Happiness tracks whether things exceed expectations, not how well things actually go

Evidence

Rutledge’s findings were illuminating on a number of counts. The first was that happiness was fleeting. However happy it made you to receive £1 in a particular bet, five bets later, 92% of that impact had disappeared. Anything that happened more than ten bets ago may as well never have happened. This meant that subjects’ happiness had virtually nothing to do with how much money they had actually made. … As Rutledge writes, “Momentary happiness is a state that reflects not how well things are going but instead whether things are going better than expected.” — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 636

Categorization

• XREF: Empirically grounds the hedonic treadmill concept and ties directly to the reader’s standing theme of contradictory human goals. — connects to: Anticipatory travel moments produce distinctive joy distinct from daily life — Karl Ove Knausgaard, A Death in the Family, 1274; Trust is won by a transformative rather than conforming response to expectations
• SEED: An essay exploring why ‘lower your expectations’ fails as a happiness strategy, since expectations boost well-being before outcomes arrive.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Brian Christian, The Alignment Problem, 636

Broader Connections

• Trust is won by a transformative rather than conforming response to expectations #corroborates (0.72)