Daniel T. Gilbert’s research while affiliated with Harvard University and other places

Anecdotal evidence indicates that people believe that morality is declining1,2. In a series of studies using both archival and original data (n = 12,492,983), we show that people in at least 60 nations around the world believe that morality is declining, that they have believed this for at least 70 years and that they attribute this decline both to the decreasing morality of individuals as they age and to the decreasing morality of successive generations. Next, we show that people’s reports of the morality of their contemporaries have not declined over time, suggesting that the perception of moral decline is an illusion. Finally, we show how a simple mechanism based on two well-established psychological phenomena (biased exposure to information and biased memory for information) can produce an illusion of moral decline, and we report studies that confirm two of its predictions about the circumstances under which the perception of moral decline is attenuated, eliminated or reversed (that is, when respondents are asked about the morality of people they know well or people who lived before the respondent was born). Together, our studies show that the perception of moral decline is pervasive, perdurable, unfounded and easily produced. This illusion has implications for research on the misallocation of scarce resources³, the underuse of social support⁴ and social influence⁵.

Oxytocin (OT) has been extensively studied with regard to its socio-cognitive and -behavioral effects. Its potential as a therapeutic agent is being discussed for a range of neuropsychiatric conditions. However, there is limited evidence of its effects on non-social cognition in general and decision-making in particular, despite the importance of these functions in neuropsychiatry. Using a crossover/within-subject, blinded, randomized design, we investigated for the first time if intranasal OT (24 IU) affects decision-making differently depending on outcome predictability/ambiguity in healthy males. The Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) and the Cambridge Risk Task (CRT) were used to assess decision-making under low outcome predictability/high ambiguity and under high outcome probability/low ambiguity, respectively. After administration of OT, subjects performed worse and exhibited riskier performance in the IGT (low outcome predictability/high ambiguity), whereas they made borderline-significant less risky decisions in the CRT (high outcome probability/low ambiguity) as compared to the control condition. Decision-making in healthy males may therefore be influenced by OT and adjusted as a function of contextual information, with implications for clinical trials investigating OT in neuropsychiatric conditions.

We hypothesized that people would exhibit a reticence bias, the incorrect belief that they will be more likable if they speak less than half the time in a conversation with a stranger, as well as halo ignorance, the belief that their speaking time should depend on their goal (e.g., to be liked vs. to be found interesting), when in fact, perceivers form global impressions of each other. In Studies 1 and 2, participants forecasted they should speak less than half the time when trying to be liked, but significantly more when trying to be interesting. In Study 3, we tested the accuracy of these forecasts by randomly assigning participants to speak for 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, or 70% of the time in a dyadic conversation. Contrary to people’s forecasts, they were more likable the more they spoke, and their partners formed global rather than differentiated impressions.

Everyone knows that if you want to learn how to do something, you should get advice from people who do it well. But is everyone right? In a series of studies ( N = 8,693), adult participants played a game after receiving performance advice from previous participants. Although advice from the best-performing advisors was no more beneficial than advice from other advisors, participants believed that it had been—and they believed this despite the fact that they were told nothing about their advisors’ performance. Why? The best performers did not give better advice, but they did give more of it, and participants apparently mistook quantity for quality. These studies suggest that performing and advising may often be unrelated skills and that in at least some domains, people may overvalue advice from top performers.

We investigated intentional thinking for pleasure, defined as the deliberate attempt to have pleasant thoughts while disengaged from the external world. We propose a Trade-Off model that explains when and why thinking for pleasure is enjoyable: People focus on personally meaningful thoughts when thinking for pleasure (especially when prompted to do so), which increases their enjoyment, but they find it difficult to concentrate on their thoughts, which decreases their enjoyment. Thus, the net enjoyment of thinking for pleasure is a trade-off between its benefits (personal meaningfulness) and costs (difficulty concentrating). To test the model, we compared intentional thinking for pleasure to four alternate activities in three studies. Thinking for pleasure was more enjoyable than undirected thinking (Study 1) and planning (Study 3), because it was more meaningful than these activities while requiring a similar level of concentration. Thinking for pleasure was just as enjoyable as playing a video game (Study 2) or unprompted idle time activities (Study 3), but for different reasons: It was more meaningful than these activities, but required more concentration. We discuss the implications of these findings for what people might choose to do during idle times. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

