Daniel Kahneman on two kinds of happiness

[ciphergoth]

Daniel Kahneman: The riddle of experience vs. memory at TED 2010. Video, 20 minutes, transcript to right of video.

Kahneman, one of the founders of behavioural economics, on how our remembered happiness correlates only weakly with our experienced moment-to-moment happiness, and the profound implications for the study of happiness and the pursuit of happiness. I'll find it hard to think about happiness the same way again.

Comments

[juliet]

You may wish to add for those of us who are allergic to video that there's a transcript link top right of the video. (THANK FVCK, because otherwise I would not have bothered with any of the TED stuff I've seen. 20 min? when I can read it in <2min? no chance.)

(eta: and now I've read it & I have a whole bunch of stuff that I would like to say but no time in which to say it right now. I may be back :) )

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Added a mention of it - thanks!

Somewhat rambly comment because I'm on my way out

[lizw.livejournal.com]

*nod* I came across this idea in the context of a study that was looking at drug experiences - interviewing people while they were under the influence and then again after they'd come down - which found that people described a much happier experience in the second interview than in the first one. In other words, the drug was making their memories happier, not their moment-to-moment experience. I forget which specific drug it was, though. As you say, it's changed the way I think about happiness quite a lot. I note also that diagnostic tests like the Burns Depression Checklist look for remembered rather than moment-to-moment states of mind in the way they're administered - people aren't diagnosed by being given sheets to keep with them and track how many times they actually feel inadequate, tired, worried about their health etc, but by asking them at the end of a given period (often a week) how inadequate, tired or worried they remember feeling during it. So depression isn't necessarily about what you feel moment-to-moment, but about what lasting impression it makes on you. Which in turn reminds me that my yoga teachers talk a lot about learning not to allow negative experiences to make an impression.

Re: Somewhat rambly comment because I'm on my way out

[ciphergoth.livejournal.com]

Is the right response to try and adjust our remembered happiness to more closely match our experienced happiness? Should we have apps on our phones that beep at random times and ask us about our experiential happiness at that instant?

Re: Somewhat rambly comment because I'm on my way out

[lizw.livejournal.com]

I'd draw the opposite lesson from it - I think the right response is to take active steps to forget negative experiences as quickly as possible (once the lessons from them have been learned and any consequences dealt with) and as far as possible remember only the positive ones, to maximise remembered happiness.

[henry_the_cow]

That's interesting. He may very well be right in general and it's an interesting point to consider, but I have quibbles about some of his examples.

A symphony is more than the sum of the moments that comprise it. To suggest otherwise would be like saying that the music is no more than the sum of its individual notes - which is getting into Morecambe & Wise territory ("Listen sunshine, I am playing the right notes; just in the wrong order"). So a dreadful screeching sound at the end of a performance could indeed ruin the enjoyment of the piece as a whole.

The example about pain is well known. (It's relevant to experiences of childbirth as well). But it does not follow that lessons about the experience of pain necessarily apply to experience of happiness (for those cases where the pain is not itself part of the pleasure, I mean). Measuring the absence of pain is not measuring the presence of happiness, just as measuring wealth is not necessarily measuring happiness.

And I thought his examples about vacations were plain weird. In my experience, a fortnight's holiday is much better than one that lasts just a week. Maybe there is a length beyond which the happiness no longer increases; I just haven't met it yet...

[booklectica]

Interesting! The most obvious example for me is relationships ending - if it ends badly then one's memories of the happy times often get corrupted, so you get very contradictory emotions: you can be aware that as lived experience X event was wonderful, but when you remember it it's overlaid with the pain of later events, so you get both sensations at once. Same after a bereavement, I presume.

I wouldn't go on a holiday if my memories of it were going to be erased afterwards. Maybe I put too much emphasis on memories.