Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey, Slight Changers, it's Maya. I've got a special
Speaker 1: episode for you. In honor of World Happiness Day. I
Speaker 1: chat with doctor Laurie Santos, host of another Pushkin podcast,
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab. She's also a friend and mentor of mine.
Speaker 1: This conversation is a kind of greatest Hits mixtape of
Speaker 1: the best tips and strategies for leading a happier life.
Speaker 1: And now that's what I call happiness Volume one situation. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I just really love nineties callbacks. Anyway, I hope you
Speaker 1: enjoy it, and I would love to hear from you
Speaker 1: about the things you try out. Hi, Laurie, Hello A Maya.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining me on a slight change of
Speaker 1: plans in honor of World Happiness Day.
Speaker 2: I love it. Thanks so much for having me on
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 1: So I alluded to this, but it's worth sharing with
Speaker 1: folks that I've actually known you since I was seventeen
Speaker 1: years old. I was a student of.
Speaker 2: Yours alost eight years.
Speaker 1: No, I know, it feels like it's been so much longer.
Speaker 1: I was a freshman in your monkey Lab class and
Speaker 1: you ended up being my academic advisor for all four years,
Speaker 1: and at the time your research lab was focused on cognition, right,
Speaker 1: differences between monkeys and humans, And I would never have
Speaker 1: known at the time that at some point you would
Speaker 1: pivot and start focusing on happiness research. So can you
Speaker 1: share what led to that shift?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just so so much of a surprise
Speaker 2: for me too, interestingly, but yeah, no, So, I mean
Speaker 2: I was doing all this work on kind of comparative
Speaker 2: cognition and studying monkeys, you know, happily doing that work,
Speaker 2: and then I took on a new role at Yale,
Speaker 2: I becoming what's called the head of college. And so
Speaker 2: I know you know this, but for your listeners, Yell's
Speaker 2: one of these weird schools like Hogwarts and Harry Potter,
Speaker 2: where there's like colleges within a college. There's like Gryffindor
Speaker 2: and Slytherin kind of thing. Yale has these too. I
Speaker 2: was head of what's called Silliman College, and that meant
Speaker 2: that I, as a faculty member, lived on campus with students.
Speaker 2: So I hang out with them in the dining hall
Speaker 2: and I just you know, saw them in the coffee shop.
Speaker 2: I was like really much closer to student life than
Speaker 2: I was, even you know, running my lab where I
Speaker 2: got to know students really well, and honestly, I just
Speaker 2: didn't like what I was seeing. I was seeing the
Speaker 2: college student mental health crisis up close and personnel, where
Speaker 2: just in my community we had so many students who
Speaker 2: were self reporting experiencing like extreme anxiety or suicidality or
Speaker 2: panic attacks. It was just like on the ground, just
Speaker 2: so sad and scary that these students' lives were just
Speaker 2: like riddled with these mental health issues. And this is
Speaker 2: not just what's going on at Yale or any other
Speaker 2: IVY League campus. This is what's happening nationally right now,
Speaker 2: where nationally over sixty five percent of college students report
Speaker 2: being more anxious and overwhelmingly anxious, such that they can't
Speaker 2: get any work done. Like the stats are just like
Speaker 2: staggering when you look at them. That was when I
Speaker 2: made this pivot to studying happiness. I was like, I
Speaker 2: need to figure out ways that I can help my students,
Speaker 2: right Like my job as a professor means I need
Speaker 2: to take care of the mental health of these students
Speaker 2: that are around me. And one way I can do
Speaker 2: that is to try to figure out, like what are
Speaker 2: strategies that we know from science that students can use
Speaker 2: to feel happier. And so I made this whole new class,
Speaker 2: Psychology and the Good Life that I thought, would you know,
Speaker 2: be just like a normal class on Yelle's campus. But
Speaker 2: in the end it kind of went a little bit viral.
Speaker 2: Over twelve hundred students showed up on the first day
Speaker 2: of class to be part of this new class that
Speaker 2: we were teaching, and I think it showed that, like
Speaker 2: young people today are voting with their feet, like they
Speaker 2: don't like this culture of feeling stressed out and anxious,
Speaker 2: and they really just wanted to learn how they could
Speaker 2: kind of protect their well being. And so from there
Speaker 2: I kind of retrained in this new domain of happiness
Speaker 2: studies and realized it was useful not just for Yale students,
Speaker 2: but useful for like, honestly everyone, because everybody's trying to
Speaker 2: be happy. Everyone's sort of feeling a little bit burned
Speaker 2: out these days and feeling a little stressed, and I
Speaker 2: think so many of us are looking for strategies from
Speaker 2: science about what we can do to feel better.
Speaker 1: So I want to establish the basics because there are
Speaker 1: so many definitions of happiness out there, and there's so
Speaker 1: many questions philosophical questions about what happiness is. Is it satisfaction?
