People significantly underestimate how happy they were in the past.
When you look back over your life, can you remember how happy you used to be, say, five years ago?
The chances are that you were much happier than you recall.
Research suggests that people were usually happier than they remember.
In other words, we seem to forget how happy we used to be.
Confusing past and present
The conclusions come from a study which looked at data from tens of thousands of people in Germany, France, the U.S. and the U.K..
The results showed that people’s present feelings interfered with their evaluation of the past.
Dr Alberto Prati and Professor Claudia Senik, the study’s authors, explained:
“Happy people tend to overstate the improvement of their life satisfaction over time, whereas unhappy ones tend to overstate the deterioration of their level of happiness.
This indicates a certain confusion between feeling happy and feeling better.”
People were asked at regular intervals about their current feelings of happiness every year.
But, when they tried to remember their past levels of happiness, their present feelings got in the way of an accurate assessment.
Dr Prati and Professor Senik said:
“People are able to recall how they used to feel about their life, but they also tend to mix this memory with the way they currently feel.”
Upgrade the present
In contrast to downgrading their past happiness, people seem to consistently upgrade the happiness they feel in the present.
On average, people feel they have been steadily getting happier over their lifetimes, despite their own yearly happiness ratings suggesting otherwise.
The study’s authors write:
“It thus seems that feeling happy today implies feeling better than yesterday.
This recall structure has implications for motivated memory and learning and could explain why happy people are more optimistic, perceive risks to be lower, and are more open to new experiences.”
The study was published in the journal Psychological Science (Prati & Senik, 2022).
