Paradoxical lifestyles
Just came across an interesting behavioural economics paper by Stutzer & Frey. Behavioural science is an extremely ‘hot’ field of academia at the moment, hitting the mainstream with books such as Freakonomics (Dubner & Levitt), Predictably Irrational (Ariely), Blink (Gladwell), Nudge (Thaler), etc), and with increasing influence in politics, notably within the Conservative Party here in the UK.
The key finding is this:
Our main result indicates [...] that people with long journeys to and from work are systematically worse off and report significantly lower subjective well-being
So you make yourself systematically worse off, and much unhappier, by buying a large suburban house (with long commute) with an extra bedroom for the rare occasions when your parents come to visit, instead of a short-haul townhouse - even though at the time of purchase, going for the larger suburban house seemed like a totally rational decision.
Same deal with getting a highly paid city job in Canary Wharf or on Wall Street or Madison Avenue even though it dramatically extends commute time - when we would lead a happier job working a ‘worse’ job locally.
The conclusion is not totally unexpected, but it’s an interesting example that makes you think about how irrational human existence can be - pretty depressing really. It highlights the importance of behavioural economics: we may be able to achieve a much happier society if it can succeed in revealing these paradoxical lifestyle choices and thus helping us to avoid them.
We don’t understand, long term, the relative contributions to our happiness and well-being of different factors in our lifestyle. Behavioural science in the 21st century could have a similar ‘enlightenment’ effect to nutritional/dietary science in the 20th.
I’d be interested to know what other examples there are, from your life, where you now think/suspect a decision you took at some point in life *thinking* it was totally rational has led to you being worse off overall?
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