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Speaker 1: Pushkin. If you're a fan of my work or of

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Speaker 1: this podcast, you've probably heard the story of how I

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Speaker 1: got interested in happiness research in the first place. If not,

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Speaker 1: here's a very quick version. Back in twenty eighteen, I

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Speaker 1: was an Ivy League psychology professor minding my own business

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Speaker 1: when I started noticing that something was changing on college campuses.

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Speaker 1: The students I saw in my classes day after day,

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Speaker 1: year after year, over time, they seemed different. They were

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Speaker 1: more stressed, less joyful, more overwhelmed, less happy, more depressed,

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Speaker 1: way less resilient, and way more anxious. I got so

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Speaker 1: worried about this generation of college students that I decided

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Speaker 1: to drop everything and fully retrain in the science of happiness,

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Speaker 1: just so I.

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Speaker 2: Could help them.

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Speaker 1: As I worked with students more closely, I found myself thinking, Man,

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Speaker 1: the kids today, what's up with them? Why are they

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Speaker 1: so different than the generations that came before them? Why

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Speaker 1: are young people today so messed up? As I became

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Speaker 1: more of an expert on the science of happiness, I

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Speaker 1: got asked a lot of these very same questions. I

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Speaker 1: gave interview after interview emphatically claiming that the kids today

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Speaker 1: were different, that they were doing worse than any generation

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Speaker 1: before them. Turns out that this is a crisis nationally

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Speaker 1: for our young people. Right now, over fifty percent of

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Speaker 1: college students say they feel hopeless most of the time.

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Speaker 1: Over sixty percent of college students report feeling overwhelming anxiety

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Speaker 1: most days. I used strong phrases like the mental health crisis.

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Speaker 1: I saw the college student mental health crisis, college student

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Speaker 1: mental health crisis. This is the mental health crisis that

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Speaker 1: our students and our young people are facing nationally. I

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Speaker 1: shared study after study showing just how much young people's

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Speaker 1: well being had worsened over time. Academic stress is one

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Speaker 1: of the highest we've seen kind of historically since we've

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Speaker 1: been measuring this, and I wasn't alone. Even now, it

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Speaker 1: feels like nearly every article you see about the kids

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Speaker 1: today involves some scholar talking about how messed up they are.

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Speaker 1: Some of those scholars even get pretty judgy, arguing not

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Speaker 1: just that the kids today are struggling, but that they're

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Speaker 1: coddled or lazy. I tell you all of this to

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Speaker 1: set up just how hot of a hot take today's

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Speaker 1: happiness hot take is going to be. Because today's happiness

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Speaker 1: hot take is this, I'm starting to think that the

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Speaker 1: kids today are all right, or at least as all

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Speaker 1: right as the kids in any generation have ever been.

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Speaker 1: Now you may be thinking, wait, Laurie, after all those interviews,

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Speaker 1: do you really think you have the youth mental health

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Speaker 1: crisis wrong. We'll get ready to find out, because we're

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Speaker 1: going to go on a bit of an adventure, a

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Speaker 1: deep dive into what our minds get wrong when it

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Speaker 1: comes to judging the kids today and what we can

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Speaker 1: do to give them a bit more compassion. Our minds

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Speaker 1: are constantly telling us what to do to be happy.

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Speaker 1: But what if our minds are wrong? What if our

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Speaker 1: minds are lying to us, leading us away from what

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Speaker 1: will really make us happy. The good news is that

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Speaker 1: understanding the science of the mind can point us all

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Speaker 1: back in the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness

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Speaker 1: Lab would meet doctor Laurie Santos. As a young kid.

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Speaker 1: Growing up in the nineteen eighties, college student mental health

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Speaker 1: expert Alexis Redding had a very special connection with the

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Speaker 1: action movie hero Indiana Jones.

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Speaker 2: My childhood dog was named Indiana Jones. The reason why

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Speaker 2: my childhood dog was named Indiana Jones is that my

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Speaker 2: father was an archaeologist.

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Speaker 1: Having an archaeologist dad during the Indiana Jones era would

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Speaker 1: come to define a lot of Alexis's childhood. Every afternoon,

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Speaker 1: after school, Alexis would head to the museum where her

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Speaker 1: father work. She'd find ways to entertain herself as her

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Speaker 1: dad spent hours methodically trying to figure out stories of

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Speaker 1: the past that were hidden in small bits of bone

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Speaker 1: and pottery. But Alexis's real introduction to archaeology came when

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Speaker 1: she turned eight years old and got a chance to

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Speaker 1: travel to her father's field site at the Great Pyramid

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Speaker 1: of Giza.

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Speaker 2: He and his team spent several decades actually running the

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Speaker 2: Giza Plateau Mapping project, which was unearthing the worker's village

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Speaker 2: of the human beings who raised the pyramids and telling

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Speaker 2: the stories of their lives. Up until that point, what

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Speaker 2: my father did was a little bit vague. They didn't

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Speaker 2: understand what it meant to be in the field. I

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Speaker 2: hadn't seen that up close, and it was a eye

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Speaker 2: opening to see how meticulous the work was, you know,

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Speaker 2: literally using pain brushes and toothbrushes to move bits of

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Speaker 2: stand away. And the amount of enthusiasm he had over

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Speaker 2: finding a trash dump because that was such a treasure

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Speaker 2: trobe of information when you're an archaeologist, of the layer

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Speaker 2: after layer of human life and what is left behind.

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Speaker 1: The fictional character Indiana Jones famously fell in love with

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Speaker 1: archaeology when he first visited his father's Egyptian field site.

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Speaker 1: Did that visit to Giza set Alexis onto a similar.

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Speaker 2: It was fascinating and entirely.

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Speaker 1: Not for me. Archaeology involved dealing with a lot of dust,

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Speaker 1: and Alexis was not a fan of dust, but she

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Speaker 1: did inherit her father's passion for figuring out hard academic puzzles.

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Speaker 1: And the hard academic puzzle Alexis took on is the

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Speaker 1: subject of today's Happiness hot take the mental health of

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Speaker 1: kids these days.

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Speaker 2: I study the experience of young adults navigating transitions, the

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Speaker 2: transition from high school into college, from college into the workforce,

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Speaker 2: and I specialize in mental health and well being during

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Speaker 2: those processes.

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Speaker 1: Alexis is the faculty co Chair of Higher Education at

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Speaker 1: the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the editor of

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Speaker 1: a new book entitled Mental Health in College What Research

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Speaker 1: tells Us about supporting students. Alexis is therefore very well

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Speaker 1: versed in the way that adults typically talk about the

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Speaker 1: kids today.

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Speaker 2: There is a narrative that somehow this generation is so

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Speaker 2: decidedly different than the generation that came before.

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Speaker 1: Alexis bought into this narrative herself when she was beginning

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Speaker 1: her doctoral studies. She knew about all the data showing

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Speaker 1: that rates of depression and anxiety were on the rise

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Speaker 1: in modern students. She too wondered what was wrong with them.

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Speaker 1: But Alexis's take on the kids today changed back in

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Speaker 1: twenty sixteen when she got an unexpected call from a

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Speaker 1: Harvard administrator offering three thousand dollars for a somewhat unorthodox

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Speaker 1: summer research project.

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Speaker 2: As a dock student, somebody offers you three thousand dollars

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Speaker 2: to do any sort of intellectually engaging work, you say yes.

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Speaker 1: What was this unusual project? Well, that Harvard administrator and

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Speaker 1: her team had been cleaning out the attic of the

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Speaker 1: university's Bureau of Study Council building when they stumbled onto

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Speaker 1: something unexpected.

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Speaker 2: They had found this recessed bookshelf that they had forgotten

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Speaker 2: was there. It was behind an old, dusty tapestry, and

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Speaker 2: it was behind these locked class doors.

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Speaker 1: On that hidden bookshelf were boxes and boxes of old

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Speaker 1: research materials, And.

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Speaker 2: What she told me is that they had these old

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Speaker 2: conversations with students, recordings of student interviews with young people

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Speaker 2: who were navigating the college years, and they didn't know

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Speaker 2: what to do with them, but they felt like there

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Speaker 2: was something interesting there.

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Speaker 1: Alexis also thought there might be something of interest there.

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Speaker 1: One of the most foundational studies in Alexis's field of

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Speaker 1: college student development was published back in nineteen sixty eight

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Speaker 1: by famed Harvard psychologist doctor William Perry. The project involved

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Speaker 1: extensive interviews with university students from the nineteen fifties that

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Speaker 1: sounded suspiciously similar to what the Harvard administrator had stumbled across.

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Speaker 1: Could the conversations in those old boxes be Perry's original

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Speaker 1: interviews from his foundational paper? Could they offer a glimpse

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Speaker 1: into what college student mental health was like back in

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Speaker 1: the day, and by comparison, how bad things had gotten today?

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Speaker 2: You know, being the daughter of an archaeologist, themes that

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Speaker 2: you are primed to go on a grand adventure of discovery,

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Speaker 2: and that seems like a typical thing to do.

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Speaker 1: Alexis's first visit to that attic archive did indeed feel

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Speaker 1: like a grand adventure. When she pulled back the tapestry,

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Speaker 1: she found piles and piles and piles of old research materials.

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Speaker 2: But it was a mess. It was like you ask

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Speaker 2: a kid to clean the room and everything goes into

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Speaker 2: the closet, like that had happened over maybe twenty years.

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Speaker 1: The attic space also featured the very thing Alexis most

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Speaker 1: detested when visiting her dad's field site.

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Speaker 2: It was dust filled. I spent part of my three

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Speaker 2: grand on Cleraton in an air purifier so that I

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Speaker 2: could spend time of their dust.

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Speaker 1: Why did it have to be dust? But pack of

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Speaker 1: Cleraton in hand. Alexis got to work trying to make

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Speaker 1: sense of the mess. She began organizing all the random

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Speaker 1: papers in those boxes. She discovered card catalogs of old interviews,

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Speaker 1: outdated training materials, And then one day Alexis stumbled upon

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Speaker 1: a sheet of paper that didn't match the others.

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Speaker 2: Everything about it looked and felt different, like the paper

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Speaker 2: felt different in a purple mimeograph ink. The font was

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Speaker 2: like a little thicker from an old school typewriter.

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Speaker 1: The purple inked page appeared to be a transcript of

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Speaker 1: a student being interviewed about his mental health struggles. Could

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Speaker 1: this be a conversation from Perry's foundational nineteen fifty study.

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Speaker 1: The only way to find out was to locate the

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Speaker 1: rest of those pages. As weeks and weeks of searching past,

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Speaker 1: slowly but surely more of those strange purple pages turned up.

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Speaker 2: And then I found page eighteen. Right in the middle

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Speaker 2: of the page said President Nixon and the Vietnam War.

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Speaker 2: This was supposed to be from the fifties and sixties.

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Speaker 2: My history's bad, but that's later, that's later. I had

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Speaker 2: this moment in the attic of like, I'm not a

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Speaker 2: presidential historian, but I feel like that's off.

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Speaker 1: Tricky Dick was president from nineteen sixty nine until nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy four. That was more than a decade after Perry

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Speaker 1: had concluded his foundational study.

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Speaker 2: Which means that I didn't have something from the original study.

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Speaker 2: I had something from a replicated study from the nineteen seventies.

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Speaker 2: Now this is my field. I know the literature. I

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Speaker 2: know that this study was never published.

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Speaker 1: Had Perry conducted a second study with a new group

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Speaker 1: of students from the nineteen seventies, one that he had

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Speaker 1: never published or even told other scholars about. That seemed unlikely,

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Speaker 1: but Alexis needed to know for sure, so she tracked

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Speaker 1: down several people who had worked at the Bureau Study

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Speaker 1: Council back in the day. And those former staff members said, oh, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I remember, doctor Perry did try to redo that original study.

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Speaker 1: Oh and it took forever, they explained. It turns out

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Speaker 1: that Perry had spent ten painstaking years collecting hundreds and

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Speaker 1: hundreds of hours of student interviews from the nineteen seventies

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Speaker 1: on reel to real tapes. Alexis was floored she hadn't

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Speaker 1: found the interviews behind Perry's original publication, but in some ways,

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Speaker 1: she'd stumbled across something even more remarkable, a completely forgotten

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Speaker 1: follow up study filled with unpublished student voices from the

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventies. Somewhere out there were hundreds of tape recordings

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Speaker 1: of data that could provide a never before glimpsed peek

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Speaker 1: into the mental health of her father's generation. Those lost

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Speaker 1: tapes could be the key to finally understanding what was

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Speaker 1: so different about the kids today, and now he just

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Speaker 1: needed to find them. The Happiness Lab will be back

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Speaker 1: in a moment.

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Speaker 3: Anytime people see something bad in the world, they're like, well,

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Speaker 3: that didn't used to be there.

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Speaker 1: We'll get back to Alexis Redding's adventure in just a moment,

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Speaker 1: but before we do, I want to introduce you to

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Speaker 1: a different psychologist, one who also spends a lot of

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Speaker 1: time thinking about how people have changed over time. His

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Speaker 1: name is Adam Mastroianni.

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Speaker 3: There's some horrible murder on the news. It's like, you know,

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Speaker 3: they didn't used to do that. Some politician does something unethical.

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Speaker 3: You know they didn't used to do that. It seems

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Speaker 3: like we have all the stuff in the present that

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Speaker 3: I just don't think we used to have in the past.

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Speaker 3: And I think part of that is because, like, no

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Speaker 3: one really knows what the past was like, even the

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Speaker 3: people who were there for it.

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Speaker 1: Adam's an expert on what our minds get wrong when

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Speaker 1: we think about how people used to behave back in

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Speaker 1: the day, especially when it comes to their moral goodness.

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Speaker 3: I feel like I had spent my full life hearing

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Speaker 3: people say, like, you know, you used to be able

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Speaker 3: to leave your door unlocked at night and they would

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Speaker 3: be fine. Used to be able to trust a man's word,

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Speaker 3: and now you can't. You know, this fallen, sinful, evil

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Speaker 3: world we live in is the world we used to

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Speaker 3: live in. I can remember a world, or at least

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Speaker 3: have been told about one that wasn't so mean and nasty.

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Speaker 1: People love making sweeping claims like these. Back in my day,

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Speaker 1: people were better. Society these days is going right downhill

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Speaker 1: or perhaps more relevant for Alexis's work in today's Happiness

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Speaker 1: hot take discussion the kids today, they're so much more

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Speaker 1: sensitive and fragile and depressed than my generation was. Claims

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Speaker 1: like these kind of piss Adam off. He often finds

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Speaker 1: himself wondering do we have any real evidence that people

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Speaker 1: are actually getting worse over time?

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Speaker 3: It's like things can get better and things can get worse.

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Speaker 3: I think it's merely that the standard of evidence for

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Speaker 3: things getting worse is so much lower than the standard

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Speaker 3: of evidence for things getting better. It's like you don't

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Speaker 3: really need to provide any proof to feel convinced or

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Speaker 3: to be convincing that like something new and bad has happened.

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Speaker 1: And Adam is quick to point out that whether people

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Speaker 1: think other people's behavior has changed matters a lot. Take

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Speaker 1: for example, what we think about how nice the average

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Speaker 1: person has become over time.

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Speaker 3: If you think you used to live in a nice

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Speaker 3: world and now you live in a nasty world. Like

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Speaker 3: what difference that must make for the way that you

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Speaker 3: conduct yourself, Because, for one thing, you might be a

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Speaker 3: little more licensed to be nasty if you think, like, well,

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Speaker 3: it's kind of what we're doing now, Like the rules

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Speaker 3: are out the window, so I can't trust other people.

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Speaker 3: Therefore I don't have to be a trustworthy person either.

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Speaker 3: Everybody else is cheating, so I should cheat too.

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Speaker 1: Our beliefs about people's moral decline can also have big

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Speaker 1: political consequences.

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Speaker 3: If someone's like, hey, man, things used to be great.

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Speaker 3: Now they're bad. Wouldn't it be awesome if they were

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Speaker 3: good again? Just like put me in charge and I'll

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Speaker 3: do it. And like, by the way, if you could

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Speaker 3: turn off all the rules and like give me a

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Speaker 3: limited power, that'd be really helpful. But you should do

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Speaker 3: that because we live in these unprecedented times where things

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Speaker 3: for the first time have gotten really bad. That means

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Speaker 3: we should take unprecedented measures to turn them back around.

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Speaker 3: So like, this is a favorite refrain of aspiring dictators

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Speaker 3: and autocrats everywhere.

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Speaker 1: But do we really believe that people today are worse

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Speaker 1: than they were decades ago? Adam wanted more than just anecdotes.

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Speaker 1: So he surveyed a nationally representative group of subjects and

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Speaker 1: asked them to rate how kind, honest, nice, and good

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Speaker 1: people are today versus in the past.

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Speaker 3: And every survey we did people are like, today is

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Speaker 3: the worst time, and when you ask me about the past,

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Speaker 3: it gets better. You can even tell the difference between

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Speaker 3: today and four years ago. It just gets a step

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Speaker 3: worse each time we get closer to the present.

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Speaker 1: But have we always thought that the kids were worse

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Speaker 1: back in the day.

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Speaker 3: Here we had a major head start in that other

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Speaker 3: people had asked other people these questions for a very

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Speaker 3: long time. So we have all this archival survey data

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Speaker 3: gathered for decades and around the world, where people are

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Speaker 3: asked questions like do you think things are getting worse?

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Speaker 3: Do you think people are less respectful than they used

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Speaker 3: to be? Less ethical, less kind, less friendly?

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Speaker 1: Adam was able to gather lots of data from these

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Speaker 1: archival surveys. He amasked more than two hundred thousand data

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Speaker 1: points testing people all over the world going back as

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Speaker 1: far as the nineteen forties, and in more than eighty

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Speaker 1: percent of these archival surveys, most people said yep. People

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Speaker 1: today are worse than they were in the past.

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Speaker 3: So we can see that not only do people a

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Speaker 3: majority of people believe this in the US, majorities of

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Speaker 3: people believe that morality is declining in every country that's

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Speaker 3: ever been surveyed.

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Speaker 1: But Adam wondered, who are the folks driving this effect.

