SEPT 30

9: SEP 30 - Some Obstacles to Happiness

Assigned

• Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves, C8, “Introspection and Self-narratives” (24)

Wilson, Chapter 8, Strangers to Ourselves, "Introspection and Self-Narratives"

• Introspection -- flashlight metaphor -- Freud's metaphor: archaeology
• Wilson doesn't support these metaphors, seems sceptical that we get such clarity, thinks evidence supports a different view:

• "Introspection is more like literary criticism in which we are the text to be understood. Just as there is no single truth that lies within a literary text, but many truths, so are there many truths about a person that can be constructed." 162 like wirting a self-biography from limited source information (or bad memory)

• Introspection as personal narrative. Like writing your biography, but with limited information. Agrees that there are “hidden” facts.

• Julian Barnes story: Ander Boden becomes aware of his love for Barbro due to his wife's accusation. In his reading, there isn’t really a “fact of the matter” about whether they love each other.

• [Do we introspect too much? Should we be doing other things to gain self-knowledge?]

• Real Estate story -- Do we know what we want or do we sometimes “show” what we want?
• Analytic methods (Ben Franklin method) vs. Intuitive or behavioral (Yogi Bera method)

• People are "too good" at giving reasons for their feelings, but not necessary accurate when they do. They rarely say, "I don't know why I feel this way..."168. [Or, “I don’t know what I think?”]

• Analytic methods can change our experience (movie critic example, p. 166).

• Major Claims:

• Sometimes we use faulty information to decide what our reasons for our feelings are. Then, using faulty reasons, we actually may alter our feelings.
• Introspection is a process of construction and inference, not “internal perception”.

• Study in which subjects in one condition analyze their relationships and in a control condition others don't. Analyzed condition showed greater change in feeling. Also, weeks later, subjects cite very different reasons for how they feel. It's as if a story were being retold rather than objective reasons being located. "availability bias"

• In a related study, the unanalized condition predicted relationship longevity.

• Which is the real you? The analyzed or unanalyzed? Wilson is saying that you shouldn't assume the analyzed is. Sometime the analysis changes the underlying experience (Vargas Llosa on watching movies with a rubric.)

• Poster satisfaction study 171. Note both results. 1. In general, analysis decreased satisfaction. 2. For people with aesthetic expertise, however, analysis matched prior feelings.

• Wilson's advice isn't to act on impulse, but to delay rational analysis, in some situations, let yourself say "Not sure how I feel" -- gather external information and perceptions. Those in the poster study who knew a lot about art didn't experience a change in satisfaction.

• "The trick is to gather enough information to develop an informed gutfeeling and then not analyze that feeling too much." 172

• Wilson's advice: try to become aware of implicit feelings, implicit motives.

• Major piece of "implicit feelings" research:

• Schultheiss and Brunstein study -- determined implicit feelings (such as need for power or affiliation) and then asked subject to predict their happiness in being in a situation that is geared to stimulate those needs. Subjects don't accurately predict impact of the experience (they are strangers to themselves). "Consistent with many studies that find that people are not very aware of their implicit motives, people who were high in the need for affiliation and power did not anticipate that the counseling session would make them any happier or feel more engaged than other participants." 174 But "goal imaging" and "prefeeling" changed that. “Instead, they were able to imagine a future situation well enough that the feelings it would invoke were actually experienced…”

• Rumination -- definition 175 -- increases depression in depressed.

• Pennebaker Study -- subjects write about negative experiences from their lives and it makes them happy. How to explain this? How is it different from rumination? -- Wilson claims that it's because writing involves construction of a meaningful narrative. Our natural bias toward life kicks in.

• Doesn’t want to suggest that Pennebaker’s method and psychotherapy are interchangeable. Good random control studies show that psychotherapies are effective. But they might both involve changing our narratives.

• Lessons from the chapter:

• Be careful of the reasons and stories you use to narrate your experience. You might actually conform your experience (feelings) to the narrative.
• But the positive side of that . . . Could you prime someone (yourself) to write a wise or happy narrative?

Meditation Notes

• Some patterns and recurring problems in meditation.

• the persistence of mental content.
• the problem of “thought suppression” (Ironic process theory. [1]
• Meditation effects.

H&W Exercise

• Things in your future that are clear, fuzzy, and opaque.

• We are looking at obstacles to happiness that have to do with our limited ability to imagine the future. What sorts of things in your near and long term future can you imagine clearly, less clearly, or not at all? Take 3-4 minutes to share some of these with each other. Do you have different or similar “future clarity”?