Speaker 1: Pushkin. If you're a fan of the Happiness Lab, you've
Speaker 1: surely heard about the powerful benefits of social connection as
Speaker 1: well as the dangers of its opposite, loneliness.
Speaker 2: Loneliness is strongly associated with an increased risk of heart
Speaker 2: disease and dementia, and depression and anxiety.
Speaker 1: This is doctor Vivigmerty. Back in twenty twenty three, when
Speaker 1: he was Surgeon General, he famously issued a landmark public
Speaker 1: advisory to sound the alarm about the negative effects of loneliness.
Speaker 1: Vivic joined us on the show a few years ago
Speaker 1: for an episode about the dangers of isolation. During that conversation,
Speaker 1: he referred to our country's lack of social connection as
Speaker 1: an epidemic, one that he argued was deadly.
Speaker 2: And if you looked at the degree of life shortening,
Speaker 2: it appeared similar to the immortality impact of sloping fifteen
Speaker 2: cigarettes to day and greater than the mortality impact of obesity.
Speaker 1: Vivik also told us that the health problems associated with
Speaker 1: loneliness were growing. One recent report by the World Health
Speaker 1: Organization found that one in six people worldwide is affected
Speaker 1: by loneliness, and Vivig found that rates of loneliness in
Speaker 1: our own country can be as high as twenty two percent.
Speaker 2: And just to put this in context, twenty two percent
Speaker 2: of adults in the United States is more than the
Speaker 2: percentage of adults who smokes cigarettes. It's more than percentage
Speaker 2: of adults who have diabetes, So this is exceedingly common.
Speaker 1: It's no surprise then, that news reports these days are
Speaker 1: brimming with scary stories about the terrifying costs of the
Speaker 1: loneliness crisis. I mean, the World Health Organization has argued
Speaker 1: that loneliness is linked to an estimated one hundred deaths
Speaker 1: every hour. Scary stuff, right, Well, that's why this week's
Speaker 1: Happiness hot take is bound to be a very, very
Speaker 1: fiery one, because today's happiness hot take is this, Lately,
Speaker 1: I've been starting to think think that all this talk
Speaker 1: about the dangers of loneliness might be a little overblown,
Speaker 1: or at the very least counterproductive in ways that our
Speaker 1: lying minds don't realize. Today's happiness hot take is that
Speaker 1: we desperately need to change how we think about and
Speaker 1: how we talk about loneliness, because the science shows that
Speaker 1: there are lots of unexpected benefits that can come from
Speaker 1: a little more alone time. Our minds are constantly telling
Speaker 1: us what to do to be happy. But what if
Speaker 1: our minds are wrong? What if our minds are lying
Speaker 1: to us, leading us away from what will really make
Speaker 1: us happy. The good news is that understanding the science
Speaker 1: of the mind can boind us all back in the
Speaker 1: right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos. When you think about loneliness, what comes to mind?
Speaker 3: I was studying happy TOSTV work and there were lots
Speaker 3: of ntating geese outside my bedroom window and they did
Speaker 3: that honking noise which still fills me with dread.
Speaker 1: For doctor Faye bound Alberti, a historian at King's College
Speaker 1: in London, loneliness conjures up the sounds she remembers hearing
Speaker 1: when going through a rough breakup as a college student.
Speaker 3: And it made me feel a very kind of profound
Speaker 3: and physical sense of loneliness that linked to other times
Speaker 3: I've heard those geese and the sort of the isolation
Speaker 3: attached to that.
Speaker 1: Fay is the author of a biography of loneliness, The
Speaker 1: History of an Emotion.
Speaker 3: I'm also a historian of medicine emotion in the body,
Speaker 3: and I write about feeling between the classical period in
Speaker 3: the present day.
Speaker 1: I came across phase work one day when I was
Speaker 1: scrolling through social media and saw her tweet asking what
Speaker 1: loneliness sounds like, and.
Speaker 3: The responses were really interesting. Some people said, when they
Speaker 3: were alone in their flash at night and they hear
Speaker 3: that click click noise when the radiations start to tend
Speaker 3: themselves off. Some people talked about hearing the whistling down
Speaker 3: the chimney when they were alone in their Some people
Speaker 3: found the sort of morning bird call, the twittering of
Speaker 3: the birds in the morning isolating, because it reminded them
Speaker 3: that yet in the day they were waking up alone.
Speaker 3: Other people said, oh, when they're walking past a pub
Speaker 3: or a bar and you can hear people chatting inside,
Speaker 3: and often you get that blast of warmth, don't you
Speaker 3: at the same time as you walk past, And that's
Speaker 3: another kind of sensorial feeling, and all of which is like, oh,
Speaker 3: I don't have that, And so those are the kinds
Speaker 3: of things. It was wanting to open up a conversation
Speaker 3: about physical experiences of loneliness.
Speaker 1: I love you sharing the pub example, because it feels
Speaker 1: so desceral to me. I spent a year in the
Speaker 1: UK in grad school in Bristol, when I didn't really
Speaker 1: know anybody, and I had that exact experience, like walking
Speaker 1: by the pubs and you hear the sort of din
Speaker 1: of chatter and you just feel this deep sense of
Speaker 1: not having social connection with yourself. It's so sad, not
Speaker 1: just the sound, but also for me, I have the smell,
Speaker 1: like when you're walking by and you get this blast
Speaker 1: of sort of old beer smell, that like you could
Speaker 1: be in there with those people, but you're not, and
Speaker 1: you just kind of feel so by yourself.
Speaker 3: It's really interesting, isn't it. I think does nothing like
Speaker 3: other people's relax sociability to make you think, oh, I
Speaker 3: miss that. Loneliness is very much part of the body
Speaker 3: as well as the mind, and I think that about
Speaker 3: all our emotions. And one of the things that I
Speaker 3: know as a history of emotion is that with the
Speaker 3: rise of the scientific medicine, we separated our mind and body.
Speaker 3: It was also seen as a physical thing before the
Speaker 3: rise of scientific medicine. It made the body of machine
Speaker 3: that produces and the mind this kind of complex organ
Speaker 3: which is reduced to brain. And we tend to think
Speaker 3: of emotions like loneliness as being cognitive processes, but they're
Speaker 3: very felt. We feel them in the body. Those in
Speaker 3: terms of our emotional reactions, but also in terms of
Speaker 3: our memories, the ways in which memories of experience get
Speaker 3: locked into the body.
