surrogates
edyong | March 19, 2009Want to know how much you'd enjoy an experience? You're better off asking someone who has been through it, even if they're a complete stranger, than to find out information for yourself. This advice comes from Daniel Gilbert from Harvard University, who espoused it in his superb book Stumbling on Happiness. Now, he has found new support for the idea by studying speed-daters and people receiving feedback from their peers.
In the first study, he found that female students were better able to predict how much they would enjoy a speed-date if they listened to the experiences of strangers than if…