The ideas and examples from the interesting TED Talk « The surprising science of happiness»

I’d like to share with you some ideas and conclusions.
Human brain has tripled in mass for over the period of evolution (2 million years). The brain has got a new structure named pre-frontal cortex. The main function of this structure is to experience simulator.
From one hand sometimes the simulator doesn’t work correctly. Often the simulator makes you believe the different outcomes are more different than in fact they are (нужно закончить сравнение в предложении) and we are getting into trouble by process of (не понятно значение - getting into trouble because we have to make a choice?) choosing the alternative. From another hand our brain can synthesize the happiness and we don’t need to find it.

What’s the difference between synthetic and natural happiness? The author explains: natural is what we get when we get what we wanted and opposite the synthetic happiness is what we make [of it - (optional)] when we don’t get what we wanted.
There are some experiences that confirm this idea. The first is with Monet prints. The participants should rank pictures from the ones what that they like the most to the ones what that they like the least. The subjects should take 1 picture: number 3 or number 4 (not what they like (or not their most liked picture) ). After several some time the participants should re-rank pictures. In As a result the owned picture has got bigger (better?) rating. This is example of synthetic happiness.
Another experience experiment was performed with photo competition in Harvard. There are two groups of participants. All participants should take 10 pictures of their favorite Harvard places. Then they should choose one that they want to own. Group 1 has a chance to change their chose choice after 2 weeks; group 2 has not. After 2 weeks organizers ask to assess pictures that participants have. Group 1 likes their pictures less (because of permanent thinking of whether to change or not to change); group 2 - more. This experiment confirms the idea that freedom (a lot of alternatives) is an enemy for synthetic happiness but a friend for natural.
The main conclusion is we should try do not to overrate the difference between the alternatives and we should try to create an environment for synthetic happiness (think, make a decision and keep calm; do not worry about things that we can’t change).

Well-done!