Speaker 1: In order to understand what we might be getting wrong
Speaker 1: about the loneliness crisis, I wanted to better understand where
Speaker 1: this feeling comes from in the first place. And that's
Speaker 1: why I was so excited to have Faye join me
Speaker 1: for this episode. Because fins take on the historical origins
Speaker 1: of loneliness differs from that of a lot lot of
Speaker 1: the academics I hang out with. You see, my colleagues
Speaker 1: have long assumed that loneliness is a product of biology,
Speaker 1: an emotion that has been shaped over generations by natural selection.
Speaker 1: Humans are, of course, social primates. We rely on one
Speaker 1: another for survival. Loneliness can therefore be thought of as
Speaker 1: an evolutionary signal, one that's built to help us avoid
Speaker 1: the dangers of isolation. Loneliness is there to alert us
Speaker 1: that we need to return to the safety of the tribe.
Speaker 1: Under this view, one would predict that our species has
Speaker 1: been experiencing this yucky feeling for a long time. But
Speaker 1: Fay argues that that's not the case. Her historical analysis
Speaker 1: has found that loneliness, at least as we think of
Speaker 1: it today, didn't really exist before the nineteenth century.
Speaker 3: I think often people think about the history of emotions
Speaker 3: as being people felt the same, just the landscapes were different,
Speaker 3: but the emotions themselves were changed by the landscapes.
Speaker 1: And Fay says that being lonely before the Industrial Revolution
Speaker 1: meant something entirely different than it does today. Loneliness was
Speaker 1: used interchangeably warnliness, and it just meant being alone. It
Speaker 1: just meant being solitude. There wasn't anything like the emotional
Speaker 1: weight that it has today. So when Wordsworth talked about
Speaker 1: wondering lonely as a cloud, he just meant he was alone.
Speaker 1: At that point, you could be warmly or you could
Speaker 1: be lonely, but you would not have that sort of
Speaker 1: sense of emotional loss and lack that we have today.
Speaker 1: I find this so striking. The ache that I got
Speaker 1: walking by a crowded pub back in grad school, or
Speaker 1: that sense of invisibility that newly rejected Fay felt listening
Speaker 1: to those geese. They says that people didn't really experience
Speaker 1: that feeling for most of human history.
Speaker 3: If you imagine in the early modern period, when God
Speaker 3: is always there, you're never actually alone. If we are
Speaker 3: aware of something bigger than ourselves, we are less likely
Speaker 3: to feel lonely. And so it's only when you have
Speaker 3: the decline of religion as the only explanation for why
Speaker 3: we're in the world, and the rise of urbanization and
Speaker 3: economic individualism. All of these kind of transformations make us
Speaker 3: into smaller parts, and they don't give us that kind
Speaker 3: of sense of the collective or collective identity. So round
Speaker 3: about eighteen hundred you do get more and more people
Speaker 3: talking about loneliness. People aren't any longer feeling that they
Speaker 3: are enough on themselves with themselves. We've got the rise
Speaker 3: of the individual, the decline of the collective. So those
Speaker 3: are the broad patterns I think that affect our emotional state.
Speaker 1: Fay points to two famous stories of isolation that nicely
Speaker 1: illustrate the different emotional reactions that people had to solitude
Speaker 1: before and after this rise of the individual. Story Number one,
Speaker 1: the old school version of solitude, is from Robinson Crusoe,
Speaker 1: the famous novel by Daniel Defoe published in seventeen nineteen,
Speaker 1: in which the main character is shipwrecked on a remote
Speaker 1: island for twenty eight years. Story number two. The more
Speaker 1: modern notion of solitude is from Castaway, the award winning
Speaker 1: movie released back in two thousand, in which the actor
Speaker 1: Tom Hanks survives a plane crash and spends four years
Speaker 1: struggling to survive on a deserted island.
Speaker 3: So robis and Cristo when he's kind of cast adrift,
Speaker 3: it follows the convention of being this sort of pestling,
Speaker 3: this spiritual journey, this notion of being in isolation or
Speaker 3: solitude as a way of understanding oneself better. And if
Speaker 3: you compare that to Castaway, it's very much about the
Speaker 3: loss of other people and how do we cope. And
Speaker 3: for me, that's such a sort of fantastic transition in
Speaker 3: what's happened across the period that I'm talking about. We
Speaker 3: are not alone with God anymore. We are alone with ourselves,
Speaker 3: which for many people is quite terrifying, because what do
Speaker 3: we do when we look inward?
Speaker 1: Psychologists have been looking at what happens when modern people
Speaker 1: get stuck alone and have to look inwards, and it's
Speaker 1: not pretty. Take one famous study by psychologists Matt Killingsworth
Speaker 1: and Timothy Wilson. They brought subjects into the lab and
Speaker 1: asked them to sit alone in a room without distractions
Speaker 1: for fifteen minutes. No cell phones or internet access, not
Speaker 1: even a pennrot paper. The one thing subjects did have
Speaker 1: access to was a machine that gave out a mild
Speaker 1: electric shark. Participants were not told to shock themselves, but
Speaker 1: when faced with the boredom of actually sitting alone with
Speaker 1: their own thoughts for fifteen minutes, twenty five percent of
Speaker 1: women and sixty seven percent of men voluntarily chose to
Speaker 1: shock themselves. They thinks that part of our version to
Speaker 1: sitting alone with our thoughts in the modern day comes
Speaker 1: from how we talk about what it means to be alone.
Speaker 3: We have this language of loneliness, which is global. Now
Speaker 3: we talk about it as an epidemic. So we have
Speaker 3: produced this medicalized, problematic notion of loneliness as something bad.
Speaker 3: And what happens is that people think, oh, that must
Speaker 3: be what I'm feeling, and I think that that also
Speaker 3: increases loneliness. If we say that loneliness is one thing
Speaker 3: that's inevitable, we medicalize it, so it's like a disease
Speaker 3: that comes from outside, not a product of how we live.
Speaker 3: Then what we're doing is we're massively over simplifying.
Speaker 1: This is phase big concern with the idea of a
Speaker 1: quote loneliness epidemic. It makes loneliness sound like one single
Speaker 1: conditioning you either have or don't have, when in reality,
Speaker 1: they argue, loneliness is much more complicated than that.
