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Happiness is the greatest hiding place for despair. ~ Kierkegaard
Frankly, I don't know what Kierkegaard meant, but then, who does? Perhaps he was wary of a rah-rah can-do attitude toward the self-generation of happiness. If so, I am on the same page. But let's begin at a more visceral level.
You are hungry, so very hungry. Not for nourishing psychological insight, but food. Non-processed, wholesome, protein-rich, Omega-3-ish food. If you don’t get it soon, you will faint. You must eat something, and I hope for your sake that food is nearby. But suppose it is not. Might you not try to imagine that same food, which you do not have, and simulate its consumption in your mind? You think it is cruel of me to suggest as much? Perhaps, because we both know this will not work. The fantasy of feeding is no substitute for the real thing. If anything, your hunger will grow stronger. To imagine the desired object is to increase the desire. Yet, sometimes this strategy works. When you know for sure that you will soon enjoy the gratification of consumption, anticipatory imagination can be delicious and pleasure-enhancing. Without such assurance, however, you will not rejoice but suffer.
So we see that fantasized consumption may provide a drop of utility in the short term, but is otherwise devastating. This is so when we are talking about needs with a physiological basis, needs that can only be satisfied by the restoration of homeostasis. What about other, psychological needs? Research has uncovered myriad ways in which people satisfy non-physiological desires by creative imagination. The archetype of such self-gratifying cognitive restructuring is the reduction of cognitive dissonance. In a classic observational study, Festinger and colleagues (1956) found that cultists reinforced their own beliefs in extraterrestrials and started proselytizing after an expected visitation from the nebula (I forget which) failed to materialize. Dissonance reduction can make you feel better, but you’ll have to make stuff up.
There are limits and costs to the cognitive construction of happiness. I shall be brief on the limits because you can check them out yourself. Try to imagine to be happy (if you are not right now) and then see if you are. Imagine driving a Jag when all you have is a fuming VW. Imagine he loves you when in fact he doesn’t. If you succeed in these exercises beyond a few seconds (ok, minutes), you are flirting with psychopathology. We worry that you are not well. Why? Because it is an essential task of the mind to keep track of the distinction between that which is being perceived and that which is only being imagined (see Stanovich, West, & Toplak, 2014, or an earlier post on this blog). Most major theories – as well as folk psychology – recognize that imagination can help us deal with reality, but it cannot replace it.
What about the costs of the gratification-by-imagination tactic? Consider two types of cost: The first is a cost to those who try to understand human psychology. Some psychologists who have invested much work in showing the Better-Than-Average-Effect argue that it (the BTAE) occurs because it makes people feel better about themselves. For example, they think that people claim that they are more honest than the average person because doing so gives them pleasure. Unfortunately, there is no direct evidence for this claim (as far as I know); at least no direct evidence is presented or cited in two recent papers that make this claim loudly. Brown (2012) showed that the strength of the BTAE covaries with the perceived importance of the trait. Sedikides et al. (2014) found that inmates of a British penitentiary showed a BTAE and did not even think they were less law-abiding than the man in the street.
These are interesting results but they hardly prove the motivational hypothesis or refute the cognitive one. Ordinarily, motivation implies intention. People self-enhance because they want to and they know it. If so, we need to worry about the limited capacity of wishful thinking to actually make you happy. People must really believe they are better than average and real conviction cannot be had by choice alone. Alternatively, the BTAE might come from nonconscious processes and hence be self-deceptive. Where then is the motivation? Would an appeal to the unconscious not amount to a reduction of the BTAE to subsurface cognition?
Nothing is gained from calling self-enhancement a bias motivated by the need for a positive self-concept; and the lack of a gain is a cost. We are only burdened with the illusion that we understand the phenomenon. Why be so keen on proving that self-enhancement is motivated? We do not know. We do know, however, that to say that the researchers attribute the self-enhancement bias to the motive to self-enhance because they want to has the same logical force as the claim that people self-enhance because they are motivated to do so, namely none.
The second type of cost is more commonplace. Someone has probably told you that you will – eventually – be sorry for what you did, without providing proof or probability. I recall elderly relatives plucking this string by prophesizing regret for a time after their death (Wenn ich mal nicht mehr bin . . .). This is designed to be a knock-down argument; it is a type of corrosive communication. How is one to reply? To shout Let me prove to you that you are wrong on this one! does not cut it the responded-to message is emotional, not factual. Its intent is to force compliance or submission in the here and now. Unhappiness is being induced – or attempted to be induced – in the other person, but what about the person resorting to this dark device? What is her emotional state? I think her state is ambivalent. On the one hand, there is a dollop of self-pity, which is never attractive. On the other hand, there is the claim of higher ground, the prediction of eventual vindication (Der Endsieg!). This is not attractive either, but to the person herself, it is an effort to hallucinate her own happiness. [Unfortunately] this type of hallucination is not as pointless as the imagination of cake when hungry. Since the predicted day of justice lies far in the future, the corrective power of reality is disabled. No denial or distortion of reality is necessary because there is no relevant reality. Everyone can imagine the future in any way they wish. The user of the ‘you’ll be-sorry’ gambit may derive additional gratification from the hearer’s frail attempts to unhear the prophesy. The hearer may struggle to dismiss the message, but this is hard and unpleasant, while the user can bask in complacency. At least for the moment, the user may have achieved an I-feel-better-than-you state of mind.
So what is the cost? Foretelling another person’s regret is transparently pathetic. As noted above, the ability to sting the other person requires an expression of helpless self-pity. The user resorts to this shoddy tactic presumably because she has nothing more effective at her disposal. For you, avoiding use of the ‘you’ll be sorry’ tactic is the moral choice. It is an easy choice to make. Resolve now to desist from using this tactic forever. If you don’t, you will regret it later. [1] [2]
Brown, J. D. (2012). Understanding the better than average effect: Motives (still) matter. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 38, 209-219.
Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails. Minnesota, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Sedikides, C., Meek, R., Alicke, M. D., & Taylor, S. (2014). Behind bars but above the bar: Prisoners consider themselves more prosocial than nonprisoners. British Journal of Social Psychology, 53, 396-403.
Stanovich, K. E., West, R. F., & Toplak, M. E. (2014). Rationality, intelligence, and the defining features of Type 1 and Type 2 processing. In J. Sherman, B. Gawronski, & Y. Trope (Eds.), Dual processes in social psychology (pp. 80-91). NY: Guilford Publications Inc.
[1] The ‘you’ll-be-sorry-later’ technique is popular in eschatological circles, and this raises theodicean questions. Why would an omnipotent god postpone punishment to the postmortem period? Why would He resort to a ‘you may be rejoicing now, but you’ll be gnashing your teeth later’ attitude? If it is immoral for humans to threaten thus, would it not be immoral for Him?
[2] I was confronted with a textbook example of the ‘you’ll-be-sorry’ tactic by a fellow who commented on a post critical of theistic interpretations of the big bang. The writer quoted The Gospel According to John 1:1 (In the beginning . . .) to establish the supremacy of an evangelical understanding of the universe. He then prophesied that – and I paraphrase – that towel-headed stone-agers are about to sweep across Europe and North America, kill all us white men and have their way with our daughters. That would be the time of regret, but not really, because we white men would be dead. So much for the paraphrase. I secretly admire the Neolithic sophistication of this argument; it not only foretells our regret, but it seeks to amplify it by having us die first. Please do not look for this comment online because I deleted it. It did not seem to have the decorum we have come to expect from the pages of Psychology Today. My paraphrasis of this comment refers to the psychology of its construction, not its literal content.
