A Harvard psychologist finds that joy is a tricky thing to predict

[survivor999]

By David Mehegan, Globe Staff | May 20, 2006

CAMBRIDGE — Happiness is a bundle of mysteries. How to get it. How to know it when you’ve got it. Why some people seem happy even when their luck is rotten while others languish in misery as they go from one triumph to the next.

One of the subtler mysteries is the subject of Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert’s new book, ‘‘Stumbling on Happiness’’: What will make us happy in the future? You may think you know, but Gilbert’s finding, after years of research, is that people are lousy at predicting what will make them happy or unhappy.

Gilbert is a bouncy, irrepressible, articulate, 48-year-old professor whose own research (and that of his graduate students) underlies much of his book. Yes, teachers are supposed to be articulate, but few scientists speak with his quotable clarity and puckish sallies. During an interview in his office, he spoke as if his lifework is just the most fun thing and he never tires of celebrating it.

His field is social psychology. Around 1993, he said, ‘‘a friend and I were exchanging stories about the ways life had surprised us, and it had surprised us in similar ways. When bad things happened, we were doing better than we had expected. And the good things that happened, accolades and achievements, were not as good as we expected.’’ He looked for the scientific literature on this phenomenon but found there was none. Thus began years of research on people’s expectations of happiness, and why they’re usually wrong.

‘‘To me it was a lunch, to him it was a research paradigm,’’ said Jonathan Jay Koehler, who teaches behavioral decisionmaking at the University of Texas. ‘‘That’s the difference between Dan Gilbert and the rest of us. He took the idea and ran with it.’’

‘‘When I started studying this topic,’’ Gilbert said, ‘‘I was amazed at how robust the data was. Everywhere we looked, we saw the same results. People overestimated the hedonic consequences of future events — ‘If that future thing happens, it’s going to make me feel great for a long time, but if that bad thing happens, I’ll be devastated.’ Neither prediction turned out to be right. We looked at voting, falling in love, sporting events, medical results — every time, the same phenomenon appears. The other discovery was the almost universal denial of this phenomenon.’’



More: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2006/05/20/cmon_get_happy?mode=PF

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[enough]

1. Too bad nobody in Bushco will read that article.

It could save the world a world of misery.

[mccormack98]

2. I can refute that easily ...

Cal beats Stanford in the Big Game and it's INSTANTANEOUS PURE JOY, BABY!