From:
http://www.kansascity.com/205/story/104708.html
Jonathan Clements
STRIVING, BUT NEVER SATISFIED
We may have life and liberty. But the pursuit of happiness isn't going so
well.
As a country, we are richer than ever. Yet surveys show that Americans are
no happier than they were 30 years ago. The key problem: We aren't very good
at figuring out what will make us happy.
We constantly hanker after fancier cars and fatter paychecks - and,
initially, such things boost our happiness. But the glow of satisfaction
quickly fades.
Similarly, we tell our friends that our kids are our greatest joy. Research,
however, suggests the arrival of children lowers parents' reported
happiness.
Why do we keep striving after these things? Experts offer two explanations.
*We aren't built to be happy. Rather, we are built to survive and reproduce.
We wouldn't be here today if our ancestors didn't struggle to protect and
feed their families. The promise of happiness is just a trick to jolly us
along.
"This is an incentive scheme for the benefit of our genes," argues money
manager Terry Burnham, co-author of Mean Genes. "It's a very fundamental
trick that's played on us, this lure of perpetual bliss."
Don't like the idea that we're hoodwinked by some hard-wired set of ancient
instincts? Blame it, instead, on societal beliefs.
Working hard and raising children may not make us happier. But these beliefs
keep society functioning - and those who embrace them pass these values on
to their children.
*We're bad at forecasting. Consider a study by academics Daniel Kahneman and
David Schkade. They asked university students in the Midwest and Southern
California where they thought someone like themselves would be happier. Both
groups picked California, in large part because of the better weather. Yet,
when asked how satisfied they were with their own lives, both groups were
equally happy.
"When you're thinking about moving to California, you're thinking about the
beaches and the weather," said Schkade, a management professor at the
University of California at San Diego. "But you aren't thinking about the
fact that you'll still be spending a lot of time in the grocery store or
doing chores. People emphasize differences that are easy to observe ahead of
time and forget about the similarities."
When we predict what will make us happy, we're also influenced by how we
feel today.
Maybe most important, we fail to anticipate how quickly we will adapt to
improvements in our lives. We think everything will be wonderful when we
move into the bigger house. We don't realize that, after a few months, we
will take the extra space for granted.
David Schkade
http://rady.ucsd.edu/faculty/directory/schkade/
Daniel Kahneman
http://webdb.princeton.edu/dbtoolbox/query.asp?qname=facultydetail&ID=kahnem
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