Daniel Gilbert Biography

Daniel Gilbert is an American social psychologist and writer. He is the Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and is known for his research with Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia on affective forecasting.

He is the author of the international bestseller Stumbling on Happiness, which has been translated into more than 30 languages and won the 2007 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books.

He has also written essays for several newspapers and magazines, hosted a short, non-fiction television series on PBS, and given three popular TED talks.

Daniel Gilbert Age

Gilbert was born on November 5, 1957, in the United States of America. He is 65 years old as of 2022.

Daniel Gilbert Height

Gilbert stands at an estimated height of about 5 feet 10 inches tall.

Daniel Gilbert Family

Gilbert is private when it comes to his personal life, he has not revealed any details about his parents nor if he has any siblings. This information will be updated soon.

Daniel Gilbert Wife

Daniel Gilbert is married to Marilynn Oliphant with whom he lives with in Cambridge, Massachusetts United States. He has one son and two grandchildren.

Daniel Gilbert Net Worth

Gilbert has an estimated net worth of $ 10 million dollars.

Daniel Gilbert Salary

Gilbert earns an estimated salary of about $50000 to $100000 annually.

Daniel Gilbert Education

Daniel Gilbert received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Colorado Denver in 1981 and a Ph.D. in social psychology from Princeton University’s Department of Psychology in 1985. From 1985 to 1996, he was a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. Since 1996, he has been a faculty member at Harvard University.

Daniel Gilbert Social psychologist and writer.

When Daniel Gilbert was a boy, he loved books about optical illusions, and he was astounded by how the brain and eyes could be fooled. At the age of 19, Gilbert was a high school dropout who wanted to be a science-fiction writer.

Daniel Gilbert had an attempt to improve his writing skills, he went to the local community college to enroll in a creative writing class. When he was told that the creative writing class was full, he signed up for the only class that was still open: Introduction to Psychology.

Gilbert’s 2006 book, Stumbling on Happiness, was a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into more than 30 languages. It won the 2007 Royal Society Prizes for Science Books and was included as one of fifty key books in psychology in 50 Psychology Classics (2006) by Tom Butler-Bowdon.

Gilbert’s non-fiction essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, TIME, and others, and his short stories have appeared in Amazing Stories and Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, as well as other magazines and anthologies.

He has been a guest on numerous television shows including 20/20, the Today Show, Charlie Rose, and The Colbert Report. He is the co-writer and host of the 6-hour NOVA television series “This Emotional Life” which aired on PBS in January 2010 and won several Telly Awards.

He has given three popular TED talks, including one of the 20 most-viewed talks of all time (as of December 2013). Beginning in 2013, Daniel Gilbert appeared in a series of Prudential Financial television commercials that used data visualization to get Americans to think about the importance of saving for their retirements.

For example, in one advertisement, people were asked to put stickers on a timeline to indicate the age of the oldest person they knew to illustrate the recent increase in life expectancy. In another, Gilbert started a chain reaction and set a Guinness World Record by toppling a 30-foot (9 m) domino to illustrate the power of compound interest. Third, people put magnets on walls marked “Past” and “Future” to illustrate the optimism bias.

Daniel Gilbert Books

• Stumbling on Happiness 2006
• Psychology Third Canadian Edition 2014
• Loose-Leaf Version of Psychology 3e and Launchpad (Six Month Access) 2016
• Psychology + the Psychology Major’s Companion: Canadian Edition 2017
• Psychology, Canadian Edition, and Launchpad for Psychology, Canadian Edition (Six-Month Access) 2017
• Psychology 4e, Canadian Edition, and Psychology and the Real World 2e 2017
• Psychology 4e & Launchpad for Psychology 4e (Six Months Access) 2017
• Psychology 4e & Reef (Six Month Access) 2017
• Loose-Leaf Version for Introducing Psychology, Launchpad (Six Month Access) and MacMillan Learning Student Flyer for the University of Texas at Dallas 2017
• Psychology, Canadian Edition 2017
• Psychology with 12-Month Access Code 2012

Daniel Gilbert Ted Talks

When people talk about happiness, it’s often referred to as a search—a quest to find something so elusive and out of reach, that there are now tons of ideas on how to acquire it. But shockingly, it could be our power to choose from thousands of great experiences in life that actually keep us from being happy.

In this TED Talk, psychologist Dan Gilbert breaks down happiness into its two most basic components the happiness we stumble upon and the happiness we create to reveal a shocking truth. “Natural happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted, and synthetic happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted,” he says. “And in our society, we have a strong belief that synthetic happiness is of an inferior kind.”

Gilbert says neither of the two is any less real than the other. In fact, everyone has the ability to synthesize happiness. But while having the freedom to choose different things in life creates natural happiness, synthetic happiness thrives on the exact opposite. “The psychological immune system works best when we are totally stuck when we are trapped,” Gilbert says.

“This is the difference between dating and marriage. You go out on a date with a guy, and he picks his nose; you don’t go out on another date. You’re married to a guy and he picks his nose? He has a heart of gold, [but] don’t touch the fruitcake! You find a way to be happy with what’s happened.” An experiment at Harvard proved just that. Gilbert created a photography course in which students took pictures around campus and learned to how to develop them in a dark room.

He allowed the students to choose their two best photos, and then he split the students into two experimental groups. The first was asked to give up one of their photos the other group was asked the same but had the option to swap the photo days later if they changed their mind. Surprisingly, the students who were stuck with their photo, unable to swap it for the other, were more satisfied with their choice.

“And people who are deliberating “Should I return it? Have I gotten the right one? Maybe this isn’t the good one? Maybe I left the good one?” have killed themselves. They don’t like their picture, and in fact, even after the opportunity to swap has expired, they still don’t like their picture. Why? Because the [reversible] condition is not conducive to the synthesis of happiness.”

That doesn’t mean people shouldn’t have preferences, Gilbert says. Some things truly are better than others. The real risk in happiness happens when people overrate their choices, allowing the mind to conjure dozens of this-or-that scenarios that keep the brain in a constant search.

“When our ambition is bounded, it leads us to work joyfully,” Daniel Gilbert says. “When our ambition is unbounded, it leads us to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt others, to sacrifice things of real value. When our fears are bounded, we’re prudent, we’re cautious, we’re thinking. When our fears are unbounded and overblown, we’re reckless, and we’re cowardly.”

Daniel Gilbert Awards and honors

Gilbert has won numerous awards for his teaching, including the Harvard College Professorship and the Phi Beta Kappa Teaching Prize. He has also won awards for his research, including the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Award for an Early Career Contribution to Psychology.

In 2008, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Gilbert was awarded an honorary degree from Bates College, in Lewiston, Maine on May 29th, 2016. He was named the recipient of a 2019 William James Fellow Award from the Association for Psychological Science for his contributions to social psychology.