Strengths of Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle has followed Paul Potts to Britain's Got Talent underdog stardom. Watch the sensation here. Already on the Today show and set for a place on Oprah's coach.

A number of people have asked what underlies her instant appeal. Well her story follows a classic narrative - a challenge plot protagonist who is fighting against all odds. She risks ridicule and public humiliation. Though not yet empirically proven in psychology lab (yet), she elicits in us the positive emotion of elevation. First proposed about ten years ago by Professor Jonathan Haidt, elevation is still somewhat of a mystery to scientists. It is distinct from admiration though that emotion is also present when we watch Susan Boyle sing.

Tough question: how are you risking ridicule to do something you really believe in? What will you do that might elicit elevation in others?

So what should I read? Part I

If you are interested in what all the evidence-based findings are on how to live a more fulfilled and engaged life, I wanted to put them all in one place:

1. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom – Jonathan Haidt
One of the best books you can read on what really constitutes a life of fulfillment. Haidt sifts through science & philosophy. He shows which bits the Stoics had right, where the Buddhism is spot on, why its dangerous to trust your feelings, why we desparely seek prestige and how we fail to appreciate why commuting to work makes us miserable.



2. Authentic Happiness – Martin Seligman
Seligman is a heavyweight in the world of psychology. This is the bestseller. Goes deeper into Pleasure, Engagement & Meaning. Also lots of learned optimism – training your mind to be less pessimistic.



3. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
This is the definitive work on Challenge / Engagement: who achieves peak experiences in life and how. A flow state ensues when one is engaged in self-controlled, goal-related, meaningful actions. A serious but rewarding read (it's a compelling academic book, not self-help). It’s been a classic since it was first published in 1970s



4. The Paradox of Choice – Barry Schwartz
The problems of consumer choice. Why we make bad decisions when faced with a huge array of choices. Very accessible. It will help you understand why we fail to make adequate 401K / pension plans or would prefer to walk out of a supermarket rather than decide what variety of jam to buy



5. Stumbling upon happiness – Daniel Gilbert
Why we mis-remember the part, mis-interpret the present and mis-predict the future. Very accessible tour of counterintuitive findings from Psychology & Behavioral Economics. There's less here on what you can do about all the findings but it's a fast, fun read

Emotional buying

A friend of mine recently asked me, "is it true that 75% of our buying decisions are based on emotion? It sounds like a made up statistic". This was my response:

The quick answer is that we have two type of processes that go on in our brains when making any decision:
System 1 is when we use our intuition. This is fast, automatic, effortless and rooted in emotion. It is our gut instinct
System 2 is when we use our reasoning. This slow, controlled, effortful and rule-governed. We have to consciously so it

Most decisions, including buying decisions, involve people using a combination of System 1 and System 2. Classic Economics has flaws because is assumes we are all rational players with perfect information using System 2 only. Behavioral economics, psychology etc recognizes the importance of system 1.

There is a growing amount of research on how they interact. I think it's fair to say:

- everyone uses system 1 all the time without realizing it. e.g. most people choose their life partner on this

- different people engage system 2 (reasoning) for different decisions in different situations but generally those they consider v important. some buying decisions fall into this category, many don't

- but it's not so much a question of what % of buying decisions are based on emotion. All of them are. But they are also partly based in reasoned thinking. The real question is do we think rationally then let in our emotions to influence the decision to some extent? Or do we have a gut instinct ("I like the look of John McCain", "I love that dress") and then use all the data & reasoning to justify that initial reaction?

- there is near overwhelming evidence that the latter is true. this a robust but depressing finding. it explains why republicans and democrats so deeply believe that their view of the world is right - look out for the upcoming book by Jonathan Haidt, 'The Righteous Mind'

Disgust

What’s wrong with a brother a sister having protected sex if no-one ever finds out? What about cooking and eating roadkill? How about drinking apple juice that’s had a sterilized cockroach dipped in it?

These are the issues of moral dumbfounding - when people feel strongly that something is wrong but cannot explain why.

Jonathan Haidt’s work describes how emotional responses occur instantaneously — we have primitive gut reactions that evolved to generate split-second decisions and enhance survival in a dangerous world. Moral judgment, on the other hand, comes later, as our conscious mind develops a plausible rationalization for the decision already arrived at through moral intuition.

Haidt uses his theory of morality to explain why Liberals and Conservatives disagree on so much and why they cannot even see how others could view a moral issue differently. He explains how Liberals use two strong moral foundations. They value the individual and fairness (or reciprocity). You are free to exercise your free-will just don’t harm anyone and don’t cheat on anyone. On the other hand while Conservatives do value these two foundations they also place value on three others: In-group loyalty, Authority and Purity. For most people in the world the unit of society is not the individual but the family or broader community.

If you want to know where you stand go on the political spectrum to http://www.yourmorals.org/ There’s an article describing it from the NY Times but better is a 5mins a video from the New Yorker conference 2007. Not great production quality but good enough http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt

By the way his book, The Happiness Hypothesis is one of the best written accounts on what really makes people happy today. An accessible and fascinating read (but not self-help).http://www.amazon.com/Happiness-Hypothesis-Finding-Modern-Ancient/dp/0465028012