You're happy. Imagine that!
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PostPosted: Tue, May 23 2006, 12:08 pm EDT    Post subject: You're happy. Imagine that! Reply with quote

You're happy. Imagine that!
Why people are so bad at predicting what will make them feel good

May 21, 2006. 01:00 AM
JUDY STOFFMAN
TORONTO STAR

Real estate agents say you should buy the worst house in the toniest neighbourhood rather than the best house on a modest street.

But Daniel Gilbert, a Harvard University psychology professor, believes such a purchase is rarely a prescription for happiness. Before you sign that offer to purchase, consider how you'll feel coming home each day to a dump amidst the mansions.

"It will make you feel bad because the brain is a difference detector; almost everything that it senses, it senses as a comparison," he says in Toronto to talk about his book Stumbling on Happiness.

The capacity to imagine future happiness or unhappiness — called "affective forecasting" — is, Gilbert says, what distinguishes us from other animals.

As he puts it, "We don't have to actually have gall bladder surgery or lounge around on a Caribbean beach to know that one of these is better than another."

Gilbert has spent 15 years at Harvard's Social Cognition and Emotion laboratory investigating how people imagine what will make them happy, and why they so often get it wrong.

He has found that small pleasures like coming home to a house no worse than the neighbour's is more likely to yield long-term joy than inheriting $1 million, getting a big promotion or being elected president.

"It's the frequency and not the intensity of positive events in your life that leads to happiness, like comfortable shoes or single malt scotch," he says.

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