Psych Study Investigates Predictors of Happiness

A neighbor’s advice may be more informative than your own best guess in predicting what will make you happy.

A team of Harvard researchers, led by Professor of Psychology Daniel T. Gilbert, conducted two experiments in which Harvard undergraduates were asked to predict their reaction to events given either information about the event itself or surrogate information about the experience of another undergraduate who had experienced the event.

Gilbert said that the study revealed the surprising finding that an individual’s forecasting ability is improved when they are deprived of the information they really want—details of the event itself.

“It’s natural to want information about the event, but it’s not the best way to be accurate,” Gilbert said. “Our imagination is a very poor guide to how we’ll feel in the future.”

The study stated that people often misjudge their reactions because they tend to imagine features of a situation that are sure to happen, but not those that are simply likely to happen.

By relying only on the reactions of another who have experienced the event, individuals are immune to many errors of inaccurate mental simulation, the study said.

In an experimental setup involving speed dating, 33 undergraduate females were asked to predict how much they would enjoy a 5-minute date with a undergraduate male. Half of the group was given the man’s pictures and profiles, while others only the reaction of the women who had just “dated” the man.

The study, published in the Mar. 20 issue of the journal Science, found that the women made significantly more accurate predictions of their own level of enjoyment when provided with the experience of another woman in their social group.

Likewise, undergraduates made more accurate predictions about how they would react to being evaluated by a member of their social group when they knew how another person had felt about a similar characterization.

Though people may benefit from the advice and experience of others, the study also found that people do not believe this to be the case.

“People don’t like using others’ experiences,” Gilbert said. “In our study, we forced them to use it. But what in real life, what kind of things might you use to make them want to learn the things that they know?”

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