Happiness Dissected: A breakthrough dissection of the emotions based on each emotion's unique biological purpose

Mark Devon

Aug. 2015 · Mark Devon

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Emotions are not a mysterious soup in your head! This book dissects happiness into our individual emotions based on their evolutionary or biological purpose. This dissection reveals many breakthrough insights: you only fall in love with strangers; women only fall in love with men of equal-or-higher rank; men fall out of love 4 years after meeting a woman; you only envy former peers – like siblings and classmates; you only feel humor when others make a mistake you could make, a mid-life crisis occurs when your rank plateaus and you stop feeling pride; we say please and thank you so others don’t feel humiliation; we only cry because we’re lonely. 

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I am an outsider to psychology.  I do not have education or training in psychology or any related fields.  However, this outsider status allowed me to think outside the box and make the breakthrough insights provided in this book.
I am a management consultant.  I was first exposed to evolutionary theory as part of an MBA course at Harvard.  That exposure left me with the belief that each of our emotions must have evolved for a unique purpose.

I reasoned that if I could identify an emotion's purpose, I could identify its trigger and vice versa.  Following that thought I wrote The Origin of Emotions which identifies each emotion's purpose, trigger and effect.  Later, I wrote Happiness Dissected to provide a more practical and user-friendly exploration of the emotions.
Surprisingly, this breakdown of the emotions based on their purpose has not been done before.  One reason is that many emotions are group adaptations - which are not considered possible by mainstream evolutionary academics.  They don't believe we can evolve group adaptations, like group emotions, that cause you to harm yourself and your genes to help your group.  My outsider status made it easier for me to see that group emotions do exist - revenge being the best example.
Please contact me if you have questions.  I am keen to spread the ideas presented in my books.  You can reach me at: [e-mail]