Speaker 1: Pushkin. I always try to book guests for the show
Speaker 1: that I know you'll love, people who I think really
Speaker 1: have something to say about the science of happiness. Some
Speaker 1: guests have important lived experiences, giving them valuable well being
Speaker 1: insights to share. Other guests are leading researchers in my field,
Speaker 1: people who've gathered exciting data about what actually does make
Speaker 1: us feel happier. Let's go at zoom. I think the
Speaker 1: zoom is sounding fine, so I think we should be
Speaker 1: all set okay, But the guest you're about to hear
Speaker 1: from today is kind of in a different league. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much for taking the time to do this.
Speaker 1: We've wanted to have you on the podcast for a
Speaker 1: long time, so we're very.
Speaker 2: Excited, happy to do it.
Speaker 1: And saying he's in a different league honestly still sort
Speaker 1: of under sells his stature, because this scientist didn't just
Speaker 1: play the happiness scientist game, he kind of invented it.
Speaker 1: I kind of just wanted to enter all the listeners
Speaker 1: of the podcast to your story and what it's been
Speaker 1: like to have this legacy of creating positive psychology over
Speaker 1: these years. So we're going to kind of go pretty broad.
Speaker 1: If you're cool with that.
Speaker 2: Okay, Are we ready?
Speaker 1: Yep, We're ready to go. Are you ready ready to
Speaker 1: meet the scientist without whom the Happiness Lab probably wouldn't exist.
Speaker 2: Hello, I'm Marty Seligman. I'm professor of psychology at the
Speaker 2: University of Pennsylvania, and about twenty five years ago, when
Speaker 2: I was president of the American Psychological Association, I had
Speaker 2: to look around and ask what did psychology need? And
Speaker 2: that was the origin story of positive psychology. Psychology have
Speaker 2: been all about misery and suffering, and what it was
Speaker 2: missing was the possibility that people could have a good life.
Speaker 1: Marty Seligman's academic career stretches back decades, and he did
Speaker 1: do plenty of important research into misery and suffering. He's
Speaker 1: the researcher behind a famous experiment that we've talked about before,
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab. In his study, a group of dogs
Speaker 1: were given mild electric shocks. Some of the dogs could
Speaker 1: press a button to end their pain, but others could
Speaker 1: do nothing to halt the shocks. When that unlucky's second
Speaker 1: group was finally given an easy way to escape new shocks,
Speaker 1: they never learned how to improve their situation. They simply
Speaker 1: gave up and took the pain humans, it turns out
Speaker 1: act just the same. It was an intriguing pattern of
Speaker 1: results that Seligman famously christened learned helplessness. This research alone
Speaker 1: would be achievement enough for most scientists, but Marty took
Speaker 1: his work in a unique direction. He didn't just concentrate
Speaker 1: on what could break our spirits and cause us misery.
Speaker 1: He wanted to unlock the opposite, what could allow us
Speaker 1: to become more resilient and flourish. In doing so, he
Speaker 1: laid the foundation for the scientific study of happiness and
Speaker 1: the whole field of research that we cover on this podcast,
Speaker 1: a field known as positive psychology. And since Marty's the
Speaker 1: guy who invented positive psychology, I thought it'd be fitting
Speaker 1: to let him explain what it is.
Speaker 2: I'm not big on definitions, but the way I think
Speaker 2: about the subject matter is with the acronym perma eer
Speaker 2: m A. These are the five things that I think
Speaker 2: positive psychologists measure and build. So P is positive emotion,
Speaker 2: subjective wellbeing, happiness, rapture, contentment E is engagement slow when
Speaker 2: time stops for you, when you're one with the music,
Speaker 2: when you're completely engaged. R is good relationships, M I've
Speaker 2: changed my mind about recently. M is usually construed as meaning,
Speaker 2: where meaning is something like belonging to and serving something
Speaker 2: you think is bigger than you are. But I've come
Speaker 2: to believe that there's a different m of mattering, which
Speaker 2: is more at the heart of well being. How much
Speaker 2: do you matter? What would happen if you vanished? How
Speaker 2: much would you be missed? How much would your family
Speaker 2: suffer if you vanished? How much would your work suffer?
Speaker 2: And A is accomplishment, mastery, competence, achievement. So for me,
Speaker 2: the definition of positive psychology, while open ended, revolves around
Speaker 2: measuring and building.
Speaker 1: Program So in some ways, it's kind of odd, one
Speaker 1: might think, looking at the big history to realize that
Speaker 1: you're focused on all these things that built Perma, because
Speaker 1: at least at the beginning of your career, you were
Speaker 1: known for studying something completely different. You were known for
Speaker 1: studying maybe the opposite of Perma, right, which is the
Speaker 1: sense of helplessness and animals, And so going way back,
Speaker 1: I'm kind of curious how you got involved in that.
Speaker 1: What started off your interest in kind of studying learn
Speaker 1: helplessness and depression in animals? Where did that come from?
