It's what you don't know that matters...

According to recent behavioral studies, humans have a very hard time coping with uncertainty. Although it is true that the economic crisis that has swept across the globe has left many households significantly poorer than they were less than two years ago, it is apparently not the reason behind the sharp drop in all kinds of "health and well being" indexes. Instead, the culprit seems to be the significant amount of uncertainty regarding the way the economy is likely to unfold over the next couple of months or years. Studies show, for example, that we tend to derive greater comfort and cope better with the certainty of bad news than with not knowing if results will be good or bad. This has something to do with the concept of "synthetic happiness" which was thought up by Harvard professor Daniel Gilbert. According to the theory, we end up being less happy when we are given a choice than when something is imposed on us. This concept was demonstrated with students that were broken into two groups. The first group were asked to rank a series of Monnet paintings in terms of attractiveness and given the chance to select the one they liked most to take with them. The second group were asked to do exactly the same thing with the exception that they were allowed to exchange their painting for another one in a week's time. At the end of a week it was discovered that the first group (who could not exchange their painting) where generally much more satisfied with their choice than the second group who had the option of exchanging it for another. In other words, choice, it seems brews dissatisfaction just as uncertainty leads to anxiety.