Stumbling on Happiness

by Daniel Todd Gilbert

most Americans can be classified as one of two types: those who live in California and are happy they do, and those who don’t live in California but believe they’d be happy if they did. Yet, research shows that Californians are actually no happier than anyone else—so why does everyone (including Californians) seem to believe they are?13 California has some of the most beautiful scenery and some of the best weather in the continental United States, and when non-Californians hear that magic word their imaginations instantly produce mental images of sunny beaches and giant redwood trees. But while Los Angeles has a better climate than Columbus, climate is just one of many things that determine a person’s happiness—and yet all those other things are missing from the mental image. If we were to add some of these missing details to our mental image of beaches and palm trees—say, traffic, supermarkets, airports, sports teams, cable rates, housing costs, earthquakes, landslides, and so on—then we might recognize that L.A. beats Columbus in some ways (better weather) and Columbus beats L.A. in others (less traffic). We think that Californians are happier than Ohioans because we imagine California with so few details—and we make no allowance for the fact that the details we are failing to imagine could drastically alter the conclusions we draw.14