Speaker 1: I don't think people are resting on their laurels hoping
Speaker 1: happiness is going to show up. I think people are
Speaker 1: actively working towards this stuff. They're just kind of going
Speaker 1: at it the wrong way. Hello, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast. Today we welcome doctor Laurie Santos on the show.
Speaker 1: Doctor Santos is a psychology professor and head of Soliman
Speaker 1: College at Yale University. Her course, Psychology and the Good
Speaker 1: Life is Yale's most popular course in over three hundred
Speaker 1: years and has been adapted into a free coursera program
Speaker 1: that has been taken by over three point three million
Speaker 1: people to date. Doctor Santos is a winner of numerous
Speaker 1: awards both for her science and teaching from institutions such
Speaker 1: as Yale and the American Psychological Association. She's also the
Speaker 1: podcast host of the Happiness Lab. In this episode, I
Speaker 1: talked to doctor Santos about happiness. People are unhappy not
Speaker 1: for lack of trying, but it's because they're applying ineffective strategies.
Speaker 1: Doctor Santos identifies some of the cognitive biases that can
Speaker 1: hinder our happiness. There's no magical antidote to our problems,
Speaker 1: but there are ways to boost well being in small
Speaker 1: but significant ways. We also discussed resilience, social justice, and mindfulness.
Speaker 1: It was great to catch up with Wari, who I've
Speaker 1: known from my graduate school days. I've long respected her
Speaker 1: work and it's been really great watching her amazing developmental
Speaker 1: trajectory within her career. So, without further ado, I bring
Speaker 1: you doctor Laurie Santos. Lari Santos. Wow, so great to
Speaker 1: have you on the Psychology Podcast. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: having me on the show. Yeah, you're such a superstar now,
Speaker 1: and you were a superstar in my eyes when I
Speaker 1: was a grad student over ten years ago. It's amazing
Speaker 1: how time flies. You look the same, same, same, same podcasting.
Speaker 1: Podcasting treats you well. You know, I think for both
Speaker 1: of us we're looking great. And really do I look
Speaker 1: recognizable at least? Yes, definitely. And you were a superstar
Speaker 1: in my eyes for a different reason than why you're
Speaker 1: a superstar today that I loved your work on cognitive
Speaker 1: processes and non human animals. I'm in love your research
Speaker 1: during then, and I didn't even know at that time
Speaker 1: that you were interested in happiness, and I wasn't even
Speaker 1: interested in happiness then, So I didn't, I should say,
Speaker 1: I didn't know that I would become interested in happiness.
Speaker 1: So I just bring this up to start because both
Speaker 1: of us are kind of I want to bond here
Speaker 1: for a second here with you, because I feel like
Speaker 1: both of us started were unusual within the positive psychology world,
Speaker 1: because you know, I'm a cognitive scientist, right, You're a
Speaker 1: cognitive developmental psychologist who then got interested in positive psychology.
Speaker 1: And I think that's quite different than a lot of
Speaker 1: people in the field of positive psychology who start off
Speaker 1: in that field and maybe don't have the background on
Speaker 1: the brain and cognitive development. So I just wanted to
Speaker 1: kind of start offrom there. It's an interesting journey. Yeah, no, same.
Speaker 1: I mean if you had told me back then when
Speaker 1: you were agred student I was first starting at Yale
Speaker 1: that I'd be studying happiness, I'd be like, what, like
Speaker 1: monkey happiness, Like what are you talking about? So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's been an interesting journey, So catch me up. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't even know at what point, what year were you? Like, Oh,
Speaker 1: I'm going to teach a course in happiness at Yale?
Speaker 1: I didn't even know when that? Like, how that the
Speaker 1: origin story of that? Yeah? Yeah. So it started when
Speaker 1: I took on a new role on Yale's campus. So
Speaker 1: I became a head of college. Right. So, for those
Speaker 1: that don't know, Yale is one of these weird schools
Speaker 1: like Hogwarts and Harry Potter, where there's like colleges within
Speaker 1: a college. There's like, you know, the Yale gryffindor Yale Slytherin.
Speaker 1: I became head of Silomon College, and that means in
Speaker 1: that role, I was living on campus with students, right Like,
Speaker 1: I moved into their quad. I had a house like
Speaker 1: in the midst of students. I was eating in the
Speaker 1: dining hall and hanging out in the coffee shop. And
Speaker 1: I was expecting college student life to be like what
Speaker 1: college student life was like when I went to college,
Speaker 1: you know, in the late nineties. You know, I expected students,
Speaker 1: you know, to have their issues, but to generally be
Speaker 1: kind of happy and not so stressed in enjoying college life.
Speaker 1: And that just like was not what I saw on
Speaker 1: the ground. Like, I just saw incredible numbers of students
Speaker 1: who were depressed or anxious or just stressed out. You know.
Speaker 1: I'd run into students, even students who weren't struggling that much,
Speaker 1: you know, in the quad and say hey, how's it going,
Speaker 1: and they'd say, oh, if I could just fast forward
Speaker 1: to midterms or if I could just get to the summer,
Speaker 1: and you know, it was heartbreaking. Right, here's this community
Speaker 1: that I'm supposed to be this like benevolent opt for,
Speaker 1: and I was just watching students, students struggle, watching them
Speaker 1: fast forward this like precious short college experience, and you know,
Speaker 1: it just struck me that, you know, we weren't necessarily
Speaker 1: giving students the right strategies to navigate this stuff, right,
Speaker 1: which is kind of odd, you know. I mean it
Speaker 1: also caused me to look really carefully at the national
Speaker 1: statistics on what's going on on college campuses, and like,
Speaker 1: right now, over forty percent of college students report being
Speaker 1: too depressed a function, over sixty percent say they're overwhelmingly anxious.
Speaker 1: More than one intent has seriously considered suicide in the
Speaker 1: last twelve months. Like this was again, this is not Yale,
Speaker 1: this is nationally And so I was saying, like, whoa,
Speaker 1: I had no idea things were as bad as they were,
Speaker 1: and that really kind of a jolted me. I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not teaching them anything if sixty percent
Speaker 1: of the students in my classroom were so overwhelmed and
Speaker 1: so anxious they can't function right, you know, if like
Speaker 1: if one in five has probably had someone they know
Speaker 1: maybe seriously consider suicide. Like these were just striking numbers,
Speaker 1: and so I said, we got to do something about this.
Speaker 1: Like of our psychology colleagues were like resting on their
Speaker 1: laurels and not like taking action here. And so that
Speaker 1: was what I kind of retrained. I mean, my goal
Speaker 1: was to really just retrain enough that I could develop
Speaker 1: this introductory class on strategies that students could use to
Speaker 1: feel happier. But then it kind of got bigger than that.
Speaker 1: Got bigger than that, in part because the class got
Speaker 1: bigger than I expected. I expected, you know, thirty or
Speaker 1: so kids to take this new, weird class on strategies
Speaker 1: for improving happiness, but a quarter of the entire campus
Speaker 1: showed up the first time I tried to teach it.
