Happiness: our want system vs like system
Turns out, things that we want in life, like fancy cars, big houses and so forth, do not always make us happier. If we could somehow…
There is a whole section on Amazon — or if you’re like me, your local book store — for “self-help”. That’s the section I like to visit. There, you’ll find books like “You are a bad ass” and “The subtle art of not giving a fuck” trending at the top, telling you how to live a better life. An appealing proposition in my opinion. Moreover, as we’ve discussed before, reading daily is a must.
One of the subjects I like most under “self-help” is the subject of happiness. It always intrigued me. If someone figured out how to eliminate heartache and sadness and live in a constant euphoria, I want to know! Turns out, it’s an active topic of research with lot’s of published data.
Now, I’ve always felt like I had a good natural intuition for happiness. Somehow, the idea of spending on fancy vacations or luxurious experiences never resonated with me quite the same way. I knew that inherently, spending my way to bliss wasn’t going to work; or at the very least, it was going to be very expensive. You can imagine how happy I was when science seemed to agree with me.
Happiness
Happiness has 525 ratings and 40 reviews. Das said: One of the most reliable findings in studies of well being is that…www.goodreads.com
I just finished reading “Happiness, the science behind your smile”. It is another book reciting more or less what I already knew from other books on the subject. However, It also had a surprising number of insightful observations I never heard before. One of the insights was regarding our “want system” vs our “like system”.
What is a “want system” you ask? Great question. Let’s break it down.
Turns out, things that we want in life, like fancy cars, big houses and so forth, do not always make us happier. If we could somehow measure our present life satisfaction, then go out and buy a new car, several months later, our life satisfaction would be more or less the same. The sciency term for that is hedonic adaptation. In fact, the single best predictor of your life satisfaction a decade from now is not your job, education, house or marital status. It is your life satisfaction today.
In a similar fashion, we have a “like system”. That refers to those things in life that make us happy (things we like). Health, freedom, and respect are all qualities that seem to raise our life satisfaction. Yet, there are plenty of cases when we are working actively against reaching these qualities. For example, everyone knows they should exercise and eat healthy to maintain their health. However, the only time people are motivated enough to eat healthy is a month before a beach vacation.
It follows that these two systems are
Distinct
Could potentially send opposing signals
A perfect example of this would be volunteering. People that volunteer their time for causes they care about deeply report being happier. Yet there are millions of people everyday who come home and play Xbox (Not sure if Xbox players report being happier).
From an evolutionary perspective, this makes perfect sense. Evolution doesn’t give two hoots about your happiness. Evolution needs you to propagate your genes. Therefore; adapting to your current situation and constantly striving for the next great thing is completely natural. That explains why it’s so hard to be happy with what you have. You’re simply not designed to.
That’s not to say that the two systems will always mislead you and diverge. There are many cases when the two systems align. For example, socializing. Our “want system” generally agrees with our “like system”. We tend to want to go out and meet our friends and we seem to enjoy our time when we do.
Another example is marriage. Married people report higher life satisfaction than their single counterparts. That makes sense. Who wants to be alone forever? Of course, it’s also possible that happier people tend to get married more frequently simply because they are more pleasant; an attribution bias 😕.
So what can you do with this information? I think this can be seen as another framework for making decisions. You evaluate the decision based on what system it appeals to. If it appeals to both, great! Easy win. Continue with what you were doing. If it appeals to one but not the other, maybe it’s a time to step back and re-evaluate. Do you really need to purchase that new iPhone? Should you call your mother or finish reading that article on CNN?
Or you can always donate all your worldly possessions and go live in a forest 🌲.