Speaker 1: Is it possible to become happier? What does the science
Speaker 1: say about this? How much of your happiness is your genetics?
Speaker 1: And what does any of this have to do with
Speaker 1: social connection or comparison to other people, or your balance
Speaker 1: of optimism versus pessimism, And why it would be useful
Speaker 1: to keep a journal of your life. Welcome to Intercosmos
Speaker 1: with me David Eagleman. I'm a neuroscientist and author at
Speaker 1: Stanford and in these episodes we sail deeply into our
Speaker 1: three pound universe to uncover some of the most surprising
Speaker 1: aspects of our lives. Today's episdis is about what's known
Speaker 1: about happiness from a scientific point of view. Everyone since
Speaker 1: time immemorial has asked themselves what is going to make
Speaker 1: me happy? And they've often speculated what can I tell
Speaker 1: other people about what's going to make them happy? But
Speaker 1: in a sense, I view this the same way that
Speaker 1: people once approached disease. They said, Hey, maybe if I
Speaker 1: sprinkle salt over my shoulder, or boil some bones, or
Speaker 1: eat a lizard's tail, that's going to work. There were
Speaker 1: endless theories and rituals and folk beliefs, some of which
Speaker 1: were passed down for generations. Many of these things were
Speaker 1: totally made up, but they persisted because there wasn't a
Speaker 1: better option. The world of disease changed with the arrival
Speaker 1: of the scientific method. With observation and experimentation and replication,
Speaker 1: the community slowly was able to replace guesswork and superstition
Speaker 1: with reproducible knowledge. We stopped tossing salt and started testing antibiotics.
Speaker 1: We stopped blaming spirits and started understanding microbes, and as
Speaker 1: a result, we eradicated smallpox and polio. We developed fixes
Speaker 1: for fever and diarrhea and diabetes. And if you ever
Speaker 1: feel skepticism about our progress, just note that we have
Speaker 1: added decades to the average human life. So the key
Speaker 1: question I want to ask today is can we bring
Speaker 1: that same level of rigor to the question of happiness.
Speaker 1: Now that might sound strange because happiness seems so personal,
Speaker 1: it's so subjective. Is it really something you can study
Speaker 1: in a lab? Do we really understand what it is
Speaker 1: we're chasing? Happiness? It turns out is a remarkably slippery concept.
Speaker 1: You ask three people to define it, you're going to
Speaker 1: get four answers. Is it pleasure contentment?
Speaker 2: Meaning?
Speaker 1: Is it a spike of joy or a slow and
Speaker 1: steady hum of well being. We're probably talking about all
Speaker 1: these things. And I'll note that even the ancient Greeks
Speaker 1: made distinctions. They distinguished between the pursuit of pleasure, which
Speaker 1: they called hedonia, and a life of meaning and virtue,
Speaker 1: which they called you'd ammonia. And in modern psychology we
Speaker 1: have all kinds of similar distinctions, asking whether happiness is
Speaker 1: more about fleeting moods or lasting satisfaction. But here's the thing.
Speaker 1: Even once we settle on definitions, we are not always
Speaker 1: so good at predicting what will make us happy. The
Speaker 1: general lesson from psychology is that people make systematic errors
Speaker 1: in forecasting their own happiness. We think that a new
Speaker 1: car will do it, or a bigger house, or finally
Speaker 1: getting that promotion, And when those things happen, we do
Speaker 1: feel a little jolt of joy, but it doesn't last
Speaker 1: apt we return to our baseline. Psychologists call this the
Speaker 1: hedonic treadmill. You keep running, chasing the next thing, but
Speaker 1: you never really get ahead. And by the way, even
Speaker 1: our memories deceive us. We misremember what made us happy
Speaker 1: in the past, and we make plans for the future
Speaker 1: based on those flawed recollections. We compare ourselves to others constantly.
Speaker 1: We overvalue the extraordinary and overlook the ordinary. We confuse
Speaker 1: excitement with fulfillment. So what does this all mean. It
Speaker 1: means our internal compass is often misaligned, and yet there's hope.
Speaker 1: And this is because over the past decades, researchers have
Speaker 1: begun to untangle the mystery of happiness by using tools
Speaker 1: like longitudinal studies, which follow people across decades or even
Speaker 1: across their entire lives. Other studies use brain imaging to
Speaker 1: map emotional states, or behavioral experiments that track the choices
Speaker 1: people make and then how they feel about it later,
Speaker 1: or cross cultural research that looks at how different societies
Speaker 1: define and pursue joy. What emerges from this growing body
Speaker 1: of work is a more nuanced, more evidence based understanding
Speaker 1: of what makes life feel worthwhile and good. And the
Speaker 1: answers provide something useful, a map. It's not a guarantee,
Speaker 1: it's not a formula, but it's a way to navigate
Speaker 1: toward a deeper, more lasting sense of well being. So
Speaker 1: today we're going to explore that map. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: what practices actually seem to make a difference. Based not
Speaker 1: on wishful thinking, about on data to guide us through
Speaker 1: this territory. I called up my friend and colleague, Bruce Hood.
