Happiness by Design by Paul Dolan

Author:Paul Dolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241003114
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2014-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

PAY ATTENTION TO THE FEEDBACK OF OTHERS

Look at others

We can get our own feedback, but we can also look to the experiences of others. Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness, says that one of the lessons happiness research teaches us is that the experiences of other people like you are a useful guide to the impact of an event on you, and often a much more useful guide than your own predictions about the impact of that event.20 I agree with him.

Imagine you are about to go on a date. What would you rather know about your date ahead of time to help you project how you might feel—physical features, age, height, hometown, and favorite sport, or how a stranger felt when they met your date on a previous occasion? I’m guessing you would want the personal information, and most other people do, too. But women who were given personal information made worse forecasts about how they would feel when they met a man than when they were given reports of how another woman felt when she met him—even though they did not personally know the other woman who was providing the report.21

The key challenge is to know when your experiences will mirror those of other people and when yours will be different because you have a different set of preferences. You may have agreed with how many of the participants in the German DRM and the American Time Use Survey rated their happiness during different activities, but there were likely some differences, too. I know that you think you are special—and you are, of course—but, at least in how you react to events, just not as special as you think. Many of the experiences you have will be quite similar to the experiences of others, and probably more similar, more often, than you would imagine.

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