Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hello and welcome to a special edition of the
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab podcast. I hope all my listeners who celebrate
Speaker 1: had a happy Thanksgiving. But the day I really look
Speaker 1: forward to each November is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Forget
Speaker 1: Black Friday and Cyber Monday, my holiday of choice is
Speaker 1: Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is the global holiday of charitable
Speaker 1: giving that falls right in the midst of our shopping frenzy,
Speaker 1: a day that's not about commerce but compassion. Here at
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab, we tend to make a big deal
Speaker 1: out of Giving Tuesday. Every year, we share a special
Speaker 1: episode that explores why doing good for others is super
Speaker 1: good for our own happiness. We also like to give
Speaker 1: our listeners a chance to team up and donate to
Speaker 1: a charitable cause that really does good in the world.
Speaker 1: For the past few years, that charity has been given Directly,
Speaker 1: a nonprofit that takes your cash and gives it directly
Speaker 1: to people in extreme poverty to spend as they see fit.
Speaker 1: But this year we are going even bigger. We're bringing
Speaker 1: together the fans of some of my favorite podcasts to
Speaker 1: raise even more money to fight poverty. Think ten Percent
Speaker 1: Happier with Dan Harris on Purpose with Jayshetty, Revisionist History,
Speaker 1: Hidden Brain, How to Be a Better Human, and dozens more.
Speaker 1: The campaign even has its own hashtag, Pods Fight Poverty.
Speaker 1: Pods Fight Poverty is trying to raise a million dollars
Speaker 1: this year, enough money to lift several villages in Rwanda
Speaker 1: out of extreme poverty. If you want to help, had
Speaker 1: to give directly dot org slash happiness Lab. To donate
Speaker 1: what you can, let's GiveDirectly dot org slash happiness Lab.
Speaker 1: If you're a fan of this show, you've probably already
Speaker 1: heard about the great things GiB directly can do with
Speaker 1: a small donation from a listener like you. Take the
Speaker 1: great work we did earlier this year in collaboration with
Speaker 1: author and YouTube star John Green, John and I asked
Speaker 1: you to partner up with GiB direct to tackle the
Speaker 1: deadly disease tuberculosis.
Speaker 2: Tuberculosis is an airborne disease that usually affects the lungs.
Speaker 2: If left untreated, tuberculosis usually does result in death. Fortunately,
Speaker 2: since the nineteen fifties, we've had a cure for tuberculosis.
Speaker 2: It's a bacterial infection, so the curious antibiotics given every
Speaker 2: day over four to six months.
Speaker 1: The problem is that many people with TB live in
Speaker 1: parts of the world where they can't afford these life
Speaker 1: saving drugs. So John and I asked our listeners to
Speaker 1: help out. With lots of small donations of five or
Speaker 1: ten bucks, we raised over one hundred thousand dollars to
Speaker 1: fight this disease. That's incredible, right, But what's even more
Speaker 1: incredible are the stories we heard about what this money
Speaker 1: did for people living with the disease. Take one recipient, Margaret,
Speaker 1: a thirty year old TB patient living in Malawi. Margaret's
Speaker 1: TB could have easily been cured with a simple antibiotic,
Speaker 1: but lacking the resources to get treatment, she eventually got
Speaker 1: sicker and sicker. That is until she received the cash
Speaker 1: donation we provided through gibdirectly. With that small amount of money,
Speaker 1: she was able to pay for the bicycle taxi she
Speaker 1: needed to travel to a far off clinic where she
Speaker 1: was able to finally start her drug treatment. I was
Speaker 1: overjoyed when I received the cash transfer, Margaret wrote in
Speaker 1: her thank you letter to our listeners. It felt like
Speaker 1: my life had been given a second chance. I have
Speaker 1: hope again. Months later, I still think back to Margaret's story.
Speaker 1: Whenever I'm having a crappy day, taking a moment to
Speaker 1: remember what the five or ten bucks we collectively shared
Speaker 1: did not just for Margaret, but for hundreds of other
Speaker 1: people who were struggling. That feels amazing, Probably more amazing
Speaker 1: than any material gift I'll be getting this holiday season.
Speaker 1: That good feeling is what the rest of this episode
Speaker 1: is about. With the help of some amazing fellow podcasters,
Speaker 1: I'm going to explore the enormous psychological power of giving
Speaker 1: and receiving. We'll see how small acts of kindness, a
Speaker 1: spare bit of cash, or a tiny gesture of care
Speaker 1: can create huge ripples in a person's life. I want
Speaker 1: these stories to serve as a reminder for something lying
Speaker 1: minds often forget that a great way to treat ourselves
Speaker 1: is to do a small bit of good for somebody else.
Speaker 1: To kick off these stories of how doing good can
Speaker 1: make us feel good, let's look at how receiving an
Speaker 1: act of kindness can change us. And we'll do that
Speaker 1: with my first esteemed podcast host guest.
Speaker 3: Hi, my name's Tim Harford, and I am the host
Speaker 3: of Cautionary Tales.
Speaker 1: Tim is a respected journalist and economist, but his story
Speaker 1: of being the recipient of kindness goes back to a
Speaker 1: time before he found fame working for the BBC or
Speaker 1: hosting cautionary tales.
Speaker 3: This story took place nearly a quarter of a century ago.
Speaker 3: I was visiting a friend in Cameroon, which is in
Speaker 3: West Africa, very poor part of the world. I was
Speaker 3: in my mid twenties, and I was on edge because
Speaker 3: you Cameroon was at the time rated as one of
Speaker 3: the most corrupt countries in the world, and corrupt or not,
Speaker 3: people there were often really desperate. As a tourist feel
Speaker 3: like you're a target, and so I was always on
Speaker 3: the lookout. I had just had this sort of suspicion.
Speaker 3: I went around my travels around Cameroon. I had a
Speaker 3: great time, was treated wonderfully by everybody I met, but
Speaker 3: I never lost that feeling of you need to be careful.
Speaker 3: Then one day I was standing by the roadside in
Speaker 3: a smallish town called the Menda with a couple of
Speaker 3: western friends, and I think we were waiting for a bus,
Speaker 3: just bought some egg and chips. We're having a good time,
Speaker 3: and we've just walked across country several miles on this
Speaker 3: dust road, and as we're waiting, a couple of guys
Speaker 3: zoom up behind us on a motorbike. Two guys on
Speaker 3: one motorbike. I turned around, expecting some threat, and they
Speaker 3: stopped right in front of me and one of them
Speaker 3: just hands me something and I looked down at it
Speaker 3: is this, and it's a passport. In fact, it's my passport.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm completely bewildered. Why is this guy giving
Speaker 3: me my own passport? And of course I realized what's
Speaker 3: happened is the passport was in my back pocket and
Speaker 3: I've sat down by the roadside miles back and the
Speaker 3: passport must have fallen out, and these guys have driven
Speaker 3: along this road on the motorbike. They've spotted a British passport,
Speaker 3: and they have gone all the way down the road
Speaker 3: looking for the first guy they see who looks British,
Speaker 3: which is me. They even got my photo with my passport,
Speaker 3: and the amazing thing was they handed it over and
Speaker 3: then they just drove off. They weren't They didn't sort
Speaker 3: of stand around waiting for a tip or reward or
Speaker 3: even really a thank so it was just you know,
Speaker 3: there you go. I thought you might need this, and
Speaker 3: off they went, and I realized that this suspicion which
Speaker 3: with which I've been viewing everybody, had been so much
Speaker 3: the opposite of how these guys had actually behaved. I mean,
Speaker 3: I would have been even more grateful if I had
Speaker 3: had a moment to realize they even had a problem,
Speaker 3: because if I had been stuck in Cameroon without my passport,
Speaker 3: that's a big problem that's going to cause me a
Speaker 3: lot of headaches. But they had solved the problem before
Speaker 3: I even realized they'd solved the problem. They had completely
Speaker 3: defied my rather uncharitable expectations of the people of Cameroon,
Speaker 3: and they're driven off into the sunset without even waiting
Speaker 3: for a thank you.
Speaker 1: It also seems like they did a lot of work,
Speaker 1: Like it sounds like they were like chasing you as
Speaker 1: you're walking around all through the day to try to
Speaker 1: find you too.
Speaker 3: Probably they came a couple of miles on the motorbike.
Speaker 3: I mean it was probably ten or fifteen minutes. Maybe
Speaker 3: I don't know at all really how much work they did,
Speaker 3: But all I know is that they did it, And
Speaker 3: they could easily have taken that passport and thought, well,
Speaker 3: maybe maybe we can turn this into cash somehow, or
Speaker 3: even just maybe we can try and get a tip
Speaker 3: out of this guy.
Speaker 1: Or just left it on the ground, like oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know this guy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, there's someone else's problem. Yeah, just ignored it.
Speaker 3: But they didn't that story.
Speaker 1: But it also points out how like so many of
Speaker 1: our societies are probably much more high trust societies than
Speaker 1: we assume. Like so many people are out there doing
Speaker 1: better things that we think, but I think we have
Speaker 1: minds that assume people are kind of mistrusting. I actually, unfortunately, Tim,
Speaker 1: I actually blame the economists on this a little bit
Speaker 1: because I feel like, at least.
Speaker 3: All fine, yeah, sure we kick the economists.
Speaker 1: I mean, at least the standard economists have been telling
Speaker 1: us for a long time that you know, we are
Speaker 1: home economic as we are these selfish beings who are
Speaker 1: going to go out.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: So maybe the folks who returned your passport would do
Speaker 1: it if they thought they could get you know, some
Speaker 1: cash off you, or they you know, maybe they get
Speaker 1: some huge reputational benefits. Someone saw them do it and
Speaker 1: that you know, now they kind of like praising them
Speaker 1: and so on. But they wouldn't just do it, just
Speaker 1: for the good of doing it well, I mean, let.
Speaker 3: Me push back a little bit. Let me push back
Speaker 3: a little bit and defend my fellow economists. So the
Speaker 3: classic economic model, all it says is that people have
Speaker 3: consistent preferences, and it's kind of convenient to assume that
Speaker 3: those preferences are about consumption, Like you're trying to spend
Speaker 3: as little money as possible and get as much stuff
Speaker 3: as possible for that money. It doesn't have to be
Speaker 3: you could and I've I've seen some beautiful economic models
Speaker 3: written where actually, my pleasure is completely dependent on your pleasure, Laurie,
Speaker 3: Like the happier I can just see the glow in
Speaker 3: your eyes. I know how happy you are, and the
Speaker 3: happier you are, the happier that makes me. There's nothing
Speaker 3: in conventional economics that makes that impossible. We tend not
Speaker 3: to make that assumption because it's kind of why would you,
Speaker 3: And so we simplify and we talk about the purchase
Speaker 3: of goods and services and we ignore the altruistic bit.
Speaker 3: There's nothing in classical economics that says people can't be altruistic.
Speaker 3: We I think just haven't paid enough attention to that possibility.
Speaker 3: And because we don't pay attention to the possibility. We
Speaker 3: just set it to one side.
Speaker 1: Are you surprised that we don't think of kind actions
Speaker 1: as as valuable as impactful as they often are?
Speaker 3: If I can just be a kind of amateur evolutionary
Speaker 3: psychologist for a moment, I suppose you might naturally think
Speaker 3: that we had evolved to be a little bit more
Speaker 3: suspicious of people, particularly of strangers, because you know, it's
Speaker 3: bad to have someone take advantage of you. But actually,
Speaker 3: of course we evolved to be to be social beings,
Speaker 3: and maybe we shouldn't be so surprised that people often
Speaker 3: behave kindly to each other. I mean, I am aware
Speaker 3: of some research in psychology. All know this kind of
Speaker 3: work better than me, Laurie, But we often failed to generalize,
Speaker 3: Like we think, oh, if I found a wallet with
Speaker 3: like a driving license in it, then you know I'd
Speaker 3: contact the owner or I'd hand it into the police station. Yeah,
Speaker 3: of course That's what I'd do. But then you ask people,
Speaker 3: You ask if other people would do that, and we think, oh, no,
Speaker 3: other people would wouldn't do that. And it's not like
Speaker 3: we think we're better than other people. It's just that
Speaker 3: the two questions don't even overlap. It's almost as that
Speaker 3: we've got a different circuit in our brain reflecting on
Speaker 3: how we would behave or reflecting on how we think
Speaker 3: somebody else will behave.
Speaker 1: And this is a challenge for the organization that we've
Speaker 1: been working with give directly. Their philosophy is like, we're
Speaker 1: just going to give people money directly and let them
Speaker 1: do with it what they want. That people in need
Speaker 1: have the best ideas about how to spend their money
Speaker 1: to make their situation better. But a lot of the
Speaker 1: folks who are thinking about giving to give directly often
Speaker 1: have the following problem, which is like, are people really
Speaker 1: going to know what to do with the money? Are
Speaker 1: they going to do something bad? Are they going to
Speaker 1: buy something frivolous or something like that. It seems like
Speaker 1: people just don't trust people to make the best decisions,
Speaker 1: And I feel like this is part of the same
Speaker 1: kind of bias we have as undercover economists. How do
Speaker 1: you think of this bias and where what are we
Speaker 1: doing wrong?
Speaker 3: Give the economists some credit. We definitely trust people to
Speaker 3: make decisions in their own interests. There are cases where
Speaker 3: you might go, look, the money is only useful if
Speaker 3: it's coordinated, So actually, what this village really needs is
Speaker 3: a bridge or a well. But in general, people are
Speaker 3: going to be good stewards of their own money, and
Speaker 3: they're going to be good judges of how to spend
Speaker 3: that money because there's so much they know about their situation,
Speaker 3: about the context, and about their own ambitions that nobody
Speaker 3: else can know. And if you give them money, then
Speaker 3: you're putting them in the best possible position to take
Speaker 3: advantage of their own context and to fulfill their own ambitions.
