Cognitive Engineering

Why do some small things give us so much pleasure? Tidying up the desk, putting on new socks or changing the washing-up sponge, all seemingly insignificant and yet capable of providing us with an immense sense of joy and satisfaction. In this week’s podcast, we discuss pleasure. We ask why we routinely undervalue the things from which we derive pleasure, if we spend too much money on big things and not enough on small things, and whether the removal of pain is the same thing as the manifestation of pleasure. Nick also outlines his taxonomy of pleasure generation. Finally, we discuss the most prominent predictors of happiness and share our own memories of sheer bliss. A few things we mentioned in this podcast: - The Sun surveys Britons to find the top fifty ‘simple pleasures’ https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/14632933/brits-reveal-simple-pleasures/ - What correlates with happiness and life satisfaction? https://ourworldindata.org/happiness-and-life-satisfaction - The World Happiness Report https://worldhappin