Speaker 1: Please welcome Professor Catherine Sanderson, Thank you, Thank you. The
Speaker 1: Science of Happiness, Appreciating modern painting, Dilemmas of modern medicine,
Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln, and the civil history of Jazz, Artistic genius
Speaker 1: of Michel Angela, When Intuition, food turning, Points that changed
Speaker 1: American history, Psychology of religion. One Day University. The most
Speaker 1: acclaimed and popular professors from top colleges. They're best lectures,
Speaker 1: fascinating conversations. Hi, I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn about the
Speaker 1: science of happiness. I'm delighted to be here today. I
Speaker 1: love teaching. I think that will be obvious over the
Speaker 1: next hour. I hate grading. Maybe some of you sat
Speaker 1: and watched me great um in preparation for today, and
Speaker 1: so this is really my ideal. I come and I
Speaker 1: talk for an hour, and I don't leave with anything
Speaker 1: I have to do. My name is Katherine Sanderson, and
Speaker 1: I'm a professor of psychology at AMers College in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: Presentation and if you'd like one, just choot me an
Speaker 1: email and you can have the entire presentation. What do
Speaker 1: you mean by happiness? So that's a really tricky question
Speaker 1: because it's actually currently in heated debate in the literature,
Speaker 1: and so different people. You could have this podcast, you know,
Speaker 1: five times, and you'd get five different answers. So some
Speaker 1: people think of happiness as a sense of overall contentment,
Speaker 1: comfort with their life, well being, well being, sure exactly.
Speaker 1: Other people think of happiness as a much more sort
Speaker 1: of positive, joyful emotion. And you know, I think of
Speaker 1: the image in my mind is a little kid on
Speaker 1: a swing, you know, with their face in a big grim,
Speaker 1: you know, pumping their legs back and forth. So one
Speaker 1: of them is really a sense of contentment, life satisfaction
Speaker 1: overall I feel good. And one of them is a
Speaker 1: sense of utter and pure joy. And probably both of
Speaker 1: those are part of what happiness is. What is the
Speaker 1: thing that you really want to get over in your
Speaker 1: lecture about the science of happiness? The biggest thing I
Speaker 1: want is for people to leave the lecture knowing that
Speaker 1: there are specific, concrete things they can do in their
Speaker 1: lives to increase their happiness. I think lots of people
Speaker 1: believe that happiness is beyond them, you know, some quirk
Speaker 1: of you know, bad genes or negative life experiences, environmental factors, etcetera.
Speaker 1: And I end every lecture by giving people ten strategies
Speaker 1: that no matter where you start on the genetic lottery
Speaker 1: of happiness, no matter your life circumstances, there are specific,
Speaker 1: concrete things you can do in life that are within
Speaker 1: your reach to increase happiness. There are a bunch of
Speaker 1: little behaviors we can do so Exercising strongly associated with
Speaker 1: better psychological and physical well being, getting enough sleep, spending
Speaker 1: time in nature. Those are all very simple things. Reading
Speaker 1: a book you love that brings great happiness. How good
Speaker 1: is the science of happiness? I think the science of
Speaker 1: happiness is strong, and in fact is getting stronger. So
Speaker 1: some of the most interesting research right now is extending
Speaker 1: prior research in two ways. One, a lot of research
Speaker 1: in the field of psychology in general has focused on
Speaker 1: Western cultures and largely the United States, And so then
Speaker 1: the ultimate question becomes, well, is this happiness in our
Speaker 1: culture or is this happiness across cultures? And so there's
Speaker 1: growing evidence now that the predictors of happiness are in
Speaker 1: fact quite similar across cultures. And that's something that's very
Speaker 1: new and that we didn't know a decade ago. The
Speaker 1: other real advantage to current technology is that we're learning
Speaker 1: much more about genes and about brain functioning. So there's
Speaker 1: research that I describe in the talk that looks at
Speaker 1: m r I data and literally has people think about
Speaker 1: a certain thing and then looks at what parts of
Speaker 1: the brain are activated. Researchers did a very interesting study
Speaker 1: in which they brought in people and put them in
Speaker 1: an MRI machine, so a machine that measures brain activation,
Speaker 1: and they had them look at different pictures. Um, the
Speaker 1: top scene is of an urban scene, it's a city skyline.
