Stumbling on Happiness
Big idea
• The human being is the only animal that
can think about the future
• Discriminates between nexting and
predicting
– We are always in some way predicting what is
to come next- moment by moment
– Animals can do this- basic predictions about
what is coming
The Frontal Lobe
• Development of this lobe has allowed for
our species to plan for the future
• Frontal lobotomies
– Patients are unable to plan for the future
The future
• We all automatically think about the future
a lot
– 12% of our day is spent thinking about items
from the future
– Usually positive things about the future
Quick experiment
• When given a free meal
– Would you rather have it tonight, tomorrow
night or in the distant future
– Most pick tomorrow night
– The act of imagining and anticipating the
event brings us joy
Problem with dreaming about the
future
• Things that we dream about a lot, we
overestimate the likelihood of these events
happening
– We think about positive things in the future more
– We are probably overly optimistic about our future
– American college students expect to:
• Live longer, stay married longer, travel more than average
• Have a gifted child, own their own home, appear in the
newspaper, not have heart attacks, drinking problems, car
accidents, broken bones or gum disease than average
Why are we stuck in the future
• With bad events
– They help buffer what could happen
– Two groups received shocks
• One got 3 high intensity shocks and 17 low intensity
• One got 20 high intensity shocks
• Whose hearts were beating faster?
– The 3 high, 17 low
– The other group got a warning before each shock
– This group got no warning and it appeared to be scarier
• We want to have control over things
Hospital visitation study
• Two groups
– High control group
• Able to plan out when visitors came by
– Low control group
• Were told when the visitors were coming
– After 2 months, high control group were
happier, healthier and more active
• Side note: they stopped the study then
– The high control group had a large number of people die
in the months that followed
– Losing control that you have is not good
What is happiness?
• A subjective experience
– What is the color yellow?
• The “you-know-what-I-mean feeling”
• Living up to one’s potential?
• A virtuous life
– But the Nazi on a beach may be happy,
whereas the pious missionary that is being
eaten by sharks may not be happy
Happiness could also be a point of
view
• “I’m happy that the man that killed my
mother will rot in jail for the rest of his life.”
– Is this person really happy?
– Probably not happy about life- or giving a life
satisfaction rating here
Why is subjectivity bad?
• Does anyone really know whether they are
happy or not?
– We may question the cancer patient that
claims it was better for them
– The conjoined twins that swear they wouldn’t
want to be separated
– Everyone’s happiness is different, so how can
we compare?
Comparing to one’s self
• Instead of comparing two views, let’s take
one person that has experienced both
– Comparing the current to a memory
• Memories are unreliable
Paint describers experiment
• Two groups
– Stare at one paint color swatch
– After a 30 second break, given 5 to chose from
• Which is the same?
– One group was asked to describe the first swatch
– One group was not
– 73% of the non-describers could identify the correct
color
– 33 % of the describers could
• Apparently they were trying to match the memory (incorrect
memory) and not tha actual color
What if we make the two
experiences really close together?
• Change blindness
– LoOk ClOsElY vs lOoK cLoSeLy
Language squishing hypothesis
• Lori says eating birthday cake is an 8/8 on the
happiness scale
– We know that it is only a 4/8 on our happiness scale
– Thus her 8 must equal our 4
– She has never known what it means to really be
happy
– What about the things that we have never
experienced?
• Maybe it is us that truly lacks ever knowing real happiness?
Experience stretching hypothesis
• Maybe she really means an 8- she feels
the same way we feel when we climb Half
Dome when she gets a piece of cake
• “they don’t know what they’re missing”
– That’s the point
– They can be happy with what they have never
having had the other
Examples
• Ever learned to play an instrument?
– The first time you play “Mary had a little lamb”
you are ecstatic
– After you have been playing for a few years,
“Mary had a little lamb” is a little lame
– Does that take away from the happiness that
you experienced the first time? NO
Are we accurate at identifying
our own emotions?
• Capilano bridge experiment says no
Are we aware of our own
emotions?
