What is it that makes us happy? That’s one of the fundamental questions Barry Schwartz pursues in The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
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Despite what many assume, it doesn’t appear to be money. Studies show that there is greater happiness in wealthy countries than in poor countries. But, “once a society’s level of per capita wealth crosses a threshold from poverty to adequate subsistence, further increases in national wealth have almost no effect on happiness. You find as many happy people in Poland as in Japan, for example, even though the average Japanese is almost ten times richer than the average Pole. And Poles are much happier than Hungarians (and Icelandics much happier than Americans) despite similar levels of wealth.”
Well, what about close relationships? It is true that people who have close marriages and/or close friendships are happier. But Schwartz suggests this may be a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Which comes first: happiness or relationships?
“Miserable people are surely less likely than happy people to have close friends, devoted family, and enduring marriages. So it is at least possible that happiness comes first and close relations come second.”
So much of happiness comes down to decisions we make to be contented. The problem with a maximizing approach to life (see the last two posts) is that we’re never quite satisfied. They could have chosen (a car . . . a spouse . . . a church) better, perhaps, so they’re always looking over their shoulders and living in regret.
So, “What to Do About Choice?” he asks in the final chapter. Schwartz offers 11 suggestions, of which I’m passing on just four.
1. Choose when to choose.
With an overabundance of options surrounding us with almost everything, we have to decide how many options we’re going to consider and how much time we’re going to expend.
“Restricting yourself in this way may seem both difficult and arbitrary, but actually, this is the kind of discipline we exercise in other aspects of life. You may have a rule of thumb never to have more than two glasses of wine at a sitting. The alcohol tastes good and it makes you feel good and the opportunity for another drink is right at your elbow, yet you stop. And for most people, it isn’t that hard to stop.”
2. Satisfice more and maximize less.
“Learning to accept ‘good enough’ will simplify decision making and increase satisfaction. Though satisficers may often do less well than maximizers according to certain objective standards, nonetheless, by settling for ‘good enough’ even when the ‘best’ could be just around the corner, satisficers will usually feel better about the decisions they make. . . . Becoming a conscious, intentional satisficer makes comparison with how other people are doing less important. It makes regret less likely. In the complex, choice-saturated world we live in, it makes peace of mind possible.”
3. Make your decisions nonreversible.
When a decision we make is final, our mind moves toward ownership of the choice. Schwartz points out that this is clearer with the big decisions, and there’s a lot of street wisdom in these words about marriage:
“A friend once told me how his minister had shocked the congregation with a sermon on marriage in which he said flatly that, yes, the grass is always greener. What he meant was that, inevitably, you will encounter people who are younger, better looking, funnier, smarter, or seemingly more understanding and empathetic than your wife or husband. But finding a life partner is not a matter of comparison shopping and ‘trading up.’ The only way to find happiness and stability in the presence of seemingly attractive and tempting options is to say, ‘I’m simply not going there. I’ve made my decision about a life partner, so this person’s empathy or that person’s looks really have nothing to do with me. I’m not in the market — end of story.’ Agonizing over whether your love is ‘the real thing’ or your sexual relationship above or below par, and wondering whether you could have done better is a prescription for misery. Knowing that you’ve made a choice that you will not reverse allows you to pour your energy into improving the relationship that you have rather than constantly second-guessing it.”
4. Practice an “attitude of gratitude.”
“We can vastly improve our subjective experience by consciously striving to be grateful more often for what is good about a choice or an experience, and to be disappointed less by what is bad about it.”
He suggests putting a notepad by your bed and every day, either when you wake up or just before you fall asleep, jotting down five things from that day (or the day before) for which you’re grateful. Most of the time those things will be small, but the practice will help nurture a spirit of joy, contentment, and gratitude rather than one of disappointment, regret, and dissatisfaction.
And with that — Happy Thanksgiving!
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I hope you saw these words yesterday from my buddy Richard B., who is a researching fanatic. (He’s also a rock star on the ACU campus — with the huge Walling lecture hall filling up for his classes.)
Two summers ago I worked with some students on research in this area. We expanded Schwartz’s maximizing and satisficing into the “religious marketplace” (e.g., people who try to look for the “best” church, or “best” worship, or “best” preaching). Our results mirrored Schwartz: These people were much less satisfied with church and tended to switch churches more often. By contrast, “religious satisficers” just picked a church, settled in, and went to work. And were much happier.
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An example of why I try not to miss what David Brooks writes.
“I have a rule, which has never failed me, that when a writer uses quotations from Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and the Left Behind series to capture the religious and political currents in modern America, then I know I can put that piece of writing down because the author either doesn’t know what he is talking about or is arguing in bad faith.”
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Today makes twelve years. My, how quickly they’ve flown. We still miss her.