Speaker 1: The bottom scene is of a nature scene water. So
Speaker 1: the researchers controlled very carefully for lots of things in
Speaker 1: the pictures. Um, the scenes were always pretty. It wasn't
Speaker 1: that you were showing you know, urban scenes of congestion
Speaker 1: or whatever. None of the pictures had people in them.
Speaker 1: So people are in an MRI machine and they show
Speaker 1: them a series of pictures and they measure brain activity.
Speaker 1: What they found was that looking at the urban city
Speaker 1: skyline created lots and lots of brain activity. The brain
Speaker 1: was reacting, the brain was processing thinking, you know, activated.
Speaker 1: Looking at the nature scene, the brain was very calm,
Speaker 1: like you were meditating. So in response to the nature scene,
Speaker 1: people were relaxed. Brain waves were low, relaxed. It was
Speaker 1: literally like they were meditating. So that's some evidence for
Speaker 1: what looking at nature may do to us physiologically, and
Speaker 1: it may help explain this link between looking at nature
Speaker 1: and feeling better. And so we're learning about neurological measures
Speaker 1: of happiness in particular situations that provide stronger evidence than
Speaker 1: we've had before, which is just self report data questionnaires
Speaker 1: and people responding, which may be accurate but can also
Speaker 1: be subjected to some kind of bias. Yeah, because it
Speaker 1: must be difficult to design a questionnaire around happiness that
Speaker 1: that one person would report yeah, I'm happy or I'm
Speaker 1: in a happy relationship, and another person with exactly the
Speaker 1: same set of of objective criteria may report differently, right,
Speaker 1: And and of course one of the challenges in that
Speaker 1: example is that there are people in the exact same
Speaker 1: life circumstance that see the world in very different ways.
Speaker 1: So I gave an example about being on a date
Speaker 1: shortly after college graduation with my boyfriend, and we were
Speaker 1: driving in urban Atlanta and had a flat tire. So
Speaker 1: we had a lovely day planned picnic and hike, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and we had this flat tire. So we pulled it
Speaker 1: side of the road, and I am in the passenger seat,
Speaker 1: freaking out. This is a terrible thing that happened. Our
Speaker 1: day is ruined. It's going to be really expensive. We're
Speaker 1: gonna have to get the car tode. And I'm spiraling,
Speaker 1: and my boyfriend says, um, I'm just going to change
Speaker 1: the tire. So there's an example. And it was like
Speaker 1: ten minutes, but there's an example in which we were
Speaker 1: in the exact same circumstance and an event happened and
Speaker 1: I saw it in a very sort of negative and
Speaker 1: fatalistic way, and he saw it as no big deal.
Speaker 1: And and that I think sort of illustrates that one
Speaker 1: of the challenges happiness is that different people see the
Speaker 1: same thing in different ways. How about you, Why are
Speaker 1: you personally so interested in this subject? So my answer
Speaker 1: to the last question probably probably already conveyed that. And
Speaker 1: I should start by saying that that boyfriend is now
Speaker 1: my husband because I sat in the well, I sat
Speaker 1: in that car knowing going like, huh, you know, he
Speaker 1: sees the world in a much better way than I do,
Speaker 1: which is which has been true, you know, throughout our marriage.
Speaker 1: And so I think one of the reasons that I
Speaker 1: like giving this talk is that happiness does not come
Speaker 1: easily for me. So for some people, my husband, uh,
Speaker 1: my oldest child, happiness comes very easily. I have a
Speaker 1: teenage son that when we take the iPhone away from periodically.
Speaker 1: He was in public school from kindergarten through eighth grade.
Speaker 1: In ninth grade, he moved to an elite prep school
Speaker 1: that he was woefully underprepared for in every sense of
Speaker 1: the word. And it was a very rocky transition, involved
Speaker 1: a lot of tears, mostly mine and uh and he
Speaker 1: was doing very, very poor, like really across the board,
Speaker 1: but especially in Spanish, and it's in Spanish. At the
Speaker 1: end of the halfway through the first trimester and we
Speaker 1: got his progress report and the progress report said he
Speaker 1: had a fifty in Spanish. This is a school that
Speaker 1: uses the traditional grading scale, so fifty was really good. Uh.