Speaker 3: I talk about loneliness really as a cluster of different emotions,
Speaker 3: because it's not a single emotion. It's a peculiar state
Speaker 3: that might be composed of grief and sadness, it might
Speaker 3: be composed of resentment or anger. And so the particular
Speaker 3: emotions that make up loneliness depend on where we are
Speaker 3: in our lives. There are pinch points where we might,
Speaker 3: for instance, get married, get widow, get divorced, or even
Speaker 3: be a teenager going to have to college, and we
Speaker 3: feel some sort of transitory sense of loneliness which is
Speaker 3: in relation to our circumstance and actually a very positive
Speaker 3: thing because it means we're ready for the next stage
Speaker 3: and what do we want. And that's different to the
Speaker 3: kind of chronic loneliness that can settle in when people
Speaker 3: aren't able to connect and maybe they're disadvantaged by health
Speaker 3: or economics or geography. Those sort of nuances I think
Speaker 3: are very very important. Otherwise we start thinking that a
Speaker 3: who's just lost her husband of thirty years is going
Speaker 3: to be feeling exactly the same kind of loneliness as
Speaker 3: a teenage boy who is online all at the time,
Speaker 3: but asn't our friends. I mean, it just seems to
Speaker 3: be obvious and these are not the same emotions, so
Speaker 3: we can't have a one size fits all approach. I
Speaker 3: think that a lot of the emotional experiences we have
Speaker 3: are opportunities for growth and development. If your psyche and
Speaker 3: body is saying something is missing, it's an opportunity. If
Speaker 3: we treat it all us a bad thing, what we're
Speaker 3: doing is closing down the opportunity for growth. We're closing
Speaker 3: down the opportunity of connection, and we're really taking away
Speaker 3: what are the different complex kinds of emotions they're going
Speaker 3: towards this state. We need to really drill down into
Speaker 3: that because it's so subjective, so our interventions need to
Speaker 3: be tailored.
Speaker 1: When we get back from the break, we'll meet a
Speaker 1: psychologist who's trying to follow phase advice, someone who's trying
Speaker 1: to drill down into the language we use to talk
Speaker 1: about loneliness so that we can fight this feeling more effectively.
Speaker 1: She'll break down what we get wrong about loneliness and
Speaker 1: what we can do better when the happiness Lab returns.
Speaker 4: In a moment, when I first started studying this topic,
Speaker 4: I actually really struggle to be alone. I had this
Speaker 4: perception that being alone is loneliness. You know, I had
Speaker 4: never considered that these two are separate things. One moment
Speaker 4: that really comes to mind is in college, I had
Speaker 4: sort of a lunch plan. It fell through, and I thought, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: I guess I'll just go to the dining hall and
Speaker 4: eat by myself.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: I walked in the dining hall and I realized that
Speaker 4: pretty much everybody was chatting with others. I remember feeling
Speaker 4: in my body pretty anxious, like, oh my gosh, I
Speaker 4: have to sit by myself, and how are other people
Speaker 4: going to perceive me?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: This is Mikaela Rodriguez, a new colleague of mine in
Speaker 1: the psychology department at Yale and an academic expert on
Speaker 1: what we tend to get wrong when it comes to loneliness.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's a little embarrassing to say, but I
Speaker 4: did worry are other people going to think that I'm
Speaker 4: weird that I have no friends. And so anyway, I
Speaker 4: found a spot in the very back of the dining
Speaker 4: hall that was a little bit more sort of secluded
Speaker 4: where other people wouldn't really see me, and I ate
Speaker 4: my lunch, but just sort of felt kind of awkward
Speaker 4: the whole time.
Speaker 1: Mikhaela's interest in the psychological effects of loneliness began back
Speaker 1: when she was a college student.
Speaker 4: This is really I think common, especially in that age, right,
Speaker 4: and often on social media, seeing that other people at
Speaker 4: least seem to be having these really rich social lives
Speaker 4: and traveling and going to parties. It feels like there's
Speaker 4: this expectation that we also need to be very social,
Speaker 4: and that if we're not, that there's something wrong with us,
Speaker 4: that we're doing something wrong. I think there is this
Speaker 4: understanding that, well, if you have, for example, depression or
Speaker 4: an anxiety disorder, it's not necessarily that there's something wrong
Speaker 4: with you, right, It might be something's going on in
Speaker 4: your brain, there's this chemical imbalance, as people say, right,
Speaker 4: there's other genetic, environmental factors. But I do think that
Speaker 4: when it comes to loneliness, there still is this perception
Speaker 4: that if you're lonely, it's something about you. You know,
Speaker 4: you're not able maybe to make those connections. You're not
Speaker 4: socially skilled enough, And so it does feel like there's
Speaker 4: an extra level of sort of shame that's attached to
Speaker 4: loneliness that maybe we're not seeing anymore with these other
Speaker 4: sort of mental health, negative sort of emotional.
Speaker 1: Experiences, and studies have shown that the stigma associated with
Speaker 1: loneliness can have big consequences for people who happen to
Speaker 1: be a bit solitary by nature.
Speaker 4: When American adults are told about a hypothetical person who
Speaker 4: likes to spend their time alone, those people rate that
Speaker 4: person as less desirable, as a friend, less attractive, less competent.
Speaker 4: We make these sort of negative evaluations and negative assumptions
Speaker 4: about that person.
Speaker 1: And MICHAELA says that these negative assumptions have only gotten
Speaker 1: worse in the last few years.
Speaker 4: There are so many articles I feel like I see
Speaker 4: one every single day on the dangers of loneliness. But
Speaker 4: even in sociology, philosophy, public health, these related fields, we
Speaker 4: see that the vast majority of research on these topics
Speaker 4: is looking at sort of the dangers of being alone
Speaker 4: and the serious risks associated with loneliness, and I recognize
Speaker 4: that you know, these messages are intended to be helpful
Speaker 4: and to encourage people to go out and seek social connection,
Speaker 4: which course, as we know, is very important. At the
Speaker 4: same time, a few years ago, I sort of wondered
Speaker 4: whether these messages that we're receiving might have unintended negative consequences,
Speaker 4: Might they be counterproductive.
Speaker 1: Mikaela decided to test this directly. She had subjects read
Speaker 1: a news article that either discuss the risks of being alone,
Speaker 1: like most news articles do these days, or one that
Speaker 1: talked about the benefits of alone time. She found that
Speaker 1: the simple apt to reading one article about the downside
Speaker 1: of solitude changed subjects beliefs about the dangers of being alone.
