A CONVERSATION
WITH DANIEL GILBERT
Professor
Happiness: The interview
By Claudia
Dreifus
Published: April 23,
2008http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/23/healthscience/22conv.php
At Harvard, the
social psychologist Daniel Gilbert is known as Professor Happiness. That is
because the 50-year-old researcher directs a laboratory studying the nature of
human happiness. Dr. Gilbert’s “Stumbling on Happiness” was a New York Times
paperback
best seller for 23 weeks and won the 2007 Royal Society Prize for Science
Books.
Q. HOW DID YOU
STUMBLE ONTO YOUR AREA OF STUDY?
A. It was
something that happened to me roughly 13 years ago. I spent the first decade of
my career studying what psychologists call “the fundamental attribution error,”
which is about how people have the tendency to ignore the power of external
situations to determine human behavior.
Why do many
people, for instance, believe the uneducated are stupid?
I’d have been
content to work on this for many more years, but some things happened in my own
life.
Within a short
period of time, my mentor passed away, my mother died, my marriage fell apart
and my teenage son developed problems in school. What I soon found was that as
bad as my situation was, it wasn’t devastating. I went on.
One day, I had
lunch with a friend who was also going through difficult times. I told him: “If
you’d have asked me a year ago how I’d deal with all this, I’d have predicted
that I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning.”
He nodded and
added, “Are we the only people who could be so wrong in predicting how we’d
respond to extreme stress?”
That got me
thinking. I wondered: How accurately do people predict their emotional
reactions to future events?
Q. HOW DOES THAT
RELATE TO UNDERSTANDING HAPPINESS?
A. Because if we
can’t predict how we’d react in the future, we can’t set realistic goals for
ourselves or figure out how to reach to them.
What we’ve been
seeing in my lab, over and over again, is that people have an inability to
predict what will make us happy — or unhappy. If you can’t tell which futures
are better than others, it’s hard to find happiness. The truth is, bad things
don’t affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. That’s true of good things,
too. We adapt very quickly to either.
So the good news
is that going blind is not going to make you as unhappy as you think it will.
The bad news is that winning the lottery will not make you as happy as you
expect.
Q. ARE YOU SAYING
THAT PEOPLE ARE HAPPY WITH WHATEVER CARDS ARE DEALT TO THEM?
A. As a species,
we tend to be moderately happy with whatever we get. If you take a scale that
goes from zero to 100, people, generally, report their happiness at about 75.
We keep trying to get to 100. Sometimes, we get there. But we don’t stay long.
We certainly fear
the things that would get us down to 20 or 10 — the death of a loved one, the
end of a relationship, a serious challenge to our health. But when those things
happen, most of us will return to our emotional baselines more quickly than
we’d predict. Humans are wildly resilient.
Q. DO MOST OF US
HARBOR UNREASONABLE NOTIONS OF WHAT HAPPINESS IS?
A. Inaccurate,
flawed ideas. Few of us can accurately gauge how we will feel tomorrow or next
week. That’s why when you go to the supermarket on an empty stomach, you’ll buy
too much, and if you shop after a big meal, you’ll buy too little.
Another factor
that makes it difficult to forecast our future happiness is that most of us are
rationalizers. We expect to feel devastated if our spouse leaves us or if we
get passed over for a big promotion at work.
But when things
like that do happen, it’s soon, “She never was right for me,” or “I actually
need more free time for my family.” People have remarkable talent for finding
ways to soften the impact of negative events. Thus they mistakenly expect such
blows to be much more devastating than they turn out to be.
Q. SO, IF WE
DIDN’T HAVE THESE MECHANISMS, WOULD WE BE TOO DEPRESSED TO GO ON?
A. There may be
something to that. People who are clinically depressed often seem to lack the
ability to reframe events. That suggests that if the rest of us didn’t have
this, we might be depressed as well.
Q. AS THE AUTHOR
OF A BEST SELLER ABOUT HAPPINESS, DO YOU HAVE ANY ADVICE ON HOW PEOPLE CAN
ACHIEVE IT?
A. I’m not Dr.
Phil.
We know that the
best predictor of human happiness is human relationships and the amount of time
that people spend with family and friends.
We know that it’s
significantly more important than money and somewhat more important than
health. That’s what the data shows. The interesting thing is that people will
sacrifice social relationships to get other things that won’t make them as
happy — money. That’s what I mean when I say people should do “wise shopping”
for happiness.
Another thing we
know from studies is that people tend to take more pleasure in experiences than
in things. So if you have “x” amount of dollars to spend on a vacation or a
good meal or movies, it will get you more happiness than a durable good or an
object.
One reason for this is that experiences tend to be shared with other people and
objects usually aren’t.
Q. HAVE YOU JUST
EXPRESSED A VERY ANTI-AMERICAN IDEA?
A. Oh, you can
spend lots of money on experiences. People think a car will last and that’s why
it will bring you happiness. But it doesn’t. It gets old and decays. But
experiences don’t. You’ll “always have Paris” — and that’s exactly what Bogart
meant
when he said it to Ingrid Bergman. But will you always have a washing machine?
No.
Today, I’m going
to Dallasto meet my wife and I’m flying first class,
which is ridiculously expensive. But the experience will be far more delightful
than a new suit. Another way I follow what I’ve learned from data is that I
don’t chase dollars now that I have enough of them, because I know that it will
take a very large amount of money to increase my happiness by a small amount.
You couldn’t pay
me $100,000 to miss a play date with my granddaughters.
And that’s not
because I’m rich. That’s because I know that a hundred grand won’t make me as
happy as nurturing my relationship with my granddaughters will.
Q. SO YOU HOLD
WITH THE NOTION THAT “MONEY CAN’T BUY YOU HAPPINESS”?
A. I wouldn’t say
that. The data says that with the poor, a little money can buy a lot of
happiness.
If you’re rich, a lot of money can buy you a little more happiness. But in both
cases, money does it.
Q. ARE YOU, DAN
GILBERT, HAPPY?
A. I am. I think
good things are happening to me and will continue. I am not optimistic about
the rest of the species, but I’m so blessed, it’s almost scary. I’m sorry to
disappoint you, but I have a wildly sunny disposition. I love to laugh. My book
is full of jokes.
Copyright
© 2008 the International Herald Tribune
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