An Eastern Kentucky University Chautauqua lecture will explore “The Pursuit of Happiness in Trying Times” on Thursday, Nov. 1. Cornell University psychology professor Tom Gilovich will speak at 7:30 p.m. in O’Donnell Hall of the Whitlock Building. The lecture is free and open to the public.
Gilovich has taught for more than 30 years at Cornell, where he runs the Gilovich lab and is a recipient of the Russell Distinguished Teaching Award. As a researcher, he has recently focused on happiness and the nature of the effects of gratitude. His work has made several significant contributions to the fields of social psychology, decision making and behavioral economics. He has contributed to ideas such as the illusion of transparency, bias blind spots, headwind/tailwind asymmetry, the spotlight effect, clustering illusion, anchoring and self-handicapping.
He has authored widely cited articles and popular books such as “The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit from Psychology’s Most Powerful Insights” (with Lee Ross), “How We Know What Isn’t So: The Fallibility of Reason in Everyday Life,” “Why Smart People Make Big Money Mistakes and How to Fix Them” (with Gary Belsky) and “Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment” (with Dale Griffin and Daniel Kahneman). He also wrote one of the standard “Social Psychology” textbooks.
The lecture is sponsored by the Office of Graduate Education and Research; Department of Psychology; Department of Anthropology, Sociology and Social Work; the Center for Economic Development, Entrepreneurship and Technology; and the Honors Program.
For more information about the Chautauqua lecture series, visit www.chautauqua.eku.edu, or contact Chautauqua Lecture Coordinator Erik Liddell at erik.liddell@eku.edu.