Not to think about the future requires that we convince our frontal lobe not to do what it was designed to do, and like a heart that is told not to beat, it naturally resists this suggestion#601•
Forestalling pleasure is an inventive technique for getting double the juice from half the fruit.#614•
CHAPTER 2
If every thinker in every century has recognized that people seek emotional happiness, then how has so much confusion arisen over the meaning of the word? One of the problems is that many people consider the desire for happiness to be a bit like the desire for a bowel movement: something we all have, but not something of which we should be especially proud.
The kind of happiness they have in mind is cheap and base—a vacuous state of "bovine contentment" that cannot possibly be the basis of a meaningful human life.
As the philosopher John Stuart Mill wrote, "It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied.
And if the fool, or the pig, are a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question."#615•
In short, emotional happiness is fine for pigs, but it is a goal unworthy of creatures as sophisticated and capable as we.#596•
PART II
But if living one's life virtuously is a cause of happiness, it is not happiness itself, and it does us no good to obfuscate a discussion by calling both the cause and the consequence by the same name#610•
Happiness will not tremble," Cicero wrote in the first century BC, "however much it is tortured."#611•
When the word happy is followed by the words that or about, speakers are usually trying to tell us that we ought to take the word happy as an indication not of their feelings but rather of their stances.#641•
Apparently, the describers' verbal descriptions of their experiences "overwrote" their memories of the experiences themselves, and they ended up remembering not what they had experienced but what they had said about what they experienced#643•
What's important to note for our purposes is that card tricks like this work for precisely the same reason that people find it difficult to say how happy they were in their previous marriages.#629•
Studies such as these demonstrate that once we have an experience, we cannot simply set it aside and see the world as we would have seen it had the experience never happened.#624•
Not knowing what we're missing can mean that we are truly happy under circumstances that would not allow us to be happy once we have experienced the missing thing#603•
CHAPTER 3
Experience implies participation in an event, whereas awareness implies observation of an event#602•
Chapter 3
On the other hand, most people would rather receive $19 today than $20 tomorrow because a one-day delay that takes place in the near future looks (from here) to be an unbearable torment. Whatever amount of pain a one-day wait entails, that pain is surely the same whenever it is experienced; and yet, people imagine a near-future pain as so severe that they will gladly pay a dollar to avoid it, but a far-future pain as so mild that they will gladly accept a dollar to endure it#2022•
CHAPTER 7
Psychologists call this habituation, economists call it declining marginal utility, and the rest of us call it marriage.#636•
Because it is so much easier for me to remember the past than to generate new possibilities, I will tend to compare the present with the past even when I ought to be comparing it with the possible#642•
Chapter 4
Clinking champagne glasses and kissing one's spouse at the stroke of midnight would be a relatively dull exercise were it to happen every evening, but if one does it on New Year's Eve and then allows a full year to pass before doing it again, the experience will offer an endless bouquet of delights because a year is plenty long enough for the effects of habituation to disappear.
The point here is that time and variety are two ways to avoid habituation, and if you have one, then you don't need the other.
In fact (and this is the really critical point, so please put down your fork and listen), when episodes are sufficiently separated in time, variety is not only unnecessary—it can actually be costly.#1379•
Economists shake their heads at this kind of behavior and will correctly tell you that your bank account contains absolute dollars and not "percentages off." If it is worth driving across town to save $50, then it doesn't matter which item you're saving it on because when you spend these dollars on gas and groceries, the dollars won't know where they came from.
