Page 100 - The Power to Change Anything

Make the Undesirable Desirable 89

CREATE NEW EXPERIENCES

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Sometimes people
loathe the very thought of a new behavior because they lack
adequate information to judge it correctly. They imagine what
a new behavior will feel like, and their predictions come up
negative. Unfortunately, they’re often wrong.

Get People to Try It

This problem of guessing incorrectly about how an activity
might make one feel is neither odd nor inconsequential. The
average human being is actually quite bad at predicting what
he or she should do in order to be happier, and this inability
to predict keeps people from, well, being happier. In fact, psy-
chologist Daniel Gilbert has made a career out of demonstrat-
ing that human beings are downright awful at predicting their
own likes and dislikes. For example, most research subjects
strongly believe that another $30,000 a year in income would
make them much happier. And they feel equally strongly that
adding a 30-minute walk to their daily routine would be of triv-
ial import. And yet Dr. Gilbert’s research suggests that the
added income is far less likely to produce an increase in hap-
piness than the addition of a regular walk.
Dr. Silbert confronts this inability to predict happiness every
single day. It’s her job to ask new residents at Delancey Street to
do things that, to them, sound painful, boring, or both. For exam-
ple, lifetime criminals have no idea what a law-abiding life
might be like. When they do try to imagine it, they make some
very predictable errors. They assume that it will be very much
like their present life—minus the fun. You know, cleaning
toilets while giving up the excitement of crime or the stimula-
tion of drugs. They’re unable to imagine the pleasure associated
with getting a raise, owning a home, or any of a thousand other
parts of a law-abiding life they’ve never experienced.