All’s Well
I recently had an argument with my wife, who insisted that I like the movie Schindler’s List. Now, let me be clear: She was not insisting that I would like the film or that I should like the film. She was insisting that I do like the film, which we saw together in 1993. This struck me as supremely unfair. I don’t get to be right about too many things, but the one thing I reserve the right to be right about is what I like. And as I have been telling everyone who would listen for more than a decade, I do not like Schindler’s List. But my wife said I was wrong, and as a scientist I feel morally bound to test any hypothesis that involves me eating popcorn. So we rented Schindler’s List, watched it again, and the results of my experiment unequivocally proved who was right: We were. She was right because I was indeed riveted by the movie for all of the first two hundred minutes. But I was right because at the end something awful happened. Rather than leaving me at the story’s conclusion, the director, Steven Spielberg, added a final scene in which the real people on whom the characters were based came on-screen and honored the movie’s hero. I found that scene so intrusive, so mawkish, so thoroughly superfluous, that I actually said to my wife, “Oh, give me a break,” which is apparently what I’d said in a rather loud voice to the entire theater in 1993. The first 98 percent of the movie was brilliant, the final 2 percent was stupid, and I remembered not liking the movie because (for me) it had ended badly. The only strange thing about this memory is that I’ve sat through an awful lot of films whose proportion of brilliance was significantly less than 98 percent, and I remember liking some of them quite a bit. The difference is that in those films the stupid parts were at the beginning, or in the middle, or somewhere other than the very end. So why do I like average films that end superbly more than nearly perfect films that end badly? After all, don’t I get more minutes of intense and satisfying emotional involvement with the nearly perfect film than with the average film?
Yes, but apparently that’s not what matters. As we’ve seen, memory does not store a feature-length film of our experience but instead stores an idiosyncratic synopsis, and among memory’s idiosyncrasies is its obsession with final scenes.8 Whether we hear a series of sounds, read a series of letters, see a series of pictures, smell a series of odors, or meet a series of people, we show a pronounced tendency to recall the items at the end of the series far better than the items at the beginning or in the middle.9 As such, when we look back on the entire series, our impression is strongly influenced by its final items.10 This tendency is particularly acute when we look back on experiences of pleasure and pain. For instance, volunteers in one study were asked to submerge their hands in icy water (a common laboratory task that is quite painful but that causes no harm) while using an electronic rating scale to report their moment-to-moment discomfort.11 Every volunteer performed both a short trial and a long trial. On the short trial, the volunteers submerged their hand for sixty seconds in a water bath that was kept at a chilly fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit. On the long trial, volunteers submerged their hand for ninety seconds in a water bath that was kept at a chilly fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit for the first sixty seconds, then surreptitiously warmed to a not-quite-as-chilly fifty-nine degrees over the remaining thirty seconds. So the short trial consisted of sixty cold seconds, and the long trial consisted of the same sixty cold seconds with an additional thirty cool seconds. Which trial was more painful?
Well, it depends on what we mean by painful. The long trial clearly comprised a greater number of painful moments, and indeed, the volunteers’ moment-to-moment reports revealed that they experienced equal discomfort for the first sixty seconds on both trials, but much more discomfort in the next thirty seconds if they kept their hand in the water (as they did on the long trial) than if they removed it (as they did on the short trial). On the other hand (sorry), when volunteers were later asked to remember their experience and say which trial had been more painful, they tended to say that the short trial had been more painful than the long one. Although the long trial required the volunteers to endure 50 percent more seconds of immersion in ice water, it had a slightly warmer finish and hence was remembered as the less painful of the two experiences. Memory’s fetish for endings explains why women often remember childbirth as less painful than it actually was,12 and why couples whose relationships have gone sour remember that they were never really happy in the first place.13 As Shakespeare wrote, “The setting sun, and music at the close / As the last taste of sweets, is sweetest last / Writ in remembrance more than things long past.”14
The fact that we often judge the pleasure of an experience by its ending can cause us to make some curious choices. For example, when the researchers who performed the cold-water study asked the volunteers which of the two trials they would prefer to repeat, 69 percent of the volunteers chose to repeat the long one—that is, the one that entailed an extra thirty seconds of pain. Because the volunteers remembered the long trial as less painful than the short one, that was the one they chose to repeat. It would be easy to impugn the rationality of this choice—after all, the “total pleasure” of an experience is a function of both the quality and the quantity of the moments that constitute it, and these volunteers were clearly not considering quantity.15 But it would be just as easy to defend the rationality of this choice. We don’t ride the mechanical bull or pose for a picture with a handsome movie star because these momentary experiences are inherently pleasurable; we do it so that we can spend the rest of our years immersed in blissful recollection (“I stayed on for a full minute!”). If we can spend hours enjoying the memory of an experience that lasted just a few seconds, and if memories tend to overemphasize endings, then why not endure a little extra pain in order to have a memory that is a little less painful?16
Both of these positions are sensible, and you could sensibly hold either of them. The problem is that you more than likely hold both of them. Consider, for example, a study in which volunteers learned about a woman (whom we’ll call Ms. Dash) who had an utterly fabulous life until she was sixty years old, at which point her life went from utterly fabulous to merely satisfactory.17 Then, at the age of sixty-five, Ms. Dash was killed in an auto accident. How good was her life (which is depicted by the dashed line in figure 21)? On a nine-point scale, volunteers said that Ms. Dash’s life was a 5.7. A second group of volunteers learned about a woman (whom we’ll call Ms. Solid) who had an utterly fabulous life until she was killed in an auto accident at the age of sixty. How good was her life (which is depicted by the solid line in figure 21)? Volunteers said that Ms. Solid’s life was a 6.5. It appears, then, that these volunteers preferred a fabulous life (Ms. Solid’s) to an equally fabulous life with a few additional merely satisfactory years (Ms. Dash’s). If you think about it for a moment, you’ll realize that this is just how the volunteers in the ice-water study were thinking. Ms. Dash’s life had more “total pleasure” than did Ms. Solid’s, Ms. Solid’s life had a better ending than Ms. Dash’s, and the volunteers were clearly more concerned with the quality of a life’s ending than with the total quantity of pleasure the life contained. But wait a minute. When a third group of volunteers was asked to compare the two lives side by side (as you can do at the bottom of figure 21), they showed no such preference. When the difference in the quantity of the two lives was made salient by asking volunteers to consider them simultaneously, the volunteers were no longer so sure that they preferred to live fast, die young, and leave a happy corpse. Apparently, the way an experience ends is more important to us than the total amount of pleasure we receive—until we think about it.
