Nothing matters as much as you think it does while you are thinking about it.
Kahneman and Schkade's finding that Californians and Midwesterners report similar life satisfaction, while both groups predict Californians are happier. The climate matters only while you are asked about the climate.
In practice
- An employee weighing a job offer fixates on the commute and finds, a year in, that it barely features in how they feel about the work.
- A buyer choosing between two flats agonises over the kitchen and, two years later, thinks about the neighbours.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Decision-making & Reasoning
- Essay
- The catalogue of predictable errors