Stumbling on Happiness – Fitness Scholar

volunteers in one study received a series of twenty electric shocks and were warned three seconds before the onset of each one.35 Some volunteers (the high-shock group) received twenty highintensity shocks to their right ankles. Other volunteers (the low-shock group) received three highintensity shocks and seventeen low-intensity shocks. Although the low-shock group received fewer volts than the high-shock group did, their hearts beat faster, they sweated more profusely, and they rated themselves as more afraid. Why? Because volunteers in the low-shock group received shocks of different intensities at different times, which made it impossible for them to anticipate their futures. Apparently, three big jolts that one cannot foresee are more painful than twenty big jolts that one can (1) – page 22
People feel more confident that they will win a dice toss if they can throw the dice themselves.45 People will wager more money on dice that have not yet been tossed than on dice that have already been tossed but whose outcome is not yet known (2) – page 23
the one group of people who seem generally immune to this illusion are the clinically depressed,48 who tend to estimate accurately the degree to which they can control events in most situations. (3) – page 24
volunteers were shown some quiz-show questions and asked to estimate the likelihood that they could answer them correctly. Some volunteers were shown only the questions (the question-only group), while others were shown both the questions and the answers (the question-and-answer group). Volunteers in the question-only group thought the questions were quite difficult, while those in the question-and-answer group—who saw both the questions (“What did Philo T. Farnsworth invent?”) and the answers (“The television set”)—believed that they could have answered the questions easily had they never seen the answers at all. Apparently, once volunteers knew the answers, the questions seemed simple (“Of course it was the television— everyone knows that!”), and the volunteers were no longer able to judge how difficult the questions would seem to someone who did not share their knowledge of the answers (4) – page 38
volunteers in one study were shown a series of slides depicting a red car as it cruises toward a yield sign, turns right, and then knocks over a pedestrian.5 After seeing the slides, some of the volunteers (the no-question group) were not asked any questions, and the remaining volunteers (the question group) were. The question these volunteers were asked was this: “Did another car pass the red car while it was stopped at the stop sign?” Next, all the volunteers were shown two pictures—one in which the red car was approaching a yield sign and one in which the red car was approaching a stop sign—and were asked to point to the picture they had actually seen. Now, if the volunteers had stored their experience in memory, then they should have pointed to the picture of the car approaching the yield sign, and indeed, more than 90 percent of the volunteers in the no-question group did just that. But 80 percent of the volunteers in the question group pointed to the picture of the car approaching a stop sign. Clearly, the question changed the volunteers’ memories of their earlier experience, which is precisely what one would expect if their brains were reweaving their experiences—and precisely what one would not expect if their brains were retrieving their experiences. (5) – page 55
When college students hear persuasive speeches that demonstrably change their political opinions, they tend to remember that they always felt as they currently feel.5 When dating couples try to recall what they thought about their romantic partners two months earlier, they tend to remember that they felt then as they feel now.6 When students receive their grades on an exam, they tend to remember being as concerned about the exam before they took it as they currently are.7 When patients are asked about their headaches, the amount of pain they are feeling at the moment determines how much pain they remember feeling the previous day.8 When middle-aged people are asked to remember what they thought about premarital sex, how they felt about political issues, or how much alcohol they drank when they were in college, their memories are influenced by how they think, feel, and drink now.9 When widows and widowers are asked how much grief they felt when their spouse died five years earlier, their memories are influenced by the amount of grief they currently feel.10 The list goes on, but what’s important to notice for our purposes is that in each of these instances, people misremember their own pasts by recalling that they once thought, did, and said what they now think, do, and say… Those who remained loyal to Perot throughout his flipping and flopping remembered feeling less sad and angry when he withdrew in July than they actually had been, whereas those who abandoned him when he abandoned them remembered being less hopeful than they had been. In other words, Perot supporters erroneously recalled feeling about Perot then as they felt about him now (6) – page 75
when people who have recently eaten try to decide what they will want to eat next week, they reliably underestimate the extent of their future appetites (7) -page 76