Speaker 1: We had to teach it in a concert hall, Woolsey Hall,
Speaker 1: which you might remember on campus, and so that was
Speaker 1: a minor logistical nightmare. But it also taught me that
Speaker 1: students are like voting with their feed They don't like
Speaker 1: this culture of feeling stressed and anxious, and I think
Speaker 1: they really wanted to do something about it. They wanted
Speaker 1: to do something about it, and like an EVI in
Speaker 1: spaced way, they were like, what does the science say
Speaker 1: the kinds of strategies we can use? Give them to
Speaker 1: me and I will put them into practice. Yeah, what
Speaker 1: year was that? This was in twenty eighteen, which is
Speaker 1: also kind of funny, is not the right word ironic? Maybe,
Speaker 1: like you know, pression, like you know, to be talking
Speaker 1: about well being in college students before the COVID nineteen pandemic, right,
Speaker 1: Like I was worried about the levels of depression and
Speaker 1: anxiety then and you know everything has changed since then.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I experienced the same thing. I started teaching
Speaker 1: at Positive Psychology at Penn in twenty sixteen. While Angela
Speaker 1: Duckworth was writing her book Grit. She said, Scott, do
Speaker 1: you want to teach my course? And I was like sure,
Speaker 1: And then it ended up becoming a whole thing that
Speaker 1: I just love doing so much. And I could just
Speaker 1: see firsthand how unbelievably stressed these students are, and I
Speaker 1: think it's complex, and I wanted to just have an honest,
Speaker 1: open conversation with you about it. I think there's a
Speaker 1: one hand in the other hand here, I do see
Speaker 1: a lot more that teachers, that professors can can do
Speaker 1: to help students and have more compassion for all the
Speaker 1: balls they have the juggle, you know, and all the
Speaker 1: things they have to do. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: I'm also starting to see a little bit of a
Speaker 1: rise in entitlement to happiness among the students, and I
Speaker 1: wanted to hear your thoughts, if you know what I mean.
Speaker 1: If you maybe that's not happening at Yale, but I
Speaker 1: think it's gotta be happening at Yale. If it's happening
Speaker 1: at Columbia, an expectation that, well, I should be happy.
Speaker 1: And part of my training and teaching in my course
Speaker 1: is actually to to not think necessarily that way. You
Speaker 1: know what, Life doesn't really owe you anything, but it
Speaker 1: sure would be nice to help the students. And of course,
Speaker 1: but I think there's a little it's a little complex there,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to get some of your thoughts on that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this I think fits with some of the
Speaker 1: ways that I teach the Happiness class at Yale. You know,
Speaker 1: the class starts with this idea that our minds lie
Speaker 1: to us when it comes to happiness. Right. There's so
Speaker 1: many ways that we get happiness wrong. And I think
Speaker 1: one of them is just that that we think we
Speaker 1: should be happy all the time, that it's normative to
Speaker 1: be happy all the time, right, that one could even wrong, possible,
Speaker 1: something's wrong with you if you're not happy all the time.
Speaker 1: And then I think, you know, it's partly a lie
Speaker 1: of our mind, but it's partly comes from you know,
Speaker 1: the culture today. I think there really is an idea
Speaker 1: of toxic positivity. Right, ooh, negative emotions. You've done something wrong,
Speaker 1: like you're feeling anxious, you're feeling scared, like you know
Speaker 1: you must be broken, Like, do something about that, right,
Speaker 1: And I think one of the things we talk about
Speaker 1: a lot in the class is that negative emotions are well,
Speaker 1: first of all, they're normative, right, They're just part and
Speaker 1: parcel of like a real good human life. But beyond that,
Speaker 1: there are these important signals that we need to pay
Speaker 1: attention to. It's important to start seeing negative emotions like
Speaker 1: any other negative physical sensation, like you stick your hand
Speaker 1: on a hot stove. That's an important signal that you're
Speaker 1: supposed to do something you're supposed to move your hand,
Speaker 1: if you're feeling lonely, if you're feeling anxious, if you're
Speaker 1: feeling angry. Those are in some ways normative responses to
Speaker 1: certain situations, but they're also really good sign posts that
Speaker 1: you might need to do something different, that you might
Speaker 1: need to behave differently. And so I too kind of
Speaker 1: get the sense that one of the misconceptions is like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm feeling a little depressed and WoT be you know,
Speaker 1: in the context of COVID nineteen, something must be broken?
Speaker 1: Why am I not happy all the time? And I
Speaker 1: think one of my goals is to clear up some
Speaker 1: of those misconceptions that happiness isn't something you get all
Speaker 1: the time. It's also not a destination, right. I'm fond
Speaker 1: of telling my students this lovely quote from Dan Gilbert's
Speaker 1: psychology professor at Harvard, who says, Happily ever after only
Speaker 1: works if you have six minutes to live. It doesn't.
Speaker 1: It's not like you a permanent solution there. That's so funny.
Speaker 1: He is so witty. That guy is so witty. So
Speaker 1: I think I need to step back and just ask
Speaker 1: you how you even define happiness? Maybe that should have
Speaker 1: been my first question, But I think there's different conceptualizations
Speaker 1: of it within the field. So what's your definition of it? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I kind of use the definition that Sonya Lubomirski's and
Speaker 1: other positive psychologist uses. She talks about happiness is being
Speaker 1: happy in your life and being happy with your life.
Speaker 1: So I think of being happy in your life as
Speaker 1: having a decent ratio of positive to negative emotions. It's
Speaker 1: not no negative emotions. It's not positive emotion you know,
Speaker 1: happiness emoji all the time, but it's like generally having
Speaker 1: a decent ratio of things like laughter and joy to
Speaker 1: things like you know, sadness, anger and so on. That's
Speaker 1: happy in your life. But then happy with your life
Speaker 1: is separate, right, It's the answer to the question, all
Speaker 1: things considered, how satisfied are you with your life? It's
Speaker 1: a sense of purpose and meaning and kind of a
Speaker 1: bigger picture. And I like that definition for two reasons.
Speaker 1: One is I think it shows you that these things dissociate, right, Like,
Speaker 1: you can be totally happy in your life and have
Speaker 1: all these wonderful hedonic experiences and positive emotions and just
Speaker 1: be completely empty when it comes to you know, purpose,
Speaker 1: and what you're doing with your life. The other reason
Speaker 1: I like these definitions is that my read is that
Speaker 1: many of the interventions we have to improve happiness, many
Speaker 1: of the things we can do with our behaviors and
Speaker 1: our thought patterns to feel better, they wind up intervening
Speaker 1: on both of these constructs, right Like, they wind up
Speaker 1: increasing your positive emotions or decreasing your negative emotions in
Speaker 1: some but not all cases, And I think they wind
Speaker 1: up making you a little bit more satisfied with your life.
Speaker 1: So that's the one we tend to use. And it's
Speaker 1: also worth noting that that leaves out a lot a
Speaker 1: lot of the ways I think culture characterizes happiness. But
Speaker 1: I think it's pretty good from a social sciencey perspective. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've always been in awe of how predictive from a
Speaker 1: scientific point of view, a one item life satisfaction questionnaire
Speaker 1: survey can be. I mean, it's like one item, right like,
Speaker 1: how satisfied are you with your life? And I've read
Speaker 1: some really technical justification papers justifying why that's actually probably
Speaker 1: the best measure, probably better than objective, because people in
Speaker 1: the field like, well, why can we have objective? You know,
Speaker 1: self reports unreliable well, it's like, yeah, but maybe that's
Speaker 1: the exception is when it comes to life satisfaction things.
