Speaker 1: Pushkin. So did he tell you what we're doing today? No,
Speaker 1: I did tell you more than I usually do. You
Speaker 1: told me a bit. You didn't tell me much. Grapes.
Speaker 1: Something about grapes, Yeah, something, that's what I remember, something
Speaker 1: about grapes. I'm chatting with PJ Vote and Alex Goldman,
Speaker 1: the co host of the podcast reply All. It's really
Speaker 1: hard to describe. We do all sorts of crazy stories
Speaker 1: about things that's out true but our true, and it's
Speaker 1: a wonderful podcast. Pj's right, you should listen to reply All.
Speaker 1: It's about the Internet, modern life, and how to survive it. Plus,
Speaker 1: PG and Alex are a great pair. They're clever, funny,
Speaker 1: and not above using the occasional curse word, as you'll
Speaker 1: probably hear in the next half hour. But a real
Speaker 1: highlight of reply All for me is when Alex gets
Speaker 1: going on his favorite topic, graping. There's like this pink
Speaker 1: mystery scuff on our floor and I'm like, what is that?
Speaker 1: Why can't I get it off? It's making me so
Speaker 1: mad and like, no sane person should care about it.
Speaker 1: I'm glad I'm work married to you in that life,
Speaker 1: married to you. I feel like we wouldn't live together
Speaker 1: a while. Alex is particularly into griping. It's a way
Speaker 1: that he likes to bond with his listeners because, if
Speaker 1: we're being honest, griping feels kind of fun. I mean,
Speaker 1: I like to gripe, My best friends like to gripe,
Speaker 1: My family likes to gripe. It's funny, and griping lets
Speaker 1: us connect with the people around us. I one day
Speaker 1: some we were the first thing. We were like. We
Speaker 1: hate all the same things, and most of the time,
Speaker 1: venting our frustration seems to make us feel better. Or
Speaker 1: does it is griping really all it's cracked up to be?
Speaker 1: Or is this yet another spot? Or our mind is
Speaker 1: leading us astray. Our minds are constantly telling us what
Speaker 1: to do to be happy. But what if our minds
Speaker 1: are wrong? What if our minds are lying to us,
Speaker 1: leading us away from what will really make us happy.
Speaker 1: The good news is that understanding the science of the
Speaker 1: mind can point us all back in the right direction.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Happiness Lab with doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: Gripes became a regular part of Reply All by Necessity.
Speaker 1: One of the show's early sponsors was a website hosting
Speaker 1: company and PG and Alex had to deal with a
Speaker 1: problem that many podcasters face, how to make an ad
Speaker 1: for a company like that that sounds fun to listen
Speaker 1: to and not super cheesy. And then at some point
Speaker 1: we realized Alex is a habitual griper, and I think
Speaker 1: I was saying that you should have a website where
Speaker 1: it's just you're complaining. Then it went from just Alex's
Speaker 1: gripes to taking like listener gripes, and the listener grapes
Speaker 1: are great because they're almost like a picture of what
Speaker 1: the world is like in a given moment. Like there's
Speaker 1: like a real feeling to like summer gripes, and like
Speaker 1: when world events are really anxiety producing, everyone seems to
Speaker 1: be like griping in the same direction. The way the
Speaker 1: website works is people just submit grapes and they end
Speaker 1: up on a spreadsheet that I can go through whenever
Speaker 1: I choose. As it happens, Alex has his laptop open
Speaker 1: in his studio. The spreadsheet is huge. I certainly didn't
Speaker 1: expect it to become what it is because we do
Speaker 1: one of the ads every three to four months, but
Speaker 1: I would say probably twenty to twenty five people leave
Speaker 1: grapes on there a day. Really, maybe more. I didn't
Speaker 1: realize there's that much. There are over thirty thousand grapes
Speaker 1: on my spreadsheet. I didn't know. I like to check
Speaker 1: the reply all recently submitted grapes because they're pretty funny.
Speaker 1: And one recent complaint really spoke to me. Stickers on fruit. Oh,
Speaker 1: because a grape isn't just a complaint, like a grape
Speaker 1: is a specific kind of complaint, and some complaints don't
Speaker 1: make good grapes like that, Like a grape has certain qualities.
