Another important example of unconscious processes, processes that we are not aware

of and perhaps can't even be aware by introspecting, is our ways of interpreting

prospective events, events that could well happen in the future. So, for instance,
as Wilson points out, the topic of affective forecasting. That is forecasting how
we're going to feel about our emotions in the future and our standard well-being in
the future is something that we are generally speaking are not very good at. We
tend, that is, to have a durability bias that is that the elation that we might
feel from getting something new for example, or the grief that we might feel when
something very bad happens, we tend very much to overestimate without being aware
of the fact that we do so. So, there's again an unconscious mechanism of durability
bias that we are not aware of and can't be aware of by virtue of unconscious
introspecting. Examples of durability biases are things like the following. Many of
us, I've heard thousands of times, people say things like somebody says how are you
doing? And the answer is, well, I haven't hit the lottery yet, get it, but I guess
I'm managing okay, thank you. Hitting the lottery being a way of referring to a
winning a huge jackpot in virtue of your state's or country's lottery, and the
presupposition there in that answer is that if only I hit the lottery I'd be really
happy and I'd be set, I'd have it made. But I believe that, and Wilson points out
as well, that in making a decision of that sort and predicting that I'd be super
happy if I were to win the lottery, suggests the durability bias in the following
sense. Presumably most of us would be elated for a certain amount of time if we won
a great deal of money. But the evidence shows, and it's reasonably strong, that
lottery winners are some of the least happy people in the world. You can begin to
imagine why if you think about it. If you win the lottery then you might be tempted
to quit your job. But unless it's an absolutely terrible job, it probably provides
a great deal of satisfaction in life because it gives you a challenge, it gives you
something to do, it's a source of social contact for example, again not all jobs
are this way but many of them are. So, the myth that we have of, if I could be rich
enough to quit my job, is perhaps misleading because it suggests we could that have
happiness without it, but it's not clear how you'd fill in the things, how you
would make up for the things that loss of the job actually would have, firstly.
Secondly, when you win a huge lottery, you're likely to have a lot of friends show
up on your doorstep, that is people who want to benefit from your richness who
aren't necessarily showing a friendship that's the most sincere kind, and as a
result you can end up being a little bit suspicious of all the people around you
because you're unsure as to whether or not those putative friendships are genuine.
Wilson discusses various stories about famous examples of lottery winners who ended
up not being able to manage their money, spent it all, and found themselves being
disgraced and ostracized by their community. They can't go back to where they lived
before because people were threatening them with bodily harm if they didn't give
them money but they spent it anyway, and so the lives have been sort of dislocated
from what they had been before. So, the idea that, if I were to win the lottery I'd
be happy, my life would be set and I�d have it made, is I think a myth that many of
us carry around due to the fact that we have a durability bias, that is if I were
to experience the elation that I'd have in the first week or month or six months
after winning that amount of money, that therefore that elation would carry on for
much longer, that's a bias that's probably not corresponding to anything in
reality. Likewise, when somebody says if only I had that car, if only I had that
watch, if only I had that new suit, if only I could buy that piece of jewelry I'd
be vastly happier than I am. The fact is that things like that produce a certain
amount of elation and then end up when it's time to start paying for them, and
maintaining them as the case may be, that we tend to go back down to our normal
state and now we've got something else that we're responsible for, sometimes you
can end up being less happy than you were before. So, that's the potentially
positive side of it, and for the potentially negative side Wilson points out
examples of survivors who experience grief. So, when somebody has a loss of a loved
one for instance, there's a great deal of grief and mourning that occurs
justifiably. But when asked how would you feel and how long would you take to
recover if you were to experience the death of a child, or a parent, or a spouse,
or a close friend, most people would say, I would grieve for a very long time and I
don't know if I'd ever get over it. The fact is however that most people, of course
there are plenty of exceptions, but most people do get back to surviving and
getting over their grief in a reasonable amount of time, six months, one year, two
years, and then you are able to carry on. The general point being that our
emotional lives are relatively homeostatic in the sense that they tend to go back
to where they were before after a perturbation. That perturbation might happen for
some weeks, or months, or maybe even a year, maybe even a year and a half or two in
more extreme cases, but after that we get back to where we were before even if
we've bought something very expensive, or win a lot of money, or on the other side
experienced a severe loss. Generally speaking we get back to normal but we don't
know that about ourselves because Wilson suggests we have a durability bias that
operates at the unconscious level.