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Speaker 3: The suspicion that like, it's a certain kind of person

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Speaker 3: who says that people are less good than they used

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Speaker 3: to be. It's probably a conservative, and it's probably an

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Speaker 3: older person. And we found that neither of those things

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Speaker 3: are fully true. They're somewhat true. So it is true

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Speaker 3: that people who report themselves as being more conservative or

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Speaker 3: more on the right side of the political spectrum do

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Speaker 3: say this more so they see a bigger change. But

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Speaker 3: even if you go as far left as you can

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Speaker 3: go in our survey population, they too perceive decline over

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Speaker 3: the same periods of time. So it's not like being

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Speaker 3: on one side of the aisle turns the effect on

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Speaker 3: and off. When it comes to age, it's actually a

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Speaker 3: little more complicated. So it is the case that older

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Speaker 3: people say there's been more decline in their lifetimes, but

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Speaker 3: they have a longer lifetime in which to witness that decline.

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Speaker 3: So what we really want to know is do they

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Speaker 3: perceive a greater rate of decline? So if you just

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Speaker 3: divide how much moral decline they've seen over the number

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Speaker 3: of years that they've had to see it, you get

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Speaker 3: the same number. If you're younger or older, and you

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Speaker 3: do get the same number. So it's not just conservatives

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Speaker 3: and it's not just older people who are saying this. Everybody,

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Speaker 3: regardless of age and political persuasion, can agree, like, people

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Speaker 3: are worse now than they once were.

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Speaker 1: But is everybody right? Is Adam smart to be skeptical?

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Speaker 1: Or has there really been a continuous and steep decline

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Speaker 1: in people's kindness, honesty and niceness over time?

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Speaker 3: If that's true, Like that's the biggest effect in all

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Speaker 3: of social science, Like that's the most important thing we

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Speaker 3: should figure out, because if people used to be nice

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Speaker 3: and now they're nasty, they're like, well, how did that happen?

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Speaker 3: When did it happen? Is there a way we can

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Speaker 3: reverse it?

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Speaker 1: Unfortunately, figuring out if people have in fact gotten less

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Speaker 1: nice over time is kind of hard.

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Speaker 3: There's no like great objective measure of this. Right, we

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Speaker 3: can't go into the Arctic and like drill for ice

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Speaker 3: cores that tell us the historical amounts of niceness in

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Speaker 3: seventeen fifty. But what we can do is look again

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Speaker 3: at all this archival research we have where people are

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Speaker 3: asked about the state of their moral worlds at that time,

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Speaker 3: So questions like have you looked after someone's male, plants

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Speaker 3: or pets while they were away in the last month?

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Speaker 3: Have you given up your seat on the bus? Did

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Speaker 3: people treat you with respect all day yesterday? If it

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Speaker 3: is the case that people are getting worse and worse

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Speaker 3: over time, we should be able to pick it up

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Speaker 3: on these questions. People like surveyed back in nineteen eighty

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Speaker 3: five should say I was treated with respect all day yesterday,

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Speaker 3: and then people in twenty twenty five should say I

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Speaker 3: wasn't treated with respect all day yesterday. Instead, we find

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Speaker 3: that in all of these questions they're flat, over and

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Speaker 3: over again, flat flat, Flat. People give the same answers

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Speaker 3: every year.

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Speaker 1: Across more than one hundred surveys testing more than ten

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Speaker 1: million people worldwide from the nineteen sixties until today, Adam

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Speaker 1: found that people report seeing exactly the same levels of niceness, honesty,

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Speaker 1: and kindness over time, but those are just surveys. Is

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Speaker 1: there any way to measure whether people's actual moral behavior

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Speaker 1: has changed across time.

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Speaker 3: So another way of looking at how people treat each

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Speaker 3: other interpersonally is to look at what economists have been

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Speaker 3: doing in their labs for the past fifty years. They

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Speaker 3: do these economic games, and games is like a strong

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Speaker 3: word for what these are. I'd hate to hang out

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Speaker 3: play games with the economists, but basically, people come into

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Speaker 3: the labs they played like the Prisoner's dilemma or common

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Speaker 3: goods game. These are games where essentially you have the

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Speaker 3: option of being generous or selfish with a stranger.

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Speaker 1: A team of economists put the data from all these

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Speaker 1: different do you want to be nice or mean to

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Speaker 1: a stranger games together into what's known as a meta analysis.

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Speaker 1: You can think of a meta analysis as one big

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Speaker 1: statistical test that mathematically combines the results of lots of

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Speaker 1: studies on one topic. And the meta analysis Adam found

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Speaker 1: included more than five hundred different generosity experiments running all

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Speaker 1: the way from the nineteen fifties until today, and.

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Speaker 3: What they wanted to know was are people more likely

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Speaker 3: to be generous or selfish with a stranger? And the

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Speaker 3: researchers themselves tell us that they went in thinking that

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Speaker 3: people were going to be more selfish over time. They

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Speaker 3: expected to find that finding. Instead, they found the opposite.

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Speaker 3: People were ten percentage points more likely to choose the

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Speaker 3: inter's option in these games than the selfish one.

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Speaker 1: Not only have people not gotten meaner over the last

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Speaker 1: seventy years, they've actually gotten ten percent nicer. Adam guess

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Speaker 1: that most lay people would find these results shocking.

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Speaker 3: We just took those findings and asked another sample of

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Speaker 3: people to predict them. We described the games, we tell

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Speaker 3: them the period of time we're looking at, and we

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Speaker 3: said we'll pay you extra money if you get this right, like,

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Speaker 3: just where did it go over time? People say, much

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Speaker 3: like the researchers, they expect that people got more selfish

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Speaker 3: over time, when in fact they got more self less.

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Speaker 3: So even when you make the question really specific, even

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Speaker 3: when you pay people to get the answer right, they

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Speaker 3: will tell you that people are meaner when in fact

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Speaker 3: they're nicer.

402
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Speaker 1: Adam calls this strange effect the illusion of moral decline.

403
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Speaker 1: We think people are getting worse over time, that everybody

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Speaker 1: is less honest and kind and nice than they used

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Speaker 1: to be. But Adam's work shows were just wrong. But

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Speaker 1: where does the illusion of moral decline come from? Adam

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Speaker 1: thinks it arises because of the combination of two common

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Speaker 1: cognitive byes sees. The first bias is one that we

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Speaker 1: talk about a lot on the happiness lab. We don't

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Speaker 1: notice the good stuff in life nearly as much as

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Speaker 1: we notice the bad stuff.

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Speaker 3: It's just a negativity bias, so we pay more attention

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Speaker 3: to bad things than good things. This is why you

414
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Speaker 3: know if it bleeds it leads, you're more likely to

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Speaker 3: be served a negative news story. You're more likely to

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Speaker 3: click it. But that's enough to make it seem like

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Speaker 3: the world's always bad. I don't think that's enough to

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Speaker 3: make it seem like the world was once good. For that,

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Speaker 3: you need an additional effect. This one comes more strictly

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Speaker 3: from the memory literature. It's called the fading affect bias,

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Speaker 3: which is just the observation that the pleasure of good

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Speaker 3: memories does not fade as fast as the pain of

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Speaker 3: negative memories. So like if you got turned down for

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Speaker 3: your high school prom, Like that feels pretty bad at

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Speaker 3: the time, but twenty years later, it's maybe a funny story,

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Speaker 3: or maybe a we're leaving story. Right, I found my

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Speaker 3: person and like, so glad I didn't end up with

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Speaker 3: that one. Whereas, like if you had a great high

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Speaker 3: school prom, like probably was fun at the time, and

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Speaker 3: you remember, it's like, it's not as fun as it

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Speaker 3: was to experience, but it's still pretty good. And those

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Speaker 3: two tendencies are what happens in memory. On average, the

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Speaker 3: good things lose some of their goodness but generally remain good.

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Speaker 3: The bad things lose more of their badness, and they

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Speaker 3: sometimes flip to becoming good. And so if you combine

436
00:21:20,716 --> 00:21:24,596
Speaker 3: these two phenomena, the fading affic bias and the negativity bias,

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00:21:24,876 --> 00:21:27,436
Speaker 3: you can create this perception that the world is now

438
00:21:27,556 --> 00:21:29,916
Speaker 3: bad but it was once good.

439
00:21:30,436 --> 00:21:33,356
Speaker 1: Let's do a quick recap. Why do people mistakenly think

440
00:21:33,356 --> 00:21:35,436
Speaker 1: that people today are worse than they were in the past.