Speaker 1: Talk to me, Alex, how would you how would you
Speaker 1: put it? I would describe it as something that is
Speaker 1: annoying enough to complain about, but mostly not annoying enough
Speaker 1: to do something about. Yes, yeah, yeah, and it's nice.
Speaker 1: If they're like sort of good fiction, they should be
Speaker 1: highly specific and also universal at the same time, Like
Speaker 1: sticker on fruit is really good. Here's a grape we
Speaker 1: got today at eleven fifty eight am. This is like
Speaker 1: a perfect example of one washing my hands after cracking
Speaker 1: eggs and then having hands are two wet to pinch
Speaker 1: and sprinkle salt on your eggs. That's a good gripe.
Speaker 1: It's really good. Yeah, PJ, you said that Alex isn't
Speaker 1: a griping like, so why do you like the gripe
Speaker 1: being so much? I think that probably the strength I
Speaker 1: have is that I don't hold anything in. I'm just
Speaker 1: like a constant pressure release valve. It's just like a
Speaker 1: way to get it out of my head and so
Speaker 1: that the you know, ahead of steam doesn't build up
Speaker 1: and I don't become like miserable. It's interesting that you
Speaker 1: say that, because I think sometimes that's how it works.
Speaker 1: Other times, as a long time Alex could an observer
Speaker 1: an expert. Sometimes I feel like there's a type of
Speaker 1: complaining you'll do where it gets howt your system is gone.
Speaker 1: There's a type of complaining you do where it's actually
Speaker 1: just like a chorus to a song where every time
Speaker 1: you sing it, you sing it like slightly louder. But
Speaker 1: it's not like PJ only has to hear Alex's louder gripes.
Speaker 1: There's also the Internet, which PJ describes as a complain
Speaker 1: box for things that don't have complain boxes. We complain
Speaker 1: on Twitter, we complain on Reddit, we complain on WhatsApp.
Speaker 1: Any site or service that allows to post a comment
Speaker 1: seems to attract gripes like moths to a flame, But
Speaker 1: that raises a question. Why do we choose to share
Speaker 1: our gripes or willingly read the gripes of total strangers.
Speaker 1: I think one thing, it's just like you don't feel
Speaker 1: alone in the world. You're like everyone's encountering this. Like
Speaker 1: I have this theory that when you love somebody, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're so nice, they're so great. And people describe the
Speaker 1: people they love very vaguely, and when you dislike somebody,
Speaker 1: you're like, he's got this weird little walk, like he
Speaker 1: thinks he's the Prince of Tennessee, and like blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah. And like what I like about graping complains
Speaker 1: it is like you are noticing the world, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. Griping makes you present. It makes you
Speaker 1: very very present, And like I can deal with anybody
Speaker 1: complaining as long as they're funny about it. And it's
Speaker 1: like you're taking the shit of the world and turning
Speaker 1: it at least into like an observable moment or something.
Speaker 1: Gripes are a guilty pleasure. They're like sugary candy. We
Speaker 1: know we shouldn't really indulge too much, but we just
Speaker 1: can't resist, And just like eating too much candy, it's
Speaker 1: pretty clear griping too much has a downside. Well, everyone
Speaker 1: thinks I'm a cranky asshole. Yeah, I don't think everyone
Speaker 1: thinks you're a cranky asshole. Sarah has several friends who
Speaker 1: just call me grumps, so oh okay, yeah everybody thinks
Speaker 1: a cranky asshole. Yeah, I think you can make you
Speaker 1: unpleasant company. In the last season of The Happiness Lab,
Speaker 1: we talked about the need to curate our emotional lives
Speaker 1: to make sure we're controlling those feelings that we're exposed to.
Speaker 1: Flirting with gripes can demonstrate how witty and cool we are,
Speaker 1: but recreational complaining can sometimes turn into a habit, which
Speaker 1: means we're constantly surrounded by negative feelings. We used to
Speaker 1: work with somebody who was like a high level constant graper,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't like stickers on fruit. It was like
Speaker 1: everything sucks. And I remember reaching a point where it's
Speaker 1: like I can't talk to this person anymore because either
Speaker 1: I have to argue with them all the time or
Speaker 1: I have to see things the way they see them.
