Product Description

Why are lovers quicker to forgive their partners for infidelity than for leaving dirty dishes in the sink? Why will sighted people pay more to avoid going blind than blind people will pay to regain their sight? Why do dining companions insist on ordering different meals instead of getting what they really want? Why do patients remember long medical procedures as being less painful than short ones? Why do home sellers demand prices they wouldn’t dream of paying if they were home buyers? Why are shoppers happier when they can’t get refunds? Why do pigeons seem to have such excellent aim; why can’t we remember one song while listening to another; and why does the line at the grocery store always slow down the moment we join it?

In this brilliant, witty, and accessible book, renowned Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert describes the foibles of imagination and illusions of foresight that cause each of us to misconceive our tomorrows and misestimate our satisfactions. Vividly bringing to life the latest scientific research in psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and behavioral economics, Gilbert reveals what scientists have discovered about the uniquely human ability to imagine the future, and about our capacity to predict how much we will like it when we get there. With penetrating insight and sparkling prose, Gilbert explains why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #6731 in Books
• Published on: 2006-05-02
• Released on: 2006-05-02
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 304 pages

Amazon.com
Do you know what makes you happy? Daniel Gilbert would bet that you think you do, but you are most likely wrong. In his witty and engaging new book, Harvard professor Gilbert reveals his take on how our minds work, and how the limitations of our imaginations may be getting in the way of our ability to know what happiness is. Sound quirky and interesting? It is! But just to be sure, we asked bestselling author (and master of the quirky and interesting) Malcolm Gladwell to read Stumbling on Happiness, and give us his take. Check out his review below. --Daphne Durham

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Guest Reviewer: Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell is the author of bestselling books Blink and The Tipping Point, and is a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Several years ago, on a flight from New York to California, I had the good fortune to sit next to a psychologist named Dan Gilbert. He had a shiny bald head, an irrepressible good humor, and we talked (or, more accurately, he talked) from at least the Hudson to the Rockies--and I was completely charmed. He had the wonderful quality many academics have--which is that he was interested in the kinds of questions that all of us care about but never have the time or opportunity to explore. He had also had a quality that is rare among academics. He had the ability to translate his work for people who were outside his world.

Now Gilbert has written a book about his psychological research. It is called Stumbling on Happiness, and reading it reminded me of that plane ride long ago. It is a delight to read. Gilbert is charming and funny and has a rare gift for making very complicated ideas come alive.

Stumbling on Happiness is a book about a very simple but powerful idea. What distinguishes us as human beings from other animals is our ability to predict the future--or rather, our interest in predicting the future. We spend a great deal of our waking life imagining what it would be like to be this way or that way, or to do this or that, or taste or buy or experience some state or feeling or thing. We do that for good reasons: it is what allows us to shape our life. And it is by trying to exert some control over our futures that we attempt to be happy. But by any objective measure, we are really bad at that predictive function. We're terrible at knowing how we will feel a day or a month or year from now, and even worse at knowing what will and will not bring us that cherished happiness. Gilbert sets out to figure what that's so: why we are so terrible at something that would seem to be so extraordinarily important?

In making his case, Gilbert walks us through a series of fascinating--and in some ways troubling--facts about the way our minds work. In particular, Gilbert is interested in delineating the shortcomings of imagination. We're far too accepting of the conclusions of our imaginations. Our imaginations aren't particularly imaginative. Our imaginations are really bad at telling us how we will think when the future finally comes. And our personal experiences aren't nearly as good at correcting these errors as we might think.

I suppose that I really should go on at this point, and talk in more detail about what Gilbert means by that--and how his argument unfolds. But I feel like that might ruin the experience of reading Stumbling on Happiness. This is a psychological detective story about one of the great mysteries of our lives. If you have even the slightest curiosity about the human condition, you ought to read it. Trust me. --Malcolm Gladwell

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From Publishers Weekly
Not offering a self-help book, but instead mounting a scientific explanation of the limitations of the human imagination and how it steers us wrong in our search for happiness, Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, draws on psychology, cognitive neuroscience, philosophy and behavioral economics to argue that, just as we err in remembering the past, so we err in imagining the future. "Our desire to control is so powerful, and the feeling of being in control so rewarding, that people often act as though they can control the uncontrollable," Gilbert writes, as he reveals how ill-equipped we are to properly preview the future, let alone control it. Unfortunately, he claims, neither personal experience nor cultural wisdom compensates for imagination's shortcomings. In concluding chapters, he discusses the transmission of inaccurate beliefs from one person's mind to another, providing salient examples of universal assumptions about human happiness such as the joys of money and of having children. He concludes with the provocative recommendation that, rather than imagination, we should rely on others as surrogates for our future experience. Gilbert's playful tone and use of commonplace examples render a potentially academic topic accessible and educational, even if his approach is at times overly prescriptive. 150,000 announced first printing.(May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From AudioFile
Humans often fail at predicting what will make them happy in the future. Weaving together information from a variety of scientific and economic sources, psychology professor Gilbert explores why we know so little about the preferences of the people we're about to become. A terrific narrator of his own work, Gilbert revels in sharing his quirky research--he may be an academic, but his writing is witty and accessible, and he sounds like an entertaining acquaintance who's explaining his ideas rather than reading them. This is not a self-help book (how to be happy), but a well-researched explanation of why we think like we do (how we stumble along in our search for happiness). Listeners will come away from this top-notch production both entertained and enlightened. J.C.G. ¥¥¥ © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

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Customer Reviews

Best book I've read in 2 years
This is an awesome book written with no little wit and incredible insight. It's like Blink but with humor.

If you want to know why you make bad decisions, why you think like you do and why having kids isn't what it's cracked up to be, you need to check this out.

Owner for 2 years and still haven't finished
I have to admit I've really struggled to finish this book...in fact after many attempts, I've barely made it through half. The book is a bit trite and was not intriguing enough to hold my attention!

Thought provoking, but doesn't provide solutions to the challenges posed
When you're deciding about what will make you happy in the future, do you think about things you enjoyed in the past? Do you imagine yourself in the future to imagine how you would feel? If you answer yes to these types of questions, Gilbert's book presents some interesting perspectives that will probably make you think twice about doing it again. For example, he discusses how (from a very scientific point of view) our imaginations fool us by doing things like imposing how we feel today on how we think we'll feel in the future. While he makes great points about how the way people predict what will make them happy is inherently flawed, I thought he fell a bit short in suggesting alternative ways to make predictions. While it's helpful to know that people who take risks are happier in the long run, I'm still not willing to risk jumping off a cliff in the hope I can actually fly.