researchers challenged some volunteers to answer five geography questions and told them that after they had taken their best guesses they would receive one of two rewards: Either they would learn the correct answers to the questions they had been asked and thus find out whether they had gotten them right or wrong, or they would receive a candy bar but never learn the answers.15 Some volunteers chose their reward before they took the geography quiz, and some volunteers chose their reward only after they took the quiz. As you might expect, people preferred the candy bar before taking the quiz, but they preferred the answers after taking the quiz. In other words, taking the quiz made people so curious that they valued the answers more than a scrumptious candy bar. But do people know this will happen? When a new group of volunteers was asked to predict which reward they would choose before and after taking the quiz, these volunteers predicted that they would choose the candy bar in both cases. These volunteers —who had not actually experienced the intense curiosity that taking the quiz produced—simply couldn’t imagine that they would ever forsake a Snickers for a few dull facts about cities and rivers (8) – page 76
When they measured the volunteers’ satisfaction over the course of the study, they found that volunteers in the no-variety group were more satisfied than were volunteers in the variety group. In other words, variety made people less happy, not more (9) – page 84
when people are asked whether they would prefer to have a job at which they earned $30,000 the first year, $40,000 the second year, and $50,000 the third year, or a job at which they earned $60,000 then $50,000 then $40,000, they generally prefer the job with the increasing wages, despite the fact that they would earn less money over the course of the three years (10) – page 89
people are more likely to purchase a vacation package that has been marked down from $600 to $500 than an identical package that costs $400 but that was on sale the previous day for $300 (11) – page 90
One of the most insidious things about side-by-side comparison is that it leads us to pay attention to any attribute that distinguishes the possibilities we are comparing… Because side-by-side comparisons cause me to consider all the attributes on which the cameras differ, I end up considering attributes that I don’t really care about but that just so happen to distinguish one camera from another… In one study, people were given the opportunity to bid on a dictionary that was in perfect condition and that listed ten thousand words, and on average they bid $24.31 Other people were given the opportunity to bid on a dictionary with a torn cover that listed twenty thousand words, and on average they bid $20. But when a third group of people was allowed to compare the two dictionaries side by side, they bid $19 for the small intact dictionary and $27 for the large torn dictionary. Apparently, people care about the condition of a dictionary’s cover, but they care about the number of words it contains only when that attribute is brought to their attention by side-by-side comparison (12) – page 92
The fact is that negative events do affect us, but they generally don’t affect us as much or for as long as we expect them to.11 When people are asked to predict how they’ll feel if they lose a job or a romantic partner, if their candidate loses an important election or their team loses an important game, if they flub an interview, flunk an exam, or fail a contest, they consistently overestimate how awful they’ll feel and how long they’ll feel awful.12 Able-bodied people are willing to pay far more to avoid becoming disabled than disabled people are willing to pay to become able-bodied again because able-bodied people underestimate how happy disabled people are.13 As one group of researchers noted, “Chronically ill and disabled patients generally rate the value of their lives in a given health state more highly than do hypothetical patients [who are] imagining themselves to be in such states.”14 Indeed, healthy people imagine that eighty-three states of illness would be “worse than death,” and yet, people who are actually in those states rarely take their own lives (13) – page 97
job seekers evaluate jobs more positively after they accept them,21 and high school students evaluate colleges more positively after they get into them (14) – page 101
when volunteers in one study were told that they’d scored poorly on an intelligence test and were then given an opportunity to peruse newspaper articles about IQ tests, they spent more time reading articles that questioned the validity of such tests than articles that sanctioned them.31 When volunteers in another study were given a glowing evaluation by a supervisor, they were more interested in reading background information that praised the supervisor ’s competence and acumen than background information that impeached it.32 By controlling the sample of information to which they were exposed, these people indirectly controlled the conclusions they would draw. You’ve probably done this yourself. For instance, if you’ve ever purchased a new automobile, you may have noticed that soon after you made the decision to buy the Honda instead of the Toyota, you began lingering over the Honda advertisements in the weekly newsmagazine and skimming quickly past ads for the competition (15) – page 104
