Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners, Welcome to an episode brought
Speaker 1: to you by the twenty twenty four Subaru Share the
Speaker 1: love of it and I'm pretty excited because today is
Speaker 1: one of my favorite holidays, Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is
Speaker 1: the one day of the year that focuses on giving back,
Speaker 1: whether that's gifting money to your favorite charity, checking in
Speaker 1: on a friend, or doing a random act of kindness
Speaker 1: for a stranger. Study after study shows that engaging in
Speaker 1: actions like these can have a big impact on our happiness,
Speaker 1: and that's the reason we tend to make a big
Speaker 1: deal out of Giving Tuesday. We're at the Happiness Lab.
Speaker 1: If you're a fan of the show, you'll remember that
Speaker 1: each Giving Tuesday we offer listeners an opportunity to help
Speaker 1: folks in need. In years past, we've partnered with groups
Speaker 1: like giving multiplier dot org, a site that allows you
Speaker 1: to donate not only to your favorite cause, but also
Speaker 1: to a set of super effective charity is recommended by experts,
Speaker 1: where every one of your dollars will do the most good.
Speaker 1: Last year, we focused our efforts on just one of
Speaker 1: these super effective charities. Give Directly. Give Directly strives to
Speaker 1: end global poverty. Through a rather creative strategy, they find
Speaker 1: a community in need and give every single member of
Speaker 1: that community so much needed cash, no strings attached.
Speaker 2: What we do is we send about one thousand dollars
Speaker 2: to each of the households in those villages.
Speaker 1: This is Gloria and Gibert give directly, his country director
Speaker 1: in Rwanda, explaining where the donations usually go.
Speaker 2: Ten percent of the money goes to busic needs, so
Speaker 2: that would be food and the most essential items in
Speaker 2: the house. Another twenty to twenty five percent goes to
Speaker 2: house renovation, and that's usually a basic need. If you're
Speaker 2: being rained on, you don't think straight and you don't
Speaker 2: continue sending the children to school and so on and
Speaker 2: so forth. And then the large portion, about seventy percent
Speaker 2: usually goes towards productive investment. For example, if you buy
Speaker 2: a goat here, that can turn into five votes within
Speaker 2: three years, right, and that means true revenue for the family.
Speaker 1: Gloria and her colleagues that give directly have found that
Speaker 1: letting people make their own choices about these cash transfers
Speaker 1: is incredibly cost effective, and the money doesn't just disappear,
Speaker 1: It kickstarts the local economy, making everyone better off.
Speaker 2: The researcher keep directly demonstrate that you get a two
Speaker 2: point five multiplier effect. So for every dollar that we sent,
Speaker 2: you actually get an effect of two point five dollars
Speaker 2: a circulating in the market.
Speaker 1: After learning about the effectiveness of cash transfers, I couldn't
Speaker 1: wait to try them out. So last Giving Tuesday, I
Speaker 1: invited Happiness Lab listeners to take part in one of
Speaker 1: Give Directly It's projects, and we had a very ambitious goal.
Speaker 1: We took one struggling village and vowed to raise enough
Speaker 1: money to get every single household in that community out
Speaker 1: of extreme poverty. Gloria's on the show to tell you
Speaker 1: more about the community. We picked a place called Kibobo.
Speaker 2: Sheboboy is remote, quite isolated village in Randa. It's that
Speaker 2: the peripherse of Kigali, which is the capital. In general.
Speaker 2: The population in Kiboboy is quite poor and lives under
Speaker 2: a dollar a day.
Speaker 1: That's right, one dollar a day. The World Bank defines
Speaker 1: extreme poverty as households that survive on less than two
Speaker 1: dollars and fifteen cents a day. Before Happiness Lab listeners
Speaker 1: stepped in, nearly everyone in Kebobo was in that dire position.
Speaker 2: What you would have in Kiboboy is very little access
Speaker 2: to drinking water. This translates into long trips one hour
Speaker 2: and more and by the time they bring back a
Speaker 2: jerry cab full of water, they have to decide whether
Speaker 2: to shower or to feed the children. Those are the
Speaker 2: choices that these villagers are confronted with.
Speaker 1: Imagine having to walk for over an hour just to
Speaker 1: get something safe to drink. These are the conditions that
Speaker 1: Kebobo residents faced every day. They lack the home comforts
Speaker 1: that so many of us take for granted.
Speaker 2: Roofing is very poor, there's no flooring, and most of
Speaker 2: the time sanitation is a problem, so you don't have
Speaker 2: access to a lad train and you sleep on the floor.
Speaker 1: These are admittedly huge challenges, but Gift Directly has found
Speaker 1: that a little kindness can go a long way towards
Speaker 1: fixing things in a place like Cabobo.
Speaker 2: A dollar in Rwanda has way more value than a
Speaker 2: dollar in the US. What it does here is it
Speaker 2: transforms her family's life, it transforms a community's life.
Speaker 1: And that was our goal. I wanted to rally Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab listeners like you to donate enough money to completely
Speaker 1: transform the life of every single resident of Cabobo. That's
Speaker 1: hundreds and hundreds of people. Now I knew my listeners
Speaker 1: were a generous bunch, but could we really raise enough
Speaker 1: money to help an entire village. The answer, of course
Speaker 1: was yes, yes we could, and yes we did.
Speaker 2: Gibobo has about te hundred and ninety three families and
Speaker 2: each of them was able to receive a cash transfer
Speaker 2: of about eleven hundred dollars. We are very grateful to
Speaker 2: have received that gift, very generous and very impactful.
Speaker 1: I want to let that sink in for a second.
Speaker 1: We helped every single family and the entire village of
Speaker 1: Kebobo get a cash transfer of over one thousand dollars.
Speaker 1: That is absolutely incredible. Take the effect it's had on
Speaker 1: one Cobobo resident, Tails four. Here he is talking about
Speaker 1: what life was like before we all donated. My name
Speaker 1: is Tadus for we are a family of seven.
Speaker 3: Before receiving the transfers, we often had to go without
Speaker 3: meals and it was heartbreaking when our little children are
Speaker 3: for food and we had nothing to give them. After
Speaker 3: receiving cash transfers, we bought our on land for farming,
Speaker 3: I also bought a cow, which is truly valuable as
Speaker 3: it provides both medic for our family and fertilizer for farming.
