Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Science Stuff, a production of iHeartRadio. I'm
Speaker 1: Horey Champ and today we are tackling a question that
Speaker 1: is very personal to me and that I imagine is
Speaker 1: very personal to you as well. And the question is
Speaker 1: what really makes us happy?
Speaker 2: Is it money? Is it love? Is it a sense
Speaker 2: of purpose? Or is it random? Believe it or not.
Speaker 1: Science has studied this question and it has come up
Speaker 1: with some pretty definitive answers. So we're going to talk
Speaker 1: to two scientists today. One is a psychologist who's running
Speaker 1: one of the biggest and most unique experiments on human
Speaker 1: happiness in history. And we're going to talk to a
Speaker 1: neuroscientist who's going to tell us what he thinks is
Speaker 1: happening in your brain when you feel happy.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: This is the first in a two part series, so
Speaker 1: be sure to also check out part two. Okay, get
Speaker 1: ready to experience the joy of science as we answer
Speaker 1: the question it really makes us happy? Hey everyone, Okay,
Speaker 1: before we get started, I want you to take a
Speaker 1: second and ask yourself this question, Am I happy? I'll
Speaker 1: take a pause so you can think about it.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: If you're a skeptical person, you might be thinking, well,
Speaker 1: Orge what do you mean by being happy? Or you
Speaker 1: might be thinking, well, sometimes I feel happy and sometimes
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: Happiness is a pretty tricky.
Speaker 1: Subject, which is what inspired our first guest here today,
Speaker 1: doctor Matt Killingsworth, to start as a graduate student at
Speaker 1: Harvard something called Track Your Happiness dot Org. Well, thank you,
Speaker 1: doctor Killingsworth for joining us.
Speaker 3: Glad to be here.
Speaker 2: Please tell us who you are and what you do.
Speaker 3: Sure, my name is Matt Killingsworth. I'm at the University
Speaker 3: of Pennsylvania at the Wharton School of Business, and I'm
Speaker 3: a researcher who studies human happiness.
Speaker 1: Fantastic, so tell us about Track Yourhappiness dot org.
Speaker 3: So this is a project that I started more than
Speaker 3: a decade ago. Track Your Happiness really aims to be
Speaker 3: the world's biggest happiness study to try to figure out
Speaker 3: the recipe for human happiness and how to spread it
Speaker 3: into people's lives. Since this project's been started, hundreds of
Speaker 3: thousands of people from around the world have joined across
Speaker 3: its different versions. I created it because I wanted to
Speaker 3: understand how happy people really feel as they actually go
Speaker 3: about their daily lives. What makes our lives enjoyable, fulfilling, interesting, satisfying, Okay.
Speaker 1: Doctor Pilling's Worth study uses a very specific method called
Speaker 1: experience sampling, which is based on the idea that how
Speaker 1: we answer the question are you happy kind of changes
Speaker 1: throughout the day, and it depends on what's happening to
Speaker 1: us on any given moment. We'll get to how it works,
Speaker 1: but first I wanted to know how he got this idea.
Speaker 3: I really, you know, especially before and during my PhD training,
Speaker 3: I really read the scientific literature, hundreds and hundreds and
Speaker 3: thousands of papers, so I had a pretty good sense
Speaker 3: of all of the things that we discovered up to
Speaker 3: that point.
Speaker 1: So what were the things that you learn from the literature?
Speaker 3: Lots of different things. So the idea that happiness might
Speaker 3: be important, I mean, you can go back to Aristotle,
Speaker 3: you can certainly go back to Jeremy Mintham and John
Speaker 3: Stuart Mill and other people kind of arguing some version
Speaker 3: of happiness is kind of like the reason we do
Speaker 3: everything else. It's the metric or the construct that all
Speaker 3: this other stuff that humanity is pursuing is ultimately trying
Speaker 3: to achieve. But it really wasn't until you know, the
Speaker 3: second half of the twentieth century at least, and even
Speaker 3: more so in the last few decades that it's become
Speaker 3: quite clear that we can measure happiness pretty well, not perfectly,
Speaker 3: but well enough to do really good science. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's probably the most essential thing that research is documented,
Speaker 3: because if you can't measure it, you can't really do
Speaker 3: science with it. But once you measure it, you could
Speaker 3: be wrong about basically everything. But if you keep measuring, observing,
Speaker 3: you know, refining your thinking, oh, you'll get closer and
Speaker 3: closer and closer to the truth.
