Speaker 1: Pushkin. I want to bring you back to one of
Speaker 1: my favorite moments in sporting history, one that provides an
Speaker 1: important message about what you can do to be happier.
Speaker 1: It's August fifth, twenty twelve, the London Olympics. As the
Speaker 1: soundtrack to Chariots of Fire fills the stadium, Jimmys Mkaila Moroney,
Speaker 1: wearing her team USA tracks, is waiting to accept an
Speaker 1: Olympic medal. Finally her name is called, prompting a huge
Speaker 1: cheer from the crowd. She waves, steps onto the podium
Speaker 1: and takes a deep breath that she bows her head.
Speaker 1: An official slips the metal over the ponytail, which holds
Speaker 1: back her hair so fiercely that all her features seem
Speaker 1: drawn upwards, all except her mouth, that is. Michaela is
Speaker 1: doing her best to keep a straight face, but she's
Speaker 1: barely suppressing a frown. Michaela shakes the official's hand and
Speaker 1: mouths thank you over the crowd noise. Another official presents
Speaker 1: the metalists with a bunch of flowers. A flicker of
Speaker 1: a polite smile crosses Michaela's lips for just an instant,
Speaker 1: and then fades, and then it happens the face for
Speaker 1: just a second in front of thousands of spectators and
Speaker 1: millions of TV viewers around the world. Michaela's mouth grimaces,
Speaker 1: contorting sharply to the left. It's a look that somewhere
Speaker 1: between annoyance and downright contempt. So why was Michaela scowling
Speaker 1: in front of all her fans? It was because of
Speaker 1: the metal around Michaela's neck. She just one the Olympic silver.
Speaker 1: In subsequent interviews, Michaela was everything you'd expect from a
Speaker 1: top ranking Olympian. She accepted that her unexpected fall in
Speaker 1: the vault competition men she didn't deserve to take gold.
Speaker 1: She asserted that she was happy with her runners up medal.
Speaker 1: But on that podium in London, just for a second,
Speaker 1: Michaela's face told another story. But here's an even bigger puzzle.
Speaker 1: The Russian gymnast Maria Passeka was also on the podium
Speaker 1: that day, and she did even worse. She only took
Speaker 1: the bronze medal. But the weird thing is Maria looked
Speaker 1: much much happier than Michaela did. So how can that be?
Speaker 1: The answer? It turns out involves a very common cognitive bias,
Speaker 1: one that doesn't only plague champion athletes. It's a bias
Speaker 1: that plagues all of us, and it's one that's impeding
Speaker 1: our happiness more than we expect. Our minds are constantly
Speaker 1: telling us what to do to be happy. But what
Speaker 1: if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are
Speaker 1: lying to us, leading us away from what will really
Speaker 1: make us happy. The good news is that understanding the
Speaker 1: science of the mind and point us all back in
Speaker 1: the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab the
Speaker 1: doctor Laurie Santavius. If you were asked to choose which
Speaker 1: metal you'd want, gold, silver, or bronze, I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: I could predict your order of preference. Even in crude
Speaker 1: monetary terms. The gold plated metal is more prized than
Speaker 1: the silver, which in turn is more valuable than the
Speaker 1: copper alloy one. But what if I were to ask
Speaker 1: you to rank the metals in order of which you
Speaker 1: think would bring you the greatest joy? Would you stick
Speaker 1: with those choices? I bet you would, which is one
Speaker 1: of the reasons everyone got so obsessed with Michael and
Speaker 1: Moroney's scowl. How could you be so upset with a
Speaker 1: silver medal within days of the ceremony. Michaela's second place
Speaker 1: grimace became a popular meme. She was photoshopped into great
Speaker 1: moments in human history, the moon landing, the fall of
Speaker 1: the Berlin Wall, when Miley Cyrus cut her hair short.
Speaker 1: In every event, Michaela is there, looking on and scowling.
Speaker 1: Michaela is the mean reminded us is not impressed. Michaela
Speaker 1: took her mumification with good grace, even when she was
Speaker 1: asked to make the face in the Oval Office beside
Speaker 1: President Barack Obama. She also did the rounds on late
Speaker 1: night talk shows, fielding questions about the now infamous expression.
Speaker 1: Here she is discussing the face with David Letterman. I
Speaker 1: thought to myself, I know exactly what's going on here.
Speaker 1: They've caught her at an introspective moment. She's probably not
Speaker 1: pleased with her performance, would rather have done better, and
Speaker 1: instead of silver, would rather gotten the gold. And who
Speaker 1: can blabor? And they've caught her and just a contemplative moment,
Speaker 1: and now they're making it silly? Am I right about that?
Speaker 1: It is pretty funny? I see it again. Letterman is right.
Speaker 1: Michaela was the hot favorite to take cold. Her fall
Speaker 1: dashed those hopes and momentarily broke her heart. But it
Speaker 1: turns out Michaela's silver metal reaction is really common. Hello.
Speaker 1: My name is Michelle quan Olympic figure skater. It's tough
Speaker 1: to find Olympians willing to talk about the crushing instant
Speaker 1: when the highest award in their sports slipped through their fingers.
Speaker 1: Michelle Kwan, however, didn't hesitate for a single second when
Speaker 1: I asked her to relive the memories of the biggest
Speaker 1: upset in her glittering ice skating career, the nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight Winter Games. I kind of let the waterworks happen.
Speaker 1: I mean it was going to happen. And you know,
Speaker 1: as your kid, yes, you dream of going to Olympics,
Speaker 1: you dream of winning gold, and you don't think of
Speaker 1: winning silver or bronze, and so it's a disappointment when
Speaker 1: you have high hopes and you do everything to make
Speaker 1: it happen. Just like MICHAELA, Michelle was predicted, no expected
Speaker 1: to take the gold. I was one of the favorites
Speaker 1: for sure going into those Olympics. Michelle's performance was one
Speaker 1: of the most anticipated of the day. She came to
Speaker 1: the Nagano Olympics just having won the national championship, where
Speaker 1: she earned an unprecedented six point zero, which is a
Speaker 1: perfect score in figure skating at the time, and Michelle's
Speaker 1: ninety eight Olympic performance did not disappoint. Wearing a sparkly
Speaker 1: blue dress, she skated to a harp and string concerto.
Speaker 1: The entire performance was flawless. I did perform both a
Speaker 1: clean short program long program, meaning that I made no mistakes.
Speaker 1: Michelle looked joyous when she left the ice. She even
Speaker 1: smile led up at her dad, who was clapping furiously
Speaker 1: in the stands. I was overwhelmed because I felt like
Speaker 1: I did it. You know, I did it. I did
Speaker 1: everything that I had planned. I did every single jump.
Speaker 1: I did my job and what I set out to do,
Speaker 1: and unfortunately, you know, it wasn't the best that night.
Speaker 1: Michelle's teammate, fifteen year old Tara Lipinski, took to the
Speaker 1: ice a little later. The alts were against her. No
Speaker 1: one so young or inexperienced had ever won figure skating gold,
Speaker 1: but Tara's long performance was stellar. She hit two triple
Speaker 1: triple jump combos and the crowd went wild. It was
Speaker 1: obvious that an upset was about to occur, and it
Speaker 1: like really happened within minutes. I knew from the reaction
Speaker 1: of just the applause that it's going to be close,
Speaker 1: and so it was sort of nail biting. But when
Speaker 1: the scores came out, I already knew Tara had taken
Speaker 1: the gold, and just like that, Michelle was bumped to
Speaker 1: second place. Her gold medal dreams dashed. You didn't even
Speaker 1: really have a moment because then you're walking down the
Speaker 1: hallway and then there's the press conference. It was just whatever,
Speaker 1: you know, like I was ready to answer questions and
Speaker 1: I'm very candid and I'm very honest, and I think
Speaker 1: I might have cried a little bit. And it's a
Speaker 1: disappointment and it's very raw. I mean, it is, of
Speaker 1: course a bit of a disappointment for an athlete not
Speaker 1: to get the gold. But what both Michelle and michaela
Speaker 1: seemed to be missing is the fact that they just
Speaker 1: won silver medals at the Olympic Games. They've each just
Speaker 1: proven that they're amongst the very best athletes in the world.
Speaker 1: But Michelle and mckailla aren't the only ones to be disappointed.
Speaker 1: I mean, champion British rower Catherine granger like in getting
Speaker 1: second place in Beijing to suffering a bereavement, and Canadian
Speaker 1: hockey star Joscelyn the Rock was so upset with her
Speaker 1: silver medal that she refused to wear it. Neither her coach,
Speaker 1: nor her teammates, nor even the angry crowd chanting put
Speaker 1: your metal on could change her mind. So what's going on? Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out all of these incredible competitors are in
Speaker 1: the throws of a rather common psychological error. We simulate
Speaker 1: alternative realities, and we react to events not just in
Speaker 1: terms of what happened, but what those simulations tell us
Speaker 1: might have happened, easily, could have happened, almost happened. This
Speaker 1: is Tom Gillibitch. He's a sports fanatic, both on the
Speaker 1: court and off. I looked around and there weren't that
Speaker 1: many over sixty five basketball players. Tom was still shooting
Speaker 1: hoops well into his seventh decade. His knees, miraculously, we're
Speaker 1: still holding up. I go out and play for court basketball.
Speaker 1: A few games, come back to my office and I
Speaker 1: was just beat good for nothing. I thought, I have
Speaker 1: a job. I can't do that. That job is as
Speaker 1: a professor of psychology at Cornell University. Tom is a
Speaker 1: world expert on the biases that affect our choices and
Speaker 1: our well being. Back in nineteen ninety two, Tom embarked
Speaker 1: on one of my favorite ever studies in the field
Speaker 1: of happiness research. It combined his love of sports with
Speaker 1: his access to high end consumer electronics. In those days,
Speaker 1: having a VHS recorder in your house was kind of
Speaker 1: new and exciting. If you had one, you were on
Speaker 1: the cutting edge of technology. Tom had been a seminar
Speaker 1: discussing why narrowly missing out on an imagined future torches
Speaker 1: us so much. He wanted to find a way to
Speaker 1: figure out what was going on. His sports brain suddenly
Speaker 1: kicked in. There a lot of data points out there
Speaker 1: of some disgruntled looking silver medallists, and one of the
Speaker 1: graduate students in the class, Vicki Medvick, said that sounds interesting.
