Happiness and Control
Early on in this book, Gilbert (Gilbert, 2006, p. 22) cuts right to the chase, proposing that happiness is often associated with a sense of broadly-encompassing personal control:
“. . . people find it gratifying to exercise control—not just for the futures it buys them, but for the exercise itself. Being effective—changing things, influencing things, making things happen, is one of the fundamental needs with which human brains seem to be naturally endowed, and much of our behavior from infancy onward is simply an expression of this penchant for control.”
Gilbert (Gilbert, 2006, p. 22) assigns this desire for control to a very early time in our life:
“Before our butts hit the very first diaper, we already have a throbbing desire to suck, sleep, poop, and make things happen. It takes us a while to get around to fulfilling the last of these desires only because it takes us a while to figure out that we have fingers, but when we do, look out world. Toddlers squeal with delight when they knock over a stack of blocks, push a ball, or squash a cupcake on their foreheads. Why? Because they did it, that’s why. Look, Mom, my hand made that happen. The room is different because I was in it. I thought about falling blocks, and poof, they fell. Oh boy! Sheer doing!”
Other psychologists have assigned the term “internal locus of control” to this desire. The oppositional desire is termed “external locus of control. ”where we wish someone or something out there in the world can be credited for a specific outcome. Using Gilbert’s example of early childhood wishes, the pull toward an external locus of control perspective might be found when it is not blocks that are falling, but instead that vase located on the living room shelf. The child looks around to see if the cat pushed it off the vase (but the cat was nowhere around), or if Mommie bumped it (though she was on the other side of the room). Finding no external villain, the child is likely to break out in tears, having acknowledged their personal causality.
As we grow older, the desire to have control of our present and future life shows up, as Gilbert notes, in an accompanying desire to “steer our own boat.” Gilbert (Gilbert, 2006, p. 25) offers some insight regarding this desire:
“We insist on steering our boats because we think we have a pretty good idea of where we should go, but the truth is that much of our steering is in vain—not because the boat won’t respond, and not because we can’t find our destination, but because the future is fundamentally different than it appears through [what Gilbert calls] the prospectiscope. Just as we experience illusions of eyesight (“Isn’t it strange how one line looks longer than the other even though it isn’t?”) and illusions of hindsight (“Isn’t it strange how I can’t remember taking out the garbage even though I did?”), so too do we experience illusions of foresight—and all three types of illusion are explained by the same basic principles of human psychology.”
I would offer an extension on Gilbert’s insights, noting that some people don’t want to steer their own boat—and this might be a result in many instances of these people encountering the reality of a future that “is fundamentally different” from what they had anticipated. While the push toward an external locus of control (someone else steers the boat) might arise from an acknowledgement of flawed foresight, it also can arise from a sense of initial powerlessness and hopelessness. The child is reared to believe that they have no control over their life, or the young adult confronts the fact that they are likely to spend the rest of their life living in poverty and are suppressed in their ability to effect any change in their life. I have also found in my work with people from other cultures that there is often a reliance on some force (such as God, fate, or good fortune) over which one has no control. In such cultures, time is spent praying at a temple or cathedral, rather than planning for the future.
Returning to Gilbert’s proposal that control is a key ingredient of happiness, we find him turning to a means-end strategy of control. While we might not find happiness in a specific task that we have chosen to undertake, there is an assumption that this task will eventually bring about happiness. Gilber (Gilbert, 2006, p. 36) puts it this way:
