The Paradox of Knowing

David Dunning, Department of Psychology, Uris Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York            

The Psychologist, The British Psychological Society, Volume 26 – Part 6 – Pages:414-417 (June 2013)

Why do we have greater insight into others than ourselves?

People appear to know other people better than they know themselves, at least when it comes to predicting future behaviour and achievement. Why? People display a rather accurate grasp of human nature in general, knowing how social behaviour is shaped by situational and internal constraints. They just exempt themselves from this understanding, thinking instead that their own actions are more a product of their agency, intentions, and free will – a phenomenon we term ‘misguided exceptionalism’. How does this relate to cultural differences in self-insight? And are there areas of human life where people may still know themselves better than they know other people?

To know others is wisdom, to know one’s self is enlightenment.                                                   Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu

For the past twenty-odd years, the main discovery in my lab has been finding out just how unenlightened people are, at least in the terms that Lao Tzu put it. People appear to harbour many and frequent false beliefs about their own competence, character, place in the social world, and future (Dunning, 2005; Dunning et al., 2004). If ‘knowing yourself’ is a task that many philosophers and social commentators – from both Western and Eastern traditions – have exhorted people to accomplish, it appears that very few are taking the advice seriously enough to succeed.

But here is the rub. Although people may not possess much enlightenment, according to Lao Tzu’s criteria, they do instead seem to display a lot of wisdom. At least when it comes to making predictions about the future, people achieve more accuracy forecasting what their peers will do than what they themselves will do. Through their predictions, they seem to possess a rough but valid wisdom about the general dynamics of human nature and how it is reflected in people’s actions. They just fail to display the same sagacity when it comes to understanding their own personal dynamics. As psychologists, they appear to be much better social psychologists than self-psychologists.

The ‘holier-than-thou’ phenomenon

The ‘holier-than-thou’ phenomenon in behavioural prediction perhaps best illustrates this paradox of greater insight into other people than the self. The phenomenon is defined as people predicting they are far more likely to engage in socially desirable acts than their peers. Across several studies, we have asked people to forecast how they will behave in situations that have an ethical, civic or altruistic tone. For example, we ask whether they will donate to charity, or cooperate with another person in an experiment, or vote in an upcoming election. We also ask them the likelihood that their peers will do the same. Consistently, we find that respondents claim that they are much more likely to act in a socially desirable way than their peers are (Balcetis & Dunning, 2008, 2013; Epley & Dunning, 2000, 2006).

But here is the key twist: We then expose an equivalent set of respondents to the actual situation, to see which prediction – self or peer – better anticipates the true rate at which people ‘do the right thing’. Do self-predictions better anticipate the rate that people act in desirable ways, with people, thus, showing undue cynicism about the character of their peers? Or do peer predictions prove more accurate, demonstrating that people believe too much in their better selves? In our studies we find that people’s peer predictions are the more accurate ones. Self-predictions, in contrast, are wildly optimistic. For example, in one study, a full 90 per cent of students in a large-lecture psychology class eligible to vote in an upcoming US presidential election said that they would. They then provided another student with some relevant information about themselves, such as how interested they were in the election and how pleased would they be if their favoured candidate won. Peers given such information predicted that only 67 per cent of respondents would vote. Actual voting rate among those respondents when the election arrived: 61 per cent (Epley & Dunning, 2000, Study 2).

Time and again we have seen such a pattern. For example, 83 per cent of students forecast that they would buy a daffodil for charity in an upcoming drive for the American Cancer Society, but that only 56 per cent of their peers would. When we check back, we found that only 43 per cent had done so (Epley & Dunning, 2000, Study 1). In a Prisoner’s Dilemma game played in the lab, 84 per cent of participants said they would cooperate rather than betray their partner, but that only 64 per cent would do likewise. The actual cooperation rate was 61 per cent (Epley & Dunning, Study 2).

Accuracy as correlation

But wait, a careful reader might say. People might prove overconfident about their own behaviour, but surely they know more about themselves than other people do. This accuracy just reveals itself in a different way. Namely, if we look instead at the correlation between people’s predictions and their actions, we might find a stronger relationship for self-predictions than for peers. More specifically, people may overpredict the chance that they will vote. But those who say they will vote will still be much more likely to vote than those who say they will not. Forecasts from peers will fail to separate voters from nonvoters so successfully.

