You 2.0: Decide Already!
1 of 2Dan Gilbert says we're not great at predicting how much we will enjoy an experience in part because we fail to consider all of the details. We think a visit to the dentist will be terrible, but we're forgetting about the free toothbrush, the nice chat with the dental hygienist and the magazines in the waiting room.How great would it be to win a new car? How horrible would it be to get laid off from your job? Research by psychologist Dan Gilbert at Harvard University suggests the answers are: not that great and not that horrible, respectively.
Among the many things Dan Gilbert studies is our predictions about how we'll feel about future events. One of the most important questions we ask when making any decision is, "How will this make me feel?" But no matter how much time we spend thinking about the future, we don't get any better at predicting it. That's why, as Gilbert writes in his book Stumbling on Happiness, divorce lawyers and people who remove tattoos continue to have a steady stream of customers.
This week, Shankar talks to Dan Gilbert about where we go wrong in making our predictions and how we can use this research to lead happier lives.
The Hidden Brain Podcast is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Jennifer Schmidt, Rhaina Cohen, Parth Shah, Laura Kwerel, and Thomas Lu. Our supervising producer is Tara Boyle. You can follow us on Twitter @hiddenbrain, and listen for Hidden Brain stories each week on your local public radio station. [Copyright 2019 NPR]