Speaker 1: And if I see things the way they see them,
Speaker 1: I won't like my life anymore. I'm dying to know
Speaker 1: who you're talking about. Oh okay, yeah, but literally it
Speaker 1: was like, I can't talk to you anymore. Like I can't,
Speaker 1: I don't even want to make small talk, which I've
Speaker 1: never that's the associopath thing to do. I've never done
Speaker 1: that before. And it was a small office. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a thing where you'd be like, hey, it's a
Speaker 1: beautiful day out and then they'd be like, yeah, well
Speaker 1: the sun was burning the back of my neck. I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, man, even relative to me, this is wild.
Speaker 1: That was another level. We all have relationships that center
Speaker 1: around swapping gripes and grievances. I mean, there are definitely
Speaker 1: certain people in my life who I know I'll covetch
Speaker 1: with as soon as I see them. And if I'm
Speaker 1: being honest about how I end up feeling during and
Speaker 1: after those gripe sessions, it's usually not great. It often
Speaker 1: ups my stress levels. But the biggest downside to all
Speaker 1: this cavetching, at least according to science, is one of
Speaker 1: our minds can't see it. Turns out there is an
Speaker 1: opportunity cost to griping, there's something else we could be
Speaker 1: doing instead that allows for better social bonding and a
Speaker 1: lot more happiness. The Happiness Lab will be back in
Speaker 1: a moment. Certainly, there's that social commiseration component to it, right,
Speaker 1: There's a bonding that goes on when we share complaints.
Speaker 1: I'm talking with doctor Robert Emmons, a professor of psychology
Speaker 1: at UC Davis. We're chatting about the upsides of griping.
Speaker 1: There's some social benefits. Certainly, it can help connect us
Speaker 1: together kind of a shared collective grievance, and that can
Speaker 1: feel good. There's also the you know, the physiology. I
Speaker 1: think it feels good to express the emotional least temporarily,
Speaker 1: but in the long run it actually doesn't service very well.
Speaker 1: Robert worries that the benefits of griping depends a lot
Speaker 1: on the kind of cavetching we're engaging in. Some are
Speaker 1: more detrimental to well being than others, and some are
Speaker 1: perhaps a little bit more facilitative or actually can be
Speaker 1: adaptive if it results in problem solving or insight. It
Speaker 1: turns out that griping for the sake of griping doesn't
Speaker 1: make us feel good, but when we express our frustrations
Speaker 1: in order to process us a bad situation, to make
Speaker 1: sense of it and find a solution that can have
Speaker 1: a more positive effect. When people write about a negative
Speaker 1: event that happened to them and they express their emotions
Speaker 1: about it, that's not as beneficial as getting some insight
Speaker 1: for why the event happened in the first place, or
Speaker 1: now what a person can do about it. So you
Speaker 1: could say that starts with a complaint, certainly noticing what's
Speaker 1: going wrong, but the goal is always to move beyond that.
Speaker 1: The problem is we don't always take our griping to
Speaker 1: that next level. In fact, if you're a call that
Speaker 1: was pretty much how PJ and Alex defined gripes earlier.
Speaker 1: Something that is annoying enough to complain about, but mostly
Speaker 1: not annoying enough to do something about. But not doing
Speaker 1: anything about our gripes isn't even the worst part of
Speaker 1: our urge to complain. The biggest issue is that we
Speaker 1: get the benefits of griping all wrong. Our minds lie
Speaker 1: to us about how good it will make us feel. Said,
Speaker 1: it's if shown complaining or listening to people complain has
Speaker 1: an effect both on the listener as well as the complainer.
Speaker 1: It's another case where we do things which are bad
Speaker 1: for us, but we don't realize that. Robert examined this
Speaker 1: in a classic study back in two thousand and three.
Speaker 1: He had college students fill out a weekly survey for
Speaker 1: a couple months. He asked a bunch of questions about
Speaker 1: the subjects, while being their overall mood, how grateful they
Speaker 1: were feeling, and even whether they engaged in healthy habits
Speaker 1: like exercise. Some students were then asked to list five
Speaker 1: mundane events that had happened during the week, but other
Speaker 1: students were asked to complain not about the big things
Speaker 1: in life, mind you, just the small stuff, the stickers
Speaker 1: on fruit level problems. They had the typical every day
Speaker 1: guarden variety types of hassles related to roommates and finances
Speaker 1: and parking problems and professors. Not me, of course, but
Speaker 1: some of the other ones, of course, Robert. But did
Speaker 1: giving students the chance to complain about these little annoyances
Speaker 1: improve their mood over the ten weeks? The answer was striking.
Speaker 1: Griping didn't help at all. If anything, people who talked
Speaker 1: about their hassles had a worse time. For example, the
Speaker 1: griping group wound up exercising almost forty five minutes less
Speaker 1: than those in the control group. But Robert included one
Speaker 1: additional group of participants in this study. Subjects in this
Speaker 1: third condition showed improved well being relative to the Hassle's
Speaker 1: condition and even higher levels of gratitude, more frequent exercise,
Speaker 1: and fewer physical symptoms like headaches and stomach problems. What
Speaker 1: were the people in this well being supercharged group asked
Speaker 1: to do? They were told to think back over the
Speaker 1: past week and write down up to five things that
Speaker 1: they were thankful for. They were asked to do the
Speaker 1: opposite of griping, focus on things you're grateful for. Robert
Speaker 1: called this the blessings condition. In this and lots of
Speaker 1: other studies, Robert has found that counting your blessings leads
Speaker 1: to a host of positive outcomes. I used to be
Speaker 1: able to keep track of all the findings, but now
Speaker 1: it seems like almost every day and in every way,
Speaker 1: we're learning more and more ways in which gratitude works
Speaker 1: that it drives good outcomes in people's lives. So, whether
Speaker 1: you're talking about emotional health, relational satisfaction, physical well being,
Speaker 1: you see that gratitude matters The stats that Robert cites
Speaker 1: in his book, The Little Book of Gratitude are pretty incredible.
Speaker 1: People who count their blessings show twenty three percent lower
Speaker 1: levels of stress hormones like cortisol. They reduce their dietary
Speaker 1: fat intake by as much as twenty five percent. People
Speaker 1: suffering from chronic pain show a ten percent improvement in
Speaker 1: sleep quality and depression levels that are nineteen percent lower.
Speaker 1: Science shows that gratitude also increases our resilience. In contrast
Speaker 1: to griping, focusing on the good things in life seems
Speaker 1: to be a strategy that allows you to take action
Speaker 1: in order to fix the bad things. We know from
Speaker 1: the studies that that gratitude helps us recover from loss
Speaker 1: and trauma. It helps us to deal with the slow
Speaker 1: drip of every day's stress, as well as the massive
Speaker 1: personal upheavals and the face of suffering and pain and
Speaker 1: loss and trials and tribulations. Gratitude is absolutely sensual. It's
Speaker 1: part of our psychological immune system. But the biggest benefit
Speaker 1: of counting your blessings, according to Robert, is that it
Speaker 1: connects us with other people. Yes, that one good thing
Speaker 1: that griping gives us, we can get that kind of
Speaker 1: relationship boost from gratitude too, right, absolutely, I mean one
Speaker 1: of the benefits of gratitude is that it connects us
Speaker 1: so deeply with other people. And a colleague of mind
Speaker 1: social psychologist at a Chapel Hill, North Carolina and Sarah Algo,
Speaker 1: talks about gratitude as basically the interpersonal emotion. It is
Speaker 1: the find, remind, and bind emotion. Sarah and her colleagues
Speaker 1: have found that practicing gratitude can completely shift people's mindset
Speaker 1: about a personal relationship. Taking time to think gratefully about
Speaker 1: a friend or partner makes you spontaneously notice more positive
Speaker 1: qualities about that person. It makes it easier to remember
Speaker 1: happier memories with that person, and drives us to spend
Speaker 1: more time with them. And all of these little mindset
Speaker 1: shifts wind up making us feel more connected. Sarah calls
Speaker 1: gratitude a booster shot for our relationships. The positive evidence
Speaker 1: for focusing on the good things in life are pretty clear,
Speaker 1: but it's still not something that comes naturally to many
Speaker 1: of us. If you're going to express sentiment online, being
Speaker 1: like I hate a nice sandwich, I'm really grateful to
Speaker 1: be alive today is like it comes across I think
Speaker 1: as well dopey. I think I think the problem with
Speaker 1: niceness and goodness and happiness as express online is like
Speaker 1: it can feel you feel like you're bragging. It can
Speaker 1: feel like you can feel insincere. Enguelan since here, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: PG and Alex kind of nailed it here. Gratitude does
Speaker 1: feel a little dopey. Robert knows that if he's going
Speaker 1: to get us all signed up to that blessing's condition,
Speaker 1: he's going to have to change that attitude. I like
Speaker 1: to say that gratitude really is an old fashioned idea,
Speaker 1: but the science makes it brand new. In fact, we
Speaker 1: know now from the science that gratitude actually does deliver
Speaker 1: on its promise and on its potential. To paraphrase Robert,
Speaker 1: gratitude seems dopey, but it works. Getting past the cheese
Speaker 1: takes effort, but it's definitely effort worth doing. Part of
Speaker 1: why I do this, you know, part of why I
Speaker 1: study gratitude and try to con people that gratitude is
Speaker 1: the best approach to life is just to convince myself,
Speaker 1: is to remind myself that every day I need to
Speaker 1: practice gratitude. Even though Robert's an expert on this. It
Speaker 1: didn't always come easy. I was always you know, planning ahead.
Speaker 1: I was always you know, the person who said, Okay,
Speaker 1: well I'll be happy when such and such happens, when
Speaker 1: I you know, get into college, when I get into
Speaker 1: graduate school, and when I get tenued, when I get
Speaker 1: I was always delaying or putting off happiness. And I
Speaker 1: think it was because I wasn't grateful enough for my
Speaker 1: current situation. That I had everything I needed perfectly to
Speaker 1: be happy and to be grateful, to be content in
Speaker 1: the moment, but I was always looking for something bigger
Speaker 1: and better and brighter, you know, down the road. Doing
Speaker 1: these sorts of you know, interviews, writing the books, doing
Speaker 1: the research, giving the talks is just really almost like
Speaker 1: a personal journey for me to become more grateful. So
Speaker 1: for people who are kind of in the in the
Speaker 1: complaining camp or like, you know, think that that's that's
Speaker 1: focusing on the hassles is where it is any last
Speaker 1: advice for them to get on the gratitude bandwagon. So
Speaker 1: I think a really good thing to do is just
Speaker 1: take one daily hassle, some area that you struggle with,
Speaker 1: and try to view that through a lens of gratitude.
Speaker 1: Take the bad thing that you are most likely by
Speaker 1: default to complain about, and see if you can extract
Speaker 1: at least one benefit from that bad thing. That's something
Speaker 1: that anyone can do, whether or not we complain by
Speaker 1: nature or by practice. I think you know, once we
Speaker 1: start doing that, we can see that can shift us
Speaker 1: that the house. We're not going to go away. We're
Speaker 1: always going to have those, but at least we'll have
Speaker 1: a backdrop by which we can view those with some
Speaker 1: degree of hope and trust in the future and positivity
Speaker 1: after the break. We're going to take Robert's advice to
Speaker 1: the next level because science shows that there's one way
Speaker 1: to experience gratitude that doesn't just boost your well being
Speaker 1: in the moment, It can make you happier for a long,
Speaker 1: long time, like for over a month. I wanted to
Speaker 1: try out these bold scientific claims directly, and I knew
Speaker 1: just the subjects. You guys don't mind being guinea pigs,
Speaker 1: nor the Happiness lab will be right back. This exercise, allegedly,
Speaker 1: according to science, can boost your mood not just for
Speaker 1: the rest of the day, but for over a whole month. Really. Yeah.
Speaker 1: In two thousand and five, psychologist Marty Seligman and his
Speaker 1: colleagues recruited over five hundred people to try a bunch
Speaker 1: of different happiness interventions. Simple behavior is designed to quickly
Speaker 1: boost well being, but Seligman also wanted to test whether
Speaker 1: these interventions caused sustained improvements and happiness and mood like
Speaker 1: ones that lasted for weeks and weeks. One of these
Speaker 1: interventions was called a gratitude visit. Here's how it works.
Speaker 1: You think of someone you care about a lot, someone
Speaker 1: you're really grateful for, but also someone you've never really thanked.
Speaker 1: Then you sit down and write that person a genuine,
Speaker 1: heartfelt letter. You explain why that person has had such
Speaker 1: a meaningful impact on your life. And when you're done,
Speaker 1: rather than mailing the letter or sending a quick email,
Speaker 1: you ask to meet them in person. And so when
Speaker 1: I went to interview PG and Alex, I just happened
Speaker 1: to bring along some happiness lab notepaper. We have a
Speaker 1: little project for you all. Are we doing gratitude journalism?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, here's your prompt. I want you to
Speaker 1: each write a quick letter of thanks to each other.
Speaker 1: You want to express your thanks in a way of
Speaker 1: something you've not expressed to each other, and so you're
Speaker 1: just going to scribble some stuff down, Okay. Well, PG
Speaker 1: and Alex are working on their letters. I wanted to
Speaker 1: dig a bit more into the science of how this
Speaker 1: intervention works and why, like PG and Alex, many of
Speaker 1: us seem to dread openly expressing gratitude. I'm Nicholas Eppily.
Speaker 1: You can call me Nick. I'm a professor of behavioral
Speaker 1: science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.
Speaker 1: I study mind reading for a living. I study how
Speaker 1: people think about each other's thought and some beliefs and attitudes,
Speaker 1: and mostly how people screw that up and misunderstand each
Speaker 1: other a lot. Nick does lots of experiments in which
Speaker 1: he forces people to do stuff they think is going
Speaker 1: to feel really awkward, but winds up making and feel
Speaker 1: happier than they expect. If you listen to Season one,
Speaker 1: you might remember the guy who forced people to talk
Speaker 1: to strangers on a train. That was Nick. You give
Speaker 1: somebody else a compliment on a given day, you could
Speaker 1: sit down and write a gratitude letter to somebody else.
Speaker 1: And so what's of interest for me is a psychologist,
Speaker 1: is why aren't we doing those things? Writing gratitude letters
Speaker 1: we know makes people feel happier. Most people are listening
Speaker 1: to your podcast today didn't do that today. Question is
Speaker 1: why not? Why didn't you do that if that makes
Speaker 1: you feel good? The answer is that we just get
Speaker 1: the consequences of expressing gratitude all wrong. When participants here
Speaker 1: they need to sincerely convey their thanks to someone's face,
Speaker 1: they usually have a pretty strong reaction. They're thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, this is going to feel cheesy. One of
Speaker 1: the things that we find here, like we do in
Speaker 1: so many other contexts, is that people just underestimate the
Speaker 1: positive impact that their social engagement will have on other people,
Speaker 1: and therefore it makes them reluctant to do it, which
Speaker 1: causes them to miss out on opportunities that would make
Speaker 1: them feel good too. Nick didn't experiment asking subjects to
Speaker 1: do a gratitude letter, but before they started, he asked
Speaker 1: them to make some predictions. How happy will the recipient
Speaker 1: be about getting the letter, how surprised will they be,
Speaker 1: and how awkward will they feel? I husked PG and
Speaker 1: Alex the same thing. Actually talk through what it's feeling
Speaker 1: like if you're trying to write it stressful and I
Speaker 1: can hear Alex writing so more stressful. I just wrote
Speaker 1: so far, Oh guy, dear Alex M. How are you feeling,
Speaker 1: Alex weird? Because I feel like I'm gonna have to
Speaker 1: read it. I wish I right about that there's some possibility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: people say nice things to me like actually shuts my
Speaker 1: brain down, like I can't respond, like I don't know
Speaker 1: how to respond, just like public expressions of gratitude and kindness,
Speaker 1: they just make me feel nervous, like they make me
Speaker 1: feel vulnerable. How do you think PJS going to react
Speaker 1: to the letter? PG is going to do a thing,
Speaker 1: this thing that he always does, which is his eyes
Speaker 1: will get wide and he's like, oh, that's really nice,
Speaker 1: thank you. That's fucked up. I got you pegged son
Speaker 1: on a scale of one not really that impressed to
Speaker 1: ten he's really touched. Where is he going to be?
Speaker 1: Probably an eight PG at a scale of one to ten.
Speaker 1: How do you think Alex is gonna feel after this?
Speaker 1: I think also probably around an eight right, probably higher? No,
Speaker 1: probably about Yeah. I can't newly wait to game him
Speaker 1: as well as he canna do meet Like, I don't
Speaker 1: know what is Maybe I'll say thanks Bud. I wouldn't
Speaker 1: say bud. You say bit a lot times when you're touched.
Speaker 1: So those are PG and Alex's predictions, but Nick's experimental
Speaker 1: data suggests they'll both be wrong. We found that the
Speaker 1: letter writers consistently underestimate how positive the recipients are going
Speaker 1: to feel. That the letter writers underestimate how surprised the
Speaker 1: recipient will be about the content, underestimate how happy the
Speaker 1: recipient will feel. They predict recipients will be happy recipients
Speaker 1: are even happier than that. They're basically at the ceiling
Speaker 1: of our measure, And they overestimate how awkward the recipient
Speaker 1: is going to feel. When we think about sincerely expressing
Speaker 1: thanks to someone, we assume it's going to feel weird
Speaker 1: for everyone involved, But that's totally wrong. People love hearing
Speaker 1: our gratitude. And just put yourself in the shoes of
Speaker 1: a recipient for a minute. You've got somebody who has
Speaker 1: valued something that you did for years and hasn't told
Speaker 1: you about this, And you know, the more it matters
Speaker 1: to them, the more depth they go into, how does
Speaker 1: it feel to receive something like that? Really really really good? Right?
Speaker 1: And every professor I know somewhere in their office has
Speaker 1: a collection of gratitude letters that they've received from students. Everybody.
Speaker 1: Mine is right next to my office. Choeah, Mine's in
Speaker 1: my bedroom drawer. Actually there you go. Yeah, everybody keeps those,
Speaker 1: I promise you. So why are we so bad at this?
Speaker 1: Like even I, as a psychologist, just don't get the
Speaker 1: intuition when I think about it, that it's going to
Speaker 1: be as meaningful. I think it's going to be awkward. Like,
Speaker 1: where does this misconception come from? It's crazy, It's not crazy,
Speaker 1: it's psychology. It's perspective. So that's the big problem here.
Speaker 1: So in all of these social interactions, you've got two
Speaker 1: minds going on. You've got the mind of the agent,
Speaker 1: the mind of the actor, the person who's starting the interaction,
Speaker 1: person who's writing the letter or whatever it is. And
Speaker 1: then you've got the mind of the person receiving the act.
Speaker 1: And if we know anything in psychology, it's that bridging
Speaker 1: those two minds is super hard. There's a gap there,
Speaker 1: and the gap is between me writing it and you
Speaker 1: reading it. Now, what's my perspective when I'm writing it?
Speaker 1: So I'm having to come up with all the words,
Speaker 1: and I'm revealing all this personal stuff, and I'm having
Speaker 1: to get the words just right, and I'm you know,
Speaker 1: I'm worried. Am I saying this sentence? Am I really
Speaker 1: expressing what I feel? Am I articulating it just right?
Speaker 1: Does that sound weird? I'm focused on all the words
Speaker 1: that I'm saying, right, I'm focused on my competence. How
Speaker 1: good of a letter writer? Am I? The sort of
Speaker 1: competence focus is definitely what was playing out with the
Speaker 1: reply all guys with a dash of mild competitiveness thrown
Speaker 1: into the mix writing a fucking novel over there? Come on? Man, Wow,
Speaker 1: it does kind of feel like a competition of who's
Speaker 1: writing the most right now? And I will lie, yeah,
Speaker 1: it feels awful done. Being them first doesn't mean you
Speaker 1: did better. I know you're like the Q like finishes
Speaker 1: the test right away and like walks out cartway ling
Speaker 1: and then gets a d I'm saying such a nice shit.
Speaker 1: Mat All you need is like two sentences. According to Nick,
Speaker 1: Pugie and Alex need to relax. Their letters aren't going
Speaker 1: to be graded like some AP English exam actors. Attend
Speaker 1: to the words they're saying, to their competence and so
Speaker 1: they're worried about it being awkward and weird and all
Speaker 1: of that stuff. The recipients couldn't care us about that,
Speaker 1: or don't care very much about that. They care about
Speaker 1: the meaning of what you're saying, the warmth that you're conveying,
Speaker 1: that you're reaching out to them and expressing gratitude, and
Speaker 1: that is just super powerful. Oh my god, it's time
Speaker 1: so the guys exchange their letters. Can you even read
Speaker 1: my handwriting? Yeah, I'm sure I can. It's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Mine's pretty bad. Okay, PJ. Thank you for fielding all
Speaker 1: the annoying HR stuff lately and for being sensitive to
Speaker 1: my mental health struggles. I love working with you, even
Speaker 1: though I even though you vaped too much, even though
Speaker 1: I vaped too much. And it looks like it's signed
Speaker 1: by Baba. It says Alex, I was supposed to be
Speaker 1: a heart. Oh that's really nice. Fuck Ah. That's the
Speaker 1: way that we deal with each other's coming us by'm
Speaker 1: laughing at and mocking it. Fee it is christ all right,
Speaker 1: here we go. Dear Alex, thank you for being a
Speaker 1: friend and collaborator and weirdo partner in crime for the
Speaker 1: past decade. You make me laugh more than anybody. And
Speaker 1: I can't imagine going through the ups and downs of
Speaker 1: this decade without you as my partner. Love you, buddy,
Speaker 1: Thanks Bud. All right, quick skill One's ten. How are
Speaker 1: you feeling like eight? Or nine? Yeah? More like nine? Yeah.
Speaker 1: PG and Alex performed exactly like Nick's subjects. They knew
Speaker 1: the letters were going to feel good, but they underestimated
Speaker 1: just how good. And I thought they definitely seemed happier
Speaker 1: after the activity. Yeah, it's nice. Now, in theory, if
Speaker 1: I came back like a month later, you'd still be
Speaker 1: like slightly more above baseline than you were. That's what
Speaker 1: the data suggests. Really, yeah, which is crazy. That's crazy.
Speaker 1: How much of a boost When Marty Seligman made his
Speaker 1: test subjects read their gratitude letters, they showed a significant
Speaker 1: bump in well being. They gained about five points on
Speaker 1: a hundred point happiness survey known as the Steen Happiness Index.
Speaker 1: But what's most impressive is that participants stayed boosted by
Speaker 1: at least a few points on that test for an
Speaker 1: entire month, which is kind of crazy. A whole month
Speaker 1: just by reading a short little letter. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: you just gave your antidepression medication like performance enhancing drug
Speaker 1: for the podcast it. I'm not sure if these letters
Speaker 1: are going to have a huge bump in their reply
Speaker 1: all mood for weeks to come, but they definitely made
Speaker 1: PJ and Alex a little happier during that interview, and
Speaker 1: despite all their initial predictions, PJ and Alex ended up
Speaker 1: leaving the experiment feeling more positive. We're good. That was awesome,
Speaker 1: you guys. Our mind tells us that openly celebrating our
Speaker 1: blessings or sincerely expressing our thanks to people will feel
Speaker 1: awkward and weird. We think it'd be better to bond
Speaker 1: with the people we care about in other ways, like
Speaker 1: having a constant gripefest. But that intuition is wrong even
Speaker 1: for expert level gripers, the ones like Alex, who can
Speaker 1: make us really laugh when complain I had the DVD
Speaker 1: from for like four months for like a year. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a grape right there. The songs shows that the
Speaker 1: cost are our constant gripe bing is bigger than we think.
Speaker 1: We're getting ourselves and others all worked up without really
Speaker 1: addressing the problems we face, but we're also missing out
Speaker 1: on better ways to bond with the people around us
Speaker 1: because we don't realize how good expressing our thanks will
Speaker 1: make us feel. And so I, for one, I'm going
Speaker 1: to try to take this evidence to heart. The next
Speaker 1: time I'm at dinner with a friend. I'm going to
Speaker 1: resist the urge to talk only about the annoying stuff
Speaker 1: in life, and I'm going to scale back some of
Speaker 1: my online gripe posting too. Instead, I'm going to take
Speaker 1: a bit more time to focus on the blessings, starting
Speaker 1: with the fact that you listen to my podcast. So
Speaker 1: thanks podcast listener. I'm really proud that you're here, and
Speaker 1: I hope that you'll join me for the next episode
Speaker 1: of The Happiness Lab by Doctor Laurie Santos. The Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley with
Speaker 1: the help of Pete Naton. Our original music was composed
Speaker 1: by Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering by
Speaker 1: Evan Viola. The show was edited by Sophie mckibbon and
Speaker 1: fact checked by Joseph Fridman. Special thanks to mil Lavelle,
Speaker 1: Carlie mcgliorre Heather Fame, Julia Barton, Maggie Taylor, Maya Kanag
Speaker 1: Jacob Weisberg and my agent Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Pushkin Industries and by me,
Speaker 1: doctor Laurie Santos,