Fig. 21. When considered separately, the shapes of the curves matter. But when directly compared, the lengths of the curves matter.
The Way We Weren’t
If you were an American of voting age on the evening of November 8, 1988, then you were probably at home watching the results of the presidential contest between Michael Dukakis and George Bush. When you think back on that election you may recall the inf
amous Willie Horton ad, or the phrase “card-carrying member of the ACLU,” or Lloyd Bentsen’s stinging retort to Dan Quayle: “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” You most certainly recall that when all the votes were tallied, Americans decided not to send a Massachusetts liberal to the White House. Although Dukakis lost the election, he did win some of the more liberal states, and because we’re talking about memory, I’d like to ask you to use yours right now. Close your eyes for a moment and try to remember exactly how you felt when the newscaster announced that Dukakis had won the state of California. Were you disappointed or delighted? Did you jump up and down or did you shake your head? Did you shed tears of joy or tears of sorrow? Did you say, “Thank God for the left coast!” or “What do you expect of fruits and nuts?” If you inhabit the liberal end of the political spectrum, then you probably remember feeling happy when California was called, and if you live toward the conservative end, then you probably remember feeling less so. And if that’s what you remember, then my friends and fellow citizens, I stand before you today to announce that your memory is mistaken. Because in 1988, Californians voted for George Herbert Walker Bush.
Why is it so easy to pull a cheap stunt like this? Because memory is a reconstructive process that uses every piece of information at its disposal to build the mental images that come trippingly to mind when we engage in an act of remembering. One such piece of information is the fact that California is the liberal state that gave us Transcendental Meditation, granola, psychedelic rock, Governor Moonbeam, and Debbie Does Dallas. So it makes sense that Michael Dukakis—like Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry—would have won the state handily. But before Californians began voting for Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and John Kerry, they voted as many times as they possibly could for Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon. Unless you are a political scientist, a CNN junkie, or a longtime Californian, you probably didn’t remember that bit of historical politrivia. Instead you made a logical inference, namely, that because California is a liberal state, and because Dukakis was a liberal candidate, Californians must have voted for him. Just as anthropologists use both facts (a thirteen-thousand-year-old skull found near Mexico City is long and narrow) and theories (“Long, narrow skulls indicate European ancestry”) to make guesses about past events (“Caucasians came to the New World two thousand years before the Mongoloids replaced them”), so did your brain use a fact (“Dukakis was a liberal”) and a theory (“Californians are liberal”) to make a guess about a past event (“Californians voted for Dukakis”). Alas, because your theory was wrong, your guess was wrong too.
Our brains use facts and theories to make guesses about past events, and so too do they use facts and theories to make guesses about past feelings.18 Because feelings do not leave behind the same kinds of facts that presidential elections and ancient civilizations do, our brains must rely even more heavily on theories to construct memories of how we once felt. When those theories are wrong, we end up misremembering our own emotions. Consider, for instance, how your theories about something—oh, say, how about gender?—might influence your recollection of past feelings. Most of us believe that men are less emotional than women (“She cried, he didn’t”), that men and women have different emotional reactions to similar events (“He was angry, she was sad”), and that women are particularly prone to negative emotions at particular points in their menstrual cycles (“She’s a bit irritable today, if you know what I mean”). As it turns out, there is little evidence for any of these beliefs—but that’s not the point. The point is that these beliefs are theories that can influence how we remember our own emotions. Consider:
• In one study, volunteers were asked to remember how they had felt a few months earlier, and the male and female volunteers remembered feeling equally intense emotions.19 Another group of volunteers was asked to remember how they had felt a month earlier, but before doing so, they were asked to think a bit about gender. When volunteers were prompted to think about gender, female volunteers remembered feeling more intense emotion and male volunteers remembered feeling less intense emotion.
