Word of the Week Archive
by Kerry Maxwell, author of Brave New Words, with recordings by speechinaction
miswant verb [I/T], noun [C] 
miswanted adjective 
‘Would a 20 percent raise or winning the lottery result in a contented life? You may predict it will, but almost surely it won’t turn out that way. And a new plasma television? … Worse, Gilbert has noted that these mistakes of expectation can lead directly to mistakes in choosing what we think will give us pleasure. He calls this “miswanting”.
Jon Gertner, New York Times 7th September 2003
‘A group of US psychologists suggests (convincingly) that our brains are wired to “miswant” – that is, to overestimate the effects that imminent decisions will have on our emotional states. A new car won’t really make us happy; a break-up won’t really be unbearable.’
www.mediajunk.com 11th September 2003
The festive season is upon us and we’re all avidly thinking about what we need to acquire to make the dreams of our children, family members and friends come true, as well as wondering if anyone has responded to our own ‘Christmas list’! Of course we all love to give and receive gifts and delight in the happy faces of the recipients, even if our motives are partly fuelled by the commercialism of Christmas. We should be warned however that with such a materialistic focus we may be victims of a newly identified concept in psychology: miswanting.
Miswanting describes the situation of mistakenly believing that getting a particular thing will make you happy. For instance, winning the lottery is a classic example of something that a lot of people desire, but many of those who have actually won it don’t always find the happiness they had anticipated. Those who want to win the lottery are therefore in a state of miswanting.
A verbal derivative miswant has been coined, with a corresponding participle adjective miswanted. There is also some evidence for a countable noun homograph miswant. Typical examples of miswants are things like a new car or home cinema system which, although they might be exciting initially, soon become the norm. Psychologists argue that we very quickly incorporate such things into the backdrop of our lives, and when they become ordinary, we lose pleasure from them.
So if Santa is on a tight budget this year or doesn’t seem to respond to your Christmas wishes, don’t despair, at least you can be spared from a few miswants!
Background
The concept of miswanting originates with two US psychologists, Daniel Gilbert, professor of Psychology at Harvard, and Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia, who first used the term in the title of an article: ‘Miswanting: Some problems in the forecasting of future affective states.’ (In J. Forgas (ed.), Thinking and Feeling: The Role of Affect in Social Cognition. Cambridge University Press, 2000).
The term subsequently gained more widespread recognition from September 2003 when it featured in an article in the New York Times entitled ‘The Future Pursuit of Happiness’ (John Gertner, 7th September 2003).
Search the Web
miswanting
miswant
miswanted
Search with WebCorp.
Search with Web
Concordancer.
This article was first published on 19th December 2003.
Subject archive: abstract ideas, business - retail, ethics and religion