The illusion of focus: are we really happy?

On previous articles We talk about the complexity of happiness due to the presence of two I's that take into account different elements to assess the degree of happiness in our life. To this must be added the frequent errors in thinking present in the nature of our mind.

The amount of cognitive biases that humans commit in our day to day it is highly known and developed by psychologists such as Dan Ariely and Daniel Kahneman due to the limitation of three of our cognitive processes: attention, perception and memory.

However, the bias that we humans commit the most when thinking about our happiness is a cognitive error known as the illusion of focus.

• Related article: "How do we think? Daniel Kahneman's Two Systems of Thought"

What is the illusion of focus?

In his research on happiness, Kahneman adds this bias as a distorting element of our perception of reality, which leads us to assess our level of satisfaction with life based on the most accessible information at the present time.

It is a cognitive bias or error in human thinking that consists of

the distortion of the importance that an aspect can have on our happiness at the moment when we are thinking about it. In other words, it is the unfortunate fact that we cannot think of any circumstance that affects well-being without distorting its importance.

The order of questions experiment

A well-known experiment that highlights this bias and the distortion of our judgments made before Specific information is that in which students are asked to evaluate, in general, the well-being of their lifetime. They are then asked how many appointments they have had in the last month. The correlation between the scores for these questions is negligible (0.012). Questions are answered independently.

Nevertheless, if we reverse their order and ask first for appointments and then for happiness the correlation increases to 0.66. One question influences the other. The order of the questions has affected your answer. A cognitive distortion based on the change of focus.

Through this experiment, the influence of the illusion of focus is reflected, which according to Kahneman can be described with the following phrase: “nothing in life is as important as we think when we think about her".

• You may be interested: "Cognitive biases: discovering an interesting psychological effect"

Conclution

As much as it may weigh us down, this thought mechanism influences all aspects of our lives, and leads us to act in a way that may not come close to what really makes us happy. That is why, on many occasions, we overestimate the importance of buying that car, joining the gym, starting that relationship, investing in a new business, adopting a dog... and the way in which that will increase our degree of well-being when, in reality, we may be falling victim to this cognitive bias.

If we can get anything clear from this finding of our psyche, it is that nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you're thinking about it. Human well-being always depends on the illusion of your focus.

Bibliographic references:

• Kahneman, Daniel. Think fast, think slow. Barcelona: Debate, 2012. ISBN-13: 978-8483068618.