• In one study, male and female volunteers became members of teams and played a game against an opposing team.20 Some volunteers immediately reported the emotions they had felt while playing the game, and others recalled their emotions a week later. Male and female volunteers did not differ in the kinds of emotions they reported. But a week later female volunteers recalled feeling more stereotypically feminine emotions (e.g., sympathy and guilt) and male volunteers recalled feeling more stereotypically masculine emotions (e.g., anger and pride).
• In one study, female volunteers kept diaries and made daily ratings of their feelings for four to six weeks.21 These ratings revealed that women’s emotions did not vary with the phase of their menstrual cycles. However, when the women were later asked to reread the diary entry for a particular day and remember how they had been feeling, they remembered feeling more negative emotion on the days on which they were menstruating.
It seems that our theories about how people of our gender usually feel can influence our memory of how we actually felt. Gender is but one of many theories that have this power to alter our memories. For instance, Asian culture does not emphasize the importance of personal happiness as much as European culture does, and thus Asian Americans believe that they are generally less happy than their European American counterparts. In one study, volunteers carried handheld computers everywhere they went for a week and recorded how they were feeling when the computer beeped at random intervals throughout the day.22 These reports showed that the Asian American volunteers were slightly happier than the European American volunteers. But when the volunteers were asked to remember how they had felt that week, the Asian American volunteers reported that they had felt less happy and not more. In a study using similar methodology, Hispanic Americans and European Americans reported feeling pretty much the same during a particular week, but the Hispanic Americans remembered feeling happier than the European Americans did.23 Not all theories involve some immutable characteristic of persons, such as gender or culture. For example, which students tend to score highest on an exam—those who worry about grades, or those who don’t? As a college professor, I can tell you that my own theory is that students who are deeply concerned about their performance tend to study more and hence outscore their more lackadaisical classmates. Apparently students have the same theory, because research shows that when students do well on an exam, they remember feeling more anxious before the exam than they actually felt, and when students do poorly on an exam, they remember feeling less anxious before the exam than they actually felt.24
We remember feeling as we believe we must have felt. The problem with this error of retrospection is that it can keep us from discovering our errors of prospection. Consider the case of the 2000 U.S. presidential election. Voters went to the polls on November 7, 2000, to decide whether George Bush or Al Gore would become the forty-third president of the United States, but it quickly became clear that the election was too close to call and that its outcome would take weeks to decide. The next day, November 8, researchers asked some voters to predict how happy they would be on the day the election was ultimately decided for or against their favored candidate. On December 13 Al Gore conceded to George Bush, and the next day, December 14, the researchers measured the actual happiness of the voters. Four months later, in April 2001, the researchers contacted the voters again and asked them to recall how they had felt on December 14. As figure 22 shows, the study revealed three things. First, on the day after the election, pro-Gore voters expected to be devastated and pro-Bush voters expected to be elated if George Bush was ultimately declared the winner. Second, when George Bush was ultimately declared the winner, pro-Gore voters were less devastated and pro-Bush voters were less elated than they had expected to be (a tendency you’ve seen before in other chapters). But third and most important, a few months after the election was decided, both groups of voters remembered feeling as they had
expected to feel, and not as they had actually felt. Apparently, prospections and retrospections can be in perfect agreement despite the fact that neither accurately describes our actual experience.25 The theories that lead us to predict that an event will make us happy (“If Bush wins, I’ll be elated”) also lead us to remember that it did (“When Bush won, I was elated”), thereby eliminating evidence of their own inaccuracy. This makes it unusually difficult for us to discover that our predictions were wrong. We overestimate how happy we will be on our birthdays,26 we underestimate how happy we will be on Monday mornings,27 and we make these mundane but erroneous predictions again and again, despite their regular disconfirmation. Our inability to recall how we really felt is one of the reasons why our wealth of experience so often turns out to be a poverty of riches.
Fig. 22. In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, partisans expected the Supreme Court’s decision to strongly influence how happy they would feel a day after the decision was announced (bars on the left). A few months later they remembered that it had (bars on the right). In fact, the decision had a far smaller impact on happiness than the partisans either predicted or remembered (bars in the middle).
Onward
When people are asked to name the single object they would try to save if their home caught fire, the most common answer (much to the chagrin of the family dog) is “My photo album.” We don’t just treasure our memories; we are our memories. And yet, research reveals that memory is less like a collection of photographs than it is like a collection of impressionist paintings rendered by an artist who takes considerable license with his subject. The more ambiguous the subject is, the more license the artist takes, and few subjects are more ambiguous than emotional experience. Our memory for emotional episodes is overly influenced by unusual instances, closing moments, and theories about how we must have felt way back then, all of which gravely compromise our ability to learn from our own experience. Practice, it seems, doesn’t always make perfect. But if you think back to all that talk about pooping, you’ll remember that practice is just one of the two ways in which we learn. If practice doesn’t fix us, then what about coaching?
Stumbling on Happiness Page 22