If Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong. This means that if Daniel Gilbert is right, then you are wrong to believe that a new car will make you as happy as you imagine. You are wrong to believe that a new kitchen will make you happy as long as you think. You are wrong to think that you are unhappy with a large single setback (a broken wrist, a broken heart) with one (tip of the knee, strained marriage) less chronic. You are wrong to assume that the failure of employment will be overwhelming. You are wrong to think that a death in the family will leave you lacking every year, forever and ever. You are wrong to rely even a cheeseburger you order in a restaurant - this week, next week, in a year, it really does not matter when - definitely hit the spot. That's because when it comes to predicting exactly how you will feel in the future, most likely wrong.
A professor at the faculty of psychology at Harvard, Gilbert likes to tell people he is studying happiness. But it would be more accurate to say that Gilbert - with Tim Wilson psychologist at the University of Virginia, economist George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon and the psychologist (and Nobel laureate in economics) Daniel Kahneman of Princeton - took the lead in the study of a specific type emotional and behavioral prediction. In recent years, the four men began to question the decision-making process that shapes our sense of well-being, how can we predict what will make us happy or unhappy - and then how sentons- us after the actual experience? For example, how can we assume that we will feel if your favorite college team football wins or loses, and then how we can really feel a few days after the game? How can we predict they feel about buying jewelry, have children, buy a big house or be rich? And then, how can we see results? According to this small university body, almost every action - the decision to buy jewelry, have children, buy a big house or works extensively by a larger paycheck - our predictions based on these events emotional consequences.
Until recently, this was uncharted territory. How do we plan our feelings, and if these predictions fit our future emotional states, has never been research laboratory substances. But in scores of experiments, Gilbert, Wilson, Kahneman and Loewenstein made a number of observations and conclusions that undermine a set of fundamental assumptions: namely, that humans understand what we want and we are to improve our well-being - we are good maximizing our utility, in the jargon of the traditional economy. Moreover, their work on the prediction and raises troubling questions a little more personal. To understand the emotional prediction, as Gilbert called these studies is to ask if everything you've ever thought about life choices and happiness, was at least a bit naive and, at worst, a big mistake the happiness trap.
The problem, as Gilbert and company have come to discover, is that we fail when trying to imagine how we feel something in the future. Not that we have big things wrong. We know that we will experience different views Cirque and periodontist; we can predict exactly what we prefer being trapped in an elevator in Montauk Midtown. What Gilbert has found, however, it is that overestimate the intensity and duration of our emotional reactions - our '' affect '' - future events. In other words, we could believe that BMW will make life perfect. But it is almost certainly less exciting than expected; or it excites us as long as expected. The vast majority of participants in the Gilbert tested through the years consistently have only these types of errors, both in the laboratory and in real life situations. And if the subject of Gilbert tried to predict how they would feel in the future on a plate of spaghetti with meat sauce, the defeat of a romantic favorite political candidate or rejection seemed not to matter. On average, bad events were less intense and more transient test participants predicted. Good events proved less intense and brief.
Gilbert and his collaborator Tim Wilson called the gap between what we expect and what ultimately experience the 'through impact' '' - '' impact '' means that errors in estimating the intensity and duration of our emotions and '' bias '' our tendency to sin. The expression characterizes the way we experience the gradation excitement about not only BMW but also on any object or event that is supposed to make us happy. An increase of 20 percent or win the lottery result in a happy life? You can expect it, but it almost certainly will not come out this way. And a new plasma TV? You can have high hopes, but the impact by suggesting almost certainly less cold and in less time than you think. Worse, he said Gilbert expects these errors can lead directly to errors in choosing what we think give us pleasure. He calls it '' miswanting. ''
'' The average person says, "I know I'll be happier with a Porsche in a Chevy '...' 'Said Gilbert' '' O O Linda Rosalyn place as a doctor instead of a plumber This seems very clear to people the problem is I can not get into medical school or allow Porsche So for the average person, the obstacle between them and happiness is actually getting the future they want But what our research shows... - and not only ours but of Kahneman and Loewenstein - is that the real problem is to know which of these futures will have high impact and really makes you happy.
'' You know, the Stones said: "You can not always get what you want, '' 'he says Gilbert' 'I do not think that's the problem The problem is you can not always know what you want...' '
Gilbert Paper on affective forecasting began appearing in the late 1990s, but the idea of studying happiness and emotional prediction actually came to him on a sunny afternoon in October 1992, when he and his friend Jonathan Jay Koehler sat lunch outside psychology of the construction of the University of Texas at Austin, where the two men were teaching at the time. Gilbert was bored in school and said the desperation felt his failed marriage. And as he launches into a discussion of his personal life, he was diverted to wonder why economists focus on the financial aspects of doing more than emotional decision. Koehler recalls, '' Gilbert said something like..? "Everything seems so small in fact it is not a question of money; it is happiness Is not that what everyone wants to know when we make a decision '' On the one time, Gilbert forgot their problems, and two more questions came to him. We know what makes us happy? And if it is difficult to understand what makes us happy at the time, how can we predict what will make us happy in the future?