Speaker 1: So at the end of the first trimester, Andrew calls
Speaker 1: me and says, mom, I got my grades. Good news
Speaker 1: about Spanish. I was like, what a relief. I'm so nervous,
Speaker 1: you know what with the fifty. I'm like, what did
Speaker 1: you get? He goes, I got a fifty eight, And
Speaker 1: I was like, it's not good news, and he goes, no, no,
Speaker 1: it is. It's eight points higher than I had in
Speaker 1: in October. I go, it's an F and he says
Speaker 1: it's really an F plus And I said, I am
Speaker 1: a professor. There is no F plus that is not
Speaker 1: one of the grade options. That doesn't is impossible. And
Speaker 1: he says, but at the rate I'm going, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: have a sixty six in January. And I said that's
Speaker 1: a D. Like that's also not good. But so here
Speaker 1: really is what is good Andrew? You know, by all accounts,
Speaker 1: some days can end up in prison. Um and hopefully
Speaker 1: not a Spanish speaking prison. I mean, that would be terrible.
Speaker 1: But but he's going to be fine because he is
Speaker 1: going to call home and be like, hey, I got
Speaker 1: a bunk bed, I got this roommate. There are these
Speaker 1: meals three times today, there's this exercise yard. And after
Speaker 1: that I stopped worrying about him, because anybody who can
Speaker 1: call their mom with the good news of the F plus,
Speaker 1: he really is going to be fine. He's probably gonna
Speaker 1: be living in my basement, but he's gonna be fine
Speaker 1: as an adult. Where is Andrew? Now? Ye? So, so
Speaker 1: here's the story about why this optimistic outlook, which is
Speaker 1: so beneficial, really helps people. He continues he improves. At
Speaker 1: the end of his freshman year of high school, he
Speaker 1: has an a minus in Spanish, and his teacher calls
Speaker 1: me and says, in all of my years of teaching,
Speaker 1: it's the single biggest improvement I've seen an any student.
Speaker 1: So Andrew stuck with Spanish throughout high school. He finished
Speaker 1: high school, applied to college, got in, and came to
Speaker 1: me and my husband in the spring of a senior
Speaker 1: year in high school and said, I have a personal
Speaker 1: goal before I start college. I want to be fluent
Speaker 1: in Spanish, so I'd like to take a gap year
Speaker 1: and spend it in Peru. And Andrew is currently a
Speaker 1: freshman in college, continuing to say Spanish, but he spent
Speaker 1: last year living in Peru with a family, speaking Spanish
Speaker 1: full time and has basically become fully bilingual. And that's
Speaker 1: an example of how his optimistic outlook let him take
Speaker 1: what was literally a failure and and turn it into
Speaker 1: a success, and in fact, it's been really life changing
Speaker 1: for him. Most of us are on social media. Does
Speaker 1: social media make us happier or more miserable? Is there
Speaker 1: strong research on this. There is pretty consistent strong research
Speaker 1: that social media is not good for psychological well being.
Speaker 1: There's often a sense on social media in which people
Speaker 1: only post the good. My kid is valedictorian. I just
Speaker 1: ran the Boston marathon and under three hours. So one
Speaker 1: there's this sense of look at all these people having
Speaker 1: this great life, and my life doesn't measure up. You know,
Speaker 1: my life is really not you know what other people
Speaker 1: are experiencing. It's less good. The other key is that
Speaker 1: social media often has the effect of making people feel excluded.
Speaker 1: So I have three teenagers right now, and you know,
Speaker 1: I vaguely remember being a teenager, and I'll say that
Speaker 1: one thing my children have to deal with it I
Speaker 1: never had to deal with is seeing pictures posted of
Speaker 1: parties they weren't invited to. And that happens all the time.
Speaker 1: So people on social media, you know, post events, parties,
Speaker 1: social gatherings, and if you weren't invited, you're now vividly
Speaker 1: aware that you weren't invited and can see all the
Speaker 1: other people who were. One day university where we taught
Speaker 1: to award winning and acclaimed professors the most popular on
Speaker 1: their campuses. They're best lectures the one students love to hear.
