Stumbling On Happiness Book Review
PSYCH253 Book Review: Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert
In Daniel Gilbert’s, Stumbling on Happiness (2006), Gilbert attempts to explain
how our current reasoning for happiness is in fact, flawed. Many examples explored within the book as well as experiments provided in class supports the overarching theme that our memory is influenced by external factors that we are unaware of. Our memory cannot be solely relied upon when retrieving previous
experiences, nor used to project the feelings we expect to feel in the future. Too much emphasis is placed on current feelings, often amplifying how we currently feel and implanting that feeling into the future. This book review will provide examples from lectures as well as the book itself to support Gilbert’s thesis.
Gilbert states, “the elaborate tapestry of our experience is not stored in memory
– at least not in its entirety. Rather, it is compressed for storage by first being reduced to a few critical threads, such as a summary phrase or a small set of key features (p. 87) indicates that us humans store important pieces of information as part of our memory and fill in details when we are required to retrieve it from memory. This is illustrated through the stop sign experiment where volunteers were required to recall whether another car stopped at the stop sign or the yield sign before it passed the red car. Volunteers were then asked different questions with different key words, such as “stop sign” and “yield sign.” This changed the volunteers’ memories of their earlier experience. The volunteers filled in the missing information with the internally generated schemas triggered by the key words mentioned in the questions and assumed that, this information was in fact, “retrieved” from their memories (Myers, Spencer & Jordan
Danielle Chan UW ID: 20347269
2012) The “filling in trick” helps us create a seamlessly smooth and normal reality through seeing things that are not really there and remember things that didn’t really happen (Gilbert, 2006). Both studies presented in Stumbling on Happiness and in lectures support the fact that our memory cannot be heavily relied on when retrieving previous experience as our minds often fabricate and add in certain details that were never present in the first place.
Aside from the filling in trick, humans tend to place emphasis on certain features
while ignoring other attributes. We think events taking place in the near future will have a greater impact on how we feel than events taking place in the far future. When volunteers were asked whether they would rather receive $20 in a year’s time or $19 in 364 days, most of them chose to receive the $20 in a year’s time. However, when volunteers were asked whether they would rather receive $19 today than $20 tomorrow, they would all much rather receive the $19 today. All volunteers imagined the one day wait in the near future as an unbearable torment, while the one day wait in the far future as a mild pain. Our brain focuses on processing events happening in the near future, and therefore places more emphasis on its impact, thus exaggerating how we think we will feel in the future. As mentioned in the lecture, when participants were asked whether they would rather pay $80 to see favourite band from 2003 now or to pay $129 to see current favourite band in 2023, people tend to pay more to see their favourite band now in the future than to see their current band from 10 years ago (Bergsieker, 2013). This illustrates that even when humans are allowed to compare current feelings with feelings from the past, they would much rather give preference to
Danielle Chan UW ID: 20347269
their current feelings. The decisions we make and the feelings we feel in the future are often based on how we currently feel. Humans often overestimate the intensity and duration of emotional reactions to positive or negative events, such as winning the lottery or getting into a car accident (Bergsieker, 2013). How we are feeling in the present ultimately affects how we remember the past and how we will imagine the future. When imagining the future, we must keep in mind that our brain automatically places priority on how we are currently feeling when projecting how we will feel in the future, therefore we must learn how to adjust for this view in time.
Another experiment illustrates how external factors influence the way we think
without us ever knowing. The first group of volunteers were asked to remember how they felt a few months earlier, and the results showed that both male and female volunteers remembered feeling equally intense emotions. However, when volunteers were asked to think a bit about gender, female volunteers tend to remember feeling more intense emotion, while male volunteers remembered feeling less intense emotions. Gilbert states, “It seems that our theories about how people of our gender usually feel can influence our memory of how we actually felt” (pg. 229). This study directly correlates with the stereotype threat experiment explained in class. When female Asian participants were reminded of their Asian identity, they performed better on the math test (Bergsieker, 2013). Because participants in both cases were reminded of their gender/racial backgrounds, this swayed their actual feeling/performance to confirm to the traditional stereotypes that are expected of them. Participants did not notice how our minds unconsciously processed the subtle cues, and thus formed, what
Danielle Chan UW ID: 20347269
they thought to be a logical view of their feelings/performance. “Our brain use facts and theories to make guesses about past events, and so too do they use facts and theories to make guesses about past feelings” (pg. 228). This demonstrates that the mind often misinterprets information and unconsciously conform to what the mind ought to think based on past experiences and feelings when generating how we currently feel or how we will be feeling in the future.