Speaker 3: We're sort of trained to believe that if somebody really
Speaker 3: needs a handout, that must be because they lack judgment,
Speaker 3: that they have made many poor decisions in the past,
Speaker 3: otherwise they wouldn't need a handout. But in somewhere like Cameroon,
Speaker 3: it's definitely not true. There are lots and lots of
Speaker 3: people in really difficult situations in many countries in the world,
Speaker 3: and absolutely not because of any bad decisions that they
Speaker 3: themselves have made. So I think we need to shake
Speaker 3: off this idea that if someone needs if someone needs
Speaker 3: a handout, then by definition they can't be trusted with
Speaker 3: the handout. We've kind we've got to break out of
Speaker 3: that because that's just nonsense.
Speaker 1: So even an economist says that giving is good for us.
Speaker 1: If you want to put that advice into effect right away,
Speaker 1: then consider giving to the Pods Fight Poverty campaign, Just
Speaker 1: go to Give Directly or slash Happiness Lab. The next
Speaker 1: podcaster to share a story on the power of giving
Speaker 1: is an old friend of the show.
Speaker 4: First of all, it's great to see you again.
Speaker 1: A minute and hes yeah. Army veteran JR. Martinez was
Speaker 1: badly wounded in Iraq when the humpy he was driving
Speaker 1: hit a roadside bomb. Forced to end his military service, Jr.
Speaker 1: Entered a dark chapter, but he eventually fought back, building
Speaker 1: a series of new careers, first as a TV actor,
Speaker 1: then as a Dancing with the Stars champion, and finally
Speaker 1: as the host of the inspiring podcast Medal of Honor. Jr.
Speaker 1: Is a big fan of giving back. He's done an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of service for the veteran community. But today
Speaker 1: he asked to share a story not of giving, but
Speaker 1: of receiving, specifically of receiving a life changing gift that
Speaker 1: he didn't even know he needed.
Speaker 5: In two thousand and nine, I was asked to do
Speaker 5: the auction for a veteran's golf outing and it was
Speaker 5: going to benefit a nonprofit set up to help you know,
Speaker 5: service members and their families. And immediately I was like,
Speaker 5: of course, now I'm not an auctioneer, but I'm sure
Speaker 5: I'll get up there and you know, try to do
Speaker 5: my best. And I was like, well, what are some
Speaker 5: of the auction items? And they said this, this, this, this,
Speaker 5: and a puppy And so they bring out the puppy.
Speaker 5: He's eight weeks old black lab and I hold him
Speaker 5: and I feel this like connection. I'm financially going through
Speaker 5: my budget as a you know, twenty seven year old
Speaker 5: of like, how much could I bid on this puppy?
Speaker 5: The max was like I could probably do like six
Speaker 5: hundred bucks, like that's the absolute max. So we get
Speaker 5: there and immediately like that number has surpassed, Like it
Speaker 5: We're not sex hundred. That number has moved on. And
Speaker 5: so I'm holding the next auction item, this quilt, and
Speaker 5: I'm ready to move it along, and a lady raises
Speaker 5: her hand that bitted on the dog and says, may
Speaker 5: I say something? So we're like, of course, So she
Speaker 5: comes up to the state. She says, we love animals,
Speaker 5: we love dogs. We love this dog, we love this cause,
Speaker 5: but unfortunately we have you know, pets at home, so
Speaker 5: there's no room for this sweet dog at our house.
Speaker 4: And she says, so we.
Speaker 5: Want to give them give him to j R. And
Speaker 5: I'm like that quill, like I'm just like now using
Speaker 5: it to like wipe all the tears and the snot
Speaker 5: and everything.
Speaker 1: And I'm in shock.
Speaker 5: I was still going through my stages of you know,
Speaker 5: like I was mad and I was navigating a lot
Speaker 5: of emotional things and they give him to me and
Speaker 5: I take him home and Laurie, I mean, he helped
Speaker 5: me heal and he was my he was my companion
Speaker 5: in all these stages of life that I navigated, and
Speaker 5: I'm just forever like grateful And every time I would
Speaker 5: see the couple that that did that gesture for me,
Speaker 5: I mean, as you can imagine, I always felt forever
Speaker 5: indebted to them because of you know, what they gave
Speaker 5: to me and the gift they gave to me. And
Speaker 5: when he passed, it was one of the hardest things
Speaker 5: that I've experienced in my life.
Speaker 1: What was his name, Romeo?
Speaker 5: And I remember like I named him Warrior because I
Speaker 5: was like, well, it's for wounded warriors. You know, this
Speaker 5: is the you know, the mid twenties kid, you know
Speaker 5: guy naming the dog, you know, And I was like, warrior, Yeah,
Speaker 5: you're a warrior. Then I was like, what am I
Speaker 5: going to call you for?
Speaker 1: Short war?
Speaker 5: And I was like, well, I don't know. I started
Speaker 5: noticing this pattern where people would see him and they
Speaker 5: would just like gravitate to him, and I was like, ah,
Speaker 5: you're no warrior, You're a Romeo. And every time I
Speaker 5: would look at him, no matter what stage of life
Speaker 5: that I was in, his look just always reminded me
Speaker 5: to just be just to be present, just to be
Speaker 5: with him, just to be with the environment. Can't tell
Speaker 5: you how many times I would take him to the
Speaker 5: park and we would just sit at the park, just
Speaker 5: he and I.
Speaker 1: It also seemed like you didn't realize at that moment
Speaker 1: that you really needed this kind gift, but then when
Speaker 1: it came in your life, it really changed it.
Speaker 5: I had no clue. I had absolutely no clue that
Speaker 5: this is what I needed. As much as I was
Speaker 5: sitting here budgeting like how much can I realistically afford
Speaker 5: to bid on this dog? I was then thinking about
Speaker 5: my life is busy, I can't have a dog right now,
Speaker 5: Like who's going to watch the dog for me when
Speaker 5: I'm when I have to travel? There were all these
Speaker 5: reasons why I also couldn't have one, and then the
Speaker 5: universe said, this is what you need and gave it
Speaker 5: to me. And guess what I figured it out.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how much folks ended up
Speaker 1: spending on Romeo. It was clearly more than your six
Speaker 1: hundred bucks that you're going to spend, you know, But
Speaker 1: my guess is, whatever they spent, it actually wasn't as
Speaker 1: much as you wound up getting out of Romeo. Like
Speaker 1: the act of doing something nice for somebody has these
Speaker 1: like incredible returns, like this huge return on investment that
Speaker 1: we just don't often realize.
Speaker 4: One hundred percent.
Speaker 5: If Romeo was here today and someone offered five hundred
Speaker 5: times more than what they spent, when I take it,
Speaker 5: absolutely not, absolutely not. There is no price that I
Speaker 5: can put on that gesture of what they did for me.
Speaker 5: That's the place we got to operate from. Do give,
Speaker 5: even if we never necessarily get to understand the full
Speaker 5: impact that it had.
