It turns out there's quite a bit of cognitive dissonance impairing our understanding of motivation and happiness. Duke University's Professor Dan Ariely fills in the gaps. Ariely's latest book is "Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations" (goo.gl/SkXk2p). Read more at BigThink.com: bigthink.com/videos/dan-ariely-on-the-science-of-motivation-and-pursuing-happiness Follow Big Think here: YouTube: goo.gl/CPTsV5 Facebook: www.facebook.com/BigThinkdotcom Twitter: twitter.com/bigthink Transcript - So when we think about what motivates people maybe the first think about is what we think motivates people and what don’t we understand motivates people. And maybe the first misunderstanding is about the pleasure principle. So we have this idea of we have the right to pursue happiness and we’re trying to be happy and that’s really what we’re pursuing – happiness. But think about it. What gives you happiness in a way that is observable? Maybe sitting on the beach drinking a mojito or maybe sitting on the sofa watching a sitcom. But if you do almost anything that is useful, meaningful, that you take pride of it’s not the same things. But imagine you have a whole life of sitting on the beach drinking mojitos. How happy would that life be? So the first I think mistake is that we pursue momentary happiness rather than longer term happiness. So we do the things that will make us laugh out loud today kind of. Not always laugh out loud but kind of like that. And we don’t do the things that are difficult and complex and challenging but give us a very different sense of happiness. Think about something like running a marathon. You don’t see anybody happy. Like if you came as an alien and you image peoples’ brains and you looked at their facial expressions as they’re running a marathon you would say somebody’s punishing them. Read Full Transcript Here: goo.gl/RthrJa.

Be the first to comment