Speaker 1: Discover more on our website one day you dot Com
Speaker 1: Now more with professor Catherine Sanderson of Amherst College, who
Speaker 1: says many of us compare ourselves to others way too often.
Speaker 1: I think that there are people who are always better
Speaker 1: at it than other people, and I think there are
Speaker 1: people who are always very focused on those comparisons. The
Speaker 1: nature of the comparison may change, so it may be
Speaker 1: this person took a better vacation, or this person drives
Speaker 1: a nicer car or whatever. But we're often aware of
Speaker 1: how we are different from other people, and that is
Speaker 1: true across the lifespan, even if the specific parts of
Speaker 1: comparison may change. What does studies say about how anxiety?
Speaker 1: Are levels of anxiety affect happiness? It's a really important
Speaker 1: question and seems to be something that is of growing
Speaker 1: concern that you know, I see in college students, but
Speaker 1: we see sort of, you know, across America. So people
Speaker 1: vary tremendously in their overall baseline of anxiety. There's some
Speaker 1: people who can sort of think about worst case scenarios
Speaker 1: and and escalate situations, and there are other people who
Speaker 1: seem to have the ability to take experiences in life
Speaker 1: and take it in stride. It's obviously much harder for
Speaker 1: people who are high in anxiety to find happiness. Is
Speaker 1: there a way to deal with that? Sure, you really
Speaker 1: try to think about the world in a new and
Speaker 1: different way, so you change your thought patterns. When my
Speaker 1: son was on the verge of what I thought was
Speaker 1: failing out of prep school, what I continually said to
Speaker 1: myself is he doesn't have leukemia. And that's the reality
Speaker 1: that for me, there was this horrible tragedy of he
Speaker 1: has an f in Spanish and may well get tossed
Speaker 1: from his prep school. But the reality is there are
Speaker 1: parents all across the country who have teenagers having chemotherapy
Speaker 1: and hospital and they wish their kid was failing Spanish
Speaker 1: in high school. And so that's an example of changing
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have about something to recognize that what
Speaker 1: we see as a terrible crisis and a terrible stressor
Speaker 1: in reality is not that big a deal in the
Speaker 1: scheme of things. What are the biggest mistakes that people
Speaker 1: make around happiness? One, and this will not be surprising. Money.
Speaker 1: We have a very strong belief in our society that
Speaker 1: more money leads to more happiness. If I just had
Speaker 1: more money, then I would be happier. Um. So here's
Speaker 1: a picture of um, Tiger Woods's house, or maybe now
Speaker 1: Tiger Woods's ex wife's house. Um, And we think, gosh,
Speaker 1: if I lived in a house like that, surely I
Speaker 1: would be happy every single minute of every single day.
Speaker 1: And of course the reality is that isn't true. More
Speaker 1: money does not lead to more happiness. Here's the important
Speaker 1: exception for people living below the poverty line, for people
Speaker 1: who are worried about are my kids going to have
Speaker 1: enough food tomorrow? Will we have heat this winter? Do
Speaker 1: I have a safe place to sleep? For people who
Speaker 1: are living below the poverty line at the poverty line,
Speaker 1: more money absolutely increases happiness. But for people who are
Speaker 1: not living at that level of subsistence, more money does
Speaker 1: not increase happiness. The keys that we acclimate, and that's
Speaker 1: really sort of the fundamental principle. We think, will be
Speaker 1: happy when we get more money, But the reality is
Speaker 1: we acclimate when we get into college, when we graduate
Speaker 1: from college, by a house, get a promotion. These are
Speaker 1: all big, sort of substantial life events that we expect
Speaker 1: will lead us to be happier, and they do, but
Speaker 1: only briefly, because then we adapt. Given all the advances
Speaker 1: and science and medicine, what are the prospects for instant
Speaker 1: gratification in a in a happiness pill. Great question. I'm
Speaker 1: going to say two things about that. One, there are
Speaker 1: people who have chemical imbalances in their bodies that lead
Speaker 1: them to experience chronic clinical depression, you know, severe anxiety.
