More about Jonathan Haidt

    Click Read More below to learn more about the author of The Happiness Hypothesis and what he is doing today. Also follow links to apply some of the proposals put forth in the book to your own job, your own life, and your state of "flourishing."


   Jonathan Haidt (pronounced "height") has become an authority on positive psychology (the scientific study of human flourishing) and moral psychology (the study of why people care so much about right and wrong, and sometimes choose to do wrong).
        He has written a very readable book that has much to offer busnesses and workplaces in that he gives guidelines for what energizes people at work, why virtue is very important for good leadership to occur, and ways to increase people's commitment to a cause and to each other. Each of us who read's the book can gain insight into what makes us happy, why it's so hard to change ourselves, and why love so rarely lasts among many other ideas. We can also learn how to turn weaknesses into strengths.

    Dr. Jonathan Haidt is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the Universityh of Virginia. He recieved his Ph.D in social psychology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992, had additional training in cultural psychology at the University of Chicago. He was the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Professor at the Princeton University Center for Human Values in 2006-2007. He was a Research Fellow at the University of California Santa Barbara until the end of 2008. His first book was entitled Flourishing: Positive Psychology and the Life Well-Lived.

He has won numerous awards including the Templeton Prize in Positive Psychology, and several teaching awards including 2004 Outstanding Faculty Ward at the University of Virginia.
      Dr. Haidt is currently researching the psychology of politics. He has identified five innate psychological systems that seem to be the foundations upon which all cultures build their moralities. He proposes that nearly all human moralities use two of these five foundations: concerns about harm vs care, and concerns about fairness and reciprocity. He believes that political liberals elaborate only these two foundations, thereby creating moral systems in which individuals, autonomy, and the rights and protection of the downtrodden are most important. But he proposes that political conservatives and many religious groups rely on three additional systems that bind people together in cooperative and interdependent groups. These three systems are: ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. Although Haidt calls himself a moderate liberal, his research in India and his research for The Happiness Hypothesis showed him that there is wisdom about the causes of human flourishing to be found in all long enduring cultural and philosophical traditions, ie in the wisdom of the ancients. He is currently leading an effort to help liberals and conservatives understand and respect each other, in hope of fostering a more civil form of politics.  (See http://www.civil.politics.net/).

     He now lives with his wife Jayne and their 3 year old son in Charlottesville, VA.

     To learn to apply some of his proposals for happiness and to help increase your own "flourishing", go to www.happinesshypothesis.com/beyond.html.