Throughout the book, Gilbert emphasizes the fact that we should not use current
feelings to project how we will be feeling in the future. That is because we tend not to think about what our minds will do to relieve the bad news. In a study, participants were applying for a good paying job that involved tasting ice cream and making up funny names for it. Participants were either interviewed by a jury, where one vote for the participant would give them the job, or interviewed by a single judge. These participants predicted that they would all feel equally unhappy if they were rejected by either the jury or the judge, however when asked after the rejection, participants were much happier when they were rejected by the single judge than by the unanimous jury. Participants were unable to imagine how what their brains would do to cope with the bad news, therefore rating their unhappiness as equal. These participants did not know that our psychological immune system would kick in and help relieve the painful rejection, through blaming the judge, rather than the jury. This once again validates the fact that we cannot use our current feelings and accurately predict how we will feel in the future, as there our brain uses many mechanisms to cope with the unhappiness and happiness it will endure.
Danielle Chan UW ID: 20347269
Stumbling on Happiness presents many helpful facts as to how we should re-‐
evaluate our interpretations of what really makes us happy. Daniel Gilbert provides many examples in which humans, as smart as we are, should not rely heavily on our memory and previous experience to project and imagine how we will feel in the future. Rather than storing the entirety of the event that took place, we tend to store important pieces of information and unconsciously fabricate the rest. Gilbert tells readers how we often misattribute our happiness and wrongfully predict how happy something will make us through projecting how we currently feel into the future. The studies presented in Stumbling on Happiness used in combination with the social psychology theories presented in class, demonstrates how the mind often plays tricks in how we interpret happiness, and what we think makes us happy. To move forward, when imagining how we will feel in the future, we should ultimately not base these predictions on past experiences, as our memories of these past experiences are often flawed. Rather, we should consult other individuals who are currently experiencing the future we are trying to imagine to attain a more accurate and relevant estimate of how we will feel, react and experience in the future. Gilbert has effectively demonstrated how common social psychology studies support his view that there is no single formula to happiness, but rather knowing what makes us stumble, can lead to more accurate predictions of happiness in the future.
Danielle Chan UW ID: 20347269
References Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on happiness. United States : Vintage Canada.
Myers , D. G., Spencer, S. J., & Jordan, C. H. (2012).Social psychology. (5th ed.). Canada: McGraw-‐Hill Ryerson.
In Daniel Gilbert’s, Stumbling on Happiness (2006), Gilbert attempts to explain
how our current reasoning for happiness is in fact, flawed. Many examples explored within the book as well as experiments provided in class supports the overarching theme that our memory is influenced by external factors that we are unaware of. Our memory cannot be solely relied upon when retrieving previous
experiences, nor used to project the feelings we expect to feel in the future. Too much emphasis is placed on current feelings, often amplifying how we currently feel and implanting that feeling into the future. This book review will provide examples from lectures as well as the book itself to support Gilbert’s thesis.
Gilbert states, “the elaborate tapestry of our experience is not stored in memory
– at least not in its entirety. Rather, it is compressed for storage by first being reduced to a few critical threads, such as a summary phrase or a small set of key features (p. 87) indicates that us humans store important pieces of information as part of our memory and fill in details when we are required to retrieve it from memory. This is illustrated through the stop sign experiment where volunteers were required to recall whether another car stopped at the stop sign or the yield sign before it passed the red car. Volunteers were then asked different questions with different key words, such as “stop sign” and “yield sign.” This changed the volunteers’ memories of their earlier experience. The volunteers filled in the missing information with the internally generated schemas triggered by the key words mentioned in the questions and assumed that, this information was in fact, “retrieved” from their memories (Myers, Spencer & Jordan
Danielle Chan UW ID: 20347269
2012) The “filling in trick” helps us create a seamlessly smooth and normal reality through seeing things that are not really there and remember things that didn’t really happen (Gilbert, 2006). Both studies presented in Stumbling on Happiness and in lectures support the fact that our memory cannot be heavily relied on when retrieving previous experience as our minds often fabricate and add in certain details that were never present in the first place.
