Why are we happy Why aren’t we happy Ted Talk Video Discussion

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Why are we happy Why aren’t we happy Ted Talk Video Discussion

Watch the following TED Talk on Impact Bias, “the tendency to overestimate the hedonic impact of future events,” by Dan Gilbert (Why are we happy? Why aren’t we happy? | Dan Gilbert) (20 minutes).

The theme of this lecture is that we are not very good at predicting what will make us happy, an idea that you should recall was discussed at length in Chapter 2 of our text.

Text : Social Psychology (13th Ed.) David G. Myers, Jean Twenge

After watching it, give an example of something that has already happened in your life that you thought ahead of time would make you happy and comment on how you actually (remember) feeling afterwards (yes, I know, the phenomenon focused on in this talk/forum is predicting future happiness, so there is a bit of a “reconstruction” effect of you being asked to reflect ‘back’ to what you thought you would feel before something happened).

DISCUSS in terms of the video: Now comment on your example (memory) integrating one (or more) of the points made in the TED Talk.