DECISIONS AND EMOTIONSagainst a crude description of all human thought as irrational. None-
theless, these new insights into the apparent fallibility of our decision
making have proven hugely influential and have led to the flourishing of
a field known as behavioural economics, popularized by books like Nudge
by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. Because of the implications for
policy making, the field has also attracted the attention of world leaders,
including Barack Obama and David Cameron. Newspaper reports in
the summer of 2010 claimed the latter has set up a “Nudge Unit” at 10
Downing Street charged with translating Thaler’s ideas into policy.
To take one quick example from the field: a phenomenon known
as the status quo bias describes the way most of us are swayed by the
default option. It’s been suggested that the shortage of organ donors
in many countries could be remedied by making “donate” the default
option, meaning that people would have to opt out if they didn’t want
to donate their organs. Some experts have argued that taking out a
Measuring wellbeing
How satisfied are you with your life? A surprisingly large amount
of happiness research – for example, comparing happiness between
nations – is based on people’s answer to this single question, or one very
similar to it. You don’t need to be a psychologist to recognize that this
approach, while straightforward, is extremely crude. Our emotions are
regularly buffeted one way then the other, from one moment to the next,
like a tree in the wind. To gauge these momentary fluctuations more
accurately, psychologists use so-called “experience sampling” techniques.
Participants are armed with hand-held computers or smartphones
and asked to log their feelings and what they’re up to – either at fixed
time-intervals or whenever the computer buzzes at them. Researchers
can then look at the effects of various activities on people’s feelings, as
well as seeing how a person’s experience at one time-point affects their
enjoyment of an activity at a later time-point. However, these diary-
based methods can be intrusive and distracting. Just imagine the buzzer
going off when you’re settling down to eat or watch a good film. To avoid
these disadvantages, Daniel Kahneman pioneered the “day reconstruc-
tion method”. Participants recall the previous day, breaking it down into
different periods of activity and recalling how they felt during each of
these “chapters” of the day. This research has revealed that people report
feeling happiest when with friends, as opposed to with their spouse
or children. And rather than income being the most powerful factor
affecting people’s sense of wellbeing – as one might expect – it is having
a good night’s sleep that, apparently, makes the most difference.