But will it make you happy?

Why do people believe that living in California would make them feel happier than people who do live in California actually are?

And why do people, who are afraid of being rejected, want more drugs than people who have actually been rejected?

There are several reasons.

If you are a typical human being, you are bad at remembering why you felt happy in the past, good at knowing how happy you feel now, okay at predicting roughly what will make you feel happy in the future, but bad at predicting how happy you will feel if specific events happen. That’s the conclusion of scientists who have researched this fascinating area.

Past, Present and Future

How happy were you last year? That’s too much detail to calculate, so your mind takes a short cut. You focus mainly on your highest highs, your lowest lows, and the most recent events. However, if I had asked you, at random times during the past year, how you actually felt at that moment, and I combined your answers, they would be different – and more accurate. This has been tested by using randomly-timed buzzers to alert people to write down how they are feeling, then checking later what they remember about their feelings.

Are you happy now with your life in general? Again, your mind takes a short cut: if you’re in a good mood, you’re more likely to say yes. Nevertheless, your answer is likely to match with external ways of checking how happy you are, such as physiological signs and how happy your family and friends think you are. Are you satisfied with your work? Hobby? Marriage? Now that’s more specific. Regardless of your mood, your mind compares how things are with how things could be. Again, pretty accurately.

What will make you happy next year? You can predict most things fairly accurately. However, you are also influenced by your mistaken beliefs about what made you happy last year. And your mind over-predicts the impact that changes will bring. Lottery winners are less happy than we expect, and crippled accident victims less unhappy. When we think of these events, we focus on the change of becoming a lottery winner or accident victim, not on the ongoing reality of being one. Over time, we adapt to most changes. Millionaires face new problems. Disabled people develop new interests.

Impact Bias

Three psychologists and an economist pioneered much of the research on how we predict our feelings, and how accurate our predictions are. They are Daniel Gilbert in Harvard, Tim Wilson in Virginia, Daniel Kahneman in Princeton and George Lowenstein in Carnegie-Melon. They call this ‘affective forecasting’ (in psychology, the word ‘affect’ means feeling or emotion). Here’s some of what they found.

Broadly speaking, you can accurately predict that winning the lottery or seeing your sports team win a trophy will make you feel happy. However, you mistakenly believe that these events will make you feel happier, and for longer, than they actually do. That’s why Daniel Kahneman and others found that people believe that living in California would make them happier than people who do live in California actually are.

Also, broadly speaking, you can accurately predict that a serious illness or a death in the family will make you feel unhappy. However, you mistakenly believe that these events will make you feel unhappier, and for longer, than they actually do. That’s why Tim Wilson and others found that people, who are facing possible rejection, want more mood-enhancing drugs than people who have actually been rejected.

Daniel Gilbert calls this ‘impact bias’ or ‘miswanting’. And it gets worse. Because, when you do get the new trinket you have coveted for ages, and when it gradually dawns you that you are not as happy as you thought you would be, you often react by ‘miswanting’ something else instead, and the cycle continues. The same thing happens with bad events. When something bad happens to you, and when it gradually dawns you that you are not as unhappy as you feared you would be, you often start instead to fear a different bad event more than you should do.

Empathy Gap

Your mood when you decide what you want is also a factor. When you are calm, reflective and rational, you cannot accurately predict what you will want when you are aroused, anxious or fearful. That’s why it can be a bad idea to go food shopping when you are hungry, or to go on a date without a condom. George Lowenstein calls this ‘the empathy gap’ between being in a ‘cold state’ or a ‘hot state’.

There are many other examples of this empathy gap in action. Some are summarised by Elizabeth Dunn and others of New South Wales in their 2007 paper on what they call ‘Emotional Time Travel’.

Once you own something, you can become more attached to it than you thought that you would before you owned it. That’s why buyers (who don’t yet own an object) often think that the seller is demanding too much money, and sellers (who do own the object) often think that the buyer should be prepared to pay more.

Women often predict that, if they were sexually harassed, they would feel angry and confront the harasser, whereas women who are actually sexually harassed are more likely to feel afraid and to avoid confrontation. That’s why female jurors often give less credibility than they should to the evidence of women who have been sexually harassed.

Also, you think differently about events that are further away in the future. If you are choosing a series of videos to watch later, you are more likely to include a serious high-brow movie, but if you are choosing just one video to watch now, you are more likely to choose a low-brow entertaining movie.

Possible Solutions

Here are four ways of becoming more accurate when you are predicting how future events will make you feel.

The first is very simple – just knowing that impact bias and empathy gaps exist, can help you to counter them.

