Decoding Love - Andrew Trees [12]
Regardless, the vagaries of our minds when it comes to everything from predicting how something will make us feel in the future to remembering how something made us feel in the past should generate a certain amount of skepticism for one of the central claims of the romantic story line—that finding Mr. or Ms. Right will solve all of our problems and make us happy. If you don’t believe me, then you need to consider what I like to call the parable of the lottery winner and paraplegic, which reveals that no single thing affects our happiness as much as we think it will. There are numerous studies confirming this, ranging from college students predicting how they would feel if their football team lost to professors predicting how unhappy they would be if they failed to get tenure. But let’s go right to the starkest evidence imaginable. I’m going to ask you a simple question: would it bring you more happiness to win the lottery or to become a paraplegic? No doubt, this is an astoundingly easy choice. Equally astounding, though, is how little the difference is between these choices when you measure people’s long-term happiness.
At the moment people first learn their fates, of course, the contrast could not be greater. Lottery winners are ecstatic and often think that all of their problems have been solved, while paraplegics face a level of despair that is difficult for most of us to imagine. But over time, even the best and the worst of events get woven into the fabric of our daily lives. According to more than one study, lottery winners are no happier than people in general. One study compared people who had won anywhere from $50,000 to $1 million in a state lottery with a group of nonwinners. Not only were the winners no happier than the nonwinners, researchers found that many everyday activities, such as watching television or talking with a friend, were no longer as enjoyable for the winners as they were for the nonwinners. What about the paraplegics? Surely, they were significantly unhappier than the average person. But another study revealed that their level of happiness was only slightly lower than it had been before their loss.
No matter how important something is at the moment, we always tend to overestimate how long it will stay with us. Psychologists call this the “durability bias.” This holds true even for our relationships. A recent study has shown that people were less upset by breakups than they had predicted they would be. The reason for this is that most of us fail to factor in the positive experiences we will continue to have in the future, regardless of the breakup. Studies have also found that people recover even from bereavement fairly quickly, especially if they can find meaning in the loss. Researchers have discovered that people have a certain set point for happiness, a level that they may stray from briefly when a major event occurs, such as winning the lottery or getting married, but that they generally return to and remain at for most of their lives. Just how quickly do we return to our set points? Usually less than three months. In other words, finding “the one” simply isn’t as important as the romantic story line tells us it is.
At the very least, I hope this chapter has made you more aware of the different ways that we are unconsciously influenced, even when it comes to something as fundamental as romantic attraction. That’s not to say that any of us are soon going to become the rational creatures we imagine ourselves to be. But at least we can be a little more conscious of the dark recesses of our mind that so often waylay us on the road to love.
2
The Dating Animal
What I Learned About Dating from Darwin
THE FOLLOWING PAGES ARE NOT FOR THE FAINT OF heart. If there is one part of this book that strikes at the very root