The dominance of conclusions over arguments is most pronounced where emotions are involved.

It is only a slight exaggeration to say that happiness is the experience of spending time with people you love and who love you.

People are very good [at] thinking about agents. The mind is set really beautifully to think about agents. Agents have traits. Agents have behaviors. We understand agents. We form global impression of their personalities. We are really not very good at remembering sentences where the subject of the sentence is an abstract notion.

Optimism is normal, but some fortunate people are more optimistic than the rest of us. If you are genetically endowed with an optimistic bias, you hardly need to be told that you are a lucky person - you already feel fortunate.

A general “law of least effort” applies to cognitive as well as physical exertion. The law asserts that if there are several ways of achieving the same goal, people will eventually gravitate to the least demanding course of action. In the economy of action, effort is a cost, and the acquisition of skill is driven by the balance of benefits and costs. Laziness is built deep into our nature.

A large portion of the weekend effects is explained by differences in the amount of time spent with friends or family between weekends and weekdays.

If people can construct a simple and coherent story, they will feel confident regardless of how well grounded it is in reality.