our first impressions and decisions become imprinted? And if so, how does this imprinting play out in our lives? Is religion imprinted?

- Dan Ariley

packaging matters

The point is that we don't really understand the role expectations play in the way we experience and evaluate art, literature, drama, architecture, food, wine--anything really. The packaging, the social environment, the narrative surrounding the product matter a lot.

Expectation is an important part of the way we experience music. Joshua Bell told me that it takes an appropriate setting to help people appreciate a live classical music performance. The listener needs to be sitting in a comfortable, faux velvet seat, and surrounded by the acoustics of a concert hall. And when people adorn themselves in silk, perfumes and cashmere, they seem to appreciate the costly performance much more.

“What if we did the opposite experiment?” I asked. “What if we put a mediocre player in Carnegie Hall with the Berlin Philharmonic? The expectations would be very high but the quality would not. Would people discern the difference would their pleasure be quashed?” Bell thought for a moment. “In this case,” he said, “the expectations would triumph over the experience.” Furthermore, he said he could think of a few people who were not great violinists but received wild praise because they were in the right environment.

Across many domains of life, expectations play a huge role in the way we end up experiencing things. Think about the Mona Lisa. Why is this portrait so beautiful, and why is the woman’s smile mysterious? Can you discern the technique and talent it took for Leonardo da Vinci to create it? For most of us the painting is beautiful, and the smile mysterious, because we are told it is so. In the absence of expertise or perfect information, we look for social cues to help us figure out how much we are, or should be, impressed, and our expectations take care of the rest.

Alexander Pope once wrote: “Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.” To me, it seems that Pope’s advice is the best way to live an objective life. Clearly, it is also very helpful in eliminating the effects of negative expectations. But what about positive expectations? If I listen to Joshua Bell with no expectations, the experience is not going to be nearly as satisfying or pleasurable as if I listen to him and say to myself, “My god, how lucky I am to he listening to Joshua Bell play live in front of me.” My knowledge that Bell is one of the best players in the world contributes immeasurably to my pleasure.

As it turns out, positive expectations allow us to enjoy things more and improve our perception of the world around us. The danger of expecting nothing is that, in the end, it might be all we’ll get. The danger of expecting nothing is that, in the end, it might be all we’ll get.

- Dan Ariley

key to happiness

self-esteem = success / pretention

belongings to belonging

oldest profession

The prostitutes had to make it their business to be students of men. They said that after most men passed their virile twenties, they went to bed mainly to satisfy their egos, and because most women do not understand sex this way, they damage and wreck a man’s ego. No matter how little virility a man has to offer, prostitutes make him feel for a time that he is the greatest man in the world. That’s why prostitutes never run out of business. More wives could keep their husbands if they realized their greatest urge is to be men.

- Malcolm X

everyone's a liar

We all stretch the truth and tell lies by omission. Just getting along with people involves both. Humans are hardwired to deceive. We deceive when we’re competing with other members of the same sex; we deceive when we’re trying to attract the other sex. Deception is more the state of nature than not deceiving. In the animal kingdom, virtually every species deceives all the time. Why don’t we lie even more? It helps our reputation for people to know they can believe us.

true self-esteem

Rand argues that the independent person grounds his self-esteem in his objective estimate of himself, not in others’ estimate of him. Self-esteem is a person’s appraisal of his own moral worth; a positive self-appraisal is the reward for having lived a virtuous life. The independent person is concerned with being good, not with others thinking him good. When the independent person receives praise from others, his estimate of the other person goes up; his estimate of himself does not change. The independent person recognizes that his character is what it is independent of what others think of him.

Is this even possible? The quote, "no man is an island," comes to mind...

How can a person be "selfless egoist"? A selfish egoist is one who seeks to advance his own interests, yet he is nonetheless selfless because others have dictated his interests. He has no real self. One's primary orientation is to other people, not to reality. He seeks greatness in other people's eyes. He does not want to be great. He wants others to think him great.