Speaker 2: Well, In fact, I think in retrospect what I always
Speaker 2: wanted to study was well being and happiness. But in
Speaker 2: the nineteen sixties, when I entered psychology, before you were born, Laurie,
Speaker 2: the only game in town that was even close to
Speaker 2: it was misery and suffering in clinical psychology. And so
Speaker 2: when I entered psychology as an undergraduate, I wanted to
Speaker 2: do rigorous work, scientifically replicable, and the only thing around
Speaker 2: was to work on misery. And so I was fortunate
Speaker 2: enough to be part of a group in the early
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties that discovered a phenomenon called learned helplessness. We
Speaker 2: found that animals and then people who experienced events that
Speaker 2: they couldn't do anything about collapsed and showed a set
Speaker 2: of deficits very much like depression. And that's where I began,
Speaker 2: and I worked on that for about fifteen years until
Speaker 2: it became an established field. So that was the first
Speaker 2: fifteen years of my fifty five year academic career.
Speaker 1: So in some ways I've heard you talk before about
Speaker 1: how you would studied well being if it was a career.
Speaker 1: Were you sort of a happy kid and did that
Speaker 1: continue into your professor years or did you resonate more
Speaker 1: with some of those helpless animals that you were looking at.
Speaker 2: Oh, I was a pretty unhappy, miserable kid. That didn't
Speaker 2: make me want to study misery. It actually made me
Speaker 2: want to study happiness. But no one was working on happiness.
Speaker 2: And the way learned helplessness gave way to happiness and
Speaker 2: positive psychology. And it was when we did helplessness experiments
Speaker 2: with people. We found that only two thirds of the
Speaker 2: people and two thirds of the animals who got bad
Speaker 2: events that they couldn't do anything about collapsed and showed helplessness.
Speaker 2: But really interestingly, one third of the people I worked
Speaker 2: with I could not make helpless And finally, after about
Speaker 2: ten to fifteen years, I said, these are really interesting people.
Speaker 2: What is it about them that makes them immune from helplessness?
Speaker 2: And that led to the next fifteen years of my work,
Speaker 2: which basically that it was optimistic people, optimism and pessimism.
Speaker 2: In my way of thinking, means the following. Pessimistic people
Speaker 2: are people who, when bad events strike them, believe it's permanent,
Speaker 2: it's going to last forever, it's pervasive, it's going to
Speaker 2: ruin your whole life, and it's uncontrollable. Nothing you can
Speaker 2: do about it, and optimistic people, when they're hit with
Speaker 2: bad events, believe temporary justice. One situation and I can
Speaker 2: overcome it. Those are the people who never became helpless.
Speaker 2: So that takes me thirty years into my career. And
Speaker 2: then I began to realize that I wasn't working on pessimism.
Speaker 2: I was working on the opposite optimism. And that coincided
Speaker 2: with being elected president of the American Psychological Association in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety six. And presidents are supposed to have themes initiatives,
Speaker 2: and I didn't know what mine was going to be.
Speaker 2: And I had an epiphany which really led to positive psychology.
Speaker 1: And so talk a little bit. If this is the
Speaker 1: epiphany I'm thinking of that I've heard you talk about before.
Speaker 1: I think it involves your daughter, the famous garden story,
Speaker 1: And so walk me through what happened. You know what
Speaker 1: she told you and where that epiphany came from.
Speaker 2: Well, it's a beautiful day in the garden and NICKI,
Speaker 2: who had just turned five years old, and I were weeding.
Speaker 2: I was sweating away and weating and Nicki, damn it,
Speaker 2: was having a great time. She was throwing weeds in
Speaker 2: the air and dancing and singing, and I shouted at her.
Speaker 2: I said, get to work, Nikki, and she walked away
Speaker 2: and she came back and she said, this is literally
Speaker 2: what happened. Daddy. Can I talk to you? I said, yeah,
Speaker 2: what is it, Niki? And she said, well, Daddy, do
Speaker 2: you remember before my fifth birthday that had occurred about
Speaker 2: two weeks before that I was a whiner, that I
Speaker 2: whined all the time. I said, yeah, Nikki, you are
Speaker 2: a little horror And she said, well, Daddy, have you
Speaker 2: noticed since my fifth birthday? I haven't whined once? Said
Speaker 2: oh yeah, I said, well, Daddy, on my fifth birthday,
Speaker 2: I decided I wasn't going to whine anymore. And that
Speaker 2: was the hardest thing I've ever done. And if I
Speaker 2: can stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch.
Speaker 2: That hit me like a brick, and it caused me
Speaker 2: to rethink in almost an instant three different things. The
Speaker 2: first one was that she was absolutely right that I
Speaker 2: was a grouch, and worse than that, I was proud
Speaker 2: of being a grouch because I thought that anything that
Speaker 2: produced success in my life because I could see what
Speaker 2: was wrong with every effect And then occurred to me
Speaker 2: for the very first time that maybe that got in
Speaker 2: the way, and maybe any success I had in life
Speaker 2: was because I could see what was right in things.
Speaker 2: So I resolved to change. And indeed I'm no longer
Speaker 2: a grouch. Nicky, by the way, is still a whining.
Speaker 1: How old is she She's a clinical psychologist.
