Most people’s happiness is not due to the absolute outcomes, but the relative outcomes.
Medvec (1995) showed that the happiness of bronze medalists is higher than that of silver medalists:
Some common reference points:
- Ourselves in the past
- Other people (e.g. their income)
In 1998, they asked Harvard students which of the two salaries they would prefer:
- You get $50K, but others get $25K
- You get $100K, but others get $250K
Just a little over 50% chose the first.
Similarly, if you’re unemployed when unemployment is high, you are a lot less sad than when unemployment is not high.
The more TV you watch, the higher you think the average wealth is, and the lower you estimate your own wealth.
For each extra hour of TV you watch, people spend on average $4/wk (in 1999).
Generally, if a woman spends a few minutes looking at lots of photos of models on magazines, their view of themselves go down. Similarly, a man’s attraction to his wife also goes down by a little.
Vogel (2014) tested the correlation of Facebook use and self-esteem. The correlation coefficient was -0.2 - pretty weak.
Our minds tend to get used to stuff. Hedonic adaptation is the process of becoming accustomed to a positive or negative stimulus such that the emotional effects of that stimulus are attenuated over time.
Impact bias: We overestimate the impact - both in duration and in intensity - that a positive or negative event will have in our lives. One of the key takeaways is that if you discover something negative is going to happen to you, don’t expect you’ll be sad for too long.
We don’t get better at impact bias with experience (for the same event).
Why do we predict poorly?
- Focalism: The tendency to look at that event and forgetting the rest of the world (when predicting)
- Immune neglect: Unawareness of our psychological immune system