Speaker 1: I want to know how you're experientially experiencing the world.
Speaker 1: Is that redundant to say that? But you know how
Speaker 1: you're experiencing. Yeah, you're with me, You're with me. I
Speaker 1: use that phrase all the time. Yeah, No, I think,
Speaker 1: I think. I mean, yeah, I too. I mean, especially
Speaker 1: coming from you know, the work with animals right where
Speaker 1: you know, there have been these long debates about what
Speaker 1: can count as a real explanation and what can count
Speaker 1: as a real method. You know, when I kind of
Speaker 1: came through the happiness work and I'm like, oh, okay,
Speaker 1: where's you know, where are our methods? It's like you
Speaker 1: just ask people and I'm like, what you just asked?
Speaker 1: It's like a BuzzFeed quiz. That's the entire of your
Speaker 1: like empirical method exactly. But I kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: I came around. I mean I came around in part
Speaker 1: you know gas all this stuff you know, right, which
Speaker 1: is that these self report measures correlate with a ton
Speaker 1: of things that you might think of as like slightly
Speaker 1: more objective, right, you know, if I take all your
Speaker 1: tweets and I do machine learning on them to pull
Speaker 1: out the emotion words. If I do these detailed like
Speaker 1: friend and family interviews, you know. And in cases where
Speaker 1: we have you know, biological constructs, which for the most part,
Speaker 1: we don't for happiness or positive emotion, but in cases
Speaker 1: where we have things we could look at, like cortisol
Speaker 1: or things like that, these things tend to correlate with it.
Speaker 1: But it, you know, so I came around to like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe this isn't a silly BuzzFeed quiz. It really is
Speaker 1: a like a detailed scientific like construct that we can
Speaker 1: be using, or not a construct, a detailed kind of
Speaker 1: scientific method for testing how you're really feeling. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: also just an interesting intellectual exercise to think through. Well,
Speaker 1: let's say we could develop an objective well being measured
Speaker 1: supposed to subjective of well being. Okay, what would that
Speaker 1: even mean? First of all? But second of all, what
Speaker 1: if it clashes with the What if it's like does it?
Speaker 1: What if you disagree? Yes, what your mormometer is saying
Speaker 1: that you're only at a ninety eight point six on happiness,
Speaker 1: I'm like, no, I feel great, So yeah, like, are
Speaker 1: you allowed to like Trump what the test says. It's
Speaker 1: almost I think of all as well with my whole work,
Speaker 1: and I start off in intelligence, what if my actual
Speaker 1: intelligence that I'm in the real world, you know, it
Speaker 1: like defies what you predicted my intelligence will be based
Speaker 1: on your IQ test, you know. So I'm kind of
Speaker 1: like thinking of it a little bit analogous. Well that
Speaker 1: even mean, I think the subjective is a lot more
Speaker 1: powerful in a lot of ways, exactly how you are
Speaker 1: experiencing the world. And sometimes people can experience the world
Speaker 1: it positively even if people all around them are experiencing
Speaker 1: it negatively. And that's fascinating too. I mean, that's the
Speaker 1: whole resilience literature. And then you know, George Bonano and
Speaker 1: my colleague a Columbia doing great work on that, you know,
Speaker 1: But like what explains how and why insern environments some
Speaker 1: people act one way and other environments people at another way.
Speaker 1: What have you come across in your research and your
Speaker 1: personal experience with the students that are the best predictors
Speaker 1: of that kind of resiliency to whatever life throws at you.
Speaker 1: I think, honestly, my sense is that it's the kind
Speaker 1: of strategies they use. I mean, I've really come around
Speaker 1: to think that, you know, there are behaviors we can
Speaker 1: engage in that make us feel better. There are thought
Speaker 1: patterns we can engage in to make us feel better,
Speaker 1: and a lot of that's for many people that's really intentional.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, there is obviously, you know, heritable
Speaker 1: differences and happiness. There's some part of the variants out
Speaker 1: there in the world and people's well being that's explained
Speaker 1: by you know, what genes you happen to get in
Speaker 1: the lucky gene lottery, right, But I think my sense
Speaker 1: is that people who tend naturally to have a higher
Speaker 1: subjective well being, they just tend naturally to do the
Speaker 1: behaviors that like wind up improving your happiness. You know,
Speaker 1: I have this one friend who I went in my
Speaker 1: brain when I think of like, oh, you know this
Speaker 1: happy person. I tend to think of this one friend
Speaker 1: of mine. It's the wife of one of my college friends,
Speaker 1: and I think of what she does naturally, and she's
Speaker 1: naturally like just the most grateful person ever, Like, she's
Speaker 1: naturally like the most social person ever. I don't think
Speaker 1: I've ever heard of a night when she's like plopped
Speaker 1: down and watch Netflix, Like, you know, she she's not
Speaker 1: like a you know, a fitness freak, but she like
Speaker 1: moves her body with regular frequency. She sleeps like she
Speaker 1: just does all things that like, you know, if I
Speaker 1: was like listing all the criteria that people should engage
Speaker 1: in to feel better, she does it naturally hardwired. Yeah.
Speaker 1: What's funny is people often assume, you know, now that
Speaker 1: I'm this newfound you know, like happiness teacher, that I
Speaker 1: do this stuff naturally, and I'm like, hell no, that's
Speaker 1: not like I like, my instincts are the opposite. I
Speaker 1: think this is one of the reasons that the students
Speaker 1: resonate with me teaching this stuff, and my my podcast
Speaker 1: listeners resonate is like, my instincts are exactly the wrong ones.
Speaker 1: So I kind of get it. If you're struggling, it's
Speaker 1: like nope. But I also think that it would be
Speaker 1: better to you know, be solo and just like leisurely
Speaker 1: watch TV. I also think I definitely don't want to
Speaker 1: move my body. I also think, you know, like every
Speaker 1: single negative thing you could be doing, I'm like, yep,
Speaker 1: that's my instinct. But I think of doing better is
Speaker 1: to overcome those instincts is to recognize that your intuitions
Speaker 1: might be leading you astray. It's funny you brought that
Speaker 1: up because I was going to ask you, after all
Speaker 1: these years teaching this, how has it impacted your happiness personally?
