■ Time. The hours people spend sifting through the multitude of choice takes away from the time spent on more worthwhile pursuits.
There is some financial gain in being a maximizer (on average they obtain starting salaries $7000 higher than satisficers), however they are also unhappier, experiencing higher levels of regret, perfectionism, depression, upward social comparison and neuroticism.
W
hat type of decision maker are you when it comes to choices? Do you like to research all the options before you make a final decision or do you tend to go for the option that suits what you need?Think about it…
■ Awfulizing. Exaggerating a negative event or person beyond what is objectively true.
■ Distress intolerance. A perception that individuals adopt that tells them that they will not be able to recover or withstand potentially traumatic events.
■ Learned helplessness. Stemming from Seligman’s work, this is when people adopt a mentality that they have no control over their negative situations and give up.
■ Perfectionism. Individuals who use this tend to fixate on the minute details and only accept excellence.
■ Negative self-fulfilling expectancies. The phenomenon of eliciting negative responses from others via a person’s previous communications with others.
■ Rejection goggles. This is when people identify and fixate on rejection, even when it may not exist in the situation. (Adapted from Diener and Biswas-Diener, 2008:
193–4.)
Finally, memory relates to the large body of research showing that recalling and savouring past positive events and experiences leads to enhanced wellbeing.
N
obel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman (1999) conceptualized the ‘peak-end rule’ or peak-end experience, where individuals judge their experiences on how they were at their peak (either pleasant or unpleasant) as well as how they ended. One slightly uncomfortable experiment demonstrating the peak- end rule involves several hundred participants and an intrusive colonoscopy.After finding contradictory reports on patients’ actual experience and reported experience of colonoscopies, 652 patients were randomly assigned to either a control or experimental group. The control group simply went through the colonoscopy as planned. The intervention group, however, had the colonoscopy left in for an extra 60 seconds. Although leaving the apparatus in place for an additional minute was mildly discomforting it was less so than the actual procedure. Thus, ending on a mildly discomforting rather than painful note significantly affected the recollection of the entire procedure.
This also supports the theory of duration neglect, as it is not the length of the occurrence that is important for recollection but how the event ends.
See Redelmeier et al. (2003) for the original article.
COLONS
Overall, when we attend to positive things around us using clear rather than negatively biased interpretations of events and interactions, as well as engaging in positive reminiscence, we can set ourselves up to create a more positive attitude and happier existence.
Suggested Resources 69
Summary
There are several definitions of happiness, but that in most widespread use in research is ‘subjective wellbeing’ (SWB). Reflecting on the learning objectives, you should now understand SWB across cultures. More specifically:
■ One of the reasons suggested as to why some humans are never satisfied is hedonic adaptation.
■ The hedonic adaptation prevention model is currently being used to counteract this evolutionary tendency to revert back to our happiness set points.
■ Subjective wellbeing is traditionally measured via self-report
measurement tools, such as the SWLS, because happiness is a subjective phenomenon.
■ Currently, there are several global happiness polls that enable us to look at countries’ populations and their current happiness levels.
■ Sometimes choice is not a good thing, especially if we tend to lean on the maximizing side.
Suggested Resources
http://www.gallup.com/home.aspx
To find out more about the Gallup World Polls or to access books written by the organization, go this website.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/happiness_formula/4771908.stm This link allows you to access some of the clips from the acclaimed BBC documentary, The Happiness Formula, featuring Ilona Boniwell.
http://internal.psychology.illinois.edu/~ediener/index.html
This is an excellent website, allowing you access to free online journals regarding SWB, and new and innovative tools.
http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/
To track the world and its diverse and changing values, visit the world values survey website.
F u r t h e r q u e s t i o n s f o r y o u
1 Do you agree with the research findings on children and wellbeing?
Honestly argue for or against these findings.
2 What would your life be like if you never had to worry about money?
3 What do you think is missing from the area of subjective wellbeing?
Discuss.
Personal Development Interventions
T
he exercises presented below focus on identifying and enhancing your subjective wellbeing.1 AIM approach
We would like you to try out Diener and Biswas-Diener’s (2009) AIM approach at creating a positive attitude. Make sure you attempt each one!
Attention: tomorrow, make a concerted effort to attend to the positive experiences, events, people and environments around you. Write down what you witnessed and reflect.
Interpretation: challenge your interpretations. Refer to the list of six types of destructive thinking patterns and the next time you make a sweeping negative statement, reframe the sentence to use more constructive wording.
Memory: as you attend to the positives tomorrow, bank these memories so that you can reflect on them, savour them and replay them for future enjoyment.
2 Intensely positive experiences
Similar to the ‘M’ (memory) in the AIM approach, we would like you to take reminiscence one step further. We would like you to engage in writing about an intensely positive experience, such as wonder, happiness, ecstasy, love from graduation, family, children, vacations, etc. (Burton and King, 2004).
We would like you to think of an intensely positive experience and write about it for 15 minutes, for three consecutive days. Keep track of how you feel during, after and at the end of the week.
Measurement Tools 71