Aren't our goals ultimately determined by our surroundings? We think they're our goals, but aren't these goals a by-product of our particular environment and background? I think the point here is that we should be intrinsically motivated and not extrinsically motivated.

how we motivate ourselves

A crucial part of the brain's representation of goals is their association with rewards and punishments. When you accomplish a goal, you experience a pleasurable reward through the activity of neural populations in areas such as the orbitofrontal cortex and the nucleus accumbens. Even the anticipation of such accomplishment can produce a reward, as when you imagine yourself completing a major project. Goal accomplishment is thus like other rewarding experiences that offer pleasure in expectation as well as in realization. For example, thinking of the piece of chocolate cake you will have for dessert is not as rewarding as actually having the cake, but it is pleasurable nevertheless. Such anticipation of reward serves to motivate people to perform the actions that are required to accomplish the desired goal.

the progress principle

Good men, at all times, surrender in truth all attachments. The holy spend not idle words on things of desire. When pleasure or pain comes to them, the wise feel above pleasure and pain.

- Buddha

Do not seek to have events happen as you want them, but instead want them to happen as they do happen and your life will go well.

- Epictetus

If money or power could buy happiness, then the author of the Old Testament book of Ecclesiastes should have been overjoyed. The text attributes itself to a king in Jerusalem, who looks back on his life and his search for happiness and fulfillment. He tried at one point to “make a test of pleasure,” by seeking happiness in his riches:

I made great works; I built houses and planted vineyards for myself; I made myself gardens and parks and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees…I also had great possessions of herds and flocks, more than any who had been before me in Jerusalem. I also gathered for myself silver and gold and the treasure of kings and of the provinces; I got singers, both men and women, and delights of the flesh, and many concubines. So I became great and surpassed all who were before me in Jerusalem; also my wisdom remained with me. Whatever my eyes desired I did not keep from them.

- Ecclesiastes 2:4-10

But in what may he one of the earliest reports of a midlife crisis, the author finds it all pointless:

Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had spent in doing it, and again, all was vanity and a chasing after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

- Ecclesiastes 2:11

The author tells us about many other avenues he pursued—hard work, learning, wine—but nothing brought satisfaction; nothing could banish the feeling that his life had no more intrinsic worth or purpose than that of an animal. From the perspective of Buddha and the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, the author's problem is obvious: his pursuit of happiness. Buddhism and Stoicism teach that striving for external goods, or to make the world conform to your wishes, is always a striving after wind. Happiness can only be found within, by breaking attachments to external things and cultivating an attitude of acceptance. (Stoics and Buddhists can have relationships, jobs, and possessions, but, to avoid becoming upset upon losing them, they must not be emotionally attached to them.) This idea is of course an extension of the truth that life itself is but what you deem it, and your mental state determines how you deem things. But recent research in psychology suggests that Buddha and Epictetus may have taken things too far. Some things are worth striving for, and happiness comes in part from outside of yourself, if you know where to look.

The author of Ecclesiastes wasn't just battling the fear of meaninglessness; he was battling the disappointment of success. The pleasure of getting what you want is often fleeting. You dream about getting a promotion, being accepted into a prestigious school, or finishing a big project. You work every waking hour, perhaps imagining how happy you'd be if you could just achieve that goal. Then you succeed, and if you're lucky you get an hour, maybe a day, of euphoria, particularly if your success was unexpected and there was a moment in which it was revealed. More typically, however, you don't get any euphoria. When success seems increasingly probable and some final event confirms what you already had begun to expect, the feeling is more one of relief—the pleasure of closure and release. In such circumstances, my first thought is seldom "Hooray! Fantastic!"; it is "Okay, what do I have to do now?"

My underjoyed response to success turns out to be normal. And from an evolutionary point of view, it's even sensible. Animals get a rush of dopamine, the pleasure neurotransmitter, whenever they do something that advances their evolutionary interests and moves them ahead in the game of life. Food and sex give pleasure, and that pleasure serves as a reinforcer that motivates later efforts to find food and sex. For humans, however, the game is more complex. People win at the game of life by achieving high status and a good reputation, cultivating friendships, finding the best mate(s), accumulating resources, and rearing their children to be successful at the same game. People have many goals and therefore many sources of pleasure. So you'd think we would receive an enormous and long-lasting shot of dopamine whenever we succeed at an important goal. But here's the trick with reinforcement: It works best when it comes seconds—not minutes or hours—after the behavior. Just try training your dog to fetch by giving him a big steak ten minutes after each successful retrieval. It can't be done.