Speaker 1: And if you want to follow Jr's advice to do
Speaker 1: and to give then here's the url where you can
Speaker 1: donate to the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. It's GiveDirectly dot
Speaker 1: org slash Happiness Lab. It's time for a quick break,
Speaker 1: but we'll return with the story of a world famous
Speaker 1: author who carries cash for strangers in need and a
Speaker 1: scientist who has seen the first hand benefits of an
Speaker 1: unexpectedly kind word. The Happiness Lab special episode on the
Speaker 1: power of giving will return in a moment. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to the Happiness Lab Special Giving Tuesday episode. In the
Speaker 1: spirit of my favorite charitable holiday, I'm chatting with my
Speaker 1: favorite podcasters about their personal stories of generosity. Our goal
Speaker 1: is to remind you that one of the quickest ways
Speaker 1: to feel happier yourself is to give a little happiness
Speaker 1: back to somebody else. Next up, we have Michael Lewis.
Speaker 1: I'm best selling author of Moneyball and The blind Side
Speaker 1: and host of the award winning podcast Against the Rules.
Speaker 1: Michael wanted to share a new strategy he's been using
Speaker 1: to make it as easy as possible for him to
Speaker 1: do good for people in need.
Speaker 6: I made a.
Speaker 7: Decision to always carry a bunch of ten dollars bills
Speaker 7: with me so that if I see anybody who asked
Speaker 7: me for money, I just automatically give them ten dollars
Speaker 7: people on the streets.
Speaker 1: So I started doing it, and so how does it feel?
Speaker 7: So it is completely true that when you give something
Speaker 7: to someone else you feel good.
Speaker 3: Totally feels good.
Speaker 7: But years ago, when I was working on the blind
Speaker 7: Side the Christian family, the dad and the family said
Speaker 7: to me something in passing about giving that I've never
Speaker 7: been able to get out of my head. When I
Speaker 7: hit a little bump in my mind about giving, it's
Speaker 7: a touchdown for me, and it's if it doesn't hurt
Speaker 7: a little bit, you haven't given enough. I thought that
Speaker 7: was a cool idea. And so you know, it's not
Speaker 7: a natural act just to hand money over people. It
Speaker 7: hurts the tiny bit. So that also is a reassuring feeling.
Speaker 1: I bet each of those ten dollars bills that you
Speaker 1: gave away, the benefit that came to you was way
Speaker 1: more than ten bucks that you would have blown on
Speaker 1: like two lattes or something silly.
Speaker 7: So this has only been gone on for a couple months,
Speaker 7: So this only happened like five times. But I'm gonna
Speaker 7: try to make this a habit forever, just because I
Speaker 7: think it will change my relationship to just people on
Speaker 7: the streets. Yeah, I don't mean people who are homeless.
Speaker 8: I've just been like everybody around you, because especially like
Speaker 8: if you're in a city, you kind of go through
Speaker 8: the world waiting for someone to ask you for something,
Speaker 8: and you have all those defenses up, and so those
Speaker 8: defenses don't just operate against the people who are asking
Speaker 8: you for money, they operate against everything. They're the enemy
Speaker 8: of moving through the world in a good way, in
Speaker 8: an open way.
Speaker 1: So it opens up things a little bit. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love this advice because it's so nicely tied to the
Speaker 1: type of thing that we're doing. Would give directly, right, Like,
Speaker 1: their whole deal is that they just give these cash transfers,
Speaker 1: no questions asked, And the act of doing that means
Speaker 1: you're not kind of thinking in ways where you're being
Speaker 1: mistrustful and kind of like analyzing people. Like, first of all,
Speaker 1: it's just like too much cognitive load of like, well,
Speaker 1: what is this money going to go to? Is it
Speaker 1: going to go to something good or whatever? But more
Speaker 1: than the cognitive load, you just wind up thinking all
Speaker 1: these bad theories about your fellow humans, right, Like they're
Speaker 1: going to spend this on something terrible. They're gonna use
Speaker 1: drugs or something like that. So just committing like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to give them money. I'm going to
Speaker 1: trust that other people have good intentions of what they're
Speaker 1: going to do with it. First of all, you get
Speaker 1: the benefit that you get from giving, but also beyond that,
Speaker 1: you don't have all this like yucky mistrust that comes
Speaker 1: with like wondering what someone who's going to do with
Speaker 1: the money. It's just like is a wonderful like cognitive
Speaker 1: load reducer and like negative social contagion reducer. Correct. All correct.
Speaker 8: So we'll see if I persist in this.
Speaker 7: But this has been a little giving wrinkle in my life.
Speaker 1: I hope Michael's tiny wrinkle grows into a big ridge,
Speaker 1: a subtle shift that turns into real positive change for
Speaker 1: Michael and for anyone feeling a little inspired by his
Speaker 1: new giving tactic. And if you're a feeling newly inspired
Speaker 1: to make a difference, you're a luck because you can
Speaker 1: take part in our Pods Fight Poverty campaign right now.
Speaker 1: Just had to give directly dot org slash Happiness lab
Speaker 1: to give what you can. Next up is a story
Speaker 1: of kindness from one of my former Yale students, a
Speaker 1: fellow psychologist who was also the host of an award
Speaker 1: winning podcast, plus is one of my dear friends.
Speaker 6: Hey, I'm doctor Mayah Schunker and I'm the host of
Speaker 6: A slight Change of Plans.
Speaker 1: And so, Maya, what's your story of unexpected benefits of kindness?
Speaker 6: My moment is actually one from elementary school.
Speaker 1: So we're going way back for this one.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we're going all the way back. I was bullied
Speaker 6: a lot as a kid.
Speaker 1: And wait, really, I'm surprised by this. Somehow I didn't
Speaker 1: know this about you.
Speaker 6: Oh my gosh, Oh my god, so many tears, so
Speaker 6: much anxiety.
Speaker 1: Wait, who was your worst bully? Mine was? I won't
Speaker 1: say her name, I'll say it was Jessica t She
Speaker 1: was terrible.
Speaker 6: Jacqueline Callen Lindsay it was a trio and Carly too.
Speaker 6: But these were girls in my neighborhood that weren't super
Speaker 6: nice to me, and it was really hard. At the time,
Speaker 6: I just thought, oh, I'm a deeply flawed, broken person.
Speaker 6: With some hindsight, I realized, oh, how interesting. I was
Speaker 6: one of very very few kids of color in my
Speaker 6: whole school. I wonder if maybe that played a role.
Speaker 6: But regardless of what contributed to the meanness and the cruelty,
Speaker 6: I spent my childhood feeling just really insecure and really
Speaker 6: really anxious, and these bullies gave credence to my worst
Speaker 6: fears about myself.
Speaker 1: Was this like in the school yard, on the bus,
Speaker 1: like where did this happen?
Speaker 4: Oh my god?
Speaker 6: Cafeteria so carly one day was like, you're so ugly,
Speaker 6: it's painful for me to look at you, and then
Speaker 6: got up and went to another table. There was another
Speaker 6: episode in elementary school where the kids had decided in
Speaker 6: advance that they were going to pretend I was invisible
Speaker 6: that day. So when I went to go drink from
Speaker 6: my milk cart and I lifted up, they were like, oh,
Speaker 6: there's a milk cart and floating in the air. How funny.
Speaker 6: And now there's a fork in the air, Like, oh
Speaker 6: my god, I'm like the pretending I literally don't exist.
Speaker 1: I want to like jump through the zoom and hug you.