Speaker 2: She's thirty years old and a very good therapist. But
Speaker 2: at any rate, the first thing I realized that I
Speaker 2: was a grouch, and I decided to change. The second
Speaker 2: thing I realized is that my theory of teaching and
Speaker 2: child development was all wrong. My theory was remedial. It
Speaker 2: was somehow if you corrected all the errors that your
Speaker 2: children made, you'd get an exemplary child. And I realized
Speaker 2: how foolish that is, and that the job of a
Speaker 2: teacher and a parent is not remedial. It's to find
Speaker 2: out what the child is really good at and to
Speaker 2: bring that out and to help her lead her life
Speaker 2: around it. And Nikki was really good at talking to
Speaker 2: adults and understanding what was going on in the world,
Speaker 2: and indeed it's what makes her a good clinical psychologist.
Speaker 2: Now she's run with that skill. But the third thing
Speaker 2: was the reason you and I are talking, Laurie and
Speaker 2: that was that psychology was half baked. It was all
Speaker 2: baked about misery and suffering. And we've done okay with that,
Speaker 2: far from perfectly. But our medications and our therapies were
Speaker 2: all about the alleviation of suffering. But what we didn't
Speaker 2: touch was a question of what's above zero? Could we
Speaker 2: be happy? Could we have a good life. So my
Speaker 2: theme became psychologists should be not only interested in what
Speaker 2: cripple's life and how to get rid of it, but
Speaker 2: rather what enhances life and to try to build more
Speaker 2: of it. It really was a momentary epiphany changed my life,
Speaker 2: both personally and professionally, and is the founding legend of
Speaker 2: positive psychology.
Speaker 1: And so when you introduced the idea at this American
Speaker 1: Psychological Association meeting, you know, when you took on the presidency,
Speaker 1: what was the reaction Because the field was pretty entrenched
Speaker 1: in abnormal psychology and kind of the negative aspects of
Speaker 1: human nature and fixing those. How did people react early on?
Speaker 2: Well, it was pretty bimodals on the positive side. When
Speaker 2: I started to speak about this, I noticed that people
Speaker 2: in the audience were often weeping and would come up
Speaker 2: to me afterwards and say, you know this is what
Speaker 2: I always wanted to do to work on happiness, but
Speaker 2: the only game in town was misery, so I became
Speaker 2: a clinical psychologist. On the other hand, died in the world.
Speaker 2: Clinical psychologists who saw the world through a pathology lens
Speaker 2: were and are threatened by it.
Speaker 1: But Marty wasn't deterred by all those naysayers. He used
Speaker 1: his new role as president to embark on a new
Speaker 1: and important phase of his career. He wanted to work
Speaker 1: out exactly how we could all live better, more fulfilling,
Speaker 1: happier lives. And we'll hear more from Marty about what
Speaker 1: he learned when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 1: I'd probably need an entire season of shows to go
Speaker 1: through all of legendary psychologist Marty Seligman's ideas and discoveries,
Speaker 1: but one of his most influential notions is the importance
Speaker 1: of what he calls flourishing. Marty has argued that this
Speaker 1: is the key to leading a better life. In his view,
Speaker 1: we need to do more than just seek out what
Speaker 1: we usually think of as happiness.
Speaker 2: For me, happiness is one fifth of positive psychology, so
Speaker 2: irma perm P is positive emotion and by and large,
Speaker 2: the notion of subjective well being happiness captures it. But
Speaker 2: the smiley face and being merry is not even close
Speaker 2: to what positive psychology is about. Positive psychology is about
Speaker 2: what non suffering, free people choose. And indeed, one of
Speaker 2: the things they choose is to feel good, but they
Speaker 2: also choose to be engaged, they choose to have good relationships,
Speaker 2: they choose to matter and mean in the world, and
Speaker 2: very importantly, they choose to accomplish things. So positive psychology
Speaker 2: is not just about subjective well being and happiness, but
Speaker 2: very often about how you're doing in the world.
Speaker 1: And it's also you've argued about the traits that get
Speaker 1: you there, and this connects to a lot of your
Speaker 1: work on character strengths. So I'm curious what got you
Speaker 1: first interested in this idea of character and how we
Speaker 1: could develop it more well.
Speaker 2: When I was doing clinical psychology DSM, the diagnostic and
Speaker 2: statistical manual was very important. These were all the traits
Speaker 2: that were impeding life, and so when I started to
Speaker 2: think about positive psychology, it seems to me we needed
Speaker 2: a manual of the sanities, not just the insanities, the
Speaker 2: sanities being the traits that built the good life that
Speaker 2: led to a field. Chris Peterson was the central person
Speaker 2: in that field. When we started to work on a
Speaker 2: manual of the sanities, I called Chris. It happened to
Speaker 2: be his fiftieth birthday. He is a head of the
Speaker 2: clinical program at Michigan at the time, and I said,
Speaker 2: what are you going to do for the rest of
Speaker 2: your life, Chris? And he said, well, I don't know.