• You’d think so
• Blindsight
– People can not be aware of something yet
can process it
• This is true of emotions
– Alexithymia
• Inability to describe emotional states
• Have just as strong a physiological response as
normal people, just can’t say what they are
currently feeling
3 premises to dealing with a hard to
measure idea like happiness
• Tools are flawed
– All tools are flawed though, so since it is ok that
thermometer isn’t perfect, why wouldn’t it be ok for a
happiometer to be imperfect?
• People are fairly accurate about themselves
– All other measures are based off subjective ratings of
happiness- the only reason we know that a smile =
happy is because someone has told us “I’m happy”
and we can see a smile co-occur
• Measure from many people
– “law of large numbers”
– The more times you measure, the closer you get to
reality
Memory is not perfect
• Yield sign experiment
– Shown a video where a car passes through a yield
sign, then hits a person
– ½ were asked the question: “Did another car pass the
car while it was stopped at the stop sign?”
– Asked to point to the pictures they saw (either a yield
sign or a stop sign
– 90% of the people that did not get asked a question
pointed to the correct sign
– 80% of the people that were asked the question
pointed to the stop sign
– Our brains construct our memories
List of words
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Bed
Rest
Awake
Tired
Dream
Wake
Snooze
Blankt
Doze
Slumber
Snore
Nap
Peace
Yawn
Drowsy
Which of the following was not on the
list?
•
•
•
•
•
•
Bed
Doze
Sleep
Gasoline
Sleep and gasoline….
Probably reconstructed the memory and knew
the words were all about sleep and thus
incorrectly remember sleep
Two facts about misremembering
• People are very confident in their
misremembering
• You can be warned about it ahead of time and
still misremember
Blind spot
• Our brain is always constructing our environment all of
the time
• *eel experiment
–
–
–
–
–
Recorded a cough where the star is
Put it in these sentences (the same *eel sound)
“The *eel was on the orange”
“The *eel was on the shoe”
People swear that they hear the words peel and heel
respectively
– Their brains simply fill it in even if it is not really there
– Had to wait until the last word of the sentence to fill in the
missing portion- yet we are unaware that we fill it in
Realism vs idealism
• Realism
– The idea that what you see is what is there
• Idealism
– The idea that what you see is a combination of what
is there and what you believe you should see
Piaget and the development of idealism
• Children are born realists
– Children are egocentric and believe that if they know
something it is true and thus others know it
– Other people’s beliefs don’t lay a role in the way
people work
• As they age, they become more idealists
– Obj permanence study
• Candles of different size
• Eyes are realists even though we act as idealists do
So our brains fill in gaps
• We make predictions based on these gaps
about our future selves
Easier to notice what is there than what
is not there
• Give a pigeon a choice of 2 bars to press
– Pigeons learn to press the illuminated bar to get seed
– They never learn to press the unilluminated bar to get seed if the
experiment is set up that way
• Humans work the same
– Given 4 sets of 3 letters each:
•
•
•
•
SXY
GTR
BCG
EVX
– The second one is special- what makes it special?
– If takes about 34 series of numbers before a subject figures out
that the presence of the letter T is what makes it special
– If the thing that makes it special is the absence of the letter T,
subjects never figure it out
Why is that important?
• Because to know whether two things are related,
you must pay attention to when then co-occur
(which is easy for us) but also to when they don’t
happen (which is hard for us)
– Thus we tend to conclude that pigeons have an
uncanny ability to crap on us, even though they
probably miss so many more times than they make
Extremia vs Moderacia
• Where would you want to vacation?
– Extremia: beautiful weather, fantastic beaches, crummy hotels,
bad nightlife
– Moderacia: average weather, average hotels, average beaches,
average nightlife
• Where to make plans?
– Pay attention to the positives
– Most pick extremia
• Say you have plans at both and you need to cancel one
place
– Pay attention to the negatives
– Most pick extremia as well
So… when estimating future events
• We fail to consider how much our imagination
fills in (that might be wrong)
• We also fail to consider how much our
imagination leaves out
Predicting students
• Asked to predict how they would feel after their college’s
team won the game this weekend
– Group 1 had to describe the events of a typical day first
– Group 2 did not
• The results?