This assertion is plausible, but it surprisingly fails empirical test. When we look at accuracy from a correlational perspective, we find that peers at least equal overall the accuracy rates of those making self-predictions (see also Spain et al., 2000; Vazire & Mehl, 2008). In one of our voting studies, peers who received just five scant pieces of information about another person’s view of an upcoming election predicted that person just as well (r = .48) as did people predicting their own actions (r = .51) in correlational terms. Other researchers report similar findings: All it takes is a few pieces of information for a peer to achieve accuracy rates that equal the self. The behaviour can be a performance in an upcoming exam (Helzer & Dunning, 2012) or performance on IQ tests (Borkenau & Liebler, 1993).

And, if the action is one that people find significant, and if peers are familiar with the person in question, then peer prediction begins to outdo self-prediction. Roommates and parents, for example, outpredict how long a person’s college romance will last, relative to self-prediction (MacDonald & Ross, 1999). Ratings of supervisors and peers outclass self-ratings in predicting how well surgical residents will do on their final surgical exams (Riscucci et al., 1989). Ratings of peers do better at predicting who will receive a promotion in the Navy early relative to self-impressions (Bass & Yammarino, 1991).

Misguided exceptionalism

Taken together, all this research suggests that people tend to possess useful insight when it comes to understanding human nature. But this research also suggests that people fail to apply this wisdom to the self. In a sense, people exempt themselves from whatever valid psychological understanding they have about their friends and contemporaries. Instead, they tend to think of themselves as special, as responding to a different psychological dynamic. The rules that govern other people’s psychology fail to apply to them. We have come to call this tendency misguided exceptionalism.

What is it about their understanding of other people that respondents exempt themselves from? We contend, with data, that people recognise that others tend to be constrained in what they do. There are forces, both internal and external to the individual, which are out of their control but that influence how they behave. The smell of freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies does break people’s willpower.

The opinions of the crowd place pressures on other people to conform.

But these constraints are for other people. When it comes to our own behaviour, we tend to emphasise instead our own agency, the force of our own character, and what we aspire, intend or plan to do. Relative to others, we believe that our actions are largely a product of our own intentions, aspirations and free will (Buehler et al., 1994; Critcher & Dunning, 2013; Koehler & Poon, 2006; Kruger & Gilovich, 2004; Peetz & Buehler, 2009). We consider ourselves free agents generally immune to the constraints that dictate other people’s actions.

Much recent empirical work reveals this differential emphasis for the self. People think their futures are more wide-open and unpredictable, and that their intentions and desires will be more important authors of their futures than similar intentions and desires will be for other people (Pronin & Kugler, 2010). When predicting their own exam performance, people emphasise (actually, too much, it turns out) their aspiration level, that is, the score they are working to achieve (Helzer & Dunning, 2012), but they emphasise instead a person’s past achievement (appropriately, it turns out) in predictions of others. College students consider their future potential – or, rather, the person they are aiming to be – to be a bigger part of themselves than it is in other people (Williams & Gilovich, 2008; Williams et al., 2012). People predicting who will give to charity consider the prediction to be one about a person’s character and attitudes – that is, until they confront a chance to give themselves, in which case they switch to emphasising situational factors in their accounts of giving (Balcetis & Dunning, 2008).

College students harbour reservations about excessive drinking, but not
recognising that others also feel this same reluctance, they go along
with the crowd

Misunderstanding situations

Ultimately, this misguided exceptionalism and overemphasis on individual agency means that people fail to apply an accurate understanding of human nature to themselves, one that would make their predictions more accurate. People, for example, are surprisingly good at understanding how situational circumstances influence people’s behaviour. In one study, we described a ‘bystander apathy’ study to students. Students were shown an experiment in which a research assistant accidentally spilled a box of jigsaw puzzle pieces. These students were then asked the likelihood that they would help pick the pieces up relative to the percentage of other students who would help. Of key importance, participants were shown two variations of this basic situation – one in which they were alone versus one in which they were sitting in a group of three people.

Those familiar with social psychology will recognise that people are more likely to help when they are alone rather than in a group (Latané & Darley, 1970). In the group, people are seized by the inertia of not knowing immediately whether to help, and thus taking their cue to do nothing based on the fact that everyone else, lost in the same indecision, ends up doing nothing, too. But would our participants show insight into this principle? Not according to their self-predictions. Participants stated that they would be roughly 90 per cent likely to help either alone or in the group. They did, though, concede that other people would be influenced, and that the rate of helping would go down 22 per cent (from 72 per cent to 50 per cent) among other people by introducing the group. Of key import, when we ran the study for real, we found that placing people in a group had a 27 per cent impact (from 50 per cent down to 23 per cent) on actual behaviour. Again, peer predictions largely anticipated this impact. Self-predictions did not (Balcetis & Dunning, 2013).