Speaker 3: I'm hopeful that we will have a great harvest. My
Speaker 3: son needed two hundred dollars to purchase a motorbike for work,
Speaker 3: and now he's working as a moto taxi driver. Before
Speaker 3: the transfers, I had very old and torne clothes and
Speaker 3: I was not computed to meet other people. Are no
Speaker 3: longer embarrassed to meet people or go to any event.
Speaker 2: He's a very proud man. He smiles all the time.
Speaker 2: He looks good, he looks clean, his wife looks happy.
Speaker 2: He's also managed to send his daughter and his two
Speaker 2: grandchildren to school, and his daughter, particularly who couldn't access
Speaker 2: school back then, is getting really good grades.
Speaker 1: And tell usforce family is not the only one to
Speaker 1: experience such radical improvements.
Speaker 2: You have people who have medical debt. So another family,
Speaker 2: the mother of the family very sick before we got there,
Speaker 2: and they managed to clear about seven hundred dollars of that,
Speaker 2: and the alternative to that would have been that they
Speaker 2: sell the one little plot of land they were farming on.
Speaker 2: So really, the cash transfers have come to save them
Speaker 2: and still left them with extra allowing them to continue
Speaker 2: on the better path that they would have not reached
Speaker 2: if we hadn't been there.
Speaker 1: Give Directly has continued studying the impact of our donation,
Speaker 1: and Gloria says that many families found ways to spend
Speaker 1: their money and purchases that will have a positive impact
Speaker 1: on their families and communities for years to come.
Speaker 2: The households that we found under a dollar a day
Speaker 2: are now ranging between two point five dollars a day
Speaker 2: to three dollars a day today.
Speaker 1: Wow, so they like literally double their triple their income.
Speaker 2: Definitely. I'll give you another example. Most of the recipients
Speaker 2: in kebobo bota cow. But in return from the cow,
Speaker 2: you get five liters of milk a day, and you
Speaker 2: can sell four liters of milk and you bring back
Speaker 2: the one litter your children and your family, and that
Speaker 2: provides for the nutritional input that so many families are lacking.
Speaker 2: If that cow then has two paths over the span
Speaker 2: of three years, you have saved the family.
Speaker 1: But Gloria also shared examples of families that made even
Speaker 1: more creative investments, ones that I couldn't have imagined when
Speaker 1: we began this project.
Speaker 2: So for example, there's a couple called Newland Alin and
Speaker 2: it started the first pub in the village. And that
Speaker 2: could be an atypical choice. Why would you spend the
Speaker 2: money towards the pub. But what they explain is this
Speaker 2: acts as a retail shop during the day so they
Speaker 2: can make money and at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: everybody gathers around them, they can serve drinks. And they've
Speaker 2: described so much loughter, so much joy at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, so much relaxation that happens, and that
Speaker 2: was one of their objectives. They were like, how can
Speaker 2: we get the community more together, so to say, And
Speaker 2: now they are exploring the idea of a restaurant.
Speaker 1: You mentioned something about a mattress. Share that story with
Speaker 1: me if you would.
Speaker 2: A mattress is considered luxury in Randi and you slip
Speaker 2: on the floor. One of the first purchases is a
Speaker 2: mattress and it costs you about sixty to seventy dollars
Speaker 2: in Rwanda. But that's true luxury and most of the
Speaker 2: families in Kibobo village have had that on their list
Speaker 2: of purchases, said Beatrice, who lived there. That was purchased
Speaker 2: number one, and they now confirmed that they sleep way
Speaker 2: more comfortably than before. Beatrice was sick before, so that's
Speaker 2: an extra layer of comfort that you have managed to
Speaker 2: provide her.
Speaker 1: When we teamed up with Give Directly, I had a
Speaker 1: guess about the kinds of things our money would be
Speaker 1: spent on, stuff like when livestock, school books, and building repairs,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know how our donations would actually feel
Speaker 1: to the people on the receiving end. Talking to Gloria
Speaker 1: had me beaming. I was so happy for Tilos four
Speaker 1: and the other residents of Gobobo, and so proud of
Speaker 1: us for sending whatever money we could. Hearing Gloria share
Speaker 1: what we were able to accomplish was just incredible.
Speaker 2: The first thing you noticed when you're get in Gibobo
Speaker 2: is how many people smile at you. That's the most
Speaker 2: basic way of expressing the effect of what we are doing,
Speaker 2: and before that it was a different feeling. And that's
Speaker 2: the most powerful thing we can do in life, whether
Speaker 2: it's giving cash, transfers or something else. It's all about
Speaker 2: the love that you convey by sharing what you have.
Speaker 1: When I think about what we were able to do
Speaker 1: in Cabobo, I'm brought to tears, But why don't we
Speaker 1: do this more often? What gets in the way of
Speaker 1: so many of us doing good in the world. We'll
Speaker 1: find out when this special Giving Tuesday episode of the
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab returns from the break Welcome Back. I wanted
Speaker 1: to better understand what gets in the way of us
Speaker 1: doing as much good as we can for others, So
Speaker 1: I decided to ask an academic expert and a Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab regular.
Speaker 4: I'm nickke Blame, a professor of behavioral science at the
Speaker 4: University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and I study
Speaker 4: mind reading for a living, the inferences we make about
Speaker 4: each other's thoughts and beliefs and attitudes, and mostly about
Speaker 4: how we screw that up and misunderstand each other in
Speaker 4: lots of different ways.
Speaker 1: My first question for Nick was why giving to others
Speaker 1: makes us feel so good. One answer, he said, comes
Speaker 1: from a psychological concept known as self determination theory.
Speaker 4: This theory proposes we have kind of three basic motivations
Speaker 4: or needs. One is relatedness connectedness, another is competency feeling
Speaker 4: like we are capable agents we can do things effectively
Speaker 4: in the world. And autonomy that we feel like we're
Speaker 4: responsible for this thing. And kindness, particularly when it's effective,
Speaker 4: really hits all three of these in a major, major way.