– Group 2 dramatically overestimated how happy they would be
with a win or how sad they were with a loss
– They failed to think about all of the details that their imagination
left out- such as studying for finals in the hours after the game
and how much of an effect that would have on them
– The describers were forced to think about those other things and
thus were able to predict a bit more accurately
Future events perceived differently
• If they are far away vs if they are tomorrow
– Locking a door
• Far away: “securing the house”
• Tomorrow: “puttijng a key in a lock”
– Getting married
• Far away: “making a serious commitment”
• Tomorrow: “having pictures taken”
– In the distant future, we think about why things
happen
– In the near future, we think about how they will
happen
Babysitting
• Typically people eagerly volunteer to babysit
their neices and nephews
– Until the day comes to do it
– At that time, they details of what they are having to
actually do are clear and now it is no longer an act of
love but a chore to do
We judge events differently depending
on when they happen
• Would you rather have $19 in 364 days or $20 in
365 days?
• Would you rather have $19 today or $20
tomorrow?
• Most say 20$ in 365 days, because waiting that
extra day in a year isn’t much, but most say $19
today, because they don’t want to wait the day
now
Our present messes with our memories
of the past
• When college students hear speeches that
change their political views, then tend to think
they always felt the way the currently do
• When dating couples try to recall how they felt
about romantic partners two months ago, they
tend to remember that they felt as they do now
• When middle aged people are asked to
remember how they felt about premarital sex,
political issues, or how much they drank, these
memories are influenced by now
Our present messes with our
predictions of the future as well
Prefeeling
• Based on how we imagine the event, we have a
feeling (a gut feeling) that screws with us
– Monet vs garfield comic picture
• Which do you want in your house?
– Group 1: go with your gut (prefeeling)
– Group 2: think about it a bit before you decide
• One month later, who was happier? The prefeeling group
– The thinkers overanalyzed and ended up choosing the one they
thought they would like as opposed to the one that they actually
liked
What’s the problem with prefeeling?
• We can mix it up with actual feeling
– Are you happy with your life?
• Turns out that the current weather plays a large part in your
answer
• If it is raining people are less happy than if it is sunny out
• Their current blah feeling substituted for their imagined
feeling
Diversification Bias
• If you were given the choice of a variety of snacks over
the next few weeks or the same snack over the next few
weeks, in advance most would chose variety
– Turns out that those that get no variety are happier than those
that get variety
• If you had the choice of two identical plates of food or
two different plates of food for a table, you would be
better off getting variety
– Because of habituation happening over time, but with a long
enough rest (for the few weeks study) habituation is not a factor
and it goes away
People predict future feelings by…
• Starting with the event happening now and then
changing it
– Starting points matter, because they effect the ending
points
– How many countries are there in Africa?
• 60? Fewer- when starting with 60, people guessed around 45
• 10? More- when starting with 10, people guessed around 25
• Why the discrepancy?
– Because where we start effects where we end
Would you rather have a job that
pays…
• 30,000 the first year, 40,000 the second and
50,000 the third….
• OR
• 60,000 the first, 50,000 the second and 40,000
the first
• Most people take the first option even though
they make 30,000 less than the second option
because pay cuts suck
Would you drive across town…
• To save $50 on a $100 stereo?
– Most say sure…
• To save $50 on a $50,000 car?
– Most say no
• But $50 is $50 either way
– This doesn’t make sense economically
– People compare everything to the past though
– It is all relative
Two more
• Would you buy a vacation package that was on
sale from $600 down to $500?
• Or the same package that is for sale for $400
but yesterday was $300?
• Most will jump at the first option, but not the
second
Concert ticket example
• Concert ticket costs $20
– Group 1: You get to the show with a ticket and $20 in
your wallet
• Before the show, you lose your ticket… do you buy a new
one?
– Most say no
– Group 2: You get to the show with two $20s in your
wallet
• Before the show, you lose a $20… do you buy a ticket?
– Most say yes
Why?