Speaker 1: We should test that. To do so, Tom set his
Speaker 1: VCR to catch the Barcelona Olympics on NBC. So we
Speaker 1: recorded all of their coverage and then went through it.
Speaker 1: We pulled critical moments where swimmers are racing to the
Speaker 1: finish line and they touch one, two, three, and we
Speaker 1: just followed the camera. Sometimes most often of course, they're
Speaker 1: focusing on the gold medal winner. Sometimes they'll show the
Speaker 1: faces of the bronze and silver medal winner. We would
Speaker 1: edit those and show them to judges and have them
Speaker 1: score it on a agony to ecstasy scale, borrowing a
Speaker 1: phrase from an old sports program, The Wide World of Sports.
Speaker 1: Those judges Tom's students had to give each face they
Speaker 1: saw a score from one to ten. If the athlete
Speaker 1: looked like they were an emotional agony, they got a one.
Speaker 1: If the medalist appeared to be in the throes of ecstasy,
Speaker 1: it was a ten. The bronze medalists scored on average
Speaker 1: a seven point one out of ten on that scale.
Speaker 1: That's pretty high, especially given that they had just gotten
Speaker 1: third place. But silver medalists they scored not a seven,
Speaker 1: nor a six, not even a five. On average, they
Speaker 1: were at a four point eight. Of all the people
Speaker 1: on the podium, the silver medalists were clearly the most miserable,
Speaker 1: and on tom scale, a four point eight is closer
Speaker 1: to agony than to ecstasy. M Does this mean that
Speaker 1: the silver medalists, who's so close to the gold they
Speaker 1: could almost taste it, think of their quite significant achievement
Speaker 1: not as achievement, but as a failure to win the gold,
Speaker 1: the failure to be the person who can be on
Speaker 1: the wheaty box the following year, whereas the bronze medalist.
Speaker 1: They might also some of them, especially if they were
Speaker 1: expecting to win, might imagine, oh, if I'd done a
Speaker 1: little better, I could get the gold medal. But the
Speaker 1: gold medal is two slots away. One slot away in
Speaker 1: the opposite direction is not getting a medal at all,
Speaker 1: and so psychologically that's a more tempting alternative to reality,
Speaker 1: to construct, and therefore they have a sense of relief that, wow,
Speaker 1: at least I got a medal. Tom's finding wasn't just
Speaker 1: true at the Barcelona Olympics. The agony of silver medalist
Speaker 1: has been confirmed experimentally again and again. During the two
Speaker 1: thousand and four Athens Games, Professor David Matsumoto of San
Speaker 1: Francisco State teamed up with martial arts journalists Bob Willingham.
Speaker 1: They ran judo medalists from over thirty different countries through
Speaker 1: a state of the art technique called the Facial Action
Speaker 1: Coding system. They noted the exact movements of each of
Speaker 1: the muscles in the athletes faces and we're talking all
Speaker 1: the muscles here, from the corrugators superciliate to the zygomaticus major.
Speaker 1: The researchers confirmed what Tom's judges saw and revealed a
Speaker 1: pattern that was even more striking. The martial artists who
Speaker 1: won silver weren't just less happy than those in first
Speaker 1: and third place, they were in a completely different state
Speaker 1: of mind. Their facial expressions showed distinctly negative emotions, emotions
Speaker 1: like sadness, anger, and disgust, which is remarkable. I mean,
Speaker 1: they just got Olympic recognition for their sporting achievements, and
Speaker 1: their faces said they felt awful. These findings show that
Speaker 1: the imagined alternative that of a gold medal poisons the
Speaker 1: actually really awesome reality the silver medalist experience. They've just
Speaker 1: won an Olympic medal that should be a thrill, but
Speaker 1: they end up looking enviously at the one single solitary
Speaker 1: person on earth who beat them. But this experience isn't
Speaker 1: just a problem for Olympians. It's part of human nature.
Speaker 1: It's a bias that's deeply ingrained in all of us.
Speaker 1: People don't react to the stimuli they confront. They react
Speaker 1: to the meaning that they attached to the stimuli. Second
Speaker 1: place is great, except if you've assigned it the meaning
Speaker 1: of it not being the gold medal. But bronze medalists
Speaker 1: clearly attach a different meaning to getting third place on
Speaker 1: the leaderboard. They aren't gazing disappointedly at the champ They're
Speaker 1: looking down at all the people who didn't beat them.
