Your Brain’s Love of Happy Endings Could Make You Unhappy
By: Naveen Kumar
Tags: Life, Relationships, Health, Psychology, Brain

Your Brain’s Love of Happy Endings Could Make You Unhappy

Photo: Meng Yiren/Getty Images

Science and Hollywood both have proof that people prefer happy endings. Research shows that people are more likely to repeat experiences that finish on a high note (think: sex, a meal followed by dessert, or your favorite holiday rom-com). But a new study published in the Journal of Neuroscience found that people’s affinity for happy endings could actually hinder one’s ability to make decisions that maximize enjoyment — and it applies to everything from choosing a restaurant to moving on from a breakup.

Consider a tropical vacation (when such a thing was possible): If the weather is lovely throughout but it rains on your last day, you may be less likely to remember the experience fondly. And, because of the unhappy ending of that last rainy day, you might also be less likely to choose to take a similar getaway in the future. And that actually works against your best interests.

Final impressions can be deceiving

Cambridge University’s Martin Vestergaard, PhD, and Wolfram Schultz, PhD, who both work in the university’s department of physiology, development, and neuroscience, use the example of a rainy holiday to illustrate the findings of their empirical study: that focusing too narrowly on the conclusion of an experience can prevent people from accurately assessing its value as a whole.

In their study, the researchers presented 27 male participants with a digital simulation while monitoring brain activity with the help of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Subjects were asked to watch two series of coins fall into separate pots and then determine which pot held more value. The larger the coin, the more it was worth.

“It comes down to our ability to summarize an experience that takes place over time,” Vestergaard says. Getting hung up on the conclusion can distract us from accurately judging the full duration.

“If you can’t control your attraction to happy endings, then you cannot trust your choices to serve your best interest.”

One sequence the participants were shown featured smaller coins in the final moments (an unhappy ending). Subjects who thought those smaller coins meant the pot was worth less showed increased activity in their anterior insula. This part of the brain focused on the final impression of diminished returns, the study found, and “excessively marked down” the value of the whole. Study authors referred to these subjects as “suboptimal decision-makers” for fixating too narrowly on the end of the sequence.

On the other hand, those who correctly chose the more valuable pot showed increased activity in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which seemed to accurately analyze the overall total. The authors called these subjects “optimal decision-makers” for their ability to evaluate the entire sequence correctly rather than fixate on the conclusion.

The study authors suggest that optimal decision-makers take a long view and consider the overall experience while suboptimal decision-makers sour on the whole if it doesn’t end well.

These findings, the authors say, could help people make better decisions. “The question is what are you trying to achieve when you make a decision?” Vestergaard says. Being focused on a happy ending doesn’t actually optimize your future experience, he points out: “If you can’t control your attraction to happy endings, then you cannot trust your choices to serve your best interest. That’s why we talk about stepping back and just double checking if you feel you’re at risk of running with an impulse that is not an accurate representation of something you’ve just experienced.”

Focus more on the journey, not the ending

What about endings that are inherently disappointing? Although the experiment was conducted as a gambling simulation, the study’s findings have broad-reaching applications — including in matters of the heart.

“Relationships essentially come down to cost-benefit analysis,” says Galena Rhoades, PhD, a clinical psychologist and research professor in the department of psychology at the University of Denver. “You may have a longer list of pros and cons or a more complex set of variables” than in other situations, “but the decision-making process is essentially the same in that we’re heavily influenced by recent extreme events.” Processing those extremes and working toward greater perspective is often the work of clinical therapy.

As Rhoades has proven in her field research, and as many people can attest, breaking up is painful and often leads to psychological distress. A breakup is “by definition a disappointing end to a relationship,” Vestergaard says. “But you’re doing yourself a disservice” if you judge the whole relationship by the rocky final months or weeks, he says. “You may end up thinking that you’ve wasted years of your life” when, in fact, you likely enjoyed at least some (or much) of that time.

“If you have a good relationship that ends, you may be able to look back and see the positives rather than getting bogged down by the negatives. Taking with you what you want to and leaving behind what you should.”

Discounting what pleasure you derived from the relationship doesn’t just lead to more emotional distress; it’s actually an inaccurate assessment of the overall experience.

Of course, there are cases when applying such logic to a situation also governed by emotion proves more difficult. “If there’s something traumatic about the breakup, especially a betrayal, that could lead to an excessive markdown of the entire experience,” Rhoades says. If you come away with a negative impression of your ex-partner’s character, it may be more complicated to consider the value of your time together.

But processing a breakup — essentially deciding to move on and seek out a new relationship — entails a similar blend of thinking characteristic of optimal decision-makers.

“If you have a good relationship that ends, you may be able to look back and see the positives rather than getting bogged down by the negatives,” Rhoades says, “taking with you what you want to and leaving behind what you should.”