This belief that self-behaviour ‘floats’ above the impact of situational circumstances and constraints can lead people to forgo decisions that would actually help them. Consider the task of staying within a monthly budget. In one study, participants were offered a service that would provide them with savings tips plus a constant monitoring of their finance. For themselves, participants felt the service would be superfluous. It would have almost zero impact on their ability to achieve their budget goals. What mattered for them instead was the strength of their intentions to save money (Koehler et al., 2011).

But, in reality, a random sample of participants assigned to the service was roughly 11 per cent more likely to reach their budget goals. And, a group of participants asked to judge the impact of the service on other people estimated that the service would matter; that others would be 17 per cent more likely to reach their goals. Again, predictions about others better reflected reality than predictions about the self, in that people could recognise the impact of an important situational aid on others, but felt they themselves were immune to those influences (Koehler et al., 2011).

Cultural influences

This overemphasis on the self’s agency suggests possible cultural differences in the holier-than-thou effect. And, indeed, such cultural differences arise. It is the individualist cultures of Western Europe and North America that emphasise autonomy, agency and the imposition of will onto the environment (Fiske et al., 1998; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Far Eastern cultures, such as Japan, emphasise instead interdependence, social roles and group harmony – that is, social constraints on the self. Might those cultures, thus, be relatively immune to the ‘holier’ phenomenon?

Across several studies, we have found that people from collectivist cultures display much less self-error than did those from individualist ones. For example, young children attending a summer school on Mallorca were asked how many candies they would donate to other children if they were asked, as well as how many candies other children on average would donate.

A week later, the children were actually asked to donate. Children from more individualist countries (e.g. Britain) donated many fewer candies than they had predicted, but those from more collectivist countries (e.g. Spain) donated on average just as many as they had predicted. Both groups were accurate in their predictions about their peers (Balcetis et al., 2008).

Does the self have any advantage?

Extant psychological research, however, does suggest one area where this general story about self- and social insight will reverse. People may be wiser when it comes to predicting the public and observable actions of others rather than self, but they do appear to have privileged insight into aspects of the self that are not available for other people to view. People know that below the surface of their public appearance is a private individual who feels doubt, anxiety, inhibition and ambivalence that he or she may not let wholly come to the surface (Spain et al., 2000; Vazire, 2010; Vazire & Carlson, 2010, 2011). Of course, this individual does not see this roiling interior life in others.

As a consequence, people may lack awareness that what’s inside themselves is similarly churning and stirring within others. Thus, for example, people often consider themselves more shy, self-critical, and indecisive than other people (Miller & McFarland, 1987). College students harbour reservations about excessive drinking, but not recognising that others also feel this same reluctance, they go along with the crowd to excess on a Saturday night (Prentice & Miller, 1993). In a similar vein, college students harbour much more discomfort about casual sex than they believe their peers do, with each sex overestimating the comfort level of the other sex when it comes to ‘hooking up’ (Lambert et al., 2003).

Concluding remarks

Thus, current psychological research suggests that people may be wise, at least when it comes to understanding and anticipating other people, but they stand in the way of letting this wisdom lead to their own enlightenment. However, if research reveals this problem, it also suggests a potential solution to it. What we presume about other people’s behaviour and futures is likely a valuable indicator of what awaits us in the same situation – and may be much better indicator of our future than any scenario we are spinning directly about ourselves. When predictions matter, we should not spend a great deal of time predicting what we think we will do. Instead, we should ask what other people are likely to do. Or, we should hand the prediction of our own future over to another person who knows a little about us.

Whatever we do, we should note that perhaps we are, indeed, uniquely special individuals, but that it is too easy to overemphasise that fact. In anticipating the future, we should be mindful of the continuity that lies between our self-nature and the nature of others. It is in recognising this continuity that we realise the path that leads to our wisdom may be a pretty good path to our enlightenment, too. At the very least, that thought does remind one of another Chinese proverb that has survived the centuries, perhaps best indicating its worth – that to know what lies for us along the road ahead, we should be sure to ask those coming back.

