TED Talks: The Official TED Guide to Public Speaking

by Chris J. Anderson

From field studies to laboratory studies, we see that winning or losing an election, gaining or losing a romantic partner, getting or not getting a promotion, passing or not passing a college test, on and on, have far less impact, less intensity, and much less duration than people expect them to have. This almost floors me—a recent study showing how major life traumas affect people suggests that, if it happened over three months ago, with only a few exceptions, it has no impact whatsoever on your happiness. Why? Because happiness can be synthesized! . . . Human beings have something that we might think of as a psychological immune system. A system of cognitive processes, largely nonconscious cognitive processes, that help them change their views of the world so that they can feel better about the worlds in which they find themselves. There it is, synthetic happiness explained. It’s been built on the concepts of prefrontal cortex, experience simulator, and impact bias. And to make it clear, Gilbert uses another metaphor, that of the immune system. You already know what an immune system is, so to think of this as a psychological immune system is easy. The concept is not delivered in a single leap but piece by piece, and with metaphors to guide and show how the pieces fit together. But perhaps we’re still not fully believing it. So Gilbert encourages us that he really does mean what he seems to be saying by giving a series of examples of people’s psychological immune system...