Daniel Kahneman: prediction

Transcript context

…Good evening. I have two questions, but they’re short. My first question is, you briefly talked about moral emotions. Do you see any benefit to shame? Because I’ve read conflicting theories there. So the moral emotion of shame and your thoughts. And two, what is the impact of counterfactual thinking on happiness in your study? About shame, I really have no idea. It’s there. Should one wish that it weren’t? It’s probably a force that induces better behavior in lots of people who would not be controlled in other ways. So I don’t know how important or how useful it is. It’s painful to the people who feel it, and it might be useful to others who might be affected by bad behavior. As for counterfactuals and happiness, I think that what you referred to — there are counterfactual emotions. Regret is a counterfactual emotion. Guilt is a counterfactual emotion. You can ask in the sense that they are driven by something that didn’t happen, that could have happened but didn’t. Some of these emotions seem to be completely superfluous, like regret. And I think people, by and large, would be better off without regret. But notice what regret is. Regret is what happens the next morning. And if we didn’t have it, then who knows what we might do. [laughter] Next question over here.…

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