References

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Smog in our brains

By Kristen Weir

American Psychological Association 
July/August 2012, Vol 43, No. 7

Researchers are identifying startling connections between air pollution and decreased cognition and well-being.

That yellow haze of smog hovering over the skyline isn't just a stain on the view. It may also leave a mark on your mind.

Researchers have known since the 1970s that high levels of air pollution can harm both cardiovascular and respiratory health, increasing the risk of early death from heart and lung diseases. The effect of air pollution on cognition and mental well-being, however, has been less well understood. Now, evidence is mounting that dirty air is bad for your brain as well.

Over the past decade, researchers have found that high levels of air pollution may damage children's cognitive abilities, increase adults' risk of cognitive decline and possibly even contribute to depression.

"This should be taken seriously," says Paul Mohai, PhD, a professor in the University of Michigan's School of Natural Resources and the Environment who has studied the link between air pollution and academic performance in children. "I don't think the issue has gotten the visibility it deserves."     

      

Cognitive connections

Most research on air pollution has focused on a type of pollutant known as fine particulate matter. These tiny particles — 1/30th the width of a human hair — are spewed by power plants, factories, cars and trucks. Due to its known cardiovascular effects, particulate matter is one of six principal pollutants for which the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has established air quality standards.

It now seems likely that the harmful effects of particulate matter go beyond vascular damage. Jennifer Weuve, MPH, ScD, an assistant professor of internal medicine at Rush Medical College, found that older women who had been exposed to high levels of the pollutant experienced greater cognitive decline compared with other women their age (Archives of Internal Medicine, 2012). Weuve's team gathered data from the Nurses' Health Study Cognitive Cohort, a population that included more than 19,000 women across the United States, age 70 to 81. Using the women's address history, Weuve and her colleagues estimated their exposure to particulate matter over the previous seven to 14 years. The researchers found that long-term exposure to high levels of the pollution significantly worsened the women's cognitive decline, as measured by tests of cognitive skill.

Weuve and her colleagues investigated exposure to both fine particulate matter (the smallest particles, less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter) and coarse particulate matter (larger particles ranging from 2.5 to 10 micrometers in size).

"The conventional wisdom is that coarse particles aren't as important as fine particles" when it comes to human health, Weuve says. Previous studies in animals and human cadavers had shown that the smaller particles can more easily penetrate the body's defenses. "They can cross from the lung to the blood and, in some cases, travel up the axon of the olfactory nerve into the brain," she says. But Weuve's study held a surprise. She found that exposure to both fine and coarse particulate was associated with cognitive decline.

Weuve's results square with those of a similar study by Melinda Power, a doctoral candidate in epidemiology and environmental health at the Harvard School of Public Health. Power and her colleagues studied the link between black carbon — a type of particulate matter associated with diesel exhaust, a source of fine particles — and cognition in 680 older men in Boston (Environmental Health Perspectives, 2011). "Black carbon is essentially soot," Power says.

Power's team used black carbon exposure as a proxy for measuring overall traffic-related pollution. They estimated each man's black carbon exposure by cross-referencing their addresses with an established model that provides daily estimates of black carbon concentrations throughout the Boston area. Much like Weuve's results in older women, Power and colleagues found that men exposed to high levels of black carbon had reduced cognitive performance, equivalent to aging by about two years, as compared with men who'd had less black carbon exposure.

But while black carbon is a convenient marker of air pollution, it's too soon to say that it's what's causing the cognitive changes, Power says. "The problem is there are a lot of other things associated with traffic — noise, gases — so we can't say from this study that it's the particulate part of the air pollution that matters."

Still, the cumulative results of these studies suggest that air pollution deserves closer scrutiny as a risk factor for cognitive impairment and perhaps dementia.

"Many dementias are often preceded by a long period of cognitive decline. But we don't know very much about how to prevent or delay dementia," Weuve says. If it turns out that air pollution does contribute to cognitive decline and the onset of dementia, the finding could offer a tantalizing new way to think about preventing disease. "Air pollution is something that we can intervene on as a society at large, through technology, regulation and policy," she says.

Young minds

Research is also finding air-pollution-related harms to children's cognition. Shakira Franco Suglia, ScD, an assistant professor at Boston University's School of Public Health, and colleagues followed more than 200 Boston children from birth to an average age of 10. They found that kids exposed to greater levels of black carbon scored worse on tests of memory and verbal and nonverbal IQ (American Journal of Epidemiology, 2008).