Secondly, when remembering how past events made you feel, try to remember a series of events, not just one. If you just remember one event, it is likely to be an extreme, untypical example. If you do only remember one, at least remind yourself that it may be extreme and untypical.

Thirdly, when predicting how future events will make you feel, try to put the event in context. Think of the inevitability of change. Think of many different possible outcomes. Think of bad aspects of good outcomes, and good aspects of bad outcomes. And think of other things that will also be happening in your life that will distract you from the event in question. For example, your social relationships can help to counter career problems, and vice versa.

And finally, get older. Older people are less likely to over-predict how future events will make them feel, simply because they have been through so many similar events in their lives.

Sources

• Photo: California by Scott Klettke (cc)
• On Emotionally Intelligent Time Travel: Individual Differences in Affective Forecasting. Dunn et al. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2007; 33: 85-93
• When to Fire: Anticipatory versus Postevent Reconstrual of Uncontrollable Events. Wilson et al. Pers Soc Psychol Bull 2004; 30, 1-12
• The Futile Pursuit of Happiness, by John Gertner, article in New York Times Magazine, Sep 7 2003
• Well-Being: the Foundations of Hedonic Psychology, Russell Sage, 1999
• Does Living in California Make People Happy? A Focusing Illusion in Judgments of Life Satisfaction. Schkade and Kahneman, Psychological Science 1998; 9, 340-46

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Why I am an atheist

I am an atheist because I reject the idea that gods exist, in the same way and for the same reasons that I reject the ideas that that the earth is balanced on the back of a sea turtle, that homeopathy is more useful than a heart transplant, that Rapunzel wove her hair into a ladder or Rumpelstiltskin wove straw into gold, that stepping on a pavement crack will break my mother’s back, that a deposed Nigerian prince wants to email me several million dollars, that Uri Geller can bend spoons with his mind, that I am in danger from vampires or zombies or broken mirrors, or that I am protected by angels or leprechauns or horseshoes.

Reasons to Believe

Like many people, you may sincerely accept some of the above ideas as being true, either because you have experienced something unexplainable that has caused your brain to generate a belief in your God or Uri Geller, or because you feel happier when you believe in heaven or homeopathy, or because you prefer your life to be guided by holy writings or horoscope readings, or because you think that people behave better when they are being scrutinised by Satan or Santa, or because life is just simpler when you seem to believe what most people seem to believe.

Absence of Evidence

However, I reject all of these ideas simply because there is no evidence that any of them are true. Of course, I might be wrong about any or all of them. And I will happily change my mind if I ever get evidence that an alien spacecraft crashed at Roswell in 1947 and that successive US Governments since then have been hiding the aliens at a military base near Groom Lake in Nevada, or that the creator of the universe visited one small planet and caused a virgin of one species to give birth to himself so that he could die, return to life, and then write his story in a book.

Atheism is a Way of Thinking

I think I am very unlikely to get such evidence, because the ideas are so improbable, but if I get it I will not resist it. And this is the key to understanding atheism. It is far more about a way of thinking than it is about the outcomes that result from that thinking. Atheism involves believing in the power of reason to pursue knowledge, accepting ideas because of evidence, rejecting ideas because of lack of evidence, and always being prepared to change your mind if you learn something new.

Photo: Unicorns by Erika Hall (cc)

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America’s top elected atheists

Americans elect a lot of public officials – over half a million, from the President down to school district level. If atheists and other nonbelievers were represented fairly, you would expect about 50 in the US Congress and another 50,000 at State and local level. In 2007, the Secular Coalition for America tried to find them. They found only five. Three were very local officials: a school board president, a school committee member and a town meeting member. And the two most senior were both in their seventies, much closer to the end than the start of their political careers.

Pete Stark, United States Congressman

The first, Pete Stark, was born in 1931 and served in the Air Force and founded a bank before being elected to Congress in 1973 to represent a liberal district in California. He grew up a Republican, but had switched sides when he opposed the Vietnam War. He is a Unitarian Universalist, a congregation in which members seek their own truth about theological issues. Stark does not believe in a supreme being, saying that he is more interested in people, though he adds that the Stark family does recognize a supreme being – his wife Deborah.

So what horrific future would this openly atheist Congressman inflict on Americans? His shocking priorities are universal health care, ending the war in Iraq and protecting Medicare. He wants higher taxes for the wealthy and on cigarettes. He wants incentives for teachers to work in low-income schools. He wants higher payroll taxes to better fund social security. He wants better job re-training, child care and housing assistance. He supports the UN, the Kyoto protocol, abortion, gay marriage and affirmative action. He opposes the death penalty, and wants to restrict sex and violence on television. May God protect us all from Pete Stark.

