Book SummaryStumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Stumbling on Happiness

In Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert shows how, despite our best efforts, we often fail to make choices that maximize our future happiness. He claims this is because our imaginations (our capacity to envision the future and speculate about what will make us happiest), our memories, and perceptions of the present are highly subjective and inaccurate. When we make choices about our futures based on this inaccurate information, those choices end up being sub-optimal and not conducive to our future happiness. It seems that we more often stumble on happiness than successfully create it.

In this guide, we’ll first describe why it’s hard to talk about happiness and how we can get around those hurdles to have a productive conversation about it. We’ll then outline Gilbert’s argument that we fabricate the past, present, and future, and that this fabricated view of the world leads us to make happiness-reducing choices about our future. We’ll conclude by showing how, despite our best intentions, we can’t ever overcome these errors in our decision-making.

Why It’s Difficult to Talk About Happiness

According to Gilbert, a major reason why it’s difficult to talk about happiness is that you can’t describe it unless you reference something else. You can only talk about happiness by saying what makes you happy or what happiness is like. You cannot concretely say what happiness itself is.

For instance, you might explain to a friend that the happiness you felt when your fiancé proposed was like the feeling of awakening to a warm spring morning, or you might show them a picture of your delighted face in an engagement photo. You can’t, however, describe your happiness without these references.

(Shortform note: Gilbert contends that it’s difficult to describe happiness without using external comparisons. However, researchers have been able to discern with more ease what makes you happy: In the seminal Harvard Study of Adult Development, which tracked the health and well-being of 268 Harvard students over the course of 80 years, researchers found that having strong relationships was the greatest predictors of happiness.)

How to Talk About Happiness Despite This Difficulty

While Gilbert acknowledges the difficulty of discussing happiness, he claims you can still have a constructive discourse about it and presents two propositions for how to do this:

Proposition #1: We Should Rely on First-Hand Accounts of Happiness

Though our attempts to discuss happiness will always be flawed, Gilbert writes that they will be least flawed if we rely on accounts of happiness by the people experiencing it—not by observers. Someone eating a cookie is better able to describe the happiness of eating a cookie than the person watching them eat a cookie, for instance.

(Shortform note: There are both advantages, as Gilbert points out, and disadvantages to using self-reported data on happiness—or, indeed, anything. Common disadvantages include people (particularly experiment subjects) giving responses they think are socially acceptable, rather than honest. For instance, when asked if a picture of a smiling baby makes them happy, a subject may answer “yes” because they feel that to be the acceptable response, even if it’s not true. Subjects can also interpret questions differently. For instance, one subject might interpret a question as being about their general level of happiness in life, while another subject might interpret the same question as referring to their present happiness.)

Proposition #2: Large Numbers of Similar Experiences Are Reasonably Accurate

Additionally, Gilbert states that when large numbers of people report the same experience of happiness, we can take that experience to be reasonably accurate—this is commonly known as the law of large numbers. In formulating his principles about happiness, Gilbert therefore relies on ideas and definitions of happiness that large sample sizes of people commonly agree upon.

The Law of Large Numbers in AI Medicine

The law of large numbers has applications beyond understanding human behavior, as Gilbert proposes here. In artificial intelligence, for instance, scientists use it to suggest the best course of treatment for a certain condition. AI first picks out relevant information about treatments and their success rates from a vast array of medical records. It then sorts that information based on patterns it detects: for instance, which treatments were the most successful in certain circumstances. Finally, it proposes the treatment most likely to succeed for a specific patient based on the information it found and categorized.

It’s only by using the law of large numbers—and the idea that the shared results of large numbers of similar treatment experiences tend to be accurate—that AI can recommend treatments effectively.

You Fabricate Your Reality: Fabricated Memories

We’ve just described why it’s hard to talk about happiness and the strategies we can use to reduce that difficulty as much as possible. Now, let’s turn to the first part of the argument Gilbert makes about why it’s so hard to predict what will make us happy: that your mind fabricates your memories, perception of the present, and imaginings of the future and that these are not objective reflections of reality. We’ll start by describing how the mind fabricates your memories.

Your Brain Fills in Omissions in Memories With Assumed Information

According to Gilbert, when you summon a memory, **your mind supplements...

Stumbling on Happiness Summary Shortform Introduction

In Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert presents a fundamental problem with humans’ quest for happiness: In the present, you make choices and take actions to bring about future events that you believe will make you happy. However, those choices and actions don’t always make you happy and often make you actively unhappy.

Gilbert’s explanation for this is that your imagination (which you use to envision the future and what will bring you the most joy), your memory, and your perception of the present are largely inaccurate. When you use these inaccurate and poorly-informed visions 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. This means that frequently, the best way to find happiness is not to deliberately plan for it but to simply stumble upon it by accident.

About the Author

Daniel Gilbert is an award-winning writer, teacher, and researcher in social psychology. His interests include decision-making, humans’ relationship to the future, and social inference—how humans attempt to understand each other. He’s currently the [Edgar Pierce Professor of...

Stumbling on Happiness Summary Part 1: Why It’s Difficult to Talk About Happiness

Have you ever wondered why you so often regret the decisions you make about what to do in the future? In Stumbling on Happiness, Harvard psychology professor Daniel Gilbert points out that our imaginations (our capacity to envision the future and speculate about what will make us happiest), memories, and perceptions of the present are highly subjective and inaccurate. When we make choices about our futures based on this inaccurate information, those choices end up hindering our future happiness. For this reason, it seems that we more often stumble on happiness than successfully create it.

Gilbert found that during moments of adversity in his life, he was incapable of understanding that his unhappiness would pass and that life would go back to normal—in other words, he was fabricating a dark vision of the future that didn’t reflect what it would truly be like. He embarked on a journey to discover why he was unable to accurately predict the future (and how he’d feel about it), and his research in this area became the basis for this book. Stumbling on Happiness may not show you how to predict the future and overcome the cognitive barriers to making good choices about your...

Stumbling on Happiness Summary Part 2.1: You Fabricate Your Reality | Fabricated Memories

We’ve just described why it’s hard to talk about happiness and the strategies we can use to reduce that difficulty so that we can have a constructive conversation about it.

Now, let’s turn to the first part of the argument Gilbert makes about why it’s hard to predict what will make us happy: that your mind fabricates your memories, perception of the present, and imaginings of the future and that these are not objective reflections of reality. We’ll start by describing how the mind fabricates your memories.

Your Brain Fills in Omissions in Memories With Assumed Information

According to Gilbert, when you summon a memory, your mind supplements existing pieces of the memory with assumed information. Your mind must do this because you don’t store memories as complete experiences of an event, which would include a massive amount of sensory detail, feelings, and thoughts. Memories are only stored snippets and narratives of the event, with many details omitted. This means that your memories are made up of both true-to-life and assumed (potentially false) information that fills the omissions.

For instance, if you spend a day at the zoo, all you might store in memory...

Stumbling on Happiness Summary Part 2.2: You Fabricate Your Reality | Fabricated Perception of the Present

In the last chapter, we described how you fill in inevitable gaps in your memory with assumed information. Now, let’s move on to describe two ways you fabricate your present reality: by filling in visual and aural gaps in your perception with assumed information, and by interpreting present events in a way that’s advantageous to you.

Fabrication #1: Your Brain Fills in Gaps in the Present With Assumed Information

Your brain doesn’t just fill in the gaps in your memory with assumed information, claims Gilbert: It even fills in the gaps in your visual and aural perception of the world right now with assumed information.

First, says Gilbert, you have a literal blind spot—a small area you can’t see—and your brain fills in that spot based on what it sees around it. For example, if you’re looking at a blue sky, but part of your perception is obscured by your blind spot, your brain will fill in the blind spot with the blue sky it does see.

Second, adds Gilbert, your brain fills in sounds you don’t hear clearly or fully with approximations based on the contextual sounds you do hear. For example, if you’re talking to a friend while a dog barks nearby, you might...

Shortform Exercise: Recognize There’s Information That Doesn’t Support Your Beliefs

Strengthen your awareness that you base your beliefs and actions only on certain information—usually, information that you agree with—and that you therefore interpret your reality, rather than view it objectively.

Note some of your current lifestyle choices and habits. These could include dietary choices (Are you a vegan or vegetarian, for instance?), exercise choices (Do you exercise regularly? At what time of the day?), recreational choices (How do you spend your free time? Playing sports? Watching TV?), or any other conscious choice you’ve made about how to lead your daily life.

Stumbling on Happiness Summary Part 2.3: You Fabricate Your Reality | Fabricated Future

In the last chapter, we showed how your mind fabricates your present by filling in your visual and aural blind spots with assumed information and interpreting events so they reflect well on you.

We’ll conclude Part 2 by describing how you fabricate your imaginings of the future. Because your imagination is the faculty most relevant to Gilbert’s overarching argument that you make poor choices about the future based on bad information, we’ll spend time first explaining why and how you imagine the future in the first place. We’ll then move on to the types of fabrications your mind makes about the future.

You Imagine the Future Because Doing So Makes You Happy

Gilbert writes that humans’ most basic desire in life is to be happy and that every action we take is in service of achieving happiness. Imagining the future is one important way for us to increase our happiness. We can define “imagining the future” as thinking about future scenarios and who we might be in the future, as well as planning for both, explains Gilbert.

(Shortform note: It’s easy to confuse the concept of “imagining” as Gilbert describes it with the idea of “fantasizing” or “daydreaming.” But...

Shortform Exercise: Notice When You Omit Information From Your Vision of the Future

Recognize when you might not be considering unfavorable or negative information when envisioning future events and situations.

Think of a recent event or situation you looked forward to but that went wrong in some way. How did you picture the event or situation in your imagination? Be as specific as possible. (For instance, you might have looked forward to your birthday party, thinking about the friends you’d see and gifts you’d receive.)

Stumbling on Happiness Summary Part 3: 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 main 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 fabricates your reality. We’ll then describe how this lack of awareness makes you happier now but eventually 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...

Stumbling on Happiness Summary Part 4: Six Poor Choices About What to Do in the Future

In the last part, we 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: six specific poor choices about the future that leave you 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 in Part 2.3: 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...

Shortform Exercise: Reflect on the Impact of Risky and Safe Choices

Consider the effects of risky and safe choices, and explore which type of choice you might ultimately pursue.

Briefly describe a recent choice you had to make between something risky and something safe. (For instance, you might have been deciding between staying in and going to a party where you didn’t know anyone.)

Stumbling on Happiness Summary Part 5: You Can’t Make Better Choices About Your Future

In the last part, we described six types of poor choices you can make about your future. Now, let’s conclude by talking about potential solutions to correct these poor choices—and why, in Gilbert’s view, none of these solutions work.

We’ll first cover solutions based on personal experience—in other words, using your memories of past events to correct your decision-making in the future. We’ll then talk about solutions based on the insights of others—using the experiences and learning of others to inform your decision-making.

Trying to Make Better Choices Using Memories

You might be tempted to think that you can use your memory of past poor choices to make better decisions about the future, writes Gilbert. But this is impossible because your memory is faulty in several ways we’ve already discussed: It’s made up of snippets of an experience, not the experience itself, and you constantly rewrite memories based on new information. This means that you rely on fabricated memories when trying to correct decisions, which leads to poor outcomes.

Your memory misrepresents the past and keeps you locked in a cycle of making poor choices about your future in three specific ways:...