17 December 2008

Choosing and buying happiness

There's a fascinating conversation going on right now around Dan Gilbert's latest TEDTalk, "Exploring the frontiers of happiness," posted yesterday. In the talk, Gilbert goes into detail on his research into choice, satisfaction and happiness. Several commenters are suggesting the headline is inaccurate, because the talk isn't about happiness, per se, as much as about decisions. TED.com member Eliezer Israel calls it "a cogent exploration of rational decision-making." What do you think -- how are choice and happiness connected?

If you'd like to think further on this, check out today's talk, about the absurd endgame of humanity's search for happiness at any cost: Benjamin Wallace's "Does happiness have a price tag?" In the name of pure research, Wallace looks for the most expensive things in the world and tries them out. I think his small questions -- Does he really look sexier in $800 jeans? Would you let your dog sleep on a $40,000 mattress? -- lead to the same big questions that Dan Gilbert asks.

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16 December 2008

Exploring the frontiers of happiness: Dan Gilbert on TED.com

Dan Gilbert presents research and data from his exploration of happiness -- sharing some surprising tests and experiments that you can also try on yourself. Watch through to the end for a sparkling Q&A with some familiar TED faces. (Recorded July 2005 in Oxford, UK. Duration: 33:38.)

Watch Dan Gilbert's talk from TEDGlobal 2005 at Oxford on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 350+ TEDTalks -- including more talks about happiness.

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14 August 2008

Archive: Dan Gilbert asks, "Why are we happy?" on TEDTalks

For the next week, we're presenting some of our favorite TEDTalks from among the 270+ talks and performances we've posted since June 2006. Look for brand-new TEDTalks starting August 18. Until then, enjoy these gems -- and suggest your own by writing to contact@ted.com or joining the conversation on TED.com.

Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, challenges the idea that we’ll be miserable if we don’t get what we want. Through experiments, he's found that our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned. It's a big idea that has spawned pages of discussion on TED.com. About this talk and Barry Schwartz's (yesterday's archive pick), one blogger writes, "I found reading the comments on the talks as interesting as the talks themselves." (Recorded February 2004 in Monterey, California. Duration: 21:28)

Watch Dan Gilbert's 2004 talk on TED.com, where you can download it, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 270+ TEDTalks.

Read the transcript >>

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12 February 2008

Stumbling on sadness?

Many TEDTalks explore themes of happiness -- Stumbling on Happiness' Daniel Gilbert, Mattheiu Ricard (who's been called the Happiest Man on Earth), happy designer Stefan Sagmeister, and many more ...

Now a recent story in Newsweek rounds up the latest on happiness' opposite: sadness. It's an interesting gloss on the growing happiness industry -- and what the story calls "the backlash against the happiness rat race."

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02 January 2008

Edge question 2008: What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Many TEDTalks speakers have answered the 2008 Edge Foundation question: What have you changed your mind about? Why?

Among the more than 160 essays from leading thinkers -- scientists, philosophers, artists -- look for Wired's Chris Anderson, Nick Bostrom, Stewart Brand, Richard Dawkins, Aubrey de Grey, Juan Enriquez, Helen Fisher, Neil Gershenfeld, Daniel Gilbert, Daniel Goleman, Kevin Kelly, Steven Pinker, Carolyn Porco, Martin Rees, Michael Shermer and Craig Venter. Block out some time to sample these -- it's an addictive read.

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26 October 2007

How toddlers (and monkeys) make choices

What's the relationship between our happiness and the choices we make? TEDTalks from Barry Schwartz and Daniel Gilbert point out some paradoxes of this relationship, and the complex emotions involved in choice. Now, some new research from Yale sheds light on how toddlers and monkeys make choices. From the BPS Research Digest Blog:

Forty 4-year-olds used a scale of smiley faces to indicate how much they liked a range of animal stickers. For each child, the researchers identified three stickers which that child liked equally – let’s call these A, B, C. Each child then faced two choices – first to choose which of A or B they would like to take home. Afterwards, they then had to choose between sticker C and whichever sticker (A or B) they hadn’t selected before.

The surprising result was, faced with the second choice, the kids overwhelmingly picked sticker C -- though they'd liked all three stickers equally at first. The other surprising result was, the researchers got the same result with capuchin monkeys, who chose among three different-colored M&Ms.

For more on this study, read the journal abstract or a detailed post on the blog The Proper Study of Mankind.

Photo from Wikimedia:
Cebus capucinus: Capuchin Monkeys Sharing
Source: Powell K: Economy of the Mind. PLoS Biol 1/3/2003: e77. Photo courtesy of Frans de Waal.

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26 September 2006

Happiness Expert Dan Gilbert on TEDTalks

Dan Gilbert is a psychology professor at Harvard, and author of Stumbling on Happiness. In this memorable talk, filmed at TED2004, he demonstrates just how poor we humans are at predicting (or understanding) what will make us happy. (Recorded February 2004 in Monterey, CA. Duration: 22:02)

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