THE MYTH:“WE KNOW WHAT WILL MAKE US HAPPY”

By: Maria Gil

INTRO we = very poor at imagining the

consequences of both happy and sad events

We = over-estimate both how unhappy we would be if something bad happened

and also how happy we will be if

something good happens1

FIRST OF ALL…DO WE KNOW WHAT MAKES US HAPPY IN THE FIRST PLACE? materialistic things rarely determine long-term happiness

Happiness determined by natural factors, awareness, and experiences

British philosophers John Locke and Jeremy Bentham claimed happiness is determined by the number of positive events experienced in life2

HUMAN BEHAVIOR IS JUST AN ATTEMPT TO ACHIEVE HAPPINESS "positive hedonic experience" is what valuing means. We can't say what's good without saying what it is good for

different individual experiences contain different amounts of happiness = basic dimension or basic component of experience

Experiences that have different amounts of happiness can feel completely different

So if we don’t even know what makes us happy in the first place, how will we know what will makes us happy in the future? 3

HOW WELL CAN THE HUMAN BRAIN PREDICT ITS OWN FUTURE FULFILLMENT? We are fairly poor at predicting what

will make us happy in the future Modern people take the ability to imagine

the future for granted The part of our brain that allows us to create the future is one of

nature's newest inventions so it isn't surprising that when we try to use this new ability to imagine

our futures, we make some errors The main error = is that we vastly overestimate the hedonic

(good or bad) consequences of any event. we don't seem to learn all that much from our own experience. To learn from experience requires that we be able to remember it,

and research shows that people are about as bad at remembering their past emotions as they are predicting their future emotions.

That's why we make the same errors again and again 3

GET THE BETTER IN THE FUTURE, LEAVE THE WRONG IN THE PAST Negative emotions have important roles to play in our lives because when people think about how terribly wrong things might

go and find themselves feeling angry or afraid, they take actions to make sure that things go terribly right instead

Anxiety and fear keeps us warned Emotion range that tells us what to do Errors are bad - it is better to be able to predict the future than not knowing what will make us happy increases our ability to reach it We have brains that can foresee the future in a way that no other

animal ever has Foresight in general allows us to take a glance of the long-term

consequences of our actions + to take events to avoid the bad ones and promote the good ones

VARIETY AND TIME We're all told that variety is the spice of life

Research shows that people do tend to seek more variety than they should

We all think we should try a different doughnut every time we go to the shop, but the fact is that people are measurably happier when they have their favorite on every visit — provided the visits are sufficiently separated in time

If you had to eat 4 donuts in rapid succession variety would certainly spice up your experience

But if you had to eat 4 donuts on 4 separate Mondays, variety would lower your overall enjoyment

The human brain has great difficulty reasoning about time

PRIMAL INNOCENCE some people retain the romantic concept that human

unhappiness results from the loss of our primal innocence

Every generation has the illusion that things were easier and better in a simpler past but things are easier and better today than at any time in human history

If human kind flourishes it will be because we embraced learning and reason

SOURCES1. (

http://www.kaizen-training.com/top-ten-myths-about-the-brain)

2. http://psychcentral.com/lib/2011/what-makes-us-happy/)

3. http://edge.org/conversation/the-science-of-happiness