Speaker 1: But wait, how is this a story about kindness? I
Speaker 1: just don't see where this is.
Speaker 6: Okay, Sorry, sorry. So I was bullied a lot, and
Speaker 6: there were a few kids that were so deeply kind
Speaker 6: to me and weren't just nice behind the scenes, but
Speaker 6: were advocates for me when it really mattered. So I
Speaker 6: remember there was this one girl in my neighborhood named Adrian,
Speaker 6: and we were on.
Speaker 1: The school bus.
Speaker 6: The school bus was brutal because like a lot of
Speaker 6: the kids didn't want to sit next to me, so
Speaker 6: it was a whole thing. It's like, we'd rather sit
Speaker 6: five in a seat rather than sit next to Maya.
Speaker 6: You know, kids are terrible, right, So I remember some
Speaker 6: kids were saying some nasty things to me, and Adrian
Speaker 6: stood up and was like, all of you guys, just
Speaker 6: shut up.
Speaker 1: Maya is awesome.
Speaker 6: I just remember those words in little kid Maya's brain
Speaker 6: were transformative, Like I had to transcendent experience in that moment,
Speaker 6: and I I just remember being so moved by the
Speaker 6: fact that she was willing to stand up and say
Speaker 6: these things in front of the people that I was
Speaker 6: really scared by because I'm not exactly the type of
Speaker 6: person who would have fought back in those moments and
Speaker 6: like really stood my ground. Instead, I thought, oh, I know,
Speaker 6: let me try to kill them with kindness. Maybe that
Speaker 6: will win over the bully. And that is clearly a
Speaker 6: very losing strategy when it comes to engaging with bullies effectively.
Speaker 6: So Adriane did this for me, and it really helped
Speaker 6: change the landscape for me. It's not like the bullies
Speaker 6: were suddenly nice, but I now felt like Adrienne was
Speaker 6: in my corner, and it changes your whole mentality when
Speaker 6: you feel like even one person is on your team.
Speaker 6: And I was fast forwarding decades to think about how
Speaker 6: this had affected me as a person, and actually, Laurie,
Speaker 6: it was a moment from my time at Yale, when
Speaker 6: I was your undergrad student. There was a guy in
Speaker 6: my dorm room who was being bullied because he was
Speaker 6: suffering from depression and bipolar disorder and it didn't fit
Speaker 6: with the kind of frat boy, machismo athlete vibe. I
Speaker 6: guess that his social group entertained and they were so
Speaker 6: cruel to him.
Speaker 4: They were so.
Speaker 6: Mean, and I remember being like, I'm going to be
Speaker 6: Adrian for him, for Noah, and I stood up to
Speaker 6: those guys and I was like, you guys suck, and
Speaker 6: Noah's amazing, and how dare you be so ignorant about
Speaker 6: mental illness and those struggles. I even remember at a
Speaker 6: reunion I gave this guy so much. I don't know
Speaker 6: what a kosher word I can say on this podcast is,
Speaker 6: but it was not a fun exchange, I'll say for
Speaker 6: this other guy, because I was like, how could you
Speaker 6: treat Noah like that? And I actually just got a
Speaker 6: text message from Noah a couple months ago saying, I
Speaker 6: remember in college when I was going through such a
Speaker 6: hard time, Maya, you were so on my side and
Speaker 6: you were so nice to me, and it really touched
Speaker 6: my heart that I could pay it forward like that
Speaker 6: because I remember having been on the receiving end that
Speaker 6: See I told you, Laurie, it had a happy ending.
Speaker 1: Okay, that was good. I'm glad that at the ending
Speaker 1: came up. It wasn't just like Maya getting tortured on
Speaker 1: the bus.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 1: But I love this story because it shows like Adrian's
Speaker 1: probably not sitting there thinking about like how she helped
Speaker 1: this one person in elementary school, but you right now
Speaker 1: are thinking about how that helped you to this day
Speaker 1: and a decade after that. It was also helping somebody else,
Speaker 1: like in college, And so we forget not just like
Speaker 1: how long our kind events wind up helping the people
Speaker 1: that we do nice things for but also like how
Speaker 1: many times these turn into like these cascades where like
Speaker 1: more nice things happen over time.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, they had these beautiful spillover effects, right. And there's
Speaker 6: this concept in psychology called moral elevation, and it's basically
Speaker 6: when you witness someone else's extraordinary actions. So it could
Speaker 6: be their kindness, or their courage, or their self sacrifice,
Speaker 6: or their ability to forgive other people, any character trait
Speaker 6: that you find really amazing and impressive that can lead
Speaker 6: to this warm, fuzzy feeling in your chest that makes
Speaker 6: you feel like, wow, humans are capable of extraordinary things.
Speaker 6: But importantly, when you experience moral elevation, it doesn't just
Speaker 6: feel good, It actually changes your brain. When you see
Speaker 6: someone challenge your understanding of the world and about what
Speaker 6: humans are capable of, it cracks open your own imagination
Speaker 6: about what you are capable of. And I love that
Speaker 6: insight because what it's done in my own life is
Speaker 6: it's made me a more keen observer. So when I'm
Speaker 6: walking in the coffee shop, I'll notice someone being extra
Speaker 6: nice to the barista, or I'll notice that someone went
Speaker 6: out of their way to smile at me. When I'm
Speaker 6: going on a walk, and these moments feel so good
Speaker 6: in the moment, but they also have these long lasting
Speaker 6: effects on our psychology and our view of others and
Speaker 6: importantly of ourselves and our potential our capabilities as people.
Speaker 6: And so it's really enriched my life to see the
Speaker 6: world through a moral beauty lens.
Speaker 1: This is such a great example. I feel like, especially
Speaker 1: in winter when everything's feeling so dark and so glum,
Speaker 1: that like they're just these examples of beauty and guidnance
Speaker 1: out there that we can find, and that seeing them
Speaker 1: isn't just like witnessing something that's beautiful, it's also changing us.
Speaker 6: To exactly And yes, winter is dark, but also the
Speaker 6: world like we're in a really dark place right now.
Speaker 6: It's very hard to stay hopeful and positive. And I
Speaker 6: have just felt like reminding myself that actually humans are
Speaker 6: so good at their core, because you can witness these
Speaker 6: beautiful acts every single day, and that's in my control,
Speaker 6: unlike so much else that's.
Speaker 4: Happening in the world.
Speaker 6: Is a wonderful way of reclaiming my agency and allowing
Speaker 6: myself moments of happiness, moments of joy in everyday life
Speaker 6: against the backdrop of a lot of suffering. In the world,
Speaker 6: you know, And so yeah, I've just been grateful for
Speaker 6: the gift that we've gotten from science in the space
Speaker 6: of moral elevation.