Speaker 1: What Decker Killingsworth is saying is that happiness, or the
Speaker 1: pursuit of it, in a way, kind of defines what
Speaker 1: it means to be human. I mean, it's in the
Speaker 1: founding Document of the United States that it's one of
Speaker 1: our unalienable rights. It's the thing we all strive for
Speaker 1: and hope to achieve. And yet it wasn't until the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties that we started studying it scientifically. That's what
Speaker 1: psychologist started to look into it.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of the past research really focused on
Speaker 3: what are the characteristics of happy people? Like who is happy?
Speaker 3: We knew something about relationship between age and happiness, and
Speaker 3: income and happiness, and how different countries differ in their
Speaker 3: levels of happiness. You know, lots of these things that
Speaker 3: you might collect on a big government survey or you
Speaker 3: know personality as well, how to things like the Big
Speaker 3: five personality dimensions relate to happiness. And one of the
Speaker 3: things that was really missing, I think was trying to
Speaker 3: understand like when people are happy.
Speaker 1: So all of these studies since the nineteen fifties made
Speaker 1: a lot of progress.
Speaker 2: And trying to figure out the general.
Speaker 1: Factors that affect your happiness, like personality, how much money
Speaker 1: you have, what culture or country you live in. But
Speaker 1: according to doctor Killingsworth, the data was always a little fuzzy.
Speaker 1: That's because of something I think we all know about happiness,
Speaker 1: which is said it sort of depends on when you
Speaker 1: ask me if I'm happy or not. In other words,
Speaker 1: is happiness how I feel in the moment, or is
Speaker 1: happiness how I feel when I take a step back
Speaker 1: and consider my life in general. If you ask me
Speaker 1: if I'm happy in a particularly stressful moment, like if
Speaker 1: I'm frustrated with my job, or my kids or my relationships,
Speaker 1: I might answer one way.
Speaker 2: Whereas if you ask me while I'm on.
Speaker 1: Vacation, sitting in a beach thinking about my life, I
Speaker 1: might answer a different way, not to mention. Sometimes there
Speaker 1: are trade offs in life. Sometimes you have to put
Speaker 1: up with unpleasant moments or do things we don't really
Speaker 1: want to do that might help us in the long run,
Speaker 1: like cleaning your COI lit Or exercising or most jobs
Speaker 1: for most people. Now, this is something scientists knew, but
Speaker 1: they didn't know quite what to do about it. Nobody
Speaker 1: had thought to think that houseone responds to the question
Speaker 1: are you happy? Depends on when you ask them the question.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying they never thought of it. I think
Speaker 3: people were certainly aware those things could be important, but
Speaker 3: we really lacked the ability to do it. So, Like
Speaker 3: this method of experience sampling that's really the cornerstone of
Speaker 3: my research, you know, was invented by a guy Mehi
Speaker 3: chicksit me Hai back in like the late nineteen seventies.
Speaker 3: But he did it with like radio pages clipped to
Speaker 3: someone's belt and then a little paper booklet they filled
Speaker 3: out when the beeper went off. Well you can study
Speaker 3: like eight people at a time. Later, there were you know,
Speaker 3: studies using like pomp pilot for those of us who
Speaker 3: are old enough to remember that technology. But literally before
Speaker 3: I started this project, I looked in you know, the
Speaker 3: flagship journals of the discipline of psychology, and they would
Speaker 3: have twenty studies that ever use experience sampling, and they
Speaker 3: would have ten or twenty people in them a most.
Speaker 3: You know, now I've had hundreds of thousands of people
Speaker 3: in the study, and you know, a gigantic number of
Speaker 3: variables too.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's get to how Doctor Killing Sports project works.