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you get that question all the time,
Speaker 1: but I am curious, like it must change you and
Speaker 1: in small ways that up over time that maybe even
Speaker 1: you're not fully aware of. But no, totally, no, I'm aware.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, Scott, I'm a nerd, like I
Speaker 1: like do my own little perma once a month, just
Speaker 1: check out it's going. And honestly I have I've gone
Speaker 1: up on like a you know, a standard ten point
Speaker 1: is happiness scale, you know about a point right, So
Speaker 1: it's not like these practices take you from zero to
Speaker 1: one hundred. That's not their goal, right. I think it's
Speaker 1: you know, small but significant movements upwoard And I definitely
Speaker 1: have experienced that. But I've experienced that in part because
Speaker 1: I do a lot more of these behaviors. You know,
Speaker 1: when you teach a class on this stuff, your students
Speaker 1: will love to call you out, like if mine my
Speaker 1: students sees me in the Solomon courtyard and I'm like,
Speaker 1: on my phone and not talking to someone. They'll say,
Speaker 1: hawk santo is, that are our title is head of college,
Speaker 1: so I'm hawk satist, like hax santo is, Like I
Speaker 1: thought you were supposed to be on your phone, like
Speaker 1: or if my podcast producer catches me like beating myself
Speaker 1: up and engaging in self compassion, he'll just send like
Speaker 1: little emojis that are like, hey, like just a reminder
Speaker 1: like now supposed to do that. You know, you have
Speaker 1: a whole freaking episode on this. You know, you got
Speaker 1: a lot of these students, you know, they're just like
Speaker 1: it's just I'm like, oh, you know, it's such a
Speaker 1: privilege we have, first of all, to be able to
Speaker 1: transform their lives in meaningful ways. Like I'm very grateful
Speaker 1: for that opportunity. I'm sure it's a yell as well.
Speaker 1: But at Barnard College very social justice oriented. They're very
Speaker 1: social justice oriented. So you know, a conversation that continually
Speaker 1: comes up in the classroom and I'm wondering if this
Speaker 1: this has come up in your classroom is well they're like, well,
Speaker 1: Professor Kaufman, you know what about systemic issues? Right? What
Speaker 1: about like structural issues? And like does this work that
Speaker 1: we're doing and validate that in some way or say
Speaker 1: that it's not important, and we always it always leads
Speaker 1: to a really rich discussion in my classroom. I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: we need to stop me either or thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: like like it's not let's change even the phrasing of
Speaker 1: that question. But that question always comes up, you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering, has that come up in your classroom? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: definitely mean dealt with it? Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I try to, you know, also make it clear that
Speaker 1: we're not talking about either or, but also that it's
Speaker 1: not even not either or. There is an important synergy
Speaker 1: and a balance that comes from thinking about both of
Speaker 1: these issues at the same time. I actually cover some
Speaker 1: work really looking at the extent to which happier people
Speaker 1: engage more in social justice stuff. This is a work
Speaker 1: by Costa Khushlaff and his colleagues that looks at this directly. Right.
Speaker 1: They go and look at people who go to a
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter protest or people who go to a
Speaker 1: climate change rally, and they measure people's level of wellbeing.
Speaker 1: So they survey, For example, in one study, they surveyed
Speaker 1: all these UVA students right after that kind of nasty
Speaker 1: white supremacist incident, and they asked, hey, did you donate
Speaker 1: money to Black Lives Matter? Did you do something? Right?
Speaker 1: And what they find is that the people who are
Speaker 1: taking action are the ones who are have the highest
Speaker 1: self reported subjective well being. So the idea is subjective
Speaker 1: well being gives you kind of the bandwidth to like
Speaker 1: not be you know, in your house, like eating ice cream,
Speaker 1: when you feel like the world's falling apart, you actually
Speaker 1: go out and do something. They did similar studies on
Speaker 1: climate change, right, so they look at who's worried about
Speaker 1: climate change, and what you find is that people who
Speaker 1: have lower levels of self reported subjective wellbeing are more
Speaker 1: worried about climate change. Right. It makes sense. You're just
Speaker 1: miserable everything, and climate change looms really large, you feel
Speaker 1: really anxious about it. But then they say, okay, well,
Speaker 1: who donated money to climate change, who went to a protest,
Speaker 1: who did anything? And what you find is exactly the
Speaker 1: opposite pattern, right, So people who have that self reported
Speaker 1: highest levels of subjective well being are doing stuff. And
Speaker 1: so I share this study with students because I say,
Speaker 1: you know, like you know, you're the future. Yale students like,
Speaker 1: you know, college students, you're the future. But like, if
Speaker 1: you're all so miserable that sixty percent of you are,
Speaker 1: you know, so anxious that you can't function most days,
Speaker 1: like you're not going to get out there and fix
Speaker 1: these problems. And so I think it's not I think
Speaker 1: we need to move students away, not just from the
Speaker 1: either or, but to recognize there's a synergy here, right.
Speaker 1: You know, you can actually help more if you're taking
Speaker 1: care of yourself. You know, the African American poet Audrey
Speaker 1: Lord talked about, you know that self care is a
Speaker 1: political act, right, And I think taking care of your
Speaker 1: own health through positive psychology interventions you can also consider
Speaker 1: a political act, right, And so so that's one that's
Speaker 1: kind of one way to deal with it. The other
Speaker 1: is just to recognize that again, these structural changes are
Speaker 1: so needed, but they're they're not inexpensive this stuff, right, Like,
Speaker 1: there's no reason we can't be doing both of these
Speaker 1: at the same time. Yeah. I love that the trauma, loss,
Speaker 1: and uncertainty of our world have led many of us
Speaker 1: to ask life's biggest questions, such as who are we?
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Speaker 1: become your best self. Okay, now back to the show.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of things that were raised with what
Speaker 1: you just said, So I'm trying to like think Whi's
Speaker 1: one of the first something interesting I find about the
Speaker 1: subjective well being researched is that that one item, you know,
Speaker 1: someone may think, oh, well with happiness, Like, surely that
Speaker 1: just means hedonism. Surely that just means you know, feeling
Speaker 1: good all the time. But even the data itself shows
Speaker 1: and didn't have to be this way. This is how
Speaker 1: the data came out. It shows that subjective well being
Speaker 1: is much more strongly correlated with pro social purpose than hedonism.
