having a fast-food restaurant one-tenth of a mile from school increases the obesity rate among the children at that school by more than 5 percent. Similarly, for pregnant women, a fast-food restaurant within a half mile of their house leads to a 1.6 percent increase in the chance of gaining over forty-four pounds during their pregnancy (1) – page xix
simply being asked to think about how happy you are feeling in the moment could affect your response (2) – page 24
Responses to life satisfaction questions are affected by apparently irrelevant factors, such as whether you are asked about political views before being asked a life satisfaction question (3) – page 5
Your satisfaction with life is much more highly correlated with your marital satisfaction if the marriage question is asked before the life satisfaction question (4) – page 5
We are more likely to regret not doing something than having done it (5) – page 20
College students regretted not working harder during winter breaks, while college alumni regretted not partying harder all those years (6) – page 20
being with people is good for feeling good, even at work (7) – page 29
Richer people are generally more likely to have more friends, get married, be in better health, and so on, all of which improve life satisfaction. So rather than isolating the effect of income, which economists tend to do, we need to sprinkle its effects across all the other inputs into life satisfaction. When this sprinkling takes place, the effect of income on life satisfaction is much greater than found previously in the literature because we are picking up its indirect effects as well as the direct effects that come from having a bigger bank balance (8) – page 37
The effect of genes, in particular, has led some to believe that we each have a set point of happiness that we fluctuate around but always return to. But this is not supported by evidence, because some events, like unemployment and disability, can permanently lower satisfaction with life (9) – page 37
Radiologists trained in the art of detecting a different kind of invisible gorilla—cancerous tumors—also failed to notice a small picture of a gorilla when it was placed in the upper corner of a CT lung scan. These specialists, trained in seeing the unusual, missed out on the extraordinarily unusual. They still did better than nonspecialists, though: 20 percent of radiologists said they saw the gorilla in the scan compared to no one from a general public sample (10) – page 50
These experiments illustrate powerfully that when you attend to one aspect of your environment you do not attend to another. This can lead to situational blindness, whereby you are so focused on one aspect of your environment that you fail to notice the bigger picture. This is most frequently discussed in the aviation and medical sectors to describe the causes of errors made by pilots and surgeons when they miss crucial information in their environment (11) – page 50
When wine shoppers pass by a display of French and German wines with French accordion music playing in the background, they’re more likely to pick up a French bottle. Play a German song by a brass Bierkeller band, and they’re more likely to pick up the German brand. Indeed, a study looking at just this showed that 70 percent of the bottles sold in the store reflected the music playing in the background. But when asked, only 14 percent of the shoppers said that the music was what influenced their purchase (12) – page 54
art historians are better able to spot a fake work of art when they transfer their wealth of knowledge and wisdom from system 2 to system 1, and thus make what appears to be a snap judgment (13) – page 54
In a weight-lifting competition, you would be more likely to lift a given weight if you were ranked tenth after the first round than if you were ranked first (14) – page 55
the time taken on accurately completing the Stroop task will be reduced when you have a full bladder (15) – page 56
We randomized the students into one of four different groups: (1) paid ten pence per step; (2) paid two pence per step; (3) simply encouraged to keep going by the researcher at fifteen-second intervals in the two minutes; and (4) a control group that was asked to perform the task without further incentive. Those being offered the cash exercised more: about 105 steps in groups 1 and 2 compared to 90 steps in groups 3 and 4. Those being paid ten pence, or who were being encouraged to exercise, were more satisfied with their performance… Those who thought they had done well on the exercise task (thus, those in the ten-pence and encouragement groups) ate, on average, about 320 calories compared to the 240 calories eaten by those who did not think they had done so well (those in the two-pence and control groups) (16) – page 59
It turned out that children who were more active at school rested when they were at home, and vice versa… Similar results were found in another study looking at the effect of walking versus driving to school (17) – page 59
Participants who, in an easy hypothetical hiring situation, chose to appoint a manifestly better black candidate for a job, thus had the chance to establish they were not racist and were then more likely to make prejudiced choices in a subsequent harder hiring decision (18) – page 60
participants who said they were endorsing Barack Obama instead of John McCain in the 2008 US presidential election were then more likely to make a prejudiced choice in a subsequent hiring task, or to allocate more money to a charity fighting poverty in a white rather than in an African American neighborhood (19) – page 60
It turns out that there was a significant effect on life satisfaction and mental health in 2001 during September, which then fell over the next couple of months to completely disappear by December (20) – page 61