Speaker 1: And so I want to be very careful to say
Speaker 1: that my lecture is not a substitute for therapy, psychopharmacological
Speaker 1: you know, aids, etcetera. And that one of the challenge
Speaker 1: is is that for people who are in the midst
Speaker 1: of the throes of a serious psychological disorder, they simply
Speaker 1: do not have the ability to say, oh, yes, let
Speaker 1: me spend some time in nature and read a book
Speaker 1: and you know, smile more often. That they really need assistance.
Speaker 1: And so one of the things that we do, in
Speaker 1: fact have is a magic pill, because the magic pills, antidepressants,
Speaker 1: anti anxiety medication are actually correcting a chemical balance in
Speaker 1: the brain that enables people to then take the steps
Speaker 1: they need to find greater happiness. And your second point,
Speaker 1: and my second point is that part of the joy
Speaker 1: and happiness is the pursuit of happiness. It's not I
Speaker 1: will have a pill so I feel happy and joyous
Speaker 1: all the time. Part of what brings us happiness is
Speaker 1: working towards that happiness. So how do we spend money.
Speaker 1: You can spend money in better and worse ways in
Speaker 1: terms of happiness. So a lot of people think wrongly
Speaker 1: that happiness is about spending money on expensive possessions. You know, uh,
Speaker 1: new car, new watch, you know, expensive purse or shoes
Speaker 1: or whatever. And initially, yeah, that is new and it's exciting,
Speaker 1: and it's your you know, nice watch or fancy purse
Speaker 1: or whatever. And then it's just your watch, your purse.
Speaker 1: So where we get much more happiness from is the
Speaker 1: pursuit of experiences. So that could be, you know, tickets
Speaker 1: to a Broadway show, it could be travel, it could
Speaker 1: be going to a concert, or tickets to the Super
Speaker 1: Bowl or whatever. And why that is a better way
Speaker 1: to spend money on experiences is that it allows us
Speaker 1: to anticipate, Oh, I'm going to be going to this
Speaker 1: big game, I'm going to be going to the World Series. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to see Hamilton's you know whatever that I've
Speaker 1: always wanted to do. So we have this anticipation of
Speaker 1: the event. Then we get to experience the event, and
Speaker 1: then we get to look back on the event, and
Speaker 1: we tell people about the event, and we savor the event.
Speaker 1: When we spend money on experiences, we are pursuing happiness.
Speaker 1: We are actively engaging in happiness, and that brings us
Speaker 1: tremendous pleasure. Going further, any book recommendations, there's a wonderful
Speaker 1: book I recommend all the time. Really should get royalties
Speaker 1: on it, but I do not um And it's by
Speaker 1: a neuroscientist at Stanford, and it's called why Zebras Don't
Speaker 1: get Ulcers? And Zebras don't get ulcers because they only
Speaker 1: react physiologically with great anxiety and stress and physiological reactions
Speaker 1: like heartbeating fast and rapid breathing when they're about to die,
Speaker 1: when they're being chased by a lion or tiger or whatever.
Speaker 1: And as you can probably imagine, humans showed that stress
Speaker 1: reaction all the time. I'm stuck in traffic, I have
Speaker 1: a blind date, I have a job interview. And it's
Speaker 1: one of reasons why humans have relatively high rates of
Speaker 1: stress related illnesses. And the second book is a great
Speaker 1: recommendation for women, and it's by Dr Susan Nolan HOA
Speaker 1: Suma and it's called Women Who Think Too Much, And
Speaker 1: it's really about the somewhat gendered pattern of how we
Speaker 1: think about the world, which is that women are much
Speaker 1: more likely than men to ruminate, to obsess about negative things,
Speaker 1: to worry about negative things. And this book is really
Speaker 1: an easy guide in terms of trying to help break
Speaker 1: some of the negative cycles. But it but it doesn't
Speaker 1: urge women to be like men. No, no, although there
Speaker 1: is certainly research suggesting that men's ability to distract themselves
Speaker 1: from negative events can actually be beneficial. Great, Thank you
Speaker 1: very much, Thank you. This has been delightful. Professor Catherine
Speaker 1: Sanderson on the Science of Happiness. I'm Richard Davies. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening. Sign off on our website one Day You
Speaker 1: dot com to become a member and access over six
Speaker 1: hundred full length video lectures from the world's finest professors.