On Reference Points

A Journey into Humans and Happiness

As the ball hit the crossbar and bounced away from the goal, the sinking realization hit that our team was knocked out of playoffs. Despite a miraculous season where we finished top of the league (after multiple seasons near the bottom), it was the most painful loss ever. A month later, I’m still recovering. Why is that?

During the early days of COVID, as I settled back into my childhood bedroom, the perpetual productivity-chaser inside me looked to fill the time. So I signed up for “The Science of Happiness,” an online course taught by Yale psychologist Dr. Laurie Santos. Early in the course, Dr. Santos described the concept of reference points: a “salient (but often irrelevant) standard against which subsequent information is compared.”¹

The basics of reference points are intuitive. Two students get a B+. The straight-A student feels disappointed, but the C-average student is thrilled. I divide reference points (probably too simply) into “above” and “below” reference points:²

• “Above” points are standards we may want to reach

• “Below” points are standards we believe we have surpassed or are better off than

However, we don’t experience them equally. Let’s do an at-home example: 

How many times this week did you feel bad about yourself? When you compared yourself to someone more “attractive,” or with more resources than you, and felt (maybe only slightly) inferior or insecure. My guess: at least a couple times every day.

Now, think about something you’ve gotten right. A new job or promotion, a skill you’ve developed, or a relationship that you’ve actively worked to improve. How much did you dwell on that? My guess: not long enough. Maybe you thought about it briefly, shared it with friends and family, and moved on.

As you might realize (or already know), we are disproportionately affected by our “above” reference points. A study found that “controlling for an individual’s own income, higher earnings of neighbors are associated with lower levels of self-reported happiness.” The better your peers do, the worse you feel.³

Why are we like this? It comes from two attributes of human evolution.

First, our instinct for survival and safety has developed our negativity bias. This is our “tendency not only to register negative stimuli more readily, but also to dwell on these events.”⁴ Second, our brain wiring makes humans one of the most adaptive species on the planet.⁵ This allows us to quickly adjust to new physical and social environments, and subsequently adopt new reference points.

The result: Even if we’re progressing in life, we adapt quickly to our new normals, and are structurally designed to focus on the negatives. Even if I should celebrate my soccer team’s incredible season, my mind dwells on our one loss.

So why am I — armed with one introductory Zoom course on neuroscience — preaching about reference points and happiness?

While giving my parents and grandma a White House tour, we ran into Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo!

By many objective measures, I’ve been incredibly fortunate over the past year. Professionally, I was lucky to get a job at the White House, where I’ve had opportunities like giving speeches, meeting Cabinet secretaries, and working with inspiring civil servants on disaster recovery. Personally, I’ve spent quality time with high school, college, and work friends on the East Coast, and made new ones in the West. I’ve also made measurable (though non-linear) progress in my health goals.

But unless I sit back and remind myself, it doesn’t feel all that great. More often than not, I’m thinking about the event I wasn’t invited to, or the friend that didn’t respond back, or the weight I couldn’t lift.

Our relationship with reference points is a human feature, not a bug. And for many, they are powerful motivators. But in this social media environment, we’re constantly exposed to people we perceive to have a better job, body, life etc.⁶ No matter what we achieve, there are always “above” reference points to make us feel insecure, insufficient, and unhappy. 

So now what? Are we destined to forever be unhappy?

Our power lies in the ability to rebalance how we focus on our “above” and “below” reference points. It’s simple, but not easy. It requires making active time and space to think about our “below” reference points. To reflect on all we have received or achieved. To be grateful.

This is far from a novel realization. Many already practice this through gratitude journals, therapy, meditation, or prayer. For me, I rebalance by getting out of my head: writing my thoughts down, or having a long conversation with someone. But the point is recognizing that we’re fighting an uphill battle against our instincts. And through persistence, we can actually slowly rewire our brain’s neural pathways towards happiness.⁷

I used to wonder why every feeling has a corresponding action except happiness. If I’m angry, I should deal with my issues. If I’m hungry, I should eat. If I’m tired, I should sleep. What do I do with happiness?

I now have my answer: make space for it, cherish it, and remember it.

1. In response to growing rates of anxiety and depression amongst students, Dr. Santos launched a new course in 2018, titled “Psychology and the Good Life.” Within no time, the course became the most popular course ever taught in Yale’s 317-year history, with nearly 1200 students enrolled (Leighton 2021). This specific quote comes from her YouTube course, “The Science of Well-Being for Teens.”

2. This is a far from perfect categorization. Reference points are probably on a spectrum (or grid) more than a binary, but I hope it’s a helpful framing.

3. https://users.nber.org/~luttmer/relative.pdf

4. https://www.verywellmind.com/negative-bias-4589618#:~:text=The%20negativity%20bias%20is%20our,to%20dwell%20on%20these%20events.

5. https://news.vanderbilt.edu/2020/07/15/neuroscientists-at-vanderbilt-identify-the-brain-cells-that-help-humans-adapt-to-change.

6. There are countless articles about how social media affects us. One example: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-social-media-makes-people-unhappy-and-simple-ways-to-fix-it/

7. https://www.forbes.com/sites/vanessaloder/2015/03/18/how-to-rewire-your-brain-for-happiness/