Speaker 1: Is it joy? Is it fulfillment? Is it pleasure? And
Speaker 1: I really love how you and many other psychologists define
Speaker 1: and measure happiness because to me, it encompasses so many
Speaker 1: of these concepts. So do you mind sharing how you
Speaker 1: think of that happiness?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So this is a definition that I've taken from
Speaker 2: Sonya Lubermirski, who's a professor at UC Riverside, and she
Speaker 2: thinks about happiness as being defined as being happy in
Speaker 2: your life and being happy with your life. So let's
Speaker 2: kind of break this down. So, being happy in your
Speaker 2: life this is the idea that you have a decent
Speaker 2: number of positive emotions, or at least a decent ratio
Speaker 2: of positive emotions to negative emotions. I think bracketed happiness
Speaker 2: is not about getting rid of all of your negative emotions.
Speaker 2: That's toxic positivity. That's not what happiness researchers mean, but
Speaker 2: it does mean and like having a decent ratio of
Speaker 2: positive things like cheerfulness and joy and laughter to the
Speaker 2: not so good things like anger and sadness and so on.
Speaker 2: So that's kind of being happy in your life, but
Speaker 2: being happy with your life is a different construct. It's
Speaker 2: how you think your life is going. So it's your
Speaker 2: answer to the question, all things considered, how satisfied are
Speaker 2: you with your life? And so researchers have called these
Speaker 2: the affective and cognitive parts of subjective well being. So
Speaker 2: the affective like the more emotional parts of happiness, and
Speaker 2: the cognitive how you think your life is going parts
Speaker 2: of happiness. And I love this definition because it shows
Speaker 2: us a couple of things. One is, it shows us
Speaker 2: that these constructs can dissociate. And you probably know people
Speaker 2: for whom they've dissociated. I have a friend who has
Speaker 2: a newborn baby right now, and you know she is
Speaker 2: with her life quite happy, right, you know, she's this
Speaker 2: new like meaningful, bunderful love of joy who she loves
Speaker 2: and you know, can't wait to see his future and
Speaker 2: so on. But like in her life, maybe the emotions
Speaker 2: are not as good, right, there's like, yeah, it's like
Speaker 2: it's a rough go and you like have a newborn baby, right.
Speaker 2: And we probably also can come up with examples of
Speaker 2: the opposite. You know, somebody who might have in their
Speaker 2: life all these like hedonistic pleasures. You know, think of
Speaker 2: some like super rich or super famous person, but with
Speaker 2: their life, maybe they feel a certain emptiness. Right. And
Speaker 2: So I love this definition because I think it captures
Speaker 2: so much of what I'm trying to help my students
Speaker 2: with and what I'm trying to help my listeners with
Speaker 2: with happiness. What I want them to have is a
Speaker 2: life that's filled with lots of positive emotion and a
Speaker 2: life that feels satisfying to live a life that they
Speaker 2: think is going well. And the great news is there's
Speaker 2: so many strategies that we can use to boost both
Speaker 2: of those constructs up.
Speaker 1: What is the time horizon for thinking about the like
Speaker 1: in your life versus the with your life? Because in
Speaker 1: any given day, I wonder, you know, can you have
Speaker 1: both that moment to moment understanding of your happiness and
Speaker 1: then also that reflective experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean this is a hard one. And this
Speaker 2: is where we get to a sort of dirty secret
Speaker 2: of the entire happiness science work, which is that to
Speaker 2: measure people happiness in their life and with their life,
Speaker 2: we have to ask them, right, Like I wish we
Speaker 2: had a little thermometer that we could stick in someone's
Speaker 2: mouth that would say, well, in your life, you're you
Speaker 2: know ninety nine point six happy, you know, out of
Speaker 2: one hundred or something, But we don't. We have to
Speaker 2: kind of ask people, and that brings up the problem
Speaker 2: that whenever we're asking people, we're getting people's like retrospective
Speaker 2: judgment about how things are going. If I were to
Speaker 2: ask you, hey, you know what, how many positive emotions
Speaker 2: did you experience this week? You'd have to think back
Speaker 2: and make an evaluation of, well, how was that farmer's market,
Speaker 2: how was that you know, interesting coffee shop I went to? Right,
Speaker 2: you'd have to kind of make a remembered judgment about something.
Speaker 2: The same is true and even more true in the
Speaker 2: case of your happiness with your life. Right, you kind
Speaker 2: of have to do a sort of summing of, like, well,
Speaker 2: all things considered, how satisfied am I? You're kind of
Speaker 2: making this sort of very cognitive judgment, and all of
Speaker 2: the judgments are a little bit retrospective, right, And it
Speaker 2: makes us worry that, like, maybe the judgments go wrong,
Speaker 2: and maybe those judgments particularly go wrong if you ask
Speaker 2: people after a long time horizon. You know, many of
Speaker 2: these happiness studies try to to do an analysis like
Speaker 2: in the particular day, so tag you right now, like
Speaker 2: how many positive emotions have you experienced this week? So
Speaker 2: hopefully you'll kind of remember accurately. But sometimes we're having
Speaker 2: people give these retrospections a while back, and we might
Speaker 2: be tapping into maybe a different form of happiness and
Speaker 2: people's remembered happiness than in their kind of happiness in
Speaker 2: the moment. This is something that researcher Danny Conneman calls
Speaker 2: this distinction between experienced happiness and remembered happiness, Like it's
Speaker 2: hard to know the experienced happiness because I have to
Speaker 2: like ask you immediately and make sure you're not kind
Speaker 2: of remembering to get it right. But you know, Danny
Speaker 2: has this interesting quip where he says, well, which of
Speaker 2: these happinesses are we trying to maximize our experience or
Speaker 2: our remembered happiness? And I feel like he kind of
Speaker 2: comes down on the side of the remembered happiness, you know,
Speaker 2: like the experienced happiness that's gone, Like all you have
Speaker 2: access to is what you remember, and so maybe we
Speaker 2: might want to maximize that one instead.
Speaker 1: So a foundational message of your work is that we
Speaker 1: as humans mispredict what is going to make us happy.
Speaker 1: When it comes to happiness, we always have a well,
Speaker 1: as soon as X happens, or as soon as Y happens,
Speaker 1: as soon as I get to Z, that's when I'll
Speaker 1: be happy. Right. We stall our happiness in present day
Speaker 1: with the hope that this future event will deliver all
Speaker 1: the goods. And it might be for someone a promotion
Speaker 1: they're waiting for, or having a family, or finally finding
Speaker 1: a partner to get married to. And we just put
Speaker 1: so much stock in that one event and then inevitably,
Speaker 1: at least the research shows it will disappoint us, right
Speaker 1: that end destination.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is what researchers call the arrival fallacy, right,
Speaker 2: or I like to call it the happily ever after fallacy,
Speaker 2: Like this thing happens and I'll be happy ever after, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So for example, you know my, like, some high school
Speaker 2: student applies to Yale. They're really excited about it. They
Speaker 2: get in. They over predict that that event of getting
Speaker 2: into Yale will feel amazing, like super super amazing, and
Speaker 2: they predict that that feeling of happiness will last for
Speaker 2: a really long time. It turns out it doesn't feel
Speaker 2: as amazing as you think, and that amazing feeling doesn't
Speaker 2: last for as long as you think, And that's not
Speaker 2: just true of getting into YEA, it's true of any
Speaker 2: positive fact, whether that's like getting married or winning the lottery.
Speaker 2: You know, pick your favorite positive thing. It just like
Speaker 2: doesn't impact you for as much or as long as
Speaker 2: you think. But this has like good news attached to
Speaker 2: it as well, which is that the same is true
Speaker 2: for negative events, you know, So pick your terrible negative
Speaker 2: event right, Like you get divorced, you go bankrupt, like
Speaker 2: you lose the ability to use your leg, you become paraplegic.
Speaker 2: For example, all those things we predict would be really
Speaker 2: really really bad. It would very negatively affect our happiness,
Speaker 2: and we would feel pretty crappy about it for a
Speaker 2: long time. But it turns out that we even more
Speaker 2: strongly mispredict in the negative direction. So, you know, we mispredict,
Speaker 2: for example, that getting into yel will feel really good.
Speaker 2: We even more mispredict that having a car crash and
Speaker 2: becoming paraplegic would feel really bad, And we even more
Speaker 2: strongly mispredict how long these negative events are going to last.
Speaker 2: And so research by Harvard professor Dan Gilbert has found
Speaker 2: that our impact bias is worse in the negative direction
Speaker 2: than it is in the positive directions. We make even
Speaker 2: more mispredictions when we're dealing with bad events, which is
Speaker 2: kind of good news, right, because it means that all
Speaker 2: those things, all these things aren't really scared of, they're
Speaker 2: not going to be as bad as we think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And can you talk a bit about this concept
Speaker 1: of the happiness set point and how when you talk
Speaker 1: about this mixed prediction, what ends up happening is we
Speaker 1: often just return back to our baseline faster than we
Speaker 1: might have thought.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And so this is a phenomenon the researchers often
Speaker 2: refer to as hedonic adaptation, where you just kind of
Speaker 2: you go back to wherever your set point was and
Speaker 2: happiness no matter what the good stuff and the bad
Speaker 2: stuff is. And again that can feel a little bit depressing, right.
Speaker 2: We want these new circumstances in our life that are
Speaker 2: good to have this positive impact on our happiness for
Speaker 2: a while, but actually we kind of just mostly go
Speaker 2: back to baseline. But that means the same is true
Speaker 2: for all the crappy stuff in life, Like some terrible
Speaker 2: thing happens, and it will, you know, hurt a little
Speaker 2: bit less than we think, maybe for a while, but
Speaker 2: not for as long as we think, and so we're
Speaker 2: much more stable in our set points for happy than
Speaker 2: we expect.
