Post No.: 0957
Furrywisepuppy says:
Utility could be defined in two ways – as a function of pain and pleasure (experienced utility) or as a function of want-ability (decision utility, as employed by expected utility theory).
Of course these definitions will coincide if people want what they’ll enjoy, and enjoy what they’ll choose for themselves. This assumption of coincidence is implicit in the notion that economic agents are rational – rational agents are expected to know their tastes and preferences, both present and future, and they’re supposed to make good decisions that’ll maximise their interests.
If there’s no adaptation effect to the pain and you would pay more to reduce the number of planned daily painful injections jabbed into you from 6 to 4 (a 33% reduction) compared to from 20 to 18 (a 10% reduction), then the decision utility of avoiding 2 injections will be higher in the first case than in the second. But if there’s no adaptation effect to the pain then what can justify the difference?
The number of previous injections will affect one’s experienced utility but shouldn’t affect one’s decision utility. This suggests that, at least in some cases, experienced utility should really ought to be the rational criterion by which our decisions be based on. This also indicates a discrepancy between decision utility and experienced utility.
For a given level of pain, longer lasting pains should give more experienced disutility than shorter ones. But when perceived total pain (or pleasure) is rated – instead of people rating their pain according to the total amount of pain they received (the mathematical integral of a function that plots their level of pain across time), they tend to rate it according to the ‘peak-end rule’ (whereby the global retrospective rating is predicted well by the average of the level of pain/pleasure reported at its worst/best/peak moment and the level reported at its end) and ‘duration neglect’ (whereby the duration of the pain/pleasure event has little or no effect whatsoever on the global retrospective rating, even if a rating of the total pain/pleasure was explicitly requested).
Therefore ending an otherwise good event on a low note more likely makes that experience seem bad in total when remembered in retrospect, and ending an otherwise laborious event on a high note more likely makes that entire experience seem good in total when recalled. Ending a long and agonising episode on a pleasant note will make that total experience appear alright and worth it in retrospect (e.g. finishing a grrrinding and punishing ultramarathon in first place), and vice-versa (e.g. an ugly divorce after a largely blissful marriage living in paradise). This means that when people are asked to rate their pain/pleasure over time whilst they’re experiencing an event in real-time, they could come to a very different conclusion of their own experience compared to if they were asked to only retrospectively rate that experience! (So it’s not so much about ‘first impressions’ as ‘peak and last impressions’ that are most crucial – albeit if one’s first impression is terrible, it might become one’s last!)
One might have thought that swiftly getting rid of a pain to minimise its duration and total pain, even if this might increase the peak intensity and leave patients with an awful last moment, would be better. But if the objective is to reduce a patient’s memory of pain – lowering the peak intensity of pain could be more important than minimising the duration of it; and gradual relief may be preferable to abrupt relief since patients will retain a milder memory of the pain if the pain at the end of a procedure is relatively mild. The ‘less-is-better’ effect is at play here – ‘system one’ represents sets by averages, norms and prototypes, not by sums. Regarding pain and pleasure at least – the ‘remembering self’ keeps in mind a representative moment, strongly influenced by the peak and end rather than by the integral.
This all points to us having a conflict of interest between our ‘experiencing self’ (does it hurt now?) and our ‘remembering self’ (how much did the event seem to hurt on the whole?) But since memories are all we get to keep from our experiences of living, and retrospection is the only perspective we can adopt as we think about our life experiences – our remembering self should arguably be deemed more important that our experiencing self.
Well it can be problematic if we prioritise our experiencing self over our remembering self because this could lead to repeatedly going from ephemeral pleasure to ephemeral pleasure (like recreational drug abuse). Our memories are the lasting legacy that stays with us in the long term (e.g. the memories with our parents – so make fond memories with your children). The long term is what matters most because it’s longer lasting too. Strongly arguably, living with deeper purpose is more fulfilling than just existing from moment to moment. Some experiences are arduous during the moment but lead to growth and pride. Woof!
We have stories we tell ourselves of the past, and a happy ending is more important to us than a happy total experience. So we can suffer excruciating torment during the Special Forces selection process but be super proud of ourselves afterwards for many years if we successfully complete it. This is why the ending of a show is the most significant segment and producers should aim to leave the audience on a high (Game of Thrones Season 8 anyone(!)) Our remembering self therefore creates our self-identity. It shapes our decisions. And of course generates our lasting memories.
We perhaps shouldn’t continue with a project, course, box set or book if our experiencing self isn’t enjoying it (to avoid the sunk costs fallacy). Yet to our remembering self, it might still be worth completing it because of the lasting satisfaction we’ll feel for doing so? Alleviating our FOMO (fear of missing out) may mean that we don’t leave with lasting regrets for not checking out the end of something in case it turned out good?
