Hillary Clinton once said, “The worst thing that can happen in a Democracy— as well as in an individual's life— is to become cynical about the future and lose hope.”
But could the opposite actually be the case?
If we have a favorable view of the future, will we not be motivated to do the work to make sure that it’s actually good?
That’s the question Behavioral Economist Michael Norton set out to answer. He’s the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School.
JIM: Michael Norton, welcome back.
JARED: Tell us about this study and what it says about us.
NORTON: We, my co-author Todd Rodgers and I, had this idea a few years ago that if you look at— after every election, basically, (let’s leave the most recent one aside, it’s an anomaly) but before this one, what you see is after every election, whoever wins, the winning side says, this is it. This is the beginning of a permanent majority for Party X that won, and the other side says, this is a temporary blip, but in the next election, that’s going to be the beginning of the permanent majority for whatever party we’re in. Every election cycle, there are these books, called, like, ‘The Democratic Future’ or ‘The Republican Future’—literally, if you go back in history, you see these. The idea was, obviously both can’t be right, because there’s one or the other. So we thought, let’s ask people about the future. Do they think, actually, that the world is going to come around to you?
Right now, maybe some things are wrong, but surely in five years, 10 years, 20 years, eventually, people are going to agree with whatever I think. Part of the idea is that people might be confused right now, and they don’t know what they’re doing, but because I’m correct, and my beliefs are true and obvious, given enough time, of course you other idiots will eventually understand that I’m correct. Even if now I understand that not everyone agrees, in 10 years, of course everyone will agree with me, because you’ll all come around.
JIM: Is this a uniquely American phenomenon, or not? Part of the problem I see, and I think you did in your research, of believing the world will come to me, is that you don’t have to do anything. You can sit at home and say, well, maybe in a year or two, Donald Trump or Jane Doe is going to get it right, I don’t have to fight. In Montreal, they raise the cost of college a dollar and there are a million people in the street, and here we could torture our families and we’d probably sit at home and watch television.
NORTON: Especially if the torture was on television, that’s a win-win.
JIM: Does that explain part of our… un-activist behavior in recent years?
NORTON: We don’t have data from Montreal, but we do have data from at least… we did it in the U.S., we did it in the U.K., and we got data from China as well. Very similar. It seems to be that people from… the countries we’ve studied seem to have this general belief that things are going to come around to them. Now, it might manifest in different ways in different countries what that means. We’ve shown at least in the U.S. that because you think things are going to come around, why donate to causes, why vote, why leave my house? Eventually everything will be fine for me anyway.
JIM: Do we really believe this in America, or do we delude ourselves into believing it because it’s easier to live if you don’t have to take responsibility?
NORTON: We would call this a bias or a mistake, we called it the belief in a favorable future. It’s obviously wrong, because, as I said, not all of us can have a favorable future because we disagree about things. So there’s no way it can be correct, but I think you’re right that it feels good. It’s nice to think, especially when things are not so great right now, it’s probably nice for us to think that later on, they’ll be good.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. To hear Michael Norton’s full segment with Boston Public Radio, click on the audio link above.