But these economic arguments fall on deaf ears because human beings don't think in absolute dollars#1405•
The facts are these: (a) value is determined by the comparison of one thing with another; (b) there is more than one kind of comparison we can make in any given instance; and (c) we may value something more highly when we make one kind of comparison than when we make a different kind of comparison#1305•
These facts suggest that if we want to predict how something will make us feel in the future, we must consider the kind of comparison we will be making in the future and not the kind of comparison we happen to be making in the present#1303•
Historians use the word presentism to describe the tendency to judge historical figures by contemporary standards#1308•
Chapter 5
For there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Shakespeare, Hamlet Prince of Denmark#1309•
The only thing more difficult than finding a needle in a haystack is finding a needle in a needlestack. When an object is surrounded by similar objects it naturally blends in, and when it is surrounded by dissimilar objects it naturally stands out#1307•
Alas, this simpleminded project was doomed from the start, because while rats and pigeons may respond to stimuli as they are presented in the world, people respond to stimuli as they are represented in the mind#1306•
To answer this question, researchers asked some volunteers (definers) to write down their definition of talented and then to estimate their talent using that definition as a guide. Next, some other volunteers (nondefiners) were given the definitions that the first group had written down and were asked to estimate their own talent using those definitions as a guide.#1314•
For example, college students request new dorm assignments when their current roommates do not think well of them, but they also request new dorm assignments when their current roommates think too well of them#1396•
Good scientists deal with this complication by choosing the techniques they consider most appropriate and then accepting the conclusions that these techniques produce, regardless of what those conclusions might be. But bad scientists take advantage of this complication by choosing techniques that are especially likely to produce the conclusions they favor, thus allowing them to reach favored conclusions by way of supportive facts#1377•
Studies show that people intuitively lean toward asking the questions that are most likely to elicit the answers they want to hear. And when they hear those answers, they tend to believe what they've nudged others to say, which is why "Tell me you love me" remains such a popular request#1390•
People with life-threatening illnesses such as cancer are particularly likely to compare themselves with those who are in worse shape,40 which explains why 96 percent of the cancer patients in one study claimed to be in better health than the average cancer patient#1382•
When our action causes us to accept a marriage proposal from someone who later becomes an axe murderer, we can console ourselves by thinking of all the things we learned from the experience ("Collecting hatchets is not a healthy hobby"). But when our inaction causes us to reject a marriage proposal from someone who later becomes a movie star, we can't console ourselves by thinking of all the things we learned from the experience because .
.
.
well, there wasn't one.
The irony is all too clear: Because we do not realize that our psychological immune systems can rationalize an excess of courage more easily than an excess of cowardice, we hedge our bets when we should blunder forward.#1397•
To be effective, a defensive system must respond to threats; but to be practical, it must respond only to threats that exceed some critical threshold—which means that threats that fall short of the critical threshold may have a destructive potential that belies their diminutive size. Unlike large threats, small threats can sneak in under the radar.#1394•
Terrorism is a strategy based on the idea that the best offense is the one that fails to trigger the best defense, and small-scale incursions are less likely to set off the alarm bells than are large-scale assaults.#2902•
The paradoxical consequence of this fact is that it is sometimes more difficult to achieve a positive view of a bad experience than of a very bad experience.#2903•
Intense suffering triggers the very processes that eradicate it, while mild suffering does not, and this counterintuitive fact can make it difficult for us to predict our emotional futures.#2899•
The irony is that you may ultimately feel better when you are the victim of an insult than when you are a bystander to it.#2898•
Apparently, people are not aware of the fact that their defenses are more likely to be triggered by intense than mild suffering, thus they mispredict their own emotional reactions to misfortunes of different sizes.#2904•
Intense suffering is one factor that can trigger our defenses and thus influence our experiences in ways we don't anticipate. But there are others. For example, why do we forgive our siblings for behavior we would never tolerate in a friend? Why aren't we disturbed when the president does something that would have kept us from voting for him had he done it before the election? Why do we overlook an employee's chronic tardiness but refuse to hire a job seeker who is two minutes late for the interview? One possibility is that blood is thicker than water, flags were made to be rallied around, and first impressions matter most.
But another possibility is that we are more likely to look for and find a positive view of the things we're stuck with than of the things we're not.#2906•
We just can't make the best of a fate until it is inescapably, inevitably, and irrevocably ours.#1404•
But if keeping our options open has benefits, it also has costs. Little red roadsters are naturally cramped, and while the committed owner will find positive ways to view that fact ("Wow! It feels like a fighter jet!"), the buyer whose contract includes an escape clause may not ("This car is so tiny.
Maybe I should return it").
Committed owners attend to a car's virtues and overlook its flaws, thus cooking the facts to produce a banquet of satisfaction, but the buyer for whom escape is still possible (and whose defenses have not yet been triggered) is likely to evaluate the new car more critically, paying special attention to its imperfections as she tries to decide whether to keep it.
The costs and benefits of freedom are clear—but alas, they are not equally clear: We have no trouble anticipating the advantages that freedom may provide, but we seem blind to the joys it can undermine.#1391•
Unexplained events have two qualities that amplify and extend their emotional impact. First, they strike us as rare and unusual. If I told you that my brother, my sister, and I were all born on the same day, you'd probably consider that a rare and unusual occurrence. Once I explained that we were triplets, you'd find it considerably less so.#2905•
Unexplained events seem rare, and rare events naturally have a greater emotional impact than common events do. We are awed by a solar eclipse but merely impressed by a sunset despite the fact that the latter is by far the more spectacular visual treat.#1383•
Once we explain an event, we can fold it up like freshly washed laundry, put it away in memory's drawer, and move on to the next one; but if an event defies explanation, it becomes a mystery or a conundrum—and if there's one thing we all know about mysterious conundrums, it is that they generally refuse to stay in the back of our minds#1403•
Explanation robs events of their emotional impact because it makes them seem likely and allows us to stop thinking about them. Oddly enough, an explanation doesn't actually have to explain anything to have these effects—it merely needs to seem as though it does.#2901•
In both cases, students chose certainty over uncertainty and clarity over mystery—despite the fact that in both cases clarity and certainty had been shown to diminish happiness#2900•
The poet John Keats noted that whereas great authors are "capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason," the rest of us are "incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge."#1399•
We are more likely to generate a positive and credible view of an action than an inaction, of a painful experience than of an annoying experience, of an unpleasant situation that we cannot escape than of one we can. And yet, we rarely choose action over inaction, pain over annoyance, and commitment over freedom#1400•
CHAPTER 9
But studies also show that nine out of ten people are wrong. Indeed, in the long run, people of every age and in every walk of life seem to regret not having done things much more than they regret things they did, which is why the most popular regrets include not going to college, not grasping profitable business opportunities, and not spending enough time with family and friends.#637•
But why do people regret inactions more than actions? One reason is that the psychological immune system has a more difficult time manufacturing positive and credible views of inactions than of actions#620•
Chapter 6
The fact that the least likely experience is often the most likely memory can wreak havoc with our ability to predict future experiences#1370•
This tendency to recall and rely on unusual instances is one of the reasons why we so often repeat mistakes#1387•
Because we tend to remember the best of times and the worst of times instead of the most likely of times, the wealth of experience that young people admire does not always pay clear dividends.#1386•
Genes tend to be transmitted when they make us do the things that transmit genes#1380•
For example, imagine what would happen if one of the Imperfect players sent the false message "Talking on the phone all day and night will ultimately make you very happy," and imagine that other Imperfect players were gullible enough to believe it and pass it on. This message is inaccurate and thus will cost the Imperfects a point in the end.
But it may have the compensatory effect of keeping more of the Imperfects on the telephone for more of the time, thus increasing the total number of accurate messages they transmit.
Under the right circumstances, the costs of this inaccurate belief would be outweighed by its benefits, namely, that it led players to behave in ways that increased the odds that they would share other accurate beliefs.
The lesson to be learned from this game is that inaccurate beliefs can prevail in the belief-transmission game if they somehow facilitate their own "means of transmission." In this case, the means of transmission is not sex but communication, and thus any belief—even a false belief—that increases communication has a good chance of being transmitted over and over again#1375•
Economists explain that wealth has "declining marginal utility," which is a fancy way of saying that it hurts to be hungry, cold, sick, tired, and scared, but once you've bought your way out of these burdens, the rest of your money is an increasingly useless pile of paper#1402•
It is true that when people tell us about their past experiences ("That ice water wasn't really so cold" or "I love taking care of my daughter"), memory's peccadilloes may render their testimony unreliable. But it is also true that when people tell us about their current experiences ("How am I feeling right now? I feel like pulling my arm out of this freezing bucket and sticking my teenager's head in it instead!"), they are providing us with the kind of report about their subjective state that is considered the gold standard of happiness measures#1376•
The psychologists, biologists, economists, and sociologists who are searching for universal laws of human behavior naturally care about the similarities, but the rest of us care mainly about the differences#1401•
Our mythical belief in the variability and uniqueness of individuals is the main reason why we refuse to use others as surrogates. After all, surrogation is only useful when we can count on a surrogate to react to an event roughly as we would, and if we believe that people's emotional reactions are more varied than they actually are, then surrogation will seem less useful to us than it actually is.
The irony, of course, is that surrogation is a cheap and effective way to predict one's future emotions, but because we don't realize just how similar we all are, we reject this reliable method and rely instead on our imaginations, as flawed and fallible as they may be.#1392•
aft
MOST OF US MAKE at least three important decisions in our lives: where to live, what to do, and with whom to do it.#1369•
In 1738, a Dutch polymath named Daniel Bernoulli claimed he had the answer. He suggested that the wisdom of any decision could be calculated by multiplying the probability that the decision will give us what we want by the utility of getting what we want. By utility, Bernoulli meant something like goodness or pleasure#1371•
nts
Nozick, The Examined Life, p. 111. Nozick's "happiness machine" problem is popular among academics, who generally fail to consider three things. First, who says that no one would want to be hooked up? The world is full of people who want happiness and don't care one bit about whether it is "well deserved." Second, those who claim that they would not agree to be hooked up may already be hooked up.
After all, the deal is that you forget your previous decision.
Third, no one can really answer this question because it requires them to imagine a future state in which they do not know the very thing they are currently contemplating.
See E.
B.
Royzman, K.
W.
Cassidy, and J.
Baron, " 'I Know, You Know': Epistemic Egocentrism in Children and Adults," Review of General Psychology 7: 38–65 (2003).#1395•
Clever psychologists have been able to design some unusual circumstances that provide exceptions to this rule; see C. W. Perky, "An Experimental Study of Imagination," American Journal of Psychology 21: 422–52 (1910). It is also worth noting that while we can almost always distinguish between what we are seeing and what we are imagining, we are not always able to distinguish between what we saw and what we imagined; see M.
K.
Johnson and C.
L.
Raye, "Reality Monitoring," Psychological Review 88: 67–85 (1981).#1388•
Human beings are not the only animals that appreciate variety. The Coolidge effect ostensibly got its name when President Calvin Coolidge and his wife were touring a farm. The foreman noted the sexual prowess of his prize rooster: "This rooster can have sex all day without stopping," he said. "Really?" said Mrs.
Coolidge.
"Please tell that to my husband." The president turned to the foreman and asked, "Does the rooster mate with the same chicken each time?" "No," said the foreman, "always with a different chicken." To which the president replied, "Really? Please tell that to my wife." The story is probably apocryphal, but the phenomenon is not: Male mammals who have mated to exhaustion can usually be induced to mate again with a novel female; see J.
Wilson, R.
Kuehn, and F.
Beach, "Modifications in the Sexual Behavior of Male Rats Produced by Changing the Stimulus Female," Journal of Comparative and Physiological Psychology 56: 636–44 (1963).
In fact, even breeding bulls whose sperm is collected by a machine show a greatly reduced time to ejaculation when the machine to which they've become habituated is moved to a novel location.
E.
B.
Hale and J.
O.
Almquist, "Relation of Sexual Behavior to Germ Cell Output in Farm Animals," Journal of Dairy Science 43: Supp., 145–67 (1960).#1378•