Intuitive diagnosis is reliable when people have a lot of relevant feedback. But people are very often willing to make intuitive diagnoses even when they're very likely to be wrong.

Most successful pundits are selected for being opinionated, because it's interesting, and the penalties for incorrect predictions are negligible. You can make predictions, and a year later people won't remember them.

Researchers who studied a thousand Dutch vacationers concluded that by far the greatest amount of happiness extracted from the vacation is derived from the anticipation period.

Alternative descriptions of the same reality evoke different emotions and different associations.

People who are cognitively busy are also more likely to make selfish choices, use sexist language, and make superficial judgments in social situations.

Being wealthy is often a powerful predictor that people spend less time doing pleasurable things and more time doing compulsory things and feeling stressed.

One study found that people who just thought about watching their favorite movie actually raised their endorphin levels by 27 percent.