Speaker 1: The participants who read the negative news article assume that
Speaker 1: being alone would feel less enjoyable, that it would make
Speaker 1: you less hopeful, and that overall you'd be less healthy.
Speaker 4: Okay, so makes sense, right. The information that we get
Speaker 4: from the media, we know influences our beliefs, But how
Speaker 4: did these beliefs that we hold about being alone actually
Speaker 4: influence our day to day experiences.
Speaker 1: To test this, Michaela recruited a different group of subjects.
Speaker 1: She first surveyed their beliefs about alone time, and then
Speaker 1: divided her subjects into two groups, those who had positive
Speaker 1: beliefs about alone time and those who thought more negatively
Speaker 1: about solitude. She then used a procedure known as experience sampling,
Speaker 1: in which researchers pink people at random times of the
Speaker 1: day and ask how they're feeling to test what happened
Speaker 1: when the two different groups of subjects got stuck in
Speaker 1: short moments of solo time.
Speaker 4: People who believe that being alone is bad, right, that
Speaker 4: it's inherently lonely, that it's harmful for their well being.
Speaker 4: Whenever they were alone in their daily lives LORI, they
Speaker 4: felt significantly lonelier, more anxious, more stressed, more bored They
Speaker 4: felt worse right. Interestingly, though, when we look at people
Speaker 4: who view being alone as a positive experience, we see
Speaker 4: the opposite. We see that when they spend time alone,
Speaker 4: they actually experience a decrease in loneliness and a decrease
Speaker 4: in stress, and a decrease in anxiety and boredom. Not
Speaker 4: only that, they also experienced increases in positive emotions like
Speaker 4: contentment and relaxation.
Speaker 1: These findings are pretty incredible. How we think being alone
Speaker 1: is supposed to feel influences how being alone actually feels
Speaker 1: in the moment, and Mikaela has observed this striking effect
Speaker 1: again and again. Take for example, her recent study exploring
Speaker 1: cross cultural differences in people's perceptions of loneliness.
Speaker 4: We recruited participants from nine countries, and this was spanning
Speaker 4: six continents an except Antarctica. Really hard to find people
Speaker 4: there to take our studies, so almost every continent, i
Speaker 4: will say, And so we had for example, Japan, Mexico, Brazil, Poland,
Speaker 4: South Africa, couple others, and essentially we wanted to know
Speaker 4: how adults in these different countries view being alone, to
Speaker 4: what extent do they think being alone is positive or negative, right,
Speaker 4: beneficial or harmful. We see that in countries like the US,
Speaker 4: the UK, Poland in other words, countries that are more individualistic,
Speaker 4: people view being alone as more negative, as more unhealthy,
Speaker 4: whereas people in Japan and Mexico, two very different countries
Speaker 4: but both we would consider collectivistic countries viewed being alone
Speaker 4: as significantly more positive and healthier.
Speaker 1: What are some of the hypotheses for why collectivist culture
Speaker 1: is value solitude?
Speaker 4: For one of the things we know about more collective
Speaker 4: cultures is that people view the self as more interdependent.
Speaker 4: So what I mean is that people view themselves as
Speaker 4: an individual as intertwined with their family members, their friends,
Speaker 4: their community. In other words, who I am is linked
Speaker 4: to who you know, my friends and family are. And
Speaker 4: so I think that actually changes what being alone means, right,
Speaker 4: Because when I'm physically alone, yes, I'm by myself. But
Speaker 4: if I have this sense that my identity is always
Speaker 4: tied to my loved ones, then maybe that aloneness is
Speaker 4: actually less threatening because even though I'm physically by myself,
Speaker 4: I'm carrying my mom, right, I'm carrying my dad, I'm
Speaker 4: carrying my two little sisters with me all the time.
Speaker 4: I'm carrying these sources of meaning with me wherever I go.
Speaker 4: Whereas in more individualistic cultures, we know that the self
Speaker 4: is really viewed as a DiscT entity that is not
Speaker 4: connected really to anybody else. Right, We're unique, We're our
Speaker 4: own person.
Speaker 3: I will not.
Speaker 4: You know, it's not that that's inherently better or worse.
Speaker 4: These are just sort of different ways of viewing oneself.
Speaker 4: But if we do see the self as independent and
Speaker 4: not linked to other people, then I think when we're alone,
Speaker 4: we really are sort of disconnected, right, and so I
Speaker 4: think there could be this sort of protective effect of
Speaker 4: having this more interdependent view of the self.
Speaker 1: Mikaela's work seems to be bearing out what historian Fay
Speaker 1: Bound Alberti said earlier that how a culture thinks being
Speaker 1: alone is supposed to feel influences how being alone actually feels.
Speaker 1: In this and so many other studies, Mikaela has found
Speaker 1: that if you believe alone time is going to suck,
Speaker 1: then you're alone time will feel luckier and lonelier. And
Speaker 1: that is a very worrying conclusion, especially for someone who
Speaker 1: hosts a podcast that talks a lot about social connection.
Speaker 1: So much of our modern public health messaging tries to
Speaker 1: teach people about the negative effects of loneliness, but that
Speaker 1: messaging might ironically be making the loneliness crisis even worse,
Speaker 1: and Michaela says that this stems from a specific thing
Speaker 1: that many news articles get wrong. When it comes to loneliness.
Speaker 4: We see the vast majority of news articles using loneliness
Speaker 4: and solitude interchangeably, which I think is not only inaccurate,
Speaker 4: I think it's also harmful. These experiences are distinct. Being
Speaker 4: alone is not loneliness. We can think of loneliness as
Speaker 4: a feeling, right. It is a subjective experience of feeling disconnected,
Speaker 4: regardless of whether you're physically by yourself or with other people.
Speaker 4: You can feel lonely even when you're in a crowd,
Speaker 4: right in a party. And actually, what I found in
Speaker 4: my work we see that the most sort of intense
Speaker 4: or painful loneliness often comes when we're with others because
Speaker 4: we have expectation that we should be feeling connected to them,
Speaker 4: but for one reason or another, we don't.
Speaker 1: And so how correlated our loneliness and solitude?
Speaker 4: We've seen from decades of work that loneliness and solitude
Speaker 4: are actually weakly correlated, and the correlation is around point two.
Speaker 4: So just for those listening, you know, we think of
Speaker 4: correlations as the strength of a relationship between two experiences.