Speaker 1: They're thinking about the possibility of not getting a medal
Speaker 1: at all. Bronze medalists are framing their experience in a
Speaker 1: way that is also pretty relatable, especially if you think
Speaker 1: back on your own life experiences. Many times people will
Speaker 1: say that, oh, the happiest moment of my life is
Speaker 1: you know, I was having a medical task because there
Speaker 1: was something to worry about and it turned out it
Speaker 1: was nothing, and I'll always remember that day. It just
Speaker 1: you're ere ecstatic that something bad didn't happen. There's always
Speaker 1: a worse reference point out there if you look carefully enough,
Speaker 1: yes problem as we do often look Yes. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's really a psychology of counting your blessings. Before we
Speaker 1: take a break, let's play a quick would you rather game?
Speaker 1: Would you rather take a a job were you earn
Speaker 1: fifty thousand dollars a year, or be a job where
Speaker 1: you earn one hundred thousand dollars a year. Time's up.
Speaker 1: My guess is that you went with option B. But
Speaker 1: I didn't tell you what everyone else at the Imaginary
Speaker 1: Company was earning. And that makes a bigger difference than
Speaker 1: you think. The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment.
Speaker 1: It's nineteen eighty one in England is in the group
Speaker 1: of a terrible economic crisis. Jerry Dammers and his ska
Speaker 1: band The Specials are touring the country, playing concerts in
Speaker 1: city after city, and everywhere they go they see the
Speaker 1: same thing. Auto plants closing, shipyards shutting down, factory gates
Speaker 1: being locked for good. Nearly three million Brits are out
Speaker 1: of work and six thousand more are joining those ranks
Speaker 1: every single day. Dammer's hit song powerfully evokes the feeling
Speaker 1: of hard times. Ghost town must be miserable, but as
Speaker 1: it turns out, you may be happier living in a
Speaker 1: ghost town than a boomtown if you're unemployed. And to
Speaker 1: explain why I need to talk about the power of
Speaker 1: reference points, you see, our mind is constantly telling us
Speaker 1: that being absolutely better is what matters. Gold is better
Speaker 1: than silver, which is better than bronze. Getting an A
Speaker 1: plus on your report card is better than an A,
Speaker 1: which is better than an Earning one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: is better than seventy five thousand, which is better than
Speaker 1: fifty thousand. But it turns out that being absolutely better
Speaker 1: doesn't always feel better. It depends on your reference point,
Speaker 1: that other alternative reality you're paying attention to, which takes
Speaker 1: us back to ghost towns. Back in two thousand and three,
Speaker 1: Andrew Clark, a professor at the Paris School for Economics,
Speaker 1: studied well being in the UK across different kinds of
Speaker 1: labor markets, whether you're in a ghost town like the
Speaker 1: one in the Special Song or a bloomtown in which
Speaker 1: only a small number of people are seeking work. What
Speaker 1: did he find well As you might expect, Clark found
Speaker 1: that not having a job kind of sucks. Overall, unemployed
Speaker 1: folks were less happy than those with jobs, but how
Speaker 1: big that effect was dependent on where you lived. Being
Speaker 1: unemployed in a town where lots of folks are unemployed
Speaker 1: doesn't feel as bad as being unemployed in a town
Speaker 1: where lots of folks are working. Clark's stata showed that
Speaker 1: we're using the other people around us as a reference point.
Speaker 1: Misery really does love company. If you've heard the last episode,
Speaker 1: you may recall that lottery owners, millionaires, and other people
Speaker 1: earning lots and lots of money usually aren't all that
Speaker 1: much happier than the rest of us. The science of
Speaker 1: reference points shows why it's true that millionaires have objectively
Speaker 1: more money than lots of people on the planet, but
Speaker 1: they also hang out with people who make even more
Speaker 1: money than they do, which means they don't end up
Speaker 1: feeling all that wealthy. The minds of the super rich
Speaker 1: naturally compare themselves against the super super rich, and everyone
Speaker 1: ends up feeling bad. You can always find a better
Speaker 1: middle out there when it comes to salary, and that
Speaker 1: kind of envy can bring out our mean streak. Do
Speaker 1: you remember that would you rather question? From earlier? It
Speaker 1: was about picking from two different salaries, one higher and
Speaker 1: one lower. We'd pretty much all take the bigger paycheck,
Speaker 1: but Tom Gilowitch explained a twist that can trigger our
Speaker 1: obsession with reference points. There's a nice old economic study
Speaker 1: where respondents were asked which world would you rather live in?
Speaker 1: One where you make fifty tho dollars a year and
Speaker 1: other people make twenty five, so you're the richest person
Speaker 1: on your block. Or would you rather live in a
Speaker 1: world where you make a hundred thousand but everybody else
Speaker 1: makes two hundred thousand, so you're making twice as much.
Speaker 1: You have twice as much purchasing power, but other people
Speaker 1: have still more than you, And that turns out to
Speaker 1: be a hard problem. The respondents are roughly split. Half
Speaker 1: of them want just give me more money, I don't
Speaker 1: care that other people are making more than I am,
Speaker 1: and other people want to be the top dog. These
Speaker 1: results are crazy. Almost half of us would be willing
Speaker 1: to give up a huge part of our salary just
Speaker 1: to be doing better than other people. But we don't
Speaker 1: just do this with money. Sarah Sulnick and David Hemenway,
Speaker 1: who ran the original study, asked a whole list of
Speaker 1: similar questions about other kinds of achievements. Do you want
Speaker 1: to be very pretty in a sea of fashion models
Speaker 1: or kind of plane, but prettier than other people? Do
Speaker 1: you want to be super smart or smarter than your peers.
