Happiness Is Not Where You Expect It
Posted on November 23rd, 2006
Written by Richard
Posted in: N/A (old archives)
I just listened to a pretty good lecture on happiness by Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard professor, and author of Stumbling on Happiness. The talk was about how the brain is able to synthesize happiness with just about any situation. The corollary is that striving for the best possible outcome usually makes us less happy than just choosing any option and never looking back.
This is the mp3 (about 20 minutes long): http://ted.streamguys.net/ted_gilbert_d_2004.mp3
I thought three points were particularly interesting:
- Experimental evidence seems to say that, if something happened more than three months ago, it generally has no bearing on your current level of happiness, no matter how good or bad it was
- While most people prefer to have freedom to choose between options, and freedom to change their minds later, this tends to lead to less happiness
- An experiment on people with no short-term memory gave evidence that the brain actually re-tools its aesthetic preferences based on the situation it is stuck with. In the first phase, they were made to take their third choice of paintings. Later, even though that had no recollection of the earlier phase, they tended to prefer the paintings they were “stuck” with before.
The talk is short, and entertaining, if you like to think about things like this. I haven’t read the book yet, but it looks interesting.
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© 2010 Richard Todd. I am not a financial advisor, and nothing on the site should be considered investment advice or actionable recommendations. I'm just an individual, saying what I think, and sharing my experiences.