In early 1990, for a teacher and going like the Gilbert psychology to change their field of research on how we perceive each other's happiness, as he did that day was just a weird hair short. But Gilbert has always liked questions that lead him to a new place. Now 45, Gilbert left school at 15, engaging in what he calls' 'the tail end of the hippie movement' hitchhiking from town to town without a goal with his guitar. He met his wife on the way; is the stop in the other direction. They married at 17, had a son at age 18 and settled in Denver. '' I pulled weeds, which was selling rebar, which was selling carpets, rugs I installed it, I spent a lot of time the lawyer of a telephone '' he recalls. During this period, he spent several years traveling science fiction stories for magazines like Amazing Stories. Therefore, besides being "one of the most talented social psychologists of our time '', as the author psychology professor David G. Myers describes me, Gilbert is the author of '' L 'essence GRUNK' ', the story of an encounter with a creature made of egg salad that jets around the galaxy in a rocket refrigerator the happiness trap.
Psychology was a matter of chance. In the midst of his science fiction career, Gilbert tried to enroll in a writing course at the local university, but the class was full; psych thought, accept you are not registered yet, help with the development of character in his fiction. This led to the creation of a degree in the University of Colorado Denver, and then a doctorate at Princeton, then go to the University of Texas and the appointment at Harvard. '' People ask me why happiness, '' Gilbert said, 'and I say, "Why study something else is the Holy Grail studied what every human action is directed?..' '
Gilbert had an experience students in a photography class at Harvard choose two favorite photos among those who had taken and abandon a teacher. Some students said their choices were permanent; Others were told they could exchange their impressions after several days. In fact, they have had time to change their minds were less satisfied with their decisions to those whose decisions are irrevocable.
Much of the research is in that line Gilbert. Another recent study asked whether travelers in Boston, which lost its trains have been self-blame that people tend to predict who will be in this situation. (They did not.) And a paper awaiting publication, "Longevity comfortable things not so bad, '' examines why it is expected that major problems will always dwarf small inconvenience. '' When bad things really happen we defend ourselves against them, '' said Gilbert. '' People, of course, to predict the exact opposite if you ask him. "What would you like to have a broken leg knee or something? probably they say, "trick knee." And yet, if your goal is to accumulate a maximum of happiness in your life, you just made the wrong choice. A trick knee is a bad thing to have. ''
These studies establish links between forecasting, decision-making and well-being. The photography experience defies our common assumption that we would be happier with the opportunity to change our minds when, in fact, we are pleased to close. Experience shows that the transit tend to err in estimating our regret for lost opportunities. The '' work '' things are not as bad shows our inability to imagine how irritations seriously compromise our satisfaction. Our emotional defenses snap into action when it comes to divorce or illness but not least problems. We fix the leaky roof in our house, but in the long term, broken screen door mend adds up to more frustration.
Gilbert does not believe all the forecast errors lead to similar results; a death in the family, a new gym membership and a new husband are not the same, but how they affect our well-being, which are similar. '' Our research indicates simply that if what matters and what does not work, the less material than I think they will, '' he said. '' The things that happen to you or you buy or own - much as you think they make a difference in your happiness, you're wrong to a certain amount. You overestimate how much a difference they make. None of them makes a difference than you think. And this is true of the positive and negative events. ''
Much of the work of Kahneman, Loewenstein, Gilbert and Wilson was inspired by the concept of adaptation, the term psychologists used at least since the 1950s to describe the way in which to adjust to changing circumstances. George Loewenstein human capacity summarizes this as follows: '' Happiness is a sign that our brains use to motivate us to do certain things. And in the same way that our eye adapts to different lighting levels, we are designed to sort of go back to the point of happiness September. Our brains are not trying to be happy. Our brain will regulate us. 'Thus, the trend suggests why adaptation impact bias is so pervasive. As Tim Wilson, he said: '' We do not realize how quickly adapt to a pleasant event and make it the backdrop of our lives. When an event for us, we do ordinary occurs. And become ordinary, we lose our pleasure. ''the happiness trap
It is easy to forget something new and crucial in what Wilson said. Not that we lose always interested in the bright and shiny things over time - that is a feature long known - but are often unable to recognize that we adapt to new circumstances and therefore fail to integrate this into our decisions. So, yes, we adapt to BMW TVs and plasma, as we adapt to everything. But Wilson and Gilbert and others have shown that we seem unable to predict that we will adapt. So when we find the pleasure derived from a decrease of the thing, we move to the next thing or event, and is almost certain to make another prediction error, then another, ad infinitum.
As Gilbert points out, this parasite is also significant when it comes to negative events such as loss of a job or the death of someone we love, in response to which project the future of inconsolable permanently. '' What I want, I have spent more time studying, is our inability to recognize the power of psychological defenses are activated once, '' Gilbert said. '' We have used the metaphor of "psychological immune system" - it's just a metaphor, but not bad for this defense system that helps you feel better when bad things happen. The observers of the human condition since Aristotle have known that people have these defenses. Freud spent his life and his daughter Anna spent her life caring for these defenses. What is surprising is that people do not seem to recognize that they have these defenses, and that these defenses are triggered by negative events. '' During my conversations with Gilbert, a close friend of his death. '' It'm like everyone else in thinking, I'll never be in this life and never be well again, '' he wrote in an email, as had planned a trip to Texas for the funeral. '' But because of my work, there is always a voice in the back of my head - a voice wearing a lab coat and has a large amount of data under his arm - that says, 'Yes, you want, and Yes, he will do it. "And I know that the voice is right. ''
However, the argument that it is hard to imagine what we want and how we will deal still misleading. On the one hand, it can cast a shadow of regret certain decisions of life. Why I decided to work 100 hours a week to earn more would make me happy? Why I think retirement in Sun City, Ariz., I would be happy? On the other hand, it can be enlightening. It is not surprising that the library states that have not been happy as I expected. Although she dumped me, I'll be fine anyway predict how things feel to us in the long term is disconcerting. A lot of research on welfare seems to suggest that wealth above middle class comfort makes little difference to our happiness, for example, or having children does nothing to improve the well - even if it leads to dramatically lower marital satisfaction. They often crave a spacious, detached house (something we adapt easily), when in fact, likely to affect our happiness by moving us neighbors. (Social interaction and friendships have been proven to give lasting pleasure.) The large detached house is Loewenstein, 48, he was purchased. '' I fell into a trap, I would never have fallen into '' he said.
The office Loewenstein is a narrow staircase in a hidden corner of a huge building, brick is used on the edge of the campus of Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. He and Gilbert are an interesting contrast. Gilbert is talkative, theater, dazzling in his speech and writing; that fills a room. Loewenstein is the soft voice, data abstraction and flexible in the way of a hard-core athlete; It seems to float around a room. Both men profess great admiration for each other and their different disciplines - psychology and economics - have common interests in terms of complementarity rather than heavy emotional prediction. While the most significant contribution to the prediction emotional Gilbert is through the impact of Loewenstein called "empathy gap. ''
This is how it translates. In a recent experiment, Loewenstein tried to find how people could be able to dance alone to Rick James, "Super Freak '' before a large audience. Many have agreed to do for a certain amount of money a week in advance only to return when the day came on stage. This sounds like a gaffe, but it gets to the fundamental difference between the way we behave '' hot '' states (anxiety, anger, fear , desire, arousal, etc.) and "states" "" This calm rational cold empathy gap in thinking and behavior. - do not seem to predict how we behave in a warm state when we are in a cold state - materially affects happiness, but a little less consistent than through impact. '' Much of our life is making decisions that have consequences for the future, '' Loewenstein said. '' And if our decision is influenced these emotional and psychological transient states, then we know we're not making decisions with a view to future consequences. '' This can be as simple as a proclamation of unhappy love in a moment of lust, says Loewenstein, or something darker, as an act of rage or suicide.
Among other things, this research led Loewenstein collaborating with health experts who want to know why people have unprotected sex when they would never agree to do so in times of cold calculation. In which they are asked data volunteers experiments how they behave in various' heat of the moment '' situations - if they have sex with a minor, for example, or act forcefully with a partner who requested stop - have consistently demonstrated that different excited states can change margins amazing answers. '' Such statements have the ability to change us so deeply that we are more different from us in different states that are someone else, '' Loewenstein said.
Part of the Loewenstein curiosity in hot and cold states comes from situations where emotions are pitted against his intellect. When he is teaching, he walks through the world, making sure to reach Alaska or hiking kayak at least once a year. A specialized mountaineering literature, once wrote an article that examines why climbers have a bad memory for pain and usually ignore both the cusp great danger. But he did the same to himself several times. He nearly died in a canoeing accident whitewater result and promised he would never see his canoe out of control again. (A couple of hours later, went to look.) The same goes for their climbing activities. '' You set your time to reverse, then you are far from the top, '' he said. '' So you press. He has not brought enough food or clothes, and as a result, will hit 13,000 feet, and you have to sit there and shake all night without a sleeping bag or warm clothes. When the sun rises, which is half frozen, and say, "Never again" Then you go back and immediately want to start dating again. '' He pushes the point. '' I tried to train my emotions '' but admits that he can make the same mistakes on your next trip ..
