The Surprising Science of Happiness When people discuss happiness, they frequently refer to it as a search—a mission to discover something so elusive and out of reach that there are numerous theories about how to get it. Surprisingly, yet, it might be our freedom to select from among countless wonderful experiences in life that prevents us from being content. Dan Gilbert started his Ted talk by talking about the development of the human brain. The speaker in Dan Gilbert's "Surprise Science of Pleasure" examines human happiness from a psychological and neurological perspective. In his studies, he found that humans could mentally test out situations before acting as a result of the prefrontal cortex. This distinguishes humans from other animals. This evolutionary adaption, though, is not without drawbacks. While it might seem that a lottery winner would be happier than a person who had just been paralyzed, a study found that one year later, both new paraplegics and lotter...