With the summer months rapidly approaching, thoughts immediately turn towards time away from the office. While it can be great to be on vacation, there are many trips where you feel as if you need a few days off to recover from the exhausting task of enjoying yourself!
Although it is great to be on holiday, it turns out that scientific research seems to indicate that we derive more pleasure from the anticipation of a trip (as opposed to the actual trip itself)! I found this result rather surprising. I suppose it has something to do with the difference between potential and reality. The future promise of the trip may help us navigate the day-to-day drudgery in a slightly less painful way. Perhaps is also relies on the fact that all trips go well when they are only in our minds...
Stephanie Rosenbloom in the NY Times discusses some of the science behind these findings:
....a psychological study about the connection between anticipation and happiness was published online in a journal called Applied Research in Quality of Life. The authors of the study, researchers from the Netherlands, interviewed more than 1,500 people, including 974 vacationers, and found that the vacationers felt most happy before their trips.
She goes on to give some practical advice on ways to help make your anticipation even more fulfilling:
Turns out, there is an art to anticipation. Savoring, said Elizabeth Dunn, an associate professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia and a leading happiness researcher, is an active, not passive, process. “It’s better to immerse yourself,” she said. Reading novels and poetry, watching films and television programs, browsing fashion and design blogs that are either from or about the place you plan to visit encourages you to not only learn about your destination, but to dream, providing some concrete details for your mind to latch on to. It may sound counterintuitive, but this building up of positive expectations and excitement actually helps our minds smooth over any minor discrepancies if reality doesn’t quite measure up to the fantasy. “We’re less likely to be bothered by these little holes if we build up our expectations ahead of time,” Professor Dunn said. “So go ahead and assume it’s going to be wonderful.”
She closes with a comparison between anticipation and reminiscing:
But what about the joy of reminiscing? Doesn’t that also create happiness? Researchers say yes, but anticipating the future delivers more happiness than reflecting on the past. One study, by Leaf Van Boven of the University of Colorado at Boulder and Laurence Ashworth of Queen’s University published in The Journal of Experimental Psychology in 2007, found that students felt happier while anticipating a vacation than while reminiscing about the vacation.
Here is a link to the full article: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/11/travel/what-a-great-trip-and-im-not-even-there-yet.html?_r=0