How do we know how well most other folks do? Why, we look around, of course—but in order to make sure that we see what we want to see, we look around selectively.38 For example, volunteers in one study took a test that ostensibly measured their social sensitivity and were then told that they had flubbed the majority of the questions.39 When these volunteers were then given an opportunity to look over the test results of other people who had performed better or worse than they had, they ignored the tests of the people who had done better and instead spent their time looking over the tests of the people who had done worse. Getting a C– isn’t so bad if one compares oneself exclusively to those who got a D. This tendency to seek information about those who have done more poorly than we have is especially pronounced when the stakes are high. 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.41 And if we can’t find people who are doing more poorly than we are, we may go out and create them. Volunteers in one study took a test and were then given the opportunity to provide hints that would either help or hinder a friend’s performance on the same test. Although volunteers helped their friends when the test was described as a game, they actively hindered their friends when the test was described as an important measure of intellectual ability (16) – page 105
For half the volunteers, the betweenstates study concluded that capital punishment was effective and the within-states study concluded it was not. For the other half of the volunteers, these conclusions were reversed. The results showed that volunteers favored whichever technique produced the conclusion that verified their own personal political ideologies. When the within-states technique produced an unfavorable conclusion, volunteers immediately recognized that within-states comparisons are worthless because factors such as employment and income vary over time, and thus crime rates in one decade (the 1980s) can’t be compared with crime rates in another decade (the 1990s). But when the between-states technique produced an unfavorable conclusion, volunteers immediately recognized that between-states comparisons are worthless because factors such as employment and income vary with geography, and thus crime rates in one place (Alabama) can’t be compared with crime rates in another place (Massachusetts).47 Clearly, volunteers set the methodological bar higher for studies that disconfirmed their favored conclusions. This same technique allows us to achieve and maintain a positive and credible view of ourselves and our experiences. For example, volunteers in one study were told that they had performed very well or very poorly on a social-sensitivity test and were then asked to assess two scientific reports—one that suggested the test was valid and one that suggested it was not.48 Volunteers who had performed well on the test believed that the studies in the validating report used sounder scientific methods than did the studies in the invalidating report, but volunteers who performed poorly on the test believed precisely the opposite…. Volunteers in one study were asked to evaluate the intelligence of another person, and they required considerable evidence before they were willing to conclude that the person was truly smart. But interestingly, they required much more evidence when the person was an unbearable pain in the ass than when the person was funny, kind, and friendly.49 When we want to believe that someone is smart, then a single letter of recommendation may suffice; but when we don’t want to believe that person is smart, we may demand a thick manila folder full of transcripts, tests, and testimony (17) – page 106
research suggests that people are typically unaware of the reasons why they are doing what they are doing,1 but when asked for a reason, they readily supply one.2 For example, when volunteers watch a computer screen on which words appear for just a few milliseconds, they are unaware of seeing the words and are unable to guess which words they saw. But they are influenced by them. When the word hostile is flashed, volunteers judge others negatively.3 When the word elderly is flashed, volunteers walk slowly.4 When the word stupid is flashed, volunteers perform poorly on tests.5 When these volunteers are later asked to explain why they judged, walked, or scored the way they did, two things happen: First, they don’t know, and second, they do not say, “I don’t know.” Instead, their brains quickly consider the facts of which they are aware (“I walked slowly”) and draw the same kinds of plausible but mistaken inferences about themselves that an observer would probably draw about them (“I’m tired”). (18) – page 109
Studies show that about nine out of ten people expect to feel more regret when they foolishly switch stocks than when they foolishly fail to switch stocks, because most people think they will regret foolish actions more than foolish inactions.19 But studies also show that nine out of ten people are wrong… 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 (19) – page 112
when people are given electric shocks, they actually feel less pain when they believe they are suffering for something of great value (20) – page 113
two volunteers took a personality test and then one of them received feedback from a psychologist.25 The feedback was professional, detailed, and unrelentingly negative. For example, it contained statements such as “You have few qualities that distinguish you from others” and “People like you primarily because you don’t threaten their competence.” Both of the volunteers read the feedback and then reported how much they liked the psychologist who had written it. Ironically, the volunteer who was the victim of the negative feedback liked the psychologist more than did the volunteer who was merely a bystander to it. Why? Because bystanders were miffed (“Man, that was a really crummy thing to do to the other volunteer”), but they were not devastated, hence their psychological immune systems did nothing to ameliorate their mildly negative feelings. But victims were devastated (“Yikes, I’m a certified loser!”), hence their brains quickly went shopping for a positive view of the experience (“But now that I think of it, that test could only provide a small glimpse into my very complex personality, so I rather doubt it means much”). Now here’s the important finding: When a new group of volunteers was asked to predict how much they would like the psychologist, they predicted that they would like the psychologist less if they were victims than if they were bystanders. 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 (21) – page 113
