Conceive your own Happiness

A lot of time is spent chasing experiences. Little drops of joy that change your mood. So we do things that we believe will make us happy. We can kind of see the outcome and choose to do it or not. I mean, kidney & liver cake... would you like some? I make it for my dogs and there's no way I'm going to cut myself a slice. I've got a good idea it's going to taste bad... there isn't even any sugar in it.

Anyway, we have this...

...amazing ability to simulate experiences...

...in our pre-frontal cortex. It's a neat trick no other animal can do like we can. So let's use this simulator to imagine your future... On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being the happiest, how happy would you be if you won the lottery? What about if you became paralysed?

Naturally, if you won the lottery happiness would spike, and if you became a paraplegic it would crash, and yet, over time a sense of happiness returns to baseline. It's because money and all the things it buys doesn't make people happy in the long term. Equally, an incapacitating event does not suppress joy and satisfaction over a lifetime. Of course, you'd be devastated, however, as Stephen Hawking put it - "My expectations were reduced to zero when I was 21. Everything since then has been a bonus."

It turns out, major life events do not matter as much as we expect!

Research has revealed something unexpected, something researchers call the "impact bias", which is the tendency for your simulator to make you believe that different outcomes are more distinct than they really are.

Numerous studies on many different life events are shown to have less impact and intensity and do not last as long as people expect. In fact, if a major life trauma happened over three months ago, with few exceptions, it would have no impact whatsoever on your happiness. It is almost unbelievable but it's because happiness can be manufactured.

We synthesize happiness, although, most are still looking for it. In other words, we have a "psychological immune system"... cognitive processes that help to change our views of the world, so we can feel better about the world we live in.

At some point, you'll no doubt have had a conversation where a friend or acquaintance seems to put a positive spin on an obviously drastic event. They'll claim to be happier, glad it happened, no regrets, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger, etc. In our heads, we respond in disbelief, "Really, yeah... OK", to their shocking statements because we imagine how that situation would affect us. We think it would devastate us.

So we snigger because we don't understand...

...the Power of Conceived Happiness

In our view, we can see the quality "natural happiness" brings but not the value of happiness that we create.

Now, Dan Gilbert, Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, has proven that synthetic happiness is not inferior to natural happiness. Plus, he shows us how to control our dysfunctional brains to avoid it preventing synthetic happiness occurring.

The charismatic professor takes a 50-year-old experiment called the "free choice paradigm" to demonstrate how we create happiness. He displays 6 objects and asks a person to rank them in order of the ones they like the most to the least... 1st to last. In his experiment, he uses Monet prints and once the person has finished ranking them, he thanks them and tells them, "We happen to have some extra prints in the closet. We're going to give you one as your prize to take home. We happen to have number three and number four, which one would you like?" The choice is a bit difficult because neither one stands out over the other, but naturally, people tend to pick number three because they liked it a little more than number four.

Sometime later the experiment is repeated on the participants. The results show the print they own moves up the order and the one they didn't choose moves down. Now, you might question the conscious decision-making over actual happiness... you wouldn't be the first... So professor Gilbert removed the consciousness decision-making out of the equation.

To be able to prove happiness is in fact created, the professor did the same experiment with a group of hospitalised patients who had anterograde amnesia. Most of them have Korsakoff's syndrome because they drank far too much, and now they can't make new memories. They remember their childhood, but if you walk in and introduce yourself, and then leave the room when you go back in, they don't know who you are.

So, they repeated the experiment with the Monet prints. The patients were asked to rank them in order of the ones they like the most to the least... 1st to last. They too were given the choice between print number three and four. Like most people would, they said they'd take number three. They were told print number three would be mailed to them.

After half an hour, they return to see the patient. The patients excuse themselves saying, "If I've met you before, I don't remember." Just to make sure, they're asked to pick out the print they chose. They simply picked one at random because they couldn't remember. OK, perfect, now the experiment can be repeated to see what happens.

In the original experiment, the participants believe the one they own is better than they thought. The one they didn't choose is not as good as they thought. Synthetic happiness. It turns out, amnesiacs do exactly the same thing. They like the one they own more so than they did before, but they don't know they own it.

So, synthesised happiness truly changed their deep emotional reactions to that Monet print. They're not just saying it because they own it... because they don't know they own it. They are not trying to convince themselves of anything. The emotion is real. Their feelings towards the prints were changed by manufactured happiness.

The Enemy of Conceiving Happiness

Additionally, some of us are better at doing this than others. Plus, the circumstances surrounding the situation can prevent synthetic happiness from thriving. It turns out, the ability to change your mind is the enemy of conceiving happiness. Freedom, the option to go back on a decision, only stimulates a desire for natural happiness because it allows us to try possibilities that might make us happy.

In order to demonstrate how this phenomenon affects us, professor Gilbert created a photography course where students borrow a camera, take some photos and learn how to develop them in the darkroom. Now they are given the opportunity to make two enlarged prints of their best photos. Then, as part of the course, they have to submit one print and they get to keep the other. One group of students were told their submitted print would be sent to head office, therefore, their decision was final. While the other group was told they could change their mind within a week.

Here's what happened, the group that couldn't change their mind liked the image they chose a lot. However, the students given the opportunity to change their mind do not like their picture even when the chance to change the print expired. The experience killed synthetic happiness. And the crazy thing is, we choose to be in situations where created happiness cannot thrive. Two-thirds of us will choose options that give us the opportunity to change our minds and therefore risk being unhappy with the decision in the long run.

The reality is, we have the capability to manufacture happiness and yet we are constantly chasing it by choosing experience.