Book Review: Stumbling on Happiness

[da]

I finished the audio-book version of Stumbling on Happiness on the drive back from my parents' place.

I wrote about Daniel Gilbert last August when he was interviewed on Tapestry, the CBC radio program on faith and spirituality (and so did d., which I link to from that post). Re-reading my impressions at the time, I conclude his book made a much better impression on me than it appears his radio-interview and TED lecture did. In no small part because he was able to set out his arguments completely, not constrained to 30 or 20 minutes. (Good gawd, he sounds strident and pressed for time in the TED talk.)

I took out of the library both his book and the unabridged audio version (read by Gilbert). The book copy was recalled so I only read a few chapters in print. I recommend either, or both. It made a fine accompaniment to driving many hours on the 401.

The book is pleasantly engaging, with a very accessible style that I only occasionally wish had been more terse. He mixes in with his psychology research a smattering of jokes I actually found funny- occasionally laugh-out-loud funny.

I'm torn on how much I'd like to say about the content. Others will have written better than I can. I think Gilbert writes most effectively about unexpected psych research results. For example (and this isn't an exhaustive list of the good stuff, it's just off the top of my head) :

* People overestimate their emotional reactions to future events. Our psychological "immune system" kicks in when awful things happen, making them feel... bad, but not as bad as you'd expect them to.

* However, the psychological immune system won't kick in under a certain threshhold. So a slightly bad event can fester in your mind worse than a really bad event.

* We, obviously, edit our memories; and we do so in a way to self-validate our beliefs. The fascinating thing to me is that we also edit our predictions of our feelings from before-hand, so we can self-validate the way we ended up feeling. "We remember feeling the way we thought we would feel, whether we felt like that or not." We're really a mess when it comes to accurately remembering feelings, and Gilbert mentions a few "emotional blind-spots" which consistently trip us up.

I liked this interview with him; it gives a fair sense of his writing style.

Something else I appreciate: when I got to the end, I wished I had a study group to help hash out my thoughts on the book. It turns out, and I think I read this last year, that Gilbert posted a study guide to go along with the Harvard frosh class he teaches based on the book. I can probably get access to most of the articles he cites.

So I'm pondering whether to try and find a dozen other people who just read this book and see what we might do with it.

Comments

[kraig.livejournal.com]

So I'm pondering whether to try and find a dozen other people who just read this book and see what we might do with it.

Sounds good to me! Your office or mine? ;)

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

...and/or here, or a chatroom, or an LJ community... or audio chat (I meant to ask, might as well ask here- how did you and your CRCerror buddies do the audio chat?).

I have nothing against meeting in person, except for logistics and for people who are 1000s of km away and for having quite enough evening meetings for the present. :)

[kraig.livejournal.com]

We Skyped a conference call, the host ran Garage Band. Which crashed, so we only got some of the audio.

[sulle-stelle.livejournal.com]

Sounds really interesting! I might be game to do some kind of online study group. I leave it to you to research the technology necessary to do it. :-)

[http://users.livejournal.com/merle_/]

"We, obviously, edit our memories [...]"

It surprises me how few people actually believe this.