Speaker 1: And if maya story has given you a moment of
Speaker 1: moral elevation, remember that you can choose to become an
Speaker 1: Adrian too. You can do that by joining me and
Speaker 1: dozens of other podcasters as part of the Pods Fight
Speaker 1: Poverty campaign. Why not donate five bucks right now by
Speaker 1: heading to give directly dot org slash happiness Lab. That's
Speaker 1: GiveDirectly dot org slash happiness Lab. It's time for a break,
Speaker 1: but when we return, I'll get to share my own
Speaker 1: story of the power of giving and how four words
Speaker 1: that I quickly scribbled nearly twenty years ago said a
Speaker 1: little girl on the path to becoming an aerospace engineer.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will be right back. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab special Giving Tuesday episode. Today we're exploring
Speaker 1: just how much we underestimate the psychological power of small
Speaker 1: acts of generosity. And the next story is one that
Speaker 1: really hits home for me because the person in this
Speaker 1: story doing all that underestimating of the power of giving
Speaker 1: was me.
Speaker 4: So in two thousand and eight. I was six years old.
Speaker 1: This is Avery Miller, and.
Speaker 9: I didn't know too much, you know, about the world,
Speaker 9: but I knew that I wanted to be an astronaut
Speaker 9: because I'd read books about them, I'd seen them on
Speaker 9: TIV and my parents were very encouraging of all of that.
Speaker 9: And my mom realized there was an event called World
Speaker 9: Science Festival.
Speaker 1: The World Science Festival is a multimedia science education organization
Speaker 1: that began as an annual event in New York City
Speaker 1: to make science fun and accessible to the general public.
Speaker 1: Big panels and talks, interactive exhibits, and kid friendly games.
Speaker 1: Avery's mom thought her daughter would love it, so the
Speaker 1: Millers decided to take the four hour trek from their
Speaker 1: home in Boston to New York City.
Speaker 9: So we went to the festival and there's a lot
Speaker 9: of really cool outside stuff and you know, the typical
Speaker 9: kid activities.
Speaker 4: But my mom was like, you know, I think.
Speaker 9: Avery would really love going to some talks, which an
Speaker 9: insane thing to think about a six year old, but
Speaker 9: that's my mom.
Speaker 4: So we went to quite a few talks, but I
Speaker 4: think there were mostly men, so not really role models.
Speaker 1: That's when Avery stumbled on a panel that would change
Speaker 1: her life forever. It was called Cool Jobs, where scientists
Speaker 1: shared the cool questions they explored and the fun places
Speaker 1: they got to work. There was a Disney imagineer, a
Speaker 1: forensics expert who used science to solve crimes, and an
Speaker 1: early career psychologist whose name you might recognize if you're
Speaker 1: a fan of the show.
Speaker 10: She spends a lot of time thinking about how we
Speaker 10: think and how we play and how we fall in
Speaker 10: love by hiking through the jungles of Puerto Rico watching monkeys.
Speaker 10: Please allarim, welcome for doctor Lori Santos.
Speaker 1: Hello everyone, thanks for having me today. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to tell you a little bit about a job that
Speaker 1: I bet many of you are thinking about, and that's
Speaker 1: the kind of job that's involved with working with animals,
Speaker 1: so fun fact, long before I began studying happiness, I
Speaker 1: spent a lot of my early career trying to understand
Speaker 1: the human mind by studying the cosmative abilities of monkeys.
Speaker 1: Back in two thousand and eight, I was asked to
Speaker 1: talk about that primate work on the Cool Jobs panel
Speaker 1: at the World Science The organizers of the panel assumed
Speaker 1: it would be of interest to college students thinking about
Speaker 1: their future careers. But what we didn't expect was to
Speaker 1: have so many little kids in the audience, little kids
Speaker 1: who were apparently very impressed that there were jobs where
Speaker 1: you could hang out with monkeys, little kids just like Avery.
Speaker 9: I was like, you get to be outside, you get
Speaker 9: to do science. And that was sort of a mind
Speaker 9: blowing moment of like, oh my god, there's someone like
Speaker 9: me who's doing all this really cool stuff. And my mom,
Speaker 9: again being really cool, was like, well, let's go.
Speaker 4: Talk to her.
Speaker 1: Avery's mom wasn't the only audience member to have that ideas.
Speaker 1: The New York Times would later report quote after the event,
Speaker 1: doctor Santo's was mobbed by a group of children curious
Speaker 1: about what she calls monkey magic tricks. I spent over
Speaker 1: an hour after that panel sitting on stage talking with
Speaker 1: kids about my work, and one of those kids was
Speaker 1: an eager little girl named Avery.
Speaker 9: So I went up and I think I told you
Speaker 9: all about how I wanted to be an astronaut and
Speaker 9: how I wanted to go to because you know, growing
Speaker 9: up in Boston, if you want to do science, you
Speaker 9: want to go to MIT. And we didn't have anything
Speaker 9: for you to sign except for the back of the
Speaker 9: ticket on the email my mom printed out, so you
Speaker 9: signed it.
Speaker 4: I have it here if you want to see it.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, can you hold it up?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we'ld like go monkey drawing.
Speaker 7: That's yeah.
Speaker 1: Exit.
Speaker 9: So I drew monkeys on it as you can see,
Speaker 9: which I'm sure my mom told me not to. But
Speaker 9: you wrote have fun at MIT, Love Laurie, and I
Speaker 9: was like, this is the coolest thing ever a scientist
Speaker 9: thinks I can be a scientist. We framed it and
Speaker 9: then I put it on my desk, and then I
Speaker 9: guess I never moved it off my desk.
Speaker 4: I mean, like I look at it all the time.
Speaker 9: In high school, I'd sit there and do my homework,
Speaker 9: and so it's like, you know what this means, I
Speaker 9: can do it. You know, as much as I hated
Speaker 9: chemistry at the time, Okay, I got to get the
Speaker 9: chemistry done because I'm going to go to MIT.
Speaker 4: So it was just this constant little reminder that like,
Speaker 4: I could do that.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so funny. I signed lots of things
Speaker 1: for lots of folks, and just the idea that they
Speaker 1: would keep them is really cool. But also does that
Speaker 1: it turned into an inspiration for you.
Speaker 9: I failed a class, almost failed a class in the
Speaker 9: eighth grade and it was science, and I was like,
Speaker 9: that means I.
Speaker 4: Can't do it, because if everyone looks at.
Speaker 9: You as the science kid and you're going around failing
Speaker 9: science classes, it's hard. So I looked at it and
Speaker 9: I was like, you know what, someone says that I
Speaker 9: can do it. I saw someone else do it. You know,
Speaker 9: there were a lot of people rooting me on, but
Speaker 9: I had this thing from such a young age. One
Speaker 9: person telling you can do it when you didn't even
Speaker 9: know that was an option is perhaps more meaningful. So, yeah,
Speaker 9: it was a big deal to me then. It's still
Speaker 9: a big deal to me now. I had it on
Speaker 9: my desk all through college, all the dorms I lived in.
Speaker 9: I have it now that I live on my own.
Speaker 9: It's just always lived on my desk. It's always just
Speaker 9: been there. I also have a Sally Ride picture, though,
Speaker 9: so you're up there with her.
Speaker 1: That's amazing. Sounds like you wound up going to college.
Speaker 1: Did you end up going to MIT or what happened?
Speaker 9: Yeah, So by senior year I realized that I did
Speaker 9: not want to go to MIT. Mit is great, but
Speaker 9: it wasn't the right fit. I ended up going to Purdue.