More recently, Frederica Perera, DrPH, at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, and colleagues followed children in New York City from before birth to age 6 or 7. They discovered that children who had been exposed to higher levels of urban air pollutants known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons while in utero were more likely to experience attention problems and symptoms of anxiety and depression (Environmental Health Perspectives, 2012). These widespread chemicals are a byproduct of burning fossil fuels.

Meanwhile Mohai, at the University of Michigan, found that Michigan public schools located in areas with the highest industrial pollution levels had the lowest attendance rates and the greatest percentage of students who failed to meet state testing standards, even after controlling for socioeconomic differences and other confounding factors (Health Affairs, 2011). What's worse, the researchers analyzed the distribution of the state's public schools and found that nearly two-thirds were located in the more-polluted areas of their districts. Only about half of states have environmental quality policies for schools, Mohai says, "and those that do may not go far enough. More attention needs to be given to this issue."

Although Michigan and Massachusetts may experience areas of poor air quality, their pollution problems pale in comparison to those of Mexico City, for example. In a series of studies, Lilian Calderón-Garcidueñas, MD, PhD, a neuropathologist at the University of Montana and the National Institute of Pediatrics in Mexico City, has investigated the neurological effects of the city's infamous smog.

In early investigations, Calderón-Garcidueñas dissected the brains of dogs that had been exposed to air pollution of Mexico City and compared them with the brains of dogs from a less-polluted city. She found the Mexico City dogs' brains showed increased inflammation and pathology including amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, clumps of proteins that serve as a primary marker for Alzheimer's disease in humans (Toxicologic Pathology, 2003).

In follow-up research, Calderón-Garcidueñas turned her attention to Mexico's children. In one study, she examined 55 kids from Mexico City and 18 from the less-polluted city of Polotitlán. Magnetic resonance imagining scans revealed that the children exposed to urban pollution were significantly more likely to have brain inflammation and damaged tissue in the prefrontal cortex. Neuroinflammation, Calderón-Garcidueñas explains, disrupts the blood-brain barrier and is a key factor in many central nervous system disorders, including Alzheimer's disease and Parkinson's disease. Perhaps more troubling, though, the differences between the two groups of children weren't just anatomical. Compared with kids from cleaner Polotitlán, the Mexico City children scored lower on tests of memory, cognition and intelligence (Brain and Cognition, 2008).

Brain changes

It's becoming clearer that air pollution affects the brain, but plenty of questions remain. Randy Nelson, PhD, a professor of neuroscience at the Ohio State University, is using mouse studies to find some answers. With his doctoral student Laura Fonken and colleagues, he exposed mice to high levels of fine particulate air pollution five times a week, eight hours a day, to mimic the exposure a human commuter might receive if he or she lived in the suburbs and worked in a smoggy city (Molecular Psychiatry, 2011). After 10 months, they found that the mice that had been exposed to polluted air took longer to learn a maze task and made more mistakes than mice that had not breathed in the pollution.

Nelson also found that the pollutant-exposed mice showed signs of the rodent equivalent of depression. Mice said to express depressive-like symptoms give up swimming more quickly in a forced swim test and stop sipping sugar water that they normally find attractive. Both behaviors can be reversed with antidepressants. Nelson found that mice exposed to the polluted air scored higher on tests of depressive-like responses.

To find out more about the underlying cause of those behavioral changes, Nelson compared the brains of mice that had been exposed to dirty air with brains of mice that hadn't. He found a number of striking differences. For starters, mice exposed to particulate matter had increased levels of cytokines in the brain. (Cytokines are cell-signaling molecules that regulate the body's inflammatory response.) That wasn't entirely surprising, since previous studies investigating the cardiovascular effects of air pollution on mice had found widespread bodily inflammation in mice exposed to the pollution.

More surprisingly, Nelson also discovered physical changes to the nerve cells in the mouse hippocampus, a region known to play a role in spatial memory. Exposed mice had fewer spines on the tips of the neurons in this brain region. "Those [spines] form the connections to other cells," Nelson says. "So you have less dendritic complexity, and that's usually correlated with a poorer memory."

The changes are alarming and surprising, he says. "I never thought we'd actually see changes in brain structure."

