Wants Vs. Likes

Wants Vs. Likes

Have you ever wanted something really, really bad, but when you finally got it, you were left feeling kind of disappointed?

Maybe you thought changing jobs would make you happy, but it didn’t.

Or you thought you’d like living in another state, but ended up regretting the move.

Perhaps you sunk a bunch of money into a new hobby you were sure you’d love, only to abandon it after just a few outings.

Why do we experience these mismatches between what we think something will be like and the reality of it?

This misalignment is often the result of confusing our wants and our likes — a common mix-up that gets in the way of our making good decisions and finding real satisfaction.

The Difference Between Wanting and Liking

While we often use “like” and “want” interchangeably, in the realm of cognitive psychology, they’re two different things.

Wanting is simply the prediction that we’ll like something when we get it or experience it.

Liking is the good feeling — the joy and fulfillment — we get from doing or having something.

Wanting is based on guesses.

Liking is based on firsthand experience.

“I want to spend more time in the outdoors.” vs. “I like spending in the outdoors.”

If we want something, we figure we must like it — otherwise we wouldn’t have wanted it in the first place.

Yet our likes and wants are not always so neatly aligned: we often want things that we really don’t like. This is a phenomenon known as miswanting.

What Causes Miswanting?

Why do we miswant? Shouldn’t we know ourselves well enough to accurately predict when we’ll like the things we desire?

Sometimes the thing we imagine when we start strongly desiring something doesn’t match up with the thing we actually experience. Our predictions aren’t accurate.

We often mix up our wants and likes with bigger decisions as well. Some folks have an idea in the heads of what would constitute their dream job. They think it’d make them happier and more fulfilled than their current work. With some pluck and drive, they manage to quit their hum-drum corporate gig and start the job that lines up with their perceived passion.

At first, things are great. The natural excitement that comes with change and newness makes them feel like they made the right choice.

But after a few weeks, they start noticing annoyances they didn’t imagine when they were in the throes of a real good wanting. They didn’t foresee the late nights, having to worry about bookkeeping, or the annoying, high-maintenance clients they’d have to work with. From the outside, they saw only the fun and interesting highlights of the job, while being blind to the behind-the-scenes dead work that actually makes up the bulk of what they’ll be doing day-to-day.

Soon, these folks start second guessing their decision because they’re not as happy as they thought they’d be. It turns out they don’t much like what they very much wanted.

Having the Wrong Theory About Ourselves

But let’s say you have a complete understanding about the object or experience you want. So there will be no mismatch between what you imagine you’ll get and what you’ll actually experience. Can that always stave off miswanting?

Unfortunately, no.

Even if we know exactly what we’re getting, sometimes we have incorrect theories about how much we’ll like it.

Experiencing Emotional Contamination

Even if we know exactly what we’ll be getting with something, and exactly what we like, we’re still susceptible to miswanting.

This is because our feelings from liking one thing can “contaminate” our wanting of other things.

For example, let’s say you go on vacation to some exotic locale, and you feel incredibly relaxed and happy. You think to yourself, “I love this place! I need to move here permanently!” It seems like it’s the location itself that’s making you happy, but it may simply be the fact that you’re on vacation and away from work. Most everyone feels happier on vacation, no matter where they are. Yet the positive feelings resulting from the break “contaminate” your feelings about the place in which you’re taking it, giving you the sense you’d be happier if you lived there year-round.

Emotional contamination often happens with relationships as well. You might be dating someone, and at first think she’s really great; yet the happiness you feel is really springing from your excitement about being in a relationship, period. It’s broken a long drought, and you mistake the buzz of having a pretty gal like you, for you liking her back. This happens with wedding engagements that fall apart too; the couple feels really good about the whole thing at first, but their positive feelings are really arising from the idea of being engaged in general, rather than about their fiancé in particular.

“feelings do not say where they came from, and thus it is all too easy for us to attribute them to the wrong source.”

How to Avoid Miswanting

So how do we make sure we go after those things that we really like, and don’t just think we like?

While it’s not possible to completely eliminate miswanting from our lives, we can take measures to reduce how often and to what extent it happens, particularly for wants that can have big-time ramifications in our lives like a job change or a move.