Chasing the Marlin—The Hemingway Effect and the Emptiness of Success

Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea highlights key factors in decision-making research related to goal achievement and its impact on our emotions. In the novel, an old fisherman catches a great marlin after tremendous effort, but soon loses it to sharks, and in turn experiences short-lived feelings of victory and emptiness. Inspired by his novel, the current study uses Hemingway’s narrative as a foundation to empirically test whether achieving a personally meaningful goal triggers initially positive emotions, followed by a rapid decline and a loss of purpose—a phenomenon we call the "Hemingway Effect." The Hemingway Effect aligns with prior research suggesting that goal completion can have paradoxical effects (Brickman et al., 1978; Sheldon & Elliott, 1999). It is also tied to forecasting bias, where people mispredict their emotional states following future events (Wilson & Gilbert, 2005). We expect to find that participants will overestimate the happiness they will feel after reaching their goal, and that those positive emotions will decline shortly after goal achievement. Lasty, we predict that offering participants a new goal will mitigate the emotional decline. This research has important implications: it demonstrates that research questions can begin with something as unexpected as a classic novel. It also emphasizes the importance of "ongoing purpose" for well-being, reminding us that post-goal happiness is often transient. These findings will resonate with anyone who has experienced post-achievement emptiness, whether they are graduates, retirees, or athletes who have just hung up their championship jersey.