Your Happiness is Not Their Job

As a historically numbers-minded person, it has been quite a change over the past year for me to come to the realization that psychology is perhaps the most valuable subject I’ve learned in life. Sure, a computer science degree or an MD might be a path to high paying jobs, but psychology is valuable in just about every career, and, more importantly, life in general. Coming to realize the value of psychology made me think about psychological literacy as a form of capital that can be utilized to ones advantage in the free market, if one so chooses.

If you were to ask someone at random to name a job that requires a deep understanding of psychology, there is a pretty good chance they’ll say psychologist, psychiatrist, or counselor. These are of course a valid answers, but my point is that people don’t as readily see that far more jobs are best done by psychologically literate people. For example, executives of companies are often masters of relationships and influence – a status which is achieved through a deep understanding of how people think. Similarly, the job of people who work in sales and marketing is to use the right tricks to get you to behave the way they want. In other words, their job is to use psychology.

The two general ways someone can make money off of their knowledge of psychology is to:

1. Convince others that their psychology knowledge can help them in exchange for money.
2. Use their psychology knowledge to manipulate others into benefiting them. Examples include getting your vote or making a sale.

Psychologists, psychiatrists, and counselors fall into the first category, while the second is less obvious. Despite this, the second group is the one that has a greater impact on the population as a whole. Understanding this has been valuable in helping me build a lifestyle that promotes happiness, so I wanted to share.

Therapists meet with at most a small group of people at one time, and that session may serve to change the mindset of those people, but the members of the second group above impact the way that nearly every human in commercialized countries thinks. It’s just that their methods are more subtle, so not everyone notices. Political affiliations are formed towards whatever party can appeal to the internal beliefs someone has. In the vast majority of cases, this is a psychological battle, not a logical one. People buy products because marketers have done a good enough job getting into their heads and convincing them that they need the product.

If you think that roads are for cars first and foremost, then bikes and pedestrians second, you can thank the clever, psychologically literate marketers at GM, Standard Oil, and others. They figured out how to change laws and manipulate what means of transportation were convenient as a way to convince Americans, who previously thought of the car as a luxury and an intruder on the streets, that cars were the only reasonable way to get around. That’s just one example of far-reaching impacts that the second group of people who make a living with psychology can have.

People always complain about how the news is so negative, but that never changes the fact. This is because the marketers at the news stations know that anxious viewers are more likely to tune in to see what ended up happening in that scary hostage situation (which, of course, had absolutely no effect on their actual life), or if that stock actually crashed like they said it would. People who are content with the way things are tend to go about their way and go do something enjoyable and/or useful with their time. The news needs unhappy people in order to continue getting views. And that’s the heart of the issue here: the second group of people who make a living off of a deep understanding of psychology – those with the larger impact – often do so by directly harming the state of mind and/or bank account of their customers. And their customers are you and I.

Living a simple life doesn’t require much in the way of purchases – the essential food, water, shelter, clothes and some modern conveniences and entertainment. A lot of people who live simpler lives are happier for it, thanks to the more comfortable financial state it leaves them in, and the energy savings from not having to waste energy on upkeep/storage/thinking about unnecessary possessions. But there are so many companies out there whose product has no place in such a life, and the job of their marketers is to convince you it does. I call this idea “complexity sells”, because companies have to sell you the idea that life is more complicated than it is, and therefore you need their product to make it “simpler”, when really it’s unnecessary and actually makes your life more complicated. Some examples include “smart” anything; most outdoor gear & a decent chunk of clothes in general; in many cases, financial advisers; most things in your kitchen that didn’t exist 100 years ago; insurance on things that would be anything short of devastating to lose; specialized exercise equipment. I think you get the idea

Clearly some people, like many in the first group I mentioned, people marketing genuinely helpful products, and those in politics for the right reasons, can use their valuable knowledge of psychology to make others happier. But it is naïve to think that the opposite isn’t also true. At first glance it can be upsetting to realize this widespread harmful use of psychology, but this is actually good news for you. Armed with this framework, you can significantly improve your life. Here are some examples:

• Only take in information that is relevant to you. We now know that the news in general is designed to make you unhappy, so if it isn’t something you need to know (for most people, almost all of the news), you shouldn’t even bother paying attention to it. On top of the added peace of mind, this also frees up time and energy to do more valuable things.

• When you do take in information, make sure to view it through the filter of “an attempt to get views/buys” first, and “actual content” second (some make it through the first filter unscathed, like…uh…hopefully…this blog…).

• Question whether what’s normal is actually what’s best: Thanks to the impact of ads and other means of marketing, companies can, and do, influenced the general population into thinking certain inferior ways of doing things are the best way. Question all of these. Some will in fact be the best way, but a significant number won’t be. A prime example that I mentioned earlier is cars. Driving 2 miles to the supermarket instead of biking is worse for your health, the environment, traffic, your wallet, and your happiness, but almost everyone does it. Car companies have just done a good enough job of convincing the public that cars are better despite them being worse in nearly every way for such commutes. Question the norm and reap the benefits. This previous post is in a similar vein.

• Think about what you buy: This is two-fold; the first part is that you should take a period of a couple weeks or so to question every purchase you make and see if it’s something that will really improve your life to an amount worth its price, or if it’s something that marketers have made you think will do so. A LOT of money spent falls into the second group. As a starting point, I ask: “Is this essential to survive, or will it save me time/money in the long run?” If the answer is no, there’s a good chance it falls into the second category. The second part of this point is, when you do make a purchase, especially large ones like, again, cars, do research before believing the common beliefs. For example, large, midsize, and compact cars are all safer than SUV’s on average, but car companies have no incentive to dispel the common-believed myth that SUV’s are the “safe vehicle”, because it gets them an extra sale of an overpriced product when a young couple has their first kid and “only” has two midsize cars (which are more than enough for a 3 person family). Source: https://www.accessmagazine.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/7/2002/11/Suv-3.png