Stark is unruffled by religious fanaticism, saying that ‘the leading candidates all agree that they believe in a supreme being, but forget about it as soon as they are elected.’ He believes that religion affects the style, rather than the substance, of the main political debate in America, which he says is between the Democrat view that government makes our lives better and the Republican view that government is dangerous for us. On ‘coming out’, he looked forward to ‘working with the Secular Coalition to stop the promotion of narrow religious beliefs in science, marriage contracts, the military and the provision of social service.’

Ernie Chambers, Nebraska State Senator

Next comes Ernie Chambers, the only openly atheist lawmaker at State level. He was born in 1937 and worked as a barber before he became a local civil rights leader in the 1960s. He was first elected as an independent candidate to the Nebraska Senate in 1971, and is the State’s only black Senator, its longest serving Senator and the only one to wear blue tee-shirts and jeans instead of a suit. His crimes against God include ending corporal punishment in state schools, getting equal state pensions for women, and blocking the legalization of concealed weapons. He strongly opposes the death penalty, and starts every legislative session by proposing its abolition.

Chambers got world attention in 2007 when he took a legal case against God. In a different case, a Nebraska judge had barred a woman from using the words ‘rape’ or ‘victim’ while alleging that she was a rape victim. He insisted that she describe what happened as ‘sex’, which is a bit like calling a mugging a ‘financial transaction’. The woman took a lawsuit against the judge, but her case was dismissed as being frivolous. Chambers took her side, arguing that the Nebraska constitution allows anyone to sue anyone. To make this point in a satirical way, he sued God in the district court of Douglas County, Nebraska.

Chambers wanted an injunction ordering God to cease certain harmful activities including the making of terroristic threats as well as ‘fearsome floods, egregious earthquakes, horrendous hurricanes, terrifying tornados, pestilential plagues, ferocious famines, devastating droughts, genocidal wars, birth defects and the like.’ He argued that the court had jurisdiction because God, being omnipresent, was personally in Douglas County, and that he should not have to serve legal papers because God, being omniscient, already knew about the case.

Three Local Elected Officials

The three local officials who responded to the Secular Coalition were Terry Doran, president of the School Board in Berkeley, California.; Nancy Glista on the School Committee in Franklin, Maine; and Michael Cerone, a Town Meeting Member from Arlington, Massachusetts. And that, in the early twenty-first century, was the extent of openly atheist elected officials in America: Pete Stark married to his supreme being in California, Ernie Chambers suing God in Nebraska, and three local officials scattered across three million square miles of land.

Clearly there are many, many more elected atheists in the American closet. If one in every ten citizens rejects belief in gods, then about fifty members of Congress should do so. The Secular Coalition says there are 21 others who are not yet willing to go public. Even if this is true, it would still be less than half the amount that would be proportional to the overall population. It is time for elected American atheists to stand up for their rational beliefs.

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Where to live a long happy life

The best six countries in which to live a long happy life are Switzerland, Denmark, Iceland, Austria, Sweden and Australia. If you live in one of these places, you can expect to have sixty or more ‘happy-years’ of life. ‘Happy-years’ are calculated by multiplying happiness levels by life expectancy.

Denmark, Switzerland and Austria have the happiest citizens, describing themselves as eight out of ten in satisfaction with their lives. Japanese citizens live longer than any other nation – almost 81 years on average – but have a low happiness score of six out of ten.

Top 25 Countries for Happy-Life Years

(happiness levels multiplied by life expectancy, 1995-2005)

• 63.9 Switzerland
• 62.7 Denmark
• 62.2 Iceland
• 61.0 Austria
• 60.8 Sweden
• 60.7 Australia
• 59.8 Canada, Finland
• 59.3 Norway
• 59.0 Luxembourg
• 58.7 Netherlands
• 58.3 Ireland
• 58.2 Malta
• 57.0 USA
• 56.5 Belgium
• 55.8 New Zealand
• 55.7 Germany
• 55.3 Mexico
• 55.2 Britain
• 54.2 Italy
• 54.1 Spain
• 53.7 Cyprus
• 53.0 Kuwait
• 52.9 Singapore
• 52.2 Israel

Top 25 Countries for Average Happiness

(satisfaction with life on a scale of one to ten, 1995-2005)