441
00:21:35,876 --> 00:21:39,036
Speaker 1: Reason number one is the negativity bias. When we look

442
00:21:39,036 --> 00:21:41,356
Speaker 1: out at the world as it is today, we naturally

443
00:21:41,396 --> 00:21:43,996
Speaker 1: notice people doing lots of bad stuff, but we don't

444
00:21:44,036 --> 00:21:46,756
Speaker 1: tend to notice all the people doing good stuff. This

445
00:21:46,916 --> 00:21:49,396
Speaker 1: starts us off on the path of thinking, hey, people

446
00:21:49,436 --> 00:21:52,476
Speaker 1: today are kind of crappy. Then our minds get hit

447
00:21:52,516 --> 00:21:56,116
Speaker 1: by bias number two, the fading affect bias. All the

448
00:21:56,156 --> 00:21:58,996
Speaker 1: bad stuff we noticed about people in the past starts

449
00:21:59,036 --> 00:22:01,916
Speaker 1: to slowly seem less bad. As time goes on, the

450
00:22:01,956 --> 00:22:05,596
Speaker 1: past becomes rosier and rosier. Ergo, we come to believe

451
00:22:05,596 --> 00:22:08,036
Speaker 1: that people today suck more than they did back in

452
00:22:08,076 --> 00:22:10,956
Speaker 1: the day of them. Says that these two biases can

453
00:22:10,996 --> 00:22:14,476
Speaker 1: cause illusions of decline more often than we realize. Take

454
00:22:14,516 --> 00:22:17,516
Speaker 1: for example, another situation in which people often say things

455
00:22:17,516 --> 00:22:20,556
Speaker 1: were better in the past with music. Think about the

456
00:22:20,676 --> 00:22:23,956
Speaker 1: newest song you've heard recently. Is that song better or

457
00:22:23,996 --> 00:22:25,996
Speaker 1: worse than the music that was on the radio when

458
00:22:25,996 --> 00:22:28,676
Speaker 1: you were in high school. If you're like most people,

459
00:22:28,836 --> 00:22:31,276
Speaker 1: you probably think that today's music is just worse than

460
00:22:31,316 --> 00:22:34,116
Speaker 1: when you were a teenager, that today's music ain'ate like

461
00:22:34,156 --> 00:22:36,636
Speaker 1: that old time rock and roll as it were. But

462
00:22:36,796 --> 00:22:39,556
Speaker 1: notice how the same two cognitive biases are at work

463
00:22:39,636 --> 00:22:42,076
Speaker 1: when we evaluate how music has changed over time.

464
00:22:42,356 --> 00:22:44,716
Speaker 3: You hear both good music and bad music. The bad

465
00:22:44,796 --> 00:22:47,756
Speaker 3: music feels worse than the good music feels good, and

466
00:22:47,796 --> 00:22:49,956
Speaker 3: then you get this feeling of like, you know, back

467
00:22:49,956 --> 00:22:52,796
Speaker 3: on the radio in whenever you were growing up, we

468
00:22:52,876 --> 00:22:54,996
Speaker 3: only had good stuff. It was like mainly hits. But

469
00:22:55,036 --> 00:22:57,596
Speaker 3: it's because you've forgotten and now don't care about all

470
00:22:57,636 --> 00:22:59,756
Speaker 3: of the bad music. You forgot about the number one

471
00:22:59,836 --> 00:23:02,236
Speaker 3: hit of Disco Duck by Rick Dees and his Cast

472
00:23:02,276 --> 00:23:04,276
Speaker 3: of Idiot that's their literal band name. Like no one

473
00:23:04,356 --> 00:23:08,156
Speaker 3: remembers that. That was in a a brief moment of hysteria,

474
00:23:08,196 --> 00:23:10,876
Speaker 3: a number one hit in America. They remember the Beatles

475
00:23:10,876 --> 00:23:12,836
Speaker 3: and the Rolling Stones music that's lasted.

476
00:23:13,036 --> 00:23:14,836
Speaker 1: I've had this phenomena when I go on road trips.

477
00:23:14,876 --> 00:23:17,316
Speaker 1: Sometimes I'm you know, listening to whatever is on the

478
00:23:17,396 --> 00:23:19,556
Speaker 1: radio because my phone sucks and it doesn't talk to

479
00:23:19,596 --> 00:23:21,916
Speaker 1: my car, and so I'll hear like, oh, it's Casey

480
00:23:21,996 --> 00:23:24,236
Speaker 1: Kysum's like, you know, top countdown and they do these

481
00:23:24,276 --> 00:23:26,636
Speaker 1: retro countdowns. And my husband and I were driving one

482
00:23:26,676 --> 00:23:28,876
Speaker 1: time and it was like the nineteen eighty seven Casey

483
00:23:28,956 --> 00:23:31,716
Speaker 1: Kysum countdown. I was like, oh my god, nineteen eighty

484
00:23:31,716 --> 00:23:33,836
Speaker 1: seven was the best there was, like the cure, like

485
00:23:33,876 --> 00:23:46,836
Speaker 1: this is gonna be amazing, let me down. Oh my gosh.

486
00:23:46,876 --> 00:23:55,556
Speaker 1: It was terrible much love, so much terrible stuff, oh

487
00:23:56,316 --> 00:24:01,956
Speaker 1: so soon. And I was like, oh my god, none

488
00:24:01,956 --> 00:24:03,796
Speaker 1: of these exist in my memory anymore. It's just that

489
00:24:03,836 --> 00:24:07,636
Speaker 1: one amazing cure song, but actually, like the top one

490
00:24:07,676 --> 00:24:09,996
Speaker 1: hundred was just as bad ineteen eighty seven as it

491
00:24:09,996 --> 00:24:12,156
Speaker 1: was today, even though my memory does not believe that

492
00:24:12,196 --> 00:24:12,556
Speaker 1: at all.

493
00:24:13,116 --> 00:24:15,436
Speaker 3: It's so funny. I've had the exact same experience driving

494
00:24:15,436 --> 00:24:17,996
Speaker 3: with my dad listening to like those serious exam stations

495
00:24:17,996 --> 00:24:20,956
Speaker 3: where they play verbatim top forty countdowns, because it's a

496
00:24:21,076 --> 00:24:23,596
Speaker 3: rare peak into what the past was actually like at

497
00:24:23,596 --> 00:24:25,636
Speaker 3: the time. No one today is picking these songs for you.

498
00:24:25,996 --> 00:24:28,796
Speaker 3: This is like what America picked on that day in

499
00:24:28,876 --> 00:24:31,636
Speaker 3: that year, and I think there's actually so few ways

500
00:24:31,636 --> 00:24:33,476
Speaker 3: of really peeking into what it was like to be

501
00:24:33,476 --> 00:24:35,156
Speaker 3: a person back then. But like, no, that was the

502
00:24:35,236 --> 00:24:36,116
Speaker 3: radio people listened to.

503
00:24:36,356 --> 00:24:38,196
Speaker 1: I want to highlight the point that Adam just made

504
00:24:38,236 --> 00:24:40,916
Speaker 1: because I think it's super important to know if people

505
00:24:40,996 --> 00:24:43,316
Speaker 1: are really getting worse over time. We have to have

506
00:24:43,356 --> 00:24:46,636
Speaker 1: an accurate way to peek into the past, but reliable

507
00:24:46,676 --> 00:24:50,636
Speaker 1: windows into earlier eras are super rare. Adam had archival

508
00:24:50,716 --> 00:24:52,916
Speaker 1: data sets, so he had the receipts to show that

509
00:24:52,956 --> 00:24:55,796
Speaker 1: people were nicer in the past than we remember. I

510
00:24:55,916 --> 00:24:58,956
Speaker 1: had the actual casey case of countdown from nineteen eighty seven,

511
00:24:59,356 --> 00:25:01,396
Speaker 1: so I could hear that my beloved old time rock

512
00:25:01,436 --> 00:25:03,916
Speaker 1: and roll was just as bad as the songs of today,

513
00:25:04,316 --> 00:25:06,916
Speaker 1: And that gets us back to today's happiness hot take.

514
00:25:07,516 --> 00:25:10,396
Speaker 1: For years, I and so many other scholars have assumed

515
00:25:10,436 --> 00:25:12,836
Speaker 1: that kid's mental health today is more messed up than

516
00:25:12,876 --> 00:25:15,836
Speaker 1: it was in previous generations. But could I and so

517
00:25:15,916 --> 00:25:19,196
Speaker 1: many other scholars be falling prey to yet another illusion

518
00:25:19,236 --> 00:25:21,916
Speaker 1: of decline. The only way to find out would be

519
00:25:21,956 --> 00:25:25,516
Speaker 1: to find an accurate archaeological peak into what college students

520
00:25:25,516 --> 00:25:28,716
Speaker 1: were really like back when Casey Kaysam did that nineteen

521
00:25:28,716 --> 00:25:32,036
Speaker 1: eighty seven countdown, or when our parents' parents' generation went

522
00:25:32,076 --> 00:25:36,036
Speaker 1: to college. For decades, researchers like me assumed that no

523
00:25:36,196 --> 00:25:40,436
Speaker 1: such accurate peak existed. But that was about to change.

524
00:25:40,476 --> 00:25:43,316
Speaker 2: The idea that there might be these materials that could

525
00:25:43,436 --> 00:25:45,716
Speaker 2: change the story of what it means to grow up

526
00:25:46,156 --> 00:25:48,756
Speaker 2: in this pivotal moment in time. I was going to

527
00:25:48,796 --> 00:25:49,636
Speaker 2: find them.

528
00:25:50,036 --> 00:26:01,916
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab will return in a moment. College student

529
00:26:01,956 --> 00:26:05,316
Speaker 1: mental health expert Alexis Redding spent her formative years watching

530
00:26:05,316 --> 00:26:08,956
Speaker 1: her egyptologist's father piece together stories of past generations with

531
00:26:09,196 --> 00:26:12,316
Speaker 1: small bits of bone and pottery. Now she was poised

532
00:26:12,356 --> 00:26:14,556
Speaker 1: to put together her own story of the past, one

533
00:26:14,556 --> 00:26:16,956
Speaker 1: that could tell us something really important about the present.

