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Sometimes, there are fun coincidences in my reading. My colleague Raj Raghunathan has a great book coming out in the Spring of 2016 called If You’re So Smart, Why Aren’t You Happy? which explores many of the actions we take that seem like a good idea at the time, but don’t help us to lead a happier and more fulfilled life. I have been reading an advance copy. It is a great book. One thing he points out is that people often take jobs that will pay well or give them status, even when those jobs won’t make them happier.
Then, this morning, I picked up the December, 2015 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology and stumbled on a paper by Kaitlin Woolley and Ayelet Fishbach exploring a similar theme.
They argue that people experience the intrinsic joy and pain of doing a particular task most strongly while the task is ongoing. Before it starts or after it ends, people are more focused on the extrinsic rewards for doing the task (like how much it will pay or whether it will make them a better person).
As a simple demonstration of this point, the researchers approached people at a gym. Some were approached while working out. Others were asked about a workout they were going to do next week. Participants were asked questions about the importance of intrinsic factors about working out (like the enjoyment of the exercise) as well as the extrinsic factors (like the health and strength benefits of working out). Participants felt the extrinsic rewards of working out were about equally important whether they were working out or not. But, they felt that the intrinsic enjoyment of working out was more important while they were doing it than when they were thinking about the following week.
Another study asked participants to perform either a fun task (evaluating jokes) or a boring task (reading sections of a computer manual). Participants were going to evaluate 30 items and would either be paid a small amount for each item or a larger amount.
Some participants were told they would do the task the following day. They predicted that they would be more interested in doing the task that paid more and would spend more time on it, but that the enjoyment of the task would not matter much.
Other participants just performed the task that day. They did more items and spent more time when the task was interesting than when it was boring. The size of the incentive did not matter. A follow-up study found that this persistence was predicted by people’s ratings of how much they enjoyed the task.
A final study using the interesting and boring tasks looked at regret. The interesting task was paired with a low reward. The boring task was paired with a high reward. Some participants chose whichever task they wanted (about 75% chose the boring task that paid better). Some participants were coerced by an experimenter to choose either the interesting task or the boring one. After doing the tasks, participants were asked whether they regretted their choice. Participants who chose the boring task regretted their decision more than those who chose the interesting task (regardless of whether they selected it for themselves or were coerced by someone else).
These results suggest that our day-to-day enjoyment and satisfaction with life is driven by what you do. If you like what you are doing, you are happier and persist longer than when you don’t like what you are doing. In the moment, that intrinsic reward of the task increases in importance.
That does not mean that the extrinsic rewards are not important. The joy and pain of what you did will fade with time, but the rewards (and punishments) of your actions persist. If the rewards are high enough, you may still choose to persist in an activity that will reward you later. Likewise, you might choose to forego a pleasurable experience if there are negative consequences in the long-run.
This is certainly true for experiences that have a fixed time horizon. You might not love school, for example, but may still choose to continue your education, because of the rewards of having a degree.
The big problem that many people face is that they also ignore the joy of their daily life when making long-term decisions like career choices. Chances are, you will spend about a third of your adult life working. And thoughts of work often following you home. If you do not find your work fulfilling, then the financial and status rewards of that work may not make you happy, even if you think they will.
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