Speaker 1: Turns out many people would rather be dumber and uglier
Speaker 1: as long as they're superior to those immediately around them.
Speaker 1: Our desire to compare ourselves with others does make us
Speaker 1: do some downright dumb stuff in the real world, and
Speaker 1: our tendency to envy other people can also leave us
Speaker 1: open to manipulation. In a typical lottery like Powerball in
Speaker 1: the US, you buy a ticket, your number comes up,
Speaker 1: you enterprize. But in the Netherlands, your feet in the
Speaker 1: lottery is directly tied to that of your neighbors. Hallows.
Speaker 1: This is the Dutch postcode lottery. It's a charity lottery,
Speaker 1: meaning that all proceeds go to a good cause. But
Speaker 1: this lottery works differently than playing powerball. The winning number
Speaker 1: isn't when you pick yourself. It's linked to your zip code.
Speaker 1: Every Sunday night, one Dutch postcode is picked out. If
Speaker 1: you live in that area and bought a ticket, you
Speaker 1: automatically win the weekly street prize of twenty five thousand euros.
Speaker 1: That's a massive chunk of the average Dutch salary. But
Speaker 1: if you didn't buy a ticket, well, you get nothing,
Speaker 1: which is kind of a bummer, even more of a
Speaker 1: bummer than losing a regular lottery in powerball. If you
Speaker 1: didn't buy a ticket, you don't feel a huge sense
Speaker 1: of loss. When some random number is announced. But if
Speaker 1: you didn't buy a Dutch Street prize ticket and your
Speaker 1: zip code comes up, that feeling of loss cuts deeply.
Speaker 1: It's not some random number that won, it was your
Speaker 1: postcode and you passed up money that should have been
Speaker 1: yours when you didn't play. That alternative reality where you
Speaker 1: could have won a lot of money becomes very salient.
Speaker 1: But the real kicker happens when you look out your window,
Speaker 1: because on average, a quarter of your neighbors bought a
Speaker 1: ticket and they're celebrating right now because some celebrity just
Speaker 1: brought them a huge, oversized check. Just like silver medalists
Speaker 1: can't help but look to gold, the neighbors of Dutch
Speaker 1: lottery winners can't help but frame themselves as losers, with
Speaker 1: all of the unhappy emotions that this sort of envy brings,
Speaker 1: even though their situation hasn't changed at all. I mean,
Speaker 1: think about it, they didn't really lose anything. They're just
Speaker 1: as rich as they were yesterday, but now they feel awful.
Speaker 1: But it gets worse. In two thousand and five, Peter Coon,
Speaker 1: an economist at UC Santa Barbara, teamed up with colleagues
Speaker 1: to test what one Dutch household winning the prize does
Speaker 1: to material consumption in the rest of the community. How
Speaker 1: it's seeing your neighbors renovate their house, go on vacation,
Speaker 1: or park a shiny new ride in the driveway make
Speaker 1: you feel probably like a loser, and maybe like you
Speaker 1: deserve something new too, even though you didn't win any money.
Speaker 1: Coon studied the long term impact of having a lottery
Speaker 1: winner and neighbor. A typical non ticket buyer has a
Speaker 1: fourteen percent chance of buying a new car within a
Speaker 1: given year. But if someone two doors down from you
Speaker 1: actually wins the lottery, that bumps up your probability of
Speaker 1: buying a new car to eighteen percent. And if that
Speaker 1: winner lives right next door to you, you're urged to
Speaker 1: buy a new car jumps from fourteen percent to twenty
Speaker 1: one percent. Having a next door neighbor get rich suddenly
Speaker 1: pushes you to make purchases you wouldn't normally make. The
Speaker 1: idea of a postcode lottery is now spreading around the world,
Speaker 1: which is great because these lotteries do raise a lot
Speaker 1: of money for good causes. The Dutch one alone has
Speaker 1: generated billions of dollars for charity since its inception. But
Speaker 1: watching the promotional videos for these games made me realize
Speaker 1: the psychological pull of this particular kind of lottery. It's
Speaker 1: fomal one O one. It's tapping into our automatic urge
Speaker 1: to use other people as reference points, often at our
Speaker 1: own disadvantage. I'm as guilty as anyone of making myself
Speaker 1: sad by constantly picking unflattering reference points, both in my
Speaker 1: professional and in my personal life. It's a trait I
Speaker 1: worry about and one I confess to Tom because if
Speaker 1: I think about, you know, who's a psychologist is doing
Speaker 1: really well, it's publishing a lot or you know, who's
Speaker 1: one of my friends who's like really beautiful, Like, my
Speaker 1: mind doesn't go to, like, oh, let's pick a medium productive,
Speaker 1: you know, psychologist, or I'll pick a like medium beautiful person.
