The Pursuit of Unhappiness: George Loewenstein on Why We're Wired for Misery

Andrew Keen (0:00)

Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.

Hello, everybody. A couple of weeks ago, we did a show with a sociologist who asked why we're so miserable. I think it was assumed that we shouldn't be miserable, that we should be happier than we are. Of course, we live in the age of anxiety and inequality and anger and all the other stuff that everyone seems to write books about these days. But my guest today, I think, might have a different take on misery. George Loewenstein is a very distinguished behavioral economist. In fact, in some ways, he invented the field. He teaches at Carnegie Mellon. He's written a number of books. His latest book, which was out last week, has a wonderful title, although I'm not sure how happy he is with the title. Maybe he's not a very happy fellow. The Opposite of Happiness, How Bad Feelings Make and Break Us. If I'm right, George Loewenstein is arguing that misery might be our natural condition rather than happiness. He's joining us from Pittsburgh in his office in Carnegie Mellon. Before we went live, I joked with George that he might be miserable because he's in Pittsburgh, but he says it's a wonderful town. George, welcome to the show.

George Loewenstein (1:47)

Andrew, nice to be on the show.

Let me say Pittsburgh is rated one of the 10 cities you should visit while you're alive. It gets very high ratings.

Andrew Keen (2:00)

10 best cities in Pennsylvania, George, is that fair?

Let's leave Pittsburgh out of it for the moment. Is that fair? Are you arguing in The Opposite of Happiness that misery rather than happiness is our natural condition and we've been misinformed about that condition?

George Loewenstein (2:25)

I don't know the degree to which we've been misinformed, but like the shelves of bookstores are full of books on happiness and how to achieve it and so on, and probably some of the advice is good if you can follow it. I've always had a hard time following it myself, but in any case, I argue that misery or unhappiness is much more of a constant in human life than happiness.

Andrew Keen (2:54)

Yeah, and I couldn't agree more on those books. I try to avoid people with happiness books on the show. I'm not a particularly happy person, I think myself.

When you think of these books in the 20th, late 20th and early 21st century, which suggests we should all be happy, can we compare and contrast that with classic 19th century novels by characters like Flaubert and Tolstoy that seems to suggest that our natural condition is unhappiness? In other words, do the novelists get it as opposed to the people now who teach in business school?

George Loewenstein (3:32)

Well, I read a lot of those novels and I love them and I get inspiration from them. My book is packed with quotes from the very authors that you just mentioned. Maybe it wasn't coincidental that you mentioned them. But I think novelists are the best psychologists. They're better than the academics, psychologists for sure.

Most excellent novels are packed with a whole lot of misery and there's a good reason for that. I think misery is more interesting.

Andrew Keen (4:15)

I couldn't agree more. When you speak of psychology and most psychologists, you don't necessarily speak in a disinterested way.

You're from the Freud family, Sigmund Freud, the father of certainly of psychoanalysis and in some ways of modern psychology is your great-grandfather. What would, I know you haven't met him or you didn't, he's a bit older than all of us. What would he make of your theories about happiness and unhappiness, George?

George Loewenstein (4:46)

Well, it's funny. I spent a lot of my career trying to escape Freud, and I actually wouldn't even mention the connection for a very long time. But it's strange because as my career has progressed, I find that I'm kind of reinventing some of his ideas more and more. A lot of my research is about kind of what I think Freud would have called conflicts between like it and superego.

And yeah, I'm very interested in topics like pain, hunger, sex, things like that.

Andrew Keen (5:36)

Well, it's not surprising you're his great grandson. But coming back to the issue of happiness, did Freud write about happiness or misery?

George Loewenstein (5:46)

I'm not an expert on Freud, but I know that at the end of his life, and I shouldn't really be talking about Freud because I truly am not an expert, but I know that at the end of late in his career, he came upon this idea of Thanatos or that kind of death instinct. And maybe that's very closely related to misery. But a lot of what he talked about, like different neuroses, those are sources of misery. And the defense mechanisms are people's attempts to defend themselves from misery.