PDF Summary:Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert

Have you ever wondered why you often regret your choices? In Stumbling on Happiness, award-winning Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert offers an explanation for what are, in his view, unavoidable poor decisions: You fabricate a large part of your reality—your memories of the past, perception of the present, and vision of the future. When you then use these inaccurate perceptions of the future, present, and past to make choices about what to do in the future, your choices are often poor and hinder future happiness.

In this guide, we’ll walk through Gilbert’s thesis, describing how your brain works and how its fabrication of reality leads you to make six specific types of bad decisions about your future. We’ll also link Gilbert’s ideas to other, related areas of human cognition. Finally, while Gilbert claims you can’t counteract your tendency to make poor decisions about your future, we’ll offer suggestions on how to improve your decision-making as much as possible.

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Another technique you use to interpret the world to your benefit, writes Gilbert, is to surround yourself with people who bolster your existing beliefs. By agreeing with your beliefs and sharing your worldview, they enable you to see the world the way you want to see it.

(Shortform note: Gilbert seems to suggest that we always want our friends to confirm our beliefs and tell us what we want to hear. However, in situations where you suspect your behavior might be causing problems, you likely want truthful input so you can improve. Solicit this input by being clear on what type of input you’re after, say Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen, authors of Thanks for the Feedback. If you want the honest feedback of your friend on something you’ve said or done, ask for honesty. This gives your friend permission to be frank with you.)

You Fabricate Your Reality: Fabricated Future

We’ve just shown how your mind fabricates your present by interpreting events so they reflect well on you. We’ll now describe how your imagination works and how your mind fabricates your imaginings of the future.

The Mechanics of Imagining: You Use Existing Images, Experiences, and Memories

Gilbert says that you imagine things using images, experiences, and memories already stored in your brain. For instance, when you’re prompted to imagine a werewolf, your brain summons images of werewolves you’ve seen in movies. Your brain must use existing images to imagine things, emphasizes Gilbert: Without an existing reference, your brain can’t imagine something. This is why, if someone asks you to imagine a “sneedle,” you can’t do it because you have no stored images of a sneedle.

(Shortform note: In the same way it’s impossible for us to imagine something we have no prior reference for, as Gilbert argues, it’s often impossible for writers of sci-Fi novels, TV shows, and films to imagine facets of the future for which there are no current references. For example, the 1991 film Until the End of the World predicted that we would be using video-pay phones in 1999. At the time of the movie’s making, the scriptwriter perhaps could not conceive of a personal mobile device that made video calls.)

Your Mind Fabricates Your Vision of the Future

Now that we’ve explained the basic mechanics of imagining, let’s turn to some of the ways your brain fabricates your vision of the future:

Fabrication #1: You Create an Image of the Future Using Existing References

Gilbert first writes that you fabricate visions of the future that reflect events and experiences you’ve already been through, rather than new events and experiences yet to come. This is because, as described above, when you imagine future scenarios, your brain uses existing references—your current experiences and memories. The result, concludes Gilbert, is that your visions of the future don’t reflect what the future will be like.

Let’s see this in action: You discover you’ve won a prize at work, which your supervisor calls “amazing office swag.” You’ll receive this prize at the end of the day. You spend the rest of the day imagining what the prize will be, and you can only use your existing images or memories of “office swag” to do this. Perhaps in the past, you received a new cell phone as office swag, or you remember that your friend once won a car from her company. You therefore imagine that at the end of the day, you’ll receive a new cell phone and a car.

However, when the time comes, you only receive a mouse pad and a t-shirt. In this way, you’ve fabricated a vision of the future based only on existing images and memories—and this fabricated vision of the future ends up being incorrect.

The Upside of Using Existing References

Here, Gilbert presents using past experiences as references when predicting the future as wholly unhelpful, as this process often leads you to fabricate improbable future scenarios. This begs the question: Can using past experiences as references ever be helpful?

In Thinking in Bets, Annie Duke suggests that this process can be helpful when making decisions in the present. She calls the act of thinking about past experiences (and imagining future scenarios) “mental time travel” and argues that this process helps you make more rational decisions. According to Duke, mental time travel forces you to use the deliberative part of your brain, which takes into account all possible information when making a choice. This includes helpful information about the past that you can use as a reference for good present decisions.

For instance, imagine you’re deciding whether or not to eat a fifth cookie. You use mental time travel to reflect on past scenarios when you ate five cookies in quick succession and remember that doing so made you feel unwell. You use this past experience as a reference for a positive present decision: You decide not to eat the cookie and consequently avoid nausea.

Fabrication #2: You Omit Unpleasant Information From Your Vision of the Future

The second way your mind fabricates your view of the future is by omitting available yet unpleasant information from your predictions, writes Gilbert—particularly unpleasant information that questions the version of the future that you want to play out or believe will play out. Your mind does this because, as we saw when discussing interpreting the present, it prefers to consume information that supports your existing beliefs and ignore information that doesn’t.

