The civil courts are one of the most humane systems society
has invented. We take the pain and
suffering that have been caused by the negligence or even the willful actions
of others and translate it into a dollar amount. This system allows people to settle their
disputes fairly and without revenge. But
it does rely on our ability to translate things like pain and suffering into a
monetary value.
There was an interesting paper exploring this issue in the
August, 2008 issue of Psychological
Science by Eugene Caruso, Dan Gilbert, and Tim Wilson. They looked at the value that people give to
things in the past and in the future.
Consider, for example, an auto accident.
A woman in her car is struck head-on by another car driven by a man who
didn’t pay attention to a stop-sign. The
man is clearly at fault. The woman is
injured and it will take 6 months for her to heal. How much should she be awarded by the
insurance company for her pain and suffering?
The researchers asked this question in two ways. In one situation, the accident was 6 months
ago, and the woman is now completely healed.
In the other, the accident just happened, and she is beginning her
recovery period. They found that people
were willing to award the woman twice as much when the pain and suffering was
yet to happen than when it was now over.
So, future pain and suffering was more valuable than past pain and
suffering.
One interesting side-note, people do not believe that they
ought to value the present and future differently. The researchers did some studies in which
they asked both the past and future questions to the same people. In this case, people gave the same value to
past and future events. However, if they
saw the past question first, then the values they gave to both events was lower
than if they saw the future question first.
It is also worth pointing out that this effect was not
limited to negative events. In another
study, people were asked how much they would want to be paid for 10 days worth
of boring work. People asked for more
money if they were asking for work they had yet to do than if they were being
asked for payment for work they had already completed.
So, what does this mean?
I guess that depends on whether you are the insurance company or the
person who has suffered damage…Insurance companies ought to wait to place any
value on pain and suffering until they are over. They will seem less valuable when they are
finished than while they are ongoing. On
the other hand, if you have suffered damage, your pain and suffering will have
the most value while you are going through it.