Aside from the filling in trick, humans tend to place emphasis on certain features
while ignoring other attributes. We think events taking place in the near future will have a greater impact on how we feel than events taking place in the far future. When volunteers were asked whether they would rather receive $20 in a year’s time or $19 in 364 days, most of them chose to receive the $20 in a year’s time. However, when volunteers were asked whether they would rather receive $19 today than $20 tomorrow, they would all much rather receive the $19 today. All volunteers imagined the one day wait in the near future as an unbearable torment, while the one day wait in the far future as a mild pain. Our brain focuses on processing events happening in the near future, and therefore places more emphasis on its impact, thus exaggerating how we think we will feel in the future. As mentioned in the lecture, when participants were asked whether they would rather pay $80 to see favourite band from 2003 now or to pay $129 to see current favourite band in 2023, people tend to pay more to see their favourite band now in the future than to see their current band from 10 years ago (Bergsieker, 2013). This illustrates that even when humans are allowed to compare current feelings with feelings from the past, they would much rather give preference to
Danielle Chan UW ID: 20347269
their current feelings. The decisions we make and the feelings we feel in the future are often based on how we currently feel. Humans often overestimate the intensity and duration of emotional reactions to positive or negative events, such as winning the lottery or getting into a car accident (Bergsieker, 2013). How we are feeling in the present ultimately affects how we remember the past and how we will imagine the future. When imagining the future, we must keep in mind that our brain automatically places priority on how we are currently feeling when projecting how we will feel in the future, therefore we must learn how to adjust for this view in time.
Another experiment illustrates how external factors influence the way we think
without us ever knowing. The first group of volunteers were asked to remember how they felt a few months earlier, and the results showed that both male and female volunteers remembered feeling equally intense emotions. However, when volunteers were asked to think a bit about gender, female volunteers tend to remember feeling more intense emotion, while male volunteers remembered feeling less intense emotions. Gilbert states, “It seems that our theories about how people of our gender usually feel can influence our memory of how we actually felt” (pg. 229). This study directly correlates with the stereotype threat experiment explained in class. When female Asian participants were reminded of their Asian identity, they performed better on the math test (Bergsieker, 2013). Because participants in both cases were reminded of their gender/racial backgrounds, this swayed their actual feeling/performance to confirm to the traditional stereotypes that are expected of them. Participants did not notice how our minds unconsciously processed the subtle cues, and thus formed, what
Danielle Chan UW ID: 20347269
they thought to be a logical view of their feelings/performance. “Our brain use facts and theories to make guesses about past events, and so too do they use facts and theories to make guesses about past feelings” (pg. 228). This demonstrates that the mind often misinterprets information and unconsciously conform to what the mind ought to think based on past experiences and feelings when generating how we currently feel or how we will be feeling in the future.
Throughout the book, Gilbert emphasizes the fact that we should not use current
feelings to project how we will be feeling in the future. That is because we tend not to think about what our minds will do to relieve the bad news. In a study, participants were applying for a good paying job that involved tasting ice cream and making up funny names for it. Participants were either interviewed by a jury, where one vote for the participant would give them the job, or interviewed by a single judge. These participants predicted that they would all feel equally unhappy if they were rejected by either the jury or the judge, however when asked after the rejection, participants were much happier when they were rejected by the single judge than by the unanimous jury. Participants were unable to imagine how what their brains would do to cope with the bad news, therefore rating their unhappiness as equal. These participants did not know that our psychological immune system would kick in and help relieve the painful rejection, through blaming the judge, rather than the jury. This once again validates the fact that we cannot use our current feelings and accurately predict how we will feel in the future, as there our brain uses many mechanisms to cope with the unhappiness and happiness it will endure.
Danielle Chan UW ID: 20347269
Stumbling on Happiness presents many helpful facts as to how we should re-‐
evaluate our interpretations of what really makes us happy. Daniel Gilbert provides many examples in which humans, as smart as we are, should not rely heavily on our memory and previous experience to project and imagine how we will feel in the future. Rather than storing the entirety of the event that took place, we tend to store important pieces of information and unconsciously fabricate the rest. Gilbert tells readers how we often misattribute our happiness and wrongfully predict how happy something will make us through projecting how we currently feel into the future. The studies presented in Stumbling on Happiness used in combination with the social psychology theories presented in class, demonstrates how the mind often plays tricks in how we interpret happiness, and what we think makes us happy. To move forward, when imagining how we will feel in the future, we should ultimately not base these predictions on past experiences, as our memories of these past experiences are often flawed. Rather, we should consult other individuals who are currently experiencing the future we are trying to imagine to attain a more accurate and relevant estimate of how we will feel, react and experience in the future. Gilbert has effectively demonstrated how common social psychology studies support his view that there is no single formula to happiness, but rather knowing what makes us stumble, can lead to more accurate predictions of happiness in the future.
Danielle Chan UW ID: 20347269
References Gilbert, D. (2006). Stumbling on happiness. United States : Vintage Canada.
Myers , D. G., Spencer, S. J., & Jordan, C. H. (2012).Social psychology. (5th ed.). Canada: McGraw-‐Hill Ryerson.