Speaker 1: Like we pick the comparison that it sub sets is
Speaker 1: the harshest, right, That's what comes to mind the easiest,
Speaker 1: And then that means we're our standard is the worst
Speaker 1: possible standard against which we could be comparing ourselves. Yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: and in some ways we're you know, we're goal striving creatures.
Speaker 1: We're happiest when we're striving for goals, and that means
Speaker 1: where you're setting our targets upwards? How am I doing
Speaker 1: compared to what well it's compared to the people who
Speaker 1: are publishing like mad and getting the great jobs. Those
Speaker 1: are the things that spring to mind most readily and
Speaker 1: that can make a person unhappy. Tom has studied one
Speaker 1: other area in which many of us do this all
Speaker 1: the time, when we think of how good our social
Speaker 1: lives are. Let's try some questions together. Who goes to
Speaker 1: more parties? You? Or other people? Who has more friends? You?
Speaker 1: Or other people who has a wider social network? You
Speaker 1: or other people? What were your answers? All three of
Speaker 1: mine were other people. When it comes to their social lives,
Speaker 1: the average person thinks they're below average. People think that
Speaker 1: they're not quite in the center of the social action,
Speaker 1: they're farther out on the periphery, that there's some inner
Speaker 1: group that is having all the fun and they're missing out.
Speaker 1: But why do we think everyone is more fun than
Speaker 1: we are as usual? It's because they are obvious reference
Speaker 1: points that are messing us up. The most natural other
Speaker 1: people to come to mind when you're thinking about how
Speaker 1: active is my social life? Are the most active, actively
Speaker 1: social people the life of the party that comes to
Speaker 1: mind most readily, and of course if you compare yourself
Speaker 1: to that person, you feel that your social life isn't
Speaker 1: that great. Given how important social relations are to human life,
Speaker 1: if you think that socially you're not quite up there,
Speaker 1: it's pretty hard for most people to feel good about themselves.
Speaker 1: And this is the most insidious part of our reference
Speaker 1: point bias. We don't just pick arbitrary reference points. We
Speaker 1: often pick the most extreme reference point out there, the
Speaker 1: person that's doing the very very very best in whatever
Speaker 1: trait we're thinking of. That's where our minds go and
Speaker 1: are biased to seek out these extreme alternatives. Might be
Speaker 1: getting more problematic today, especially with so many upward comparisons
Speaker 1: on social media to make us envious. It's a very
Speaker 1: rare person that posts a picture of themselves kind of
Speaker 1: lonely and miserable, so you get a biased sample from
Speaker 1: being on any kind of social media. So it's hard
Speaker 1: to imagine how that couldn't accentuate this tendency. Tom is
Speaker 1: quick to point out that all these comparisons are a
Speaker 1: double edged sword. On the one hand, comparing ourselves against
Speaker 1: people who are way better than us can make us
Speaker 1: feel really bad, but On the other hand, it can
Speaker 1: make a person productive. And if we were satisfied all
Speaker 1: the time, would we have the same level of drive
Speaker 1: if we were comparing downward? Well, at least, I'm not
Speaker 1: like this person who's never had a single study ever
Speaker 1: work out. I feel great now, well good, but are
Speaker 1: you going to work as hard? And so there's this
Speaker 1: tension between satisfaction and productivity. I don't always find striking
Speaker 1: that balance easy, but making the show I found an
Speaker 1: amazing new role model, someone who never stops striving but
Speaker 1: doesn't fall into that sad silver medal trap. What I
Speaker 1: didn't expect, though, was that my new role model would
Speaker 1: be Michelle Kwan coming home with the silver. Everyone's like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's such a bomber. You lost, And my approach was, now,
Speaker 1: I didn't lose. I won the silver medal. The Happiness
Speaker 1: Lab will be right back. At seven years old, I
Speaker 1: watched the Calgary nineteen eighty eight Olympics and watched Brian
Speaker 1: Poetana win the Olympics, and I think it was at
Speaker 1: that moment I was like, ah, oh, I want to
Speaker 1: be a skater. I want to be an Olympic skater,
Speaker 1: just like Brian Poetano. I'm not even going to try
Speaker 1: to read out all the championships, titles, or medals that
Speaker 1: Michelle Kwan won during her figure skating career. She may
Speaker 1: have lost the gold and ninety eight, but her trophy
Speaker 1: hall is still greater than that of her hero, Brian Boitano.
Speaker 1: I don't think about it often. It's weird to hear
Speaker 1: all the titles. I guess it must be a little
Speaker 1: surreal to be considered one of the most decorated figure
Speaker 1: skaters in history, especially when you're as modest as Michelle is,
Speaker 1: and that modesty is one of the things that sets
Speaker 1: Michelle apart. Even though Michelle was disappointed placing second Inageno,
Speaker 1: she didn't seem to be in agony. During the metal ceremony.
