HAPPINESS DOES NOT TAKE PLACE AT THE MARGIN.

HAPPINESS DOES NOT TAKE PLACE AT THE MARGIN. Behavioral psychologists like Daniel Gilbert have revived the use of marginal utility and total utility. Economists used to work with the concepts, but there were debates over whether interpersonal utility could ever be compared and whether utility could be measured. The economists in the forties and fifties showed that their theoretical results could be reached without using the concept of utility (by using “indifference curves”). Since a major thrust of economics in the last half of the twentieth century was to reduce the number of assumptions made in their models, the economists abandoned utility. The behavioral psychologists have revived the concept of utility by simply going ahead and using it and measuring it. The difference between total utility and marginal utility had been difficult to see and apparently it was only in the last half of the nineteenth century that the distinction was made. Water was often used as the example. Its total utility for a person is enormous, but the marginal utility of more water is small (the example was developed before designer water came into being). Some one who focuses on the opportunities not taken—marginal utility—in his personal life is ignoring total utility—total happiness. You should enjoy the pretty good duck you ordered rather than the roast beef you now think you would have preferred. You should count your blessings or, as Barry Schwartz suggests in the interview, think about two or three things you are grateful for each day.