NYT: What You Don’t Know Makes You Nervous (Daniel Gilbert)

"...people feel worse when something bad might occur than when something bad will occur"
I came across this article today by Daniel Gilbert - Harvard psychology professor and author of Stumbling on Happiness. Gilbert posits that bad events do not make people unhappy, rather the anticipation of bad events makes them so. One of the research studies Gilbert cites in support of this theory involves two groups of individuals that were administered electric shocks. The first group knew beforehand they would receive 20 intense electric shocks every trial. The second group knew they would receive 17 mild shocks and 3 intense shocks overall, but did not know what shock intensity they would receive in any given trial. The second group was significantly more afraid than the first group despite the first group's less favorable situation.

Gilbert explains the phenomenon as follows:

"Because when we get bad news we weep for a while, and then get busy making the best of it. We change our behavior, we change our attitudes. We raise our consciousness and lower our standards. We find our bootstraps and tug. But we can’t come to terms with circumstances whose terms we don’t yet know. An uncertain future leaves us stranded in an unhappy present with nothing to do but wait."

It's interesting to think anxiety over negative future events may be the source of unhappiness in the lives of many people rather than the events themselves. The good news is there are many ways to reduce anxiety in one's life, and thus, theoretically, reduce unhappiness as well. Also, maybe there is some comfort in knowing through studies like these that things really aren't as bad as they seem.

What You Don’t Know Makes You Nervous