Speaker 9: I became an aerospace engineer.
Speaker 1: Wait, like, mind boggling, Like you became an aerospace engineer.
Speaker 1: That's so cool. I reconnected with Avery and learned about
Speaker 1: her story when she sent me an email out of
Speaker 1: the blue thanking me for being such an inspiration to her.
Speaker 1: She wrote in her letter, you took the time to
Speaker 1: speak to me, learn my name, and just made me
Speaker 1: feel like no matter what I could do it. Thank
Speaker 1: you for being an inspiration in six year old me's life.
Speaker 1: I know that you carved the way for this field
Speaker 1: to be one that women like me can thrive in.
Speaker 1: I mean, wow. I had no idea that scribbling those
Speaker 1: four little words nearly twenty years ago would have had
Speaker 1: such an impact on someone's life. I also didn't realize
Speaker 1: that those words would ripple into the next generation of
Speaker 1: scientists too.
Speaker 9: I think one of the things that I learned and
Speaker 9: I really appreciated when I met you when I was
Speaker 9: young was that you didn't talk to me like I.
Speaker 4: Was a little kid.
Speaker 9: I never felt like someone was talking down to me,
Speaker 9: which I think in stem we have a tendency to
Speaker 9: do when people don't understand stuff. I think it was Einstein,
Speaker 9: though I could be misquoting, who said if you can't
Speaker 9: explain it to a five year old, you don't understand it.
Speaker 9: There's something to be said for approaching someone on their level.
Speaker 9: That's how people can hold on and be like, wow,
Speaker 9: I really do want to learn more. It definitely makes
Speaker 9: me think about how I'm giving my time, because, like
Speaker 9: I mentor middle schoolers and I'm like, maybe one day
Speaker 9: one of these middle schoolers will reach out and you know,
Speaker 9: same sort of thing of like, oh, you impacted me,
Speaker 9: so who knows.
Speaker 1: Look at you? The six year old has become an
Speaker 1: adult now, I know. I mean one of the reasons
Speaker 1: the story is so compelling for me also just that like,
Speaker 1: I affected someone who's so cool and doing such cool
Speaker 1: stuff now was just amazing.
Speaker 9: The fact that someone who speaks to John Green thinks
Speaker 9: I'm cool is possibly the coolest thing ever.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you would think you're cool too, but I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just like, you just have these short interactions in
Speaker 1: life where you don't necessarily realize how much you're affecting people.
Speaker 1: And I think if you can have those interactions in
Speaker 1: a way that are like positive or encouraging. We just
Speaker 1: like don't know the ripple effect of the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that we can do to other people. And so
Speaker 1: it was just such a reminder of like, oh my gosh,
Speaker 1: I can have this like incredibly long standing, like you know,
Speaker 1: twenty year ish positive effect and I might not be
Speaker 1: realizing I could do that right now.
Speaker 9: And also the fact that I can reconnect with you
Speaker 9: after twenty years and it still be something meaningful.
Speaker 1: I'm curious, was there a moment that you decided to
Speaker 1: reach back out, Like, was there like a catalyst of
Speaker 1: why you decided to reach out when you did.
Speaker 4: I'm hoping to go back to school eventually.
Speaker 9: So I've been studying for exams, and sometimes you have
Speaker 9: just a day where you're looking at your exam book
Speaker 9: and you're like, there is no way that I can
Speaker 9: keep doing this.
Speaker 4: There's no way I can keep answering problems.
Speaker 9: And I looked at the note, which again sits on
Speaker 9: my desk all the time, so I'm looking at it,
Speaker 9: and I'm like, you know, I should really reach out
Speaker 9: to her and tell her that this is impactful.
Speaker 1: This really just like blew my mind, and really just
Speaker 1: even this conversation I feel like my face is going
Speaker 1: to hurt from smiling after talking about.
Speaker 4: Me as well, which is a great thing.
Speaker 1: Avery's story is a powerful example of how a few
Speaker 1: simple words can shape someone's life in unimaginable ways. But
Speaker 1: it also shows how absolutely great it feels to be
Speaker 1: the person who gives that small act of kindness. And yet,
Speaker 1: even when we know these small gestures matter, most of
Speaker 1: us still struggle to actually do them. We put off
Speaker 1: reaching out, we delay helping, we wait for the right
Speaker 1: time to give. Why do we procrastinate on doing the
Speaker 1: very thing that will make us and other people feel
Speaker 1: so good? To find out? I tagged in our final
Speaker 1: podcast host guest, a behavioral scientist who has studied this
Speaker 1: exact problem. Katie, do you want to start by introducing yourself?
Speaker 2: I'd be delighted.
Speaker 11: My name is Katie Milkman, and I am a professor
Speaker 11: at the Wharton School, host of the podcast Choiceology, and
Speaker 11: author of the book How to Change.
Speaker 1: So, Katie, we've just heard all these amazing things that
Speaker 1: happen when people are nice to each other and do
Speaker 1: nice things for each other, including with money. We've also
Speaker 1: just heard not just what happens to the people who
Speaker 1: receive these wonderful things, but also what happens to you,
Speaker 1: the donor in terms of your happiness and how great
Speaker 1: you feel. But the problem is that our minds are stupid,
Speaker 1: and sometimes we can know all this stuff and still
Speaker 1: not put it into practice. This is the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that you study, right, Yes, although I.
Speaker 11: Wouldn't say our minds are stupid. I think our minds
Speaker 11: are incredible, but they're constantly taking shortcuts and they're sort
Speaker 11: of wired for situations that don't always optimize our current
Speaker 11: environment in the modern era.
Speaker 4: So, like, the mind is amazing.
Speaker 1: I don't want to denigrate the model. Okay, yeah, no,
Speaker 1: nodice to the mind.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 1: You know, we're walking around really smart primates, built the
Speaker 1: Internet all this stuff, But we sometimes forget the importance
Speaker 1: of doing for other people, like when it comes to
Speaker 1: our social connection. I think this is a spot where
Speaker 1: we really get it wrong. Yeah, no, absolutely.
Speaker 11: We don't anticipate how good it will feel to you know,
Speaker 11: engage in conversations and game and gift giving, just be
Speaker 11: kind to others in a wide variety of ways. We
Speaker 11: don't realize how much that will actually generate happiness for us.
Speaker 1: Our minds are also stupid in that we just like
Speaker 1: forget stuff. Like I'm guessing a lot of people right
Speaker 1: now are like, oh my gosh, it's a great opportunity
Speaker 1: to give directly, but like you actually have to do that,
Speaker 1: and like forgetfulness and friction is bad.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 11: Yeah, follow through is one of the main barriers to
Speaker 11: change that I have studied, Like we need to remind people,
Speaker 11: we need to catch them in a moment when they
Speaker 11: can take action. And actually this relates to some research
Speaker 11: I did a number of years ago related to giving.
Speaker 11: So this was a project led by Amanda Schwan, who's
Speaker 11: an amazing professor at Michigan State, and also with my
Speaker 11: colleague here, Jed Kessler, where we were able to get
Speaker 11: data from the University of Pennsylvania's hospital system on asks
Speaker 11: they made to pass patients to give. Right. So, you've
Speaker 11: had experience with the University of Pennsylvanian hospital system. You
Speaker 11: were here in patient for some sort of service or treatment.