• 8.2 Denmark
• 8.1 Switzerland
• 8.0 Austria
• 7.8 Iceland
• 7.7 Australia, Finland, Sweden
• 7.6 Canada, Guatemala, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Norway
• 7.5 Malta, Netherlands
• 7.4 USA
• 7.3 Belgium
• 7.2 Germany, El Salvador, New Zealand
• 7.1 Britain, Honduras
• 7.0 Kuwait, Saudi Arabia
• 6.9 Italy, Spain, Cyprus

Top 25 Countries for Average Life Expectancy

(measured in years, 1995-2005)

• 80.8 Japan
• 79.5 Iceland
• 79.4 Sweden
• 79.2 Canada
• 79.0 Switzerland
• 78.9 Australia
• 78.6 Italy, France, Spain
• 78.5 Israel
• 78.4 Norway
• 78.1 Greece, Netherlands
• 78.0 Belgium, Cyprus
• 77.8 Austria, Malta
• 77.6 Britain, Germany, New Zealand, Singapore
• 77.4 Finland, Luxembourg
• 76.9 USA
• 76.6 Ireland

Sources:

• Photo: Switzerland by Francisco Antunes (cc)
• Report: Veenhoven, R., Happy Life Years in 95 nations 1995-2005, World Database of Happiness, Rank Report 2006-2b

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Why atheism is important

The idea of gods is bad for society, because it spreads irrational dogma that causes good people to do bad things. This affects three practical areas of our lives: the quest for knowledge, treating people fairly, and civic society.

Rational thinking makes the following more likely: Enquiry: an ongoing unbiased quest for knowledge and truth. Empathy: adult ethics, based on relating to other living beings. Equality: a secular society that protects everybody’s rights.

And irrational dogma makes the following more likely: Creeds: accepting, as truth, imaginary answers to big questions. Commands: childish ethics, based on orders, desire and fear. Control: unjust laws that are influenced by religious dogma.

Enquiry vs Creeds

Nearly four thousand years ago, a man gazed inquisitively at the night sky over what is today near Baghdad, and he started to record the movement of the stars. This scientific breakthrough was used to create omens, such as: ‘If in month one the Demon with the Gaping Mouth rises heliacally, for five years there will be plague, but it will not affect cattle’. Today NASA has mapped the oldest lights in the universe, the ancient Babylonian omens have evolved into vacuous horoscopes, and religions have embedded gods into seasonal celebrations of nature.

Throughout time, this is the pattern of the quest for knowledge. Inquisitive and rational thinking has steadily helped us to understand more about how nature works – the latest major breakthrough being the map of the human genome, the ‘book of life’ which will dramatically improve healthcare – while superstitious and dogmatic thinking has hindered and corrupted this quest for knowledge, by teaching imaginary answers instead of seeking the truth, with the odd stoning to death or roasting alive thrown in for people who dared to disagree.

Empathy vs Commands

When I was five, I knew that I had to be good coming up to Christmas because Santa Claus was looking down from the North Pole and judging the behaviour of every child in the world. For many adults today, an imaginary creator of the universe has taken over Santa’s job – God’s making a list, he’s checking it twice; he’s going to find out who’s naughty or nice – except this time, instead of a present or an empty stocking, you get the bliss of paradise or the torment of hell, for eternity, after you die.

Throughout time, religious belief has corrupted our morality, by extending childish thinking into adulthood. The reason that we should be fair to other people, and to all sentient beings, is because we relate to them as fellow living beings. This is known as the Golden Rule: treat others as you would like to be treated. It is common to atheists, agnostics and theists alike. It requires no belief in gods, particularly gods that boast of drowning every living being in the world except the passengers on an ark.

Equality vs Control

In Ireland in 2007, an advert for slimming pills was banned because the company could not substantiate its implausible claim to ‘soak up’ fat from your food. This is how society protects vulnerable people from being conned. In the same week, the Pope announced an even more unsustainable special offer: if you visited Lourdes within a year, you would get a free ‘plenary indulgence’ and early release from Purgatory after you die, thus getting you to Heaven faster. But there was no legal mechanism to protect vulnerable people from being conned by this claim.

Throughout time, religious leaders have influenced the law and culture of civic society. Today, many States officially protect, subsidise, encourage or even enforce religious dogma at the expense of the rights of their citizens. In recent years, Islamic States have sentenced homosexuals to death and a female rape victim to be lashed. More subtly, an atheist would be almost unelectable as President of America. In a State that respects everybody’s rights, government should be secular, culture should be pluralist, and beliefs should be personal.

Image: Pantheon of Gods by Grizzli (cc)

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