Analysis Of Daniel Gilbert's Stumbling On Happiness

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People are biases about every aspect of their life. From religion, to the people they date, to the type of toothpaste they use, people already have a preset judgement about things because of experiences in their past. In the book Stumbling on Happiness, author Daniel Gilbert says the ability to think about our future is what separates humans from other animals. Gilbert suggests that our brains fall victim to a wide range of biases that cause our predictions of the future to be inaccurate. Due to these mental errors it is remarkably difficult to predict what will actually happen and what will make us happy. In the 2016 Presidential Election for the United States of America, majority of Americans thought it was merely impossible for candidate, Donald J. Trump, to win the presidency against his opponent Hillary Clinton. His win of the presidency was not expected by many, leaving most of America in a state of shock and anguish. It never occurred in the mindset of voters what if Trump actually won due to their preset judgements. Our biases stop us from making reasonable decisions because we only view one perspective on life. If we could view situations in more than one perspective, predictions about the future could be more accurate. …show more content…

From CNN, to The New York Times, to ENews forecast all websites and newscasts were telling voters that Clinton was for sure to be the next president of the United States of America. An article from the New York Times website clearly said that the chances of winning Hillary Clinton was 85%. Whereas Donald Trump only had a 15% chance of winning. The data was based solely on pre-election polls as of Election Day (Katz). Inspite of the pre-election polls, the exact Election results proofed quite the opposite. This evidence helped the reassure Hillary voters and be confident of her

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