Speaker 2: I said, well, what I'd like you to do is
Speaker 2: take a three year sabbatical, come to pen and write
Speaker 2: a manual of the sanities. And indeed he did because
Speaker 2: I raised the money for it. He put my name
Speaker 2: on it, and it began a field of positive character traits.
Speaker 2: And so very important in positive psychology is measuring what
Speaker 2: your highest strengths are and learning how to use those
Speaker 2: positive traits more in life.
Speaker 1: So give me a sense of what you mean by strength.
Speaker 1: What are some of the common character strengths that people
Speaker 1: could try to maximize.
Speaker 2: Well, we settled on twenty four of them. They were
Speaker 2: traits like social intelligence, spirituality, humor, bravery, temperance. And the
Speaker 2: criteria for these strengths were something that all religions and
Speaker 2: political philosophies that we could find across the globe agreed on.
Speaker 1: And so what do you find people who use their
Speaker 1: character strengths? What are some of the things that we
Speaker 1: see them experiencing in their day to day life.
Speaker 2: Well, in general, we find that when people use their
Speaker 2: highest strengths, more life goes better. And so one of
Speaker 2: the positive psychology exercises is to everyone listening right now,
Speaker 2: I want to do this with you. Close your eyes, Laura,
Speaker 2: your eyes are open.
Speaker 1: I know I'm closing the right now.
Speaker 2: Right, think of something that you have to do at
Speaker 2: work that you don't like doing. Now, open your eyes.
Speaker 2: Now almost everyone can think of things like that. And
Speaker 2: now your task is to take the via the twenty
Speaker 2: four Character Strengths test. It's free. About four million people
Speaker 2: have taken it. It's at Authentic Happiness one word dot org.
Speaker 2: And this tells you what your five highest strengths are.
Speaker 2: So your exercise is now to take that thing you
Speaker 2: don't like doing at work and do it with your
Speaker 2: highest strength. For example, one of my students studied in
Speaker 2: the library at Penn until midnight and then the worst
Speaker 2: part of his day came about the thing he really
Speaker 2: didn't like, and that is he had to take an
Speaker 2: hour long walk through dangerous West Philadelphia at one in
Speaker 2: the morning to get home. So he took the Signature
Speaker 2: Strengths test and his highest strength was humor and playfulness.
Speaker 2: So his assignment was to take that walk home using
Speaker 2: humor and playfulness. Here's what he did. He bought a
Speaker 2: pr roller blades and a stopwatch, and he declared it
Speaker 2: an Olympic event and timed it every night until he
Speaker 2: set the record, and then he would take longer routs
Speaker 2: and this became the best part of his day. So
Speaker 2: the importance of this is the stuff you're good at,
Speaker 2: the stuff you like and be used to a company
Speaker 2: and overcome the stuff you don't like, and when that happens,
Speaker 2: happiness goes up and work gets better. We have a
Speaker 2: culture in which we focus on traits that are wrong,
Speaker 2: ways in which we screw up, and it's important to
Speaker 2: correct your weaknesses, but even more important is to recognize
Speaker 2: the strengths you do have and then to use them more.
Speaker 1: What I love about the character strengths, especially when I've
Speaker 1: used exercises like this with my students, is that you
Speaker 1: also need to know what your strengths are. I think
Speaker 1: we kind of implicitly know it, but when we start
Speaker 1: to focus on it, like, you know, I really like
Speaker 1: humor or I really love learning. You know, whenever I
Speaker 1: take the VIA test, my top to our humor and
Speaker 1: love of learning. And I feel like that's helped me
Speaker 1: in shaping this podcast. You know, I got to do
Speaker 1: goofy things for the podcast, or I got to take
Speaker 1: on new topics where I get to learn something. And
Speaker 1: so I'm curious, what are your signature strengths.
Speaker 2: My own highest strengths are creativity, appreciation of beauty, and leadership.
Speaker 2: And indeed, I take my own medicine and indeed I
Speaker 2: try to lead my life around creativity, appreciation of beauty,
Speaker 2: and leadership. It helped me to know what my strengths
Speaker 2: were to actually say to myself, Hey, how can I
Speaker 2: use creativity in the conversation that Laurie and I are
Speaker 2: having now?
Speaker 1: And I think this is the thing we forget is
Speaker 1: that you know, we can use these in so many
Speaker 1: different context right. We can use these at work. If
Speaker 1: you're one of my college students, they can use these
Speaker 1: when they're studying. Another domain in which I know you've
Speaker 1: talked about using these is that we can use these
Speaker 1: to build up relationships. One of the homework exercises I
Speaker 1: use with students in my happiness class at Yale as
Speaker 1: I make them go on a strengths date where they
Speaker 1: have to figure out their strengths. You know, pick a
Speaker 1: friend or a romantic partner, figure out that person's strengths,
Speaker 1: and then find some activity that you can do together
Speaker 1: that maximizes both. There's like creativity and love of learning.
Speaker 1: You have to go to some new museum where you
Speaker 1: do something creative together. Or one of the ones I
Speaker 1: loved was a hair of my students came up with
Speaker 1: bravery and they did one of these ropes courses together,
Speaker 1: and they all say, like, that was so much more
Speaker 1: fun than what we would normally do, which is probably
Speaker 1: locked down and watch TV together and not do anything
Speaker 1: that used your strengths.
