would you rather become parapalegic or win the lottery? (natural v. synthetic happiness)

This week my brother sent me an interesting talk on happiness given by Harvard Psychology Professor Dan Gilbert. He's also the author of the book Stumbling on Happiness, which I just added to my GoodReads.com to-read list. For those of you who don't feel like watching the whole clip, that's what I'm here for :-)

Basic premise: Our "psychological immune system" lets us feel truly happy even when things don’t go as planned.

Gilbert begins by explaining that the prefrontal cortex -- which developed over time as human brains grew larger -- allows people to "have experiences in their heads, before they try them out in real life." More generally, the basic functions of the prefrontal cortex relate to abilities to:

• differentiate among conflicting thoughts
• determine good and bad, better and best, same and different
• think through the future consequences of current activities
• work toward a defined goal
• "predict" expected outcomes, based on actions
• exhibit social "control" (suppress urges that, if not suppressed, could lead to socially-unacceptable outcomes)

Of course, there are some glitches associated with these abilities...we are human after all. One of these is the notion of impact bias, which is the tendency for the simulator (prefrontal cortex) to make us believe that different outcomes (for example, getting or not getting job X) are more different than they actually are. In actuality, different outcomes tend to have less impact, intensity, duration than people expect them to have. A really interesting example given in the talk is the choice between becoming a paraplegic and winning the lottery. Pretty much all of us would go for the money!! But, a year after becoming paraplegic/winning the lottery, the two groups of people had generally the same level of happiness! Somewhat surprisingly, studies of
the experience of major life traumas suggest that if it happened over 3 months ago (with some exceptions) it has almost no impact. 

Now for the crux of it all....it turns out that happiness can be synthesized. We each have a psychological immune system that helps us change our views on the world so we can feel better about the world we find ourselves in. This reminds me a lot of Gretchen Rubin's commandment to Act the way you want to feel. Basically, "by acting as if you feel a certain way, you induce that emotion in yourself." Try it sometime!! Right now, for example. If you think to yourself, what a great day...and walk around like you're the ish...chances are you'll feel like your day is indeed a great one!

(Aside - this may not always work lol...Some friends of Nix and mine came to visit last year and I randomly stuck a post-it note on the door a few days earlier that said "today is gonna be a great day"...i thought it would be nice to leave home every day with that in mind...so the two friends go outside to move their car from our lot -- which is permit-only parking, btw -- and on the way out one of them reads my post-it and says aloud "it already has been!!"...2 minutes later we get a call from them that they can't find their car...it got towed!!! LOLOL....now i know you're wondering how this is funny....but actually it still ended up being a great day...we had quite an adventure going to get the car and doing other fun stuff...moral of the story...ish happens, get over it we're not victims of the world, we're victims of the way we view the world...so don't be a victim!...or something like that...whatever you take away from this story, it's one of my favorite memories and we still crack up thinking about it. )

Ok, back to Gilbert's talk. The idea of synthesized happiness is that we think it is a thing to be found, but really we can make our own happiness. We can synthesize happiness.

• natural happiness - what we get when we get what we want
• synthetic happiness - what we make when we don't get what we want

We all believe natural happiness is more valuable/better than synthetic happiness. Actually, when we want something more, we may even like it less...because want does not equal like, and vice versa. An interesting concept related to this is paradox of choice. Gilbert asserts that "freedom to choose is the enemy of synthetic happiness." Apparently, our psychological immune system works best when we can't choose, when we are stuck with a certain good/situation....you find a way to be happy with what's happened or what you've received. When life gives you lemons...

Gilbert does concede, however, that some things are better than others and we should have preferences...but when they drive us too hard and fast because we've overrated the difference between futures/outcomes we're at risk (for disappointment, discontent, unhappiness). He adds that longings and worries are both to some degree overblown, because we have ability to manufacture the thing we're constantly chasing when we choose between experiences.


This whole discussion also reminds me of the arrival fallacy, which Gretchen Rubin also talks about in her book/blog. Tal Ben-Shahar, a prominent positive psychologist, explains this as the belief that once you arrive at a certain destination, you'll be happy. We think: "if i could just X, everything would be perfect, i'd be happy, etc." Actually, arriving rarely makes you as happy as you anticipate :-/

It seems that working toward a goal can be a more powerful source of happiness than achieving it. (I know postpartum depression is complicated, but anyone else see the link here?) Finishing or accomplishing something can sometimes be a letdown. With all this in mind, try to focus on happiness in the present, in the atmosphere of growth afforded by making gradual progress toward a goal (pre-goal attainment positive affect).This can be difficult when the thing you're waiting for is something like a job. Obviously, worrying about where your income will come from is a huge boon to happiness, but for argument's sake, let's say we're talking about other sorts of goals. (For me, this idea applies to my grad school plans.)

Bottom line here: Don't be a victim. You can synthesize your own happiness. Nourish your psychological immune system like you would your biological immune system. Enjoy Now. 


Today's *big chune* is from one of the sickest riddims of all time - drop leap riddim. OMG there are sooo many big chunes on this riddim! Intoxication by German reggae artist Gentlemen is one of my favs. Btw, how awesome/crazy is it that this dude is straight German and has cred as an authentic conscious reggae artist?!


:-D