Speaker 1: If you go to track your Happiness dot org, you
Speaker 1: can sign up with your phone or your email, and
Speaker 1: once you sign up, you become part of the study.
Speaker 3: So you'll first answer some questions about your life, like
Speaker 3: your demographics and your personality and kind of your expectations
Speaker 3: of how you think you experienced different facets of life.
Speaker 3: And then from there, I really want to follow up
Speaker 3: in the course of daily life. So you know, maybe
Speaker 3: you did that on Monday, and now it's Tuesday. You're
Speaker 3: going to start getting some pings from me, some kind
Speaker 3: of notifications by email or SMS or or something else,
Speaker 3: and hopefully you'll answer one or a few surveys each day.
Speaker 3: So I might ask you questions like how do you
Speaker 3: feel right now, are you interacting with anyone else? Are
Speaker 3: you thinking about something other than what you're doing? You know,
Speaker 3: have you exercised in the last twenty four hours? A
Speaker 3: bunch of factors, And I'm basically taking the answers to
Speaker 3: all of those questions, combining with the signals on happiness,
Speaker 3: both in the moment happiness and these longer term measures
Speaker 3: of happiness, and trying to sort of figure out, well,
Speaker 3: what is the right equation for human happiness in general.
Speaker 1: So the big innovation here is that we all carry
Speaker 1: our phones with us all the time, and that gives
Speaker 1: doctor Killingsworth a chance to basically pop into your life
Speaker 1: and see how happy you are in any moment, because
Speaker 1: if someone were to ask you later, your answer might change,
Speaker 1: or you might not remember how you felt, or your
Speaker 1: memory might get distorted with time.
Speaker 3: You know, we all experience those things. We're kind of
Speaker 3: aware of what happening in the moment, but it's surprisingly
Speaker 3: hard later to remember what occurred. And that's why tracking
Speaker 3: and measuring are so powerful. So the sort of premise
Speaker 3: behind this is that if I can watch and see
Speaker 3: how happiness goes up and down during people's daily life
Speaker 3: across a whole bunch of different people and then put
Speaker 3: all that data together to try to understand what drivers
Speaker 3: of happiness might explain those shifts up and down. We
Speaker 3: might discover some new insights into what really makes the
Speaker 3: experience of human life better.
Speaker 1: And what makes people give you an answer at the time, Like,
Speaker 1: if I'm in the middle of a difficult moment or
Speaker 1: a super happy moment, why would I interrupt it and
Speaker 1: answer it.
Speaker 3: It's partly is that it's going to contribute to the
Speaker 3: quality of your insight into yourself. So if you're selective
Speaker 3: about when you choose to respond, you're going to end
Speaker 3: up with an incomplete picture of your own life. You're
Speaker 3: not going to understand what your best moments look like,
Speaker 3: what your worst moments look like, if you're kind of
Speaker 3: leaving those out. So it's not necessarily great for you.
Speaker 1: I feel like it requires a certain openness, But I imagine
Speaker 1: it could also be very therapeutic to kind of be
Speaker 1: open and to confide in your system.
Speaker 3: I think so, and I mean, honestly, I think there's
Speaker 3: real value in kind of the happiness report that people
Speaker 3: get back and seeing their data.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention when you sign out
Speaker 1: to be a part of the study. You also get
Speaker 1: a report on your daily happiness. Okay, when we come back,
Speaker 1: we're going to find out what doctor Killingsworth found in
Speaker 1: this study that, as he mentioned, hundreds of thousands of
Speaker 1: people from across the world have participated in. We're going
Speaker 1: to find out what affects your happiness the most, and
Speaker 1: we're going to find out if money is one of them.
Speaker 1: So stay with us, we'll be right back.