Life satisfaction is hardly affected by weight gain. The theoretical model we developed posits that you can do one of two things to stay happy when you gain weight: the first is to expend effort in losing weight, and the second is to expend effort in playing down the importance of weight gain in your life. Our data analyses support the second explanation. As people put on weight, they shift the focus of their attention away from parts of their lives that are associated with weight, like health, toward aspects where their weight is less important, like work (21) – page 62
There is also now some genetic evidence to show that gaining weight may not necessarily make you any less happy. The same gene that is associated with a predisposition to obesity, the FTO gene, is actually associated with a reduced risk of major depressive disorders (22) – page 63
we don’t generally withdraw attention from traffic noise because cars do not go by at regular intervals. As disheartening evidence of this, children in urban areas who live in noisy, lower floors of apartment buildings have lower reading scores than those on quieter, higher floors where traffic noise doesn’t reach to the same extent (23) – page 65
In a study looking at testing for Huntington’s disease—an inherited genetic disorder that affects muscle coordination and generally leads to psychiatric problems and early death—those who were told that they had a decreased risk of the disease reported better mental health over the year of the study following testing than those who were told their risk was unchanged. So far, so obvious. But those who were told that they had an increased risk also reported better mental health than the group whose risk was unchanged. The unchanged-risk group arguably still faced the same uncertainty as before, whereas the other two groups benefited from the uncertainty being reduced, even if it was in a “bad” way (24) – page 66
These examples show how the resolution of uncertainty about bad life events is potentially good for your happiness. Your attention is diverted away from worrying about what might or might not happen (and all the possible stresses and strains that those scenarios might involve) toward dealing with a future that can be better planned and managed. This goes a long way toward explaining why people’s life satisfaction takes a massive drop close to the time of separation but then bounces back upon divorce.(25) – page 67
if you’re like English soccer fans, perhaps you’re more inclined to watch a game when you’re unsure about who will win the match. We often seek out uncertainty for pleasure (26) – page 67
in video game players, achieving goals releases dopamine, which is the pleasure-producing neurotransmitter in our brains (27) – page 73
We do know people are happier with their lives over time if they are satisfied with aspects of their jobs like their boss, pay, and daily tasks, which suggests it is most important that the job is a good fit for the individual rather than the type of job per se (28) – page 76
kids who have a sunnier disposition are more likely to get a degree, get hired, and get promoted (29) – page 82
those of us who are seen to be in a good mood are thought of as more attractive, which means getting better grades at school and more money at work (30) – page 82
Engaging in meaningful and purposeful activities promotes better health, social integration, and daily functioning (31) – page 82
Some of the activities linked to successful aging that people consider purposeful are golfing and exercise (32) – page 82
a lack of purpose at work, unsurprisingly, has been shown to result in lower productivity and increased absenteeism (33) – page 82
Students who feel bored during their free time are more likely to drop out before graduation from high school (34) – page 82
People in the United States say they are willing to give up about 15 percent of their life expectancy to avoid problems with walking and about the same to avoid moderate anxiety or depression. Yet my own recent research shows that the latter has about ten times as much of an impact on our happiness as the former (35) – page 85
your overall assessment of an experience doesn’t even pay that much attention to how long it lasted. This is known as duration neglect (36) – page 89
Job satisfaction is actually an excellent predictor of quit rates, and in the large data sets from Germany and the UK, peak and end job satisfaction are a better predictor of quitting than overall job satisfaction ratings (37) – page 91
reviewers of academic journal papers are more likely to publish articles that conform to their own theoretical perspective (38) – page 93
intentions explain, at most, only about a quarter of the variation in changes in health behaviors, such as exercise, leaving three-quarters to be explained by factors associated with the specific contexts that trigger an action—such as whether you have a nice outdoor area to exercise in or a gym at your office (39) – page 94
from childhood to adulthood, current income relative to previous income is a significant predictor of life satisfaction and mental health, whether people move up or down (40) – page 96
There is also evidence, again using reports of life satisfaction and mental health, that the gains from increases in income can be completely offset if your expectations about gains in income rise faster than does income itself (41) – page 96
Expectations are also central to experiences of purpose in life, as well as to the lack of it. Those who experience the most purpose at work have jobs that fit with their expectations about how they see themselves (42) – page 96
One of the most effective ways to get others to do as you would like is to make them feel that they are doing it voluntarily (43) – page 97
Pedometers, which monitor the number of steps you take, increase walking (44) – page 106
People who self-monitor their blood pressure are better able to reduce it (45) – page 106
Over six hundred diners at a fast-food restaurant estimated that their meals contained an average of about 120 calories less than they actually did (46) – page 106
the suggestion to write down all the calories in what you eat and drink to help you lose weight is a good one (47) – page 106
There is now evidence, though, that obese people get less pleasure from food, which may explain why they need to eat more of it. In one study, a group of overweight and obese women had their brains scanned while they were drinking milk shakes at the beginning and end of a six-month period. Relative to the women who did not gain weight over this period, the women who gained weight showed less activation in the regions of the brain that produce dopamine, which, as you may recall, is the neurotransmitter in our brain associated with reward and feelings of pleasure. Whether getting less pleasure from food is a cause or a consequence of weight gain doesn’t really matter because people who are overweight get less pleasure from food, regardless of the cause (48) – page 107
we will generally eat more when we are around other people. We tend to want to keep eating if we are around others, whereas if we are alone, our desire to eat again lessens after eating (49) – page 108
Children’s behavior and performance in school can be improved with challenging tasks (50) – page 108
It has also been found that applying a variety of different skills at work is linked to higher experiences of meaningfulness on the job (51) – page 108
Attend to your current experiences of exercising rather than what you think the future benefits will be, because health only weakly motivates behavior now, if at all (52) – page 109
It turned out that people were just as successful at discerning a man’s sexual orientation from their photograph if they looked at it for fifty milliseconds as compared to ten seconds: participants in each of these time conditions were right about the guy’s dating preferences about 60 percent of the time (statistically, this is much better than 50 percent, which chance would predict) (53) – page 121
Participants were provided with descriptions of cars with a number of desirable and undesirable characteristics and then randomly divided into three groups along the lines of the poster study. Again, those who took a break had the best chance of picking the cars with the most positive attributes. When the researchers put these participants under MRI scanners to see their brains while they were making choices, they found that different parts of the brain were activated during conscious and unconscious thought, suggesting that the unconscious mind is processing decision information even when the conscious mind is otherwise occupied (54) – page 122
Taking a lower-paying job somehow requires justification, making it less likely that you’ll accept it even if you know it would make you happier. Judgments based on tangible factors that are easy to measure, like salary, are of course much easier to justify than decisions based on intangibles, such as getting on with colleagues or doing more fulfilling work (55) – page 123
where moving to an opt-out donor registry increases the number of donor organs (56) – page 127
medical students who went to examine a patient complaining of heart palpitations were much more likely to comply with hand hygiene regulations when the smell of citrus was in the air (57) – page 127
prison inmates who had a view from their cell made fewer visits to the prison’s health care facilities than those who did not have a view, and surgical patients randomly selected to have a view of nature from their hospital room recovered more quickly than those who had a view of a brick wall (58) – page 128
If you can’t get out (and in fact even if you can), buy some plants or install a fish tank, both of which help to reduce stress (59) – page 128
Those who believed they had just taken a multivitamin supplement expressed more interest in a buffet than an organic meal (60) – page 129
We are more likely to enroll in a curbside recycling program if we have to make a written commitment to do so than if we learn about the program in another way, such as on a flyer or by telephone (61) – page 132
those who tweet about their attempts to lose weight are more likely to do so than those who just listen to a podcast about weight loss. At the end of six months of tweeting, every ten posts to Twitter were associated with 0.5 percent loss in weight, which is about one pound for an average-weight male in the United States (62) – page 132
If you set goals where you have some degree of control over the outcome, such as your physical health and feeling connected to others, you will experience more positive emotions than if you set a goal where you have less control over the outcome, such as being rich and famous.(63) – page 132
Wherever you are “on a journey”—or working through a goal that has some discernible start and finish points—the evidence suggests that you can make reaching the destination more likely by the “law of small numbers”: in plain English, “20 percent gone” is a good motivator, as is “20 percent to go” when you get there (rather than their inverses, “80 percent to go” and “80 percent gone”). Korean students who had to complete words based on the first few consonants in each word (this is evidently much harder to do in Korean than English) returned to the task more quickly after taking a break when their progress was presented this way (64) – page 133
if you kept a diary about your moods and your perceptions of the moods of those around you, there would be a close correspondence between your moods and their moods (65) – page 137
You are especially likely to be affected by how someone else feels if you like them (66) – page 137
Studies have found that life satisfaction and reports of pleasure fall when the income of those living in your local area rises (67) – page 139
In a very different study but with similar conclusions, African American participants took a bogus IQ test in which they were told that they either did better or worse than the person sitting near to them. They reported lower self-esteem when they were told they did worse than a white person but higher self-esteem when the person who did better than them was black (68) – page 140