In one study, volunteers were asked to remember how they had felt a few months earlier, and the male and female volunteers remembered feeling equally intense emotions.19 Another group of volunteers was asked to remember how they had felt a month earlier, but before doing so, they were asked to think a bit about gender. When volunteers were prompted to think about gender, female volunteers remembered feeling more intense emotion and male volunteers remembered feeling less intense emotion. • In one study, male and female volunteers became members of teams and played a game against an opposing team.20 Some volunteers immediately reported the emotions they had felt while playing the game, and others recalled their emotions a week later. Male and female volunteers did not differ in the kinds of emotions they reported. But a week later female volunteers recalled feeling more stereotypically feminine emotions (e.g., sympathy and guilt) and male volunteers recalled feeling more stereotypically masculine emotions (e.g., anger and pride). • In one study, female volunteers kept diaries and made daily ratings of their feelings for four to six weeks.21 These ratings revealed that women’s emotions did not vary with the phase of their menstrual cycles. However, when the women were later asked to reread the diary entry for a particular day and remember how they had been feeling, they remembered feeling more negative emotion on the days on which they were menstruating (22) – page 127
We overestimate how happy we will be on our birthdays,26 we underestimate how happy we will be on Monday mornings (23) – page 128
simulators were not as happy as they thought they would be. Why? Because they failed to imagine how quickly the joy of receiving a gift certificate would fade when it was followed by a long, boring task. This is precisely the same mistake that the college-football fans made. But now look at the results for the surrogators. As you can see, they made extremely accurate predictions of their future happiness. These surrogators didn’t know what kind of prize they would receive, but they did know that someone who had received that prize had been less than ecstatic at the conclusion of the boring task. So they shrugged and reasoned that they too would feel less than ecstatic at the conclusion of the boring task—and they were right! (24)
most business managers see themselves as more competent than the average business manager,27 and most football players see themselves as having better “football sense” than their teammates.28 Ninety percent of motorists consider themselves to be safer-than-average drivers… Ironically, the bias toward seeing ourselves as better than average causes us to see ourselves as less biased than average too (25) – page 129
When people are asked about generosity, they claim to perform a greater number of generous acts than others do; but when they are asked about selfishness, they claim to perform a greater number of selfish acts than others do.33 When people are asked about their ability to perform an easy task, such as driving a car or riding a bike, they rate themselves as better than others; but when they are asked about their ability to perform a difficult task, such as juggling or playing chess, they rate themselves as worse than others. (26) – page 140
we tend to attribute other people’s choices to features of the chooser (“Phil picked this class because he’s one of those literary types”), but we tend to attribute our own choices to features of the options (“But I picked it because it was easier than economics”).35 We recognize that our decisions are influenced by social norms (“I was too embarrassed to raise my hand in class even though I was terribly confused”), but fail to recognize that others’ decisions were similarly influenced (“No one else raised a hand because no one else was as confused as I was”).36 We know that our choices sometimes reflect our aversions (“I voted for Kerry because I couldn’t stand Bush”), but we assume that other people’s choices reflect their appetites (“If Rebecca voted for Kerry, then she must have liked him”).37 The list of differences is long but the conclusion to be drawn from it is short: The self considers itself to be a very special person (27) – page 140
we enjoy thinking of ourselves as special. Most of us want to fit in well with our peers, but we don’t want to fit in too well.39 We prize our unique identities, and research shows that when people are made to feel too similar to others, their moods quickly sour and they try to distance and distinguish themselves in a variety of ways (28) – page 140

References

Unpredictable Sudden Increases in Intensity of Pain and Acquired Fear
When the Stakes Are High: A Limit to the Illusion of Control Effect, Temporal Orientation and Perceived Control as Determinants of Risk Taking
The Illusion of Control Among Depressed Patient, Judgment of Contingency in Depressed and Nondepressed Students: Sadder but Wiser, Depression, Realism and the Overconfidence Effect: Are the Sadder Wiser When Predicting Future Actions and Events, Depressive Realism and Outcome Density Bias in Contingency Judgments: The Effect of the Context and Intertrial Interval
