Review of "Stumbling on Happiness"

I'm still on a "social sciences for the masses" kick right now, and my next book is by Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert on the subject of happiness (with cover quotes from both Gladwell and Levitt). His basic argument is that we have difficulty even knowing what happiness is, how we perceive it, and, most importantly, how we will perceive it in the future. Our brain fools us in all sorts of ways (a similar theme to "Fooled by Randomness") that might make evolutionary sense but are still problematic for effective decision making. With all of this uncertainty, at best we "stumble" on happiness instead of it being something we can predict.

In all of this stumbling around, what do we know and don't know about what makes us happy? Feeling in control matters. Controlling where we're headed doesn't. That last part is the counterintuitive crux of the book. We are such bad "futurians," Gilbert argues, that our ability to control that future is pretty feeble and mostly futile. Our sense of our own feelings is so distorted by our own experiences (or lack thereof), by all of the ways that we intuitively (and incorrectly) fill in the gaps in our understanding, by our current frame of reference, and so on, that we just aren't rational decision makers most of the time.

As a historian, the part that intrigued me the most was our overriding "presentism" that makes it both very difficult to get inside the minds of people in past eras and utterly impossible to envision a future significantly different from our own present (a point that Taleb makes strongly in his arguments about "Black Swan" events in that we are very poor predictors of randomness). Of course, that's what makes the constant writing and rewriting of history necessary as each generation needs to be reintroduced to a subject on their own terms because they won't understand how it was described by previous generations who were viewing events through their own lenses and talking to people within their own cultural and historical contexts.

As for my own work context, I was intrigued by this idea that people need control to be happy, but they don't actually need to be in control of where they are going. It's sort of like my enjoyment of driving. I like being the driver, but I'm perfectly content for my wife to navigate. I frequently find in my interaction with faculty at JBU a similar dynamic. I expect them to be deeply interested in the details of the various campus-wide initiatives that I am working on. But they typically are not, at least the vast majority are not. As long as my work doesn't impinge significantly on their control of their classroom environment, they really don't care too much about where the organization as a whole is headed.

Here are a few other random reflections on points the author makes.

1) We are not very sensitive the absolute magnitude of an event but on its difference from preceding events. It's the old argument that people who are poor who don't start revolutions, it's people who had something and now are losing that something who decide to fight for major change. From this argument, I've long concluded that you can make major overhauls of a system as long as you do your best not to have people lose out in any significant way in the short term. It's that immediate and concrete difference from someone's current circumstance that gets noticed, not the huge reordering of the organization.

2) Our psychological immune systems keep us happy by constantly adjusting the rose colored lenses so that they're just rosy enough to keep us positive and moving forward, but not so rosy that we become out of touch with reality. But we do all of this adjusting in ways that we are completely oblivious to. We think we'd rather be rejected by a "jury," but in fact, we'd rather be rejected by a single "judge," so then we can blame that one person for his or her bad decision and feel better about ourselves (I'm not sure if this means that our decisions for grants and merit pay should be made by groups or just me--guess it depends on whether we want people to be "happy" and hate me or be unhappy and hate themselves).

3) We regret inaction more than bad actions. "Don't just stand around, DO something," even if it's a bad something. The appearance of action is very important to people. The results themselves? Not so much. This explains a lot to me about modern politics.

4) We have an easier time handling really bad experiences than only somewhat bad ones. Intensity matters in our psychological immune systems. We therefore fear too much passing along really bad news, and we don't worry enough about passing along the routine bad news.

5) The more inescapable a decision, the better we handle it. We think we want lots of choice, but too much choice also means more options for regret. Once a decision has been made, in other words, making it "stick" is crucial. Once it's inevitable, people have an easier time adjusting, just the opposite of what everyone thinks will be the case.

6) Unexplained events and "anonymous" comments are a much bigger deal in our minds than anything for which we can create a rational story line around. Knowing the explanation allows us to file away the information and deal with it better. Cliffhangers hold our attention. In other words, don't pay too much attention to anonymous comments on evaluations or surveys because they will plague your mind.

7) The best predictor of whether we'll be happy with a decision is to see how others who are currently going through that decision feel and think. We are all much more alike than we typically believe (our desire for uniqueness is overwhelming), so knowing what others feel about something is much better than relying on our our own imaginations about what we may think about something. In other words, rely on those Netflix and Amazon ratings and don't rely on your gut reaction to those ads for that new movie or book.


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