Speaker 4: So it's going right to the sweet spot of what
Speaker 4: motivates us. Kindness connects us with others. When you do
Speaker 4: something positive or somebody else and you can see that
Speaker 4: it had a positive impact, that pokes right on that
Speaker 4: relatedness motive and satisfies it really well, particularly when it's
Speaker 4: a stranger, when it's somebody you're not already connected to,
Speaker 4: when you do something really powerful for them that creates
Speaker 4: a connection that wasn't there before. That's powerful. It's also
Speaker 4: showing your competency that you are able to do something
Speaker 4: really powerful for somebody else when you put your mind
Speaker 4: to it, sometimes big, sometimes relatively small, and when you
Speaker 4: feel responsible for that, when you feel more competent as
Speaker 4: a result of that, when you try to do something
Speaker 4: kind and it is effective, that tends to feel great.
Speaker 4: And most often our efforts to be kind are effective.
Speaker 4: When you pass along a compliment to somebody, when you
Speaker 4: get somebody a bed when they need it, that works,
Speaker 4: That works, and so that really hits the competency button
Speaker 4: as well. And then when you're choosing to do this
Speaker 4: when you're the one who's decided to initiate this action
Speaker 4: and you feel responsible for it. That hits the autonomy button.
Speaker 4: So it really hits the trifecta. I think of our
Speaker 4: motivations when we're doing kind things for other people.
Speaker 1: I was totally miscalibrated on just how nice it would feel.
Speaker 1: And this is something that I know you've studied a lot,
Speaker 1: just like kind of how bad our miscalibrations are. You've
Speaker 1: used this term under sociality. What's that?
Speaker 4: Yes, So, undersociality is a concept we used to describe
Speaker 4: a broad set of empirical results we find where it seems,
Speaker 4: as far as we can tell, we might not be
Speaker 4: social enough for our own wellbeing. And part of that stems,
Speaker 4: I think from the very experience that you had, which
Speaker 4: is just underestimating how positive your act will feel for
Speaker 4: somebody else, how much of a positive impact you might
Speaker 4: be able to have on somebody else by reaching out
Speaker 4: and doing this act of kindness. So with your give
Speaker 4: directly campaign, typically when we you know, when we give
Speaker 4: money to a charity, we don't necessarily see the outcome.
Speaker 4: We don't see how much good we're actually doing for
Speaker 4: somebody else, and it can be easy then to underestimate
Speaker 4: just how much good is actually being done. You got
Speaker 4: to see it directly, the positive impact you were having
Speaker 4: on somebody else, and so that was big. The other thing, though,
Speaker 4: that I think we seem to miss when we are
Speaker 4: doing kind things for other people is that a kind
Speaker 4: act does two things for the recipient. On the one hand,
Speaker 4: there is some objective thing that we have done for them,
Speaker 4: so getting somebody a mattress that they can sleep on
Speaker 4: when they didn't have one, allowing somebody to go to
Speaker 4: school when they could, and those things are objective outcomes
Speaker 4: that matter. But in addition, a kind act also conveys
Speaker 4: relational connection to the recipient. It makes them feel connected
Speaker 4: to somebody else, It makes them realize somebody cares about them,
Speaker 4: It makes them feel seen. That is a profound expression
Speaker 4: of warmth to reach out to do something positive for
Speaker 4: somebody else, and warmth is one of the things that
Speaker 4: we value most in other people. And when somebody is
Speaker 4: kind to us, that just feels great because it was kind.
Speaker 4: So a recipient gets two things. One is the thing
Speaker 4: that you're giving. But the thing we really seem to
Speaker 4: undervalue or underestimate is the positive impact that just the
Speaker 4: act itself, the expression of warmth, will have on somebody else.
Speaker 4: You did really big things with all of your listeners
Speaker 4: for this community in Rwanda, really big things. But in
Speaker 4: our daily lives, even small things that we do for
Speaker 4: other people around us that are easy to do, that
Speaker 4: are everyday habits we can take on tend to have
Speaker 4: a surprisingly positive impact because we think the positive impact
Speaker 4: is going to come from just the thing that we're doing,
Speaker 4: and it does, but it also comes from the fact
Speaker 4: that we have been kind to them as well, and
Speaker 4: that's something that we don't seem to anticipate.
Speaker 1: And you've done all these clever studies to show just
Speaker 1: how systematically we underestimate the value that comes from these
Speaker 1: two things together. And one of my favorite studies that
Speaker 1: you've looked at was in the context of giving away
Speaker 1: hot chocolate. So explain this hot chocolate study.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So this was a very simple, at least conceptually
Speaker 4: simple thing that we asked people to do in Chicago.
Speaker 4: Wasn't bagos a little thing? We went to downtown Chicago,
Speaker 4: So if you visited our fair windy city, you will
Speaker 4: notice that right smack dab, downtown is a massive park
Speaker 4: and there's a skating rink down there, and it's a
Speaker 4: very popular spot in the winter time, and there is
Speaker 4: a kiosk right next to it that happens to sell
Speaker 4: hot chocolate. It gets cold here in the winter, and
Speaker 4: it's hard to think of something that feels warmer, both
Speaker 4: literally and figuratively on a cold day than getting hot chocolate.
Speaker 4: And so what we had people do was in our experiments,
Speaker 4: if they were interest in parts, we walked up to
Speaker 4: them and we told them, congratulations, you're in this experiment.
Speaker 4: We are today giving you a free cup of hot chocolate.
Speaker 4: Now you can keep it for yourself if you'd like to.
Speaker 4: But what we'd really like you to do is to
Speaker 4: look around and find somebody here and give that cup
Speaker 4: of hot chocolate away to them. And this was our ticket,
Speaker 4: and so they weren't giving away an actual cup of
Speaker 4: hot chocolate. They were giving away this ticket that just
Speaker 4: turned out to be easier experimentally if they were willing,
Speaker 4: and nearly everybody was. A few people gave it to
Speaker 4: their mostly girlfriends sitting next to them, but most people
Speaker 4: gave it away to somebody else overwhelmingly before we then
Speaker 4: went up and bought the cup of hot chocolate and
Speaker 4: went out and gave it to their recipient. We asked
Speaker 4: them to anticipate how's the recipient going to feel about this,
Speaker 4: positive or negative they're going to feel on a couple
Speaker 4: of different measures. We then went and got the cup
Speaker 4: of hot chocolate. We gave it to the recipient. We
Speaker 4: told them that somebody here in the park decided to
Speaker 4: give this to you today as an act of kindness,
Speaker 4: and they reported how it actually made them feel. Now
Speaker 4: it's important to understand is every listener here on this
Speaker 4: podcast can appreciate that that would feel pretty good to receive,
Speaker 4: and our givers anticipated that they knew that it would
Speaker 4: be pretty positive, but it turned out it was even
Speaker 4: more positive than that for the recipient. And what we
Speaker 4: learned in subsequent experiments that the part that they seemed
Speaker 4: to be missing wasn't that they would like a cup
Speaker 4: of hot chocolate. When we gave a cup of hot
Speaker 4: chocolate away as a prize that they won as part
Speaker 4: of the experiment, the givers thought that the recipients would
Speaker 4: like that just as much as getting the cup of
Speaker 4: hot chocolate. As an active kindness. It didn't matter how
Speaker 4: they got the gift, what mattered was that they got
Speaker 4: the hot chocolate. The recipients, however, they felt better when
Speaker 4: they got the hot cup of hot chocolate as an
Speaker 4: active kindness than when they won the hot cup of
Speaker 4: hot chocolate in a lottery because the cup of hot
Speaker 4: chocolate when it was an act of kindness was nice
Speaker 4: because it was hot chocolate. A plus, it had this
Speaker 4: added dose of kindness to it that made it feel
Speaker 4: even a little better. And that's what our givers missed,
Speaker 4: was that the kindness would make it feel even better.
Speaker 1: And you've also found in some of your studies that
Speaker 1: this is like, not just true in the sort of
Speaker 1: experimental set up with the hot chocolate, it's also true
Speaker 1: just in these really straightforward acts of kindness that people
Speaker 1: come up with on their own. Are people also miscalibrated
Speaker 1: where it's kind of their choice about what act to
Speaker 1: give and it's less experimentally induced.
Speaker 4: Absolutely they are. We find this consistently as well when
Speaker 4: we just let people choose an active kindness that they
Speaker 4: could do. So one of the ways I do this
Speaker 4: is with my MBA students here at the University of Chicago.
Speaker 4: I asked them to go out into the world and
Speaker 4: do some active kindness for somebody, They just keep their
Speaker 4: eyes out. Sometimes they plan it, sometimes it's spontaneous. Sometimes
Speaker 4: they're big things, sometimes they're tiny little things. Sometimes folks
Speaker 4: will say I held a door for somebody else, which is,
Speaker 4: you know, a little bit of a stretch for an
Speaker 4: active kindness.
Speaker 1: They're mva is they get to start smiling.
Speaker 4: They're busy people, right, Yeah, they're starting somewhere. So when
Speaker 4: we let them just choose it, and then when we
Speaker 4: reach out to the recipient of that, we find that
Speaker 4: the recipients also value that act of kindness more than
Speaker 4: the givers anticipated. We find it across the board.
Speaker 1: And so this is a so called prosociality paradox. We're
Speaker 1: kind of consistently undervaluing like how much our act would
Speaker 1: mean to other people. And I kind of when we
Speaker 1: talked about one of the reasons that is right, we
Speaker 1: underestimate the warmth. I think, particularly in this give directly case,
Speaker 1: there seems to be something else that's going on, which
Speaker 1: is sort of a funny framing effect, which is like
Speaker 1: when I think of like donating five bucks, it's like, well,
Speaker 1: it's not that helpful for me. It's a cup of coffee.
Speaker 1: But when I look at how that money help the
Speaker 1: people in Cobobo. It's like enormous, right, this is allowing
Speaker 1: people to like completely change their lives around.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So I think, to go back to what we
Speaker 4: were talking about just a moment before, when we do
Speaker 4: some active kindness for somebody else, we're focused on the
Speaker 4: thing that we're doing, the act that we're engaging in,
Speaker 4: what we're giving somebody, what that means to us. Right
Speaker 4: as a giver, we can't but evaluate the world from
Speaker 4: our own unique egocentric perspective on it. So when we
Speaker 4: in the United States think of five dollars, we think
Speaker 4: about what that means to us, when we think about
Speaker 4: the effort we had to go through and giving this
Speaker 4: money away. It was super easy, It wasn't that hard.
Speaker 4: It just doesn't seem like a big thing to us.
Speaker 4: But to a recipient of that, if they're in a
Speaker 4: more precarious spot in their life, five dollars isn't five
Speaker 4: dollars to us. It's five dollars to them. And that
Speaker 4: currency exchange is big. And so when you go across
Speaker 4: perspective gaps like that, particularly one that goes in that direction,
Speaker 4: we're likely to think this is a much smaller material
Speaker 4: benefit to the recipient than it actually is.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think this is true in the financial
Speaker 1: situation with this particular case of to give directly, but
Speaker 1: I think just in kind acts that we can engage
Speaker 1: in with the people around us that I imagine that
Speaker 1: perspective taking bias comes in in a different way, which
Speaker 1: is like, you know, say I have a friend who's struggling,
Speaker 1: who's really a need, who's had a bad day in
Speaker 1: a bad way. When I'm simulating what it would feel
Speaker 1: like for me to reach out, I'm like, well, it's
Speaker 1: not going to matter because I'm not the one who's
Speaker 1: in a bad way. But if she's in a bad way,
Speaker 1: then maybe I'm missing something. This is something we also
Speaker 1: see in some research.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, so we've conducted a bunch of experiments on expressions
Speaker 4: of support. Right, so this simple thing, you know somebody's
Speaker 4: going through a hard time, you reach out to them
Speaker 4: to express your support. It can often be hard for
Speaker 4: us to reach out to people at those times, because
Speaker 4: again we're thinking about our act in terms of its
Speaker 4: objective features. What am I going to do for you,
Speaker 4: Laurie when you are in a tough situation To actually
Speaker 4: change the situation you're in to actually make you feel
Speaker 4: better when you've lost the spouse or when you're sick
Speaker 4: in some way. But what the recipient values, again is
Speaker 4: not just the objective act. Somebody has just been diagnosed
Speaker 4: with some bad health condition. You're not going to remedy
Speaker 4: that health condition. You're not. That can often be a
Speaker 4: barrier to reaching out because we think that's what we
Speaker 4: have to do. That's not necessarily what the recipient values. Remember,
Speaker 4: the recipient values the relational connection just like we do.