The elephant works the same way: It feels pleasure whenever it takes a step in the right direction. The elephant learns whenever pleasure (or pain) follows immediately after behavior, but it has trouble connecting success on Friday with actions it took on Monday. Richard Davidson, the psychologist who brought us affective style and the approach circuits of the front left cortex, writes about two types of positive affect. The first he calls "pre-goal attainment positive affect," which is the pleasurable feeling you get as you make progress toward a goal. The second is called "post-goal attainment positive affect," which Davidson says arises once you have achieved something you want. You experience this latter feeling as contentment, as a short-lived feeling of release when the left prefrontal cortex reduces its activity after a goal has been achieved. In other words, when it comes to goal pursuit, it really is the journey that counts, not the destination. Set for yourself any goal you want. Most of the pleasure will be had along the way, with every step that takes you closer. The final moment of success is often no more thrilling than the relief of taking off a heavy backpack at the end of a long hike. If you went on the hike only to feel that pleasure, you are a fool. Yet people sometimes do just this. They work hard at a task and expect some special euphoria at the end. But when they achieve success and find only moderate and short-lived pleasure, they ask: Is that all there is? They devalue their accomplishments as a striving after wind.

We can call this "the progress principle": Pleasure comes more from making progress toward goals than from achieving them. Shakespeare captured it perfectly: "Things won are done; joy's soul lies in the doing."

- Jonathan Haidt

agape as sublime

When any . . . act of charity or of gratitude, for instance, is presented either to our sight or imagination, we are deeply impressed with its beauty and feel a strong desire in ourselves of doing charitable and grateful acts also. On the contrary, when we see or read of any atrocious deed, we are disgusted with its deformity, and conceive an abhorrence of vice. Now every emotion of this kind is an exercise of our virtuous dispositions, and dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise.

Jefferson went on to say that the physical feelings and motivational effects caused by great literature are as powerful as those caused by real events. He considered the example of a contemporary French play, asking whether the fidelity and generosity of its hero does not:

…dilate [the reader's] breast and elevate his sentiments as much as any similar incident which real history can furnish? Does [the reader] not in fact feel himself a better man while reading them, and privately covenant to copy the fair example?

This extraordinary statement is more than just a poetic description of the joys of reading. It is also a precise scientific definition of an emotion. In emotion research, we generally study emotions by specifying their components, and Jefferson gives us most of the major components: an eliciting or triggering condition (displays of charity, gratitude, or other virtues); physical changes in the body ("dilation" in the chest); a motivation (a desire of "doing charitable and grateful acts also"); and a characteristic feeling beyond bodily sensations (elevated sentiments). As an act of crypto-religious glorification, I considered calling this emotion "Jefferson's emotion," but thought better of it, and chose the word "elevation," which Jefferson himself had used to capture the sense of rising on a vertical dimension, away from disgust.

The relationship of elevation to love and trust was beautifully expressed in a letter I once received from a man in Massachusetts, David Whitford who had read about my work on elevation. Whitford's Unitarian church had asked each of its members to write a spiritual autobiography account of how each had become the spiritual person he or she is now. In one section of his autobiography, Whitford puzzled over why he was so often moved to tears during church services. He noticed that he shed two kinds of tears in church. The first he called "tears of compassion," such as the time he cried during a sermon on Mothers' Day on the subject of children who were abandoned or neglected. These cases felt to him like "being pricked in the soul," after which "love pours out" for those who are suffering. But he called the second kind "tears of celebration"; he could just as well have called them tears of elevation:

There's another kind of tear. This one's less about giving love and more about the joy of receiving love, or maybe just detecting love (whether it's directed at me or at someone else). It's the kind of tear that flows in response to expressions of courage, or compassion, or kindness by others. A few weeks after Mother's Day, we met here in the sanctuary after the service and considered whether to become a Welcoming Congregation [a congregation that welcomes gay people]. When John stood in support of the resolution, and spoke of how, as far as he knew, he was the first gay man to come out at First Parish, in the early 1970s, I cried for his courage. Later, when all hands went up and the resolution passed unanimously, I cried for the love expressed by our congregation in that act. That was a tear of celebration, a tear of receptiveness to what is good in the world, a tear that says it's okay, relax, let down your guard, there are good people in the world, there is good in people, love is real, it's in our nature. That kind of tear is also like being pricked, only now the love pours in.”

For many people, one of the pleasures of going to church is the experience of collective elevation. People step out of their everyday profane existence, which offers only occasional opportunities for movement on the third dimension, and come together with a community of like-hearted people who are also hoping to feel a "lift" from stories about Christ, virtuous people in the Bible, saints, or exemplary members of their own community. When this happens, people find themselves overflowing with love, but it is not exactly the love that grows out of attachment relationships. That love has a specific object, and it turns to pain when the object is gone. This love has no specific object; it is agape. It feels like a love of all humankind, and because humans find it hard to believe that something comes from nothing, it seems natural to attribute the love to Christ, or to the Holy Spirit moving within one's own heart. Such experiences give direct and subjectively compelling evidence that God resides within each person. And once a person knows this "truth," the ethic of divinity becomes self-evident.

- Johnathan Haidt

the self as sin

The self is one of the great paradoxes of human evolution. Like the fire stolen by Prometheus, it made us powerful but exacted a cost. In The Curse of the Self, the social psychologist Mark Leary points out that many other animals can think, but none, so far as we know, spend much time thinking about themselves. Only a few other primates (and perhaps dolphins) can even learn that the image in a mirror belongs to them. Only a creature with language ability has the mental apparatus to focus attention on the self, to think about the self's invisible attributes and long term goals, to create a narrative about that self, and then to react emotionally to thoughts about that narrative. Leary suggests that this ability to create a self gave our ancestors many useful skills, such as long-term planning, conscious decision making and self-control, and the ability to see other people's perspectives. Because these skills are all important for enabling human beings to work closely together on large projects, the development of the self may have been crucial to the development of human ultrasociality. But by giving each one of us an inner world, a world full of simulations, social comparisons, and reputational concerns, the self also gave each one of us a personal tormenter. We all now live amid a whirlpool of inner chatter, much of which is negative (threats loom larger than opportunities), and most of which is useless. It is important to note that the self is not exactly the rider—much of the self is unconscious and automatic—but because the self emerges from conscious verbal thinking and storytelling, it can be constructed only by the rider.

Leary's analysis shows why the self is a problem for all major religions: The self is the main obstacle to spiritual advancement, in three ways. First, the constant stream of trivial concerns and egocentric thoughts keeps people locked in the material and profane world, unable to perceive sacredness and divinity This is why Eastern religions rely heavily on meditation, an effective means of quieting the chatter of the self. Second, spiritual transformation is essentially the transformation of the self, weakening it, pruning it back—in some sense, killing it—and often the self objects. Give up my possessions and the prestige they bring? No way! Love my enemies, after what they did to me? Forget about it. And third, following a spiritual path is invariably hard work, requiring years of meditation, prayer, self-control, and sometimes self-denial. The self does not like to be denied, and it is adept at finding reasons to bend the rules or cheat. Many religions teach that egoistic attachments to pleasure and reputation are constant temptations to leave the path of virtue. In a sense, the self is Satan, or, at least, Satan's portal. For all these reasons, the self is a problem for the ethic of divinity. The big greedy self is like a brick holding down the soul.

- Johnathan Haidt

the use of adversity

Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head.

- Shakesphere

adaptation principle / hedonic treadmill

In every permanent situation, where there is no expectation of change, the mind of every man, in a longer or shorter time, returns to its natural and usual state of tranquility. In prosperity, after a certain time, it falls back to that state; in adversity, after a certain time, it rises up to it.

- Adam Smith

yin and yang of politics

In psychological terms it is this same perennial fault line which helps explain that fundamental opposition in politics between 'right' and 'left'. The right wing view rests chiefly on the masculine values, centred on the exercise of power and the maintenance of order; what may be called the values of 'Father': This is innately conservative because it believes in upholding the established structures and institutions of society. It supports those values which it sees as holding society together: the symbols of the nation state, tradition, patriotism, conventional morality, the family, discipline, the need for strength to defend the existing order against its external and internal enemies. The left wing rests essentially on the feminine values of feeling and understanding, what may be called the values of 'Mother', in which it perceives the ruling order and the right-wing view in general to be so heartlessly deficient. It talks about liberty, compassion and equality. It protests against oppression and the injustices of the system. It proclaims the need to raise up all those whom society places 'below the line', the workers, anyone who can be seen as exploited or as underdogs. It does not wish to preserve a hierarchical order which it sees as corrupt and unjust. It believes in change and the vision of a future society which is fairer and more caring; in which everyone can have an equal chance; which is not bound by narrow exclusive nationalism but sees all humanity as one.

We see this same division between the values of 'Father' and 'Mother' in the way people's political views tend to change over the years: that general human tendency to follow the pattern summed up in the maxim of Huey Long, the one-time governor of Louisiana, that 'every man's political career reads like a book, from left to right'. 'When people are young, unsettled, just starting on the ladder of life, they are more inclined to take a 'feminine', 'below the line' view; to be idealistic, to feel deeply the injustices of the world, to rebel against what they see as the constraints of discipline, established convention and the stern values of 'Father': When, as they grow older and more mature, they themselves become more established, with more experience of the world, they are inclined to take a more masculine, 'above the line' view. Idealism gives way, as they would see it, to realism. They come to appreciate the conservative values of discipline, tradition and order. They at last see the point of those values of 'Father'. It was this familiar shift taking place in people's psychic perspective which gave rise to Bernard Shaw's famous dictum that “anyone who is not a socialist at twenty has no heart, anyone who is not a conservative at forty has no head”.

What happens in the archetypal version is that it shows what is necessary for the two sides to become in some way reconciled. The egocentricity and blindness of those exercising power above the line is redeemed by their recognition of the selfless values represented by those below the line. The whole community can thus be brought together in unity. This may, according to the archetypal pattern, be what ought to happen. What in the real world is more likely to happen is that the two sides remain locked in conflict.

- Christopher Booker

human nature wants prestige, not happiness

The Chinese sage Lao Tzu warned people to make their own choices and not pursue the material objects everyone else was pursuing:

Racing and hunting madden the mind.

Precious things lead one astray.

Therefore the sage is guided by what he feels and not by what he sees.

He lets go of that and chooses this.

Unfortunately, letting go of one thing and choosing another is difficult if the elephant wraps his trunk around the "precious thing" and refuses to let go. The elephant was shaped by natural selection to win at the game of life, and part of its strategy is to impress others, gain their admiration, and rise in relative rank. The elephant cares about prestige, not happiness, and it looks eternally to others to figure out what is prestigious. The elephant will pursue its evolutionary goals even when greater happiness can be found elsewhere. If everyone is chasing the same limited amount of prestige, then all are stuck in a zero-sum game, an eternal arms race, a world in which rising wealth does not bring rising happiness. The pursuit of luxury goods is a happiness trap; it is a dead end that people race toward in the mistaken belief that it will make them happy.

- Johnathan Haidt

difference between pleasure and gratification

There is a fundamental distinction between pleasures and gratifications. Pleasures are "delights that have clear sensory and strong emotional components,” so such as may be derived from food, sex, backrubs, and cool breezes. Gratifications are activities that engage you fully, draw on your strengths, and allow you to lose self-consciousness. Gratifications can lead to flow. Seligman proposes that voluntary activities is largely a matter of arranging your day and your environment to increase both pleasures and gratifications. Pleasures must be spaced to maintain their potency. Eating a quart of ice cream in an afternoon or listening to a new CD ten times in a row are good ways to overdose and deaden yourself to future pleasure. Here's where the rider has an important role to play: Because the elephant has a tendency to overindulge, the rider needs to encourage it to get up and move on to another activity.