But there are times when we debatably should prioritise our experiencing self in order to avoid irrational behaviours. We can even irrationally select dominated choices. For instance, preferring to repeat putting our paw for 60 seconds inside a jug of 14°C (moderately painful) water plus an extra 30 seconds in that jug where that water gradually rises to 15°C (detectably slightly less moderately painful) than repeat putting our paw for 60 seconds inside a jug of 14°C water and that’s it! As subjects, we know which immersion duration is longer yet we don’t always make use of that knowledge. Rules of memory, rather than experience, determine our choice. Yet if asked ‘Would you rather a 90-second immersion or only the first 60 seconds of it?’ – we’d select the short option! The inconsistency of our intuitive decisions indicates that something is faulty with our intuitive decisions. The duration of a fuzzy electric shock has little or no effect on the perceived dread of it – all that matters is the intensity of it. Likewise, up to a point, the duration of a pleasurable stimulus matters less than the intensity of it.
We can sometimes confuse experiences with the memories of those experiences. So we can be enjoying a videogame as we’re playing it, but if the ending was abysmal, we can claim that it ‘ruined the entire experience’, when it didn’t – the experience wasn’t ruined, only the memory of it. Something ending badly doesn’t necessarily mean it was all bad. For neglecting durations, you may also be giving the good and bad parts of your experience equal weight when actually the good parts lasted far longer than the bad.
This is thus another cognitive illusion of ours. Our remembering self can be a very unreliable witness! Our memories are highly manipulable and thus fallible. The remembering self is often wrong yet it’s the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living. It’s also the one that makes the decisions, including when deciding whether to repeat an experience or not (this may be why someone may choose to quit a sporting career on a high rather than carry on whilst they’re still winning). And what we learn from the past is to try to maximise the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily our future experiences (we choose our choices based on our anticipated memories, not our anticipated experiences). So actual experience counts for little, at least when it comes to pains and pleasures, because the remembering self barks the loudest.
So our decisions aren’t always attuned to actual experience. We often make decisions that don’t produce the best possible experience for us, and we often make erroneous forecasts of our future feelings. We cannot fully trust that our preferences will best reflect our interests, even if they’re based on our own personal experiences and the memories of such experiences are fresh. It all presents a challenge to the idea that we have consistent preferences and know how to self-regulate to maximise them. We may say that we want pain to be brief and pleasure to last but our memory employs the peak-end rule and neglects durations.
Thus contrary to decision utility – to us, 20 painful injections isn’t twice as bad as 10 such injections, and a reduction from 6 to 4 isn’t the same as from 20 to 18, even if there’s no adaptation effect towards the pain. This is also related to ‘diminishing sensitivity’ – in which the difference between 20 and 18 is relatively less impressive than the difference between 6 and 4 despite them both being equally a reduction of 2 units.
Whenever we think of how we might feel or what our desires may be in the future, we tend to think according to how we feel or what our desires are right now too (e.g. we’ll assume that we’d want food more than water tomorrow if we’re hungry right now). So how one answers questions of happiness, desire and life satisfaction depend on how and when we’re asked such questions, like how we’re presently primed or how a question is framed. Future events can also potentially alter our present appraisals, and preferences.
The anticipation, worry and expectation of pain for needing to visit the dentist may last for several days leading up to the appointment, but the actual experience of being on the dentist’s chair may only last a few minutes in total. The exciting anticipation of going abroad on holiday in a few months time may mean the pleasure of that holiday extends well beyond merely the time whilst on holiday. However, sometimes this over-excitement can mean that the actual experience will fail to match one’s expectations and it’ll therefore feel like a disappointment – experiential happiness is hugely affected by expectations. Expecting too much can lead to disappointment, and not expecting a lot can lead to a joyous surprise, if expectations aren’t realised. Yet high expectations are useful – they motivate us to try something in the first place.
Lifelong ambitions set expectations, and can make a large difference to one’s life satisfaction – having high financial aspirations when aged 18 will tend to mean one will feel extremely satisfied if one reaches this goal but extremely dissatisfied if one doesn’t 20 years later. Meanwhile, those aged 18 who don’t attach much import to money won’t feel as affected. A recipe for a dissatisfied adulthood is setting goals that are especially difficult to attain. Yet they can pay off if one aims for and reaches these goals.
In short, our desires or wants affect our well-being, for better or worse; and our present experiences as well as memories affect the assessment of our whole life satisfaction.
Woof. You can reply to the tweet linked to the Twitter comment button below if you would like to share your opinions on whether setting high expectations in life is a sound or unsound idea.
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