Speaker 4: That's the part we can often miss. So psychologists in
Speaker 4: lots of different ways, from simple text messages to reaching
Speaker 4: out with a letter, which is what we've done in
Speaker 4: some of our experiments. We find that people underestimate how
Speaker 4: positively someone will respond when you just reach out to them,
Speaker 4: tell them something even as simple as small as hey,
Speaker 4: I'm thinking of you.
Speaker 1: And this is something that I think we get wrong.
Speaker 1: In a different case, another way that we can sort
Speaker 1: of boost this relational connection, which is in some ways
Speaker 1: by asking for help. Right when I need help with
Speaker 1: something and I'm like, oh, I don't want to burden anybody.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of in my own headspace about it. But
Speaker 1: to someone who with whom I ask for help, that
Speaker 1: kind of feels really nice. And you've done some lovely
Speaker 1: work showing that we don't ask for help enough. Right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But I'm going to turn the tables on here
Speaker 4: a little bit. Oh now, I'm going to turn the
Speaker 4: spotlight on you.
Speaker 1: Turn the spotlight on me. Well, you'll find out what
Speaker 1: that means when The Happiness Lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to our special Giving Tuesday episode of The
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab. Before the break, I asked kindness expert Nick
Speaker 1: Epley why we don't ask for help as much as
Speaker 1: we should. But before answering my question, Nick wanted to
Speaker 1: flip the script a bit.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you about my research in a minute, but
Speaker 4: I'll tell you about a personal experience to your listeners. So,
Speaker 4: last year, my daughter, Sion, our daughter, was diagnosed with
Speaker 4: ovarian cancer. And that's a very scary thing to have
Speaker 4: a teenage daughter diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had the
Speaker 4: best medical care in the world. She's in wonderful shape
Speaker 4: right now. Everything is great, But that was a very
Speaker 4: hard time. It was a very hard time for us.
Speaker 4: And when we were in the hospital, you will remember
Speaker 4: I reached out to you because we are big fans
Speaker 4: of yours, Sione and my wife Jen in particular, we
Speaker 4: reached out to you because I knew that because of
Speaker 4: who you are, I knew that you would be able
Speaker 4: to do something for her her that would just really
Speaker 4: lift her up. Wouldn't cure of ovarian cancer, but it
Speaker 4: would lift her up in a time when she really
Speaker 4: need to be uplifted. And you sent us T shirts
Speaker 4: which we still wear today. You sent us Happiness Lab mugs,
Speaker 4: which we still drink coffee from today. The most amazing,
Speaker 4: most amazing thing you did one day you were you
Speaker 4: were given a talk in Boston, a live a live
Speaker 4: talk I remember, and uh you. You had the audience
Speaker 4: give a shout out to see you on held up
Speaker 4: your phone and had them call out, get well soon
Speaker 4: to see on.
Speaker 1: I got a message for you.
Speaker 4: We're all thinking of you with the Happiness lif And
Speaker 4: that was just so powerful. It was so powerful for
Speaker 4: us and so uplifting for her. And I knew. I knew,
Speaker 4: just because I've seen ten thousand data points and this
Speaker 4: kind of stuff, I knew that this was something that
Speaker 4: you would be able to do that would not be
Speaker 4: a huge amount of effort for you. But that would
Speaker 4: have such a meaningful impact on my daughter because she
Speaker 4: would feel seen and uplifted by a celebrity even in
Speaker 4: our lives. And that was just really really huge. And
Speaker 4: I am certain you underestimated just how meaningful that was.
Speaker 4: This morning, when I left the house and told CeON
Speaker 4: and Jen, my daughter and wife, that I was going
Speaker 4: to be doing this podcast, they just smiles all around. Oh,
Speaker 4: we love Laurie say hello. That just stands out for
Speaker 4: us like a beacon. And I think the important.
Speaker 1: Well before you say the important part. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: so incredible to hear you tell the story and you
Speaker 1: know you had a little thanks over email, but I'm
Speaker 1: watching you almost tear up explaining the story. And two
Speaker 1: things from my side. Right First, I had no idea
Speaker 1: it impacted you and see On that much. I mean,
Speaker 1: if I had guess, I'm like, oh, it was probably
Speaker 1: cool to get the video or to get the T shirts.
Speaker 1: I had no idea you'd still be thinking about it,
Speaker 1: you'd still remember it, that you'd still be using the mugs. Right, So,
Speaker 1: completely underestimated the value to you. But on my end,
Speaker 1: I thought it was so when you reached out and
Speaker 1: I got that email about Seon. I thought, not excited,
Speaker 1: it's not the right word, but I felt so touch
Speaker 1: that you shared that with me. It seemed like such
Speaker 1: a personal thing about your family. I knew we're friends
Speaker 1: and colleagues and you've been on the show, but it
Speaker 1: just made me feel so much more connected to you,
Speaker 1: to know you much more personally, and that felt so
Speaker 1: nice to kind of feel like you were willing to
Speaker 1: share that with me, And I was super excited to
Speaker 1: be able to do that, you know, like to me,
Speaker 1: you know, the Happiness lab t shirts didn't feel like
Speaker 1: a big deal, you know, even the part about like,
Speaker 1: you know, having our live audience do that. But it
Speaker 1: was just fun for me, and honestly, it was fun
Speaker 1: for the folks at the live show. I think if
Speaker 1: I had to pick, you know, one of the best
Speaker 1: moments of that live show, they kind of enjoyed most,
Speaker 1: Like you know, streaming for ceone. So it's kind of
Speaker 1: off in two ways, right. It's like, you didn't realize
Speaker 1: the value that I would get from engaging in helping you,
Speaker 1: and I didn't realize, you know, even now, the value
Speaker 1: that you got out of that action, and we you
Speaker 1: and I are both like the world, You're a world
Speaker 1: extra on this. I'm the podcast, right, we should know
Speaker 1: how to do this better.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well, I will say, I think to my credit,
Speaker 4: at least I have learned the power that kindness can have,
Speaker 4: particularly things that seem small and easy for somebody to do.
