Stumbling on happiness
A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we're so lousy at predicting what will make us happy -- and what we can do about it.Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert explains, when people try to imagine what the future will hold, they make some basic and consistent mistakes. Just as memory plays tricks on us when we try to look backward in time, so does imagination play tricks when we try to look forward. Using cutting-edge research, much of it original, Gilbert shakes, cajoles, persuades, tricks and jokes us into accepting the fact that happiness is not really what or where we thought it was. Among the unexpected questions he poses: Why are conjoined twins no less happy than the general population? When you go out to eat, is it better to order your favourite dish every time, or to try something new? If Ingrid Bergman hadn't gotten on the plane at the end of Casablanca, would she and Bogey have been better off?Smart, witty, accessible and laugh-out-loud funny, Stumbling on Happiness brilliantly describes all that science has to tell us about the uniquely human ability to envision the future, and how likely we are to enjoy it when we get there.From the Hardcover edition.
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38recommend
78mentions
52people
2007–2026years
74% recommend23% neutral3% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- As someone who does _very_ related research, I'd push back on your skepticism.
I recommend Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness". It very accessibly addresses almost every point you raised.
In particular, people have very bad intuitions about trauma and loss. Humans are shockingly adaptable and bounce back to full functioning and happiness almost all of the time. Provided you don't have a biased sample (such as people seeking care) this is equally apparent when talking to victims of trauma as when doing empirical research.
- I'm a huge fan of Positive Psychology and have read dozens of books (by Ph.D researchers of the subject).
My favorite academic summary is The Good Life: Unifying the Philosophy and Psychology of Well-Being by Michael A. Bishop. As a hyper-short summary: psychologists studying well being have used different definitions and approaches, yet what unifies them is positive feedback loops - behaviors and activities that beget more positive affect in the future. Think spending time with good friends, etc.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22897962-the-good-life
A classic read is Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert. It shows how humans are systematically bad at predicting to what extent future events will make them happier or sad. His TED talk is a nice 20 minute summary of the book.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56627.Stumbling_on_Happi...
- "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert. Big insight - people generally have a way of rationalizing away things they did (new job, move, relationship) that turned out to be bad ideas - they focus on the positive parts, or say how they learned so much. But this doesn't work if you decided not to do something, and that inaction turned out to be a bad idea - you can't say you learned so much, because you didn't do anything. Implication is that we should be bolder in our decisions, to avoid regret.
- Life hack: choose to read books written by researchers about their field of study, rather than by non-experts dabbling in social science / psychology.
Positive Psychology is a great example -- rather than reading one of the dozens of books written by non-experts, why not go with something like The How of Happiness or Stumbling on Happiness - by people who actually study and run experiments they write about.
- If you're smart and unhappy, it seems like the best next step is to read some books on the topic of Positive Psychology written by researchers that study it. Two great starts: The How of Happiness and Stumbling on Happiness but there are many more.
ps - 4DWW (Four Day Work Week) would be an amazing improvement to happiness to anyone who gets it. Let's all work on making it the norm!
- "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert is an excellent complement to "Thinking Fast and Slow". It explores how the mind works in regards to happiness, and the biases in that.
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