Holding on to hope may not make patients happier as they deal with chronic illness or diseases, according to a new study by University of Michigan Health System researchers. "Hope is an important part of happiness," said Peter A. Ubel, M.D., director of the U-M Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine and one of the authors of the happily hopeless study, "but there's a dark side of hope. Sometimes, if hope makes people put off getting on with their life, it can get in the way of happiness."
The results showed that people do not adapt well to situations if they are believed to be short-term. Ubel and his co-authors -- both from U-M and Carnegie Mellon University -- studied patients who had new colostomies: their colons were removed and they had to have bowel movements in a pouch that lies outside their body.
At the time they received their colostomy, some patients were told that the colostomy was reversible -- that they would undergo a second operation to reconnect their bowels after several months. Others were told that the colostomy was permanent and that they would never have normal bowel function again. The second group -- the one without hope -- reported being happier over the next six months than those with reversible colostomies.
"We think they were happier because they got on with their lives. They realized the cards they were dealt, and recognized that they had no choice but to play with those cards," says Ubel, who is also a professor in the Department of Internal Medicine.
"The other group was waiting for their colostomy to be reversed," he added. "They contrasted their current life with the life they hoped to lead, and didn't make the best of their current situation."
At first I read this to be saying that they'd in fact lied to some of these patients; telling them that their colostomies were reversible when in fact - snigger - they were no such thing. Well, I wouldn't put it past these behavioural scientists. But no: Dr Ubel explains it all here and they weren't lied to: their colostomies were indeed believed to be reversible. But still, one would like a little more information on how they measure happiness in these cases. For instance, in support of his theory:
A prisoner sentenced to life without parole is in a worse situation than one with only six months remaining in his sentence. But it is this latter prisoner who is more likely to attempt to escape. The anticipation of freedom, of a better life, is so strong that he can no longer wait.
Um....yes, maybe - but that doesn't make the prisoner sentenced to life without parole somehow happier. Less uncertain, perhaps - but I suppose Chronically Ill Patients Might Be Less Uncertain if They Knew Exactly What Was Going to Happen to Them has less of a ring to it.
Still, he's clearly a high-flier, this Dr Uben. He has a recently published book: Free Market Madness: Why Human Nature is at Odds with Economics--and Why it Matters.
According to Ubel, physician and behavioral scientist at the University of Michigan, marketers exploit basic human irrationality to persuade people to consume dangerously unhealthy foods and spend more money than they have.Remarkable. Where would we be without behavioural science?
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