Speaker 2: In addition to using your strengths more what you've just
Speaker 2: said about sharing them with someone else, Virtually everything that
Speaker 2: we like doing goes better when we share with someone else.
Speaker 2: And so I think that's a really basic principle of
Speaker 2: well being.
Speaker 1: Another thing that you've talked about a lot in your
Speaker 1: work is this idea of resilience. So talk about what
Speaker 1: resilience is and how you think of it from a
Speaker 1: positive psychology lens.
Speaker 2: I think resilience for me, different people define it differently
Speaker 2: is coming back from defeat, coming back to normal functioning
Speaker 2: from a bad event. So in many ways, resilience for
Speaker 2: me is a word out of psychology as usual. It's
Speaker 2: not about being super normal or better than you were.
Speaker 2: And so for me, things like post traumatic growth are
Speaker 2: more interesting than resilience. And indeed, if you look at
Speaker 2: people like soldiers who experience bad events like combat, which
Speaker 2: one of the worst things we can experience, the response
Speaker 2: to very bad events is bell shaped, and on the
Speaker 2: left hand side of the bell is post traumatic stress disorder,
Speaker 2: people who collapse and become helpless, but in the middle
Speaker 2: is resilience, and their resilience means you may have a
Speaker 2: tough time in combat, but within three months your back
Speaker 2: where you were. And then on the right hand side
Speaker 2: of the bell is people who often go through post
Speaker 2: traumatic stress disorder, but a year later are physically and
Speaker 2: mentally stronger than they were to begin with. So I
Speaker 2: guess I would want to contrast the notion of growth
Speaker 2: to resilience. So these days I'm more interested in growth
Speaker 2: than I am in resilience.
Speaker 1: I'm curious how you got started on that in the
Speaker 1: first place. How did that work begin?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was in the middle of the Iraq War.
Speaker 2: General George Casey, the Chief of Staff of the Army,
Speaker 2: called me the Pentagon to a meeting of the General Staff.
Speaker 2: And I looked around and sitting at the table were
Speaker 2: all copies of my books and things like that. General
Speaker 2: Casey said, well, Seligman, Professor Seligman, I called him sir.
Speaker 2: I went to military school. I know about calling general sir.
Speaker 2: He said, post traumatic stress disorder, suicide, drug abuse, panic, divorce.
Speaker 2: What does positive psychology say about that? And I went
Speaker 2: through the bell shape and I said, I think the
Speaker 2: of what we can do in positive psychology is to
Speaker 2: move the whole distribution toward post traumatic growth. Whereupon General
Speaker 2: cases did two things. He said, First, he said, my
Speaker 2: legacy to the United States Army is going to be
Speaker 2: to create an army that is as mentally fit as
Speaker 2: it is physically fit. And I'm going to allocate one
Speaker 2: hundred and forty million dollars to doing that. And so
Speaker 2: I said, well, how are you going to do it?
Speaker 2: And he said, well, we've read your work in schools
Speaker 2: and we see you teach teachers the skills of positive
Speaker 2: psychology and resilience, and the teachers teach the students. Well,
Speaker 2: we have forty thousand teachers in the army. I said, really,
Speaker 2: he said, yeah, the drill sergeants. And so your job,
Speaker 2: doctor Seligman, will be to train all forty thousand drill
Speaker 2: sergeants in positive psychology and resilience, and they will train
Speaker 2: the one point one million soldiers. And so that's how
Speaker 2: our work with the military started. And I guess I
Speaker 2: should tell you two outcomes of it that your audience
Speaker 2: probably doesn't know about their new We created a psychometric
Speaker 2: tests called the GAT the GAC that every soldier takes
Speaker 2: the first day of joining the army, and these are
Speaker 2: psychological tests with the good and bad stuff. Then we
Speaker 2: follow people through the army and we've just completed two
Speaker 2: major studies. I should say both of these studies are
Speaker 2: not samples. This is everybody in the army. So the
Speaker 2: first thing we asked was could you predict post traumatic
Speaker 2: stress disorder? And so we took everyone who was deployed
Speaker 2: to Iraq and Afghanistan, seventy seven thousand people, and we
Speaker 2: asked who got post traumatic stress disorder. Three five hundred
Speaker 2: of them are diagnosed with post romata stress disorder. And
Speaker 2: it turns out you can predict from day one if
Speaker 2: you both face serious combat and you're a catastrophizer, you're
Speaker 2: three hundred and seventy percent more likely come down with
Speaker 2: post traumatic stress disorder. The same exaggeration of post traumatic
Speaker 2: stress disorder is true at every level of combat. So
Speaker 2: one finding that came out of this we could predict
Speaker 2: who is really vulnerable. The second finding is the reverse
Speaker 2: and much closer to my interest. It's about success. It's
Speaker 2: about who's going to do really well in the army.