Speaker 1: Michelle graciously hugged the teammate who beat her. She smiled
Speaker 1: genuinely when her name was called in Japanese, waving with
Speaker 1: ease at her screaming fans. She wasn't as ecstatic as
Speaker 1: the gold medalist, but Michelle seemed fine. There was no face,
Speaker 1: no tossing her metal to the side. Even though many
Speaker 1: of her fans were still in shock, Michelle looked calm
Speaker 1: and almost joyous on the stand. There's so many ways
Speaker 1: to look at it, and the way I see it's
Speaker 1: like the glasses have full. I always had like a
Speaker 1: very positive outlook. I wanted to figure out how Michelle
Speaker 1: was able to overcome that envy that plagues the typical
Speaker 1: silver medalist. How is she able to avoid falling prey
Speaker 1: to all the negative social comparisons that many of us
Speaker 1: make all the time. I never put myself against somebody.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to wish anybody falls or anything, so
Speaker 1: I tend to kind of focus on myself. I was
Speaker 1: not that kind of competitor where it's like I'm against
Speaker 1: this person. During our conversation, I realized that Michelle used
Speaker 1: several of the strategies Tom Gillowitch and I had discussed,
Speaker 1: the ones that research show can help us avoid feeling
Speaker 1: bad in the face of those imaginary reference points. The
Speaker 1: first strategy Michelle used is what researchers call negative visualization,
Speaker 1: the act of wondering what would things be like if
Speaker 1: the good events in our life never happened? Like what
Speaker 1: if I didn't manage to earn a medal at all?
Speaker 1: What if I fell during the triple Lutz and came
Speaker 1: in fifth place, or what if I never made it
Speaker 1: to the Olympics at all. That last possibility was really
Speaker 1: easy for Michelle to imagine because it almost came true.
Speaker 1: I struggled a bit a couple of months before because
Speaker 1: I had a foot fracture in my second metatarsal. Breaking
Speaker 1: your foot is a catastrophe for an Olympic skater. Michelle
Speaker 1: had to train like crazy to catch up. She almost
Speaker 1: didn't make it to Japan, but psychologically the injury was
Speaker 1: a gift. It gave Michelle a reference point that made
Speaker 1: her grateful for that second place prize because there was
Speaker 1: a really obvious imagined future where she might have been
Speaker 1: dropped from the Olympic squad all together. Michelle also had
Speaker 1: a healthy other reference point to keep her grounded, her
Speaker 1: big sister Karen. It's fun because we used to skate
Speaker 1: together and train together. Karen Quan was an elite skater,
Speaker 1: one of the very best in the United Days, but
Speaker 1: she never broke into the top flight. She never made
Speaker 1: it to the podium or got a place in the
Speaker 1: US squad because she was bested by her little sister.
Speaker 1: At the National Championships in nineteen ninety six, there were
Speaker 1: two quans. That was the Nationals where I was first,
Speaker 1: since she was fifth. You must have had parents who
Speaker 1: really instilled in you. For a sister not to be
Speaker 1: completely jealous of her other sister's fame. She's the most
Speaker 1: supportive sibling. She's just like go Michelle. Michelle looked up
Speaker 1: to her older sister as an example of how to
Speaker 1: support other athletes success gracefully, and she loved sharing the
Speaker 1: limelight with her sister Karen. Didn't feel like a competitor.
Speaker 1: I had a partner working with Karen so closely. Me
Speaker 1: and Michelle realized that there was a better way to
Speaker 1: motivate herself than enviously looking to other better skaters. Comparing
Speaker 1: myself to somebody else. It didn't drive me. I have
Speaker 1: to be internally motivated and passionate about what I was doing.
Speaker 1: And there's a third reason Michelle was able to avoid
Speaker 1: those harmful reference points. As I talked with Michelle about
Speaker 1: her grueling practice schedule, it's like Groundhog day every day.
Speaker 1: I wasn't immediately convinced that hitting the ice for hours
Speaker 1: each and every day was a great source of happiness,
Speaker 1: but as it turns out, I thrived. I love the schedule,
Speaker 1: Like I was flying and I wish I could balldle
Speaker 1: that because I don't know what was the inspiration, what
Speaker 1: was the fire. It was like a rocket that kept
Speaker 1: going and going going, where my coach was like, can
Speaker 1: you get off the ice because you're really scaring me
Speaker 1: right now, and I was flying around the ice. Michelle
Speaker 1: wasn't just in it for a shot at some far
Speaker 1: off championship. She enjoyed the grind, and when her passion
Speaker 1: for the sport propelled her onto the Olympic team, she
Speaker 1: was able to see that experience as a journey too,
Speaker 1: not just as a chance for a medal, but as
Speaker 1: an opportunity to relish every single amazing moment along the way.
Speaker 1: It's overwhelming. It is completely overwhelming. You're so proud to
Speaker 1: represent the United States, and then you're at the Olympic
Speaker 1: Arena where you skate over the Olympic rings where it's
Speaker 1: painted on under the ice, and I remember actually crying
Speaker 1: when I skated over the Olympic rings and I was
Speaker 1: so overwhelmed that I had tears rolling down my face,
Speaker 1: and then my coach actually pulled me aside. It's like
Speaker 1: you need to wake up, snap out of it. Wake up,
Speaker 1: you're here, You're the Olympics. You have a job to do.
