Thinking, Fast and Slow

In this short chapter Kahneman emphasizes the importance of the peak-end rule and duration neglect as they apply to stories (such as an opera) and to the evaluation of a life. Most notably, experimental research has shown that adding five extra years of mild happiness to an otherwise happy life led to a significant decrease in subject’s evaluation of the quality of that life. The result was repeated with different sets of subject of varying ages. Kahneman discusses vacations—asking what a vacation would be worth if you could not have any mementos and your memory of the experience was erased on return—as a means of highlighting the dominance of the remembering self.

Chapter 37 discusses aspects of well-being as experienced by people in real time (by the experiencing self) and reports data on the point. Kahneman and several other scientists pioneered well-being research, which is now common throughout the United States and even the world, when they conducted daily surveys of subjects to capture their experienced well-being. The surveys generated some surprising findings, such as that American women enjoyed time with their children slightly less than they enjoyed housework.

Kahneman explains that for most people most of the time, their experienced well-being at any moment is determined primarily by their immediate circumstances of who they are with and what they are doing. Thus, to increase happiness, most people would benefit from more time with loved ones doing enjoyable activities.

Other notable points include the significant negative impact of time-pressure on people’s reported well-being, as well as findings regarding money. Being very poor makes people miserable, perhaps because other misfortunes are thereby exacerbated, but there was exactly zero increase in experienced well-being for any additional household income over just $75,000 (measured in high-cost-of-living areas of the United States). Kahneman speculates that this may result from wealth’s apparent tendency to limit one’s ability to enjoy the small pleasures of life.

Regarding the remembering self’s global assessment of life satisfaction, however, the result of wealth addition was different. This leads Kahneman directly into the next chapter.

The final chapter of Part 5 begins with a graph that shows people report a spike in life satisfaction surrounding marriage, which is followed by plummeting assessments of satisfaction. Ultimately, however, he does not endorse the apparent message. Rather, it is a tool to highlight that people substitute easier questions via System 1, as discussed earlier in the book; thus, the spike reflects the salience of people’s marriage when close in time. Years later, people are less likely to focus on that happy event when asked about their life satisfaction.

Kahneman then explains several reasons why experienced well-being and life satisfaction are not correlated. For example, genetics play a major role in disposition and in the likelihood of assessing one’s life as satisfying.

The goals that people set when they are young also play a role in determining life satisfaction decades later. If people set clear goals, they tend to be noticeably more or less satisfied than average, depending on whether they achieved those goals.

The role of focusing illusions is then highlighted again before closing the chapter. In a brief summation, Kahneman observes that a lot has been learned about “happiness” recently, but one major aspect of that learning is the realization that it is not susceptible to a single, stable definition.

The chapter titled “Conclusions” provides a concise overview of some of the book’s key points. As Kahneman describes it, the book began by introducing two systems, then moved to discussing two figurative species (Econs and humans) before reflecting on the two selves (experiencing and remembering). In discussing the two selves, Kahneman explains that the remembering self is largely a creation of System 2. To correct for duration neglect in developing policy from well-being research, he suggests that a duration-weighted approach may be helpful.

Next, Kahneman explains that the theoretical world in which Econs exist as fully rational agents is the logic that supports libertarian politics. If people were Econs, the role of government would primarily be to get out of the way. In reality, however, humans frequently make less than optimal decisions, and government policy can go a long way toward improving them. He notes approvingly that Cass Sunstein was appointed to head the Office of Management and Budget under President Obama, a role that allowed some of his ideas to be implemented. Kahneman also notes that because people are susceptible to manipulation from unscrupulous others (unlike Econs), government has a protective role.

Finally, in discussing how the human mind makes decisions, Kahneman recalls the many challenges presented by the uneasy relationship between System 1 and System 2. There is no panacea, of course, but Kahneman relates his work to that of a physician. His research has identified and labeled several predictable errors of judgment that humans frequently make. If these are labelled and more fully understood, we can develop means of correcting them or protecting against their effects, much like a physician’s understanding of specific identified diseases enables actions to prevent them or correct their effects.