Speaker 1: I still remember learning about this research for the first time,
Speaker 1: and I think this is the most powerful finding that
Speaker 1: I've come across in my entire time as a cognitive
Speaker 1: scientist when it came to impacting my personal life. And
Speaker 1: I think that's because my philosophy around life is to
Speaker 1: minimize suffering. I'm less concerned with maximizing the positive, and
Speaker 1: suffering is what scares the crap out of me, right,
Speaker 1: and so learning that I would be more resilient in
Speaker 1: the face of that suffering has been just I mean,
Speaker 1: it was a boon. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, how often are we like, really over analyzing
Speaker 2: some decision because we're trying to avoid some negative outcome
Speaker 2: when we could really say to ourselves, actually, if that
Speaker 2: worst case scenario happened, I'd actually be fine with it,
Speaker 2: or I'd be more fine than I think, and it
Speaker 2: wouldn't impact me for as long as I think. And
Speaker 2: so I think, Yeah, recognizing that your impact bias can
Speaker 2: kind of make you a little bit more resilient. It
Speaker 2: can make you a little bit more open to however
Speaker 2: the world is going to be like.
Speaker 1: Risk seeking, you knowing of closure. Yeah, and how robust
Speaker 1: are those findings Because there are times where I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm exceptional in this way. So I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: the average person will be really resilient, but I kmm a,
Speaker 1: maaya won't be because I suck in a particular way.
Speaker 1: And so can people buy and large feel fairly good
Speaker 1: given their mental constitution that they will show these effects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, there is you know, well,
Speaker 2: there's like this so called replication crisis in psychology, but like,
Speaker 2: I don't think there's any replication crisis when it comes
Speaker 2: to effective forecasting or impact bias. This is the kind
Speaker 2: of thing that everybody shows and people is shoe it
Speaker 2: both in these like natural field data, like of people
Speaker 2: who actually have wonderful and terrible things happen, like winning
Speaker 2: the lottery and so on. This is like one that
Speaker 2: seems to be a universal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, that's great. That's great because I can I've
Speaker 1: definitely felt that way, and I can imagine a lot
Speaker 1: of people listening thinking okay, yeah, sure on average, but
Speaker 1: you know me not really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is super important, right, because a
Speaker 2: real problem with these like cognitive errors is that even
Speaker 2: when we learn how they work, they don't go away. Right,
Speaker 2: So I like literally have whole podcast episodes and whole
Speaker 2: lectures about hedonic adaptation. But when I'm making a prediction
Speaker 2: about something happening, I get just as freaked out about it.
Speaker 2: I get just as worried, Like I am just as
Speaker 2: bad at predicting as everybody else. But I can kind
Speaker 2: of remember the data and sort of course correct a
Speaker 2: little bit after the fact. And so I think that's important, right, Like,
Speaker 2: knowing about these biases doesn't make them go away, It
Speaker 2: just makes you, like have a little bit more awareness.
Speaker 2: You can kind of update a little bit after the fact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, as you know, I studied visual perception
Speaker 1: and undergrad and it was it was akin to you know,
Speaker 1: the visual illusions and illusion. But you can't unsee it exactly.
Speaker 1: At least in the case of happiness. We can be
Speaker 1: a little bit more intentional, deliverate and change our mental frames.
Speaker 1: But yeah, absolutely, I think I'm sure this happens to
Speaker 1: a lot of people. Assume given the field we're in, Oh,
Speaker 1: you must be so disciplined about eating and exercise and
Speaker 1: all these other things, and it's like not really. We
Speaker 1: know the tactics, but implement them is a different matter altogether.
Speaker 2: In fact, my next whole season of the podcast is
Speaker 2: going to be about happiness challenges that I face on
Speaker 2: the Happiness Lab. So fun, yeah, so fun, but also
Speaker 2: so personal and kind of so painful.
Speaker 1: How fixed is this? So if I'm someone listening to
Speaker 1: this podcast and I'm thinking, look, I'm committed to being happier,
Speaker 1: I really want to be happier. I'm going to work
Speaker 1: super super hard, Laurie, what do you have to tell
Speaker 1: me in terms of hope in this domain.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So there's some bad news and good news, as
Speaker 2: there often is in science. So the bad news is
Speaker 2: that there is a heritable component to our overall subjective
Speaker 2: well being. Like, if you grew up with parents who
Speaker 2: are really unhappy and you have the genes for unhappiness,
Speaker 2: it's going to be harder for you to be happy
Speaker 2: than it might be for somebody to whom happiness comes
Speaker 2: a little bit more naturally. So there is a sort
Speaker 2: of heritable component to happiness, but it's pretty tiny, right,
Speaker 2: It's tinier than most of the other traits that we
Speaker 2: have out there, And that means there's lots of room
Speaker 2: for malleyability. So the good news is that that range
Speaker 2: is really really flexible. It's much more flexible than we think. Like,
Speaker 2: even if you're a natural kind of set point right
Speaker 2: now might be feeling a little bit unhappy, that doesn't
Speaker 2: necessarily say that you're going to be stuck right there
Speaker 2: for your whole life. There's probably a rain you might
Speaker 2: not be like the happiest person on the planet, but
Speaker 2: you can engage with strategies to become much happier than
Speaker 2: you are right now. The problem is that we do
Speaker 2: that the wrong way. The problem is that we do
Speaker 2: that by like trying to change our circumstances. We try
Speaker 2: to go for the lotteries and the big college wins,
Speaker 2: as we were just talking about. We try to engage
Speaker 2: in things that are just not going to feel as
Speaker 2: happy as we think. The key to really changing our
Speaker 2: happiness is that we need to realize the right ways
Speaker 2: to do it.