Speaker 1: He's an experimental psychologist and philosopher at the University of
Speaker 1: Bristol in England, and he recently wrote a book called
Speaker 1: The Science of Happiness. Together, we're going to try to
Speaker 1: get a clearer view of what the science tells us,
Speaker 1: what works, what doesn't, and how we can apply these
Speaker 1: findings in our own lives. Here's my interview with Bruce. So, Bruce,
Speaker 1: I know at the back of your office there's a
Speaker 1: junior high playground and you're always hearing the laughter and
Speaker 1: the squealing of children. So what did that make you wonder?
Speaker 3: Well, in my day job, I see a lot of
Speaker 3: my students and I'm their tutor, and I've just come
Speaker 3: out of a tutoring session where they were really quite
Speaker 3: miserable and unhappy and really worried, and I just heard
Speaker 3: this laughter coming from the playground. I thought, what goes wrong?
Speaker 3: Where are we going wrong?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 3: How how do they ended this position at the end
Speaker 3: of the education system where they're so preoccupied with their
Speaker 3: performance and they've got mental health issues? And I kind
Speaker 3: of reached the end of my tether to some extent,
Speaker 3: I wanted to try and do something.
Speaker 1: So you thought, look, kids are happy, young adults are
Speaker 1: not so happy, and so you started looking into the
Speaker 1: science of happiness. And what did you find.
Speaker 3: Well, we had reached a bit of a crisis point
Speaker 3: at Bristol University, and I felt I needed to do something.
Speaker 3: And I looked around and discover that a former student
Speaker 3: of mind, Laurie Santos, who had I taught as an
Speaker 3: undergraduate when I was at Harvard, had also encountered a
Speaker 3: problem at Yale, and she put on a course that
Speaker 3: had been remarkably successful. So this really inspired me to
Speaker 3: try and do a version of it myself. So I
Speaker 3: contacted Laurie and her typical generous nature, She shared all
Speaker 3: her notes, and I put together a version of her course,
Speaker 3: and I call it the Science of Happiness. I think
Speaker 3: was called Psychology and the Good Life. And I focused
Speaker 3: a little bit more on critical thinking, my own spin
Speaker 3: on stuff. And I just ran it as a pilot
Speaker 3: to see if anyone would turn up to it. It
Speaker 3: wasn't credit bearing, it wasn't official course. It was just
Speaker 3: here's a lunchtime seminar series I'm running for ten weeks
Speaker 3: and I was price six hundred people turned up, even
Speaker 3: though they weren't getting credit for it. So this told
Speaker 3: me that this was something that was in demand, and
Speaker 3: the universes were very pleased with this, so they gave
Speaker 3: me the green light to go ahead and create a
Speaker 3: course which was credit bearing, and we launched it the
Speaker 3: following year and we've been doing it every year with
Speaker 3: about six hundred students enrolling. And what makes it, I
Speaker 3: think unique, is that to me, it's a large experiment
Speaker 3: because we actually get the students to fill in their
Speaker 3: own sort of levels of happiness and various psychometric tests,
Speaker 3: and every year we've run the course, we find a
Speaker 3: significant improvement of about fifteen percent on all these measures.
Speaker 3: So it's not just an educational course because they have
Speaker 3: to actually do things and we discover that actually it
Speaker 3: seems to make some impact.
Speaker 1: So before we get into the framework of the science
Speaker 1: of happiness, I want to ask you a few rapid questions. First,
Speaker 1: do you think that students are changing from let's say
Speaker 1: when you first started teaching.
Speaker 2: Yes and No?
Speaker 3: My first paper done back in nineteen eighty six. I
Speaker 3: think it came out the full year eighty seven was
Speaker 3: on the transition to university, and I was already interested
Speaker 3: in the fact that students, way back when I was
Speaker 3: an undergrad were experiencing homesickness and this sort of temporary
Speaker 3: period of uncertainty. So I think that's actually a common
Speaker 3: experience for all students when they leave the you know,
Speaker 3: the confines and the familiarity of their home environment, and
Speaker 3: they go to in new, new campus, but very soon
Speaker 3: they get used to it and they kind of adapt
Speaker 3: to that. I think the difference now is that students
Speaker 3: are already coming to university with mental health issues, and
Speaker 3: I think the nature of discussing these things that's normalized
Speaker 3: a lot more now, and it seems to be more pervasive.
Speaker 3: It certainly seems to feature as an issue that students
Speaker 3: want to talk about. So I think that I don't
Speaker 3: think there's any fundamental difference in the human mind, if
Speaker 3: you like, but the way that we discuss and talk
Speaker 3: about these things and the way it impacts on students,
Speaker 3: I think has changed.
Speaker 1: How much of a person's happiness comes down to the
Speaker 1: genes that they inherit.
Speaker 3: Actually we do have a pretty good idea about that,
Speaker 3: and that comes from behavior genetic studies where they compare
Speaker 3: identical and non identical twins, and it's roughly the same
Speaker 3: as intelligence around about heritability is about forty to fifty percent.
Speaker 3: So yes, some people are very much like their parents
Speaker 3: and some are very unlike their parents. But on average,
Speaker 3: if you look across a big population, that heritability is
Speaker 3: around about forty to fifty percent.