The neuropeptide oxytocin (OT) has been associated with a broad range of human behaviors, particularly in the domain of social cognition, and is being discussed to play a role in a range of psychiatric disorders. Studies using the Reading The Mind In The Eyes Test (RMET) to investigate the role of OT in mental state recognition reported inconsistent outcomes. The present study applied a randomized, double-blind, cross-over design, and included measures of serum OT. Twenty healthy males received intranasal placebo or OT (24 IU) before performing the RMET. Frequentist and Bayesian analyses showed that contrary to previous studies (Domes et al., 2007; Radke & de Bruijn, 2015), individuals performed worse in the OT condition compared to the placebo condition ( p = 0.023, Cohen’s d = 0.55, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.08, 1.02], BF 10 = 6.93). OT effects did not depend on item characteristics (difficulty, valence, intensity, sex) of the RMET. Furthermore, OT serum levels did not change after intranasal OT administration. Given that similar study designs lead to heterogeneous outcomes, our results highlight the complexity of OT effects and support evidence that OT might even interfere with social cognitive abilities. However, the Bayesian analysis approach shows that there is only moderate evidence that OT influences mind-reading, highlighting the need for larger-scale studies considering the discussed aspects that might have led to divergent study results.

When left to their own devices, people could choose to enjoy their own thoughts. But recent work suggests they do not. When given the freedom, people do not spontaneously choose to think for pleasure, and when directed to do so, struggle to concentrate successfully. Moreover, people find it somewhat boring and much less enjoyable than other solitary activities. One reason for this is that people may not know how to think for pleasure. Specifically, they may not know what to think about to make this both a meaningful and pleasant experience. We tested this prediction in two preregistered studies, by providing specific examples of meaningful topics (Study 1) or instructing participants to think "meaningful" thoughts (Study 2). Although providing specific examples of meaningful topics boosted how meaningful and enjoyable people found thinking for pleasure (Study 1), asking people to think "meaningful" thoughts (as compared with pleasurable ones) did not, because some of the meaningful topics people thought about were negative (Study 2). In order for thinking for pleasure to be pleasurable, people need to focus on topics that are both meaningful and positive. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Significance Social connection is essential to physical and psychological well-being, and conversation is the primary means by which it is achieved. And yet, scientists know little about it—about how it starts, how it unfolds, or how it ends. Our studies attempted to remedy this deficit, and their results were surprising: conversations almost never end when anyone wants them to! At a moment in history when billions of people have been forced to curtail their normal social activities and to reimagine this one, a scientific understanding of conversation could hardly be timelier.

Harris and Busseri [Harris, H., & Busseri, M.A. (2019). Is there an ‘end of history illusion’ for life satisfaction? Evidence from a three-wave longitudinal study. Journal of Research in Personality, 83, 103869] examined the changes in life satisfaction people predicted vs. experienced for 30-years based on the three waves of the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) survey. They conclude that “Contrary to the EOHI [end of history illusion], most individuals either were accurate or anticipated too much change into the future, rather than too little” (abstract). Examining these same data we arrive at the opposite conclusion, that people systematically underestimate future changes to their life satisfaction. The discrepancy arises because Harris and Busseri find stability in the average life satisfaction across the entire sample, while we find instability in life satisfaction within individuals. Both of these can happen. Although the average altitude of all the elevators in a skyscraper is remarkably stable over time, the altitude of each elevator changes by the second.

This chapter is concerned with a type of thinking that has received little attention, namely intentional “thinking for pleasure”—the case in which people deliberately focus solely on their thoughts with the goal of generating positive affect. We present a model that describes why it is difficult to enjoy one's thoughts, how it can be done successfully, and when there is value in doing so. We review 36 studies we have conducted on this topic with just over 10,000 participants. We found that thinking for pleasure does not come easily to most people, but can be enjoyable and beneficial under the right conditions. Specifically, we found evidence that thinking for pleasure requires both motivation and the ability to concentrate. For example, several studies show that people enjoy thinking more when it is made easier with the use of “thinking aids.” We present evidence for a trade-off model that holds that people are most likely to enjoy their thoughts if they find those thoughts to be personally meaningful, but that such thinking involves concentration, which lowers enjoyment. Lastly, we review evidence for the benefits of thinking for pleasure, including an intervention study in which participants found thinking for pleasure enjoyable and meaningful in their everyday lives.