Speaker 4: We also learned through our research that people tend to
Speaker 4: underestimate how positively others respond when you reach out and
Speaker 4: ask them for help, ask them to do things that
Speaker 4: they can do, give them an opportunity to experience relational connection, competency,
Speaker 4: and autonomy. I've actually come to think differently about asking
Speaker 4: for help from other people when I need it, when
Speaker 4: I think other people can really be helpful, I've come
Speaker 4: to think of it as an act of selfishness because
Speaker 4: I've deprived somebody else of the opportunity to feel good
Speaker 4: and more connected to us by helping us in some way.
Speaker 1: And I think this is a really important point on
Speaker 1: Giving Tuesday right, which is that we often think of
Speaker 1: acts of kindness as giving something right. We have to
Speaker 1: give money to this campaign to give directly, which is great,
Speaker 1: but one of the things we can actually do to
Speaker 1: help someone else is to let them help us. That
Speaker 1: can be really important for anyone who's listening, who's feeling
Speaker 1: like this giving Tuesday. I either don't have the finances
Speaker 1: or I don't have the bandwidth to kind of do
Speaker 1: what I would normally like to do. Sometimes asking for
Speaker 1: help can be that gift back. It's a way to
Speaker 1: sort of give to other people too. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So it turns out that when people, for instance, ask
Speaker 4: for advice, there's some interesting research on this, they think
Speaker 4: they're going to be seen as not very competent. But
Speaker 4: in fact, when you ask somebody for advice, I mean,
Speaker 4: think about how you feel when you actually give what
Speaker 4: you think is helpful advice to somebody else. That makes
Speaker 4: feel good you're helping somebody else. That's an example of
Speaker 4: how we can ask for help when we need it
Speaker 4: in ways that are beneficial both to us and of
Speaker 4: the person giving us. And I think you're right. We
Speaker 4: think of this often as as zero sum. I'm giving
Speaker 4: in your getting, and there's a zero sum nature to this,
Speaker 4: but that's not the way kindness actually works psychologically. It
Speaker 4: can uplift both sides, particularly when we do kindness or
Speaker 4: we seek kindness in a way that's authentic, that has
Speaker 4: good intentions at heart, that's what tends to be uplifting.
Speaker 1: So we just talked about ways that you can ask
Speaker 1: for help, and that's kind of participating in giving Tuesday,
Speaker 1: even though it doesn't feel like it because you might,
Speaker 1: in some sense even be getting monetary stuff from other people.
Speaker 1: Are there other ways that we can kind of give
Speaker 1: to others that don't cost us any money.
Speaker 4: So the biggest ways to do this are in psychological
Speaker 4: self affirming sorts of ways. And I think the two
Speaker 4: that at least we've studied in our research that are
Speaker 4: the clearest examples of this involve psychological acts of kindness,
Speaker 4: where we express our appreciation to somebody else, either in
Speaker 4: the form of gratitude or in the form of compliments.
Speaker 4: Those are cases where you're not exchanging money. If I
Speaker 4: tell you that I like the necklace here wearing today,
Speaker 4: or that I'm so grateful for the kindness you showed
Speaker 4: us when we were going through a hard time, I'm
Speaker 4: not exchanging anything of objective value there. But what I'm
Speaker 4: doing is I am uplifting you in some way. I'm
Speaker 4: affirming you as a positive person when I'm feeling it.
Speaker 4: What's interesting to me is that in many cases, when
Speaker 4: we feel these emotions, when we feel appreciation of gratitude
Speaker 4: for somebody else, when we have a kind thought about
Speaker 4: somebody else, we're a little nervous to share it, right,
Speaker 4: We're a little reluctant to send it out. One of
Speaker 4: my good friends in the field and somebody you know well,
Speaker 4: Jillian Sanstrom who's in the UK, just ran a demonstration
Speaker 4: in her class there in the UK where she had
Speaker 4: people write gratitude letters, gave them an opportunity to send it.
Speaker 4: Even when they wrote it, most people didn't send a letter.
Speaker 4: They were nervous, right. We've seen that in our research
Speaker 4: as well. We had people in one experiment generate compliments
Speaker 4: to send us somebody else. In the experiment, we gave
Speaker 4: them a two minute window to send it in the
Speaker 4: experiment like they had already generated. It wasn't hard. They
Speaker 4: just had to send it out. And most people didn't
Speaker 4: send along the compliment. They were waiting for the right
Speaker 4: time or something. It was awkward at the moment. There
Speaker 4: were yet other barriers, right, And those barriers are interesting
Speaker 4: to me. We find in our work that with both
Speaker 4: appreciation and compliments, people think it'll have a less positive
Speaker 4: impact on the recipient than it actually does. In the
Speaker 4: cases of expressing gratitude, these are folks who typically know
Speaker 4: each other very well, been together for a long time,
Speaker 4: or this is a person they've been very close to
Speaker 4: for a long time, and yet even with that, they
Speaker 4: still think it'll be weird for somebody to receive this
Speaker 4: letter out of the blue. I do this in my
Speaker 4: MBA class every year, and every year I get stories
Speaker 4: from my letter writers that they just couldn't believe. Notes
Speaker 4: back saying, dude, don't send this to me at work.
Speaker 4: I can't sit here and cry at my desk. Right
Speaker 4: really really powerful, surprisingly powerful. I never expected my mother
Speaker 4: would respond this way. It is your mother, and you
Speaker 4: are underestimating how uplifted she'll be when you actually express
Speaker 4: your true beliefs to her, even small compliments. I was
Speaker 4: on the train coming in this morning, my morning commute.
Speaker 4: I got onto the platform in Philosmore, where we lived.
Speaker 4: There was a woman standing there who had a shacket
Speaker 4: like this is like a jacket shirt sort of thing
Speaker 4: that I thought my wife would love that. That looks
Speaker 4: really nice. So I went up to her and I
Speaker 4: told her I love that jacket, and I think my
Speaker 4: wife would love it. Can you just tell me where
Speaker 4: you got it from? Right? And she was. She just
Speaker 4: beamed instantly when I told her how great this looked
Speaker 4: and shared with it and I found it on the
Speaker 4: way in and sh she'll be getting it for Christmas.
