from
The future of happiness in The moral landscape by Sam
Harris (Free Press, 2010)
One
of the most interesting things to come out of the research on human
happiness is the discovery that we are very bad judges of how we
will feel in the future - an ability that the psychologist Daniel
Gilbert has called "affective forecasting". Gilbert and
others have shown that we systematically overestimate the degree to
which good and bad experiences will affect us. Changes in wealth,
health, age, marital status, etc., tend not to matter as much as we
think they will - and yet we make our most important decisions in
life based on these inaccurate assumptions. It is useful to know
that what we think will matter often matters much less than we
think. Conversely, things we consider trivial can actually impact
our lives greatly. If you have ever been impressed by how people
often rise to the occasion while experiencing great hardship but can
fall to pieces over minor inconveniences, you have seen this
principle at work. The general finding of this research is now
uncontroversial: we are poorly placed to accurately recall the past,
to perceive the present, or to anticipate the future with respect to
our own happiness. It seems little wonder, therefore, that we are so
often unfulfilled.