I mentioned in our April email that The Knowledge Project podcast with Shane Parrish is my go-to for the middle of the night. On one of those nights recently, I listened again to his interview with Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who passed away in March this year aged 90.
I’ve copied an excerpt of the interview here:
The circumstances that make people happy and the circumstances that make them satisfied with their lives are not the same.
Happiness is mostly social. It’s being with people you love and who love you back.
Life satisfaction is much more conventional. It’s more about success: money, education, prestige, that sort of thing.
I used to think life satisfaction was irrelevant. We even had a research program trying to show that this was the case. But after a few years of doing that, I realised that people don’t seem to care about how happy they’ll be. They want to be satisfied with their lives. They seem to want to have a good story about their lives.
There are so many more interesting insights that Kahneman shares in this episode and in his books Thinking, Fast and Slow and his follow-up (with co-authors) Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment. Both worth a read if and when you get the chance.
Kahnemann was a true giant in the field of psychology and behavioural science. May he rest in peace.
Rob Pyne
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