Looking Back

Of all the topics we covered, I feel like the one I learned the most about was Happiness. Before hand I had no idea that there are people who study the science of happiness or even that there was a science of happiness. This topic introduced words like impact bias and free choice paradigm. It also introduced the concepts of synthetic and natural happiness. This topic also introduced us to Malcolm Gladwell who is a student of Howard Moskowitz's and Dan Gilbert's way of thinking.

According to Dan Gilbert, who is somewhat of an authority on happiness, synthetic happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted but natural happiness is what we get when we don't get what we wanted. Near the end of the topic we listened to Malcolm Gladwell talk about Howard Moskowitz who was an American market researcher and psycho physicist. Moskowitz had a very different approach to his research. He came up with the idea to have not just one pepsi, but multiple; and the idea to create multiple pickle flavors including one to satisfy the need for a zesty pickle. He was always improving and never satisfied with what he had already done. He believed that the philosophy of reaching for a higher mustard was wrong. He believed that there should be multiple kinds of different people due to the fact that people don't really know what they want.