Speaker 4: Zero means there's no relationship at all. One means that
Speaker 4: they're the same thing, they're completely related. When one goes up,
Speaker 4: the other goes up. And so point two is I mean,
Speaker 4: it's not nothing.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: We know that in general, when people are alone, especially
Speaker 4: for longer periods of time, it is common for them
Speaker 4: to experience loneliness. That said, point two is still not
Speaker 4: super high, and so there are many many instances in
Speaker 4: which people are alone and not lonely at all. So
Speaker 4: loneliness is this subjective feeling, whereas solitude we can think
Speaker 4: of as the objective state of being alone. And so
Speaker 4: solitude in that sense is not inherently a positive or
Speaker 4: negative experience.
Speaker 1: Solitude is inherently neutral. But Mikaila has also found that
Speaker 1: more effective alone time can actually make us happier.
Speaker 4: We're taught so much about how to interact with others,
Speaker 4: how to work as a team, we're not often explicitly
Speaker 4: taught how to be alone. It's something we sort of
Speaker 4: have to figure out on our own. I really view
Speaker 4: solitude as a skill. You know, it takes practice, It
Speaker 4: takes time to really cultivate this positive relationship to solitude.
Speaker 1: What are some of the best benefits of solitude?
Speaker 4: One of the I would say biggest benefits of spending
Speaker 4: time alone is emotional deactivation, or essentially, when we spend
Speaker 4: time alone, you know, in general, our intense negative emotions
Speaker 4: as well as our intense positive emotions become less intense,
Speaker 4: emotions become a little bit more neutralized. We know, for example,
Speaker 4: that when we spend time with other people, that presence
Speaker 4: of others can amplify our emotional experiences. Right being with
Speaker 4: others makes anxiety often even more intense, or can make
Speaker 4: excitement happiness even more intense. And so when we're alone,
Speaker 4: we don't have that sort of feedback from others, and
Speaker 4: often there's less stimulation in the environments, and so it
Speaker 4: can help sort of deactivate intense negative emotions. I've run
Speaker 4: several studies where I've had participants come into the lab
Speaker 4: indicate how they're feeling in that moment, and then they
Speaker 4: spend ten to fifteen minutes. In one study, we had
Speaker 4: them spend thirty minutes by themselves without actually any laptop,
Speaker 4: any phone, any device, with no activity, just truly by
Speaker 4: themselves with their thoughts, sitting in a chair, and even
Speaker 4: then we see that both positive emotion and negative emotion decreased,
Speaker 4: emotions became more neutral.
Speaker 1: Mikaela has found that being left alone with our thoughts
Speaker 1: without the option of electrocuting ourselves can you full for
Speaker 1: regulating our feelings. Honestly, this result surprised me a bit.
Speaker 1: Whenever I'm feeling an intense emotion, my instinct is to
Speaker 1: reach out to a friend so that I can talk
Speaker 1: through what I'm experiencing. I hadn't realized that being by
Speaker 1: myself could also be helpful.
Speaker 4: There are many situations in which, for example, seeking social
Speaker 4: support and talking to others can help. Other people can
Speaker 4: help shift our perspectives, or they can just give us
Speaker 4: a hug and remind us that everything's going to be okay,
Speaker 4: or they can help normalize our experiences. There's lots of
Speaker 4: things we can gain from talking to others when we're
Speaker 4: feeling upset. But sometimes when we're in this really hot
Speaker 4: and emotional state, people want to be by themselves, and
Speaker 4: I think that's not inherently a bad thing. Stepping back
Speaker 4: and spending some time by yourself can help you sort
Speaker 4: of cool off a little bit. Just like when you
Speaker 4: know people are in the middle of an argument, whether
Speaker 4: it's a romantic couple or friends, sometimes it's like, hey,
Speaker 4: let's take a minute, let's go into our rooms, and
Speaker 4: then let's come back right to just sort of relax
Speaker 4: for a moment. That can be really powerful.
Speaker 1: And for those who are uncomfortable with being alone without
Speaker 1: any distractions. Mikaela has some good news. To reap the
Speaker 1: emotional benefits of alone time, you don't necessarily just have
Speaker 1: to stare into the void.
Speaker 4: Being alone doesn't just have to be sitting by yourself, thinking,
Speaker 4: reflecting on your life. It can, but you can do
Speaker 4: so many different things. You can take a walk, you
Speaker 4: can read, you can tidy things up, you can cook,
Speaker 4: and so you know, when people engage in these different
Speaker 4: activities when they're alone, it can both serve as a
Speaker 4: sort of distraction from what's going on and also just
Speaker 4: help them kind of relax right and even physiologically help
Speaker 4: their bodies sort of recover from maybe a stressful experience,
Speaker 4: which really I think stands in contrast to a lot
Speaker 4: of what we're hearing now in the media and also
Speaker 4: a lot of what psychologists are studying.
Speaker 1: Your research has these really clear implications for public health messaging.
Speaker 1: If coverage of loneliness might be made making things worse,
Speaker 1: what should media, you know, this podcast included, honestly be
Speaker 1: doing differently.
Speaker 4: I think that we should be emphasizing the importance of
Speaker 4: social connection while also communicating to people that being alone
Speaker 4: can be okay, that it can be good, that there
Speaker 4: are situations in which it can promote our well being,
Speaker 4: and not just our well being, it can promote our
Speaker 4: social lives and our relationships and enhance them.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: I think if we had messaging that better sort of
Speaker 4: portrayed both social connection and solitude as good for us,
Speaker 4: then I think we're in the situation where no matter
Speaker 4: what people are doing, whether they're by themselves or with others,
Speaker 4: they can make the most of that experience.
Speaker 1: You've also done some fascinating work on how the language
Speaker 1: we use matters. Tell me about that work.
Speaker 4: I ran this really simple study with my wonderful collaborator,
Speaker 4: Scott Campbell at the Ohio State University, and we essentially
Speaker 4: ask participants to report their perceptions of, and beliefs about
Speaker 4: and experiences of five different words for being alone.
Speaker 3: So we had.
Speaker 4: Solitude, being alone, time alone, me time, and isolation, words
Speaker 4: that are often used interchangeably, but they have very different connotations.
Speaker 4: And indeed we found that people viewed me time as
Speaker 4: the most positive, and they viewed isolation as the most negative.
Speaker 4: I also want to mention really interesting finding, which was
Speaker 4: that people viewed time alone as more positive than being alone.