Forecast errors would be no world is a better world? A life lived without forecast errors have a richer life? Among scholars who study the emotional forecast, there is no doubt that such issues eventually jump of the academy in the real world. '' If people do not know what they will do better and be happy, '' said Daniel Kahneman, '' then the idea that people can be trusted to do what will give them the pleasure becomes questionable. '' To Kahneman, who was part of the first experiences in the region in the early 1990s, affective forecasting could greatly affect retirement planning, for example, where the prediction errors (how we save, how much How to spend chose a community, we believe that we will enjoy it) may be irreversible. He sees a role for consumer spending affective forecasting a period of reflection '' off '' could remedy buyer's remorse. More importantly, he sees critical applications in health care, especially when it comes to informed consent. '' We see people able to give informed consent, once informed of the objective effects of treatment, '' says Kahneman. '' But people can anticipate how they and others will react to a colostomy or eliminating your vocal cords? Research on affective forecasting suggests that people may have little ability to anticipate their adaptation beyond the early stages. '' Loewenstein, with his collaborator Dr. Peter Ubel, did a lot of work demonstrating that patients not overestimate the displeasure of living with the loss of a limb, for example, or paraplegia. To use affective forecasts show that people adapt to serious physical challenges better and be happier than you think, says Loewenstein, it could prove invaluable.the happiness trap
There are disadvantages to public policy in the light of this research, too. While walking one afternoon Pittsburgh, Loewenstein said he does not see how one could consider the happiness and not leaning to the political left; the data are too clear that the improvement of living standards of those who are already comfortable, as through tax cuts, does little to improve their standard of living, while increasing living standards of the poor ago a big difference. However, he and Gilbert (who once declared in an academic paper, '' Windfalls are better than pratfalls, the A's are better than C 25 December is the best and April 15, and it's better than a Republican administration '') seems to lean toward libertarian push any kind of prescriptive program. '' We are very, very nervous about overapplying investigation, '' Loewenstein said. '' The fact that we know that X makes people happy and they chose Y, X. I do not want to impose an upset with paternalism and with the help of the results coming out of our scope of imposing decisions on people. ''
However, Gilbert and Loewenstein may not contain personal and philosophical issues raised by his work. After talking to the two men, it was hard not to wonder about my own predictions in each round. Sometimes he seemed to know the secret of a parlor trick was however very difficult to achieve - when ogled a new car in the Honda dealership while waiting for a new muffler on my Accord 92, for example, or fever soared to my daughter one night and found something terrible, and then something more terrible then. With some difficulty, I could see my spirit overtaking the mark, zoom past accuracy towards the sublime or tragic. It was tempting to think ahead more moderately. But it seemed impossible too.
For Loewenstein, who is the operator particularly friction between your emotional and deliberative process, a life without forecast errors it would likely be a better, happier life. '' If you had a deep understanding of the effects of polarization and acted in it, which is not always easy to do, you tend to invest their resources on things that make you happy, '' she dit-. This could mean taking more time with friends instead of more time to make money. It also adds that a better understanding of the difference of empathy - the hot and cold states, we are all in frequent opportunities - could save people from making regrettable decisions in moments of anger or thirst.
Gilbert seems optimistic about the use of labor in terms of improving "institutional trial '' - how we spend money for health care, for example -. But less optimistic about their use to improve our personal judgment He admits He took part of his research on the heart, such as his work on what he calls the psychological immune system led him to believe he would be able to accommodate even the worst events also said that now more likely in. life, a fact confirmed in at least one aspect of their research partner Tim Wilson, who says that driving with Gilbert in Boston is a white-knuckle terrifying experience. '' But I have learned more lessons of my research I've done, '' Gilbert admits. '' I'm getting married in the spring because this woman will make me happy forever, and I know. '' At the time, Gilbert laughed, a laugh suddenly booming filling his office in Cambridge. He seems find it funny not because it is bad, but because nothing could be more true. That's how it feels. '' I do not think I want to give all these reasons, '' he said, '' the belief that there are good and there are bad and that this is a contest to try to get one and avoid the other. I do not think I learn a lot from my research in this direction. ''
Although Gilbert is currently working on a complex experience that did go affective forecasting errors. '' In this test, the team of Gilbert asked the group A to estimate how they will feel if they receive negative feedback personality. Through kicking impact, of course, and they predict most of the time they will feel terrible, when in fact end up feeling good, but if the group Gilbert B shows that others have had the same reaction and felt fine after then their members predict that will feel good too. Through the impact disappears, and participation in group B make accurate predictions.
This is exciting Gilbert the happiness trap.
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