Psychology Professor Daniel Gilbert. Photo by Kris Snibbe.

Live according to your hopes, not your fears.

That's sound advice for just about anyone, but it's also a scientific conclusion being borne out by research conducted by Psychology Professor Daniel Gilbert.

Gilbert, a high school dropout who left his guitar-playing, short- story-writing lifestyle in the late 1970s to get a GED and go to college, may be something of a poster child for his own research.

Gilbert has lived according to his own hopes. He took off from his Illinois home at age 16 to travel the country. He has since made up for time -- lost or otherwise -- by attending the University of Colorado and then earning a Ph.D. from Princeton University. He launched his teaching career at the University of Texas in 1985 and came to Harvard three years ago.

Gilbert, who heads the Psychology Department's program in social psychology, is focusing his current research on affective forecasting, or how people predict how they'll feel in response to future events. It may sound esoteric, but the principle is used by each of us every time we make a decision.

Whether the decision is a big one, like whether to take a new job or buy a house, or a small one, like whether to skip a class or go to a movie, the choice is made at least partly according to how we predict the different outcomes will make us feel.

Gilbert has found that we tend to overemphasize how a negative outcome will affect us, predicting that losing a job, for example, will have deep and long-lasting negative effects.

In actuality, Gilbert is seeing that people are much more resilient than they give themselves credit for. People have an efficient emotional "immune system," as Gilbert terms it, that protects us, allowing us to rationalize away defeat and get on with the business of living.

From a practical standpoint, Gilbert said his research could convince people to strive for what they really want in life, knowing that they can be happy whether or not they get it.

"It might encourage more of us to take more risks, to act on hope rather than fear," Gilbert said. "I think the short message for folks in the trenches is that most of us have more psychological resources, more psychological resilience, than we realize."

An experimental social psychologist, Gilbert devises experiments to test aspects of his theories. One was designed to test students' abilities to rationalize not getting a desirable job. They were told their job interview was being watched by either a single person, who had sole hiring discretion, or a panel of people, which had to vote unanimously if the student was not to be hired.

Though students predicted they'd be similarly disappointed in each case, they were far more disturbed when rejected by the panel, because then it was hard to rationalize that the rejection was because of an individual's whim, Gilbert said.

Gilbert's meandering road to Harvard illustrates a bit of his own psychological resilience. He has navigated the twists and turns of life with the help of a sense of humor and a friendly personality.

"Daniel is a great colleague. He's an extremely bright, utterly charming, totally affable fellow with a great sense of humor," said Psychology Professor Richard McNally.

Traveling the Country

Gilbert grew up in Evanston, Ill. His father was a biology professor at Northwestern University and his mother an actress, writer, and poet. Gilbert said he doesn't recall an early fascination with psychology. His early fascination was with the road.

In 1972, long-haired and 16 years old, Gilbert left home to travel the country. After a couple of years of moving around, playing music, and reading philosophy, Gilbert married, had a child, and settled in Colorado.

Gilbert had been writing science fiction during his travels, and in Colorado his budding career bloomed. His short stories were published in science fiction magazines such as Amazing Stories. Visitors to his William James Hall office can't miss the large painting of two men in spacesuits walking on an alien world -- a scene from one of his stories.

After a while, Gilbert began to look for ways to add more life and realism to his characters and took a psychology course at a local community college. That course led to another, and another, and eventually to a bachelor's degree in psychology from the University of Colorado in 1981.

From there, Gilbert entered Princeton University, gaining a Ph.D. in social psychology in 1985.

"I don't know if I'm the only Harvard professor without a high school diploma, but I bet there aren't more than a few," Gilbert said.

Gilbert took a job at the University of Texas as an assistant professor in 1985. He stayed there for 11 years, being promoted to associate and then full professor. In 1996, he came to Harvard as a professor and chair of the Social Psychology Program.

Gilbert said he enjoys Harvard's multidisciplinary nature, noting that he interacts with colleagues in other disciplines much more than he did at the University of Texas. Gilbert particularly enjoys Harvard's students, however.

"Though you might be able to replicate some aspects of Harvard elsewhere, you could never replicate the student body," Gilbert said. "The students are simply amazing. They're eager to learn, engaged, and ambitious. The one time I had to cancel class, the students were crestfallen. They asked when we could make it up."

Gilbert said he was attracted to Harvard by its reputation, its resources, and by an affinity for the Boston area. One unexpected bonus made him feel particularly at home, however. Gilbert said when he got on the road, his less-than-meek style behind the wheel finally fit in.

"When I first moved here, I said, 'Finally, people who drive like me.' "