Daniel Gilbert (psychologist)

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This article is about the social psychologist; for the businessman, see Dan Gilbert (businessman).

Daniel Todd Gilbert is the author of the New York Times bestseller Stumbling on Happiness and the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. He is a social psychologist who is known for his research (with Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia) on affective forecasting, with a special emphasis on cognitive biases such as the impact bias.

At the age of 19, Gilbert was a high school dropout, father, and working at night to be a science fiction writer. In an attempt to improve his writing skills, he travelled to the local community college to enroll in a writing class. After the long ride to the college, he was told that the writing class was full. In order to salvage his bus ride, he decided to enroll in the only open course, which was psychology.^[1]

Gilbert has won numerous awards for his teaching and research, including the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology. His scientific work has been covered by The New York Times Magazine, Forbes, Money, CNN, U.S. News & World Report, The New Yorker, Scientific American, O, The Oprah Magazine, Psychology Today, and others. His short stories have appeared in Amazing Stories and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, as well as other magazines and anthologies.