Speaker 1: One really powerful finding is that even small tweaks in
Speaker 1: the way we frame an experience can have a big
Speaker 1: impact on the way that we process it from a
Speaker 1: hedonic perspective, And so can you talk about the role
Speaker 1: that expectations play in the way that we interpret in experience.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, expectations are huge. I mean, wasn't it Shakespeare?
Speaker 2: There's nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is like how basically all of our
Speaker 2: psychology works. We just don't do it in objective terms.
Speaker 2: We think in terms of some reference point, and it's
Speaker 2: also often some reference point that makes us feel kind
Speaker 2: of crappy about whatever we've just gotten or achieved in
Speaker 2: our own life. My favorite example of this comes from
Speaker 2: the Olympics. So imagine that you're some amazing athlete, you're
Speaker 2: an Olympian, and you win a silver medal, right like
Speaker 2: your second best in the entire world in some sport.
Speaker 2: You might think I would feel amazing, right, But it
Speaker 2: turns out that if you actually analyze how silver medalists
Speaker 2: experience receiving the silver medal, they're not feeling elated. They're
Speaker 2: actually feeling awful. If you analyze their like emotional expressions
Speaker 2: on the stand, like you see expressions of contempt discussed,
Speaker 2: like deep sadness, right like, it looks like they've like
Speaker 2: you know, lost a loved one or something. It's that terrible,
Speaker 2: and you say, like, what is going on, Well, what's
Speaker 2: going on is that they're evaluating based on an expectation,
Speaker 2: a reference point. What's the obvious reference point? If you've
Speaker 2: won silver, it's a gold medal. You didn't get that,
Speaker 2: and you don't see that you've beat you know, millions
Speaker 2: and millions of people around the world. You just see,
Speaker 2: I didn't do as good as I could have done.
Speaker 2: And what's super interesting is that if you analyze the
Speaker 2: emotional expressions of bronze medalists, you see just the opposite.
Speaker 2: They are elated, they are happy. Sometimes they're even happier
Speaker 2: than the person who won the gold medal. And the
Speaker 2: reason is that their reference point is totally different. What's
Speaker 2: the reference point that's staling it? If you just want
Speaker 2: a bronze medal, like you weren't going to get gold,
Speaker 2: you are like many seconds or you know, many moments away, right,
Speaker 2: like many points away. Your reference point is like, if
Speaker 2: i'd just done a little bit worse, I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: up here at all, Like I would no metal, no
Speaker 2: metal at all. Right, And so you are thrilled, You're like,
Speaker 2: by the skin of my teeth, I'm up here, and
Speaker 2: my parents are gonna be so proud. This is great, right,
Speaker 2: that's the power of reference points. Like we're not thinking
Speaker 2: in terms of our objective performance. We're just thinking in
Speaker 2: terms of how we did relative to some expectation. And
Speaker 2: that's powerful because it means if we set the right expectations,
Speaker 2: we could probably feel a lot happier with however we
Speaker 2: did objectively.
Speaker 1: Still ahead, Laurie and I talk about science back strategies
Speaker 1: for making yourself happier. We'll be back in a moment
Speaker 1: with a slight change of plans. All right, so, Lari,
Speaker 1: let's talk through what the research says about how we
Speaker 1: can become happier. Let's start with strong social relationships. This
Speaker 1: seems to be like the number one thing.
Speaker 2: It's very, very.
Speaker 1: Very hard to be happy if you lack this, So
Speaker 1: tell me more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, people like Marty Seligman and Ed Diner are these
Speaker 2: super famous positive psychology researchers claim that social connection is
Speaker 2: a necessary condition for high happiness. Right. You cannot be
Speaker 2: highly happy without it. And that's because, like we're social primates, right,
Speaker 2: we really get lots of positive emotion out of being
Speaker 2: with other people. We feel like our life is more
Speaker 2: satisfying when we're close to others, and there's tons of
Speaker 2: evidence that just people who spend more time with the
Speaker 2: people they care about, and who just spend more time
Speaker 2: with people all together wind up feeling happier. And importantly,
Speaker 2: this is true whether you're an introvert or an extrovert.
Speaker 2: I sometimes hear from a lot of my listeners who
Speaker 2: are introverts who say things like, Okay, that social connection
Speaker 2: thing sounds great for some extrovert like you, but for
Speaker 2: an introvert like me, that sounds miserable. And really, what
Speaker 2: the data show are that if you're an introvert, you
Speaker 2: do need some alone time, but you still get the
Speaker 2: same kind of positive emotion boost from being around other people,
Speaker 2: especially when you interact with other people in like small settings,
Speaker 2: you know, calling a friend or hanging out with someone
Speaker 2: you're really close to. Right, And so I think this
Speaker 2: is just a human universal that social connection winds up
Speaker 2: making us happier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Also, are you even an extrovert? I feel like
Speaker 1: you're kind of in you Why not?
Speaker 2: I get us of being an extrovert all the time
Speaker 2: because I talk about social connection, But you know me,
Speaker 2: like I would look solo in my house all the time.
Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, just because you have a podcast doesn't make
Speaker 1: you an extrovert, right exactly. Yeah, And I think I
Speaker 1: definitely found a hit to my well being during COVID,
Speaker 1: where it wasn't possible anymore to engage in small talk
Speaker 1: with people that I would see to coffee shop or
Speaker 1: just waving and smiling to people on the street. Those
Speaker 1: little moments were so precious, and I'd been taking them
Speaker 1: for granted, because when I lost that ability that part
Speaker 1: of my social fabric, I really felt affected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think a lot of people were, not
Speaker 2: just during COVID, but you know, there's tons of evidence
Speaker 2: that these weak ties, these kind of quick conversations we
Speaker 2: have with the brista at a coffee shop or just
Speaker 2: like someone on the street, they wind up being really
Speaker 2: important for our positive mood. Researcher Nick Epley, who's a
Speaker 2: professor at the University of Chicago who studies this phenomenon
Speaker 2: he calls undersociality, where we like don't take into account
Speaker 2: our social connection as much as we should. He describes
Speaker 2: happiness overall as a leaky tire. You know, you're kind
Speaker 2: of happy for a while, but your happiness tires leak
Speaker 2: in and you got to fill it up. And he
Speaker 2: says that These quick conversations with strangers are like one
Speaker 2: of the fastest ways to fill up your leaky tire.
Speaker 1: One thing I've tried to do recently to strengthen social
Speaker 1: connections is just call people on the phone. I've just
Speaker 1: started doing that, and I think it really just freaked
Speaker 1: people out in the beginning, because they're like, whoa, do
Speaker 1: we have like a scheduled time?
Speaker 2: What happened right?
Speaker 1: It's like four fourteen. I don't think we had a
Speaker 1: call scheduled. This actually happened a couple of weeks ago
Speaker 1: where Michael lewis a friend of both of ours and
Speaker 1: someone who also has a pushkin podcast. I was just
Speaker 1: thinking about him, so I gave him a phone call
Speaker 1: and he picked up and was like, did you just
Speaker 1: butt dial me? Maya like this has to be a
Speaker 1: butt dial and I was like, no, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to say hello and see how you were doing. Turned
Speaker 1: out he was battling the flu, he had been in
Speaker 1: bed for a few days, and he loved the company,
Speaker 1: and we had a great chat and it boosted his mood.
Speaker 1: And it just built my confidence that those unexpected moments
Speaker 1: where you just call people and connect with them can
Speaker 1: be really powerful, but it takes a little bit of courage.
Speaker 2: It does take a little bit of courage. I mean,
Speaker 2: I think the problem with social connection is that there's
Speaker 2: a little friction there, right, especially given the other things
Speaker 2: we have to do that aren't social connection, right, Like
Speaker 2: you're picking up the phone and dialing it and calling
Speaker 2: michae Lewis, Like, there's a little awkwardness there. It's much
Speaker 2: easier to just like scroll on your Instagram or do
Speaker 2: something dumb that kind of has this feeling of social
Speaker 2: connection but isn't as social as we think. And so
Speaker 2: I think one of the tasks of engaging in more
Speaker 2: social connection is we have to overcome that like speed,
Speaker 2: bump of friction, cost of like a little bit of vulnerability,
Speaker 2: a little bit of work to kind of make those connections.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, speaking of phones, let's talk about the role
Speaker 1: of technology and our phones and what impact they have
Speaker 1: on our on our social connections, and then what we
Speaker 1: can do about that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean phones are so ironic, right. They were literally
Speaker 2: built so that we could talk to other people, like
Speaker 2: that is what the purpose of a phone was. But
Speaker 2: now phones have become this tool that we can use
Speaker 2: to look at our email or check what's going on
Speaker 2: in politics, or you know, look at a million other
Speaker 2: factoids in the world. What started as a tool just
Speaker 2: for connecting with other people has turned into, honestly, this
Speaker 2: terrible opportunity costs when it comes to connecting with other people.
Speaker 2: How often have you, you know, been out at dinner
Speaker 2: and looked over and seen some couple or they're like
Speaker 2: both just looking at their phone and they have this
Speaker 2: precious time to talk to one another in real life,
Speaker 2: but they're just like not actually speaking to one another.
Speaker 2: Or sadly at times that I've done that myself where
Speaker 2: my husband saying something and I was like, oh uh,
Speaker 2: could you say that again? What? I was looking at
Speaker 2: my email? Right? And this is terrible, right. It means
Speaker 2: that we might be missing out on something really important
Speaker 2: with the social connections we have in real life because
Speaker 2: we're like looking at some dumb stuff on the internet.
Speaker 2: And so, how can we deal with this opportunity cost
Speaker 2: in like a healthy way? And one of my favorite
Speaker 2: strategies comes from the journalist Catherine Price. She has this
Speaker 2: strategy that she calls WWW, which is an acronym that
Speaker 2: stands for what for, why now and what else? And
Speaker 2: so Her idea is that whenever you happen to notice
Speaker 2: that your phone in your hand, you ask those questions.
Speaker 2: First off, what for? Was there some purpose that I
Speaker 2: was looking? You know, I was really looking at the weather?
Speaker 2: Or did it just like wind up there? Because like
Speaker 2: with no purpose in mind, I'm just like scrolling through whatever? Right? Why? Now? Right?
Speaker 2: This is the sort of emotional question, like what caused
Speaker 2: me to pick up my phone? Was it some functional reason?
Speaker 2: Or maybe it was boredom, or maybe I was feeling awkward?
Speaker 2: What's the kind of queue that caused you to pick
Speaker 2: up your phone? And then, perhaps most important, what else?
Speaker 2: That's the opportunity cost question? What am I missing out on?
Speaker 1: That's the big one.
Speaker 2: That's a big one, right, is like am I just
Speaker 2: like not being present in the world, or am I
Speaker 2: ignoring my husband? Or am I avoiding something? Right? Like?
Speaker 2: What's the opportunity cost of being on your phone?
Speaker 1: Right now?
Speaker 2: And I love this acronym because it doesn't say like
Speaker 2: get off your phone all the time, right, but it
Speaker 2: allows you to mindfully notice what's happening when you're on
Speaker 2: your devices and how those devices are making you feel,
Speaker 2: and what you happen to be missing out on it
Speaker 2: kind of brings to light the things that you might
Speaker 2: be missing by being on your phone.
Speaker 1: I love to also talk about another happiness tip that
Speaker 1: I know has a lot of personal resonance for you,
Speaker 1: because this is something you've really struggled with. Can you
Speaker 1: talk about time affluence? Ah?
Speaker 2: Yes, time affluence. This is the subjective sense that we
Speaker 2: have some free time, something that until recently was very
Speaker 2: foreign to me because I experienced the opposite, which is
Speaker 2: what researchers call time famine, where you're literally starving for time.
Speaker 2: And research shows it time famine feels a lot like
Speaker 2: hunger famine, like it works a lot like that in
Speaker 2: your body, where you're literally you're activating your fight or
Speaker 2: flight system and so on. And it turns out that
Speaker 2: time famine is really bad for your happiness. And so
Speaker 2: the answer is that we need to kind of free
Speaker 2: up more time. We need to prioritize our time. And
Speaker 2: one way to do that, researcher actually will In suggests,
Speaker 2: is to like trade off more time for money. Often
Speaker 2: we can do these things with our money that give
Speaker 2: us back more time, but we don't usually frame it
Speaker 2: like that. So take going out to eat, head out,
Speaker 2: to eat. You know, you and your husband Jimmy head
Speaker 2: out to eat. That's like some food that you didn't
Speaker 2: have to cook yourself. Those are dishes you didn't have
Speaker 2: to prepare, you didn't need to look up the recipe.
Speaker 2: Going out to dinner with your husband might be a
Speaker 2: time savings of what like an hour and a half
Speaker 2: two hours. The question is like, what did you use
Speaker 2: that time for? Right, So this is a simple active
Speaker 2: reframing that we can use with something as silly as
Speaker 2: going out to dinner to realize like, hey, that was
Speaker 2: a spot where I spent some money to give myself
Speaker 2: back some time. And Willin's points out that you know, look,
Speaker 2: this might sound privileged to some foak who have discretionary income,
Speaker 2: but when she finds us at every level, if you
Speaker 2: have any discretionary income whatsoever, the more you spend that
Speaker 2: discretionary income to get back time, the happier you are.
Speaker 2: So this isn't just for like rich people who get
Speaker 2: to go out to like you know, like Michelin starred
Speaker 2: restaurants all the time. This is any of us. Can
Speaker 2: you know, pay the kid next door to like pick
Speaker 2: up the yard or clean up the snow, or take
Speaker 2: out the trash. Right, These like simple ways of spending
Speaker 2: some money to get back time can be important, but
Speaker 2: I think a bigger strategies to take time to remember
Speaker 2: that you should use the time you do have wisely.
Speaker 2: The journalist Bridget Shult coined this term that I love
Speaker 2: called time confetti, which refers to these little pieces of
Speaker 2: time that are floating around. You know that five minutes
Speaker 2: when your Zoom meeting ends early, or the ten minutes
Speaker 2: when your kid falls asleep quicker than expected. We never
Speaker 2: recognize that those are big chunks of time, so we
Speaker 2: just kind of blow that time confetti away. We just
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, I don't know, check our email, or
Speaker 2: scroll on Instagram, or scroll scroll scroll. If you add
Speaker 2: it up, it winds up being a lot of time.
