Battling Our Brains: Psychology, Happiness, and Global Warming

Why are some societies rich and others poor? On this subject, Nobel Laureate Robert Lucas wrote, "The consequences for human welfare involved in questions like these are simply staggering: once one starts to think about them, it is hard to think about anything else." The topic is a fascinating one, no doubt, and legions of social scientists have devoted careers to it. But it is quite secondary to a far more fundamental question: Why are some people happy and others not? For even in a world free from violence, hunger, and disease and stuffed to the brim with Maytags, Mercedes, and McDonalds, we would still ask this question (and probably with increasing frequency).

While evolution has long selected for brain structures that effortlessly provide impetus and instinct for breathing, eating, and reproducing, the unique human capacity to imagine potential futures and predict our happiness under alternative choices is a remarkably young – and error prone – capability. The relative immaturity of our frontal lobe, the source of our most identifiably “human” qualities, helps explain the common occurrence of miserably “rich” and joyously “poor” individuals – and, more ominously, why our species is so incapable of addressing a mortal threat like climate change.

For an introduction to these issues, one can do no better than Dan Gilbert’s Stumbling on Happiness. If you read one book this year, make it this one. Since the book’s release in 2006, I’ve read more tomes in this area of research than any happy person probably should, and Stumbling on Happiness is the only one that I re-read regularly. A Harvard cognitive psychologist (and short story writer), Gilbert packs his prose with references to the psychology, neuroscience, and behavioral economics literature. Just as importantly, his work is infused with humor that can’t help but leave the reader…well, happy. In the process, one develops an appreciation for the psychological pitfalls of imagination and prediction and how those failures lead us to make decisions that mainstream economics calls optimal but that individuals find dissatisfying. (I also highly recommend Dan’s entertaining presentation at the TED conference in Monterey).

All this talk of mental blind-spots leads to a more pressing question: Does the nature of the human brain explain why we are so unable to confront something like global warming? While our brains have incredibly fine-tuned threat-detection abilities, climate change has none of the characteristics that set-off innate defense systems honed by millennia of natural selection. As Gilbert put it in a lecture on the subject (video embedded below), it “is a threat that our brains are uniquely unsuited to do a damn thing about.” This leads to a conclusion that is prescient, depressing, and worth noting for all who care: “Scientists lament the fact that global warming is happening so fast. The fact is that it’s not happening nearly fast enough.” The great fear, of course, is that by the time climate change sets off the cerebral alarm systems of most people, it will be too far advanced for humans to do anything about it.