534
00:26:17,436 --> 00:26:20,036
Speaker 1: That is, if she could find the lost data dates

535
00:26:20,036 --> 00:26:22,916
Speaker 1: of a mysterious unpublished nineteen seventy study.

536
00:26:24,396 --> 00:26:27,116
Speaker 2: I dug through the basements, I climbed through the other

537
00:26:27,156 --> 00:26:30,196
Speaker 2: things in the attic. I at some point tried open

538
00:26:30,396 --> 00:26:32,796
Speaker 2: the drawer of a rusty file cabinet in the basement

539
00:26:32,876 --> 00:26:34,956
Speaker 2: that had been sitting in water, and I was able

540
00:26:34,996 --> 00:26:39,756
Speaker 2: to find meeting minutes and the old letters to funders

541
00:26:39,836 --> 00:26:42,236
Speaker 2: and confirmed that the study had taken place. It had

542
00:26:42,276 --> 00:26:43,996
Speaker 2: been rigors, but I couldn't find the tape.

543
00:26:44,316 --> 00:26:47,116
Speaker 1: After smashing through all the rusty file cabinets she could,

544
00:26:47,436 --> 00:26:51,156
Speaker 1: Alexis turned to her last hope, the university archive, that

545
00:26:51,236 --> 00:26:54,356
Speaker 1: spot where institutions stick all the historical stuff that they're

546
00:26:54,396 --> 00:26:55,316
Speaker 1: not sure what to do with.

547
00:26:55,676 --> 00:26:58,676
Speaker 2: Month after month, I was sitting in the archives, opening

548
00:26:58,716 --> 00:27:02,636
Speaker 2: box after box until one day SO lifted up the

549
00:27:02,636 --> 00:27:04,596
Speaker 2: top of a box and there was the first set

550
00:27:04,636 --> 00:27:08,356
Speaker 2: of them. It took me almost a year, but I

551
00:27:08,396 --> 00:27:08,956
Speaker 2: found them.

552
00:27:09,196 --> 00:27:12,716
Speaker 1: Alexis finally had her long lost archaeological peak into what

553
00:27:12,756 --> 00:27:15,236
Speaker 1: student life was like when her father was in college.

554
00:27:15,596 --> 00:27:17,756
Speaker 1: She was finally ready to analyze the data.

555
00:27:18,156 --> 00:27:20,756
Speaker 2: So I enlisted the help of my colleague, doctor Nancy Hill,

556
00:27:20,796 --> 00:27:22,596
Speaker 2: and as we were framing what it was that we

557
00:27:22,596 --> 00:27:25,836
Speaker 2: were hoping to hear on these recordings, we started from

558
00:27:25,836 --> 00:27:28,796
Speaker 2: a kids These Days place. Our idea was, Oh, this

559
00:27:28,916 --> 00:27:32,956
Speaker 2: perfect time capsule of interviews from the nineteen seventies. Obviously,

560
00:27:32,996 --> 00:27:34,716
Speaker 2: it's going to help us figure out what is so

561
00:27:34,916 --> 00:27:38,036
Speaker 2: different about being a college student today. And we both

562
00:27:38,076 --> 00:27:41,716
Speaker 2: sat down to listen independently, and we both had the same,

563
00:27:41,996 --> 00:27:47,356
Speaker 2: just jarring realization that what we were actually hearing sounded

564
00:27:47,436 --> 00:27:50,356
Speaker 2: no different than what our students were talking about in

565
00:27:50,396 --> 00:27:53,836
Speaker 2: our office hours, in our classrooms, that there was this

566
00:27:54,316 --> 00:27:58,276
Speaker 2: level of continuity that we had absolutely not expected. Give

567
00:27:58,316 --> 00:28:02,516
Speaker 2: me some examples, the loneliness that they were struggling with

568
00:28:02,596 --> 00:28:05,476
Speaker 2: the challenge of finding friends, finding their people.

569
00:28:06,036 --> 00:28:09,436
Speaker 4: I remember walking through the dining hall many times then

570
00:28:10,036 --> 00:28:12,276
Speaker 4: just not seeing anyone that I felt comfortable with to

571
00:28:12,316 --> 00:28:15,636
Speaker 4: sit down with, and I would just go off and

572
00:28:15,676 --> 00:28:16,556
Speaker 4: sit by myself.

573
00:28:16,956 --> 00:28:19,636
Speaker 2: The pressure to have life figured out by graduation, and

574
00:28:19,676 --> 00:28:22,036
Speaker 2: the sense of the ticking clock, you know, it just

575
00:28:22,076 --> 00:28:25,596
Speaker 2: seemed really huge and sort of overwhelming, and I was

576
00:28:25,716 --> 00:28:27,756
Speaker 2: afraid of the courses, and I was afraid I wouldn't

577
00:28:27,756 --> 00:28:30,236
Speaker 2: do well, and all that things that students come into

578
00:28:30,236 --> 00:28:33,036
Speaker 2: my office to talk about today were exactly the things

579
00:28:33,116 --> 00:28:34,676
Speaker 2: that those students were talking about.

580
00:28:34,796 --> 00:28:37,996
Speaker 1: Alexis wasn't able to share the students' actual recordings because

581
00:28:37,996 --> 00:28:41,156
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies researchers didn't think to ask for podcast

582
00:28:41,276 --> 00:28:44,516
Speaker 1: usage in their original consent forms, which makes sense because

583
00:28:44,596 --> 00:28:48,116
Speaker 1: podcasts didn't exist in nineteen seventy five. But Alexis was

584
00:28:48,156 --> 00:28:51,316
Speaker 1: able to share the actual quotes from student recordings, and

585
00:28:51,356 --> 00:28:52,516
Speaker 1: that's what you're hearing now.

586
00:28:52,716 --> 00:28:54,996
Speaker 5: I think I compare myself to other people too much

587
00:28:55,036 --> 00:28:57,956
Speaker 5: when I first came, you know, like a lot of

588
00:28:57,996 --> 00:29:00,716
Speaker 5: kids came from money, and I started to compare dead

589
00:29:00,716 --> 00:29:02,996
Speaker 5: to what I had, and I worried about that.

590
00:29:03,356 --> 00:29:06,356
Speaker 3: I went through a period of depression between January and February.

591
00:29:06,716 --> 00:29:08,356
Speaker 5: I'm getting to the point, right, I don't know what I.

592
00:29:08,316 --> 00:29:11,596
Speaker 4: Want and I don't know I'm not even sure how

593
00:29:11,596 --> 00:29:12,396
Speaker 4: to deal with people.

594
00:29:12,916 --> 00:29:15,716
Speaker 1: Listening to these reenactments was so shocking for me.

595
00:29:16,076 --> 00:29:19,076
Speaker 3: We are all sort of pessimistic and cynical about everything

596
00:29:19,116 --> 00:29:21,356
Speaker 3: when we think about our chances of getting a job.

597
00:29:21,716 --> 00:29:23,636
Speaker 1: These are the same kinds of worries that my YO

598
00:29:23,796 --> 00:29:27,236
Speaker 1: students share in my happiness class today, I really collapsed

599
00:29:27,236 --> 00:29:27,636
Speaker 1: one day.

600
00:29:28,356 --> 00:29:30,916
Speaker 3: I just was I felt like I was going to

601
00:29:30,996 --> 00:29:33,116
Speaker 3: cry all the time, and that had never happened to

602
00:29:33,196 --> 00:29:36,316
Speaker 3: me before, because I've never been a crier.

603
00:29:36,236 --> 00:29:37,716
Speaker 4: And I've ever been that unhappy.

604
00:29:38,396 --> 00:29:40,196
Speaker 2: I always kind of believed in myself.

605
00:29:40,956 --> 00:29:43,156
Speaker 3: Now I would sit on my bed and listen to

606
00:29:43,236 --> 00:29:46,556
Speaker 3: music and feel like, what am I going to do?

607
00:29:47,356 --> 00:29:53,196
Speaker 2: It was so remarkable to hear those parallels, and then

608
00:29:53,356 --> 00:29:55,796
Speaker 2: every so often there would be these Pepperdin details of

609
00:29:55,836 --> 00:29:59,836
Speaker 2: like a student on the recordings asking for the ashtray

610
00:29:59,996 --> 00:30:04,356
Speaker 2: or a lighter or something that was so anachronistic, but

611
00:30:04,396 --> 00:30:09,036
Speaker 2: the core developmental who am I, what do I want?

612
00:30:09,116 --> 00:30:11,156
Speaker 2: And how am I going to find my place? That

613
00:30:11,316 --> 00:30:15,556
Speaker 2: was so beautifully connected. It was it was really disorienting

614
00:30:15,556 --> 00:30:18,996
Speaker 2: for us as researchers to be so wrong about our hypothesis.

615
00:30:20,476 --> 00:30:23,036
Speaker 2: Alexis analyzed the results every way she could think of.

