‘When you finish, you’ll know yourself better, you’ll
understand the people you care about better’ ANGELA DUCKWORTH, author of Grit
‘Teeming with wisdom, insight, empathy, and sparkle. One of
the best books I have ever read’ CASS R. SUSNSTEIN, co-author of Noise
A founding father of behavioural economics reveals the
hidden logic of negative emotions with a clarity and humour that make our worst
feelings strangely easier to bear.
Every age has its illusions. Ours is that happiness is the
natural human condition. Behavioural economist George Loewenstein argues the
opposite: that our lives are inextricably shaped by the darker emotions we
spend so much time trying to avoid.
In The Opposite of Happiness, he draws on decades of
influential research—as well as insights from literature and from his own life
experiences—to offer a tour de force reexamination of the role negative
emotions play in our lives: why pain is stickier than pleasure, how the modern
world makes bad feelings worse, and why our attempts to escape misery usually
only sharpen its sting. Those who struggle to find and sustain happiness are
not unlucky or flawed, he argues, but merely human, suffering the slings and
arrows of an inherently negative nature. This knowledge comes, however, not as
a bitter pill but as much-needed solace for anyone navigating the frustrations
and heartbreaks of modern life.
In this fascinating deconstruction of negative emotions and
their behavioral consequences, Loewenstein explains how features of our mind,
like memory, attention, and self-esteem, conspire to keep us down. He reveals
the downside of supposedly uplifting feelings like hope, and untangles misery’s
intertwined forms: guilt and shame, jealousy and envy, loneliness and
depression, impatience, boredom, and regret. Drawing from a first-of-its-kind
Misery Survey, Loewenstein shares participants’ stories about, and insights
into, the diversity of negative emotions that collectively weigh us down.
Providing a provocative and refreshing counter argument to
the self-help industry, The Opposite of Happiness shares a sobering,
deeply human, and ultimately comforting truth: The sooner we understand our
negative natures, the sooner we will stop feeling guilty about failing to
achieve lasting bliss, and the better connected we will be to others who share
the same, or their own unique mix of, negative emotions.
About The Author
George Loewenstein is the Herbert A. Simon University
Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a
past president of the Society of Judgment and Decision Making and a Fellow of
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served on multiple National
Academy of Science and Institute of Medicine Panels and advised numerous
governmental organizations, including the National Institutes of Health and the
UK’s Behavioural Insights Team. Loewenstein grew up in the Boston suburbs and
received his PhD from Yale University. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife,
Donna Harsch, a professor of history at Carnegie Mellon.
