This is Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Many scientists who study people end up saying some version of the following sentence.

The human being is the only animal that has a sense of humor.

That can cooperate.

That do radio shows.

That regularly fashion and use tools.

That have.

Chins.

Psychologist Daniel Gilbert at Harvard University finishes the sentence this way.

The human being is the only animal that thinks about the future.

Every animal learns from trial and error.

Human beings learn from experiences they've never even had.

They close their eyes and say, what I like liver and onion ice cream, yuck.

Would it be a good idea to put my finger in a pencil sharpener? No.

But just because we humans have great imaginations, it doesn't mean we do a good job of predicting the future accurately.

People just aren't very good at looking into their future and predicting correctly their emotional reactions

to the events that might unfold.

We think a dentist appointment will be awful and then it's not so bad.

We think buying a new car will make us very happy.

But a dentist being just nice.

We think losing a job is the worst thing that could happen to us.

And then it becomes the best thing.

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