Having more sex might make you happier but you will be made less happy if your friends are having more than you (or at least say that they are). (69) – page 140
Once a habit loop is established, it becomes difficult to inhibit even when it conflicts with changes in motivation and conscious intentions (70) – page 141
Addictions of various kinds are some of the most difficult habits to break. Beyond any physical or psychological dependency, though, environment also matters greatly. There is also often a wider range of external cues for feeding the addiction, which explains why it’s more likely that a smoker will become a regular user of nicotine than it is that a cocaine user will become a regular user of cocaine (71) – page 142
soldiers who were heroin users returning to the United States after the Vietnam War in 1971 were much less likely to be using heroin a year later than civilian heroin users: the soldiers’ usage patterns changed when their context changed. (72) – page 142
In a series of experiments that gave participants a choice between an experience (say, a vacation) and a possession (such as an electronic gadget), there was less social comparison for the experiences compared to the possessions (73) – page 146
pairs of participants who discussed experiential purchases reported having more favorable impressions of their conversation partners than those pairs who discussed material purchases (74) – page 147
You could try walking or cycling a bit more, which has been shown to make the journey to and from work quite pleasurable(75) – page 148
entrepreneurs report more innovation and are more likely to apply for patents when they have diverse social networks beyond just their family and friends (76) – page 149
If you saw six slides for thirty seconds each and thirty slides for six seconds each, you would think that you had spent more time looking at the thirty slides even though the time is obviously the same overall (77) – page 50
Those who are high in the personality trait “openness to new experiences” report being more satisfied with their lives and experience more positive emotions (78) – page 50
Twenty minutes of watching a comedy reduces stress levels by about the same amount as twenty minutes on a treadmill (79) – page 152
One hour of watching a funny video is enough to increase infection-fighting antibodies in the bloodstream for twelve hours, as well as activate “natural killer cells,” which selectively target infected and tumorous cells (80) – page 152
Laughter also promotes muscle relaxation: people who are about to receive an electric shock report being less anxious beforehand if they listen to a funny tape first (81) – page 152
Humor has also been used successfully to reduce perceptions of loneliness and pain in older people (82) – page 152
Fathers are more likely to get involved in Sure Start (an earlyintervention program for children) when Sure Start workers have a good sense of humor (83) – page 152
Your friends not only make you happier because they’re there to hang out with you but also because they make you feel like you matter (84) – page 154
Participants in the experiment were randomly assigned to one of three treatments: one where they were forced to multitask; one where they could organize their work by freely switching between the Sudoku puzzle and the word search; and one where they performed the tasks sequentially. They were awarded points for each correctly filled Sudoku cell and each word found. The total points scored were lowest in the first group and highest in the third (85) – page 156
e-mail alone costs UK businesses about £10,000 ($16,500) per employee per year. (86) – page 157
If you could charge $1.50 per minute for working at a computer you would feel more time pressure than if you charged only $0.15 per minute for exactly the same task. In fact, the same authors show that you only need to have your wealth brought to your attention to feel time pressed. If you were made to feel rich by being given a scale where “high savings” was anything over $500, you would report feeling “more pressed for time today” than if you were made to feel poor by being given a scale where you needed to have over $400,000 to be deemed to have high savings. (87) – page 158-159
Imagine you are asked some questions about how much you earned over the past year and that your friend answered the same questions as well as being asked their hourly wage. Then you each listen to eighty-six seconds of “The Flower Duet” from the opera Lakmé. Who do you think would enjoy the music the most and be the most patient? You would—because your friend has just been reminded how much she earns in a unit (an hour), which draws attention to itself. Similar effects were also found when the researchers allowed participants to create their own leisure experience by playing around online (88) – page 158-159
People with less than a college degree have had relatively more leisure time, and those with a college degree or higher have had relatively less. The gap between the incomes of the rich and the poor has widened considerably since the 1980s but the gap between the amounts of leisure time they have has widened, too, favoring those with lower incomes (89) – page 159
one study randomly assigned participants into groups that varied in how much time they were allowed to think about answers to trivia questions, and into further groups that determined whether or not they would be allowed to take more time to answer now at the expense of less time later. Time-poor participants had three hundred seconds to answer, whereas time-rich participants had one thousand seconds. The former group borrowed on average 22 percent of their budget (so, sixty-six seconds), whereas timerich participants borrowed on average 8 percent of their budget (so, eighty seconds). As you might expect, the time-rich groups did better than the time-poor groups, whether or not they could borrow, but the time-poor group performed the best when they could not borrow at all. In a nutshell, timepoor participants borrowed their way into poor performance. If a resource becomes scarce, we will all act in very similar ways to those who are currently poor in that resource (90) – page 160