Speaker 2: Welcome back.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're answering the question what makes you happy? And
Speaker 1: so far we'fer from the scientists who's been running one
Speaker 1: of the largest and most unique studies on people's happiness
Speaker 1: ever done. The study, led by doctor Matt Killingsworth, thanks
Speaker 1: participants at random times during the day and ask them
Speaker 1: what they're doing, how they feel, and many other questions
Speaker 1: to try to get a sense of what happiness is
Speaker 1: and what are the factors that determine whether you're happy
Speaker 1: or not.
Speaker 3: It's at random times, and that's the idea. So you
Speaker 3: can kind of think of, you know, ordinary like political surveys,
Speaker 3: they're trying to get a representative sample of a population. Well,
Speaker 3: my job as a scientist is to get a representative
Speaker 3: sample of your moments, and so I'm gonna sort of
Speaker 3: ping you at a bunch of random moments, and you know,
Speaker 3: sometimes those will feel like odd times.
Speaker 1: So might be washing my dishes and I'll get a
Speaker 1: pink from you to ask me how I'm feeling. Or
Speaker 1: i might be in the middle of like a frustrating
Speaker 1: moment with my kids and I'll still get a pin
Speaker 1: from you.
Speaker 3: Exactly, It'll happen a bunch of times, and collectively that
Speaker 3: kind of gives us this representative series of snapshots of
Speaker 3: what do you actually do in your life, how do
Speaker 3: you spend your time, what are you thinking about, how
Speaker 3: do you feel, and lots of other factors.
Speaker 1: According to doctor Killingsworth, hundreds of thousands of people have
Speaker 1: signed up for the study over the years, generating a
Speaker 1: huge amount of data on basically how humans live their lives.
Speaker 1: So now the question is what does all this data
Speaker 1: tell you about happiness? Well, as it turns out, doctor
Speaker 1: Killingsworth has studied the data and he's identified several key
Speaker 1: factors seem to matter the most when it comes to
Speaker 1: your happiness. So at this point you have hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of people who have signed up for this So
Speaker 1: in your studies, What are the factors that contribute to
Speaker 1: people's happiness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'll tell you some big ones. One of the
Speaker 3: first ones that I published from this project was from
Speaker 3: a paper called The Wandering Mind is an Unhappy Mind,
Speaker 3: And so I just added this question that said, are
Speaker 3: you thinking about something other than what you're currently doing?
Speaker 3: And people could either say no, I'm just focused on
Speaker 3: the present moment on what I'm doing, or yes, I'm
Speaker 3: thinking about something else. And then I asked, if you
Speaker 3: are thinking about something else, are those thoughts pleasant, neutral,
Speaker 3: or unpleasant? And it turned out that people were engaging
Speaker 3: in mind wandering almost half the time, and that turns
Speaker 3: out to be very robustly correlated with lower happiness.
Speaker 1: Okay, the first thing doctor Killingsworth found when you pink
Speaker 1: people at random throughout their day is that many of
Speaker 1: us are not really living in the present. About half
Speaker 1: the time people were thinking about something other than what
Speaker 1: they were doing. And you find that the people that
Speaker 1: were distracted tended to be the people that also reported
Speaker 1: being unhappy, especially the ones that were distracted thinking about
Speaker 1: irrelevant or unpleasant things. In other words, living in the
Speaker 1: moment and not letting your mind wonder makes you happier.
Speaker 1: Half the time our mind is wondering, and when our
Speaker 1: mind is wonder it tends to pull down our experience exactly.
Speaker 3: Partly it's because some of the time we think about
Speaker 3: negative things, but I think it also impedes our ability
Speaker 3: to enjoy what we're doing. Like, you know, if we're
Speaker 3: having this conversation, like, the more the energy and attention
Speaker 3: I'm bringing to that, the more I'm probably going to
Speaker 3: enjoy it. If you kind of disengage and you're just
Speaker 3: kind of partially doing things, You're probably not going to
Speaker 3: enjoy it that much either.
Speaker 4: I see.
Speaker 1: There's something inherently pleasurable about being in the moment.
Speaker 3: That seems to be the case even when people are
Speaker 3: like cleaning their house, they're much happier when they're just
Speaker 3: focused on what they're doing than when they let their
Speaker 3: attention stray elsewhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so living in the moment is scientifically proven to
Speaker 1: make you happier. It's not just something taught by Buddhist Okay,
Speaker 1: what else did doctor Killingsworth find in all this data?
Speaker 1: All right, so what are some of the other factors
Speaker 1: you found?
Speaker 3: So things like what percentage of your life are you
Speaker 3: interacting in person with other humans.
Speaker 1: How social you're being in your life.
Speaker 3: How social you really are in person? Exactly. So someone
Speaker 3: that spends a lot of their leisure time really engaging
Speaker 3: with other people versus folks that get off work and
Speaker 3: they go and sit at home alone or you know,
Speaker 3: watching television or scrolling on their phone or something.
Speaker 1: Maybe explain to us for work some of the questions
Speaker 1: you would ask people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I might ask them are you talking or
Speaker 3: interacting with someone right now? And they could say yes
Speaker 3: or no? And I might say is that in person?
Speaker 3: Over video, over text? Which people are those? Friend, spouse, acquaintance, stranger, coworker, boss, child, grandparent,
Speaker 3: et cetera. So it turns out interacting in person with
Speaker 3: other people is really good.
Speaker 1: Wow. So the more you're interacting with people in person,
Speaker 1: greater the happiness in your life.
Speaker 3: That's right. So if you just look at different people's
Speaker 3: lives and say, you know, this person interacts ten percent
Speaker 3: of the time, this person as interacts forty percent, this
Speaker 3: person seventy percent, that percentage is also a very good
Speaker 3: predictor of how happy they tend to be. So you
Speaker 3: will be transiently happier relative to your own average moment
Speaker 3: when you're interacting versus not and the more you accumulate
Speaker 3: those moments, the better your life tends to be in
Speaker 3: terms of how you feel, in terms of how satisfied
Speaker 3: and fulfilled you are.
Speaker 1: Oh, I should tell that to my kids, my teenage
Speaker 1: son for sure.
Speaker 2: All right. The second big.
Speaker 1: Factor, like doctor Killingsworth found in all the data that
Speaker 1: affects your happiness is interacting with other people. Being social
Speaker 1: makes you happier, although there are a few caveats. This
Speaker 1: interaction has to be in person. Online doesn't count, and
Speaker 1: you have to really engage in it. You can't just
Speaker 1: sit at a party and be on your phone the
Speaker 1: whole time. Also, the context in which you interact with
Speaker 1: people matters. For example, talking with co workers at work helps,
Speaker 1: but not that much. Okay, And you said that kind
Speaker 1: of how we interact with those people in what context
Speaker 1: is important?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So during leisure time is when it seems to
Speaker 3: matter the most. So kind of in your free time,
Speaker 3: engaging with other people is especially beneficial. So like working
Speaker 3: on your own versus with other people, it's somewhat better
Speaker 3: with other people, but that's a smaller difference versus like
Speaker 3: going out and hanging out with your friends versus like
Speaker 3: sitting at home alone. That's extremely different.
Speaker 1: In other words, people who spend more time having meaningful
Speaker 1: interactions with other people on their free time in person
Speaker 1: tend to report being happier. Now, I think, I know
Speaker 1: what a lot of you out there are thinking right now.
Speaker 1: But does that mean introverts are a little unhappier?
Speaker 3: Introverts are a bit less happy? So I think my
Speaker 3: data also reveal a kind of trap, which is introverts
Speaker 3: think they don't benefit much, or some even think that
Speaker 3: they're harmed by interacting with other people. But that isn't
Speaker 3: actually the reality. The reality is, despite your best intuitions,
Speaker 3: speaking as an introvert myself, like, you would actually be
Speaker 3: happier if you went out and interacted with other people.
Speaker 1: Amazing, Yes, sorry, introverts, you would be a lot happier
Speaker 1: if you make the effort to talk to people for fun.
Speaker 1: Science says, so okay, And then there is a third
Speaker 1: big factor that doctor Kingsworth's found that has a huge
Speaker 1: impact on your happiness. So tell me what are some
Speaker 1: of the other factors.
Speaker 3: Then, yeah, so we talked about mental factors, we talked
Speaker 3: about social factors, another one or what I would call
Speaker 3: like physical factors. Particularly, the biggest one by far is
Speaker 3: just being physically active. The number of days of the
Speaker 3: week that someone is exercising is a surprisingly strong predictor
Speaker 3: of their level of happiness across all these different outcomes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sorry to you too, couch potatoes, but sitting around
Speaker 1: and doing nothing is also making you unhappy. The good
Speaker 1: news is that physical activity doesn't have to mean exercise,
Speaker 1: and it.
Speaker 3: Doesn't just have to be exercised simply like, the level
Speaker 3: of physical activation in your body is a very strong
Speaker 3: predictor of happiness. Being more physically in gauge in whatever
Speaker 3: is going on is a really good predictor of happiness.
Speaker 1: What do you mean physically engaged?
Speaker 3: Like? Literally, how energized is your body right now? Are
Speaker 3: you sitting down and not moving or are you standing
Speaker 3: up and moving around? Are you walking? Are you moving
Speaker 3: with energy? Kind of the more energy you're expending, the
Speaker 3: happier you tend to be.
Speaker 1: What what kinds of questions would you ask people in
Speaker 1: this case?
Speaker 3: I literally ask them at this moment, are you lying down, sitting, standing, walking, jogging, running,
Speaker 3: you know, being intensely physically active in some other way
Speaker 3: and there's basically just a straight line upward. The more
Speaker 3: they're kind of physically activated, the better they feel in
Speaker 3: the moment and in their lives.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: To wecap, these are the three main factors that affect
Speaker 1: your happiness, according to an analysis of data from hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of people that look into their daily lives
Speaker 1: and how they feel. Number one live in the moment,
Speaker 1: Number two have meaningful in person non work interactions with
Speaker 1: other people. And three stay physically active. Now, of course
Speaker 1: that's not the full picture of happiness, but as doctor
Speaker 1: Killyesworth says, focusing on these three things can go a
Speaker 1: long way to making you happier.
Speaker 3: So the way that I kind of think about those
Speaker 3: three factors, you know, there's so many other things going
Speaker 3: on with happiness. It's not like this is the total story,
Speaker 3: but I think it's a set of things that's pretty important.
Speaker 3: You can kind of think about a happy life as
Speaker 3: a function of being like mentally engaged, socially engaged, and
Speaker 3: physically engaged, sort of a life of engagement across those
Speaker 3: sort of three pillars. If you're doing pretty well and
Speaker 3: all three of those things, you're doing really well, And
Speaker 3: if you're really not doing very well in all of
Speaker 3: those things.
Speaker 2: You know, you're.
Speaker 3: Probably not doing so great. Like that doesn't get us
Speaker 3: all the way from the most miserable person to the
Speaker 3: most happy person. But that's going to be a big
Speaker 3: set of exponatory factors. Again my data correlation, but I
Speaker 3: think it seems likely that if you're able to kind
Speaker 3: of flip those levers in your life, that would make
Speaker 3: a big difference in your happiness.
Speaker 1: All right, when we come back, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: to a neuroscientist to learn what he thinks about all
Speaker 1: of this and what exactly is going on inside of
Speaker 1: a happy brain. Stay with us, you're listening to sign
Speaker 1: stuff and we're back. We're answering the question what really
Speaker 1: makes us happy? And we learn there are three factors
Speaker 1: that have a big impact on how happy we are,
Speaker 1: living in the present, having in person interactions with other people,
Speaker 1: and staying physically active.
Speaker 2: So is that it okay?
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask doctor Killingsworth more about what these
Speaker 1: other factors are, including the ageless question of whether money
Speaker 1: makes us happy. But first I wanted to check in
Speaker 1: with my friend, neuroscientist Duane Godwin. I wrote a book
Speaker 1: called Out of your Mind, in which we talk about
Speaker 1: the brain science of everyday phenomena, including what makes us happy.