Speaker 2: This is now nine hundred and ninety thousand soldiers followed
Speaker 2: for five years. Day one, they take the gap the
Speaker 2: psychological test, and over the next five years, twelve percent
Speaker 2: of them win a Heroism of medal or an Exemplary
Speaker 2: Work medal. And the question is could we predict who's
Speaker 2: going to really succeed in the army by heroism and
Speaker 2: untry work? And again the answer was we could robustly
Speaker 2: predict it. There were three psychological factors. First, optimistic people,
Speaker 2: second people with more positive emotion, and third people with
Speaker 2: low negative emotion. Are more likely, we've been able to
Speaker 2: predict post traumatic stress disorder by being a catastrophizer, and
Speaker 2: who's going to do really well in the army by
Speaker 2: high positive emotion, high optimism, and low negative emotion.
Speaker 1: Even the most rigorous researchers struggle to amass data sets
Speaker 1: like this. I mean, lots of psychology experiments are run
Speaker 1: using dozens or maybe a few hundred test subjects. Marty's
Speaker 1: work looked at the lives of tens of thousands of people,
Speaker 1: literally a whole army, and his findings speak to the
Speaker 1: power of optimism to improve our lives, which is something
Speaker 1: we'll explore in a whole lot more detail when the
Speaker 1: Happiness Lab returns after the shortbreak. Research shows that being
Speaker 1: a hopeful, optimistic person is a great indicator that you'll
Speaker 1: flourish in life, even when things go wrong or you
Speaker 1: find yourself in awful situations like, for example, military combat.
Speaker 1: Marty Seligman's massive research project with the US Army made
Speaker 1: this clear. But what exactly is the power of optimism,
Speaker 1: how does it work? And is it something that all
Speaker 1: of us can learn?
Speaker 2: First and most importantly, optimists try harder, they don't give up,
Speaker 2: they're more persistent. Secondly, when bad events hit them, they're
Speaker 2: half as likely to get depressed. They're more likely to
Speaker 2: come back and be resilient. Third people like them better.
Speaker 2: So while misery loves company, company does not like misery
Speaker 2: in the workplace. In sports, they come back from defeat better.
Speaker 2: So Optimistic pitchers in close games in the major leagues
Speaker 2: in the last three innings, their earn run average gets better.
Speaker 2: Optimistic hitters in the last three innings in close games,
Speaker 2: their betting average goes up. The pessimists go down in
Speaker 2: close games and do worse. But at any rate, optimism,
Speaker 2: because it produces more trying, by and large, seems to
Speaker 2: be a very big advantage in life, and in some
Speaker 2: ways the most surprising thing of all is that optimists
Speaker 2: live on average between six and eight years longer than pessimists,
Speaker 2: and there are now about twenty good studies of this.
Speaker 2: Controlling for all the major risk factors, particularly for cardiovascular disease,
Speaker 2: Pessimism is probably between smoking two and three packs of
Speaker 2: cigarettes a day as a risk factor, and optimism seems
Speaker 2: to give between six and eight years of extra life,
Speaker 2: probably about twice as important as exercise.
Speaker 1: I mean, all of those are amazing findings, but if
Speaker 1: you don't know the literature on optimism and hope, you
Speaker 1: might find them kind of depressing because I think many
Speaker 1: lay people have this notion that you're either born an
Speaker 1: optimist or born a pessimist.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: So it's all well and good. If you're born an optimist,
Speaker 1: then you're going to live longer and you know, get
Speaker 1: through these tough games faster. But if you're not tough
Speaker 1: for you. But this seems to be something that your
Speaker 1: work has shown too, which is that it's not just
Speaker 1: that there's optimism and pessimism, but that there's learned optimism.
Speaker 1: It's almost kind of coming full circle from your original
Speaker 1: work on learned helplessness. So talk about how optimism can
Speaker 1: be learned and what we figured out about how we
Speaker 1: can kind of bring it into our lives. If that's
Speaker 1: not our natural tendency.
Speaker 2: Well, first we should confirm the unlearned part. So in Twinsburg, Ohio,
Speaker 2: every year there's a Twins convention. Ten thy twins show up.
Speaker 2: One year, we went to Twinsburg and we gave them
Speaker 2: optimism Pessimism questionnaire. Half of them are fraternal twins and
Speaker 2: half are identical twins. And we measured concordance, and it
Speaker 2: turns out identical twins are much more concordant than fraternal twins.
Speaker 2: For optimism or pessimism, it's about fifty percent heritable. Okay,
Speaker 2: so people are partly right. Optimism is partly inherited. But
Speaker 2: it turns out if you're a pessimist like I am,
Speaker 2: you can learn optimism. And the basic skill comes straight
Speaker 2: out of cognitive therapy. First, you want to be able
Speaker 2: to recognize the most catastrophic thoughts you say to yourself,
Speaker 2: and then you want to realistically dispute them. I'm eighty
Speaker 2: years old now, and before I got on this call
Speaker 2: with you, I said, oh my god, can I really
Speaker 2: survive an hour of a I'm really too old to
Speaker 2: be doing this kind of thing. And I recognize that thought.