• When we lose the ticket, we compare seeing the
concert for $40 to seeing it for $20 (its previous
price)
– This is not a good deal
• When we lose the $20, the concert had no
history, so it is still $20 for the show
Economic oddities
• You will spend more money in stores if they carry more expensive
items with the lesser expensive items
– People rarely buy the most expensive thing, but if they increase their
most expensive item, many people spend more on the other items
• Would a doctor prescribe Med X to patients after reading about it
– 72% say yes
• If they read about a study with Med X and Y, equally effective at
treating the problem
– Only 52% say they prescribe something
• When asked to bid on a perfect condition 10,000 word dictionary
– Average bid $24
• When asked to bid on a worn 20,000 word disctionary
– Average bid $20
• When asked to bid on them when side by side with the other
– Average bid for perfect condition one: $19
– Average bid for worn one with more words: $27
What does this have to do with
happiness and the future
• The value of something is determined by
– Comparison of one thing with another
– There are many types of comparisons we can make
– We may value it differently with one comparison than
with another
• If we want to know how we will value something
in the future, we need to compare it with choices
in the future, not the present
Potato chip experiment
• How much do you think you would enjoy eating
potato chips?
– Group 1: potato chips next to chocolate bar
– Group 2: potato chips next to sardines
– The two groups predicted different levels of
enjoyment from the chips, even though there was no
difference between them when they actually ate the
chips
• Their choices NOW influenced their values later, which
caused them to predict incorrectly
Why are new things always better at
first?
• Because you make comparisons to the old
– Within a few days or weeks, you stop making those comparisons
and aree no longer as happy about the item
• You may even begin to compare it with other newer items and be
unhappy with your newish item
• We make different comparisons at different times
– This is why people say losing a dollar is a much bigger deal than
winning a dollar
• In fact, most people refuse to enter into a deal where there is an
85% chance to double your life savings and a 15% chance to lose it
The world is ambiguous
• We are navigating it and interpreting as we go
– Don’t run into the bank
• If in a boat, makes sense one way
• If not, it makes sense another way
We can be biased
• If we are rewarded, we’ll see one version of the
necker cube more than the other
• Are we naturally biased to see positive
outcomes?
– We evaluate colleges, appliances and jobs as better
once we have been accepted, bought them, or been
hired by them
When we make comparisons…
• We compare with people that make us feel
better usually
– We even ask questions that elicit the answers we
want from people
– We keep friends around us that will tell us the things
we want to hear
– A big confirmation bias going on here
• If you tell people extroverts make more money, then ask
them to describe themselves, they will focus on all of their
extrovert activities
• If you tell people introverts make more money, they do the
opposite
Hurting our friends for ourselves?
• Volunteers given a test, then allowed to give
hints to their friends that would either help or
hinder them
– If told it was a game, they helped
– If told it was a measure of intellectual ability, they
hindered
• Bottom line: the brain has agreed to believe
what the eye sees, but the eye has agreed to
look for what the brain wants
Confirmation bias
• Showed people research on capital punishment
– Between states technique
• Comparing crime rates for states that had cap pun vs not
– Within states technique
• Comparing crime rates for states that changed their laws- before
and after
– Volunteers concluded that one of the techniques was better than
the other- which was better was influenced by their stance on the
issue
• If one technique supported their views, they automatically saw the
evidence that way as more compelling
• We hold our disfavored conclusions to a much higher
standard of proof than our favored conclusions
Two groups of volunteers
• Group 1: if the strip turns green, you have an
enzyme deficiency
• Group 2: if the strip does not turn green, you
have an enzyme deficiency
– It never turned green in either case
– Group 2 waited far longer than group 1 before coming
to their conclusion
• That is, it takes us longer to agree to the
conclusion that we are ill than that we are well
We cook the facts
• So that we like them
• But we don’t want to know that we do this
– They must seem credible
– They must seem like we got them honestly
Looking forward vs looking back
• Looking forward to getting dumped
– Very bad- the edge of despair
• Looking back on getting dumped
– It wasn’t bad; it was good for me because he/she
wasn’t right
Told we were applying for a job
• Either a judge would decide whether we get the job or a
jury of people would decide
– Only one person in the jury would have to pick you to get the job
• Then told we didn’t get it
• Beforehand, most predict equal disappointment with not
getting it
• Afterwards, the judge group is happier than the jury
group
– It is easier to shrug off the judge’s opinion than the opinion of
every jury member
• It seems obvious now, but when predicting their own
disappointment, it was not obvious at all
– All they considered was the sting of being rejected, not what they
would do next (try and cope)
Action vs inaction
• We regret inaction more than action
– We regret the things we don’t do as opposed to the
bad things we did
– Because we can rationalize the things we did and say
“well at least we learned something”
– But the things that we didn’t do have nothing for us to
take from them
Our system is only activated to protest
when the offense is very bad, not just
bad
• Come join our club
– First you get hazed
• Group 1: 3 strong shocks
• Group 2: 3 mild shocks
– Group 1 ends up liking the club more than group 2.