Pleasures should be both savored and varied. The French know how to do this: They eat many fatty foods, yet they end up thinner and healthier than Americans, and they derive a great deal more pleasure from their food by eating slowly and paying more attention to the food as they eat it. Because they savor, they ultimately eat less. Americans, in contrast, shovel enormous servings of high-fat and high-carbohydrate food into their mouths while doing other things. The French also vary their pleasure by serving many small courses; Americans are seduced by restaurants that serve large portions. Variety is the spice of life because it is the natural enemy of adaptation. Super-sizing portions, on the other hand, maximizes adaptation. Epicurus, one of the few ancient philosophers to embrace sensual pleasure, endorsed the French way when he said that the wise man "chooses not the greatest quantity of food but the most tasty".

One reason for the widespread philosophical wariness of sensual pleasure is that it gives no lasting benefit. Pleasure feels good in the moment, but sensual memories fade quickly, and the person is no wiser or stronger afterwards. Even worse, pleasure beckons people back for more, away from activities that might be better for them in the long run. But gratifications are different. Gratifications ask more of us; they challenge us and make us extend ourselves. Gratifications often come from accomplishing something, learning something, or improving something. When we enter a state of flow, hard work becomes effortless. We want to keep exerting ourselves, honing our skills, using our strengths. Seligman suggests that the key to finding your own gratifications is to know your own strengths. One of the big accomplishments of positive psychology has been the development of a catalog of strengths. You can find out your strengths by taking an online test at www.authentichappiness.org.

Recently I asked the 350 students in my introductory psychology class to take the strengths test and then, a week later, to engage in four activities over a few days. One of the activities was to indulge the senses, as by taking a break for ice cream in the middle of the afternoon, and then savoring the ice cream. This activity was the most enjoyable at the time; but, like all pleasures, it faded quickly. The other three activities were potential gratifications: Attend a lecture or class that you don't normally go to; perform an act of kindness for a friend who could use some cheering up; and write down the reasons you are grateful to someone and later call or visit that person to express your gratitude. The least enjoyable of the four activities was going to a lecture—except for those whose strengths included curiosity and love of learning. They got a lot more out of it. The big finding was that people experienced longer-lasting improvements in mood from the kindness and gratitude activities than from those in which they indulged themselves. Even though people were most nervous about doing the kindness and gratitude activities, which required them to violate social norms and risk embarrassment, once they actually did the activities they felt better for the rest of the day. Many students even said their good feelings continued on into the next day—which nobody said about eating ice cream. Furthermore, these benefits were most pronounced for those whose strengths included kindness and gratitude.

So voluntary activity is real, and it's not just about detachment. You can increase your happiness if you use your strengths, particularly in the service of strengthening connections—helping friends, expressing gratitude to benefactors. Performing a random act of kindness every day could get tedious, but if you know your strengths and draw up a list of five activities that engage them, you can surely add at least one gratification to every day. Studies that have assigned people to perform a random act of kindness every week, or to count their blessings regularly for several weeks, find small but sustained increases in happiness. So take the initiative! Choose your own gratifying activities, do them regularly (but not to the point of tedium), and raise your overall level of happiness.