Speaker 2: Maybe I should just give up and turn it over
Speaker 2: to the young people. Then when we started, I could
Speaker 2: recognize the thought and I treated it as if it
Speaker 2: was said by someone who a third person whose mission
Speaker 2: in life was to make me miserable, and I disputed
Speaker 2: it with realistic evidence. So you're not only a good interviewer,
Speaker 2: but you smile and laugh and you show real responses
Speaker 2: when I'm doing something that really makes sense. So I said, well, look,
Speaker 2: Laurie really gets if this is going really well. So
Speaker 2: what you do is you realistically dispute your most catastrophic thoughts.
Speaker 2: And I become quite skilled of that. I'm a born
Speaker 2: pessimist and a born depressive, and I still hear the
Speaker 2: voices all the time that tell me I'm a reject,
Speaker 2: I'm a loser, but I know how to dispute them now.
Speaker 2: And that's the basic skill of learned optimism.
Speaker 1: And if you learn optimism in that way, do you
Speaker 1: get Is there evidence that you get as many benefits
Speaker 1: as somebody who might come about it naturally.
Speaker 2: I don't think anyone has ever tested that. That's a
Speaker 2: really interesting thing. And the difference in many ways is
Speaker 2: I think the people who get it heritably don't hear
Speaker 2: the voices all the time telling them what a failure
Speaker 2: they are, and the people who learn it really have
Speaker 2: to work. So learned optimism is work, doesn't become naturally.
Speaker 1: And I think this is in some ways a message
Speaker 1: in a lot of positive psychology, right, which is that
Speaker 1: we can go above baseline, we can flourish more, but
Speaker 1: sometimes it actually does take some work. You need to
Speaker 1: put work in. You need to be following your strength
Speaker 1: and paying attention to them. You need to fight those
Speaker 1: tendencies to talk badly to yourself. If you're a natural pessimist,
Speaker 1: you know you can experience hope and optimism in all
Speaker 1: these positive rewards, but sometimes you get to put a
Speaker 1: little bit of work into. Even if you are the
Speaker 1: father of positive psychology himself, Marty Seligman, you have to
Speaker 1: put this work in.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think at the heart of why the positive
Speaker 2: stuff has to be learned is that we inherited from
Speaker 2: our ancestors a bad weather brain. The most recent geological
Speaker 2: epoch was the ice ages, and those of your ancestors
Speaker 2: who thought, oh, it's a beautiful day in new Haven today,
Speaker 2: A bet it'll be beautiful tomorrow got crushed by the ice.
Speaker 2: And it was your ancestors who said, things look okay,
Speaker 2: but famine is coming, and ice is coming, and one
Speaker 2: tragedy or another is coming. They survive because they were right,
Speaker 2: and we got their brain. Unfortunately, if prosperity continues and
Speaker 2: it is a nice day in new Haven tomorrow, it'll
Speaker 2: be ruined. If all you can think of is how
Speaker 2: miserable everything's going to be so now in a world
Speaker 2: which is much more prosperous by almost every measure we
Speaker 2: have than the world used to be. The pessimistic brain
Speaker 2: does not serve you very well, and an optimistic brain
Speaker 2: allows you to take advantage of prosperity.
Speaker 1: And so, as you think about prosperity in this field,
Speaker 1: what are the things that make you optimistic about where
Speaker 1: positive psychology is going to be in the next fifty years.
Speaker 1: What are your predictions about how positive psychology will flourish
Speaker 1: in the future.
Speaker 2: Well, I've been mapping as people like Steve Pinker have
Speaker 2: progress over the last two hundred years, and essentially you
Speaker 2: have to be blinded by ideology not to see how
Speaker 2: much better the world is now than it was two
Speaker 2: hundred years ago. Two hundred years ago, forty four percent
Speaker 2: of your children died before the age of five. Now
Speaker 2: one percent of children die before the age of five.
Speaker 2: Two hundred years ago, the mean human life expectancy was
Speaker 2: about thirty five years. Life expectancy across the entire world
Speaker 2: has doubled in the last two hundred years. It's not
Speaker 2: just these material things that have changed to measure, Women's
Speaker 2: rights and racism not perfect, but it's a lot better
Speaker 2: than it was two hundred years ago when we had
Speaker 2: slavery and women couldn't vote. So by almost every material
Speaker 2: and spiritual dimension, life has gotten better over the last
Speaker 2: two hundred years. And now the question is will it continue?
Speaker 2: And this is a very important question. I mean, we
Speaker 2: need to overcome all sorts of stuff, avoid economic collapse,
Speaker 2: we need to avoid nuclear war, we need to avoid
Speaker 2: climate collapse. But if we do all of those things,
Speaker 2: then there's good reason to believe that human innovation and
Speaker 2: prosperity will continue. If that is so, we need a
Speaker 2: psychology that goes along with it, a psychology that tells
Speaker 2: us that everything is wrong and all we can talk
Speaker 2: about is reducing misery is not really conducive to producing
Speaker 2: more and more prosperity and more and more innovation. So
Speaker 2: I think it is vouchsafe to positive psychologists not just
Speaker 2: to witness increase prosperity over the next fifty years, but
Speaker 2: to actually help more and more prosperity to occur.
