Jon Gertner, "The Futile Pursuit of Happiness"

Since its publication in September 2003, "The Futile Pursuit of Happiness" has been reproduced hundreds of times on the Internet and has become the subject of numerous blogs and college course syllabi. It was the most frequently e-mailed article of 2003, according to the New York Times Web site. "Futile Pursuit" has also catapulted "miswanting," the idea at the center of Gertner's piece, from academic seminars into popular conversation. If the claims of the article are startling, its implications are far-reaching as well: current research suggests that most people consistently overestimate how happy an imagined outcome will make them. In fact, the things we want seldom bring us happiness, and the things that bring us happiness are seldom what we wanted. To some readers, Gertner's essay may seem disenchanting. Not only does the research appear to support the old adage, dear to the hearts of many pessimists, that wanting is better than having, but it may even call into doubt the value of the quest for self-knowledge. Other readers, however, have found Gertner's article profoundly liberating. If happiness is not the sort of thing we can achieve if we just try hard enough, then it might turn up at any moment by sheer serendipity, regardless of whether we "win" or "lose" in one of life's little competitions.

Gertner profiles two professors who seek to measure human happiness: Daniel Gilbert, a psychologist at Harvard, and George Loewenstein, an economist at Carnegie-Mellon. According to Gilbert, his research essentially involves "how people think about the future." He says, "One of the worst ways to decide whether you'll be happy in the future is to close your eyes and imagine it." George Loewenstein's research addresses what he calls "the cold-to-hot empathy gap." A cold emotional state is one of relative satisfaction, without hunger, pain, or upset, whereas a hot emotional state is the opposite, marked by physical or emotional crisis. Loewenstein claims that we become virtually different people as we move from one kind of state to another, and he points out, even more strikingly, that actions done in one state can make very little sense once we cool down or heat up. Considered together, Loewenstein's and Gilbert's research raises questions about the reliability of our own judgments about ourselves and about whether it is even possible to predict our future feelings and actions.

Gertner, Jon. "The Futile Pursuit of Happiness." The New York Times Magazine. September 7, 2003, pp. 45ff.
Biographical information on Gertner drawn from Inc. magazine; on Gilbert from the Harvard Crimson; and on Loewenstein from his home page at Carnegie-Mellon University.

Link to Explore:

http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/gilbert.htm: Daniel Gilbert's homepage. Select "Media Coverage" from the pull-down menu to access a list of recent articles about his work on human emotions.

Question for Learning:

• Why are people who own car insurance more likely to be killed in automobile accidents than people who don't have coverage? Why did a lifelong Red Sox fan fail to maintain his excitement when they finally won the World Series? Why did the largest lottery jackpot in U.S. history destroy the winner's family and his own emotional well-being? Compare Gertner's coverage of the "happiness" issue to that of other venues. How is the issue usually framed by journalists? Does Gertner's article help to explain the anecdotal examples used by some of the articles? Are there other articles that serve as useful counterparts to Gertner's?

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Question for Connecting:

• In "The Enhanced and the Unenhanced," Gregory Stock argues for a free market in what he calls "advanced germinal choice." Essentially, Stock means that people in the near future should have the freedom to provide their children with the genetic enhancements they deem to be most desirable. When we stop to consider Gertner's argument, however, it may influence our response to Stock. Even if genetic technology can deliver on its bright promises, are the results likely to be as rewarding as Stock seems to believe? Is the idea of progress in general a collective expression of the same miswanting that psychologists find in single individuals? Or, conversely, does the potential of genetic technology show that the quest for happiness is not futile at all but at last within our reach?

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