• Thus we can predict future events wrong
– Would it be better for your best friend to insult you or
your cousin?
• Most say cousin
• You defenses are not activated though and so you don’t
begin to rationalize- thus you might just look at your friend
differently and think they are mean
Two people
• One the victim, the other a bystander
– A psychologist gave a test and then gave negative
feedback
• “people like you primarily because you don’t threaten their
competance”
– People predict that they would like the psychologist
more as the bystander
– Turns out the opposite is true
– Bystanders believed the dr was mean
– Victims rationalized
• “I must be dumb. But wait, this is only one test- it probably
doesn’t mean much”
Escapable vs inescapable
• Students took photos
– Told to take their favorite one home
• In group 1: told they could exchange it for any of the others at any
time
• Group 2: told they could not exchange it
– Which group was happier with the photo?
• The one that couldn’t exchange it because they began to rationalize
their choice and forced themselves to like it
• Beforehand, the students did not believe that whether
they could exchange or not would have any impact on
whether they liked the photo
• What is interesting, is most students when given the
choice to have options or not, choose options, even
though this makes them less happy with the end result
than the other group
Explainations
• Help diminish the negative impact of traumas
• Also diminish the impact of positive things
• A set of students had chats with fake other
students
– After, they were asked to write a notes to their favorite
person
– They also received notes from the fakes saying they
were the favorite
• In fact, all of the fakes chose them as their favorite person
• Group 1 received names and identifying info
• Group 2 received no identifying info at all
• Those students in group 2 were happier than
those in group 1
– Why?
– Group 1 were able to explain away why they were
liked
• We shared X in common
– Group 2 could not explain it away and thus felt happy
Why do unexplained events have a
stronger impact on emotions?
• They are rare
• We keep thinking about them
The smile society
• Approach people and give them a dollar with a
card
– On the card it says they are the smile society doing
random acts of kindness
– On a different card, it says two extra phrases…
– “who are we” and “why do we do this”
– The group that got the explaining questions were less
happy after than the group that didn’t
• Most of the time, people choose to know these
things and get explainations even though it
actually makes them not as happy in the end
Our memories are wrong
• We remember the unusual things more
• Due to availability heuristic, we then
overestimate how often they happen
– Don’t you always seem to pick the longest line
in the grocery store?
Peak end theory screws with our
memories
• Would you rather put your hand in cold
water for 60 seconds or 90 seconds?
– Group 1: in 57 degree water for 60 seconds
– Group 2: in 57 degree water for 60 seconds,
in 59 degree water for 30 more
• Group 2 reported more pleasant memories of the
event
Studies of memory biases
• Group 1: just asked to remember how they
felt a month ago
– Remembered equal intensities for both
genders
• Group 2: before being asked to remember
how they felt, they were told to think about
gender
– Males remembered less intense emotions,
and women remembered more intense
emotions
Study 2
• When playing a game, asked to not their
emotions
– Men and women felt the same emotions
throughout
• A month later asked to recall the emotions
they felt
– Women felt more typically feminine emotions
(sympathy and guilt)
– Males felt more typically masculine emotions
(anger and pride)
Study 3
• Women were asked to write about their
feelings for 4-6 weeks
– Showed that their feelings did not change with
their cycles
– Later, when they reread certain days in the
diary, they remembered more negative
emotions on days that they were menstruating
Before an election was called…
• People expect to feel extreme highs and
lows if their candidate wins or loses
– When it actually happens, the emotions are
much less than predicted
– 6 months after the event, when asked about
it, they remember what they had predicted
would happen as having happened