Speaker 1: Seventeen year old Michelle's job wasn't to be a bunch
Speaker 1: of competitors, she envied. It wasn't even to get the
Speaker 1: gold medal. I want to skate my best before think
Speaker 1: about medals, been thinking about anything. I want to do
Speaker 1: my very own best and have no regrets. It really
Speaker 1: was an awakening of it's not about the results, It's
Speaker 1: about the journey. Michelle's awakening fits with what Tom Gilovich
Speaker 1: has learned in his study of happiness. He thinks Michelle
Speaker 1: articulated an important lesson for all of us. Life is
Speaker 1: a journey, it's not a destination. Michelle Kuan had these
Speaker 1: amazing years of putting herself to the test, day in
Speaker 1: day out, and that's not an easy thing to do,
Speaker 1: and she did it and she can feel great about that.
Speaker 1: And most of the things in life that are truly
Speaker 1: sustaining in terms of their ability to provide us happiness
Speaker 1: has to do with the pursuit of things. We're happy
Speaker 1: happiest when we're on the journey, not when the journey
Speaker 1: is over. Loving the journey gave Michelle a grace that
Speaker 1: shaped her career and was especially salient during that tough
Speaker 1: second place moment in Japan. It was a lot for
Speaker 1: a seventeen year old, but I think my parents' voice
Speaker 1: of you wouldn't sum You lose some but you realize
Speaker 1: very quickly that this is not your world. You just
Speaker 1: happen to be living in it. It's good sportsmanship, it's
Speaker 1: the reality of the world. As you'll hear a lot
Speaker 1: on this podcast, I want to find happy people and
Speaker 1: look at their behavior, both so I can give you
Speaker 1: some tips, but also so I can get some new
Speaker 1: ones myself. During our chat, Michelle revealed so many traits
Speaker 1: that separate happy people from the rest of us, but
Speaker 1: the most important one is her ability to put her
Speaker 1: experiences into context, to think in terms of positive rather
Speaker 1: than negative reference points, or to count one's blessings. As
Speaker 1: Tom put it earlier, the happy people it's almost like
Speaker 1: they have this talent for framing things in a way
Speaker 1: that sustains their happiness. If you've experienced some failure, it's
Speaker 1: easy too. Well, you can recode it as Okay, I
Speaker 1: didn't achieve this, but look at what I have. Michelle
Speaker 1: Kwan is the queen of reframing. When you look back,
Speaker 1: you're like, would a gold medal make me happier? When
Speaker 1: I look back, it's not the metals themselves. It's the moments.
Speaker 1: It's the hearing the applause and hearing the crowd and
Speaker 1: hearing the ice when I skated it over, it is
Speaker 1: so beautiful, I don't know, just hearing the roar of
Speaker 1: the audience and having that love. This is why I
Speaker 1: do what I do. We all fall prey to reference points.
Speaker 1: We don't experience the good and bad events in our
Speaker 1: lives and objective terms, we're constantly comparing our own achievements
Speaker 1: to somebody else's, that other person's metal car salary, and
Speaker 1: even social life. We've also learned that we suck at
Speaker 1: picking these reference points. That our minds automatically go to
Speaker 1: the most salient, imaginary reality, and that's often one in
Speaker 1: which we could be prettier, higher on the podium, a
Speaker 1: bit more popular, and way more wealthy. And this kind
Speaker 1: of reference point setting is costly. Here's one factoid I
Speaker 1: saved until the end. Silver medalist aren't just sadder on
Speaker 1: the stand. They're still negatively affected by that gold medal
Speaker 1: reference point. Years and years later. In fact, one study
Speaker 1: has even shown that silver medalists are more likely to
Speaker 1: die younger than those who win bronze or gold. Bad
Speaker 1: reference points can cut our lives short. So if you
Speaker 1: want to be happier, maybe even live longer, you need
Speaker 1: to find better reference points. You need to look not
Speaker 1: just for the silver lining, but the bronze lining. The
Speaker 1: great thing about the human mind is we can do that.
Speaker 1: We can simulate whatever new reference points we want. It
Speaker 1: just takes some effort, and if you're ready to put
Speaker 1: that work in, I hope you'll return for the next
Speaker 1: episode of The Happiness Lab with me Doctor Laurie Santos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed the show, I'd be super great full
Speaker 1: if you could spread the word by leaving a rating
Speaker 1: and a review. It really does help other listeners find us,
Speaker 1: and don't forget to tell your friends. If you want
Speaker 1: to learn more about the science you heard on the show,
Speaker 1: then check out our website Happiness Lab dot fm. You
Speaker 1: can also sign up for our newsletter to get exclusive content.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab is co written and produced by Ryan Dilley.
Speaker 1: The show is mixed and mastered by Evan Viola and
Speaker 1: edited by Julia Barton, fact checking by Joseph Friedman, and
Speaker 1: our original music was composed by Zachary Silver. Special thanks
Speaker 1: to Mio La Belle, Carl mcgliorre, Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor,
Speaker 1: Maya Kanig, and Jacob Weisberg. The Happiness Lab is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries and me Doctor Laurie Santos