Speaker 1: When we look at the work in positive psychology, there's
Speaker 1: so many tips and so many changes that people can
Speaker 1: make to kind of improve their sense of flourishing. If
Speaker 1: you had to boil it down to your three favorite
Speaker 1: tips or the three ones that have worked best for you.
Speaker 1: What would some of those tips be.
Speaker 2: Well, my very favorite, which I'm often asked by depress people,
Speaker 2: is what's the number one thing I can do if
Speaker 2: I'm depressed right now? And the answer is to turn
Speaker 2: off this seminar, go out and find someone who needs
Speaker 2: help and help them. Turns out, our heedonic system is
Speaker 2: built to turn on when we help others, So that's
Speaker 2: my number one. My number two, I think is that
Speaker 2: learning optimism and cultivating optimism will produce more success in
Speaker 2: the workplace, less depression, and longer life. And my third
Speaker 2: is anything you like doing, do it with someone else,
Speaker 2: it'll enhance it.
Speaker 1: Those are some fantastic go tos, easy things that people
Speaker 1: can latch onto to go from there. And in addition
Speaker 1: to all this fantastic work, you also have a new
Speaker 1: book out right now, Tomorrow Mind. So talk to me
Speaker 1: about Tomorrow Mind and tell me what it teaches well.
Speaker 2: With Gabriella Kellerman, we've asked the question what skills the
Speaker 2: workers today need in a whitewater world in which their
Speaker 2: skills get outmoded every six months? And Tomorrow Mind talks
Speaker 2: about five skills. The acronym is prism pri FM, where
Speaker 2: P is prospection, future mindedness, making people better perspectors of
Speaker 2: the future. R is resilience and optimism. I is innovation
Speaker 2: and creativity. S is social skills, particularly rapid rap or
Speaker 2: and M is mattering and meaning at work.
Speaker 1: And so these are all skills that I think matter
Speaker 1: at work, but they're kind of building on the models
Speaker 1: of flourishing that you've talked about. Generally, they're the kinds
Speaker 1: of things that can help us succeed at work. But
Speaker 1: if we master all the things in this prison acronym,
Speaker 1: it's also kind of the techniques that will make us
Speaker 1: happier generally.
Speaker 2: Indeed, and Gabriella Kellerman is both a psychiatrist and comes
Speaker 2: from the world of work and trying to make work
Speaker 2: a happier place. So it's been a particular privilege for
Speaker 2: me to be second author with Gabriella on how work
Speaker 2: can be happier than it is today.
Speaker 1: Well, all my gratitude for starting this field off that
Speaker 1: can help all of the slightly younger guns to make
Speaker 1: that happen, and to share all this great science with
Speaker 1: everybody out there. We've already kept you over time, which
Speaker 1: is exactly what I expected what happened, so we should
Speaker 1: let you go. But this is really awesome. It's meant
Speaker 1: a lot to be able to share this work, and
Speaker 1: I feel like telling your story been something I've wanted
Speaker 1: to do for a long time, so I'm so happy
Speaker 1: we could make it happen.
Speaker 2: Good. Well, thank you, it's wonderful to see you.
Speaker 1: Ditto, Dittoh, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed
Speaker 1: this chat with Marty Seligman as much as I did.
Speaker 1: Hearing Marty's story reminds me that it's an honor to
Speaker 1: live in the time we do right now, when we've
Speaker 1: learned so much about the kinds of things we can
Speaker 1: do to live a more flourishing life. So why not
Speaker 1: commit to the practices you just heard that you know
Speaker 1: will make you feel better. You could start discovering your
Speaker 1: character strengths. As Marty mentioned, you can head to his
Speaker 1: free website, authentic happiness dot org and take the via
Speaker 1: Character Strengths Survey. Once you learn what your strengths are,
Speaker 1: you can find ways to put them into practice this week.
Speaker 1: Or you could commit to changing your mindset and experiencing
Speaker 1: a bit more learned optimism. If you want more tips
Speaker 1: on how to do that, you should check out Marty's
Speaker 1: new book Tomorrow Mind Thriving at Work with resilience, creativity
Speaker 1: and connection now and in an uncertain future. The Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab will be back soon with an extra special tree,
Speaker 1: not just the usual shows recorded inside my beloved podcast closet,
Speaker 1: but two new episodes that we recorded live in front
Speaker 1: of a real studio audience of fans just like you.
Speaker 1: So I hope you'll join me back again soon for
Speaker 1: the next episode of the Happiness Lab with me Doctor
Speaker 1: Laurie Santos. The Happiness Lab is co written by Ryan
Speaker 1: Dilly and is produced by Ryan Dilly, Jess Shane and
Speaker 1: Britney Brown. The show was mastered by Evan Viola and
Speaker 1: our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Greta Cohne, Eric Sandler, Carl Migliori, Morgan Rattner, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: my agent, Ben Davis, and the rest of the Pushkin team.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is brought to you by Pushkin Industries
Speaker 1: and by me, Doctor Lariy Santos,