Pollyanna

Why people’s judgments about the quality of their lives are unreliable

People’s self-assessments of wellbeing are unreliable indicators of qualify of life because these self-assessments are influenced by three psychological phenomena, the existence of which has been well demonstrated.

The first of these is an optimism bias, sometimes known as Pollyannaism. For example, when asked to rate how happy they are people’s responses are disproportionately toward the happier end of the spectrum. Only a small minority of people rate themselves as “not too happy.” When people are asked to rate their wellbeing relative to others, the typical response is that they are doing better than the “most commonly experienced level,” suggesting, in the words of two authors, “an interesting bias is perception. It is unsurprising that people’s reports of their overall wellbeing is unduly optimistic, because the building blocks of the judgment are similarly prone to an optimism bias. For example, people are (excessively) optimistic in their projections of what will happen to them in the future. The findings regarding recall of past experiences are more complicated. However, the dominant finding, subject to some qualifications, seems to be that there is a greater recall to positive experiences than there is of negative ones. This may be because negative experiences are susceptible to cognitive processes that suppress them. Judgments about the overall quality of one’s life that are inadequately informed by the bad things that have happened and will happen are not reliable judgments. ~ Page 68 "The Human Predicament"

Whereas Pollyannaism biases judgments only in the optimistic direction, adaptation and comparison are more complicated. One adapts not only to deteriorations but also to improvements in one’s objective condition. Similarly, one can compare oneself not only to those worse off than oneself but also to those better off than oneself. It would be a mistake, however, to think that the net effect is to cancel any bias. This is because both adaptation and comparison work against the backdrop of the optimism bias. They may moderate the optimism bias, but they do not cancel it. Moreover, there is an optimism bias in the manifestation of these other traits. For example, we are more likely to compare ourselves with those who are worse off than with those who are better off. For these reasons, the net effect of the three traits is for us to overestimate the actual quality of our lives. ~ Page 70