616
00:30:23,516 --> 00:30:27,156
Speaker 2: Each new analysis revealed the same finding. The mental health

617
00:30:27,156 --> 00:30:29,876
Speaker 2: of the nineteen seventies students on those tapes was simply

618
00:30:30,076 --> 00:30:32,436
Speaker 2: no different from the mental health of the kids in

619
00:30:32,476 --> 00:30:35,796
Speaker 2: the twenty twenties. As a last ditch attempt to confirm

620
00:30:35,836 --> 00:30:38,916
Speaker 2: her original hypothesis, she enlisted the help of a new

621
00:30:38,956 --> 00:30:42,596
Speaker 2: group of research collaborators, the kids Today. So I set

622
00:30:42,676 --> 00:30:45,516
Speaker 2: up some focus groups with current students, and I was

623
00:30:45,596 --> 00:30:49,036
Speaker 2: fully transparent. These are interviews that took place in the

624
00:30:49,076 --> 00:30:51,516
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies. I need you to help me figure out

625
00:30:51,516 --> 00:30:54,316
Speaker 2: what is similar and what is different. And I gave

626
00:30:54,356 --> 00:30:57,796
Speaker 2: them two highlighters. Green was what you identify as similar,

627
00:30:58,356 --> 00:31:01,916
Speaker 2: and pink was anything that was different. And in focus

628
00:31:01,916 --> 00:31:04,676
Speaker 2: group after focus group, I just watched the transcripts turn

629
00:31:04,756 --> 00:31:07,876
Speaker 2: green with highlighter. Inc the kids today could not see

630
00:31:07,916 --> 00:31:10,876
Speaker 2: any difference between their own mental health problems and those

631
00:31:10,956 --> 00:31:15,596
Speaker 2: faced by their grandparents' generation. The typical students' happiness struggles

632
00:31:15,676 --> 00:31:18,836
Speaker 2: just hadn't seemed to change in over fifty years. I

633
00:31:18,876 --> 00:31:21,756
Speaker 2: first heard about Alexis's findings at a workshop at Harvard

634
00:31:21,836 --> 00:31:24,476
Speaker 2: over a year ago. For weeks, I couldn't get her

635
00:31:24,516 --> 00:31:27,196
Speaker 2: results out of my head. They simply didn't fit with

636
00:31:27,276 --> 00:31:29,716
Speaker 2: all the studies I'd read and all the results I'd

637
00:31:29,716 --> 00:31:33,036
Speaker 2: talked about in my own interviews, all those findings showing

638
00:31:33,116 --> 00:31:36,636
Speaker 2: increasing rates of depression and anxiety in kids today. I

639
00:31:36,676 --> 00:31:39,596
Speaker 2: asked Alexis where she thought the discrepancy came from. I

640
00:31:39,596 --> 00:31:43,236
Speaker 2: think the first thing is really to begin to decouple

641
00:31:43,276 --> 00:31:46,636
Speaker 2: these two trends of what is happening simultaneously. One to

642
00:31:46,756 --> 00:31:49,716
Speaker 2: understand what is a clinical challenge and what is a

643
00:31:49,796 --> 00:31:53,316
Speaker 2: typical developmental challenge. There are students who are having very

644
00:31:53,436 --> 00:31:57,876
Speaker 2: real mental health crisis where they need intervention from clinical counselors,

645
00:31:58,596 --> 00:32:01,436
Speaker 2: and then the vast majority of students are those who

646
00:32:01,476 --> 00:32:05,556
Speaker 2: are just struggling with typical developmental challenges of transition of

647
00:32:05,596 --> 00:32:08,636
Speaker 2: what does it mean to leave home move to a

648
00:32:08,676 --> 00:32:11,636
Speaker 2: college care campus, be asked to answer these big questions

649
00:32:11,676 --> 00:32:13,276
Speaker 2: about what do I want out of my life? How

650
00:32:13,276 --> 00:32:15,916
Speaker 2: am I going to get there? And we conflate these

651
00:32:15,956 --> 00:32:18,876
Speaker 2: two things, which means that number one, we all panic.

652
00:32:19,156 --> 00:32:21,036
Speaker 2: So the second a student comes to us and they

653
00:32:21,036 --> 00:32:24,436
Speaker 2: tell us that they're lonely or that they have anxiety,

654
00:32:24,956 --> 00:32:28,316
Speaker 2: we leap to this is a clinical problem. So we're

655
00:32:28,356 --> 00:32:31,516
Speaker 2: really trying to have a different kind of conversation about

656
00:32:31,516 --> 00:32:35,916
Speaker 2: what's really going on. What is typical normal, developmental and

657
00:32:36,076 --> 00:32:39,036
Speaker 2: hard about being a young adult, about being in college,

658
00:32:39,636 --> 00:32:43,116
Speaker 2: and to recognize the clinical challenges that are happening on

659
00:32:43,156 --> 00:32:43,876
Speaker 2: a separate track.

660
00:32:44,236 --> 00:32:47,556
Speaker 1: I resonated with Alexis's idea of these two tracks because

661
00:32:47,596 --> 00:32:50,676
Speaker 1: research shows that there definitely are more college students on

662
00:32:50,676 --> 00:32:52,716
Speaker 1: that first track today than there have ever been in

663
00:32:52,756 --> 00:32:56,676
Speaker 1: the past. Students facing clinically significant levels of mental health

664
00:32:56,716 --> 00:33:01,436
Speaker 1: issues that require urgent professional treatment, Students facing acute symptoms

665
00:33:01,476 --> 00:33:04,876
Speaker 1: like panic attacks or suicidality, or a level of anxiety

666
00:33:04,876 --> 00:33:08,836
Speaker 1: that requires medication just a function. But there are also

667
00:33:08,956 --> 00:33:12,396
Speaker 1: lives of other students in Tract two, college students who

668
00:33:12,436 --> 00:33:15,316
Speaker 1: are having a hard time because college life has always

669
00:33:15,356 --> 00:33:19,156
Speaker 1: been hard. That second group is simply reacting normatively to

670
00:33:19,196 --> 00:33:22,436
Speaker 1: the typical developmental stresses that come with being nineteen years old,

671
00:33:22,876 --> 00:33:26,276
Speaker 1: no matter what generation you're in. Alexis worries that we

672
00:33:26,356 --> 00:33:28,676
Speaker 1: might be hurting this second group of students when we

673
00:33:28,756 --> 00:33:30,636
Speaker 1: inadvertently lump them in with the first.

674
00:33:31,116 --> 00:33:34,396
Speaker 2: We are so scared that we are going to underreact

675
00:33:34,716 --> 00:33:38,036
Speaker 2: to a severe challenge that we tend to overreact.

676
00:33:38,316 --> 00:33:41,316
Speaker 1: Alexis also worries that kids today are starting to own

677
00:33:41,356 --> 00:33:44,236
Speaker 1: the narrative that adults typically tell about them, that they're

678
00:33:44,276 --> 00:33:47,876
Speaker 1: just so different than previous generations, and that's why she's

679
00:33:47,876 --> 00:33:50,396
Speaker 1: begun a new intervention with the students in her classes.

680
00:33:50,836 --> 00:33:53,276
Speaker 1: One aimed at teaching them just how similar their current

681
00:33:53,316 --> 00:33:55,076
Speaker 1: generation is to previous ones.

682
00:33:55,476 --> 00:33:57,396
Speaker 2: And so I give them a series of quotes and

683
00:33:57,436 --> 00:34:00,636
Speaker 2: I tell them these either come from the nineteen seventies

684
00:34:01,156 --> 00:34:04,236
Speaker 2: or these are from the twenty twenties. And I ask

685
00:34:04,316 --> 00:34:06,756
Speaker 2: them not just to tell me which generation they think

686
00:34:06,756 --> 00:34:10,156
Speaker 2: it's from, but why. And so we'll up a quote

687
00:34:10,516 --> 00:34:13,116
Speaker 2: like a student who couldn't get out of bed, and

688
00:34:13,156 --> 00:34:15,836
Speaker 2: it feels like he's wasting his time because he doesn't

689
00:34:15,836 --> 00:34:17,436
Speaker 2: want to go to class, because he doesn't know what's

690
00:34:17,436 --> 00:34:19,036
Speaker 2: going on in class, and he doesn't know to ask

691
00:34:19,076 --> 00:34:21,356
Speaker 2: for help, so he just doesn't show up. And my

692
00:34:21,396 --> 00:34:24,516
Speaker 2: students will tell me, oh, I've done this, or this

693
00:34:24,596 --> 00:34:27,596
Speaker 2: is bedrod. He's probably scrolling on TikTok, and will build

694
00:34:27,636 --> 00:34:30,076
Speaker 2: this strong case and will even tell me there's no

695
00:34:30,236 --> 00:34:33,276
Speaker 2: way that this is a student from another generation. And

696
00:34:33,316 --> 00:34:36,996
Speaker 2: then I reveal, one after the next that indeed, this

697
00:34:37,076 --> 00:34:39,676
Speaker 2: is a student from another generation, from your parents' generation,

698
00:34:39,876 --> 00:34:44,316
Speaker 2: from your grandparents' generation. And I think that simple activity

699
00:34:44,956 --> 00:34:48,276
Speaker 2: really opens our frame to better understanding.

700
00:34:48,956 --> 00:34:51,676
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but try out Alexis's intervention with my

701
00:34:51,716 --> 00:34:54,596
Speaker 1: own students at Yale. So this is for this episode

702
00:34:54,596 --> 00:34:57,956
Speaker 1: that we're doing about how mental health has changed over time.