Speaker 4: Even though it's so easy to just say this interchangeably, right,
Speaker 4: but I think the idea there is that time alone
Speaker 4: is maybe this like evening that we're spending by ourselves,
Speaker 4: whereas being alone feels a little more long term.
Speaker 1: Mikhaela ran an experiment to test how these different phrases
Speaker 1: affected people's mood and behavior. She split a group of
Speaker 1: college students into two experimental groups and asked them all
Speaker 1: to spend thirty minutes by them. So the only difference
Speaker 1: between the two groups was in the instructions they received.
Speaker 4: Half of the participants were told to spend thirty minutes
Speaker 4: in me time. The other half were told to spend
Speaker 4: thirty minutes in isolation. So what we found in this
Speaker 4: study is that people who spent those thirty minutes in
Speaker 4: isolation experienced a reduction in their negative emotion and also
Speaker 4: a reduction in their positive emotion. So, like I was
Speaker 4: saying earlier, right, we see this deactivation effect where people
Speaker 4: are feeling less bad, but they're also feeling less good.
Speaker 4: In the mean time group, we see something different. We
Speaker 4: see that positive emotion significantly went up and negative emotion
Speaker 4: went down even more so than it did in that
Speaker 4: other group. Right, And so the me time group felt
Speaker 4: better after those thirty minutes. Not just that, we asked
Speaker 4: our participants to report what they had thought about in
Speaker 4: that thirty minute period and also what they did. Interestingly, Lorie,
Speaker 4: we didn't see any differences in what participants reported doing
Speaker 4: in those thirty minutes between me time and isolation. We did, however,
Speaker 4: see a significant difference in what participants reported thinking about.
Speaker 4: So in the medtime group, participants were more likely to
Speaker 4: think about personal growth, whereas an isolation they were more
Speaker 4: likely to think about work and school. And so it
Speaker 4: is a little interesting, right, how even just the words
Speaker 4: we use can maybe shift what we do in this time.
Speaker 1: So to recap, loneliness and being alone two very different things,
Speaker 1: and how we think about and describe these concepts matters
Speaker 1: a lot, because neither loneliness nor solitude are inherently bad.
Speaker 1: Being alone can leave you feeling calmer, clearer, and more
Speaker 1: emotionally grounded, and that ech of loneliness can be a
Speaker 1: helpful signal that you need to make changes or as
Speaker 1: a push for personal growth. Now does that mean that
Speaker 1: social connection isn't beneficial or that people experiencing chronic isolation
Speaker 1: don't require serious intervention? Of course not. But what these
Speaker 1: findings do mean is that we might all benefit if
Speaker 1: we change the way we discuss feelings like loneliness and solitude,
Speaker 1: both on a societal level and as individuals. Mikayla's research
Speaker 1: demonstrates that talking about these experiences differently might prevent a
Speaker 1: lot of unnecessary suffering. But Mikayla's work also shows that
Speaker 1: alone time is a skill one that we need to
Speaker 1: learn to use more effectively if we want to get
Speaker 1: more of its benefits, which raises a question, what does
Speaker 1: embracing healthy solitude actually look.
Speaker 3: Like in practice?
Speaker 1: After the break, we'll speak to a world renowned advocate
Speaker 1: for a loan time. We'll hear her tips for incorporating
Speaker 1: more well being boosting solo moments into our day to
Speaker 1: day lives. That Happiness Lab will be right back.
Speaker 3: Hi, how's it going good? Good?
Speaker 1: Thanks so much for taking the time to do this.
Speaker 3: I'm really excited.
Speaker 5: I love your show. I don't have my podcast anymore,
Speaker 5: so every time I do it, I'm like, can I remember?
Speaker 5: But it sounds like you can hear me.
Speaker 3: Okay, So this.
Speaker 1: Is Emma Gannon. Emma is a writer, podcaster, and the
Speaker 1: author of a new book, A Creative Compass, Finding Your
Speaker 1: Way to a creative life. She's written extensively about the
Speaker 1: connection between loneliness and solitude, and that's in part because
Speaker 1: Emma is a huge fan of a lot of time.
Speaker 5: It's such a nuanced topic because loneliness and solitude are
Speaker 5: so different. You can be lonely in a crowded room,
Speaker 5: you can be lonely in a marriage, you can be
Speaker 5: lonely at a party. When you're feeling lonely, I believe
Speaker 5: it's because you're really disconnected from yourself. You feel lonely
Speaker 5: inside yourself, like you feel lonely because no one understands
Speaker 5: you and you don't even understand you. And so in
Speaker 5: my solitude, I don't feel lonely. Have chosen it, and
Speaker 5: I honestly think that some of my favorite memories are
Speaker 5: of me being alone. And sometimes I feel like it's
Speaker 5: controversial to say it because we're meant to be on
Speaker 5: our deathbed and think that our best moments in life
Speaker 5: are with our loved ones. And of course that is true.
Speaker 5: I'm not saying it's not. But I think I'm also
Speaker 5: going to be on my deathbed thinking that trip was
Speaker 5: amazing that I had by myself, Like I went to
Speaker 5: New York by myself for a month two years ago,
Speaker 5: and I think about it all the time, and I
Speaker 5: want to do something like that again.
Speaker 1: When you think of an experience like traveling alone or
Speaker 1: dining alone, how does that differ when you're with another person.
Speaker 5: It's a totally different experience. So when I'm with a
Speaker 5: friend and having dinner, I'm super focused on them. I'm
Speaker 5: focused on the experience and I want to be present
Speaker 5: and I want to be listening, and I want to
Speaker 5: be conscious of it being kind of reciprocal.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: It's a dance and it's enjoyable and I love it.
Speaker 5: But when I'm in those environments, I'm not looking at
Speaker 5: my surroundings as much. I'm not tasting the food as
Speaker 5: much because I'm you know, my attentions on the other person.
Speaker 5: So when I'm on my own, I'm having a sensory experience.