Nelson's mice experienced quite high levels of pollution, on par with those seen in places such as Mexico City and Beijing, which rank higher on the pollution scale than U.S. cities. It's not yet clear whether the same changes would occur in mice exposed to pollution levels more typical of American cities. Another limitation, he notes, is that the animals in his study were genetically identical. Nelson says he'd like to see similar studies of wild-type mice to help tease out whether genetic differences might make some people more or less vulnerable to the effects of pollution. "I would suspect there are people who are wildly susceptible to this and people who are less so, or not at all," he says.

Few studies have investigated connections between depression and air pollution, but Nelson's wasn't the first. A study by Portuguese researchers explored the relationship between psychological health and living in industrial areas. They found that people who lived in areas associated with greater levels of air pollution scored higher on tests of anxiety and depression (Journal of Environmental Psychology, 2011).

Back in Ohio, Nelson plans to study how much — or how little — pollution is necessary to cause changes in the brain and behavior. He's also beginning to look at the effects of air pollution on pregnant mice and their offspring. Though more research is needed to fully understand how dirty air impairs the brain, he says, the picture that's emerging suggests reason for concern.

In the United States, the Environmental Protection Agency reviews the scientific basis for particulate matter standards every five years or so, and completed its last review in 2009.

To date, the EPA hasn't factored psychological research into their standards assessments, but that could change, according to a statement the EPA provided to the Monitor. "Additional research is necessary to assess the impact of ambient air pollutants on central nervous system function, such as cognitive processes, especially during critical windows of brain development. To this end, as the number of … studies continue to increase and add to the weight of overall evidence, future National Ambient Air Quality Standards assessments will again assess and address the adequacy of existing standards."

In the meantime, says Weuve, there's not much people can do to protect themselves, short of wearing special masks, installing special filtration systems in their homes and offices or moving to cities with less airborne pollution. "Ultimately, we're at the mercy of policy," she says.

The good news, Nelson says, is that the mental and cognitive effects of air pollution are finally beginning to receive attention from the mental health research community. "We sort of forget about these environmental insults," says Nelson. "Maybe we shouldn't."

Money can't buy happiness

By Amy Novotney

American Psychological Association, July/August 2012, 

Vol. 43, No. 7, Page 24

Extremely wealthy people have their own set of concerns: anxiety about their children, uncertainty over their relationships and fears of isolation, finds research by Robert Kenny.

Most of what we think we know about people with a lot of money comes from television, movies and beach novels — and a lot of it is inaccurate, says Robert Kenny, EdD.

In an effort to remedy that, Kenny, a developmental psychologist and senior advisor at the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy at Boston College, is co-leading a research project on the aspirations, dilemmas and personal philosophies of people worth $25 million or more. Kenny and his colleagues surveyed approximately 165 households via an anonymous online survey and were surprised to find that while money eased many aspects of these people's lives, it made other aspects more difficult.

Dr. Robert Kenny

The Monitor spoke to Kenny about his findings and about the significance of his research for those of us who don't have a net worth of $25 million or more.

WHAT PROMPTED YOU TO STUDY WEALTHY FAMILIES?

We wanted to try to understand the deeper motivations of people in high net worth households. They are rarely questioned about this, and instead are asked whether they would like a Mercedes or a Lexus. Do they prefer Tiffany's or Cartier? Most surveys of high net worth households are marketing surveys to sell a product, so the questions that are asked are pretty narrow.

We decided to ask three major questions: First, we asked, "What is the greatest aspiration for your life?" As far as we can tell, no one has ever asked this population that question, yet there are assumptions made about this all the time. The second major question was, "What's your greatest aspiration for your children?" Our third question was, "What's your greatest aspiration for the world?" After each of the major questions we asked, "How does your money help you with your greatest aspiration?" and, "How does your money get in the way?"

WHAT DID YOU FIND?

People consistently said that their greatest aspiration in life was to be a good parent — not exactly the stereotype some might expect. When asked whether their money helps with that, they answered with all the obvious: good schools, travel, security, varied experiences. But when we asked how their money gets in the way, that was a payload. We received response after response on how money is not always helpful. They mentioned very specific concerns, such as the way their children would be treated by others and stereotyped as rich kids or trust fund babies, they wondered if their children would know if people really loved them or their money, whether they'd know if their achievements were because of their own skills, knowledge and talent or because they have a lot of money.

Some were concerned about motivation. They worried that if their children have enough money and don't have to worry about covering the mortgage, what will motivate them? How will they lead meaningful lives? This is where the money might get in the way and make things confusing, not necessarily better. Very few said they hoped their children made a lot of money, and not many said they were going to give all the money to charity and let their kids fend for themselves. They were, however, really interested in helping their children figure out how they could live a meaningful life. Even though they did not have to "make a living," they did need to make a life.

