Daniel Gilbert is the Harvard College Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. His research with Tim Wilson on "affective forecasting" investigates how and how well people can make predictions about[…]
Sign up for the Smarter Faster newsletter
A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people
Gilbert talks about why we’re so bad at predicting what makes us happy.
Question: Beyond a simple title, how would you describe what you do for a living?
Dan Gilbert: Well I’m a professor, which means I’m a teacher and a researcher. And as a teacher I spend lots of time with young people – undergraduates and graduate students – training them . . . teaching them and training them for their later profession. As a researcher, I spend most of my time trying to understand why people are so damn bad at figuring out what will make them happy in the future.
Recorded on: 6/12/07
▸
2 min
—
with
