The Science Behind Happiness

 The word happy on the oxford dictionary's website means "feeling or showing pleasure or contentment". But in this Tedtalk the speaker, Dan Gilbert, provides an analysis of human happiness through a psychological and neurological scope. He discovered during his research that humans can test things out in their brains before doing it in reality. This evolutionary adaption has gravely impacted the human race.

It is very complex, where we might believe something would bring us more joy than another when in reality, that wouldn't be true. He simply explained his idea when he said if you were told of a made-up ice cream flavour like liver and onion, your brain would have the ability to test it and know that it would be disgusting. Gilbert then asked the audience which they preferred, to win the lottery or to become a paraplegic? Everyone thought who would want to be disabled and not win the lottery. But research showed that after a year of winning the lottery and a year of becoming a paraplegic, both had the same level of happiness. This shows that our evolution is not always an advantage, since we can have a bad event happen to us and become happy over time, Dan calls this synthetic happiness. Synthetic happiness is a type of happiness we feel when we get something we want. Synthesizing happiness is when we find the positives and try our best to look at the bright side, rather than dwelling over what we can't have or control.