Today, many psychologists are trying to understand “Happiness”. A professor in Harvard’s Department of Psychology along with his collaborator Tim Wilson of the University of Virginia have taken the lead in studying a specific type of theory of emotional and behavioral prediction called “Impact Bias”. Gilbert and Wilson call the gap between what we predict and what we ultimately experience the “impact bias”- “impact” meaning the errors we make in estimating both the intensity and duration of our emotions and “bias”- our tendency to err. I agree with their theory of “impact bias” which to me means the gap between how and what we predict will make us happy or unhappy and then actually how we feel after what really happens or occurs. We tend to become uncertain when it comes to imagining how we will feel about something in the future. Many of us are not good at making decisions for the future. Good events prove less intense and stay for a shorter period of time, whereas as bad events also prove less intense and stay brief than our actual prediction.
I have experienced the theory of “impact bias” in my life. One example which I would like to share concerns my education. I always wanted to pursue further education in the U.S after graduating from high school in India. I thought that it would be difficult and stressful to go back to school after twenty years. In the beginning, I didn’t know where to start, but once I earned my GED, and attained admission into college, I realized that it wasn’t as hard as I had predicted. “Impact bias” played a role in this situation because I made the mistake of predicting something intensively bad, but it didn’t turn out to be as I had thought before, and it didn’t stay too long. This was an event where my thoughts and feelings changed from negative to positive.
Another experience which involved the idea of “impact bias” in my life occurred when I had migrated to the U.S. I made the mistake of predicting that everything good would happen when I decided to have a baby. I thought that it would give me intense pleasure and will last long, but it turned out to be the opposite. From the very first month I conceived, until the ninth month, I had to face many troubles. During the labor pain, I was in a trauma. After delivering the baby when I came back home, of course I was happy, but had to face everything all by myself since my husband was the only breadwinner and had to work long hours. I spent a surplus of nights without sleep and had to take care of the baby all alone. It wasn’t the right decision at that time, when I had just migrated to the U.S. Again, what I had predicted and ultimately experienced was different. My happiness after delivering the baby was not so intense and also didn’t last very long. Hence, this was the event where my thoughts and emotions changed from positive to negative.
In conclusion, “impact bias” is so prevalent around the world. Hence, I agree with Gilbert and Wilson’s idea of “impact bias” because we always tend to overestimate and underestimate our potential happiness and that’s true for positive and negative events. We often make bad choices when we predict for the future. Jon Gertner in his New York Times article named “The Futile Pursuit of Happiness”, has mentioned, “When it comes to predicting exactly how you will feel in the future, you are most likely wrong.”I would like to end with a quote of Daniel Gilbert where he says, “The problem is you can’t always get what you want. Do we even know what makes us happy? And if it’s difficult to figure out what make us happy in the moment, how can we predict what will make us happy in the future?”