Speaker 5: I'm taking in everything and looking around and people watching,
Speaker 5: and I absolutely see it as an essential thing for
Speaker 5: my nervous system. I can like regulate myself back to
Speaker 5: my default setting. I think, like I just went away
Speaker 5: for three nights last week by myself to a little
Speaker 5: town called Brye in England. It's an hour train from
Speaker 5: my house, super easy to get to and within maybe
Speaker 5: about half an hour of just getting off the train,
Speaker 5: being by myself, putting my bag down in the hotel room,
Speaker 5: lying on the bed, no one was going to get
Speaker 5: me for three days, and I had this like joy
Speaker 5: that went through my body. But more than that, I
Speaker 5: had this just sense of taking the mask off and
Speaker 5: like completely relaxing my whole entire body. And whenever I
Speaker 5: come back from those trips, my husband is like, Wow,
Speaker 5: it's like a medicine. It's not something that you should
Speaker 5: think about as a luxury. You should think about it
Speaker 5: as like a mental health toolkit. Once a month, I
Speaker 5: need to do something, and it doesn't have to be
Speaker 5: you know, it's expensive to go away. I'm not saying that,
Speaker 5: but it needs to be at least like a long
Speaker 5: walk in silence or something like that.
Speaker 1: And it does admit, however, that spending time alone is
Speaker 1: not always super easy in a society that's biased against owners.
Speaker 5: Busy restaurants treat a solo diner as sort of less
Speaker 5: important because they're not making as much money from you.
Speaker 5: They'll sit you at the bar a lot. You know,
Speaker 5: you're like shoved in the corner a little bit, or
Speaker 5: you're ignored. I've had that a bit actually, where I
Speaker 5: haven't really been sort of checked in on. You know,
Speaker 5: you're sort of left and you're trying to get the
Speaker 5: bill and you want another drink and then it's too late.
Speaker 5: So I think it would be great for kind of
Speaker 5: restaurants or whatever to understand that you're still having an
Speaker 5: experience and you're still trying to have a lovely time.
Speaker 5: When I was in my twenties, I was more sort
Speaker 5: of unsure of myself, and I think people would come
Speaker 5: up to me more, or you know, you'd get men
Speaker 5: being weird, or you would get people thinking you wanted
Speaker 5: company when you didn't, and I felt self conscious. But
Speaker 5: people don't come over to me as much. Like I'm
Speaker 5: older now and I'm confident, and I'm like, don't come
Speaker 5: near me, like I give that energy of like I'm
Speaker 5: busy and I'm eating.
Speaker 1: So we talked about traveling alone and dining alone. I'm
Speaker 1: curious about some of the other activities you've done on
Speaker 1: your own. Can you share some of those with me? Yeah?
Speaker 5: So I do like going with my friends to things,
Speaker 5: but I also actively choose moments to go alone. So
Speaker 5: I love going to the cinema by myself, especially to
Speaker 5: see something really moving. I saw a film called H's
Speaker 5: for Hawk recently, which is about grief and relationships to
Speaker 5: animals and had some deep themes, and I just knew
Speaker 5: I wanted to watch it alone. I just wanted to
Speaker 5: really immerse myself. I didn't want to talk to anyone afterwards.
Speaker 5: I wanted to just go for a walk then really
Speaker 5: digest the film. Like I really don't always want input.
Speaker 5: I love sitting and like reflecting.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad you brought up that example of going
Speaker 1: to the film by yourself, because I don't do that often,
Speaker 1: But there was this one period in grad school where
Speaker 1: I did it a lot. I was over in the UK.
Speaker 1: I was studying at the University of Bristol, and I
Speaker 1: just like didn't know that many people. There's like great
Speaker 1: indie cinema and Bristol at the time, and i'd walk
Speaker 1: there by myself and I would watch the movies by myself,
Speaker 1: and I did have that feeling of feeling like a
Speaker 1: little bit of like a freak. If someone see me
Speaker 1: by myself, they'd be like, who's that weird person? But
Speaker 1: I remember walking home from those movies and having such
Speaker 1: interesting thoughts about them of just kind of like sinking
Speaker 1: into them in a different way. And even now when
Speaker 1: I think about the specific films that I watched back then,
Speaker 1: I remember them in a really different way than like
Speaker 1: the last movie that I watched in the cinema with
Speaker 1: my husband. Here you have a connection to the things
Speaker 1: that you experience on your own, and that's kind of special.
Speaker 5: It really is, and I think it kind of preserves
Speaker 5: your individual experience. Like I remember once going through this
Speaker 5: film and I loved it. I was crying at the end,
Speaker 5: like I had such a relationship with it. And then
Speaker 5: the person next to me who I went to watch
Speaker 5: the film with, just turned to me and said that
Speaker 5: was awful, wasn't it. They were like picking it apart
Speaker 5: for certain reasons, and I was like, Oh, you've kind
Speaker 5: of just burst the moment I was having with it.
Speaker 5: So I think sometimes it's just nice to kind of
Speaker 5: sink in. And I did go to a concept by
Speaker 5: myself recently as well, which was a first I think, actually,
Speaker 5: and I was like, Oh, this is going to be
Speaker 5: a bit weird going by myself because you're really aware
Speaker 5: of how alone you are when you're in those big stadiums.
Speaker 5: And then I was wedged in the middle of two
Speaker 5: couples and they were having like a date night and
Speaker 5: I was like, Oh, this is really challenging, but I
Speaker 5: had a good time. I got into it.
Speaker 1: You've also written about something that you've called artist dates.
Speaker 1: Where does this concept come from and how do artist
Speaker 1: dates work?
Speaker 5: Yes, so this is from Julia Cameron, the author of
Speaker 5: The Artist's Way and many other books. And I love
Speaker 5: it and it's something that I do every week actually,
Speaker 5: and it's essentially a solo date that you go on
Speaker 5: where you have to do something just for the joy
Speaker 5: of it. So you know, her thinking is that it
Speaker 5: really helps you come up with new ideas, but you're
Speaker 5: not really hunting for them. You're just having a little
Speaker 5: day out by yourself essentially. And she has a list
Speaker 5: in The Artist's Way to sort of prompt you, and
Speaker 5: there are things like go to a pet store, go
Speaker 5: for a walk, go to an art gallery, go to
Speaker 5: the cinema. It's so joyful coming up with ideas for
Speaker 5: artists dates. And I think her thinking behind it is like,
Speaker 5: you can't really be a creative person if you're not
Speaker 5: refieling the well. You need to go and do things
Speaker 5: and live out things for you to have ideas.
Speaker 1: Any good artist states that you've been on recently.
Speaker 5: I mean something that I do do is I go
Speaker 5: on Google Maps and I'll type in independent bookstore and
Speaker 5: I'll just see what ones I haven't been to within
Speaker 5: like an hour's walk or whatever. And there's a little
Speaker 5: bookstore in London which is on a canal boat, and
Speaker 5: I just thought, I'm going to walk to the canal boat.