703
00:34:58,476 --> 00:35:00,476
Speaker 1: And I'm going to do an exercise with you guys

704
00:35:00,556 --> 00:35:04,596
Speaker 1: that Alexis Redding does with her students. She was the

705
00:35:04,596 --> 00:35:07,836
Speaker 1: one that found these recordings from the nineteen seventies, so

706
00:35:07,876 --> 00:35:10,996
Speaker 1: these are Harvard students class nineteen seventy five. And also

707
00:35:11,196 --> 00:35:14,756
Speaker 1: she was doing qualitative interviews with students from twenty twenty five,

708
00:35:15,116 --> 00:35:17,196
Speaker 1: and so the game is just like, can you tell

709
00:35:17,236 --> 00:35:19,356
Speaker 1: which is which, whether this is a student from nineteen

710
00:35:19,356 --> 00:35:22,796
Speaker 1: seventy five or a student from twenty twenty five. Does

711
00:35:22,876 --> 00:35:23,436
Speaker 1: that make sense?

712
00:35:23,836 --> 00:35:24,036
Speaker 6: Yes?

713
00:35:24,276 --> 00:35:28,636
Speaker 1: Yeah, Here is quote number one. I remember walking through

714
00:35:28,636 --> 00:35:31,156
Speaker 1: the dining hall many times than just not seeing anyone

715
00:35:31,236 --> 00:35:32,996
Speaker 1: that I felt comfortable to sit down with, and I

716
00:35:32,996 --> 00:35:35,276
Speaker 1: would just go off and sit by myself. This is

717
00:35:35,316 --> 00:35:38,716
Speaker 1: a student talking about his first year on campus. So

718
00:35:39,276 --> 00:35:40,996
Speaker 1: twenty twenties or nineteen seventies.

719
00:35:41,596 --> 00:35:44,116
Speaker 2: That just kind of sounds like me my freshman year.

720
00:35:44,636 --> 00:35:46,636
Speaker 1: My Yale students seem to get it wrong too.

721
00:35:46,916 --> 00:35:50,276
Speaker 2: I'll say that's totally in line with the twenty twenties experience.

722
00:35:50,556 --> 00:35:54,596
Speaker 7: Yeah, one hundred percent twenty twenty that is like peak

723
00:35:55,036 --> 00:35:56,876
Speaker 7: undergrad social anxiety.

724
00:35:57,516 --> 00:36:01,716
Speaker 1: Turns out, Nope, it was nineteen seventy five. What they

725
00:36:01,756 --> 00:36:05,316
Speaker 1: too were shocked by what they were hearing. Okay, next one,

726
00:36:06,476 --> 00:36:09,116
Speaker 1: I went through a period of depression between January and February.

727
00:36:09,196 --> 00:36:10,716
Speaker 1: I'm getting the point where I don't even know what

728
00:36:10,756 --> 00:36:13,356
Speaker 1: I want. I don't know, I'm just not sure how

729
00:36:13,396 --> 00:36:14,716
Speaker 1: to even deal with people anymore.

730
00:36:15,476 --> 00:36:18,956
Speaker 6: Twenty twenty five. I think there's something about the language

731
00:36:19,236 --> 00:36:22,756
Speaker 6: of like pausing and not finishing a sentence that I'm like, oh,

732
00:36:22,916 --> 00:36:23,636
Speaker 6: gen Zer.

733
00:36:23,836 --> 00:36:25,916
Speaker 1: They were just more articulate in the nineteen seventies.

734
00:36:25,996 --> 00:36:28,276
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think the phrase I don't know how to

735
00:36:28,316 --> 00:36:31,996
Speaker 2: deal with people, and talking about like people scare me

736
00:36:32,076 --> 00:36:34,036
Speaker 2: and stuff like that, that's very much like a twenty

737
00:36:34,076 --> 00:36:35,716
Speaker 2: twenty ish type of thing to say.

738
00:36:36,356 --> 00:36:39,316
Speaker 1: They too assumed that their grandparents' generation was different.

739
00:36:39,596 --> 00:36:41,956
Speaker 7: In my head, like nineteen seventy students are all like

740
00:36:42,436 --> 00:36:44,916
Speaker 7: happy and like congregating, like they know exactly what they

741
00:36:44,916 --> 00:36:46,596
Speaker 7: want to do and they're going to get jobs and whatever,

742
00:36:46,596 --> 00:36:48,036
Speaker 7: and they don't have to worry about any these things.

743
00:36:48,236 --> 00:36:49,436
Speaker 7: That's my stereotype at least.

744
00:36:50,436 --> 00:36:53,756
Speaker 1: And nineteen seventies again, I lied, they're all from the

745
00:36:53,836 --> 00:36:56,396
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, as you probably figured out. But how does

746
00:36:56,396 --> 00:36:57,836
Speaker 1: it feel hearing that they're so similar?

747
00:36:58,716 --> 00:37:00,556
Speaker 6: Oh well, it gives me a sense of like common

748
00:37:00,636 --> 00:37:05,356
Speaker 6: humanity that like everybody goes through the same things.

749
00:37:05,396 --> 00:37:07,036
Speaker 7: The first thing to come into mind, like what this

750
00:37:07,116 --> 00:37:10,316
Speaker 7: feels like to me is you know those ancient at

751
00:37:10,316 --> 00:37:13,796
Speaker 7: Pompeii or whatever, where it's like people talking about bathroom

752
00:37:13,876 --> 00:37:16,236
Speaker 7: humor kind of stuff. I feel like looking at that

753
00:37:16,356 --> 00:37:19,596
Speaker 7: always makes you feel like, ah, they were just like us.

754
00:37:19,636 --> 00:37:21,476
Speaker 7: And I feel like we think of ourselves as it's

755
00:37:21,516 --> 00:37:24,036
Speaker 7: like this unique special thing where we're dealing with bad

756
00:37:24,076 --> 00:37:25,556
Speaker 7: mental health or whatever. But yeah, I guess it probably

757
00:37:25,596 --> 00:37:27,716
Speaker 7: was this universal experience and people in the ninety sid

758
00:37:27,716 --> 00:37:28,836
Speaker 7: it's probably were feeling the same way.

759
00:37:28,836 --> 00:37:29,716
Speaker 5: I think that's like kind of cool.

760
00:37:30,636 --> 00:37:34,276
Speaker 2: I mean, there's something definitely validating about it. So it's

761
00:37:34,356 --> 00:37:38,076
Speaker 2: nice to hear that it really doesn't matter what time,

762
00:37:38,796 --> 00:37:40,796
Speaker 2: you're probably going to go through the same sorts of

763
00:37:41,436 --> 00:37:45,116
Speaker 2: questions and securities and whatnot. I think we put such

764
00:37:45,276 --> 00:37:48,396
Speaker 2: a false barrier between us and current students with the

765
00:37:48,476 --> 00:37:51,756
Speaker 2: kids these days narrative, because naturally, what do they conclude

766
00:37:51,756 --> 00:37:54,556
Speaker 2: from that? The grown ups in my life aren't going

767
00:37:54,636 --> 00:37:57,676
Speaker 2: to listen. They don't respect me, they don't understand what

768
00:37:57,716 --> 00:38:00,036
Speaker 2: I'm going through. And if we can, you know, just

769
00:38:00,076 --> 00:38:01,876
Speaker 2: take some of the bricks out of that wall and

770
00:38:01,916 --> 00:38:05,476
Speaker 2: build that connection. It's it's incredibly meaningful to sort of

771
00:38:05,556 --> 00:38:08,036
Speaker 2: see that generational similarity and to lead with a sense

772
00:38:08,036 --> 00:38:11,036
Speaker 2: of empathy of I was there too, and if we

773
00:38:11,076 --> 00:38:14,316
Speaker 2: can tap back into that, and we can, we can

774
00:38:14,396 --> 00:38:18,116
Speaker 2: have a much more humane, grounded conversation with young people

775
00:38:18,356 --> 00:38:21,076
Speaker 2: that is a lot less kids these days and a

776
00:38:21,116 --> 00:38:24,596
Speaker 2: lot more I know what you're feeling. I experienced it too.

777
00:38:24,716 --> 00:38:26,556
Speaker 2: Now that I've sort of tapped back in, I can

778
00:38:26,596 --> 00:38:27,436
Speaker 2: relate differently.

779
00:38:27,756 --> 00:38:30,116
Speaker 1: But there was a second group that Alexis realized might

780
00:38:30,156 --> 00:38:32,996
Speaker 1: benefit from hearing the details of these old interviews, the

781
00:38:33,076 --> 00:38:38,276
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies participants themselves. With permission from the university, Alexis

782
00:38:38,316 --> 00:38:40,956
Speaker 1: was able to track down twenty of the original participants,

783
00:38:41,476 --> 00:38:44,476
Speaker 1: and her question for them was simple, do you remember

784
00:38:44,516 --> 00:38:46,996
Speaker 1: how tough it was to be in college? And then

785
00:38:47,036 --> 00:38:49,276
Speaker 1: she offered them the chance to hear the recording of

786
00:38:49,316 --> 00:38:52,796
Speaker 1: their original interviews. How did the seventy year old participants

787
00:38:52,836 --> 00:38:55,276
Speaker 1: react to hearing the struggles of their nineteen year old

788
00:38:55,276 --> 00:38:58,236
Speaker 1: selves more than fifty years later. They would tell us, like,

789
00:38:58,276 --> 00:39:02,796
Speaker 1: I remembered the broad strokes. I remembered generally what was happening,

790
00:39:02,996 --> 00:39:05,796
Speaker 1: but I didn't remember how it felt. These former students

791
00:39:05,796 --> 00:39:09,436
Speaker 1: had succumbed to the same cognitive biases that psychologists Adam

792
00:39:09,436 --> 00:39:13,076
Speaker 1: Mastroiani had described earlier. They heard the same negative stuff

793
00:39:13,116 --> 00:39:15,156
Speaker 1: that we all do about kids today in the news.

794
00:39:15,556 --> 00:39:18,156
Speaker 1: At the same time, their memories of their own college

795
00:39:18,236 --> 00:39:21,756
Speaker 1: days slowly got muddled by the fading affect bias. They

796
00:39:21,756 --> 00:39:24,516
Speaker 1: simply didn't remember how bad things often felt as a

797
00:39:24,516 --> 00:39:28,116
Speaker 1: college student. All those moments of loneliness and job worries

798
00:39:28,156 --> 00:39:31,236
Speaker 1: and academic stress were clear as day in their recordings,

799
00:39:31,476 --> 00:39:34,796
Speaker 1: but the participants couldn't remember just how bad those moments

800
00:39:34,796 --> 00:39:36,036
Speaker 1: felt at the time.

801
00:39:36,036 --> 00:39:39,156
Speaker 2: And that to me was so so interesting. Indeed, what

802
00:39:39,196 --> 00:39:41,396
Speaker 2: they started to say is that they wished they'd heard

803
00:39:41,436 --> 00:39:44,476
Speaker 2: the recording sooner, so that when they were raising their kids,

804
00:39:44,596 --> 00:39:47,516
Speaker 2: or teaching their students or talking to their grandkids, they

805
00:39:47,556 --> 00:39:48,676
Speaker 2: could have related better.

806
00:39:49,396 --> 00:39:53,316
Speaker 1: But there's still one archaeological mystery from Alexis's adventures that

807
00:39:53,356 --> 00:39:57,676
Speaker 1: we haven't solved yet. Doctor Perry spent ten years painstakingly

808
00:39:57,716 --> 00:40:00,716
Speaker 1: collecting hundreds of interviews with students from the nineteen seventies

809
00:40:00,716 --> 00:40:03,516
Speaker 1: on those real to real tapes. Why had he decided

810
00:40:03,556 --> 00:40:06,236
Speaker 1: to replicate his original study twenty years later with a

811
00:40:06,276 --> 00:40:08,996
Speaker 1: new group of students, and why did he choose not

812
00:40:09,196 --> 00:40:12,236
Speaker 1: to publish those findings. How did all his data end

813
00:40:12,316 --> 00:40:15,956
Speaker 1: up in unmarked boxes on some random attic bookshelf. The

814
00:40:16,036 --> 00:40:19,356
Speaker 1: answer to this mystery was buried inside that wet, rusty

815
00:40:19,396 --> 00:40:23,436
Speaker 1: file cabinet that Alexis described smashing into earlier. Sitting at

816
00:40:23,476 --> 00:40:25,836
Speaker 1: the bottom was a sheet of notebook paper covered in

817
00:40:25,836 --> 00:40:28,156
Speaker 1: scribbles of what seemed to be the minutes of a

818
00:40:28,236 --> 00:40:32,036
Speaker 1: random research meeting. Only later would Alexis discover that the

819
00:40:32,076 --> 00:40:35,396
Speaker 1: notes from this particular meeting were important. They were from

820
00:40:35,436 --> 00:40:38,756
Speaker 1: the conversation in which Perry's team made their fateful decision

821
00:40:38,916 --> 00:40:42,716
Speaker 1: to abandon the new study. Alexis finally had her solution

822
00:40:43,236 --> 00:40:45,876
Speaker 1: not only to why the study had begun, but also

823
00:40:46,156 --> 00:40:47,076
Speaker 1: why it was shelved.

824
00:40:47,396 --> 00:40:50,956
Speaker 2: There was a researcher who said, in these like poignant words,

825
00:40:50,996 --> 00:40:53,476
Speaker 2: that they couldn't believe that they had to accept the

826
00:40:53,596 --> 00:40:57,836
Speaker 2: null hypothesis, that there was no difference between generations. The

827
00:40:57,876 --> 00:41:00,996
Speaker 2: study was replicated because they wanted to see what was

828
00:41:01,036 --> 00:41:03,476
Speaker 2: different about kids these days that they had done their

829
00:41:03,476 --> 00:41:06,036
Speaker 2: work in the fifties and sixties, and by the seventies,

830
00:41:06,076 --> 00:41:08,636
Speaker 2: with everything that had changed in society, they had decided

831
00:41:08,676 --> 00:41:10,676
Speaker 2: kids the days were so different they had to do

832
00:41:10,716 --> 00:41:11,396
Speaker 2: the study again.

833
00:41:11,676 --> 00:41:15,956
Speaker 1: Harry's team had exactly the same hypothesis about their contemporary

834
00:41:15,996 --> 00:41:18,796
Speaker 1: students that so many of us have about the kids today.

835
00:41:19,436 --> 00:41:22,116
Speaker 1: Those adult researchers who grew up in the nineteen fifties

836
00:41:22,476 --> 00:41:25,396
Speaker 1: looked at the college students of the nineteen seventies walking

837
00:41:25,436 --> 00:41:28,396
Speaker 1: around with their weird bell bottoms and speaking so anxiously

838
00:41:28,396 --> 00:41:31,956
Speaker 1: about the Vietnam War and post college job prospects, and

839
00:41:32,036 --> 00:41:34,916
Speaker 1: they asked themselves, what the heck is up with kids today?

840
00:41:35,196 --> 00:41:38,396
Speaker 1: There's got to be something that's so different about them.

841
00:41:38,476 --> 00:41:40,836
Speaker 2: And the researchers in nineteen seventy nine felt like they

842
00:41:40,836 --> 00:41:44,876
Speaker 2: had failed after ten years and literally thousands of hours

843
00:41:44,916 --> 00:41:47,676
Speaker 2: worth of work. And that was why the study was

844
00:41:47,676 --> 00:41:50,076
Speaker 2: sent off to cold storage, because they hadn't been able

845
00:41:50,076 --> 00:41:53,356
Speaker 2: to prove generational difference. And here we were looking back

846
00:41:53,396 --> 00:41:55,836
Speaker 2: to nineteen seventy five saying exactly the same thing.

847
00:41:56,036 --> 00:42:01,556
Speaker 1: There's no difference. That's a nice way to sum up

848
00:42:01,596 --> 00:42:05,396
Speaker 1: this week's happiness hot take. There's no difference, gen Z.

849
00:42:05,556 --> 00:42:08,156
Speaker 1: College students today are going through the same sorts of

850
00:42:08,196 --> 00:42:12,076
Speaker 1: struggles as college students faced in their parents' parents' generation.

851
00:42:13,076 --> 00:42:15,556
Speaker 1: And again, I want to be super clear here, I'm

852
00:42:15,556 --> 00:42:18,076
Speaker 1: not saying that there aren't college students today who are

853
00:42:18,076 --> 00:42:21,916
Speaker 1: facing real mental health struggles. Sadly, there are far too many,

854
00:42:22,316 --> 00:42:24,756
Speaker 1: and surveys show that the rate of those clinical level

855
00:42:24,796 --> 00:42:28,276
Speaker 1: mental health struggles have indeed gone up over time and

856
00:42:28,356 --> 00:42:31,716
Speaker 1: over generations. But we also have to remind ourselves to

857
00:42:31,756 --> 00:42:34,556
Speaker 1: be a little skeptical whenever we start thinking that the

858
00:42:34,636 --> 00:42:37,196
Speaker 1: kids today are so much worse than how kids used

859
00:42:37,196 --> 00:42:39,716
Speaker 1: to be. Our lying minds are prone to seeing an

860
00:42:39,716 --> 00:42:42,916
Speaker 1: illusory decline whenever we think about how things have changed

861
00:42:42,956 --> 00:42:46,116
Speaker 1: over time, whether that's what we believe about people's kindness,

862
00:42:46,196 --> 00:42:48,956
Speaker 1: or the kid's mental health or the crappiness of music

863
00:42:49,076 --> 00:42:51,796
Speaker 1: in the latest top ten chart. So the next time

864
00:42:51,836 --> 00:42:54,676
Speaker 1: you hear someone say something disparaging about the kids today,

865
00:42:55,116 --> 00:42:57,196
Speaker 1: I hope you will ever so gently hit them with

866
00:42:57,276 --> 00:43:00,596
Speaker 1: the hottest of happiness hot takes. The kids today are

867
00:43:00,636 --> 00:43:03,156
Speaker 1: actually all right, or at least just as all right

868
00:43:03,196 --> 00:43:05,676
Speaker 1: as the kids have ever been, and be sure to

869
00:43:05,716 --> 00:43:07,996
Speaker 1: tell them that you heard that happiness hot take here

870
00:43:08,236 --> 00:43:16,436
Speaker 1: on the Happiness Last up with Me, Doctor Laurie Santos,