Speaker 1: Here's my conversation with doctor Godwin. So, first question, Dwayne,
Speaker 1: are you happy?
Speaker 4: Well? You know, Hora, that's a complicated question, but I'm
Speaker 4: doing well and my cork is floating.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, are you happy that you finally are
Speaker 1: regular on my podcast?
Speaker 4: Yeah? I'm just scared that somehow I'll destroy your ratings,
Speaker 4: but otherwise I'm pretty happy to be here.
Speaker 1: How do we think of happiness in terms of how
Speaker 1: the brain works?
Speaker 4: Well, when I think about happiness and the things that
Speaker 4: contribute to happiness, I think about a number of different
Speaker 4: areas of the brain. The first, everyone talks about your
Speaker 4: brain's pleasure circuitry, So aart of that has to do
Speaker 4: with release of dopamine and the perception and feeling of
Speaker 4: pleasure you get when that happens. But this idea of
Speaker 4: happiness a little more complicated because that has to do
Speaker 4: with your assessment that you make about how content you
Speaker 4: are about your life. And when we talk about those,
Speaker 4: we then have to bring in your frontal lobes, because
Speaker 4: that's the place where what is good, what feels good,
Speaker 4: what is emotionally satisfying or calculated, and that information then
Speaker 4: feeds back into this pleasure circuitry and affects your sense
Speaker 4: of well being.
Speaker 1: Right what doctor Godwin is saying is that there is
Speaker 1: a part of your brain that basically makes you feel good,
Speaker 1: and that can be activated by what we're doing in
Speaker 1: the moment, if you're eating a good meal, if you're
Speaker 1: having a positive interaction with someone, or if you're having
Speaker 1: a good workout, but it can also be activated by
Speaker 1: your own thoughts and you use the front part of
Speaker 1: your brain to step back and assess your life and
Speaker 1: what's going on, that can also trigger the brain areas
Speaker 1: that make you feel good, and that has big implications
Speaker 1: for our happiness. First of all, it means that what
Speaker 1: you think, and more important, how you think about the
Speaker 1: things that are going on in your life can affect
Speaker 1: how you feel or how happy you are. We'll talk
Speaker 1: more about things like stoicism and cognitive therapy a little later,
Speaker 1: but the fact that happiness is rooted in the brain
Speaker 1: means that how easy it is to be happy can
Speaker 1: change from person to person.
Speaker 4: You know, there is a certain baseline level of happiness
Speaker 4: that can be attributed to just how genetically predisposed you
Speaker 4: are to feeling happy. And what we know about genes
Speaker 4: is that genes become proteins. Proteins become the structure of
Speaker 4: the brain, and the structure of the brain houses the
Speaker 4: activity of the brain. So it's not a very hard
Speaker 4: line to draw between a genetic predisposition and the actual
Speaker 4: activity that generates these complex emotional states.
Speaker 1: In other words, some brains might be happier than others,
Speaker 1: and this is all because of genetics. How do genetics
Speaker 1: affect our ability to be happy?
Speaker 4: Sure? You know. One of the studies that we do
Speaker 4: cover in some detail in the book is the study
Speaker 4: of the Minnesota Twins. And when I say Minnesota Twins,
Speaker 4: I don't mean the baseball team. I mean an enormous
Speaker 4: study of twins that followed identical twins who have been
Speaker 4: raised apart. It was really kind of a natural experiment
Speaker 4: in the question of whether happiness is hardwired. One example
Speaker 4: of this involved twins that were separated at birth, who,
Speaker 4: despite the fact that they never met each other, they
Speaker 4: both reported similar levels of happiness, their optimism, and even
Speaker 4: overall life satisfaction.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is a pretty cool study. Starting in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine, psychologist at the University of Minnesota were able
Speaker 1: to survey over one hundred sets of twins that were
Speaker 1: separated at birth. These are twins that were born together,
Speaker 1: but for some reason we're split apart and raised under
Speaker 1: different circumstances. Have you seen the movie The Trapp or
Speaker 1: heard the story The Prince and the Popper. These are
Speaker 1: real life examples of those stories. It's almost like the
Speaker 1: perfect experiment, right, Like if you had a copy of yourself,
Speaker 1: which is what identical twin is, and you had one
Speaker 1: of you lead one kind of life and the other
Speaker 1: lead another kind of life, and then you check them
Speaker 1: with yourself and your twin later. You could see whether
Speaker 1: life affects your happiness or whether it's something sort of
Speaker 1: inherent to your genes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in a way, it's like the perfect experiment because
Speaker 4: you can of count for a lot of the other
Speaker 4: confounds and variability that happens in a life.
Speaker 1: All right, But here is a super cool part of
Speaker 1: the experiment. The scientist didn't just look at identical twins
Speaker 1: that were separated at birth. They also looked at for
Speaker 1: eternal twins that were separated at birth. That is, twins
Speaker 1: that are basically just siblings and not genetically identical. So
Speaker 1: they looked at genetically identical twins basically clones were separated
Speaker 1: at birth, and they looked at non genetically identical twins
Speaker 1: that were also separated at birth, which is like the
Speaker 1: perfect control. Now, the scientists looked into all kinds of
Speaker 1: things about these twins, what their personalities ended up being,
Speaker 1: how smart they are, what kind of jobs they had,
Speaker 1: and they also asked them basically how happy they were
Speaker 1: and what did they find.
Speaker 4: What they found was the fifty percent of the areas
Speaker 4: and their baseline level of happiness could be attributed to
Speaker 4: genetic factors.
Speaker 1: Then, how much of their happiness was correlated with being
Speaker 1: fans of the Minnesota Twins?
Speaker 4: Possibly?
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how they've they've been doing,
Speaker 1: but it sounds like something that might affect your happiness. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think the major idea here is that twins studies
Speaker 4: provide a really important natural experiment.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: What they found was that sets of identical twins would
Speaker 1: sort of both report being the same level of happiness
Speaker 1: even though they were raised apart, but the fraternal twins
Speaker 1: the non identical ones wouldn't always be the same It's
Speaker 1: like if you had a clone that led a totally
Speaker 1: different life than you, and that clone was happy, chances
Speaker 1: are that you would be happy too, Or if your
Speaker 1: clone was unhappy, you would probably be unhappy as well.
Speaker 1: In other words, about fifty percent of how happy you are,
Speaker 1: the scientists found, is due to your genes. That is,
Speaker 1: some people are just born to be a little happier
Speaker 1: than others. Now, the thing to note here is that
Speaker 1: this means some of your happiness is already determined for you,
Speaker 1: but it also means a lot of it is not.
Speaker 4: But you know, I think the other thing that's really
Speaker 4: important about this is you could look at that and say,
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, I really don't have control of how
Speaker 4: happy I am. But I think that's the wrong way
Speaker 4: to think about it. I think the correct way to
Speaker 4: think about it is that, hey, you've got fifty percent
Speaker 4: to play with. You know that other half of it
Speaker 4: is really stuff that's under your control, circumstances that you
Speaker 4: know you may have say over.
Speaker 1: Okay, I still have a lot of questions about happiness,
Speaker 1: questions like how does having a purpose in life affect
Speaker 1: your happiness? Or how important is money? And how happy
Speaker 1: you feel and it's being on your phone all day
Speaker 1: making you unhappy. We're going to tackle all these questions
Speaker 1: in the second part of this series, so make sure
Speaker 1: you subscribe and listen to the second episode next week.
Speaker 1: Here's a sneak peak.
Speaker 3: So if you go back to kind of the state
Speaker 3: of the scientific literature, the kind of common narrative amongst
Speaker 3: happiness researchers is that money doesn't really matter very much
Speaker 3: for happiness. I think we actually got that kind of.
Speaker 1: Wrong, all right, Tune in next week for part two
Speaker 1: of What Really makes This Happy?
Speaker 2: See then you've been listening to Science Stuff production.
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