Happiness

David Gilbert, author of "Stumbling on Happiness," came to talk at Cornell. Today he spoke about happiness and how we have misconceptions of what makes us happy. In the lecture, he listed 4 main ways in which we are misguided in how we view happiness. I'll attempt to recount them here:

1.    When we imagine a scenario, we tend to forget the details. For example, when I imagine going to supermarket, I think of buying items from the grocery list, but not of how nice the cashier is, how I would accidentally knock over a display case in my clumsiness, or how I would run into an old friend. Although we forget about these details in the bigger picture of going grocery shopping, it's those details that actually make the experience good or bad. With good reason though that we don't imagine every little detail in our "simulations" -if we did, then imagining the scenario would take just as long as experiencing it. But, it's important to remember that the details of the experience that are often left out of imagining the scenarios have a larger impact the way we feel about this event.

2.   We rationalize. Our brains can hold different perspectives on any one event.

For example, in the above, you can see the box in two ways, but once you are rewarded for seeing the box in a particular fashion, your brain will have a hard time seeing it the other way. In a similar way, however things unfold, our brain tends rationalize and hold a positive perspective of the matter. This step basically lets us live at peace with the way things have unfolded. It is rather masochistic to drown in regret. Thing is, when we imagine the future, we don't remember that our brains will take this rationalization step and hence tend to downgrade (or upgrade?) what things will make us happy.

3.   We live in the present. He gave an example of a psychology experiment done on undergraduates. Subjects were introduced to potato chips and were asked to rate how much they thought they would enjoy it and then after eating them, rate how much they actually enjoyed it. The differing factor between experiments was the presence of either mouth-watering chocolate candies, or spam and some can of liver <?>. Subjects in the presence of chocolate rated their perceived enjoyment of chips lower than subjects with the spam. However, subjects from both cases had similar levels of actual enjoyment. Whatever conceptions we have of an event don't change how we actually feel when we're in the experience itself. 

4.   Your mother doesn't know everything about happiness. Cultural and personal conceptions of happiness aren't always true. He used an example of the 3 happiness-inducing factors that mothers often preach: marriage, money and children.

• Marriage: although married couples tend to be happier than unmarried individuals (both single and in relationships), perhaps couples who are happy are the ones that get married i.e. the happiness causes the marriage. Another reason could be marriage is a somewhat fixed deal (it takes work to get out of one) and our brains rationalize our happiness regarding the matter. 
• Money: money is crucial for happiness, but only up to a certain point (i.e. salary of 40k-90k). After that, money is uncorrelated with happiness. (he has theories as to why this is the case)
• Children: Studies show that happiness decreases after couples have children. Yet, people tend to think that they're much happier with children. One reason for this contradiction is because children are like heroin -they're such a great source of happiness that they crowd out all other sources of happiness. So while they do make you happy, your overall happiness decreases. 

In essence, we need to use our experiences to outsmart our brains in order to correctly predict happiness.

My thoughts:
I am the master of rationalization. And that's why point 2 speaks to me the most. Despite those random bouts of unease, I believe I strive hard to be content in life, more so that I'd like to admit. Regretting is something I refuse to do because frankly regret is all you have left of some fact you cannot change. I'd rather learn what I can from the experience... at the least I know what to do when faced with a similar choice. Regret is a desire for something you can never attain and I don't like wanting something I can't get (haha).

Point 3 is the one I'm not too certain about. I believe conceptions can completely change the way you feel about an experience. I am certain that if I wanted steak and all I got was potato chips the chips were not taste right -my taste buds desire MEAT not POTATO. On the other hand, I would enjoy the chips more if I actually wanted them. I only think this because I know I've had chips when I've wanted meat (there was no jerkey in the vending machine) and I was severely disappointed...I actually stopped eating the chips.

Phew that was a long one.