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september 09, 2003
Hur bedömer vi lycka?
I New York Times-artikeln The Futile Pursuit of Happiness beskrivs forskning om hur vi bedömer lycka och gör förutsägelser om framtida lycka ("lyckoberäkningar"). Kommer mitt liv verkligen påverkas så mycket som jag tror när jag köpt den där nya datorn?
A professor in Harvard's department of psychology, [Daniel] Gilbert likes to tell people that he studies happiness. But it would be more precise to say that Gilbert -- along with the psychologist Tim Wilson of the University of Virginia, the economist George Loewenstein of Carnegie-Mellon and the psychologist (and Nobel laureate in economics) Daniel Kahneman of Princeton -- has taken the lead in studying a specific type of emotional and behavioral prediction. In the past few years, these four men have begun to question the decision-making process that shapes our sense of well-being: how do we predict what will make us happy or unhappy -- and then how do we feel after the actual experience? For example, how do we suppose we'll feel if our favorite college football team wins or loses, and then how do we really feel a few days after the game? How do we predict we'll feel about purchasing jewelry, having children, buying a big house or being rich? And then how do we regard the outcomes? According to this small corps of academics, almost all actions -- the decision to buy jewelry, have kids, buy the big house or work exhaustively for a fatter paycheck -- are based on our predictions of the emotional consequences of these events.
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Gilbert and his collaborator Tim Wilson call the gap between what we predict and what we ultimately experience the ''impact bias'' -- ''impact'' meaning the errors we make in estimating both the intensity and duration of our emotions and ''bias'' our tendency to err. The phrase characterizes how we experience the dimming excitement over not just a BMW but also over any object or event that we presume will make us happy. Would a 20 percent raise or winning the lottery result in a contented life? You may predict it will, but almost surely it won't turn out that way. And a new plasma television? You may have high hopes, but the impact bias suggests that it will almost certainly be less cool, and in a shorter time, than you imagine. Worse, Gilbert has noted that these mistakes of expectation can lead directly to mistakes in choosing what we think will give us pleasure. He calls this ''miswanting.''
Flera av Wilsons artiklar om affective forecasting finns här.
Daniel Kahneman har skrivit många artiklar om hur vi gör bedömningar under osäkerhet och hur vi tänker (oftast fel) kring sannolikhetsteoretiska problem. T.ex. finns ett flertal av de klassiska artiklar som hans skrev tillsammans med Amos Tversky i boken Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Tyvärr har jag endast läst spridda artiklar från boken. Men tänk vad lycklig jag kommer bli när jag har läst hela...
Posted by hakank at september 9, 2003 10:00 FM Posted to Kognitiva illusioner