TGG008: How to Be Happier
FOCUS OF THE WEEK: Happiness
Tha Warmup
The U.N.'s World Happiness Report, which ranks countries by how happy their citizens perceive themselves to be, is consistently dominated by the Nordic nations.
The United States boasts a massive happiness industry of self-help books, motivational speakers, and happiness studies. But there's a startling paradox: per-person income in America is rising, while happiness falls behind.
Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert studies the nature of human happiness. Today we'll explore his book "Stumbling on Happiness" for insight into how to be happier.
Elevator Pitch
Human beings are the only animals that think about the future. We have the incredible ability to imagine events that have never happened. We can close our eyes and think, Would I like a soap-flavored latte? ... Ef no! While we have these amazing imaginations, we're really bad at predicting how future events will make us feel. We think getting turned down from our dream job would be the end of the world, but it turns out to be a blessing. Because uncertainty amplifies emotion, our inability to predict future responses makes it harder to set realistic goals or take steps towards achieving them. Today we look at the logic-processing errors our brains often make and the small adjustments that can boost our happiness.
Digging In
The Human Brain is Thicc
Over 2 million years the human brain has tripled in mass, in part because it developed a frontal lobe, which holds the prefrontal cortex. Among other things the prefrontal cortex acts as an experience simulator, allowing us to have experiences in our minds before trying them in real life.
There's a catch: our simulators are terrible at predicting our emotional response to future events. Let's play a game to help better understand this idea. Imagine you get to choose between two futures: winning the lottery, or becoming paraplegic. You believe the lotto would make you happier, right? Wrong. Data was collected on lottery winners one year after winning the jackpot and on paraplegics one year after losing use of their legs, with both groups reporting equal happiness levels.
You're Gonna Need to Break that Down
Happiness is a subjective, umbrella term. My definition of happiness is different from yours, which explains why it may be hard for us to peg what exactly makes others happy. But shouldn't we know what makes us happy? Nope, for the same reasons that we'd have no idea how we'd feel as a conjoined twin. Gilbert explains three main reasons why, despite all the time we spend thinking about the future, we don't get better at predicting it:
1. Details, details. First, we fail to consider all the little details of a future event. Major life events are comprised of 1,000's of small details, yet we hone in on only one or two. We dread going to a party where we won't know anyone because we focus on how nervous we'll be when we walk in. We fail to consider the nice music, yummy food, and funny conversations we may experience throughout the night.
To make more realistic predictions, remember the good stuff too. Though we can't imagine every detail of an event, we can remind ourselves that we're only accounting for one or two of them. Next time you're dreading an experience, take a moment to consider the good details your imagination has left out. Be humble in your predictions.
2. Time changes all. Human beings always underestimate how much they will change. It's why teens think getting Chinese characters tattooed on their arm is a good idea. In a study, Gilbert's team asked 18-year-olds how much they expected to change over the next 10 years, then asked 28-year-olds how much they'd changed over the previous 10 years. The findings? The 18-year-olds totally underestimated how much they'd change over the next decade. The researchers repeated this experiment with older groups, finding that from age 18 to 68, everyone underestimates how much they will change over the next decade. We have an illusion "that we have just recently become the people that we were always meant to be and will be for the rest of our lives." Think about what genuinely makes you happy now, and what will make you happy 10 years from now. How might this change?
To stop making decisions our future selves regret, adopt a Yelp attitude. Gilbert finds the best way to predict how you'll feel in the future is to ask someone already in your future how they feel. Should you invest in that expensive Nikon camera? Should you become a pianist? Almost any decision you're weighing has been made before. Research shows that if you can measure the happiness of someone already living in your future, that's a good indicator for how you will feel.
3. We don't know our own strength. This is the big one, the Big Kahuna. We have something Gilbert calls the "psychological immune system," which kicks into gear following major negative events. It's a set of cognitive processes that changes our view of the world to make us feel better about the circumstances we are in. It's why Lance Armstrong is glad he had cancer. It's why Moreese Bickham, a man who spent 37 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, was able to say, "I don't have one minute's regret. It was a glorious experience." Our brains "cook the facts" so that when our greatest fears happen (a breakup, the loss of a loved one), we bounce back to our emotional baselines sooner than we expect. The implication: "things that fill us with dread will make us less unhappy, for less long, than we anticipate."
To Sum Things Up
Surprises - both good and bad - have a greater emotional impact on us than things we are expecting. So to keep our fears bounded and thus set more realistic goals for ourselves, it is important to be humble in our predictions, to ask people who are doing the things we're imagining how they feel, and to trust in the astounding resilience of the human brain.
And Also...
Research shows the best predictor of happiness is human relationships and time spent with family and friends. It's way more important than money and a little more important than health. Invest in your relationships and in your physical and mental health. Sciencealso reveals that we derive more pleasure from experiences than from objects, partly because experiences tend to be shared with others. While those new shoes will eventually get old and dirty, you'll "always have Paris."