Speaker 1: And if I can ask you a personal question, Bruce,
Speaker 1: tell us about your childhood, as I understand that your
Speaker 1: father wasn't particularly happy and well adjusted and you are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I came from well I'm laughing about it now
Speaker 3: because I can look back with some degree of wisdom,
Speaker 3: but at the time it was a very impoverished childhood,
Speaker 3: tenerant if we moved from household to hustle. We never
Speaker 3: had any money, and he was a very abusive alcoholic. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a painful childhood, but you know, I think
Speaker 3: I learned to cope, and certainly this course has helped
Speaker 3: a lot for me. What I've learned on this past
Speaker 3: has actually changed my outlook. I used to be very,
Speaker 3: very driven and maybe too driven, and that to the
Speaker 3: exclusion of people around me. Now I'm a lot more
Speaker 3: mindful and thoughtful about you know, what I'm doing, and
Speaker 3: that might just be age and wisdom, but I also
Speaker 3: think that there is there are things that you can
Speaker 3: do to change your life for the better. So I've
Speaker 3: you know, I used to be skeptical about all this stuff.
Speaker 3: I felt it was very soft psychology and you know,
Speaker 3: a little bit wishy washy. And now I'm much more
Speaker 3: of a convert to it. That and if it does
Speaker 3: make the students better, then you know, whether or not
Speaker 3: we can argue about the mechanisms. I still think it's
Speaker 3: a valid endeavor to try and alleviate some of this
Speaker 3: problem that seems to be so pervasive.
Speaker 1: Great, so in your book, you boil this down to
Speaker 1: seven lessons. Well, I call.
Speaker 3: Them lessons to capture the nature that a book that
Speaker 3: was originated from a course, and so it felt like
Speaker 3: an educational process. But yeah, and they all actually bleed
Speaker 3: into each other, and it says they're all interrelated. But
Speaker 3: there is a fundamental premise throughout the book that it's
Speaker 3: happiness is about becoming less self centered and that's the
Speaker 3: kind of underlying theme.
Speaker 1: Great, so let's dive into the seven lessons. I think
Speaker 1: it's a good way to structure. This so less than
Speaker 1: one you call alter your ego. So tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Well, this comes from my training as a developmental psychologist
Speaker 3: and from the work the works of Jean Piage and others.
Speaker 3: And what Page noted is that children are very egocentric.
Speaker 3: And what he meant by that is that they view
Speaker 3: the world from their own perspective, from themselves. Literally, they
Speaker 3: think the world is an extension of their sensory systems,
Speaker 3: so that if they're not looking at something, it.
Speaker 2: Ceases to exist. So they really do believe.
Speaker 3: We have a term in philosophy called salism that the
Speaker 3: world is literally an extension of your mind. They have
Speaker 3: to learn to differentiate themselves from that physical world and
Speaker 3: understand that objects have their own kind of identity and
Speaker 3: permanence and uniqueness. And this is captured in a lot
Speaker 3: of his demonstrations that should behave as if objects cease
Speaker 3: to exist when they're not being looked at, or they're
Speaker 3: a product of the child's actions. Now that's happening in infancy.
Speaker 3: Over time, they start to learn that there is a
Speaker 3: physical world that is separate to them, and they start
Speaker 3: to realize that other children have different thoughts, but they
Speaker 3: still think of themselves very egocentrically. So initially, for example,
Speaker 3: they think that other people understand things the way they do,
Speaker 3: They see the way the world they do, and they
Speaker 3: lack what's called a theory of mind in the sense
Speaker 3: that they don't necessarily understand that others can have completely
Speaker 3: different opinions or completely different.
Speaker 2: Thoughts to their own.
Speaker 3: But around about three or four years of age, they
Speaker 3: start to learn to become less egocentric and more what
Speaker 3: I call alocentric, which means other focused. It's not that
Speaker 3: children don't interact with others, but that interaction is very
Speaker 3: much uni direction or one direction when they're very very young.
Speaker 3: But if you want to become a functioning member of
Speaker 3: society as a child, and this is what childhoods are for,
Speaker 3: it's socialization. They've got to learn to become cooperative, communicate, integrate.
Speaker 3: So when we tell ch'am to behave, we're trying to
Speaker 3: teach them the rules of socialization in order to be
Speaker 3: accepted by the rest of the tribe, as it were.
Speaker 3: So we start off with a very ecocentric perspective, and
Speaker 3: we've become more other focuses we get older. But like
Speaker 3: many aspects of the human mind. We never entirely abandoned
Speaker 3: these kind of primitive ways of thinking, and I think consciousness,
Speaker 3: for example, is a very egocentric experience. It's from the
Speaker 3: first person perspective. We don't instantly take a theory in mind,
Speaker 3: We don't instantly and for other people's thoughts and purses, unless,
Speaker 3: for example, they behave in a way that we make
Speaker 3: questions why they've done it, and we might then try
Speaker 3: and figure out what's on their mind. But in general,
Speaker 3: we're on autopilot. We're kind of seeing everything from the
Speaker 3: first person perspective, and that's okay. But when it comes
Speaker 3: to happiness, this is where I think it can be
Speaker 3: a problem because left to our own devices, we have
Speaker 3: a tendency to turn in on our ourselves, to ruminate,
Speaker 3: to consider our perspectives, and we can blow things up
Speaker 3: of proportion. Whereas if you start to see yourself as
Speaker 3: more interconnected or alocentric, first of all, you're more contributing
Speaker 3: member of society, but also you can start to get
Speaker 3: a sense that other people have things going in their
Speaker 3: lives which actually may be more paramount or more important
Speaker 3: to them, or worse. And then once you understand that
Speaker 3: actually we're all interconnected and other people have things going
Speaker 3: on their lives. It starts to put your own things
Speaker 3: into perspective. So I think there's been a language or
Speaker 3: focus on self and identity, politics and all about me,
Speaker 3: me me for the past ten years. I think we've
Speaker 3: been hearing that, and I'm just sort of saying, maybe
Speaker 3: that's the wrong way to think about it. Maybe focusing
Speaker 3: on yourself is directing your energies in the wrong way.
Speaker 3: I think we should try and ritualize of others. And
Speaker 3: this comes from younemonia, which is an ancient concept from Aristotle.
Speaker 1: Unpack you.
Speaker 3: Aemonia for us, Pneumonia is the technical term for flourishing,
Speaker 3: which means that rather than directing your effort to make
Speaker 3: yourself happy, what you should be trying to do is
Speaker 3: enrigin the lives of other people around you. So it's
Speaker 3: a more altruistic, gregarious, other focused way of energy. What
Speaker 3: Aristotle said to it. You know, anyone can be self centered.
Speaker 3: Animals are self centered and they can seek gratification. But humans,
Speaker 3: we have moral grounds, we have moral perspectives. We can
Speaker 3: put our efforts into making other people's lives better. Altruism
Speaker 3: and so on. And if you do that, that will
Speaker 3: make society better and you will benefit from that indirectly.
Speaker 3: So he argued that we shouldn't be focusing our energies
Speaker 3: on ourselves, but rather trying to improve the lives of others.
Speaker 1: Yeah. One of the things you argue, if I understood
Speaker 1: this correctly, is you're saying what you really want to
Speaker 1: hit is a balance between egocentric and alocentric. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Because obviously, if you're so selfless, then human
Speaker 3: nature is that people will take advantage, so you need
Speaker 3: to kind of get the balance correct. The other thing
Speaker 3: about being self less is if you're so empathic, then
Speaker 3: there is a danger that you can kind of become
Speaker 3: a super EmPATH or take on all the suffering and
Speaker 3: pain of others around you, which means you can't function either.
Speaker 3: So it's really trying to get things into perspective and
Speaker 3: get the balance right. If you're too allocentric or too
Speaker 3: other focus, you're probably not going to look after yourself well.
Speaker 3: If you're too selfish, you're going to be rejected, possibly
Speaker 3: and ostracized. So it's about becoming what we evolve to be,
Speaker 3: which is a socialized, integrated animal.
Speaker 1: So let's go to the second lesson, which is avoid isolation.
Speaker 1: Tell us about that.
Speaker 3: Well, that's the flip side of being ostracized. So yes,
Speaker 3: we're a social animal, and the way we've evolved is
Speaker 3: through our capacity for what I call well, I didn't
Speaker 3: coin the term. Mike Thomas elo coined it.
Speaker 2: It's ratcheting, cultural ratcheting.
Speaker 3: In other words, we have communication and we cooperate, and
Speaker 3: the information that we learn in one generation we pass
Speaker 3: on to the next. And this is a way we've
Speaker 3: been able to accumulate and build sequentially on the knowledge base,
Speaker 3: which is allowed technology to rise exponentially. So yeah, that
Speaker 3: all comes from the fact that we evolve such sort
Speaker 3: of a social life. If you think about it, we
Speaker 3: spend the largest proportion in childhood of any species. You know,
Speaker 3: it could be to the teenage years. Some adults who
Speaker 3: argue that they've still got kids in their twenties. It's
Speaker 3: still at home as children. But if you look at
Speaker 3: it in terms of our life expectancy, a large proportion
Speaker 3: of that is spent in periods of being dependent on others.
Speaker 3: So those long childhoods come at a cost, and that's
Speaker 3: why we have all the emotions of being included, all
Speaker 3: the joys and the pains.
Speaker 2: And sorrows and so forth.
Speaker 3: The flip side of it is if you're ostracized, that
Speaker 3: is really detrimental to not only your mental health but
Speaker 3: your physical health. So we know, for example, loneliness, chronic
Speaker 3: loneliness has a higher morbidity risk than many other well
Speaker 3: known factors such as moderate smoking and drinking and obesity.
Speaker 3: But if you look at the longitudinal studies of how
Speaker 3: long people live, those who have the best social connections
Speaker 3: live longer and are happier. And that's based on these
Speaker 3: studies of Harvard, for example, They've got studies to be
Speaker 3: following people up for sixty years. So social connection is
Speaker 3: paramount to our well being and social isolation is problematic.
Speaker 3: And this, of course is a big concern at the moment,
Speaker 3: the way that technology is actually is creating I think,
Speaker 3: pockets of isolation and more increased loneliness because the technology
Speaker 3: is so absorbing that people just focusing on their phones
Speaker 3: all the time and they're not engaging in the other
Speaker 3: things that they could be doing. And I'm not one
Speaker 3: of these people saying, you know, social media's you know,
Speaker 3: rotting the brains of our kids. I think what's really doing.
Speaker 3: Is it's just taking away all that time that in
Speaker 3: the past we used to have speaking to each other
Speaker 3: and doing those other things, and I think that's its
Speaker 3: real danger.
Speaker 1: On the flip side, when people are looking at their phones,
Speaker 1: they're often interacting with their friends and colleagues on there,
Speaker 1: there's a set in which for people who grew up
Speaker 1: in very isolated environments like I grew up in the
Speaker 1: mountains in New Mexico, I didn't have folks around, but
Speaker 1: kids now always have folks around. Do you think that
Speaker 1: is useful in terms of avoiding isolation.
Speaker 3: Yes, I do, And the last survey by the Pew
Speaker 3: Center showed that actually teenagers really don't see the same
Speaker 3: problems that the adults do, so they actually think it's
Speaker 3: improved their social interactions and their opportunities for interaction. I
Speaker 3: would argue, though, however, it's the nature of that interaction.
Speaker 3: I think there's something about doing everything through a screen.
Speaker 3: It doesn't really produce the same level of social interactions.
Speaker 3: I mean, for example, body movements, our ability to read
Speaker 3: body language. These are things which we've evolved over thousands
Speaker 3: of years, and now if you take it away or
Speaker 3: you produce artificial interactions. Everyone knows how awkward zoom can be.
Speaker 3: It's not the same as as if we were in
Speaker 3: kind of a spontaneous, more informal situation. So yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: not a what's the word, these are called them the luodites.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to get rid of the technology. And
Speaker 3: by the way, it's actually amazing and and it does
Speaker 3: so many things. It allows people to Education is incredible,
Speaker 3: podcasting is incredible. So these are all great, they're all upsides.
Speaker 3: But I do think we need to think about how
Speaker 3: is changed the nature of our off time as it were,
Speaker 3: so I can see the concerns quite right.
Speaker 1: Okay, so your third lesson is reject negative comparisons. So
Speaker 1: let's unpack that well.
Speaker 3: As you probably know, the brain always, by its default,
Speaker 3: the way it's calculating anything is by comparison. Nerve impulses
Speaker 3: are a signal is real as a relative comparison to
Speaker 3: the baseline. So from the very basics of how our
Speaker 3: brain cells are working right up to the complexity of
Speaker 3: conceptual thinking, we're always drawing comparisons. So, for example, you
Speaker 3: can see this in the sensory systems. If you come
Speaker 3: in from a bright day out and going to a room,
Speaker 3: it takes a long time to see anything because you've
Speaker 3: adapted to the brightness and the outside, so your system
Speaker 3: has to calibrate to the darkness. And likewise, if you
Speaker 3: go from a dark area out into somewhere bright, you're
Speaker 3: startled initially. So what the brain's always doing is doing
Speaker 3: relative comparisons. The trouble with us is that when you
Speaker 3: look at the sources of information we pay attention to,
Speaker 3: it seems that we have a bias to pay more
Speaker 3: attention to negative information. So, for example, if you get
Speaker 3: people to read a newspaper and you don't tell them
Speaker 3: that you're actually monitoring their eye movements, if you look
Speaker 3: at where they're focusing, they're focusing on all the negative stories,
Speaker 3: all the negative information. So this is a strategy of
Speaker 3: the so called negativity bias. It's called that we've evolved
Speaker 3: this special bias to pay attention to things which are
Speaker 3: potentially threatening. And the reason is is because that if
Speaker 3: you can anticipate and avoid potential threats, you'll survive longer.
Speaker 3: There's no point resting on your laurels and just paying
Speaker 3: attention to where everything's going fine. Rather strategically, from an
Speaker 3: evolutionary point of view, it's much better to actually focus
Speaker 3: on things which are likely to eliminate you from the
Speaker 3: gene pool.
Speaker 1: So this is.
Speaker 3: Why we spot frowns, quicker and sea of faces. It's
Speaker 3: why screams are more poignant than laughter, although sometimes they
Speaker 3: sound the same. But this is we have a bias
Speaker 3: really to pay attention to the sorts of negative information.
Speaker 1: So given this, how does somebody take that on to
Speaker 1: work on increasing happiness.
Speaker 2: Well, I think it's drawing the right comparisons.
Speaker 3: So going back to social media that we mentioned briefly,
Speaker 3: one of the issues that I think is somewhat problematic
Speaker 3: is it presents unrealistic measures of success and what people
Speaker 3: or what is normal. And if you focus just on
Speaker 3: if you just look at other people's lives and assume
Speaker 3: that that's what you should be comparing yourself to, then
Speaker 3: you're going to feel inadequate because generally everyone posts their
Speaker 3: best holiday snaps, the best pictures of themselves, the best food,
Speaker 3: whatever it is, and so it looks like everyone's having
Speaker 3: an incredibly good time. By comparison, you feel inadequate. I
Speaker 3: think it's it's important to recognize that the comparisons that
Speaker 3: we draw typically are unrealistic, and I think this has
Speaker 3: been one of the problems of social media because everyone
Speaker 3: seems to have a much more interesting life, and if
Speaker 3: you ask a bunch of people, for example, who goes
Speaker 3: to more parties, you are other people. What happens is
Speaker 3: that people will imagine or typically think of a very
Speaker 3: sociable person and draw a relative comparison. But of course
Speaker 3: not everyone can be below the average, because by definition,
Speaker 3: the average is the norm. But this is what we
Speaker 3: typically do when we're thinking about our happiness or our
Speaker 3: success or how we're going on in life. We are
Speaker 3: drawing the wrong comparisons by identifying those who are the
Speaker 3: most obvious.
Speaker 1: So this leads us nicely less than four, which has
Speaker 1: become more optimistic. Let's unpack that.
Speaker 3: Okay, So, given that we have a negativity bias and
Speaker 3: the information around us and the media tends to focus
Speaker 3: on negative information because that's frankly what people pay more
Speaker 3: attention to to hear, then we have to learn to
Speaker 3: recognize that there we're in a sea of negativity, and
Speaker 3: we have to learn to try and become more optimistic.
Speaker 3: And the way to do that is to recognize the
Speaker 3: way that we interpret and process events so this is
Speaker 3: working Marty Seligmann amongst others, but they recognize that there's
Speaker 3: a different way of what he called attributional style, which
Speaker 3: is how you make sense or explain situations. And there
Speaker 3: are three sorts of dimensions which typically differ between a
Speaker 3: pessimist and an optimist. Pessimists tend to think setbacks are
Speaker 3: permanent and never going to change or is an optimist
Speaker 3: is much more likely to think them as transitory. A
Speaker 3: pessimist is much more likely to take a setback and
Speaker 3: extrapolate or overgeneralize, where saying you, I bet I've failed
Speaker 3: an examin of failure at everything I do in my life,
Speaker 3: whereas an optimist is much more likely to sort of
Speaker 3: ring fence and say, well, there are other things going on.
Speaker 3: And finally, when it comes to sort of who's responsible
Speaker 3: for setbacks, the pessimist is much more likely to internalize it,
Speaker 3: or as it is more likely to deflect or not
Speaker 3: accept responsibility. Now, whilst that's okay, you don't want to
Speaker 3: be overly optimistic, because if you're overly optimistic, you'll never
Speaker 3: change or learn or try to adjust. You don't want
Speaker 3: to be overly pessimistic because then you're going to become
Speaker 3: a little bit hopeless. So you need to again try
Speaker 3: to err towards more optimism, which is to find the
Speaker 3: silver lining in the cloud, as it were. And you
Speaker 3: can do that, and it just takes time to sort
Speaker 3: of write down your setbacks and as much detail as
Speaker 3: you possibly can and then reinterpret them from a more
Speaker 3: optimistic view. And by the way, when I say optimists
Speaker 3: and pessimists, you can be actually quite nuanced. You can
Speaker 3: be pessimistic in some aspects of your life, but more
Speaker 3: optimistic in others. So I don't think it's so simple
Speaker 3: that either one or the other. But if something is
Speaker 3: impacting on your life negatively, then it's a case of
Speaker 3: just trying to reinterpret it and process it in a
Speaker 3: much more positive way, and through effort and time that
Speaker 3: comes more naturally excellent.
Speaker 1: So less than five is control your attentions to tell
Speaker 1: about that.
Speaker 3: So I have found this probably the most insightful and
Speaker 3: fascinating area of work, and this really stems from the
Speaker 3: work of mind wandering. So this is Matt Killingsworth's work
Speaker 3: and Dan Gilbert, my old coolague who discovered that mind
Speaker 3: wandering is incredibly common and it's not always associated with
Speaker 3: pleasant daydreaming. A lot of the time when it's neutral
Speaker 3: or need negative, obviously people are not particularly happy. So
Speaker 3: they did these studies where they contacted people at random
Speaker 3: points of the day and they said what are you
Speaker 3: thinking about?
Speaker 2: What are you doing? And by the way, how happy
Speaker 2: you are.
Speaker 3: It turns out that people's minds are wandering about fifty
Speaker 3: percent of the time and they tend to be less happy,
Speaker 3: And I think, what's going on there is It strikes
Speaker 3: me that this is probably rumination where people are focusing
Speaker 3: on things that haven't gone right, or they're worrying about
Speaker 3: the future, or they got some unresolved conflict.
Speaker 2: And so this has been associated with.
Speaker 3: Activation of the default mode network that seems to kick
Speaker 3: in when you're not task focused, and that is very
Speaker 3: common experience for people. And when you're not task focused,
Speaker 3: I think then you tend to sort of turn in
Speaker 3: ecocentrically to sort of view your situation. And that's why
Speaker 3: I think at least the sort of unhappy thinking because
Speaker 3: of this sort of tendency to focus on things when
Speaker 3: they're not going well.
Speaker 1: Tell us about lesson six, which is connect with others.
Speaker 3: So probably the most powerful and the most successful positive
Speaker 3: psychology intervention are those which really encourage you to form
Speaker 3: social connections. So Nick Keppley, for example Chicago, has done
Speaker 3: these really incredible studies where he forces people to strike
Speaker 3: up conversations with strangers, and he also gets other people
Speaker 3: to predict how awkward that will be.
Speaker 2: Terribly.
Speaker 3: What people predict is it's going to be incredibly awkward
Speaker 3: having a conversation with another person, say if you're commuting,
Speaker 3: for example. But if you actually force people to strike
Speaker 3: up a conversation in those circumstances, they typically will find
Speaker 3: it much more rewarding and satisfying than the other group.
Speaker 3: We thought it'd be very awkward. And this was done
Speaker 3: originally in Chicago, and it's now been replicated in London,
Speaker 3: of all places. I don't know if you've been there recently,
Speaker 3: but Londoners are not the most gagariously chatty people. But
Speaker 3: I think the point is is that it is in
Speaker 3: our nature to be social animals, and unfortunately modern life
Speaker 3: tends to get in the way of that, especially when
Speaker 3: people are on their phones and not engaging with each other.
Speaker 3: But if you actually are in a situation where you
Speaker 3: do have to strike a spontaneous conversation, it can be incredibly,
Speaker 3: really rewarding. So I think this is the recommendation I
Speaker 3: make for people, is to try and have that conversation
Speaker 3: with your barista or the person who's serving you in
Speaker 3: the shop, and you'll discover that actually you probably have
Speaker 3: a lot more common and the awkwardness that we think
Speaker 3: is going to happen never really materializes. So I really
Speaker 3: am a strong advocate of trying to reach out and
Speaker 3: connect alicentrically.
Speaker 1: Excellent, and this leads nicely into the last lesson seven,
Speaker 1: which is get out of your own head.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, that was always going to be a bit of
Speaker 3: a controversial chapter because in the beginning of that I
Speaker 3: talk about my own experience with psychedelics when I was young,
Speaker 3: And by the way, I'm not advocating this, but I
Speaker 3: did want to at least acknowledge that this is a
Speaker 3: burgeoning area of research. It's particularly fascinating the work coming
Speaker 3: out John Hopkins and Imperial College for people who have
Speaker 3: intractable depression that doesn't respond to psychopharmacology. Turns out that
Speaker 3: a psychedelic experience can actually have long term, profound benefits,
Speaker 3: so they just need to do it once. And I
Speaker 3: find that very interesting because obviously psychedelic experiences are intense,
Speaker 3: and it's most.
Speaker 2: People report an altered sense of self.
Speaker 3: And what's commonly reported is the feeling of greater connectivity
Speaker 3: with nature, with humanity. So I think that's interesting and fascinating.
Speaker 3: And by the way, you can also get those sorts
Speaker 3: of experiences in more natural ways, so trans states, and
Speaker 3: for example, I talk about the Worthing dervishes who induce
Speaker 3: trans states where they feel like connectedness. And if you
Speaker 3: ever I don't know that you may have the opportunity, David,
Speaker 3: but if you ever get the opportunity to go into
Speaker 3: outer space, maybe see business might be listening in. One
Speaker 3: of the common reports of anyone of going into out
Speaker 3: of space looking back on the Earth is the so
Speaker 3: called overview effect, where you have this profound sense or
Speaker 3: perspective when you see the planet against the fast, the
Speaker 3: vastness of the cosmos, and people often say they feel
Speaker 3: this connection with humanity. So I think this is really
Speaker 3: forcing you into the ultimate decentralized allocentric perspective, because your
Speaker 3: problems might be big, but when you see them in
Speaker 3: the context of our civilization, our planet against the universe,
Speaker 3: then certainly everything seems a little bit more balanced.
Speaker 1: So let me ask you this. I think people have
Speaker 1: been working on the topic of happiness for millennia, and
Speaker 1: the question is what is different now, What do we
Speaker 1: get from the scientific studies on this? Where are we
Speaker 1: with scientific study and what still remains to be done.
Speaker 3: So I think there's a number of avenues where it
Speaker 3: seems to be making advances. I think there's been a
Speaker 3: lot of weak work done, a lot of weak research
Speaker 3: in the past, but I think we're getting a little
Speaker 3: bit more rigorous now. I think psychology is getting more
Speaker 3: rigorous in its approach to studies. For me, I'm interested
Speaker 3: in the default mode network. I'm interested in the concept
Speaker 3: of self and how that our understanding of how that's generated.
Speaker 2: By our brain.
Speaker 3: I think that's particularly interesting. Hence that's why I talked
Speaker 3: about this new work on psychedelics. But I think the
Speaker 3: the progress is that we're now understanding why happiness is
Speaker 3: so difficult to attain. In a sense, it needs to
Speaker 3: be elusive, it needs to be this sort of transient
Speaker 3: state because you can't be permanently happy all the time,
Speaker 3: and in a sense it's foolish to try and seek
Speaker 3: a permanent state of happiness. But what you can start
Speaker 3: to do is understand why we get used to emotional situations,
Speaker 3: why we readily adapt, and then just try to get
Speaker 3: the context right. Ultimately, you know, everything we do is
Speaker 3: motivated by our emotional systems. Emotions and motivation have the
Speaker 3: same origin and Latin meaning to move us to move,
Speaker 3: And so once we understand why we are pursuing and motivated,
Speaker 3: then I think that can help in so many ways,
Speaker 3: not just in terms of our personal well being, but
Speaker 3: also some of our decisions that we're making. I think,
Speaker 3: you know, to use this term wisdom, I think is
Speaker 3: important that we have to understand the consequences of our lifestyles,
Speaker 3: why we pursue certain things, and ultimately, for example, materialism,
Speaker 3: the says that people think they're going to be happier
Speaker 3: if they.
Speaker 2: Own more and more things.
Speaker 3: We need to tell, you know, we need to calibrate
Speaker 3: that or temper that with the appreciation that well, you know,
Speaker 3: you might think that's the path of happiness, but actually
Speaker 3: the research suggests that it's not. So. I think that
Speaker 3: we're starting to get a much clearer picture of what
Speaker 3: actually drives human behavior and also our susceptibility to messaging
Speaker 3: and marketing and just become a little bit more wary
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 1: So, given all your research on this, what practical tips
Speaker 1: would you give a listener?
Speaker 3: Okay, So I have a couple of practical tips, and
Speaker 3: actually one of them's old tech, and it's really just
Speaker 3: buying a journal, buying a book with a paper and pen,
Speaker 3: and keeping a record of your life, both the good
Speaker 3: and the bad, but particularly the bad, and writing it
Speaker 3: down because left you owned devices. When you're trying to
Speaker 3: sort things out in your head, first of all, you're
Speaker 3: operating from a real awkward position because you're biased and
Speaker 3: you're blowing things up a portion. But by documenting it,
Speaker 3: the process of writing things down, and I think writing
Speaker 3: it rather than putting it down on a computer is
Speaker 3: really important because it requires effort and processing. Any setback
Speaker 3: in that tangible way works because I think it gives
Speaker 3: you the time and the perspective to get things more
Speaker 3: accurate as it were. But moreover, you then have accumulating
Speaker 3: record of your life. And when you look back over
Speaker 3: your old journals or your old diaries and you can
Speaker 3: suddenly realize that life does get better. You might be
Speaker 3: in a situation where you think things can never improve.
Speaker 3: But when you've got the luxury of looking back over
Speaker 3: your life and seeing how things have changed, I think
Speaker 3: that's an incredible insight and powerful way of documenting that.
Speaker 3: You know, it's not what happens to you, it's how
Speaker 3: you react that matters.
Speaker 1: Excellent any other tips.
Speaker 3: Don't underestimate the power of connection. I think it's really
Speaker 3: important to show humanity, to always err on the side
Speaker 3: practice active listening. This is something you do well obviously
Speaker 3: as a podcaster, which is when you're in a conversation,
Speaker 3: really listen to other people say and figure a question
Speaker 3: you can ask them because first of all, that makes
Speaker 3: the experience and the conversation more enjoyable on authentic, but
Speaker 3: also signals to the other person that you have been
Speaker 3: paying attention to them, which is an incredibly gratifying experience.
Speaker 3: That really will generate a real sense of connection, and
Speaker 3: I think that is the best way to get productive interactions.
Speaker 1: That was my interview with psychologist Bruce Hood as we
Speaker 1: talked about the science of happiness and Bruce's book by
Speaker 1: that title. So where does that leave us? Well, one
Speaker 1: takeaway from today's conversation is this, happiness isn't something you
Speaker 1: stumble on by winning the lottery or getting that car.
Speaker 1: It's not something you can buy or collect or win
Speaker 1: once and for all, like crossing a finish line. It's
Speaker 1: more like a direction you choose to walk in, and
Speaker 1: you can take small steps to get you moving the
Speaker 1: right way. The ideas that Bruce talked about suggests that
Speaker 1: happiness isn't so much about what happens to us, but
Speaker 1: more about how we engage with the world, how we
Speaker 1: connect with others, how we frame our experiences, how we
Speaker 1: find purpose in what we do. It's shaped by our
Speaker 1: biology in part, but also by our habits, our attention,
Speaker 1: and the stories that we tell ourselves. And yes, there
Speaker 1: are things we cannot control. Life's always going to throw curveballs,
Speaker 1: but it turns out that how we respond to those
Speaker 1: challenges makes a big difference, whether we cultivate optimism, whether
Speaker 1: we stay socially connected, whether we avoid negative comparisons, how
Speaker 1: we control our attention. So we'll just remind us that
Speaker 1: the Constitution in the United States doesn't promise anybody happiness,
Speaker 1: but instead freedom for the pursuit of happiness. And I
Speaker 1: think that tells us that the nation's forefathers had a
Speaker 1: view consistent with the lessons here today, which is that
Speaker 1: happiness is not a finish line to cross, but it's
Speaker 1: more like a practice, something that can be nurtured and
Speaker 1: strengthened over time. In other words, happiness is a pursuit
Speaker 1: and it is shaped by the choices we make every
Speaker 1: single day. There's no single formula, but there are patterns,
Speaker 1: there are clues, and there's growing scientific data about what
Speaker 1: actually matters. So wherever you are on that path, I
Speaker 1: hope that today's conversation brought a little more light to it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining me. Go to eagleman dot com
Speaker 1: slash podcast for more information and to find further reading.
Speaker 1: Check out my newsletter on substack and be a part
Speaker 1: of the online chats there. You can watch videos of
Speaker 1: Inner Cosmos on YouTube, where you can leave comments. Until
Speaker 1: next time, I'm David Eagleman, and this is Inner Cosmos.