while poorer people have more intrusive thoughts about money than do wealthier people, the latter ’s happiness is more negatively influenced by those thoughts (91) – page 160
one study found that men who experienced a lot of intrusive thoughts in the first month of their bereavement adapted less quickly, as indicated by their lower morale one year later compared to those who had fewer intrusive thoughts (92) – page 161
simply making a plan for how they would manage the thoughts was helpful (e.g., by starting a conversation with someone to bring attention to the present) (93) – page 162
Medical students evaluate more patients per hour and have more patient contact on ninehour shifts as opposed to twelve-hour ones (94) – page 170
we would seem to both remember and predict that short tasks of a couple minutes or so take longer than they actually do, but when it comes to longer tasks, we believe they will take less time than they actually do (95) – page 171
To shift their workload, they broke down their tasks into weekly elements and received small prizes, like movie tickets and restaurant coupons, for finishing each week. Compared to a group of loan officers who didn’t enter this antiprocrastination program, they increased the attainment of their goals by 30 percent and their bonus payments by 25 percent (96) – page 172
Students who were self-critical and reported disliking themselves because of their procrastinating past were more likely to procrastinate the second time around than those who forgave themselves (97) – page 173
If colleagues working in the same department as you are offered $20 for attending a fair about planning for retirement, you are three times more likely to attend—even though you will not get paid yourself—than if your colleagues are not incentivized to attend. Moreover, you will also be more likely to open and keep open a tax-deferred retirement account (98) – page 175
Employees who report that they receive information about how well they are performing at work are more likely to say that they experience high meaningfulness while they are working, so this is a purpose-driven route out of procrastinating (99) – page 175
giving your time away to help others, as in volunteering, will help you to feel less time pressed (100) – page 180
the “purchase” of warm glow—the positive feelings obtained from helping others—is the principal reason for giving (101) – page 181
When the hungry bat was reintroduced into the group, some of the other bats would regurgitate into the starved bat’s mouth, even though they weren’t genetically related. Those who regurgitated were subsequently more likely to be fed by the bat they had previously fed when it was their turn to be left out of the evening feed (102) – page 182
simply remembering instances of when we have been kind to others has been shown to increase how happy we say we are (103) – page 184
Charitable giving seems to have the greatest impact on your happiness when it’s clear to you where your money is going and who and how it will help. (104) – page 184
In games where players can earn more money if everyone cooperates, the quicker people are asked to make decisions about their moves, the more likely they are to cooperate (105) – page 185
A randomly selected sample of participants were then told that they had done well on the task (irrespective of how well they had actually performed). At the end of the experiment, all participants were offered the chance to give some of their winnings to charity. You can guess what’s coming, right? Those who were told they had done well gave considerably less to charity than those given no feedback (34 percent compared to 50 percent) (106) – page 186
people who were willing to donate sticks of honey to other adults in their camp were more likely to have friends who were willing to make donations, too (107) – page 186
putting a smiley or frowny face on a postcard to reflect a street’s recycling performance improved recycling rates overall by activating a social norm for recycling (108) – page 186
When the names of donors are displayed for donations with ranges of donation amounts, the majority of donors donate at exactly the lowest amount in a given range. Carnegie Mellon University publishes the names of donors who have given between $1,000 and $4,999 but does not specify what amount donors give. Almost 70 percent of these donations in 1988–89 were exactly $1,000. A similar policy operated for donations to the “Cameron Clan” at Carnegie Mellon, where the names of donors who had given between $500 and $999 were published. The average donation to this fund was $525. The Harvard Law School Fund had the same policy in 1993–94 and 93 percent of the donations were exactly $500 (109) – page 187
We’re also more generous when we are competing with other people about who can be the most generous—and more so than when we are competing for personal gain (110) – page 187
There is also some evidence that distraction can make it more likely for you to blame others for their misfortune. Imagine being asked to think about the level of compensation to award to a guy called Mike whose foot was broken when a light fixture fell on it at a baseball stadium—but when he was sitting in a seat that he had “stolen.” If you were asked to read and recall a list of words while thinking about this judgment as compared to cracking straight on with determining the compensation, you would be more likely to give Mike less and blame him more if you had to recall the words after making the judgment (111) – page 188