Speaker 5: I'm going to see what's going on in this part
Speaker 5: of London, and I'm going to go to the bookstore,
Speaker 5: and then I'm going to walk home again. And that
Speaker 5: was my artist date for that day.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, do you still ever feel lonely when you're
Speaker 1: on your own?
Speaker 5: Well, when I was in New York for a month,
Speaker 5: I had moments of feeling a bit lonely. There is
Speaker 5: a tipping point of too much alone time. A month
Speaker 5: was long. My husband did come and visit me right
Speaker 5: in the middle for a few days, so it broke
Speaker 5: it up a little bit. But there were just a
Speaker 5: few nights where I was like walking down the Hudson
Speaker 5: River path or whatever, and I would see like a
Speaker 5: group of four girlfriends laughing their heads off, and I
Speaker 5: would be like, Okay, I really miss my friends right now.
Speaker 5: Or I would see them like a romantic sunset and
Speaker 5: someone taking like a selfie with their boyfriend, and I'd
Speaker 5: be like, oh, actually, you know, I really miss my partner.
Speaker 5: But I think that's just normal. And then those feelings
Speaker 5: would come and then they would go again. So it's
Speaker 5: such a normal human emotion and so I just let
Speaker 5: myself feel it, I think.
Speaker 1: And so you mentioned this idea of the New York
Speaker 1: trip was starting to feel long, right, Any advice on
Speaker 1: getting the balance right between the kind of effective alone
Speaker 1: time but not too much alone time.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think it's about really understanding your own self
Speaker 5: and your own mind and knowing when, and this is
Speaker 5: a huge one that I'm still trying to work out,
Speaker 5: is like sometimes what I need is a night in
Speaker 5: by myself, and sometimes I need to put my shoo
Speaker 5: on and I need to go out and see a friend.
Speaker 5: So yeah, I think it's about thinking about what you
Speaker 5: need in.
Speaker 1: That moment anyways, that you've got an insight into what
Speaker 1: that looks like over time.
Speaker 5: I think over time it's like making a note of
Speaker 5: how you feel. For example, recently, I just got over
Speaker 5: an illness and I kept being like, no, no, no, I
Speaker 5: should stay in again, I should stay in again. And
Speaker 5: I was like, no, I know what I need. I
Speaker 5: need to go out with someone who makes me laugh,
Speaker 5: like one of my funniest friends. And that's what I did,
Speaker 5: and I felt a million times better, Like it kind
Speaker 5: of was like helping me heal my illness. And so yeah,
Speaker 5: it's like being very intentional with what you need. And
Speaker 5: we go in and out of being a caterpillar and
Speaker 5: being a butterfly, don't we you know. But at the
Speaker 5: heart of all of this, I've got to say, I
Speaker 5: always need a bit of solitude.
Speaker 1: And so for someone who's listening right now, who might
Speaker 1: be really afraid to spend more time alone, what do
Speaker 1: you think that fear is really about.
Speaker 5: It's the same reason why maybe we're scared to put
Speaker 5: down the alcohol in the evenings, or I don't know,
Speaker 5: sit in a room and think about something. I think
Speaker 5: there's a quote that's like every person's problem stems from
Speaker 5: being unable to sit alone in a room.
Speaker 1: The quote is actually from the French philosopher Blaze Pascal
Speaker 1: All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit
Speaker 1: quietly in a room alone.
Speaker 5: So if it's like, for all the reasons we're on
Speaker 5: our phones for like fourteen hours the day, it's the
Speaker 5: same thing, Like we don't want to be alone with
Speaker 5: our thoughts, I would assume it's because there's something that's
Speaker 5: not quite right, and if we stop, we have to
Speaker 5: confront what that thing is, whether that's that your marriage
Speaker 5: is falling apart, or that you hate your job or
Speaker 5: you don't like your life. I mean, it's easier to
Speaker 5: plug the gap, isn't it than go and sit by
Speaker 5: yourself and figure out what's going on. And I don't
Speaker 5: blame anyone for that.
Speaker 1: The first time you do it, in part because taking
Speaker 1: this time to be alone can cars of you to
Speaker 1: notice all the stuff that you've been avoiding. It can
Speaker 1: be very uncomfortable, and so any advice for kind of
Speaker 1: getting over that hump so that you can get to
Speaker 1: enjoying it more.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't think it needs to be this
Speaker 5: whole like I'm going to be a Buddhist monk for
Speaker 5: the weekend and only be with myself and my thoughts. No,
Speaker 5: I don't want to do that, that's too much. I
Speaker 5: start the day with my morning pages, which is like
Speaker 5: the Julia Cameron thing of journaling, writing three pages out
Speaker 5: and honestly, if I do that in the morning, I'm
Speaker 5: kind of done with the introspection. I don't need to
Speaker 5: spend all day kind of you know, meditating or whatever.
Speaker 5: It's not an exam that you need to pass. And
Speaker 5: I think it's too daunting sometimes to have to be
Speaker 5: with our thoughts all the time. Solitude for me is
Speaker 5: about pleasure and enjoyment and enjoy enjoy it and celebrate
Speaker 5: it and take up space even if you're on your own.
Speaker 1: Loneliness can be painful, especially when it's chronic and leaves
Speaker 1: us feeling disconnected well from other people and from ourselves.
Speaker 1: But loneliness can also be a totally normal and totally
Speaker 1: temporary feeling, one that signals the need for change or
Speaker 1: an opportunity for growth. And that is the logic behind
Speaker 1: this week's Happiness hot take. We need to rethink how
Speaker 1: we talk about loneliness, and we need to fight our
Speaker 1: urge to treat solitude as something suspicious. That way, we
Speaker 1: can enjoy the benefits of social connection while also making
Speaker 1: room for time alone, a skill that many of us
Speaker 1: never learn to practice, but one that can help us
Speaker 1: regulate our emotions, reconnect with ourselves, spark creativity, and even
Speaker 1: strengthen our relationships. Next week, we'll wrap up our Happiness
Speaker 1: Hot Take series with one final ever so hot Happiness
Speaker 1: hot take. We should all bother each other a little
Speaker 1: more often. I'm going to try to borrow one hundred
Speaker 1: dollars from a strengder Excuse.
Speaker 3: Me, we think I'll borrow a hundred dollars from you.
Speaker 1: That's next week on a Happiness Lab with me, Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos