by Ed Diener
The paradise fallacy is the tendency to be so taken with a positive feature that you overlook the negatives. Love at first sight can sometimes be an example of the paradise fallacy. That dashing Romeo with clever stories, wit, and good looks can seem like a lucky catch at first. Down the road, though, the luster can fade as you learn about his insincerity, excessive drinking, and selfishness. Admittedly, good looks are attractive, but can be distracting from good character and other personal qualities that are important to long-term relationships.
Another place the focusing illusion rears its ugly head is when we make choices between alternatives. Typically, when we are trying to decide between two things - say, flat panel televisions made by two different manufacturers - we tend to evaluate them based on differences that are apparent at the moment. The researcher Chris Hsee calls this mental tendency "joint evaluation." Stores take advantage of this by displaying their merchandise side by side. Your local electronics emporium, for instance, probably has a wall of flat panel televisions from which you can choose. As you stand there on the salesroom floor, the differences are readily apparent. This model has a larger screen, and this one is smaller. This type has brighter projection, and this one doesn't. This screen is ever-so-slightly clearer when figures move quickly. As you go about the mental arithmetic of deciding which one to buy, you are swayed by the differences between models. The important thing to note is that once you buy the larger, brighter, more expensive television and take it home, the comparisons you made back at the store no longer matter much.
When the television is in your living room, you won't think of it as "larger" or "brighter" - you will evaluate it on its own merits, irrespective of what other manufacturers might produce. That is, you will just experience your television. Do you like the sound quality? Is the remote control easy to use? Does it fit well with the aesthetics of your house? Is it bright enough for the location you choose? Hsee's research shows that, in terms of our long-term satisfaction, experiencing products is more important than choosing, even though we tend to decide based on the latter. We may have paid much more for that television because it compared well with the ones next to it, whereas in fact the differences between them make no difference to our experience once we get it home.
One place to be wary of the localism trap is in the case of novel experiences. If New York City seems so exciting to you on your first visit that you are tempted to trade your home in St. Louis for an apartment in the East Village, you might want to take it slow. People are often taken in by novelty because it is, by definition, fresh, new, and exciting. But it is important to remember the amazing human capacity for adaptation, and how, three months down the road, the thrill is certain to wear off. If you feel trapped in the drudgery of your daily commute, predictable work assignments, and weekly trips to the grocery store, it may be worth considering that life in New York might acquire these same features.
A friend of ours, Heidi, had a tough time making a major life decision: Should she move to Los Angeles or stay in Chicago? Heidi was finishing her graduate study at Northwestern University, and was beginning to think about life after school. She had grown up in Chicago, knew the city well, and had plenty of family and friends in the area. But Heidi longed to move away to the West Coast, and had always dreamed of an LA lifestyle. Fortunately for her, she was offered a two-year position in a Los Angeles suburb, a job offer that could make her dream a reality. The problem was, Heidi wasn't certain about the move. When she thought of it, a host of problems jumped to mind. She wouldn't have a social network. Apartment hunting sounded like a drag. She didn't know her way around and imagined getting lost in the city. She didn't own a car, and felt that an automobile would be a vital asset in Southern California.
Interestingly, every one of Heidi's complaints was a short-term gripe that had to do with the transition period. She was focusing exclusively on the two or three months after the move. When we asked her to picture her life eight months or one year down the road, her attitude changed. She admitted she would know her way around the city and would certainly have friends. She would be moved into her apartment and would have bought a car. Widening her view beyond the transition period helped give Heidi the confidence to make the decision to move to LA.
The good news is that the focusing illusion is predictable, and therefore can be - if not avoided altogether - tempered. Like Heidi, we can overcome this bias. When making decisions like choosing a telephone plan, a job offer, a new apartment, or a prospective girlfriend, it can be helpful to take a step back and try to look at the bigger picture. Consider all the qualities and don't let yourself be swayed by a single flashy detail. Try to gather more information beyond the features that stick out to you in the current moment. Ask yourself if Mr. Right will be as nice to your children from your former marriage as he is to you on a Friday night date. Imagine what things will be like a year down the road, after you have grown accustomed to the new situation and the novelty has worn off.
If possible, take time to make important decisions, so that you have the opportunity to experience as well as compare. Look beyond the initial excitement and novelty to the time when the choice will be a routine part of everyday living; will the choice look as attractive when the initial thrill has worn off? No doubt, you - and we - will fall prey to the focusing illusion from time to time. It is natural. But knowing about the human tendency to focus on one detail while overlooking others can be the first step in avoiding that trap.
Impact Bias: Forgetting About Adaptation
In November 2000, the world watched as Americans went to the polls to decide the fate of the president in what was a highly controversial election. Chances are, if you would have asked any voters how they would feel if Bush were re-elected, they would have had a strong answer. Supporters would have told you they would be swept with enthusiasm and opponents might have mentioned emotional devastation. In the end, Bush prevailed. The interesting question, psychologically speaking, is whether people actually felt relief and depression at the level they predicted.
Research by Tim Wilson, Daniel Gilbert, and their colleagues suggests that people are far less emotionally affected by events than most of us typically predict. In fact, they collected relevant data from the George Bush-Al Gore presidential election in 2000. Gore voters predicted they would be unhappy after a Bush win, and Bush voters predicted the opposite. When Gilbert surveyed voters later, they were far less happy (in the case of the Bush voters) and far less unhappy (in the case of the Gore voters) than they had predicted. The truth is, while electing a Commander-in-Chief is important, it has less bearing on our everyday lives than most folks think. Regardless of who sits in the White House, you probably go to the same office, take your kids to the same school, and come home to the same house each evening. Gilbert and Wilson's research group came upon the same findings when they asked study participants how affected they would be by the win or loss of their favorite sports team. People predicted that a win or loss would affect their moods longer than either actually did.
Psychologists call this phenomenon "impact bias," and it is our tendency to overestimate the emotional impact an event will have on us, either positively or negatively. We sometimes think a visit from a mother-in-law will be catastrophic and a vacation to Fiji will be lifechanging. Nine times out of ten, the events of our lives are neither catastrophic nor life-changing. Rather, these daily successes and failures are usually emotional blips that don't change our long-term happiness much.
Research points to the fact that we consistently incorrectly predict the effect of births and deaths, summer blockbusters, and fender benders. Does this mean that people are just slow learners? Why don't we use our past experience to predict our future emotions? Why can't we just remember the last time our favorite hockey team lost and say to ourselves, "Oh yeah, a loss won't be that bad. It will only last a day or so"? Why can't we easily recall how we felt a month after the last election, and reassure ourselves that this election will be no different?
A major reason we overestimate the impact of the things that will happen to us just around the bend is that we underestimate our own resilience. Most of us discount our ability to bounce back from hard times and cope with problems. Even though we have overcome difficulties in the past, we sometimes forget that we are likely to struggle through in the future as well. It is tempting to think that we could never get through something as horrible as the death of a spouse or child - and, indeed, these are traumatic and trying events for everyone - and yet people work through them every day.
You can probably imagine the intense sorrow you would feel if your spouse died. You can picture the numbness, the crying, the funeral, the friends comforting you, the loss of enjoyment in life, and maybe even the period of medication. It would be horrible. And yet the world is full of examples of folks who are happy years and decades after the loss of a spouse. There are men and women who return to their work and their hobbies, continue to take vacations and visit children and grandchildren, and who once again find meaning in life. Even if you take a big emotional hit from such an extreme loss - and you inevitably will at some time - it is highly likely that you will recover over time, and that the experience will be less devastating than you would predict.
Not Using Personal Experience
If you know any college students, you may have noticed the same surprising trend we have. As instructors of psychology courses, we often ask our students why they are interested in the field, and what professional plans they have for the future. In the last ten years, the number of students who want to be forensic investigators for the FBI has skyrocketed. In nearly every class, there are hopeful students who watch CSI, The X-Files, and Law 8' Order: Criminal Intent, and are carried away by fantasies of the exciting work they see there. They imagine the rush of being a hostage negotiator or the thrill of being a criminal profiler. But because much of what they know about the actual work of forensic detectives comes from television, there is a natural temptation to focus on other people's experiences rather than their own. We are likely to incorrectly predict our future happiness when we overlook our own experience in favor of others. And the experience of others, even when more realistic than that portrayed on television, is not necessarily a good guide for our own feelings.
We are as guilty of this as anyone. Throughout his years at college, Ed wanted to become a psychotherapist. He thought being a therapist would be rewarding because it is a helping profession and because he was interested in all the classes on psychology he had taken at school. Then, after graduation, Ed took a job at a mental hospital, hoping the references would look good on an application to graduate school. It didn't take long for Ed to figure out that he hated working in that environment. He didn't particularly like interacting with patients, and he felt frustrated with the cases that showed little progress. It turns out that Ed was interested in the ideas of psychology and in understanding the mind, but he was not particularly happy working with people in a clinical context or focusing on psychological problems. It took personal experience, rather than just vague ideas or other people's testimonials, for Ed to learn what occupation would make him happy.
You can avoid falling into the wrong job or relationship by drawing on your own experience or finding out what it will really be like in the long run. Some kids want to go to Yale to please their parents - and this is admirable - without considering whether it is a good fit for them. Some folks want to be paramedics because of the fast pace of the work, but overlook the fact that most in this occupation spend many endless hours of downtime between calls. Some people want to be university professors because they think the academic calendar and teaching classes would be great fun, but aren't aware of the pressure to publish, obligatory committee meetings, difficult students, and weekend work. You can get around not seeing the full picture by talking to others and benefiting from their experience. Ask a paramedic what a typical shift is like. Find out from a professor what she likes best and least about her job. But in the end, there is no substitute for personal experience. Get experience before you leap! Look for opportunities to volunteer, go out on a date, or spend a summer month in the city of your dreams to see how it is. Imagining what something will be like is less informative than finding out from others what it is like! And getting personal experience is even better.
Satisficing, Not Maximizing
Another reason people end up unhappy when they think they will fare well is that, unfortunately, they go about the decision-making process in a way that detracts from their overall positive experience. It turns out that deciding between many choices is less desirable than simply selecting one. For example, if you have a desire to visit Shanghai, and you arrange a trip there, you will be more likely to be satisfied with your vacation than if you chose Shanghai from among several other desirable destinations such as Tokyo and Beijing. As incredible as it sounds, having more choices can actually detract from happiness.
Barry Schwartz, a psychologist at Swarthmore College, has studied how happy people are with their decisions. Schwartz and his colleagues have identified two decision-making styles: satisficing and maximizing. Satisficers are individuals who have a minimum threshold for what is acceptable to them, and maximizers are people who strive to get the very best out of every decision. Being a maximizer sounds appealing until you learn the results of Schwartz's studies. Once maximizers have made a choice - whether it is accepting a job offer, signing a recording contract, or marrying their high school sweetheart - they are likely to second-guess themselves, and wonder whether they could have made a better choice. The funny thing is, although maximizers sometimes achieve better outcomes than satisficers - getting a bit more money for that recording contract, for instance - they also tend to be less happy with their achievements. In fact, they turn out to be less happy in general. Maximizers, according to a series of studies by Schwartz, are lower than satisficers in happiness, optimism, self-esteem, and life satisfaction, and higher in depression and regret!
Take a group of promising undergraduate students who were nearing graduation. Schwartz and his colleagues tracked their lives as they left school and began applying for jobs. The maximizers tried to get the very best jobs possible, whereas their satisficing peers tried to get good jobs with which they were sure to be satisfied. What do you think happened? The maximizers succeeded on average in landing more attractive jobs. In fact, the starting salaries of the maximizers were 20 percent more than that of the other new graduates. Unfortunately, despite the larger paychecks, the maximizers were actually less happy with their jobs! The bottom line is that maximizers may get more and like it less.
If maximizing is an emotionally backward strategy for living, why do so many people do it? Why don't folks simply lower their standards a notch and enjoy the rewards? It may be that maximizers mistakenly believe that finding the very best doctor, buying the very best car, or having the very best kitchen appliances will make them happy. How else to explain the fact that many people spend so much effort on getting their offspring into the "very best" college, when in fact there are so many truly excellent schools? In part, the answer lies in the fact that maximizing can be deeply ingrained, and people are not aware that it is problematic or else don't know how to change it. Understanding the mechanics of maximizing can help you avoid doing it. Maximizers have two characteristic features. First, they rely heavily on external sources for evaluation. Rather than asking themselves if they enjoy their fancy meal or new cell phone, maximizers are more likely to evaluate restaurants and technology based on its reputation, social status, and other external cues.
Second, maximizers typically play out an invisible drama in their heads during the decision-making process, one that is fixated on options. Rather than evaluating a copying machine based on its features, maximizers compare the machine against a wide range of possible office products. In doing so, they may get a better deal, but also open themselves up to regret. Furthermore, they spend so much time making the best choices that
they have less time left to enjoy life.
As you think about your own goals and decisions, it is worth considering whether you tend toward satisficing or strive to get the very best from every choice. Bear in mind that selecting the products, relationships, and outcomes that are good enough for you, regardless of what others may think, is a surer route to happiness. It is not that satisficers settle for second-best or third-rate; it is that they want what is "good enough" for them. Satisficers want good doctors and good cars as well, but they understand that there is a personal threshold that will be acceptable to them. They also understand that there is often little difference between the "best" and alternatives, and that there are costs in searching for the very best.
Satisficers also tend to evaluate a single item rather than making comparisons. In choosing a lawyer to draw up a legal contract, for instance, a satisficer might ask herself: "Is this lawyer capable of doing a good job on this contract?" If the answer is yes, there is no reason to look any further. Ultimately, it does not matter if there are four other lawyers who can do a marginally better job; it only matters that this lawyer can do a good job to meet the client's needs. A satisficer asks whether this college is excellent and meets her needs, not whether it is really "the best."
