"Ted Talk: The Surprising Science of Happiness" Response

In this Ted Talk, Dan Gilbert explains the idea of synthetic happiness and how it can sometimes be even more valid than "natural" happiness. Basically, we have the ability as humans to create happiness within ourselves in any situation, whether good or bad, with our mindset and attitude. I enjoyed listening to this speech and was able to easily remained focused during it because of Gilbert's effective speech tactics and organization.

I think Gilbert did a superb job in his speech with his tone, volume, and organization. In general, he had an interesting, non-monotone vocal projection that made listening fun and effortless. My favorite part about this is in the introduction. He asked the audience who they thought would be happier after a year: a person who won the lottery or a paralytic.  He displayed a graph that showed that lottery winners were approximately 3 times happier, causing the audience to chuckle slightly because of this obvious claim. But, then he switched the slide quickly to show that the ACTUAL data says that the paralytics are slightly happier on average. The crowd grew silent quickly because it was as if he had punched them in the face with this shocking statistic and made their attention level skyrocket. I think using a quick curveball in a presentation such as this is an affective way to quickly catch the audience's attention in a unique, non-cliché way. The other thing that I thought was affective in this was his use of many examples supported by graphs and pictures. Visual representations of what you are saying that are simple and easy to remember can be beneficial, but I also think they can be slightly distracting. A few of the graphs he used were slightly confusing to me, which required much of my focus, resulting in distraction from the main point. Overall, I think he did a fairly good job using the visuals, but I would have liked to see the graphs laid out in a more comprehensive way. Lastly, I think Gilbert had a great conclusion. He encapsulated the main idea of his entire speech into a few short sentences that make it easy for a listener to walk away remembering the most important ideas, rather than insignificant details. I will be using many of these techniques in my upcoming speech to maximize my chance of success.