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Psychology

Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
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Stumbling on Happiness

by Daniel Gilbert

Recommendations from our site

“We tend to see ourselves as not unlike rats, creatures driven by the short-term reward centres in our brains. But what Gilbert does fantastically well is to argue that, actually, humans are better at long-term thinking than almost any other animal. A chimpanzee may strip off the leaves from a branch to make a tool to poke into a termite hole, but that chimp will never make a dozen of those tools and put them aside for next week. Yet this is exactly what humans do.” Read more...

The Best Books for Long-Term Thinking

Roman Krznaric, Philosopher

“Dan Gilbert, a dear friend of mine at Harvard, is the best writer in our field and one of our greatest thinkers. He is extremely creative and insightful.” Read more...

The best books on Behavioral Science

Nicholas Epley, Psychologist

“One of the ideas in this book is that minds are predictive, not reactive. It feels to us like we just react to the things that are happening to us, but in fact our brains are constantly guessing what’s going to happen in the next moment. Dan’s book was one of the first books that really took on this idea of prediction – which is, I would say, one of the great innovations in the last decade or two of neuroscience research.” Read more...

The Best Books on Emotions

Lisa Feldman Barrett, Psychologist

“It shows that human beings are very bad at predicting what will make them happy, and, in fact, are even bad at describing what has made them happy in the past.” Read more...

The best books on Progress

Matthew Taylor, Political Commentator

“He’s one of the funniest people, certainly in psychology – he’s just endlessly witty, and reading it is like strapping yourself into a roller coaster.” Read more...

The best books on Happiness

Jonathan Haidt, Psychologist

“I liked this book because he went inside my brain. Essentially, he writes that we’re prisoners of our minds and brains – and we think we’re so different from everyone else, but we’re not.” Read more...

The best books on Happiness at Work

Jessica Pryce-Jones, Psychologist

The book, according to the author

“Opening lines are supposed to grab attention. Call me Ishmael was taken.”

Dan Gilbert on NPR, May 6th, 2006

Commentary

“Gilbert argues that what he calls the “psychological immune system” kicks into gear in response to big negative events (the death of a spouse, the loss of a job) but not in response to small negative events (your car breaking down). Which means that our day-to-day happiness may be predicated more strongly on little events than on big ones.”

Review in the New York Times, May 7th, 2006

Our most recommended books

  • Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert

    Stumbling on Happiness
    by Daniel Gilbert

  • The Language Instinct
    by Steven Pinker

  • Consciousness Explained
    by Daniel Dennett

  • Eichmann in Jerusalem
    by Hannah Arendt

  • The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
    by Oliver Sacks

  • Principles of Psychology
    by William James

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