Arthur C. BrooksThe Art and Science of Happiness

The way to be happier is to be more grateful, not just to decide to be more happy.

12 Jan 2024 · 1 min

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Dr. Arthur Brooks explains the evolutionary negativity bias—our tendency to notice bad things because it once aided survival—and contrasts that bias with the relatively high quality of modern life. He argues that instead of merely resolving to be happier, people should deliberately practice gratitude by actively looking for reasons to be grateful, which will, he claims, lead to greater happiness.

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We have this thing called the negativity bias. We're always looking at all the bad things that are going on around you. That's evolved, by the way, because, you know, noticing the bad things keeps you alive. Noticing the good things is a nice thing to have, but in modern life, look at our lives. It's so great. We live in the most progressive, upwardly mobile, charitable country in the history of the world, and we're getting three squares and we have happy families. And most of us, a lot of us, it's so great. And yet we're like, yeah, the food's no good in first class on this airline. I mean, it's just craziness how ungrateful that we are. So the way to do this thing that you want to do is to actually start deciding to be more grateful as opposed to deciding to be more happy. So you need something that's more instrumental and so to say, I'm going to look for why I'm grateful in this particular moment, and then you'll actually automatically get happier.