Everyday Happiness - Finding Harmony and Bliss
Education:Self-Improvement
The mind works in mysterious ways, and sometimes it gets things wrong. In this mini-series, we explore how our biases and misinformation can hinder our happiness. In today's episode, we discuss reference points.
Transcript:
Welcome to Everyday Happiness where we create lasting happiness, in 2 minutes a day, through my signature method of Intentional Margins® (creating harmony between your to-dos and your priorities), happiness science, and musings about life.
I'm your host Katie Jefcoat and I was listening to the Yale happiness course by Dr. Laurie Santos and she was talking about how our minds don’t think in terms of absolutes, we are constantly judging everything by our own reference.
This is why the studies have results when someone making $30,000 a year is asked what would you need to be even happier and they say $50,000 but when you ask someone making $100,000 they say $250,000. Our minds are judging what would make us happier by our surroundings - our reference points. And quite frankly, 50,000 or even 75,000 might make us just as happy. We already know that money doesn’t buy us happiness.
So we’re talking about a REFERENCE POINT as a salient point, (the most noticeable but often completely irrelevant) point against which all subsequent information is compared, because we're judging all the time.
So, in the scenario of salary, the reference point is what we used to make. It’s not done in absolute objective terms.
One of the most famous examples of this is seen through the olympics. We watch these sporting events and some athletes take the podium and some don’t. So if I were to show you a photo of one of the greatest swimmers of all time, Michael Phelps on the podium with his gold medal, he would look happy. But what’s interesting is the silver medalist looks less happy. But he just won a medal at the olympics, which is a huge deal. And then, if we turn to the bronze medalist, he looks as happy if not happier than the gold medalist. But why? It’s all relative.
The silver medalist sees a reference point of being so close to winning the gold medal but falling short. And the bronze medalist sees a reference point of not making it on the podium at all and just being so darn happy to be there.
All of these athletes are experiencing a different salient reference point. Our minds don’t think in terms of absolutes - it’s clouded by our salient reference points.
Researchers studied olympic athletes in exactly this scenario over and over and what they found was silver medalists were less happy than the bronze medalists over and over again.
Today, I invite you to consider your reference points when thinking about your wants.
The science mentioned in this episode can be reviewed at: Medvec et al. (1995). When less is more: Counterfactual thinking and satisfaction among Olympic medalists. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 69(4), 603–610.
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