Positive psychology

Overcome Biases

1 St strategy :

Overcome this horrible thing of hedonistic adaptation. This idea that like we are happy at first when we get something, but that happiness goes away. From now on, as you think about the kinds of things you can do to make yourselves happy, think about not investing in awesome stuff as much.

Psychologist Dan Gilbert, who you heard about last time, “Part of us believe that the new car is better because it lasts longer. But in fact, that’s the worst thing about the new car. It will stay around to disappoint you.”

Invest instead in things that are not going to stick around, namely experiences. What do I mean about experiences? But just like anything you could pay money to that gives you happiness, that’s not a thing, that’s like something you experience. So going on vacation, or spending some time in an awesome art gallery, or going to Europe to check out the wonderful paintings there, or going to a concert. Even something short like going out to eat, or enjoying a delicious dessert.

One is that experiential purchases are making us feel more excited and less impatient. But in the context of experiential purchases, we’re feeling excited. And then same thing about pleasantness. And it turns out that this is one of the reasons that experiential purchases are better, is that it helps other people resonate with you. Also, you can’t socially compare experiences.

1. Kumar et al. (2014). Waiting for Merlot: Anticipatory Consumption of Experiential and Material Purchases. This paper tells us experiences have a longer-lasting effect on happiness
2. Pchelin & Howell (2014). The hidden cost of value-seeking: People do not accurately forecast the economic benefits of experiential purchases.This paper tells us when looking at future purchases we’re more likely to value material purchases over experiential purchase but when looking at past purchases we’re more likely to value experiences over material goods

2 ND Strategy:

Thwart Hedonic Adaptation: I’m talking about savoring, this act of stepping outside your own experience to kind of review and appreciate it. This is the phenomenon of savoring. And it turns out that savoring does a couple of things.

1. it forces you to actually notice and enjoy that experience, and keep your attention on it.
2. savoring is really important, is it kind of focuses you on that experience for even longer, and that can also help you prevent adaptation.
3. you talk to another person about how good it felt, like you’re having this wonderful experience and you tell somebody about it.
4. you look for people to share it with, you amplify experience by being with other people.

Jose et al. (2012). Does savoring increase happiness? A daily diary study.This paper tells us savoring positive experiences makes you happier

Thinking about the future is bad. Reminding yourself it would be over soon, thinking that it wasn’t as good as you hoped. So finding some other reference point and be like it wasn’t as good as I thought, that can really mess you up, and remind yourself that nothing lasts forever. It’s never going to be this good again. I thought it always could be better. Or here’s another thing, that’s kind of the opposite of gratitude, like I told myself I didn’t deserve this good thing.

But if you’re using the camera as just another lens through which to see things, you’re kind of doing the savoring. I’m so lucky to be here. Look even more beautiful, it’s just in my eyes I’m seeing it in a savoring way, that all of a sudden it can actually boost happiness.

It is the case that you can enjoy something in the here and now, but we have this wonderful technique as a human, where we can kind of pull up memories from the past and think about them again. And the act of doing that, and doing that as a habit seems to really increase happiness.

That actually doing the habit of negative visualization, thinking about what things would have been if they didn’t go that way, can cause you to kind of break out of your hedonistic adaptation because you realize, wow I really do enjoy these things, and you’re kind of back at the top of the curve

Koo et al. (2008). It’s a wonderful life: Mentally subtracting positive events improves people’s effective states, contrary to their effective forecasts. This paper tells us thinking about how something good in your life might not have happened actually makes you happier

3 rd Strategy

Make this day your last, is this strategy of pretending as though this day was your last.

Thinking about losing something is the clearest way to pop out of your hedonistic adaptation because you’re putting your attention on what is going to be like not to have that and then all of a sudden the good things start popping up because you worry about losing those. And so that is kind of a technique of negative visualization.

Kurtz (2008). Looking to the future to appreciate the present: The benefits of perceived temporal scarcity. This paper tells us you enjoy things more when you think it’s going to end soon

4 Th strategy

Gratitude :Well, we’re going to define it here as a quality of being thankful, and this tendency to be appreciative of the things that you have. Sometimes people will put positive things, sometimes they put negative things, kind of doesn’t matter. Because the power of the approach is that gratitude seems to increase subjective well-being relative to these other cases

Is that it’s affecting all kinds of things that it shouldn’t affect. Writing down five things that you’re grateful for, probably you don’t have the intuition that it’s going to affect how much you want to exercise in the morning, but the data suggest it’s going to pop you into wanting to exercise a whole extra hour every week.

In addition to just writing these five things down, if some of the things you’re grateful for are other people, what if you actually told them? What if you actually shared like, look here, I’m really thankful for you, this means something to me, with other people.

1. Barton et al. (2015). Linking financial distress to marital quality: The intermediary roles of demand/withdraw and spousal gratitude expressions.This paper tells us being grateful can help us through difficult times (as seen in the case of marriage)
2. Grant & Gino (2010). A little thanks goes a long way: Explaining why gratitude expressions motivate prosocial behavior. This paper tells us receiving gratitude makes us feel valued and motivates us to be more generous

5 Th strategy

We saw our minds don’t care about absolutes. They’re constantly comparing stuff against something else and sometimes that comparison looks bad.

Morewedge et al (2010). Consuming experience: Why effective forecasters overestimate comparative value. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, This paper tells us how we predict how happy something will make us in relation other standards either inferior or superior. The example in lecture is thinking about how much you will enjoy eating potato chips in comparison to chocolate and then in comparison to sardines.

1.concretely re-experiencing,

Well, the idea of concretely re-experiencing is find a way to go back and re-experience what your old reference point was like before. Like if you were at some crappy job before Google, literally go back to that place and remind yourself what it was like. Like re-experience the bad thing before or if you were just unemployed before that, like take some time to like concretely use your imagination and think about what this was like. Or do the kind of version we talked about before, like take eight minutes and like replay what your life was like back then and write down what it felt like. And all of a sudden that will switch your reference point.

Nelson et al. (2009). Enhancing the Television-Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruptions. This paper tells us that commercials actually make watching TV more positive

2.Stop technique

One is a technique that comes from cognitive behavioral therapy and folks who want to stop ruminating, which is just called the Stop Technique, which is that sometimes you can be mindful and catch yourself doing these comparisons and you need to give your brain a moment to just like shut it up and tell it, it’s not supposed to be doing that anymore

3.Gratitude

Turns out another reason that gratitude works so well, is it stops our social comparison. If you’re experiencing lots of gratitude for the things that you have and your stuff, your attention is limited. You can’t be doing that at the same time, you’re thinking about somebody else’s thing and being envious. Gratitude is a kind of killer of envy.

4.Interrupt consumption

If you can force yourself to have an interruption in the good times, to stop it and then come back to it later, what you find is that you’re actually setting your reference point in a very positive way.

Nelson & Meyvis (2008). Interrupted consumption: Adaptation and the disruption of hedonistic experience. This paper tells us that despite not wanting them, breaks actually make us enjoy positive experiences more

It means you should be splitting the awesome things that you love most in life. So every time you face a delicious thing, a wonderful thing, a wonderful event, and so on. You could just cruise through that whole thing and not notice or you could split it and pause, and come back to it. And the key is that every time you do that, you’re going to bump out of your hedonistic adaptation curve, you’re going to get a good reference point, and you’re going to enjoy it more.

This also has a corollary, which is worth mentioning, which is that for bad things you want to hedonically adapt to them quickly. And that means if you’re dealing with bad things in your life, don’t try to break them up try to squish them all together.