Humans are creatures of habit. It’s even wired that way in our brains. But what impact does habituation have on personal happiness?

Tali Sharot is a professor of neuroscience at University College London and researches habituation, adaptation, and other cognitive biases. Her latest book, Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There co-authored with Cass Sunstein explores how habituation leads people to stop noticing both good and bad things they’re accustomed to and the benefits of breaking free from those habits. 

Tali and Greg discuss why people are more likely to feel less excited about good things over time, how taking breaks from those habits can restore the good feelings, and optimism bias discrepancies in stressful environments.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

What is optimism bias?

20:41: Optimism bias is our tendency to expect to encounter positive events more on average than we do and underestimate our likelihood of experiencing negative events in our lives. So, underestimating our likelihood of going to prison, getting a divorce, being in an accident, and so on. It is not necessarily how we will react to those events. So, it's not that I think if I get divorced, then I won't feel bad. It's mostly, at least in my studies, about what is the likelihood of the event.

Can bad news be good news?

41:07: Bad news doesn't necessarily mean that it results in a negative feeling for you. It can result in a positive feeling, and that's why it seems like people are attracted to bad news when, in fact, it's not really bad news. So, all this is like celebrity breakups; to some extent, it can make people feel good because, well, everyone has problems. So now I'm feeling better about my own life.

Three main motives for searching information

40:12: It's instrumental utility, cognitive rewards, and affective rewards. So, that's our tendency to want good news over bad news. Now, all three will drive your decisions on whether to seek information or not. So, you will for sure seek a lot of negative information if the cognitive reward is high and instrumental utility is high. But all three things matter together. And there are ways for us to tease them apart and show that all of them matter. So, that's why, despite the fact that you feel like you go after bad news, you still have the tendency to want good news.

The difference between optimism about our own lives and pessimism about the external world

33:39: What we see is that people are optimistic about their own future, the future of their family, and the future of their kids, but they're not optimistic about the world at large. In fact, they are somewhat pessimistic about global issues and about the abilities of the leaders. And let me give you a few examples. Let's take AI. So, people say AI will take more jobs than it will create, and 75 percent of people say that. It's three out of four, but only one out of four, 25%, say their job is at risk. Out of every four people, three say that they're very optimistic about the future of their family; again, 75%, but only 30% say that the next generation will be doing better than the current one.

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

• Daniel Gilbert
• Laurie Santos
• Aaron Heller
• Daniel Dennett
• Milgram experiment

Guest Profile:

• Faculty Profile at University College London

Her Work:

• Look Again: The Power of Noticing What Was Always There
• The Influential Mind: What the Brain Reveals About Our Power to Change Others 
• The Optimism Bias: A Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain