Psychologists really aim to be scientists, white-coat stuff, with elaborate statistics, running experiments.

When people believe a conclusion is true, they are also very likely to believe arguments that appear to support it, even when these arguments are unsound.

Mood evidently affects the operation of System 1: when we are uncomfortable and unhappy, we lose touch with our intuition. These findings add to the growing evidence that good mood, intuition, creativity, gullibility, and increased reliance on System 1 form a cluster. At the other pole, sadness, vigilance, suspicion, an analytic approach, and increased effort also go together. A happy mood loosens the control of System 2 over performance: when in a good mood, people become more intuitive and more creative but also less vigilant and more prone to logical errors.

Mental effort, I would argue, is relatively rare. Most of the time we coast.

People talk of the new economy and of reinventing themselves in the workplace, and in that sense most of us are less secure.

Psychologists really aim to be scientists, white-coat stuff, with elaborate statistics, running experiments.

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