In Kelly Clarkson’s latest upbeat Top 40 mainstay, she tackles the tricky issue of what her life would be like if a certain relationship failed. (You can check Luzie Zhang’s superb review of the new album, All I Ever Wanted, here). Over and over again, Clarkson screams in her chorus:
Because we belong together now.
Forever united here somehow.
You got a piece of me
And honestly
My life would suck without you.
Unfortunately, “My Life Would Suck Without You” illustrates how Clarkson makes for a great Idol but a poor psychologist. In the end, the only thing worse than the song’s name is it's understanding of how the human mind operates.
One of the most intriguing psychological fields today is the study of how people think they will emotionally respond to forthcoming events. Academically, the topic is called “affective forecasting,” which is really just a fancy way of investigating how people think they will feel in the future. And if psychologists have learned one thing from asking people to predict how they will react to certain situations, it’s that we are all really, really bad at it.
In a now classic study led by Phillip Brickman, researchers compared the base rates of happiness from people who had just won the lottery to those who had recently become paraplegic. Amazingly, it seems that within a year both lottery winners and paraplegics had returned to “standard” levels of happiness. Both groups reported generally average level of life satisfaction despite these apparent fortunes and misfortunes. Of course, I don’t have to tell you that most people would predict that lottery winners would be significantly happier and the recently paralyzed much more depressed, but this does not appear to be the case. Instead, people habituate to their current surroundings and conditions, always returning to a baseline state of happiness.
In fact, it’s almost sad to watch people continually misjudge how future events will affect them. Daniel Gilbert, the reigning King of affective forecasting, is the man most responsible for illuminating how poorly people are at predicting their forthcoming emotional states. During one 2002 study, Gilbert took some unsuspecting photography students and told them that he would take their favorite picture from the past week and blow it up for them, free of charge. In one condition, students had a non-reversible decision; whatever they told Gilbert they wanted was final and they could not go back on this choice. In the second condition, students could change their mind at any time if they were unsatisfied with the print they had chosen.
A few weeks later, Gilbert and his colleagues asked all of the photography students how satisfied they were with their prints. To those already familiar with the Pop Psychology series, it should come as no surprise that those participants in the non-reversible condition were significantly more satisfied than those who could go back on their decision at any time. Yet, when Gilbert asked people what condition they would like to be in, people heavily favored the condition that provided the opportunity to change their mind. In essence, people were actively choosing the route that would make them less happy. The lesson learned is that human beings are awful at understanding just what will bring them joy. Gilbert hypothesizes that we are all born with a “psychological immune system” that protects our happiness by making us believe that bad situations are actually somewhat preferable. The only problem is that we all walk around with no idea that such a system exists.
What does this research have to do with the latest Kelly Clarkson single? It shows that even while Clarkson believes she would be devastated by losing her latest boy toy, chances are, given enough time, she would not. Through hardships and heartbreak, our happiness adapts and perseveres.
However, perhaps the most interesting question in affective forecasting research is whether this emotional durability is even a good thing. Gilbert, and many other researchers in the field, praise our mind’s ability to remain resilient in the face of adversity. Yet an interesting counterpoint is brought up by philosopher Dan Moller. Moller discusses how, in certain situations, we really should feel sad about life events, if only to serve as a reminder for what is truly valuable. A lot of psychological research has shown that people get over failed relationships or even dead spouses rather quickly, but Moller thinks that a longer grief period could illuminate just how important these romantic connections are. With all this adaptation, we may become callous.
So although Clarkson’s life probably won’t suck after her beau lives, part of me kind of hopes it would.
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