As for the respondents' aspirations for the world, they focused, once again, on how to help the youth in the world live healthy, meaningful and impactful lives. Their answers were consistently youth-focused: They were concerned about being good parents, they were concerned about their children and they were concerned about the children of the world in general. We found that to be very interesting, and even surprising because it runs contrary to so many of the stereotypes about this population.

WHAT HAD YOU EXPECTED TO HEAR?

One could expect that you might hear things like, "I wanted to make a lot of money and become financially independent and be able to do whatever I wanted to do whenever I wanted to do it." But very few said anything like that, although they appreciated the temporal freedom. It was so non-financially focused. I expected that when we asked them about their greatest aspiration for their children, we'd get a lot more people saying they wanted their children to be world leaders, but that's not what they said at all. People said, "I'd like them to think about how to make their world a better place." Not the world, their world — their community, their neighborhood, their family.

WHAT MIGHT PSYCHOLOGISTS FIND MOST INTERESTING ABOUT THIS WORK?

A net worth of $25 million or more brings temporal freedom, spatial freedom and sometimes psychological freedom, but it's not always easy. Eventually temporal freedom — the freedom to do anything you want — raises dilemmas about what the best way to use all your time might be. There's also spatial freedom: You get to build anything you want — a house, a business, a new nonprofit — and people often get lost or befuddled with all of their options. And you get choice. You can go to this restaurant or that one, this resort or that one, buy this car or that one. People can get overwhelmed by all the choices and possibilities, and the amount of freedom that they have.

Then the overwhelming question becomes: What is the best use of my time and resources? After a while one can actually become stymied and even dispirited. There are plenty of folks who are more than willing to make suggestions, but it takes a lot of individual work to develop the psychological freedom to make decisions. For most, that's not a problem because time and money are limited, so the choices are limited. Being willing to try to understand the challenges of having an oversupply of time and money can be difficult for therapists.

The takeaway from all of this is that there seemed to be a trend that said you can't buy your way out of the human condition. For example, one survey participant told me that he'd sold his business, made a lot of money off that and lived high for a while. He said, "You know, Bob, you can just buy so much stuff, and when you get to the point where you can just buy so much stuff, now what are you going to do?"

WHAT'S THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THIS RESEARCH FOR THE VAST MAJORITY OF US WHO AREN'T WEALTHY?

This research shows the rest of the world, who often think that if they just made one more bonus or sold one more item or got one more promotion, then their world and their family's world would be so much better, that this isn't necessarily true. There's another whole level of concerns that parents are going to have about their kids. One of those concerns is this feeling of isolation. That's actually a No. 1 concern for families with a high net worth — this sense of isolation — and the higher the wealth, the worse it gets. We know this is a very powerful feeling when it comes to one's overall sense of well-being, and these people feel very isolated because they have what most of the world thinks they want. But just because you have money doesn't mean you're not going to have a bad day every once in a while. But what you often lose when you have all this money is the friendships that support you through the difficult times.

WHAT HAVE YOU LEARNED THROUGH YOUR YEARS OF WORKING WITH PEOPLE WITH A HIGH NET WORTH?

I think the toughest part about both working with this population and being in this population is that as soon as you say they have a net worth of $25 million, someone will start playing the violin. Like, "Oh, cry me a river, you have all this money and it's causing problems?"

No one is saying, "Poor me, I have a lot of money." In fact, most of them are saying, "I love having a lot of money. But don't get me wrong, there are some downsides."

These people don't have to worry about whether they'll have enough to make the mortgage payment, and they feel very fortunate. But it isn't nirvana either. If their kids have access to a lot of money, and therefore a lot of drugs, that hurts just as much as if they don't have any money and their kids are doing drugs. It doesn't save you from any of that. It's still a parent who has a child who is hurting.

The Future of the Brain

Scientific Research & Outreach into Politics, Education & Society

Susan Greenfield

As Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Oxford University, Susan Greenfield leads a multi-disciplinary team investigating the physical basis of the mind and its implications for our understanding of human behaviour, work and society. Through her reputation as a leading scientist, author and thought leader in the dynamics and evolution of the human brain, Susan Greenfield has also extended her reach to influence and inform other aspects of our society.

Susan Greenfield: http://www.susangreenfield.com/