Although he never took a course in economics, Princeton research psychologist Daniel Kahneman won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2002 for demonstrating that people make nonrational decisions when facing financial risk. Kahneman has recently extended his research into the daily choices that influence our sense of well-being. Here are his thoughts on joy:
One thing I learned when my children were small was that trying to read when I was in their presence was really not worth it, because I wasn't enjoying the reading and I wasn't enjoying them. The issue is attention, distinguishing focal experiences from peripheral experiences. When they're in the background, they're preventing you from attending to what you would like to attend to, and that is intensely frustrating. On the other hand, they're intensely satisfying when you're focusing on them.
I didn't forecast the major source of the high in winning the Nobel Prize, which was the pleasure of other people. That was a big surprise. People take intense vicarious pleasure in the success of somebody else if they're not competing with that person. And people enjoy having that emotion because it's a very clean and pure emotion. So the warmth it generated was not only unexpected but the most enjoyable part of it.