Speaker 11: You have to stay overnight, right that's kind of a
Speaker 11: big deal, or you're checked into the hospital. So you're
Speaker 11: probably feeling a lot of gratitude right now, and you
Speaker 11: have an opportunity when the university asks would you give
Speaker 11: to this hospital system? You have an opportunity to express
Speaker 11: that gratitude. The data we got allowed us to look
Speaker 11: at whether or not those mailings came right away or
Speaker 11: at a time delay, because they send them in batches
Speaker 11: every few months.
Speaker 1: So if the batch send happens to.
Speaker 11: Occur just a couple of weeks after you leave the hospital,
Speaker 11: you're going to get it real quickly. But if it
Speaker 11: happens a few months later, well then it's going to
Speaker 11: be a long time after your inpatients day that you're
Speaker 11: going to be asked would you be willing to reciprocate
Speaker 11: and make it a donation. And what was interesting is
Speaker 11: that we found a pretty steep decay. So if we
Speaker 11: hit you right after you've had this positive experience, you're
Speaker 11: much more likely to give your feeling still that warmth
Speaker 11: and gratitude and remembering how meaningful it was to be
Speaker 11: taken care of. Whereas if a little time passes the
Speaker 11: hot state, the sort of warmth and the reciprocity feelings,
Speaker 11: those positive feelings that generate the decision to give those
Speaker 11: are what's decaying and also presumably suggests that you're not
Speaker 11: going to feel as good about making that reciprocal gesture
Speaker 11: if your strong feelings have dissipated and you wait. So
Speaker 11: one of the things I think that teaches us about
Speaker 11: giving is generally when we are remembering, when we're in
Speaker 11: that hot state, when we realize how good it will
Speaker 11: make us feel, like, take action right away. Don't let
Speaker 11: that moment slip. And I think more similarly in so
Speaker 11: many parts of your life, like when you're feeling gratitude
Speaker 11: to someone, or when you've had a really positive experience
Speaker 11: and you want to make sure you don't forget to
Speaker 11: tell someone you know, you were a great professor, Laurie,
Speaker 11: and I'm so grateful for this thing you did, or
Speaker 11: you know, thank you for mentoring me, whatever it is,
Speaker 11: express that gratitude immediately, because you're going to forget if
Speaker 11: you let the moment pass. And I think, you know,
Speaker 11: one of the things I've studied in my research in
Speaker 11: other domains is just that our motivation in general waxes
Speaker 11: and wanes like over time.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 11: We years ago did an episode together, Laurie about some
Speaker 11: of my work with Hanschen Dai of UCLA on the
Speaker 11: fresh start effect, that there are these moments when we're
Speaker 11: more motivated to make a change in our lives. And
Speaker 11: I think that's just part of a bigger process, Like
Speaker 11: we don't walk around the world with like constant flat
Speaker 11: states of.
Speaker 4: Emotion and motivation.
Speaker 11: We're moving all over the place, and capitalizing on the
Speaker 11: hot state feelings is important to doing the things that
Speaker 11: are good for us in the long run, that are
Speaker 11: good for our relationships and our.
Speaker 1: Happiness, because whenever we do it, we're going to feel
Speaker 1: good doing that. Right in your fresh start work where
Speaker 1: you looking when when do people start exercising? Whatever you
Speaker 1: get the exercise habit going, that's going to have benefits
Speaker 1: for you whenever you actually get the gift done. The
Speaker 1: kind words said, you're going to experience benefit. But if
Speaker 1: you wait and the motivation goes away, then you're never
Speaker 1: going to wind up getting those benefits.
Speaker 4: Exactly.
Speaker 1: So, if someone's listening to this right now and they're thinking,
Speaker 1: oh my gosh, I want to give, to give directly,
Speaker 1: how do they lock it in? Do they like, pause
Speaker 1: the episode and just go do.
Speaker 4: A pos the episode?
Speaker 11: Do it right now, Do not wait? That's right, because
Speaker 11: that feeling will decay faster than you realize. And so
Speaker 11: this is the moment to do it. Don't wait, don't delay.
Speaker 11: You think you're going to do it tomorrow, but you won't,
Speaker 11: so do it right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, we're going to do a pause, so hopefully during
Speaker 1: that little audio break, so folks pause the episode and
Speaker 1: actually gave to give directly. But I'm guessing some folks
Speaker 1: maybe couldn't do it immediately. Are there other social science
Speaker 1: hacks we can use if we're motivated right now, but
Speaker 1: we can actually hit like send immediately.
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
Speaker 11: Maybe you're driving right now, but you can talk to
Speaker 11: a virtual assistant in your phone. You might ask it
Speaker 11: to put a calendar alert in your calendar for later
Speaker 11: today when you know you might have a moment, to
Speaker 11: remind you to follow through and choose a specific time.
Speaker 11: You could also ask that virtual assistant to send a ping,
Speaker 11: a text, or an email to someone who can hold
Speaker 11: you accountable and check in and say, hey, please ask
Speaker 11: me when you see me, partner, roommate, friend tomorrow if
Speaker 11: I've followed through on my pledge to give to give directly.
Speaker 11: We know that social accountability and making concrete plans with
Speaker 11: reminders are two ways we can hold our few yourself
Speaker 11: to account for the things we want to get done.
Speaker 1: And I especially love the social accountability suggestion because that
Speaker 1: gives us a little bit of social connection and maybe,
Speaker 1: just maybe that partner, friend, roommate might also donate to
Speaker 1: give directly and get a little happiness boost themselves.
Speaker 11: I love that perfect Yes, ask them to both nag
Speaker 11: you and to give themselves.
Speaker 1: Love this, Katie. Thank you so much for helping us
Speaker 1: try to figure out how we can use our biases
Speaker 1: to feel better and do better in the world.
Speaker 11: Thanks so much for having me and for putting together
Speaker 11: this wonderful compilation. I love gift directly and I'm really
Speaker 11: excited about it.
Speaker 1: Even small acts of generosity, a moment of encouragement, a
Speaker 1: few kind words, ten bucks donated to a good cause
Speaker 1: can have incredible ripple effects. And the sooner you act
Speaker 1: on a charitable impulse, the sooner you'll experience that positive impact.
Speaker 1: So go ahead and join the Pods Fight Poverty campaign
Speaker 1: by donating at GiveDirectly dot org slash happiness Lab. That's
Speaker 1: GiveDirectly dot org slash happiness Lab. And if you're not
Speaker 1: in a position to give, that's fine. Maybe you'd consider
Speaker 1: sharing our campaign with your friends and colleagues. Just use
Speaker 1: the hashtag pods fight Poverty to raise awareness, fight extreme poverty,
Speaker 1: and unwrap a little gift of happiness for yourself too.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will continue in the holiday spirit for
Speaker 1: the rest of the year. Next week, we'll be tackling
Speaker 1: your holiday happiness woes with a very hilarious special guest,
Speaker 1: actor and podcaster Brain Wilson. That's all next time on
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos,