Why we're unhappy -- the expectation gap | Nat Ware | TEDxKlagenfurt

Reviewer: Peter van de Ven I remember being surprised the first times I went to Africa. I was shocked when I met a lame taxi driver in Kenya. I was shocked when I met Sonia, an orphan schoolgirl in Rwanda. And I was shocked when I met a disabled subsistence farmer in Mozambique. What surprised me was not his poverty, but his happiness. I found his happiness confronting, much more confronting than poverty. Of course, not everyone was happy, but of those who were above the basic subsistence threshold, I was surprised at how genuinely happy many of them were. And I became fascinated by this notion, this idea of ​​happiness.

And since then I've researched it, I've worked on it, I've thought about it. I'm interested from an economic perspective; It's one of the things I research at Oxford. And I'm interested from a social enterprise perspective because, after all, happiness is the ultimate social outcome. I think it is particularly appropriate to talk about happiness because we have with us the Prime Minister of Bhutan, the same man who pioneered, who introduced and who championed the idea of ​​gross domestic happiness, rather than GDP, as a way of tracking growth from a country. progress, as a way to monitor how governments are acting.

But before we get into that, I want to start with a little test, a game. It's just a simple multiple choice quiz and I've invited other participants to join us on stage. So, I want you to raise your hand, I want you to answer honestly when I ask you the questions. So the first question. Imagine you are competing in the Olympic Games, representing your country, which of the following would you prefer: would you prefer to come second, third or second to last? Answer honestly: who would rather come in second place? Rise your hand. Excellent! Who would prefer to be third?

And who would prefer to be in second to last place? Excellent. It seems like a large portion of you want to come second. I'm not sure about selecting you for my Olympic team, but... (Laughs) The monkeys select a third, a third, a third; They don't quite understand the question, but they knew that there are three options. (Laughter) It's probably no surprise that among the general population, most prefer second place. So that's the first question. Question number two. Imagine that you are given one of two options: either you win the lottery and tomorrow you get ten million dollars and you can spend it however you want; or option B, alternatively, you will receive a very small payment tomorrow, but you will receive gradual payments throughout your life - increasing payments, and in total, you will receive eight million dollars over your lifetime.

If I gave you that option right now, which one would you choose? Who would choose option A? Many people. Who would choose option B? Excellent. Among the general population, most people seem to be quite shortsighted; Most people like ten million dollars tomorrow. Again, the monkeys 50:50. (Laughter) They recognized that there were two options, not three. Third and last question. You can choose your salary: what do you choose? You get 50,000 and everyone else gets 50,000. You get 50,000 and everyone else gets 60,000, or you get 40,000 and everyone you know gets 30,000. Who would choose option A? Who would choose option B? Virtually no one.

Who would choose option C? I think there's one person in an audience of about 200. You're pretty consistent with the general population, most opt ​​for option A. The monkeys, no surprises. But let's think now about what the real answers are. What does the research say about what really makes us feel content, what really makes us feel satisfied, and what really makes us happy? To question one, the answer is actually third, which I think was the lowest of the three options you all gave. There is no shortage of silver medalists who seem dissatisfied. (Laughs) That was the first question.

Second question, I think you did better. You chose option B, you went against the general population, and I think you beat the monkeys this time: they beat you on question one; You won question two. And for question three, the correct answer was actually C, and I think only one person got it right. And then the monkeys beat you two out of three, in terms of what really makes us content, satisfied and happy, as research has shown. So I think it's fair to say that overall they are a little bit better at predicting happiness than the general population, but they're still pretty pathetic, I'm sorry to say.

I think the monkeys beat you, maybe that's why they smile. They won two out of three. And the interesting thing is that it is not just us who are bad predictors of happiness. Macroeconomic data also supports this. We are richer than ever, but unhappier than ever. We are more prosperous, but more depressed. We are less satisfied. We have increasingly faster transportation, but we are increasingly quick to complain about it. In many countries there are currently more suicides than homicides. We now have more goods and services than ever. We have technology improving exponentially, but we don't see a corresponding increase in our satisfaction with life, in our happiness.

Perhaps it is one of the great paradoxes of our time. And I think the obvious question is: why do governments and individuals predict happiness so poorly? Why do we make mistakes so often? And I think it's because we don't really understand why we are often

unhappy

. And then the obvious question is: Why are we

unhappy

? What is the explanation? Now, it's not an easy question to answer, but it's one that I've thought about, researched, and delved into. And through my research over the years, as I think about it, I think there is one explanation that I find much more compelling, much more plausible, much more persuasive than any other.

And that explanation is not that we have so many options that we get stressed. It is not that we are in a worse economic situation; In many cases, we are in a better economic situation. It's not that we only have excellent reports on depression and suicide; That's true, but it only explains a small part of the data. It is not due to family breakdowns or reduced freedom. You know, the reason we're unhappy, the most compelling reason, as the data shows, as the research shows, has to do with

expectation

s. On a very basic and simple level, we feel unhappy when our

expectation

s of reality exceed our experiences of reality.

When our expectations exceed reality. And I would like to call this an expectation gap, when our expectations are greater than reality. It's a very simple concept, but it's very important to understand it completely, to understand it completely. And to help us understand it, I'd like to think in terms of three different types of expectation gaps: three different types of gaps based on the different ways we form expectations. I believe we form expectations based on our imagination, those around us, and our past experiences. So, to this first type of expectation gap, the imagination gap, which occurs when our imagination exceeds reality.

You see, when we choose to buy products, we choose from a variety of options. When we choose where to travel, we often choose from a variety of options. When we choose which leader to choose, we often choose from a variety of options. And how do we make that decision? What we do is we choose the one we think will be the best. We choose the one that we imagine will be the best of all the options. What we do is try to maximize our utility at a given price, that's how most people make decisions. To do otherwise would be to choose an option that we didn't think was that good, which seems a bit counterintuitive.

Now the problem here is that the very act of choosing what we believe will give us the most happiness, that same decision-making process is what actually undermines our happiness because what it means is that when we then look at reality, When we later experience it, whether it is the good or the place we travel to or the leader we choose, it is very likely that that reality will not live up to our expectations. And that leads to disappointment. And technology makes this much worse. What technology has messed up is making things that aren't actually realistic seem real, things that aren't even on the scale of happiness being made to seem like they're actually possible.

We photoshop things, we airbrush things, and we digitally enhance photos. And what this does is it makes us romanticize travel and makes us think of fantastical ideas about places that reality just can't live up to. So we think the Sagrada Familia looks like this, when in reality it looks like this. (Laughter) We think the Taj Mahal always looks like this, when, in fact, it often looks like this. We think the Mona Lisa looks like this, when in reality, if we are going to visit it, it will most likely look like this. (Laughter) What technology does is distort our vision, it distorts reality and makes the unreal seem real.

In fact, many of the times we are happiest when we travel are actually times when we stumble upon things we didn't expect, when we discover things for ourselves, when we don't have preconceived notions of different places. And what also makes this worse is selection bias. Many content-based algorithms, whether it's a Google search or a Facebook news feed, the way they present information is by prioritizing those things that are the best images, the most shared images, the most liked images. . They are more likely to show you a photo on Facebook if it has 200 likes than if it has 2.

And that's why we come to think that the best images are normal, average. And this also plays with our imagination. That's a selection bias. Then there is persuasion, because politicians are often elected on the basis of promising things they cannot deliver, by raising our expectations. Who would you be most likely to vote for? A politician who says, "I'll solve your problems if you vote for me," or someone who says, perhaps more honestly, "Things will probably stay the same whether you vote for me or not"? He'll probably vote for the former, but he'll probably also be disappointed.

And so we are in this constant cycle of rising expectations and fading hopes. The same goes for companies. I mean, companies are more likely to tell us that watches have never performed tasks so fast. They probably won't tell us that batteries have never died so quickly, and both things are true. And so when there is technology, when there is persuasion, and when there is selection bias, what that means is that we imagine, we demand, and we expect more than reality can provide. And when the unlimited potential of our minds meets the confined nature of the earth, we are disappointed, we are unhappy.

Expectations and disappointments irrevocably intertwined. In terms of beauty, it is no wonder that self-esteem levels are so low. I mean, advertisers learned a long time ago that if you can make people hate themselves, you can sell them things. Now they are applying it over and over again and we see this. What we see is that advertisers show only the best before and after photos. What we see are photographs of models that seem perfect even though they are not. We have become a society of complainers, of perfectionists, of counterfactual historians: people who always imagine different and better outcomes for ourselves, but people whose imaginations cannot be satisfied.

So that's the imagination gap. That is why our imagination exceeds reality, and that is the first main reason why we are unhappy. The second main type of expectation we have, I like to call the interpersonal gap. That's where we compare our reality with the reality of others. Simply put, we judge ourselves based on what we experience around us. If you earn $50,000 in a poor neighborhood, you will feel rich. If you earn $50,000 in a rich neighborhood, you will feel poor. If you get a small raise, but everyone around you gets a big raise, you'll be disappointed. Your gain is someone's pain;

Someone's pain is your gain. Unfortunately, it's a zero-sum game, or so it seems. And it's not just relative income that matters; It's also the relative appearance that matters. One person's plastic surgery is another's psychic loss. In fact, research has shown that we are actually happier when we are with worse-looking people because others perceive us as objectively more attractive. So when your friend asks you to go with him to a bar or a nightclub, you know why. (Laughter) And what's particularly interesting about this is that we have an asymmetry of emphasis: we prioritize, we focus on one end of the spectrum.

We focus on the rich, the famous, the beautiful and pay less attention to the other extreme. And that's why they make us look poorer, they make us feel poorer, they make us feel less successful than we really are. It's almost as if we were running on a hedonic treadmill, constantly striving to be happy, but failing to achieve it.because when our standard of living improves, if everyone else's standard of living improves too, we don't always feel happier. That's the second way we form expectations, based on those around us. The third and final way is based on our past, on our past experiences.

I call this the intertemporal gap. And we feel unhappy when our past reality is better than our present reality. Let's take as an example two people who have the same average income over their lifetime. There is person A whose income decreases over his lifetime, and person B whose income increases. Now, research shows that you are always happier if you are person B, if you have that increasing income, even though the average may be the same. Why is this? It's because of something psychologists call anchoring. We compare ourselves to our past, and if you are constantly improving, constantly exceeding expectations, constantly moving forward, you are generally happy.

The opposite is true if you are person A. So what does this mean in terms of raising children? I think we often tend to spoil children; We tend to give them everything to give them the best start in life. But often the best intentions don't always lead to the best results. Yes, we should support children, but if we give them everything, it is much more difficult for them to have what I call a positive intertemporal gradient: it is more difficult for them to improve over time throughout their life and that, in fact , potentially undermines your happiness.

As I talk about parenting, I think another problem in our society is that we tend to tell children that they are special, that they are unique, that they are one of a kind, that they are amazing. We tell them that they can be Prime Minister or President, that they can be the next Mark Zuckerberg. We tell them that one day they will be Beyoncé. What this means is that we raise your expectations. And then, when that kid gets a normal job, when he starts a business and it fails, as most people do, when he sees the peaks of his career with a performance of single women in the shower, he feels disappointed, unhappy. , his expectations have not been met.

Yes, we want to give children self-confidence, but we don't want to fool them and we don't want to fool ourselves. So what we see is that our happiness is largely determined by expectations. Our expectations are largely determined by what we consider normal. And what we consider normal is largely based on our imagination, those around us, and our past. And that's why we have these constant battles: the battle between our imagination and our reality; the battle between the reality we live and what we think or perceive others live; the battle between our reality and our past reality.

How can we win these battles? I think the first challenge, the challenge for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs, for parents, for legislators, for magazine editors is to take happiness seriously, to take expectations seriously. I think that many times we relegate happiness to the world of art, not to science. We dismissed it, we thought of it in terms of hippies rather than businessmen. What we want is for entrepreneurs to focus on improving satisfaction, not just increasing consumption. In terms of winning the battle of imagination, I think it's important that we make content providers a

ware

of the importance of having realistic representations of images, people, places and events.

And we could even go so far as to ban things like digital enhancement in ads. In terms of winning the interpersonal battle, I think it is important that governments prioritize income equality and that we learn to compete against ourselves and not others. And in terms of that intertemporal battle, I think it's important that we support children, encourage them, but also make them realize when it's impossible and not give them completely unrealistic expectations. Let me conclude. It seems that we have been seduced by a way of life that almost conspires in every way against the most basic level of satisfaction.

We are terrible predictors of what will make us happy. I mean, every time the monkeys hit you, you know there's a problem. We are terrible predictors of happiness because the way we rationalize, the way we make decisions is optimal based on real levels, absolute levels, but the way we feel is based on relative results, on expectations. . It is expectations that explain why a bronze medalist can be happier than a silver medalist, because the silver medalist imagines arriving first, the bronze medalist imagines arriving fourth. It's expectations that explain why lottery winners are often not so happy; Their happiness doesn't last because they don't have that increasing level of satisfaction throughout their life.

It is expectation that explains why you can be happier with an income of 40,000 than with an income of 50,000. We often think of happiness in isolation, in a vacuum, when in reality our happiness is much more complicated; it is much more intertwined with our community, our imagination and our past. And it's important that we think carefully about how our minds work, how our feelings work, how our expectations work. And it is important that we change the way we make decisions so that our thinking process matches our feeling process. Ladies and gentlemen, for business people who want to improve the lives of others, as well as for people who want to be happy, I think the first step is to understand why we are unhappy.

And I hope that the next time, if it ever happens, that your decision-making ability is compared to that of the monkeys, I hope that you emerge victorious. Thank you. (Applause) (Greetings)