The expectation of intelligent gossip is a powerful motive for serious self-criticism, more powerful than New Year resolutions to improve one's decision making at work and at home.

Clearly, the decision-making that we rely on in society is fallible. It's highly fallible, and we should know that.

My interest in well-being evolved from my interest in decision making - from raising the question of whether people know what they will want in the future and whether the things that people want for themselves will make them happy.

I think one of the major results of the psychology of decision making is that people's attitudes and feelings about losses and gains are really not symmetric. So we really feel more pain when we lose $10,000 than we feel pleasure when we get $10,000.

We all remember epochs in our experience when some dear expectation dies, or some new motive is born.

The effort invested in 'getting it right' should be commensurate with the importance of the decision.