This inclination to ignore undesirable information means you might create an image of the future that’s unrealistically positive. Here’s an example: You’re deciding between buying a gorgeous Victorian home that needs a lot of work and a newer yet less charming home. You know—perhaps even from previous experience—that the Victorian home will have structural problems due to its age and cost a lot to repair. But because you love the idea of living in a beautiful old home, you omit these shortcomings from your vision of your life in the Victorian home and buy it anyway. Once you’ve bought it, though, you’ll be unhappy with the amount and cost of repairs required.

(Shortform note: Gilbert suggests we omit disadvantageous information from our vision of the future because we don’t like to consider information that challenges our beliefs. But there might be an additional explanation for this tendency to leave out critical details: Our brains can only process a finite amount of information at a time. This means that in situations in which there’s a lot of information to consider—which house to buy, for instance—we simply can’t process it all. Our brains may then prioritize the advantageous information over the disadvantageous information, because, as Gilbert writes, it’s more appealing.)

Your Fabricated Reality Leads You to Make Poor Choices

We’ve just outlined the first part of Gilbert’s main argument: that your brain fabricates your perception of the past, present, and future. Now let’s move on to the second part of his thesis: how this fabricated reality leads you to make decisions about the future that aren’t conducive to happiness.

To present this part of the argument, we’ll first show that you lack awareness that your brain is fabricating your reality. We’ll then describe how this lack of awareness forms the foundation for poor decision-making that results in your unhappiness.

You Aren’t Aware You’re Fabricating Your Reality

Though you always supplement memories with assumed information, interpret events in the present positively, and imagine improbable futures, you don’t recognize you do this, says Gilbert. You believe you see, remember, and imagine the world exactly as it is and that your memories, experience of the present, and imaginings of the future are therefore objectively correct.

(Shortform note: According to Gilbert, you fabricate your entire reality but believe incorrectly that you perceive it objectively. However, this view may be too extreme: Sometimes, you do perceive the world objectively. For instance, when you touch a rose, you don’t fabricate your reality of being in pain—you experience the pain objectively. On the other hand, when your friend fails to smile at you and you’re immediately certain they’re mad at you, you’re fabricating your reality to a higher degree.)

Your Lack of Awareness Leads to Poor Choices About What to Do in the Future

Your lack of awareness that you’re fabricating your reality means you use fabricated and inaccurate memories and experiences to inform your choices about the future, argues Gilbert. Because these choices are based on falsehoods and overly optimistic imaginings, they often lead to unexpected and poor outcomes, which do not make you happy.

For instance, based on a memory of a short hike you took and think you enjoyed, you fabricate a vague vision of yourself in five years in which you’re climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and enjoying it. This vague and fabricated vision informs your decision to begin training for the climb. However, it turns out this decision makes you miserable because you hate physical exertion. In fact, you hated the physical exertion of your initial short hike but strategically omitted that negative detail when calling on your memories to create your vision of the Kilimanjaro climb. The choice to climb the mountain ultimately becomes a poor one because of these delusional imaginings.

Why Don’t All Choices Make Us Happy?

Earlier in this guide, we showed that our brains are wired to keep us as happy as possible as often as possible, even during adversity. This raises the question: If our minds are hard-wired to make us deludedly happy no matter what, why does Gilbert claim that certain decisions about the future make us unhappy? Shouldn’t our positive, fabricated interpretation of the world kick in to allow us to be happy even if we make “wrong,” unhappiness-producing choices about the future?

We might explain this by saying that certain choices about the future prevent us from using one or more of our previously described happiness-maintaining techniques. For instance, if you choose to climb Mount Kilimanjaro and join a group of people training for the climb, you’re no longer able to surround yourself with friends who bolster your belief that climbing the mountain will be fun and easy. Instead, you’re surrounded by experienced people who tell you that the climb will be incredibly difficult—and this erodes your happiness as a result of your choice.

Specific Poor Choices About What to Do in the Future

We just described the second part of Gilbert’s main argument: that your lack of awareness that you fabricate your reality leads you to make poor choices. We’ll now move on to the final part of Gilbert’s main argument: the specific poor choices about the future that leave unhappy.

Poor Choice #1: You Think You’ll Feel in the Future as You Do Now

According to Gilbert, you make choices about the future that are based on feelings you have now. Because how you’re feeling now may not reflect how you’d feel about the choice in the future, this can lead to poor decisions.

To explain this further, let’s first return to an idea we explored earlier: that your mind envisions the future using existing references (your current experiences and memories). Gilbert notes that when you’re considering a future choice, your mind pictures what that choice will look like using references from your past and present. You then have an emotional reaction to this picture in your mind, and this emotional reaction informs your decision—you’ll opt for the choice if you have a positive emotional reaction to the image of it.

Problems arise when your brain is already experiencing a strong emotional reaction to something in the present. In such cases, your brain focuses on your present feeling—ignoring the true future emotional reaction to the scenario you’ve imagined—and transposes it onto your imagined future scenario. You thus think your present feeling applies to the choice you’re considering for your future, even if your present emotion has nothing to do with the choice at hand. This can lead you to, say, reject a choice that would make you happy just because you’re feeling sad in the present.

