The Opposite of Happiness

A founding father of behavioral economics reveals the hidden logic of negative emotions with a clarity and humor that make our worst feelings strangely easier to bear. Every age has its illusions. Ours is that happiness is the natural human condition. Behavioral economist George Loewenstein argues the opposite: that our lives are inextricably shaped by the darker emotions we spend so much time trying to avoid. In The Opposite of Happiness, he draws on decades of influential research—as well as insights from literature and from his own life experiences—to offer a tour de force reexamination of the role negative emotions play in our lives: why pain is stickier than pleasure, how the modern world makes bad feelings worse, and why our attempts to escape misery usually only sharpen its sting. Those who struggle to find and sustain happiness are not unlucky or flawed, he argues, but merely human, suffering the slings and arrows of an inherently negative nature. This knowledge comes, however, not as a bitter pill but as much-needed solace for anyone navigating the frustrations and heartbreaks of modern life. In this fascinating deconstruction of negative emotions and their behavioral consequences, Loewenstein explains how features of our mind, like memory, attention, and self-esteem, conspire to keep us down. He reveals the downside of supposedly uplifting feelings like hope, and untangles misery’s intertwined forms: guilt and shame, jealousy and envy, loneliness and depression, impatience, boredom and regret. Drawing from a first-of-its-kind Misery Survey, Loewenstein shares participants’ stories about, and insights into, the diversity of negative emotions that collectively weigh us down. Providing a provocative and refreshing counter argument to the self-help industry, The Opposite of Happiness shares a sobering, deeply human, and ultimately comforting truth: The sooner we understand our negative natures, the sooner we will stop feeling guilty about failing to achieve lasting bliss, and the better connected we will be to others who share the same, or their own unique mix of, negative emotions.

George Loewenstein is the Herbert A. Simon University Professor of Economics and Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. He is a past president of the Society of Judgment and Decision Making and a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served on multiple National Academy of Science and Institute of Medicine Panels and advised numerous governmental organizations, including the National Institutes of Health and the UK's Behavioural Insights Team. Loewenstein received his PhD from Yale University and lives in Pittsburgh with his wife, Donna Harsch, a professor of history at Carnegie Mellon.