Daniel Kahneman: In Conversation

Recently Penguin Press hosted a very special event. We invited twenty students from Highbury Grove School and Central Foundation Boys School to 80 Strand, to ask the world's leading psychologist and author of the International Bestseller Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, questions about life. 　

Why was this an interesting thing to do? Because Daniel Kahneman has been studying the human mind for over 50 years, and has made some of the most important discoveries about the way we think, well, ever. The profundity and breadth of the influence of his research is impossible to overstate. Everybody, from Bill Gates to David Cameron, wants to know what he knows.

What happened, then, when one of the world's most sophisticated scientific minds confronted a room full of teenagers?　

Danny's knowledge acquires an intimacy and simplicity that conveys a lifetime's worth of wisdom in the space of an hour. His answers, like many of the questions, are rare and beautiful, because they are both profound and useful.

Watch him discuss the difference between mood and well-being, the impact of money on happiness, the mistakes we all make in assessing our own life-satisfaction, and the things we can do to avoid misunderstandings that can lead to bad decisions, over-confidence and regret.

There's very little worth knowing about the way our minds work that this man doesn't know. What he pays attention to we would all benefit from paying attention too.