Erich just uploaded a short post noting that Americans feel sourly about nearly everything. With no sign of optimism, and marked lack of trust in virtually all institutions, does it come as a surprise that people often sigh hopelessly over the “good old days”? Many people cling to an image of past glory and happiness, even when their fantasy “good old days” never existed. Several writers on the blog, Jason Rayl and me among them, have pointed out the inaccuracies of such perfect, imagined pasts.

So when we look back to a “good old day”, hold it up to the light of present times and see a glaring gap, has the world changed, or have our perceptions simply matured, become more jaded with time?

Some psychological research has delved into this tendency of human cognition to misperceive the past, and of our additional tendency to ignore the role that perception plays in how the world looks. A recent Cornell University study entitled “When Change in Self is Mistaken for Change in the World” (Eibach, Libby & Gilovich, 2003) finds that:

“Personal changes in respondents (e.g., parenthood, financial change) were positively correlated with their assessments of various social changes (e.g., crime rates, freedom).”

Thus, if your world has improved in recent years, you may think that crime rates have lowered, drug abuse and dependency has shrunk, and that the country’s economy has brightened and bettered recently as well. But if things have gotten worse for you, perhaps you clamor for the “good old days” of yore.

And as it turns out, many generations before us have lamented about the worsening condition of the future. Eibach, Libby and Gilovich write:

“The belief that society is changing for the worse is not unique to this era. It has been evident in every generation of the United States since the late 18th century… Evidence of similar attitudes have been found among the ancient Greeks, and in myths of cultures as diverse as the Aztecs and Zoroastians.”

Eibach et al say that a huge flaw in human cognition fuels this frequent mistake. We have trouble noticing a change in ourselves, which leads us to look at the world with what these researchers call “a naïve realism”. Years of psychological research have revealed that we attempt to see our past and current selves as a cohesive whole, in spite of evidence that suggests the opposite. Historic research, for instance, reveals that we misremember our old attitudes and beliefs as in line with our current attitudes and beliefs, even if they have actually changed dramatically.

Writers here at Dangerous Intersection have deconstructed the idea of a whole “self” many times before. While we may perceive ourselves as a static self, neurologically, cognitively, and philosophically, it just doesn’t add up. Our day-to-day and year-to-year experiences shape how we see the world around us; we do not look at the world of a true “realist” (but we sure think we do).

As a result of this cognitive approach, we think that only the world outside of us changes, and ignore that our perceptions and attitudes alter with time as well. When we notice a change, we naturally attribute it to that dynamic, unreliable, ever-changing world, not our dynamic, unreliable, ever-changing selves. This brings us back to the Cornell study. Eibach et al compared life changes to participant reports of matters such as crime rates, the extent of American freedoms, and overall perceived danger in the world. In every instance, respondents who had experienced some kind of marked life change in recent years on average claimed that crime rates, freedom, and safety had similarly shifted (usually for the worse).

To highlight one example: recent parents (with children 8 or under) reported that the world had gotten more dangerous in the past ten years. Parents of older children, say 12 years old, reported that the world hadn’t gotten more dangerous in the last ten years, but that it certainly has in the last 15 years. But parenthood no doubt changes the way you see the world. Parenthood can make a reckless narcissist into a cautious interdependent.

Eibach et al account for this change in perceived danger that exact way: when you become a parent, you suddenly become aware of a whole new range of threats in the world, as guarding and protecting a life turns into a major concern. A single twenty-something doesn’t need to worry much about child predators or abductors, or burning their hand on the stove or accidentally drinking a household cleaning product. This all changes if they have a child. New parents have to opt for hyper-vigilance, and this ever-present awareness of all the little harms in the world makes life seem much more dangerous.

This research does leave one notable question: if view of the world stems mostly from current life condition, why do most people see the world as getting worse? We only hear musings about “way back when”, not celebrations of our bright, shining future. It seems a little hard to swallow that everyone’s life just keeps getting worse and worse. Eibach et al suggest that aging makes us more aware of our shortcomings, that our slow entropy embitters us and leaves us longing for a past filled with our vitality and youth, and (so we think) greater freedom, lower crime, and more honest, decent, hardworking people.

The findings of Eibach et al has far-reaching implications, as it accounts for many human behaviors, especially voting. The old adage that we get more conservative with age may hold, in fact, as we long more and more to return to “way back when”. Yet as long as human perception looks outward rather than inward, people will still wish for some unattainable, wonderful past. Sadly, nothing will bring us back to the days of our former glory and bliss, because those “good old days” just didn’t exist.