Book Review: "Stumbling on Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert
It seems like an easy question: what makes us happy? The author, a professor of psychology at Harvard, argues that we can’t be relied upon to give a decent answer. In the foreword he writes: “This book is about a puzzle that many thinkers have pondered over the last two millennia, and it uses their ideas (and a few of my own) to explain why we seem to know so little about the hearts and minds of the people we are about to become”. He covers psychology, cognition, neuroscience, economics and philosophy to make his argument.
Findings include:
• Happiness is very subjective. As they say, “one man’s meat is another man’s poison”.
• We’re not very good at predicting the future.
• We’re not even particularly reliable remembering the past.
• Our memories are selective.
• Our thinking is subject to biases.
• Major events which we expect would have a lasting impact on our happiness (e.g. winning the lottery or becoming handicapped), will affect us in the short term, but then we will eventually return to our individual “default” level of happiness.
When making decisions about the future, and how that affects our happiness, we often resort to thoughts and imagination. But there are three major shortcomings of imagination:
1. Its tendency to fill in and leave out without telling us (Realism).
2. Its tendency to project the present onto the future (Presentism).
3. Its failure to recognise that things look different once they happen - in particular, that bad things will look a whole lot better (Rationalisation).
So, if imagination leads us astray, what are we to do when trying to make important decisions? According to the author, the best advice is to ask others who have already made similar decisions to see if they’re happy or not with their choices.
The author also makes some potentially controversial claims regarding life as a “belief-transmission game”. In particular, we believe in the joy of money and the joy of children. Regarding money, research shows that beyond a certain amount, additional income does not lead to increased happiness. Regarding children, research studies show that marital satisfaction actually dips just after the birth and only picks up when the nest empties.
Overall, the author makes a persuasive case, often with humour. There is no simple, universal formula for finding happiness. We probably shouldn’t try to think too much about making ourselves happy, since we have unreliable ideas on the subject. Instead, we should take each day as it comes, accept what we have, and make the most of the situations we find ourselves in. And where possible, seek the advice of people more experienced than ourselves.