If you won the lottery for $100 million would that make you happier the rest of your life? If you suffered an injury that made you a paraplegic would that make you permanently gloomier? Prof. Dan Gilbert of Harvard says that contrary to a universal belief, it just doesn’t happen that way. In the first part of a fascinating 21 minute video,he cites cases and statistics from his research, which indicate that our brains normally operate around some biologically controlled level of happiness; some of us being naturally much happier than others. People who win lotteries, who suffer life altering injuries or who are incarcerated for years, temporarily feel the way we would expect, but after 3 weeks to a year their brains compensate for their new situations and return them to pre-event levels of happiness. (When you think about it, this is what happens for most of us after a loved one dies.)
Certainly it’s better to win the lottery or a promotion than to be paralyzed in an accident, but external events do not permanently change our natural level of happiness. Since happiness changes from an event or achievement wont endure, then risking everything for a particular objective or to avoid a specific failure is not particularly wise.
Prof. Gilbert goes on to shatter another myth about happiness: that we can predict what will make us happy. Our ability to make good predictions on this subject is pathetic, almost non-existent. For example, we universally believe that we will be happier with choices we can change than with choices we are stuck with once we make them. With controlled experiments, he found just the opposite to be true. My first thought was about Nordstrom’s, which freely allows my wife and everyone else to return purchased items. Clearly, this attracts customers who predict that this option to change their minds will make them happier, but the research suggests that Nordstrom’s customers, because they can return purchases, won’t be as satisfied with them as customers of stores with “no return” policies.
Prof. Gilbert ties all this together with a thesis that our brains actually produce synthetic happiness, which is as real to us as natural happiness. However, we universally deny that our brains do this and consequently, give too much weight to external factors.
This talk was given in 2004, but Gilbert’s thesis really adds perspective to the Wall Street fiascos caused by ambitious, greedy and selfish executives and brokers pursuing illusions of happiness from bloated compensation and unbounded freedoms. It also explains their crybaby reactions to proposed restrictions on their behaviors and compensations; they fear being less happy.
He concluded with this the particularly apt quote from Adam Smith, the father of modern capitalism:
“The great source of both the disorders and misery of human life seems to arise from overrating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Some of these situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others. But none of them can be deserved to be pursued with that passionate ardor which drives us to violate the rules of prudence or of justice, or to corrupt the future tranquility of our minds either by shame from the remembrance of our own follies or remorse from the horror of our own injustice.”
His summation is succinct, passionate and right on target; well worth hearing and contemplating.
This talk is just one of numerous stimulating and provocative talks available from the TED site . I’ve included it in my blog roll. No doubt I’ll discuss other lectures in the coming months.
Ed Lee
