User Designer

Here’s a great TED talk by Dan Gilbert where he talks about Synthetic versus Natural Happiness. “Natural Happiness is what we get when we get what we wanted. Synthetic Happiness is what we make when we don’t get what we wanted.”

During the talk he discusses the implications of some experiments which demonstrate that giving people choice doesn’t necessarily lead to increased satisfaction, and can even have the opposite effect. More choice may impact upon the formation of Synthetic Happiness.

In one (free-choice paradigm) experiment people were given a choice of six Monet prints. They had to rank the prints according to desirability. Then they were told they could have one of prints ranked third or fourth. A few weeks later the same people were asked to re-rank the same set of prints. Lo and behold the print they had was ranked higher than the one they originally preferred most!

They were happier with what they had than what they didn’t have. Some follow on research established that if there was the possibility they could change their choice they would be less inclined to be happy with what they had.

In an Introduction to Cognitive Dissonance there’s a more detailed description of the first free-choice paradigm experiment run by J.W. Brehm in 1956. If you’re interested you could have a look at the related “spreading of alternatives”.

I wonder what are the implications of a malleable world for the generation of synthetic happiness? Will people be more dissatisfied because they constantly have a choice about altering the physical and functional form of their objects (e.g. phones, door handles, etc) and tools?