Speaker 1: Jen, don't listen, don't listen.
Speaker 4: No, Well, it doesn't always have to be a surprise.
Speaker 4: But what's interesting is that we often have these barriers.
Speaker 4: We think it'll be awkward to give this compliment, and
Speaker 4: we find people just tend to be off about that.
Speaker 4: It's more positive for the recipient that we think it'll be.
Speaker 1: This kind of reminds me of another domain that I
Speaker 1: think we can help others that we often forget. And
Speaker 1: it comes from an experience I had recently. So a
Speaker 1: good friend of mine, I think someone you know, Nick
Speaker 1: Jason Mitchell. He and his wife just had another baby
Speaker 1: and I found this out and I was thinking, like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to help, Maybe I should kick some food
Speaker 1: or something, but I wasn't really sure how to do it.
Speaker 1: And what another friend of ours did, which was amazing,
Speaker 1: was she set up kind of a meal train. So
Speaker 1: she emailed all of Jason's friends and was like, hey,
Speaker 1: here's the dates, here's what they like, you know, here's
Speaker 1: you know, bring it. And this friend was really helpful
Speaker 1: to me because I was sitting there thinking like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to do something, but I kind of didn't
Speaker 1: have the permission or the structure. I think this is
Speaker 1: something else we can do a lot. Right, if you
Speaker 1: have a cause and need set up the structure, email
Speaker 1: your friends and say here's how you're going to do it.
Speaker 1: Here's how much money, here's how you can help.
Speaker 4: We can think about intervening on these barriers and too way.
Speaker 4: One is at the personal level. What is it that
Speaker 4: I can do to overcome some of these barriers a
Speaker 4: little more wisely in cases where the barrier is kind
Speaker 4: of misplaced, so you know, that would involve you figuring
Speaker 4: out what is the right thing to do or what
Speaker 4: is the thing I'm comfortable doing right. That's an individual
Speaker 4: level intervention. But the other thing that is actually more
Speaker 4: effective at scale is a system level intervention. These are
Speaker 4: sometimes called S level interventions by psychologists having to do
Speaker 4: with a system level. And that's what your friend did
Speaker 4: is set up a context that overcame this barrier. I'm
Speaker 4: not sure what to do. I'm not sure how to
Speaker 4: do it right, Those are barriers to doing kind things.
Speaker 4: Overcame that barrier for a lot of you and allowed
Speaker 4: people to contribute here. I did something like that with
Speaker 4: these barriers in mind a couple of years ago, when
Speaker 4: one of our staff members here at the University of
Speaker 4: Chicago was going through a cancer scare of her own.
Speaker 4: We set up a gratitude chain, and so we set
Speaker 4: up for a few months at a time and extended
Speaker 4: it for a few few months. More people were on
Speaker 4: call just to write something that they were grateful to
Speaker 4: this person. For this person is amazing. People have no
Speaker 4: shortage of things to be grateful for towards her. But
Speaker 4: what that meant is that she got a gratitude letter
Speaker 4: every day spread out over time. She keeps them now
Speaker 4: on a scrapbook, and we had way more people express
Speaker 4: their gratitude and appreciation to this person than would have otherwise.
Speaker 4: Because you're right, we set up this kind of permission
Speaker 4: structure for people to do it, and that was very effective.
Speaker 1: So we could to talk about one last barrier that
Speaker 1: I know for me winds up impeding more than i'd
Speaker 1: like my ability to do kind actions for other peoples.
Speaker 1: And that's the barrier of time, right, you know, even
Speaker 1: in this case with this good friend of mine had
Speaker 1: a baby, I was like, oh, man, I want to
Speaker 1: do something. I want to get a onesie bag something.
Speaker 1: And I went back into my calendar and it kind
Speaker 1: of went away.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: I looked at like, when can I actually go over
Speaker 1: and visit him? I just didn't have any time, And
Speaker 1: so any helpful strategies for how to kind of fight
Speaker 1: the sort of time famine that we all face that
Speaker 1: gets in the way of us doing nice stuff for others.
Speaker 4: Two ways I would think about this. One is to
Speaker 4: remind yourself of the concept, the psychological concept of affordances,
Speaker 4: which is that any given situation has a variety of
Speaker 4: different possible outcomes. So a lot of different ways as
Speaker 4: could go. So our interview could have gone in many
Speaker 4: different directions. Here, my commute in on the train this
Speaker 4: morning could have gone in many different directions. My day,
Speaker 4: you know, I'm walking from the elevator to my office.
Speaker 4: I could do different things in that. Right, There are opportunities.
Speaker 4: If you start keeping an eye out for opportunities for connection,
Speaker 4: things will pop up that don't require any more effort
Speaker 4: from you, don't require any more time, they're just sitting there.
Speaker 4: It's low hanging fruit on the tree you just hadn't
Speaker 4: seen before, and you start spotting things. So, for instance,
Speaker 4: on the train ride in this morning, I spotted this
Speaker 4: woman wearing this really nice shacket, and it just I
Speaker 4: knew I should say, hey, that looks fantastic, right, And
Speaker 4: I came into the building this morning, there's a guy
Speaker 4: wearing a really nice suit, and I just thought to
Speaker 4: compliment on them that he looked really sharp.
Speaker 2: Acts.
Speaker 4: When you start looking for them, they don't require more time.
Speaker 4: You're already doing something anyway, don't require any more energy.
Speaker 4: They're like freebies almost and you just don't see them otherwise,
Speaker 4: And once you start looking for them, you see more
Speaker 4: of them. So that's one thing, is to start paying attention.
Speaker 4: The second is to disassociate your sense that the positive
Speaker 4: reaction to kindness is a function of how much you do,
Speaker 4: how hard it is for you to do, how much
Speaker 4: effort you put into this thing, and that's just not
Speaker 4: quite true, right. So a charity like give directly has
Speaker 4: positive impact on people that make it easy to give
Speaker 4: money that really matters for folks. It's not hard and
Speaker 4: has a huge impact on them and our daily lives.
