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Stumbling on Happiness | 
 enlarge | Author: Daniel Gilbert
Publisher: Vintage
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy Used: $3.25
You Save: $11.70 (78%)
New (60) Used (86) from $3.25
Rating:  218 reviews
Sales Rank: 2912
Media: Paperback
Pages: 336
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.5
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 1400077427
Dewey Decimal Number: 158
EAN: 9781400077427
ASIN: 1400077427
Publication Date: March 20, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Amazon.com Review
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
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
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 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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| Customer Reviews: Read 213 more reviews...
 Tedious November 12, 2008
a reader (NYC)
I agree with all the other one star reviews. Can't figure out how he got so many positive reviews. One or two interesting tidbits like the information about the Siamese twins, Lora and Reba Schappel who are happy with their lives even though conjoined, and the card trick on pp. 44 & 49 but one has to plow through so many pages of verbiage and unfunny "humor" to get to the few goodies that it's not worth it - life is too short. Malcolm Gladwell's books in a similar vein are more interesting.
A valuable and important book that needs to truly deal with the results of unhappiness to make even more sense. October 3, 2008
Mr. Matthew R. Lamkin
Gilbert notes that the frontal lobe evolved in order to control the environment in our quest for safety and pleasure (avoid/approach reactions). It does so largely by trying to predict the future. Unfortunately, we often stumble because our predictions are so often based on poor information gleaned from our past and present experiences through the filter of our inaccurate memories. In other words, we tend to repeat false assumptions and often poor decisions when predicting our futures so that when we do actually find happiness, it is often stumbled upon rather than planned.
As Gilbert says, "In order to have a smooth rational-seeming reality, we fill in what we don't know with details that are often wrong and leaving out details that are actually important if we realize them. And we do this seamlessly and largely unconsciously." "We tend to accept the brain's products uncritically and expect the future to unfold with the details- and only with the details- that the brain has imagined" He further states, "What we feel as we imagine the future is often a response to what's happening in the present and we predictably underestimate how different we will feel in the future."
Inaccurate predictions begets poor decision-making which often leads to an unhappy state. We then tend to rationalize our unhappy outcomes to make them more acceptable to ourselves which means we are likely to make the same choices in the future.
Any resultant feelings of inadequacy and lower self-worth can lead to even further repetition of poor choices. When in the discontented state, the mind seeks more stability and control. But what does it do? It rationalizes and continues to base its predictions on information from an often inaccurate and unstable past and present and fails to learn from experience.
For example, if you feel inadequate and odd in the sense you don't feel you fit in, you may seek out and depend on others that you see as being similarly inadequate or odd- the very people, if you do depend on them, that are most apt to reinforce your feelings of inadequacy rather than help give you the stability and centeredness that you seek.
Thus, the vicious circle continues as one clings to ones old ways...
So, in the search for stability one may cling to the tottering present in order to seek peace and happiness, but the result is most often a repetition of the past. The myth of Sisyphis comes to mind as one pictures the endless attempts to perform an impossible task such as rolling a boulder part way up a hill that is too heavy to reach the top and doing it over and over again...
But is it impossible to overcome the tendency to embrace failed thoughts and actions so that at least we stumble less and are happier with our lives?
Of course and careful observation of others who have found happiness is one recommendation.
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 Makes me glad to be human September 23, 2008
Kara Kytle (SF Bay Area, California)
This book is fabulous. As much as the content informs on the human condition, the frolicking experience of reading it reinforces it. Makes me glad to be human. Highly recommended!
- kara
Ir's basically a list of experiments September 7, 2008
Izolde (Tokyo, Japan)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I bought this book because I wanted to know how I could become happy. However, this book turned out to be a long list of psychological experiments that proved how badly human imagination and memories are flawed and follible. Yet the author concludes that nothing is better than our imagination and memories to depend on to predict our future happiness.
Interesting pop-psychology September 3, 2008
therosen (New York, NY United States)
Daniel Gilbert takes us through the elusive study of happiness in three phases.
1) He convinces the reader how nearly impossible it is to measure happiness, along with all the falicies of attempts to measure it. He concludes "The best you can do is ask someone how they're feeling at any given moment"
2) He shows many problems with individuals predicting happiness. We tend to overestimate how much we enjoy things, and how long the happiness lasts, as well as overestimating pain from negative occurances. He shows why this happens (one reason is too much focus on recent events) as well as how our memory fails us similar to imagination.
3) He closes with a tentative recommendation on what to do - in general it is not good to ask for advice, but it is relatively reliable to ask people how they are feeling at any given point in time.
The subject is soft and squishy, but Daniel Ong manages to create a book that is readable, enjoyable, and even useful. Well done, and well worth the time!
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