Speaker 1: So I think that just telling people that, like, you know,
Speaker 1: because they it's not like even like we're top down
Speaker 1: saying the theory is that purpose is more gives you
Speaker 1: greater life satisfaction and hedonism. We're saying this is what
Speaker 1: the data shows, right, I mean, you know, we start
Speaker 1: we start with you know, our our mutual colleague when
Speaker 1: we were Yale, Peter Salve's idea of the feel good
Speaker 1: do good effect, right, which is just like, if you
Speaker 1: are in a better mood, you do nicer stuff, right like,
Speaker 1: and it's like, so, yeah, I think it's fun. I
Speaker 1: mean I think again, you know, these are students who
Speaker 1: are facing these structural issues head on for the first time,
Speaker 1: you know, in college, and I think are learning about them,
Speaker 1: are learning how important they are. So I think it
Speaker 1: makes sense that they're like, wait, what about this? And
Speaker 1: I think the key is just to recognize, like all
Speaker 1: these structural issues are solved by individuals with a certain
Speaker 1: set of like psychological processes, and so we just need
Speaker 1: to remember that to fix these things, we need to
Speaker 1: pay attention to those psychological processes and the kind of
Speaker 1: psychological bandwidth and resilience that people are bringing with them. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: One thing that I felt has been remiss in the
Speaker 1: field of positive psychology is integration with the fields of
Speaker 1: personality psychology, the fields of developmental psychology. I mean, how
Speaker 1: is it not better into CRAT with the field of
Speaker 1: development and the field of cognitive science. It has just
Speaker 1: been something I've been just like, It's like I go
Speaker 1: to the conferences, right, I go to IPPA, and I'm like,
Speaker 1: there's no developmental psychologist at this entire conference. But how
Speaker 1: is that possible? Right? So, like, just the question of
Speaker 1: how do these things develop seems to be so important
Speaker 1: as opposed to just like taking having people take the
Speaker 1: questionnaire and then just seeing where they're at. Where do
Speaker 1: you think the non genetic component. We don't need to
Speaker 1: go into the genetic component, but the non genetic the
Speaker 1: non genetic component of developing happiness. What are the main
Speaker 1: environmental sources you think that really comes from? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think they're from a lot of different places.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think one way to answer that question,
Speaker 1: especially when we think about those scary statistics I just
Speaker 1: talked about in college students, is to ask where did
Speaker 1: those kind of terrible statistics come from? Right? I think
Speaker 1: one thing to know about those statistics is they've gotten
Speaker 1: really much worse, even just over the last ten and
Speaker 1: twenty years. In fact, that statistic about college student depression,
Speaker 1: my understanding, has doubled since twenty twelve, which is kind
Speaker 1: of terrifying. And so one could then flip the question
Speaker 1: on its head and say, Okay, well, what has changed
Speaker 1: in the last ten or twenty years that's causing some
Speaker 1: of these like really devastating mental health outcomes? And I
Speaker 1: think we could point our fingers a bunch of different ways,
Speaker 1: right you know, I think if you plot the slope
Speaker 1: of college student depression and you plot the slope of
Speaker 1: cell phone use or social media use, you know, the
Speaker 1: lines line up in a very you know, scary No
Speaker 1: correlation doesn't equal causation, but this looks really close kind
Speaker 1: of way. We also see, you know that I think
Speaker 1: this is also the time when achievement culture is kicking
Speaker 1: in in a really incredible way, right you know, Since
Speaker 1: the eighties of No Child Left Behind in the US
Speaker 1: News and World Report college rankings, I think, you know,
Speaker 1: the idea of student achievement has just been at the
Speaker 1: forefront in a way that causes many students before they
Speaker 1: get to college to like, you know, not be sleeping enough,
Speaker 1: not prioritize their friendships, like prioritize achievement and grades at
Speaker 1: all costs. And I think these cultural factors are really impacting,
Speaker 1: you know, the psychological development of our young people, honestly,
Speaker 1: and in many ways and ways we don't really understand.
Speaker 1: And so I don't know if there's like a red
Speaker 1: herring of like here's the one thing that has caused
Speaker 1: these changes over time. But I think it's important to
Speaker 1: start looking at these things to figure out like how
Speaker 1: did this change and how did it change so rapidly? Yeah? Absolutely,
Speaker 1: And then you know, we could of course talk all
Speaker 1: day nerding out about the genetics and coactive you know
Speaker 1: variation where people genes can subtly influence us to make
Speaker 1: certain choices which in the long run do add up
Speaker 1: to happiness or the feeling of being happy, or a
Speaker 1: feeling of being satisfied with one's life through the own
Speaker 1: the active process, not just the passive process. So that
Speaker 1: that's interesting too, But all this stuff are deep deeply
Speaker 1: intertwined culture, environment, genes. As there's a recognition that we
Speaker 1: need to pay attention to well being even more and
Speaker 1: that it's a scientific pursuit. I mean, I think that's
Speaker 1: another misconception that a lot of people have. It's like
Speaker 1: some fluffy wu thing that we leave to the like
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, Gwyneth Paltrow type people to
Speaker 1: like talk about happiness. Right, we realized, like, then this
Speaker 1: is like a real true scientific basis of study. Then
Speaker 1: we can start like doing a deeper dive into some
Speaker 1: of the epigenetics using the kind of really cool tools
Speaker 1: that we have now that I understand way less well
Speaker 1: than you do, but that you can tell us what
Speaker 1: we should be doing on the genetics side. Well, who's
Speaker 1: at Yale right now that is studying the science of
Speaker 1: well being? Besides you? Is there? Who's at Yale right now?
Speaker 1: I mean we have lots of folks who are doing yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: not many. I mean, honestly, I think there's there's a
Speaker 1: lot of folks doing the like when when things go downhill,
Speaker 1: you know, clinical mental health side, right, But not as
Speaker 1: many people doing positive psychology, which is kind of interesting.
Speaker 1: You know, I put you know, Peter in the camp
Speaker 1: of doing some really pivotal work on you know this
Speaker 1: feel good do good effect and emotional intelligence. But yeah,
Speaker 1: not as many like card carrying positive psychologists as you'd expect.
Speaker 1: That's a shame. That's a shame. I always you know,
Speaker 1: may he rest in peace. But one of my advisors,
Speaker 1: Jermo Singer, you know, I always found his work relevant
Speaker 1: like daydreaming and creativity, and I love how you infuse
Speaker 1: that into clinical psychology, and I love the emerging field
Speaker 1: of sorry going. I think, you know, I'm saying there's
Speaker 1: not any card caring positive psychologists, but I don't think
Speaker 1: they're the only ones that are strongly contributing to work
Speaker 1: in the domain of kind of happiness science. Like we
Speaker 1: have people at Yale who are looking at the neuroscience
Speaker 1: of mindfulness and meditation, people like Hetty Kober, right, you know,
Speaker 1: we have philosophers who are thinking about the good life
Speaker 1: and how we use imagination and fiction, people like Tamar
Speaker 1: Genler who are thinking about this stuff. So I think
Speaker 1: even though Yale doesn't have, you know, folks who might
Speaker 1: go to IPA and all these kind of you know,
Speaker 1: but like I'm a positive psychologist and that's who I am,
Speaker 1: we have people, you know, who are adjacent, who are
Speaker 1: really thinking about these questions more broadly and honestly. Maybe
Speaker 1: this is just you know, a show of my heritage
Speaker 1: of not growing up as a positive psychologist in the
Speaker 1: same way you didn't grow up as a positive psychologist.
Speaker 1: I think that's where the real answers are going to
Speaker 1: come from. I look at the work that I find
Speaker 1: most exciting right now, and it's often done by people
Speaker 1: who didn't grow up in that field. People like Liz
Speaker 1: Done and people like Mike Norton, people like Nick Epley,
Speaker 1: who are you know, doing this great work about social
Speaker 1: connection and money and how it impacts our happiness. And
Speaker 1: you know, they don't necessarily go to these conferences either,
Speaker 1: but I think they have really important things to say. Definitely, Definitely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a funny idea. I didn't grow up in positive psychology,
Speaker 1: and I know what you mean. Well, I was just
Speaker 1: going to make some joke like just like yeah, like
Speaker 1: if possichology is is your core identity, and like I'm
Speaker 1: a positive coology, that's a certain vibe, that's a vibe. Well,
Speaker 1: this kind of came up, you know, like I think,
Speaker 1: you know, in the midst of when I taught this class,
Speaker 1: it was really like white knuckling, like you know, with
Speaker 1: thousands of students. I didn't expect it was the first
Speaker 1: time I was teaching the class. We'd depressed there, you know.
Speaker 1: So I'm like checking my PowerPoint for typos because the
Speaker 1: first time I made the PowerPoint when like the Today
Speaker 1: Show is there or something, I'm like, ah, but the
Speaker 1: class got this tremendous amount of press. And I think
Speaker 1: it's just like anything Yale does is going to get pressed.