Thinking Rationally, Not Emotionally

Gilbert’s description of how we accidentally transpose current feelings onto imagined future scenarios suggests that we’re doomed to make bad choices based on misplaced emotions. However, there may be a way to circumvent this issue: by using logic-driven tools to assess your choices, rather than relying on your possibly flawed emotions to make decisions.

One way to do this is by implementing a rigorous decision-making process in a spreadsheet:

• Step 1: State the goal of your decision—for instance, to move to a new city where you can live for the next 10 years.

• Step 2: Brainstorm options for achieving this goal. In this case, you’d write down cities you’re considering.

• Step 3: Define a set of criteria by which you’ll judge each option. At this point, rather than having an emotional reaction to your memories of both cities and making a decision based on that reaction, you’d instead decide what living criteria matter to you: Cost of living, proximity to public transit, and so on.

• Step 4: Assign a degree of importance to each criterion. You might value the cost of living over proximity to public transit, as you’re on a budget.

• Step 5: Define questions about how well each option fits the criteria. You might define the question “What is the average cost of a condo in each city?”

• Step 6: Perform multiple rounds of research to answer the questions and rank the different options based on your findings and the degree of importance of each criterion. (Don’t be afraid to re-rank the options based on new information as you continue your research.)

Poor Choice #2: You Anticipate Regretting the Wrong Choice

According to Gilbert, another type of poor choice about the future happens because you misjudge how much regret you’ll feel in the future and over what choice. Specifically, you mistakenly think that you’ll regret a bold, risky decision and that you won’t regret a safe decision. Because you want to avoid the pain of regret, you often opt for the safe decision. In reality, you’re more likely to regret a safe decision than a bold one.

(Shortform note: Gilbert presents regret as a negative feeling to avoid. But in The Paradox of Choice, Barry Schwartz argues that you could see regret as fulfilling several positive functions: The threat of regret causes you to seriously consider decisions, rather than making snap choices. Regret in the wake of a bad decision is also a learning tool, he writes, because it tells you how to behave better moving forward. Finally, when you regret something, you’re more likely to fix the situation or make amends with anyone you’ve harmed.)

You Can’t Make Better Choices About Your Future Based on Memories

Let’s conclude this guide by talking about the errors in your memory that, in Gilbert’s view, prevent you from ever correcting your poor choices about the future.

Error #1: You Remember Uncommon Experiences More Than Common Ones

First, you believe that extraordinary events in your past are more likely to reoccur than they are, writes Gilbert. This means you base decisions on the expectation that extraordinary events will happen, when they probably won’t.

You believe this because your mind recalls memories of extraordinary occurrences more readily than ordinary ones, claims Gilbert. Ordinary events and outcomes—like taking the train and arriving at work without incident—happen all the time, so your mind doesn’t register them as vividly as uncommon events and outcomes—like taking the train and being re-routed to a different city. You therefore overestimate the frequency and dominance of extraordinary events.

This means that when weighing a decision about the future, writes Gilbert, you’ll easily recall unique, extraordinary instances in the past when the option that normally doesn’t make you happy, did make you happy. Based on this selective memory, you’ll choose the option that probably won’t make you happy, thinking it’s more likely to generate happiness than it really is.

Using Uncommon Experiences and Overcomplicated Considerations

Gilbert claims that because your mind highlights memories of strange occurrences over commonplace ones, you believe strange events are more likely to occur in the future than they really are. You therefore base your choices about the future on uncommon past events.

In Thinking Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman describes a similar way your brain triggers poor decisions: by overcomplicating those decisions. Rather than relying on straightforward information and simple considerations—tantamount to using memories of commonplace occurrences to inform our choices—we give more weight to unimportant factors and favor complicated considerations over simple ones—which is similar to using unusual, extraordinary memories to inform our choices. This is a mistake, claims Kahneman, because often, simple considerations and decision-making formulas lead to the best decisions.

Error #2: You Remember How You Should Have Felt, Not How You Really Felt

Another reason your memories can’t help you correct your decision-making is that you reconstruct memories to present how you think you should have felt at the time, rather than how you did feel, says Gilbert. This means you don’t remember your true emotional reaction to an event and can’t learn from it.

Here’s an example: You hated going to your sister’s wedding. However, you believe that you should enjoy weddings because everyone does. Therefore, you’ll falsely remember yourself as having been happy at the event. This will prevent you from correcting your decision-making in the future, and you’ll RSVP “yes” to another wedding that will, in reality, not be fun for you.

(Shortform note: One way to better remember how you truly felt, rather than how you believe you should have felt, is to journal about your feelings. By noting down when you’re having an intense emotional reaction to an event and what, specifically, you’re feeling, you create a reliable historical account of your feelings, to which you can later refer and learn from. Journaling can even help you make sense of your feelings if you’re confused or overwhelmed about an event. This further reduces the chances that you’ll misremember or misinterpret how you felt about that event later.)