Public Lecture Abstract

Monday, November 17, 2008 • 7:30 PM • James A. Little Theater, New Mexico School for the Deaf

Daniel Gilbert is the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and Director of Harvard’s Hedonic Psychology Laboratory. He is the author of Stumbling on Happiness.

Stumbling on Happiness

People want to be happy. To achieve this they must do two things. They must predict how they will feel in a variety of possible futures, and they must act to bring about the best of these and avoid the worst. Although it may seem that "getting what we want" is more difficult than "knowing what to want," research in psychology and behavioral economics tells a different story. People not only have trouble predicting the future, they have trouble predicting how much they will like it when they get there. Gilbert describes what science has to teach us about why we seem to stumble on (and not upon) happiness.