Daniel Kahneman (photo links to TED talk) discusses two aspects of our selves that result in different concepts of happiness: our reflective self, and our experiencing self.
The experiencing self lives each moment; is unhappy every moment during a dentist drill, for instance. The reflective self is our memory, how we remember that dentist appointment. Interestingly, these two selves optimise for different sorts of happiness.
Take two different dentist appointments. One is short with high levels of pain. The other has the same amount of pain for that short time, but is then ended with a minute of lesser pain. Although experientially the second appointment was worse (‘more’ pain experienced), we actually remember that second appointment more fondly than the first, because it ended with less pain. This results in a concept of ‘reflective happiness’ which is not about how happy a person lives their life, but about how satisfied they are when they think about their lives. Thus, we optimise differently for money, goals, friends, etc.
He gives another example, someone living in Ohio, fed up with the weather. They want to move to California. The reflective self ends up moving to California in the hope of getting happier, because they think the climate will be better. Once they move, the experiencing self will not be happier, because climate is not one of the day-to-day factors in happiness. However, they will think they are happier, because the reflective self compares the climate to the terrible weather back in Ohio.
These differences in what we consider happiness as we live, and what we consider happiness when we think about life, mean we end up doing very different things.
