Danny Kahneman is a funny scientist, and a flair for comedy isn’t a trait people often associate with scientists, but Dr Kahneman is very funny. He is also a super-nova among the rock stars of research in positive psychology. A Nobel Prize-winning psychologist at Princeton University, Dr. Kahneman gave a very entertaining presentation on human well-being at a recent TED Talk in California (www.ted.org). His work is captivating and continues to inform what we’re learning about happiness.
Some of the most fascinating aspects of his work are about problems in the study of positive psychology that he calls “cognitive traps,” and as a result of this pursuit, Dr. Kahneman is poised to continue to lead significant research in this galaxy. Here’s what I mean.
Dr. Kahneman’s focus has become the problems associated with what he calls the “Experiencing Self” and the “Remembering Self.” The conflict between these Selves is immediately evident when he begins to describe the problems they give researchers in measuring happiness. The story he uses for illustration is from a man’s bad memory of a beautiful symphony. The man writes about this gorgeous symphony that he listens to from an impeccable recording that is literally transporting—lyrically and technically perfect—until the end when there’s this “dreadful screeching” at the end of the performance. The man tells Dr. Kahneman, “That horrible ending ruined the whole experience.”
No, it didn’t, asserts Kahneman. The bad ending sounds pretty miserable, but in truth, it didn’t ruin the whole experience as the man had said. He admitted that the symphony was brilliant, that he’d felt moved by the beauty of that music. Dr. Kahneman suggests that this becomes an enormous cognitive trap for social scientists. Often, a subject perceives the experience differently: the “Experiencing Self” really enjoys the beautiful symphony, but the“Remembering Self” has his/her enjoyment soured by the bad ending. This conflict is very real and even mystifying at times to researchers who might be happier themselves if human expressions of happiness were easier to categorize.
Dr. Kahneman’s studies “show that what you remember of an experience is particularly influenced by the emotional high and low points and by how it ends” (Wallis, 2005). Measurable levels of happiness can be confused between “experiencing” and “remembering”: If a researcher could randomly ask people during a European vacation to rate their level of happiness, she might catch them complaining about slow service at a restaurant or, at another time, complaining about the price of some souvenir, but if she asks when it’s over, “How was your trip?,” they’ll answer based on the peak moments and how they felt at the end of the trip. The “Experiencing Self” defers to the “Remembering Self” when a person considers and expresses happiness or dissatisfaction. Knowing this, Kahneman asserts that the real benefit for social scientists in studying happiness is to pay attention to how people describe their actual experiences rather than waiting to hear their reflections.
Is this particularly funny? Well, no. The nuts and bolts of the scientific implications aren’t that funny, but watch Dr. Kahneman’s TED Talk. I’ll let him tell you about The Colonoscopy Studies.
Love Y’all,
Doctor Mell
——————-
Kahneman, D (2010) TED Talks. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.htmlwww.ted.com/daniel.
Wallis, C (2005). The new science of happiness. TIME, 9 Jan http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/daniel_kahneman_the_riddle_of_experience_vs_memory.html
