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| quote: | Originally posted by Swamper
There is a book that discusses this that I read a while back, I thought it was Happiness Hypothesis but now I can't remember. Anyways, it went on to say how siamese twins who were separated always felt something was 'missing'. Basically, we perceive happiness to be a certain way, and, we often (incorrectly) assume that to be how others see it as well. So, in our heads, we can't imagine why one would want to be attached to someone else their whole life (in the siamese case) and when some of those twins (that were separated later in life) were asked they said they were happier prior to the operation. |
Daniel Gilbert's "Stumbling on Happiness".
According to the book "happiness is relative" and depends on the different cognitions that everyone has. And since it heavily depends on cognition, it is prone to all the cognitive biases of attention, perception, memory and thinking. One very important bias is the one which states that "when people make predicitons they run imaginary simulations which take into account their present experiential state". Gilbert (who is an excellent experimental social psychologist) has actually elaborated this "current-state bias" into a psychological model called "Affective Forecast model of Prediction and Expectation" in which people make predicitons in the same way that weather scientists (meteorologists) create forecasts which are pften based on present-state data. And whilst present data can be valuable, they are never enough in predicting a chaotic system such as the weather or our future mental states. (as far as i remember these are not explicitly stated in the book but the basic ideas and the data are mentioned) .
Another idea stated in the book which is related to such incidents is the "psychological immune response". According to this hypothesis, small negative effects can cause considerable distress and psychological turmoil to an individual. This is the reason that in long-term relationships (such as..marriage!)even the smallest of negative events can lead to considerable conflict, fights etc. . When the "negativity of an event" exceeds a certain "affective magnitude" which is capable of having a devastating impact to the organism,then the mind seems to react with a kind of "immune response" in which the individual no longer feels the (psychological) pain. This IMO can be related to a psychological/psychiatric symptom present in many mental disorders known as "depersonalisation". Highly depressed individuals or individuals who are found under constant long-term stress can feel that they are "emotionless" and feel detached from reality, whereas their surroundings can feel "dream-like" and "unreal". In even higher negative events such as the direct experience of death, this kind of "immune response" can be so high that the affective outcome is actually positive and individuals often report "mystical-kind" experiences, in which they see a higher purpose to themselves and the existence. Ofcourse this is a new hypothesis and further research need to be done heh.
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