Speaker 1: Yale is just one of these places that, like anything
Speaker 1: that happens on campus, the New York Times is going
Speaker 1: to show up. But I guess there was a lot
Speaker 1: of discourse among the positive psychologists about like, who's this
Speaker 1: chick that she's going to come in and like, you know,
Speaker 1: be in the New York Times or being a positive psychologist,
Speaker 1: She's not really one of us. And in fact, it
Speaker 1: was Marty Seligman forward to me this kind of thread
Speaker 1: that was in one of these new you know, like
Speaker 1: kind of like group lists, and he's like, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's let Laurie speak for herself on this. And it
Speaker 1: was funny to see all these you know, so called
Speaker 1: positive psychologists. In fact, it was one research who studied
Speaker 1: humility who was like, who is this, you know, who
Speaker 1: is this interloper who's coming in? You know? And I
Speaker 1: wrote back and I'm like, you know, like, hey, I
Speaker 1: think we can retrain, right, you know, and it's helpful
Speaker 1: to have people. I think some of the best people
Speaker 1: doing animal work are people who weren't necessarily trained in
Speaker 1: the comparative cognition tradition, Right, you do bring other things.
Speaker 1: I was like second, like, you know, I'm not like
Speaker 1: showing up and trying to get a job in positive psychology.
Speaker 1: I'm just like teaching an undergrad class. That was how
Speaker 1: this all started, right, And yeah, I mean I didn't
Speaker 1: say it a lot of way. I didn't say, like,
Speaker 1: in third you study humility, dude, like like go on,
Speaker 1: But I didn't say yeah, I know, yeah, and a
Speaker 1: lot of ways, like I mean, it's like I didn't
Speaker 1: choose his life. This life chose me. Folks like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you wanted to start out with a thirty person seminar,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, I can't even imagine, Like it must
Speaker 1: have felt like a circus to have the media there,
Speaker 1: to have that many students. I mean, what did that
Speaker 1: feel like? Do you feel like did you feel like
Speaker 1: a rock star? Like like these mostly felt exhausted. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a kind of deep irony about this path to
Speaker 1: happiness about you know, apart from you know, students calling
Speaker 1: me out and me doing more of these practices myself,
Speaker 1: whether or not the busyness that came with this, is
Speaker 1: really helpful for my happiness. And one thing I talked
Speaker 1: about a lot in the class is time affluence. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is a lovely work, fashly one. It's another kind
Speaker 1: of non card carrying psychologist who's doing really great work
Speaker 1: in positive psychology. You know, she finds that, you know,
Speaker 1: our our sense of having free time, it was really
Speaker 1: matters for our well being much more so than our
Speaker 1: wealth affluence. Our time affluence matters a lot. And I
Speaker 1: think if there's one thing that's taken a major hit
Speaker 1: since I started doing a lot of this happiness work,
Speaker 1: it's my it's my time affluence. And especially true that semester.
Speaker 1: It was a rough time, a little bit of a
Speaker 1: surreal time. But again it's put me on this path,
Speaker 1: you know, I think, you know, I loved doing the
Speaker 1: work with primates and that was amazing. You know, I
Speaker 1: still have a lab that does some of that stuff.
Speaker 1: But just the impact that you can have teaching people
Speaker 1: about these concepts and hearing the emails about people like
Speaker 1: oh I tried, you know, social connection as you suggested,
Speaker 1: or I tried a gratitude list, and like it's really
Speaker 1: changing my life. Like there's this sense that I'm doing
Speaker 1: something that's meaningful in a different way than the work
Speaker 1: I was doing before, and definitely reaching way more people
Speaker 1: than I was reaching before, and that feels pretty good. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you didn't feel imposter syndrome, or at least
Speaker 1: you didn't feel it enough to prevent you from going
Speaker 1: for it. Oh, I definitely felt it, but I didn't
Speaker 1: feel it. I didn't feel it. It It did stop you.
Speaker 1: It didn't stop you. And because you just look at
Speaker 1: how me students you've helped like will come and in
Speaker 1: a lot of ways, it must be very, very worrying
Speaker 1: for you. I don't need to ask, like it's more
Speaker 1: wording than the Capuchins. You've changed their lives. But but
Speaker 1: I will guess that it has been very meaningful for you,
Speaker 1: and really, you know, I imagine they send you cards
Speaker 1: at the end of the semester, right like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is actually a really funny story, not just my Yale students.
Speaker 1: Because we now put that class online as one of
Speaker 1: Yelle's online digital offerings on Courserra, do or it's called
Speaker 1: the Science of Wellbeing and four million people have taken it,
Speaker 1: which is completely a little bit yeah like nuts to me.
Speaker 1: But I had this funny situation, so you know, cut
Speaker 1: to like, you know, like August of twenty twenty, everything
Speaker 1: shut down, like no one's been in the office for forever.
Speaker 1: I haven't been in the office for forever. And this
Speaker 1: is around the time that some of the staff were
Speaker 1: coming back, and I get this email from one of
Speaker 1: the administrators in the psych office. You remember for these
Speaker 1: lovely folks who are like so kind and nice and
Speaker 1: never never have a harsh word, but one of them
Speaker 1: had a harsh word for me. They were like, you
Speaker 1: got to come in and empty your mailbox. Your mailbox
Speaker 1: is overflowing. You need to get in here, like right now.
Speaker 1: And I was like what, And so by go in
Speaker 1: and you remember the little cubbies we used to have
Speaker 1: so for folks that don't know, this department of these
Speaker 1: little cobbies. So my cubby was full. The whole little
Speaker 1: bench under my cubby was full and had spilled onto
Speaker 1: the floor, and it was just cards and letters and
Speaker 1: artwork by people who'd taken the online class. That like
Speaker 1: when I tell you there was like a tiary afternoon
Speaker 1: when I went. Well, first of all, it was like
Speaker 1: impossible to carry back. I had to make do drifts
Speaker 1: to the department to get all these cards and letters.
Speaker 1: But it's beautiful. Wow. I mean, when you see that,
Speaker 1: you're really impacting people. Yeah, it's just amazing. It's just amazing.
Speaker 1: So you've really, in recent years really been interested in
Speaker 1: this idea of how we lie to ourselves. What are
Speaker 1: some of the other things we led ourselves about? Can
Speaker 1: you tell me some of the things forefront of your
Speaker 1: mind right now? Yeah, I mean, you know so many things.
Speaker 1: And I think this is a spot where the work
Speaker 1: on happiness really aligns closely with my work on capuchins
Speaker 1: in a very weird way. I mean, but back in
Speaker 1: the day, I was really interested in whether or not
Speaker 1: these cognitive errors that we have as humans are shared
Speaker 1: with monkeys. And we looked at things like lots of version,
Speaker 1: We looked at things like cognitive dissonance, We looked at
Speaker 1: like we looked at all these kind of classic biases
Speaker 1: to see are these things built in? Are these things
Speaker 1: that are evolved? Are they going to be hard to overcome?
Speaker 1: And I think this is the kind of perspective that
Speaker 1: I've taken on a lot of the happiness work is
Speaker 1: that a lot of the reason we're not as happy
Speaker 1: as we could be isn't because we're not trying. We're
Speaker 1: putting in tons of effort. We're just like doing it wrong.
