Stumbling on Happiness
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| Stumbling on Happiness | |
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| Author | Daniel Gilbert |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | Psychology |
| Publisher | Knopf |
| Publication date | 2006 |
| Media type | hardback |
| ISBN | 1400042666 |
Stumbling on Happiness is a non-fiction book by Daniel Gilbert. It was published in the United States and Canada in 2006 by Knopf, and has been translated into 20 languages. It is a New York Times bestseller.
Contents |
[edit] Summary
Gilbert's central thesis is that people imagine the future poorly, in particular what will make them happy. He argues that imagination fails in three ways:[1]
- Imagination tends to add and remove details, but people do not realize that key details may be fabricated or missing from the imagined scenario.
- Imagined futures (and pasts) are more like the present than they actually will be (or were).
- Imagination fails to realize that things will feel differently once they actually happen -- most notably, the psychological immune system will make bad things feel not so bad as they are imagined to feel.
The advice Gilbert offers is to use other people's experiences to predict the future, instead of imagining it. It is surprising how similar people are in much of their experiences, he says. He does not expect too many people to heed this advice, as our culture, accompanied by various thinking tendencies, is against this method of decision making.
The book is written in easy to understand language despite its deep roots in scientific research. Many points in the book are supported by explanations of simple experiments that illustrate common quirks of reasoning. These stories enable the reader to grasp the concept with ease.
[edit] Recognition
In 2007, the book was awarded the Royal Society Prizes for Science Books general prize for the best science writing for a non-specialist audience.
[edit] See also
- Positive psychology, particularly the work of Martin Seligman and his book Learned Optimism.
- The Black Swan (book), about the difficulty of predicting the future, and about the idea of stumbling onto life-advancing things.
[edit] Notes
- ^ (Gilbert 2006, pp. 224–228)
[edit] References
- Gilbert, Daniel (2006), Stumbling on Happiness, Knopf, ISBN 1400042666
[edit] External links
- Stumbling on Happiness web site. includes a blog where the author adds every month or so an article related to the book.
- Reviews of Stumbling on Happiness
- Publisher's website for Stumbling on Happiness
- Short interview about the book from SXSWi 2006
- Comprehensive interview on the book
- Video of Gilbert discussing humans' failure to predict what makes us happy. Presented July 2005 at the TED Conference in Oxford, UK. Duration: 22:02
- Gilbert's Profile Page on UK publisher's blog, fifthestate.co.uk
- Are You Happy? Sue Halpern review of Stumbling on Happiness from The New York Review of Books