- Johnathan Haidt

tips for happiness

The following are some changes you can make in your life that are not fully subject to the adaptation principle that might make you lastingly happier. It may be worth striving to achieve them:

1. Reduce noise especially noise that is variable or intermittent.

2. Reduce commuting (traffic).

3. Reduce situations where you have have a persistent lack of control.

4. Reduce shame (beauty, fashion, resume, etc.)

5. Focus on quality relationships.

why people do evil...they think they're moral

…Baumeister found that violence and cruelty have four main causes. The first two are obvious attributes of evil: greed/ambition (violence for direct personal gain, as in robbery) and sadism (pleasure in hurting people). But greed/ambition explains only a small proportion of violence, and sadism explains almost none. Outside of children's cartoons and horror films, people almost never hurt others for the sheer joy of hurting someone. The two biggest causes of evil are two that we think are good, and that we try to encourage in our children: high self-esteem and moral idealism. Having high self-esteem doesn't directly cause violence, but when someone's high esteem is unrealistic or narcissistic, it is easily threatened by reality; in reaction to those threats, people—particularly young men—often lash out violently. Baumeister questions the usefulness of programs that try raise children's self-esteem directly instead of by teaching them skills they can be proud of. Such direct enhancement can potentially foster unstable narcissism.

Threatened self-esteem accounts for a large portion of violence at the individual level, but to really get a mass atrocity going you need idealism—the belief that your violence is a means to a moral end. The major atrocities of the twentieth century were carried out largely either by men who thought they were creating a utopia or else by men who believed they were defending their homeland or tribe from attack. Idealism easily becomes dangerous because it brings with it, almost inevitably, the belief that the ends justify the means. If you are fighting for good or for God, what matters is the outcome, not the path. People have little respect for rules; we respect the moral principles that underlie most rules. But when a moral mission and legal rules are incompatible, we usually care more about the mission. The psychologist Linda Skitka finds that when people have strong moral feelings about a controversial issue—when they have a "moral mandate"—they care much less about procedural fairness in court cases. They want the "good guys"-freed by any means, and the "bad guys" convicted by any means. It is thus not surprising that the administration of George W. Bush consistently argues that extra-judicial killings, indefinite imprisonment without trial, and harsh physical treatment of prisoners are legal and proper steps in fighting the Manichaean "war on terror."

- Johnathan Haidt

roommate accounting

When my father drove me and my refrigerator up to college that first year, he told me that the most important things I was going to learn I would not learn in the classroom, and he was right. It took many more years of living with roommates, but I finally realized what a fool I had made of myself that first year. Of course I thought I did more than my share. Although I was aware of every little thing I did for the group, I was aware of only a portion of everyone else contributions. And even if I had been correct in my accounting, I was self-righteous in setting up the accounting categories. I picked the things I cared about—such as keeping the refrigerator clean—and then gave myself an A-plus in that category. As with other kinds of social comparison, ambiguity allows us to set up the comparison in ways that favor ourselves, and then to seek evidence that shows we are excellent cooperators. Studies of such "unconscious overclaiming" show that when husbands and wives estimate the percentage of housework each does, their estimates total more than 120 percent. When MBA students in a work group make estimates of their contributions to the team, the estimates total 139 percent. Whenever people form cooperative groups, which are usually of mutual benefit, self-serving biases threaten to fill group members with mutual resentment.

- Johnathan Haidt

reason is a slave to the passions

Studies of everyday reasoning show that when people are given difficult questions to think about—for example, whether the minimum wage should be raised—they generally lean one way or the other right away, and then put a call in to reasoning to see whether support for that position is forthcoming. For example, a person whose first instinct is that the minimum wage should be raised looks around for supporting evidence. If she thinks of her Aunt Flo who is working for the minimum wage and can't support her family on it then yes, that means the minimum wage should be raised. All done. Deanna Kuhn, a cognitive psychologist who has studied such everyday reasoning, found that most people readily offered "pseudoevidence' like the anecdote about Aunt Flo. Most people gave no real evidence for their positions, and most made no effort to look for evidence opposing their initial positions. David Perkins, a Harvard psychologist who has devoted his career to improving reasoning, found the same thing. He says that thinking generally uses the "makes-sense" stopping rule. We take a position, look for evidence that supports it, and if we find some evidence—enough so that our position "makes sense"— we stop thinking. But at least in a low-pressure situation such as this, if someone else brings up reasons and evidence on the other side, people can be induced to change their minds; they just don't make an effort to do such thinking for themselves.

- Jonathan Haidt