Speaker 1: And I think we're doing it wrong in part because
Speaker 1: we don't think about happiness the right way. We have
Speaker 1: these cognitive biases when it comes to happiness and achieving happiness,
Speaker 1: and so you know, one of the big ones is
Speaker 1: that we don't realize our minds. We get used to stuff.
Speaker 1: You know, we assume that you know, we're going to
Speaker 1: buy the next gadget and we'll be happy forever, and
Speaker 1: we get married, we get that new promotion at work,
Speaker 1: and we'll be happily ever after. You know, this term
Speaker 1: that we just show in is wrong. You know, a
Speaker 1: tall bench here calls this the arrival fallacy, right. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like we think we're going to get there and
Speaker 1: we're going to be good forever, but not so. And
Speaker 1: that's in part because not just because of hetonic adaptation,
Speaker 1: but because we're blind to heatonic adaptation. We don't realize
Speaker 1: that we get used to stuff over time. I think
Speaker 1: another bias of our mind is that we you know,
Speaker 1: we assume that we pay attention to things in absolute terms,
Speaker 1: that I get absolutely more money, you're absolutely more success.
Speaker 1: I'd feel happier. But in practice, that's just not how
Speaker 1: our mind looks at things. Our minds are big relative machines.
Speaker 1: We just compare against some random reference point, and that's
Speaker 1: how we feel. And stupidly, our minds are very good
Speaker 1: at picking random reference points that make us feel terrible.
Speaker 1: This is like, in a way, you're kind of like
Speaker 1: you're like adding on to the cognitive biases list, you know,
Speaker 1: like you're adding things within the realm of things that
Speaker 1: have more direct implications for our happiness. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you thought of about it that way at all,
Speaker 1: within that framework, but yeah, yeah, I mean I think
Speaker 1: you know, I think you know. I'm not the one
Speaker 1: who's identified these biases, right, I'm just synthesizing the great work,
Speaker 1: you know, in the case of heudon'tic adaptation of Dan Golbert,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know social comparison, tons of folks,
Speaker 1: including Connmon and Tversky, you thought about this, and you know,
Speaker 1: want a Nobel Prize apart for this stuff, right, But
Speaker 1: you know, the way I think about it is these
Speaker 1: aren't just kind of haphazard ways that our minds work.
Speaker 1: These could be deep seated, structural ways that our minds work,
Speaker 1: just like the kinds of things I was studying in Capuchins.
Speaker 1: And that means they're going to be hard to overcome.
Speaker 1: That merely understanding these mechanisms doesn't mean that you somehow
Speaker 1: can avoid them, And I think that's really important. That
Speaker 1: kind of changes the calculus of like, Okay, how do
Speaker 1: we deal with these things? Right? We have to kind
Speaker 1: of work with our biases instead of against them. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: awareness so important. Awareness so important, Which actually does lead
Speaker 1: me to a discussion of the latest science of mindfulness,
Speaker 1: because I mean, I think that some of the claims
Speaker 1: are a bit overhyped some of these mindfulness programs. When
Speaker 1: you actually look at the data, you're like, you see
Speaker 1: a much more circumscribed set of things that has reliably
Speaker 1: been that mindfulness produces. I was worrying where you kind
Speaker 1: of stand on that, what your thoughts are about the
Speaker 1: latest science of mindfulness and what it shows its benefits are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think you know, mindfulness is definitely not
Speaker 1: a panacea empirically, But none of these positive psychology interventions are, right,
Speaker 1: My read is like every single one of them in
Speaker 1: many cases, not in all cases, but in many cases
Speaker 1: for most people because of course individual differences. I don't
Speaker 1: have to tell you about individual differences, but yes, individual differences. Right. Like,
Speaker 1: what they do is they, on average give a small
Speaker 1: but consistent boost, right. I mean, if you look at
Speaker 1: like gratitude journaling, that on average gives you a small
Speaker 1: but consistent boost. But you're looking at like again, it
Speaker 1: depends on the study, but you know, like not more
Speaker 1: than a point bump up on a ten point happiness
Speaker 1: scale on average. Right. The key though is that for
Speaker 1: a lot of these I think it's and again it's
Speaker 1: on average, right, Not everybody is necessarily going to show
Speaker 1: that bomb. The key though is I think that these
Speaker 1: things give us some tools that we can try out, Right,
Speaker 1: We can try them out on ourselves and see are
Speaker 1: these the kind of things that make us feel better?
Speaker 1: And I end to put mindfulness in this category. If
Speaker 1: I try this, is it going to make me feel
Speaker 1: anxious and we're going to hate it? Or is this
Speaker 1: going to like give me a practice that allows me
Speaker 1: to be more present. That mean, it allows me to
Speaker 1: notice stuff that allows me to curb my mind wandering.
Speaker 1: And you got to do like the experiment for yourself.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, to be fair, these small
Speaker 1: but like like significant and consistent happiness was like, I'll
Speaker 1: take them. You know, I'd much rather be a seven
Speaker 1: on a happiness scale than a six out of ten,
Speaker 1: you know, like out of ten, right, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: but I think it is important. I think whenever these
Speaker 1: things get talked about in the popular media, they wind
Speaker 1: up like way more hyped than, you know, than than
Speaker 1: the results often show. And I feel like that's not
Speaker 1: exactly the fault of the researchers. Might be the fault
Speaker 1: of some researchers, but most researchers I think are honest
Speaker 1: about the magnitude of their effects sizes, but then they
Speaker 1: get written about, you know, in these huge ways. But
Speaker 1: that's true. You know, I've never read any paper that like,
Speaker 1: you know, chocolate or coffee or wine and cancer and
Speaker 1: not like it will stop cancer. I'm like pretty sure,
Speaker 1: like it's an overall average of a small percentage, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's very important to point that out that
Speaker 1: any specific exercise or targeting any one specific domain really
Speaker 1: doesn't move it that much more than one two points.
Speaker 1: But I want to be one more optimistic and say, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: that is optimistic, Like I mean likes auto music. I
Speaker 1: guess that's crazy. Like like if you if there was
Speaker 1: like a drug company that had a pill that they
Speaker 1: were like, if anybody takes this pill, they're going to
Speaker 1: go up one point on a ten point happy a skill,
Speaker 1: that drug would make so much money and we have
Speaker 1: that free drugs and all these interventions. Yes, but more optimistic.
Speaker 1: Don't let me stop you there, I was going to say.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, I don't want people to
Speaker 1: then extrapolate that to mean that the most you can
Speaker 1: increase your happiness is only one to two points, because
Speaker 1: I think the point here is the more exercise, the
Speaker 1: more you make this a daily part of your life
Speaker 1: and you have it, you can even more substantially move
Speaker 1: the dial on your life satisfaction. So I just wanted
Speaker 1: to make that point, just wanted to make that point.
Speaker 1: I think this is one of the reasons I love
Speaker 1: Sonya Lubermerski's work so much, as you know she talks
Speaker 1: about like it's work, yo, like you gotta just sid
Speaker 1: like put the work, like just like anything else. You know.
