Writing Worth Reading
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Writing Worth Reading
Jonathan Haidt says: One of the things Gilbert looks at is consumer behaviour – for example, he was involved in a study where they asked people if they would want to be able to return a product or not. And of course most people would like the option of being able to return a television that they had bought. But those who elected for that option actually then enjoyed their product less – they were less committed to it.
Jessica Pryce-Jones says: I liked this book because he went into my brain. He really hammers home the fact that you can’t predict what things are going to feel like in the future, and you’re not a good interpreter of the past. Essentially, he writes that we’re prisoners of our minds and brains – and we think we’re so different from everyone else, but we’re not. He says we think that having kids will make us happy, when, actually, when you look at it, people’s overall life happiness is really dented by having kids and really goes up when kids leave home.
Matthew Taolor says: I just read this out of the blue but it really got me excited about where human nature, neuroscience, behavioural economics and psychology meet. For a lot of people it was Nudge or Freakonomics that got them interested in that debate, but for me it was this, which is a beautifully written book. It shows that human beings are very bad at predicting what will make them happy, and, in fact, are even bad at describing what has made them happy in the past.
So where do we look for progress in the absence of Marquand’s progressive reunion?
My second choice is called Stumbling on Happiness, by a guy called Dan Gilbert. I just read this out of the blue but it really got me excited about where human nature, neuroscience, behavioural economics and psychology meet. For a lot of people it was Nudge or Freakonomics that got them interested in that debate, but for me it was this, which is a beautifully written book.
It shows that human beings are very bad at predicting what will make them happy, and, in fact, are even bad at describing what has made them happy in the past. So it is all about our cognitive frailties. The other book that is really good in that space is The Happiness Hypothesis by Jonathan Haidt.
In my last RSA annual lecture, I talked about how we really need people to understand what actually makes them happy, to understand that their desires are not the same as their needs, and that their appetites are not the same as their satisfactions. It’s a difficult argument because it can sound authoritarian or paternalistic but it is true. We are just not that good at knowing what is going to make us happy: I have made lots of mistakes in my life and so part of this is quite visceral for me. I wish I had known more about the real sources of contentment earlier.
Isn’t this argument a bit contentious, because everyone has to discover these things for themselves?
There are some things that you can only find out for yourself. I have a 17-year-old son. You can’t tell a 17-year-old boy what it is like to be a 40-year-old man because he doesn’t think he ever will be a 40-year-old man. But, having said that, I think you can tell them things that are so clear-cut that they stop and think, ‘Oh, that’s interesting.’
You can say, for example, that buying stuff won’t make you happy for more than a few weeks, but what makes you happy is the way you feel about yourself, having hobbies and pastimes that you enjoy, friends that you enjoy.
I also think that there are now lessons for all of us here about relationships. I think there are a series of big insights into the mistakes that people make and the way in which they manage their lives and their long-term relationships.
Another book that influenced me a few years ago was by Sylvia Ann Hewlett called Baby Hunger – now this is really difficult territory. It was about how women put off having children and they comfort themselves by saying, ‘Oh the fertility treatment will be fine.’ They think that it will be OK to make a decision in their 40s, and then they are shocked to find that the success rate isn’t very high, and they end up not having children and feeling very miserable about it – feeling that they never really made that choice, but that it was a structured non-choice.
Arguably you should say to women that it’s much more fun to have children when you are younger because you’ve got more energy. Also, because our health and lifespan is much better, if you have children in your mid-20s then they are more or less self-sufficient by your mid-30s and you are still young enough to go out and have a party and a new career and have a great life. You are still young at 35. Instead, middle-class women who have a choice are encouraged to wait, but then they wait till they are in their mid-30s or later when it is all quite exhausting. And then of course it is also much worse for your career, because if you do take time out it is much harder to start again.
The other thing is to realise it is worth sticking with relationships even when you think they are going wrong – because the short-term benefits you might get from a relationship ending, well, you be careful about that! Being alone is really, really bad for you. The price you pay for ending a long-term relationship is very high, so spend a bit more time at the beginning trying to get it right, try to recognise what it is that really makes a relationship work. Then once you have made a decision, try to stick with it.
Now, in saying all those things I’m not calling for government to do anything, I’m not calling for shrill morality. I’m saying just explain to people what works and what doesn’t work so that they can make decisions that are more thoughtful. But there are other factors to consider as well, like the fact that we move around all the time when probably moving around is not very good for us. It is probably better to stay in one community if you can. Move around when you’re young, but actually it is probably quite important for children to grow up in one place.
A whole lot of things that you learn from reading this literature have made us more thoughtful and possibly enable us to make better decisions.
But are these autonomous choices? Your example of women putting off children, for example, is often much more complicated than a single actor making decisions.
I quite agree, but understanding the implications might help you make decisions at the margins. And it leads us to think about new social conventions. Helen Wilkinson, when she was at Demos [the left-leaning think-tank] years ago, got into a lot of trouble with what I thought, in fact, was quite a cute argument. She said: ‘What about ten-year marriage contracts? What about saying, look we are going to make a commitment for ten years, have children, and then if at the end of the ten years it feels like it is not working for us any more we can split up in a very amicable way. It doesn’t feel like failure, we’ve done ten years, we’ve brought up our children together and we are both responsible for our children.’
Because the evidence is that if people split up without acrimony and they arrange things so that it is not inconvenient for the kids, it doesn’t have to do any harm at all. It is the acrimony and the turmoil that causes the problem. Helen Wilkinson was roundly attacked at the time but I’m not sure it is such a bad idea.
Maybe these things are happening anyway, in gay relationships as well, that people are having children in the context of a relationship that is specifically about having those children.
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Matthew Taylor is chief executive of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce (RSA) in London, founded in 1754 to encourage interdisciplinary work and thought. His previous life in politics included spells as Tony Blair’s chief advisor on political strategy, as director of the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) think-tank, and director of policy for the Labour Party. His most recent RSA lecture asked what we mean by humanism in the 21st century.