Perceived Informativeness of Facts
Semantic Integration of Verbal Information into Visual Memory, When a Lie Becomes Memory’s Truth: Memory Distortion After Exposure to Misinformation
The Perception of Consistency in Attitudes, The Relation Between Current Impressions and Memories of Self and Dating Partners, Distortion in Memory for Emotions: The Contributions of Personality and Post- Event Knowledge, Memory for Pain: Relation Between Past and Present Pain Intensity, Agreement Between Retrospective Accounts of Substance Use and Earlier Reported Substance Use, Stability and Change in Political Attitudes: Observe, Recall, and ‘Explain, The Altering of Reported Experiences, ‘It Was Never That Bad’: Biased Recall of Grief and Long-Term Adjustment to the Death of a Spouse, Relation of Implicit Theories to the Construction of Personal Histories, Sources of Bias in Memory for Emotion, Reconstructing Memory for Emotions
Obesity, Food Deprivation and Supermarket Shopping Behavior, Predicting Hunger: The Effects of Appetite and Delay on Choice
Hot/Cold Intrapersonal Empathy Gaps and the Under-prediction of Curiosity
Choosing Less-Preferred Experiences for the Sake of Variety
Preferences for Sequences of Outcomes
The Consequences of Doing Nothing: Inaction Inertia as Avoidance of Anticipated Counterfactual Regret, Inaction Inertia: Forgoing Future Benefits as a Result of an Initial Failure to Act
Contingent Weighting in Judgment and Choice, Preference Reversals Between Joint and Separate Evaluations of Options: A Review and Theoretical Analysis, The Evaluability Hypothesis: An Explanation for Preference Reversals Between Joint and Separate Evaluations of Alternatives
Adjustment to Threatening Events: A Theory of Cognitive Adaptatio, The Utility of Different Health States as Perceived by the General Public, Interpretations of Utility and Their Implications for the Valuation of Health, Ignorance of Hedonic Adaptation to Hemo-Dialysis: A Study Using Ecological Momentary Assessment, The Role of Adaptation to Disability and Disease in Health State Valuation: A Preliminary Normative Analysis, Modelling Valuations for EuroQol Health States
Job Choice and Post Decision Dissonance, Changes in Attractiveness of Elected, Rejected, and Precluded Alternatives: A Comparison of Happy and Unhappy Individual,
Selection of Information After Receiving More or Less Reliable Self-Threatening Information, Biased Information Search in the Interpersonal Domain, Postdecision Exposure to Relevant Information
Some Affective Consequences of Social Comparison and Reflection Processes: The Pain and Pleasure of Being Clos, Social Comparison Activity Under Threat: Downward Evaluation and Upward Contacts, Downward Comparison Principles in Social Psychology, Social Comparison After Success and Failure: Biased Search for Information Consistent with a Self-Servicing Conclusio, Social Comparison in Adjustment to Breast Cancer, Social Support, Support Groups, and the Cancer Patient, Some Effects of Task Relevance and Friendshi
The Influence of Prior Beliefs on Scientific Judgments of Evidence Quality, Maintaining Consistency Between Self-Serving Beliefs and Available Data: A Bias in Information Evaluation, Motivated Skepticism: Use of Differential Decision Criteria for Preferred and Nonpreferred Conclusions
The Unbearable Automaticity of Being, Category Accessibility and Impression Formation, Automaticity of Social Behavior: Direct Effects of Trait Construct and Stereotype Activation on Action, The Relation Between Perception and Behavior, or How to Win a Game of Trivial Pursuit,
“The Psychology of Preferences, Omission, Commission, and Dissonance Reduction: Overcoming Regret in the Monty Hall Problem
Control of Pain Motivation by Cognitive Dissonance
The Peculiar Longevity of Things Not So Bad
Episodic and Semantic Knowledge in Emotional Self-Report: Evidence for Two Judgment Processes, he Gender Heurristic and the Database: Factors Affecting the Perception of Gender-Related Differences in the Experience and Display of Emotions, Women’s Theories of Menstruation and Biases in Recall of Menstrual Symptoms
Preferences as Expectation-Driven Inferences: Effects of Affective Expectations on Affective Experience, Prospective and Cross-Sectional Mood Reports Offer No Evidence of a ‘Blue Monday’ Phenomenon
Surrogation: An Antidote for Errors in Affective Forecasting
Managerial Myopia: Self-Serving Biases in Organizational Planning, Ambiguity and Bias in the Self-Concept, An Exploration of the Perceptions of the Average Driver’s Speed Compared to Perceived Driver Safety and Driving Skill, The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self Versus Others
The ‘Barnum Effect’ Revisited: Cognitive and Motivational Factors in the Acceptance of Personality Description, Lake Wobegon Be Gone! The ‘Below-Average Effect’ and the Egocentric Nature of Comparative Ability Judgments
Attribution and the Psychology of Prediction, Pluralistic Ignorance: When Similarity Is Interpreted as Dissimilarity, Seeing Approach Motivation in the Avoidance Behavior of Others: Implications for an Understanding of Pluralistic Ignoranc, Abnormality as a Positive Characteristic: The Development and Validation of a Scale Measuring Need for Uniqueness
The Social Self: On Being the Same and Different at the Same Time, Effects of Experimentally Aroused Feelings of Undistinctiveness Upon Valuation of Scarce and Novel Experiences, Feelings of Interpersonal Undistinctiveness: An Unpleasant Affective Stat