Speaker 1: I saw one of my students had posted a meme
Speaker 1: about you know, it's like like, you know, hopped on
Speaker 1: the treadmill for fifteen minutes and I'm not a size
Speaker 1: you know, extra anymore, Like WTF? And I think people
Speaker 1: think this with the happiness interventions too. It's like I
Speaker 1: wrote in my gratitude journal, why am I still having
Speaker 1: any sadness? I mean it was a joke. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was a mean right, It's like you know, but but
Speaker 1: I think we think we think that with fitness, right,
Speaker 1: We're like I went to the gym every day this week,
Speaker 1: Like what's going on? Like why you know, like why
Speaker 1: can't I fit in my pants? And I think the
Speaker 1: same about happiness. We just we want quick fixes, right
Speaker 1: our brain Just this is I think another interesting bias
Speaker 1: of the brain is like it's hard for us to
Speaker 1: see small incremental changes, you know, especially ones that don't
Speaker 1: go up in alinear slope, that kind of go up
Speaker 1: and down over time, Like we just can't integrate that.
Speaker 1: But that's what's happening with these interventions. If you if
Speaker 1: you do them and you're consistent about them, and you
Speaker 1: make them a daily practice. They do work in a
Speaker 1: small but significant way. At what point should people accept
Speaker 1: some things really won't change that much within themselves and
Speaker 1: then actually for their happiness that self acceptance is actually
Speaker 1: the most important thing for them. I think about this
Speaker 1: all the time, you know, because it's like some things
Speaker 1: that you know you would it would be happier if
Speaker 1: you put your efforts into something else, right, Like, for instance,
Speaker 1: some people are obsessed with their physical appearance, right, and
Speaker 1: it's like, actually, I think you'd be a little happier
Speaker 1: if you got more obsessed about your pro social purpose
Speaker 1: then yet another sort of facial you know, reconstruction surgery.
Speaker 1: So I just try to think about this and how
Speaker 1: what have you thought about that? Yeah? I mean one
Speaker 1: of the things we talk about the way is structure
Speaker 1: the classes. We start with things that won't make you
Speaker 1: happier and things that will make you happier. Things that
Speaker 1: won't make you happier. You know, if you're living above
Speaker 1: the poverty line with a decent middle class income, more
Speaker 1: money is not going to make you happier, you know,
Speaker 1: like body and looks. You know, there's so much evidence
Speaker 1: that in many cases, diet and weight loss, plastic surgery,
Speaker 1: doesn't you know, increase your happiness at least in the
Speaker 1: way people are predicting, right, We make incorrect, affective forecasts
Speaker 1: about how good this stuff is going to ultimately feel. Right,
Speaker 1: and like, by and large, if your circumstances are reasonable,
Speaker 1: like changing them is not going to help. And so
Speaker 1: you know, I explicitly point this stuff out to students,
Speaker 1: and this is the part where I get like the
Speaker 1: most student pushback. I mean, you deal with these smart
Speaker 1: Ivy League kids right like they'll show up and be
Speaker 1: like okay, but hag Sanchez, Like, what if you know,
Speaker 1: I really make this much money and I donate this money,
Speaker 1: like you know, like can I get my like a
Speaker 1: million dollar investment banking job. So I think knowing what's
Speaker 1: not gonna work is really important and really critical. And
Speaker 1: that way, again, you can start putting your energies towards
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that really will improve your happiness. Again,
Speaker 1: it's not I don't think people are you know, resting
Speaker 1: on their laurels hoping happiness is going to show up.
Speaker 1: I think people are actively working towards this stuff. They're
Speaker 1: just kind of going at it the wrong way. Nice,
Speaker 1: very well put. So, what are some things you'll be
Speaker 1: talking about in the upcoming season of your podcast? Do
Speaker 1: we get any previews coming attractions? Yeah, you have a
Speaker 1: really famous psychologist coming up whose name starts with an S. Scott. Yes,
Speaker 1: you're actually you will be featured. Not in the next season.
Speaker 1: We have I want to transcend this to be its
Speaker 1: own episode. So it's sitting there waiting until we come
Speaker 1: back for like a full interview show because I didn't
Speaker 1: want to mix and match you with other other folks.
Speaker 1: So you're you're waiting in the wings my Transcendence episode,
Speaker 1: which I love, and we do it. Yet this season
Speaker 1: is actually really fun. We're talking about the psychology of
Speaker 1: negative experiences, why we sometimes like pain and fearful things
Speaker 1: like haunted houses and so on, and so that is
Speaker 1: we do have Paul Bluemont, and we have this wonderful
Speaker 1: journalist Lee Cowart, who, like Paul, has written a book
Speaker 1: about things painful experiences and why they feel good. But Lee,
Speaker 1: they have decided to experience all those experiences, so they
Speaker 1: ate like the World's Hottest Hot Pepper, and they engaged
Speaker 1: very publicly in the book in like BDSM like sex play,
Speaker 1: like so they like unlike Paul, like we like they
Speaker 1: pure like their money with their mouths. It's like they
Speaker 1: really like went for Well, you don't know about Paul. Well,
Speaker 1: we chatted about that in the podcast. He said, you know, like,
Speaker 1: you know, if I, if I do engage in that stuff,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to talk about it in the books.
Speaker 1: That's right, that's but yeah, but why why do we
Speaker 1: like that stuff? You know? And in some cases when
Speaker 1: we know it's fake, like in the context of sad
Speaker 1: books and scary movies, why do we fall for it?
Speaker 1: We're also doing a whole episode on fandom and why
Speaker 1: fandom can bring us happiness. This allows me because I'm
Speaker 1: like a huge sci fi nerd to nerd out. We
Speaker 1: have will we End on the show, who talks about
Speaker 1: how being a geek isn't about what you love, it's
Speaker 1: about how you love it and the happiness inducing practices
Speaker 1: of loving something like your life depends on it. So
Speaker 1: it's a little bit of a you know, mixed bag
Speaker 1: of all kinds of interesting things. But it's going to
Speaker 1: be a fun season. I love it. I love it. Well,
Speaker 1: congratulations to you. I hope you're getting some real rest
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's public knowledge that you're you're
Speaker 1: on sabbatical as it was in the New York Times,
Speaker 1: like she's so burned out, like there's like the big
Speaker 1: header and there she's so in fact, my mom lens
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, my mother in law wrote to me.
Speaker 1: She's like, I just read in the New York Times
Speaker 1: you're taking some time off. Like you're gonna tell her
Speaker 1: your mother in law so hilarious. Yeah, well, I just
Speaker 1: really hope that this is a real restorative time for you.
Speaker 1: And congratulations on all your successes and also congratulations on
Speaker 1: a knocking your head. You're like the same Lauri Santos
Speaker 1: that I remember from like a decade ago. I mean,
Speaker 1: you're humble and sweet and smart and funny. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's it's really nice to reconnect with you.
Speaker 1: And thanks for being on my show today. Thanks so
Speaker 1: much for having me. Thanks for listening to this episode
Speaker 1: of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in
Speaker 1: some way to something you heard, I encourage you to
Speaker 1: join in the discussion at thus Psychology podcast dot com.
Speaker 1: We're on our YouTube page The Psychology Podcast. We also
Speaker 1: put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube
Speaker 1: page as well, so you'll want to check that out.
Speaker 1: Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
Speaker 1: and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain,
Speaker 1: behavior and creativity.