The Nature Of Happiness By Daniel Gilbert - 1501 Words

You may have guessed Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert is all about what makes people happy, how to make people happy, and why people feel happy in certain situations. This assumption is correct, but Gilbert digs much deeper than these three simple questions. He discusses the nature of happiness and explains the many, many psychological illusions that alter our perception of happiness. Gilbert focuses on why happiness is so difficult to measure and why many people have bias views regarding happiness. After reading this book, I feel as if I have a more insightful view about the human mind and how it works. Personally, I think the following quote by Gilbert sums up his book: Our desire to control is so powerful, and the feeling†¦show more content†¦Humans can imagine the future and make plans for later, whereas animals can only make predictions about the immediate future. We often look forward in time to reduce the impact of unpleasant situations and to try to con trol and change our future. Gilbert goes on to describe what â€Å"happiness† is. He says happiness is a â€Å"subjective feeling†, meaning it is impossible to compare two different individuals’ level of happiness at a given time. When humans try to compare happiness they often compare their happiness in the present with something they experienced in the past. Gilbert explains that even when our minds compare two different things in the present we still tend to fail to notice differences. Everyone has a â€Å"blind spot of visual perception† that we fill in with what we think should be there. Gilbert compares this to our memory. Humans only store facts and feelings in our memory that we believe are important, so when we look back at a certain memory we simply fill in the missing details. In one of the studies Gilbert discusses, he describes how this â€Å"filling in† process happens when we imagine the future as well. Our brains fill in de tails about future experiences, and we are unaware this process is happening. We don’t notice the important details we may be leaving out. Humans see things that are closer to them with more complexity than those things that are far