Speaker 4: The little things we can do for others around us
Speaker 4: are the things that really have an outsized influence. So
Speaker 4: when you're thinking about what you can do for Jason,
Speaker 4: you're thinking, oh, I got to put a lot of
Speaker 4: effort into it, right, and oh that's hard, and thinking
Speaker 4: that he'll appreciate it more when it's really effortful. No,
Speaker 4: he just would like lasagna on a Thursday night, eight right,
Speaker 4: And it doesn't matter whether you cooked at yourself and
Speaker 4: mailed it. It just would you know, you just want
Speaker 4: to make So when we think that something requires a
Speaker 4: lot of effort, that can often be a barrier and
Speaker 4: we won't do it. Once you start to realize that
Speaker 4: that's not required. Just getting the thing done. Just doing
Speaker 4: the thing is what really matters. Too often, then I
Speaker 4: think it frees you up a little bit. We just
Speaker 4: had a teaching assistant of mine from last spring, calf Fredrickson,
Speaker 4: and his wife just had a baby as well, and
Speaker 4: I wanted to send them something, but it was hard
Speaker 4: to get the card and you know, get the thing
Speaker 4: mailed to me and I'll wrap it and send it.
Speaker 4: So instead I just send it through Amazon. Now that's
Speaker 4: not as nice. It's not as personal, but I got
Speaker 4: it done right, and that's what I try to focus
Speaker 4: on more, is just getting it done.
Speaker 1: And I think this is really powerful because it's also
Speaker 1: an active kindness to yourself. I know, sometimes when I'm
Speaker 1: trying to do something kind, I'm so focused on that
Speaker 1: competence piece that you talked about before that I'm like
Speaker 1: beating myself up and I'm not doing it right. I
Speaker 1: mean I had this even when I was making the
Speaker 1: food for Jason, like what kind of food should I make?
Speaker 1: Seems like Chili's really easy? But is that not cool?
Speaker 1: And it's like, no, just be kind to yourself. What
Speaker 1: matters is the act you can kind of give yourself
Speaker 1: some grace that it doesn't have to be perfect. It's
Speaker 1: still actually going to have more impact than you think exactly.
Speaker 4: The difference between good and really good is small. It
Speaker 4: can sometimes require a huge amount of investment on your
Speaker 4: side with very little impact on the recipient side. So
Speaker 4: do the thing that you can do that is good
Speaker 4: enough because it'll likely be great for the recipient.
Speaker 1: So any last minute advice on this giving Tuesday of
Speaker 1: what people can do to be happier themselves and make
Speaker 1: the world a better place.
Speaker 4: So I think probably two things, opportunities for kindness and
Speaker 4: forgiving are all around us. They're just everywhere in our
Speaker 4: day to day lives, and they don't have to be
Speaker 4: big things. One of the most influential findings for me
Speaker 4: from research on happiness and wellbeing is how important just
Speaker 4: repeated act are. We've talked before, happiness is like a
Speaker 4: leaky tire. You pump it up and you feel good
Speaker 4: for a little bit, and then it leaks back down
Speaker 4: and you pump it back, and that means you got
Speaker 4: to keep doing it, keep repeating it right, And turns
Speaker 4: out the amount of uplift or pumping up you get
Speaker 4: and others get from an act of kindness isn't as
Speaker 4: dependent on how big the act is as you might imagine, right,
Speaker 4: And so I think we can really enrich our lives
Speaker 4: if we realize if we just keep an eye out
Speaker 4: for the low hanging fruit around us, that's a good
Speaker 4: way to keep kindness kind of sustainable because there's just
Speaker 4: so many In addition to the big things we might do,
Speaker 4: the rational effective things we might do, there are also
Speaker 4: so many little uplifting things we can do expressing kindness
Speaker 4: expressing gratitude, giving compliments, saying all to people being civil
Speaker 4: don't require a lot of effort, but keep that tire
Speaker 4: pumped up in a way that keeps us and others
Speaker 4: feeling good.
Speaker 1: I started the show by saying how much I like
Speaker 1: Giving Tuesday. But Nick's right to point out that we
Speaker 1: should really be trying to generosity a daily habit, not
Speaker 1: just an annual thing. But Giving Tuesday is as good
Speaker 1: a day as any to start that long term habit.
Speaker 1: So if you have a dollar or two to spare,
Speaker 1: why not start right this minute by making a donation
Speaker 1: that can help people in need, the same way we
Speaker 1: help the people of Kebobo last year.
Speaker 2: The work goes on the list of villages like Kibobo
Speaker 2: is still long. I wish one day we don't have
Speaker 2: to send clash transfers to people, but in the meantime
Speaker 2: there is a need, then we need to continue to work.
Speaker 1: For twenty twenty four, we're teaming up with our friends
Speaker 1: a Giving Multiplier to handle all your donations. So head
Speaker 1: to giving Multiplier dot org slash happiness. That's Giving Multiplier
Speaker 1: dot org slash happiness. On that site, you can send
Speaker 1: money to villages like Kebobo via give directly while at
Speaker 1: the same time directing money to a charity that's close
Speaker 1: to your heart. What could those charities be well. This
Speaker 1: show was sponsored by the twenty twenty four Subaru Share
Speaker 1: the Love event. Subaru has a long track record of
Speaker 1: supporting good causes, and while making this episode, I got
Speaker 1: to learn about some of them. There's Meals on Wheels,
Speaker 1: which brings nutrition and friendly visits to our seniors, The
Speaker 1: National Park Foundation, which is helping all of us get
Speaker 1: out in nature. There's Make a Wish, which is allowing
Speaker 1: the dreams of ill children to come true. And the ASPCA,
Speaker 1: which protects animals from cruelty while giving carring pet owners
Speaker 1: the help they need. The point is there are lots
Speaker 1: of groups out there doing good work, so head over
Speaker 1: to giving multiplier dot org and donate what you can
Speaker 1: that's giving multiplier dot org slash happiness. May your Giving
Speaker 1: Tuesday donation be just the first step in exploring both
Speaker 1: the good that you're able to do in the world
Speaker 1: and the good that being kinder can do for you.
Speaker 1: Happy Giving Tuesday everyone,