Speaker 2: In fact, like researchers have found that we actually have
Speaker 2: more free time in our time confetti now than we
Speaker 2: did back in the day. It's just kind of broken
Speaker 2: up into these tiny chunks so we don't notice it.
Speaker 2: And so a strategy for improving your time affluence and
Speaker 2: your happiness is what can you do to make good
Speaker 2: use of that time confetti. Maybe that's when you call
Speaker 2: a friend you know who accused you of butt dialing him.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's the time when you like take time to
Speaker 2: do a quick deep breath. Maybe like that's the time
Speaker 2: when you engage in better self talk with yourself. We
Speaker 2: can use those time confetti moments to do any of
Speaker 2: these strategies that help us feel better and that can
Speaker 2: be really helpful for our happiness.
Speaker 1: I'd love to talk about my favorite happiness boosting strategy,
Speaker 1: which is being other oriented generally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think this is an important one, especially these days,
Speaker 2: because I think this is something that culture gets really wrong, right,
Speaker 2: Like I think these days, whenever we talk about happiness,
Speaker 2: we hear about things like self care or treat yourself.
Speaker 2: It's like self self self. We assume that happiness is
Speaker 2: just about investing in ourselves. But if you look at
Speaker 2: happy people, that's not what happy people are doing. Happy
Speaker 2: people tend to be much more other oriented. They're volunteering
Speaker 2: for charities, They're spending time on the people they care about.
Speaker 2: They're doing nice things for others, whether that's with their
Speaker 2: money or with their time. They just tend to be
Speaker 2: a lot more focused on other people's happiness than their
Speaker 2: own happiness. And research shows that even if that's not
Speaker 2: your natural inclination, you can engage with that a little
Speaker 2: bit more. Researchers like Liz Done in her colleagues at
Speaker 2: the University of British Columbia do these studies where they
Speaker 2: hand subjects money on the street but kind of force
Speaker 2: them to spend that money in particular ways. You're either
Speaker 2: forced to spend that money on something self careish, like
Speaker 2: you do something nice for yourself, or you're forced to
Speaker 2: spend that money on other people. And what she finds is,
Speaker 2: at the end of the day, those people who are
Speaker 2: forced to spend money on others wind up feeling happier
Speaker 2: than those that were forced to spend the same amount
Speaker 2: of money on something that was more for themselves, that
Speaker 2: was more selfish. And so I love this study because
Speaker 2: it suggests that even if that's not your natural inclination,
Speaker 2: you can kind of add in more stuff where you're
Speaker 2: just like a little bit more focused on other people,
Speaker 2: and that the evidence suggests that will naturally make you
Speaker 2: feel how.
Speaker 1: Beer I feel. Like I've heard before that the happiest
Speaker 1: people are the people who don't spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time thinking about their own happiness. Is that true? Like,
Speaker 1: is that what research shows.
Speaker 2: I think yes and no. Right, I think because of
Speaker 2: all these misconceptions, in some ways, we do have to
Speaker 2: focus on our happiness or we might be doing it wrong.
Speaker 2: Like I think, if we're pretending that these new circumstances
Speaker 2: will make us, you know, happy, and we have to
Speaker 2: have this specific achievement or this great outcome, like we're
Speaker 2: going to get that wrong. And so I do think
Speaker 2: that we want to be thinking about happiness, but we
Speaker 2: want to be thinking about it in the right way.
Speaker 2: What we assume people would do when I think about
Speaker 2: happiness is like me, me, me, you know, put in
Speaker 2: all these strategies. We don't think, Oh, they'll just take
Speaker 2: time to like be with other people, and they'll stop
Speaker 2: trying to achieve as much because they'll recognize the importance
Speaker 2: of time affluence, and we'll take lots of time off
Speaker 2: and rest, you know, or they'll you know, volunteer for
Speaker 2: charity and do this nice stuff for others. That's not
Speaker 2: our stereotype of people narcissistically pursuing happiness, And so I
Speaker 2: think it's not the pursuit of happiness that's the problem.
Speaker 2: It's the fact that we generally tend to do it wrong,
Speaker 2: start to do it right. You know, we'll feel happier
Speaker 2: and be better off because we were thinking about our
Speaker 2: happiness and trying to find good ways to pursue it.
Speaker 1: What advice do you have for people listening to this
Speaker 1: who don't feel licensed to be happy or feel guilty
Speaker 1: being happy because they take a look around them and
Speaker 1: they see so much suffering the world. It just it
Speaker 1: feels like it's almost too jarring to try and entertain
Speaker 1: happiness for themselves.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I'll start with saying I get it,
Speaker 2: like I look around in the world, and I'm a
Speaker 2: happiness expert, and I think exactly the same thing. But
Speaker 2: I think that idea comes from a certain assumption that
Speaker 2: we have about like positive emotions and happiness. I think
Speaker 2: we feel guilty feeling happy when the whole world is
Speaker 2: falling apart in part because we think, well, if I'm happy,
Speaker 2: I'm probably not going to do anything about it, right,
Speaker 2: I'm just going to like ignore the fact that the
Speaker 2: world is on fire, like if I feel good about it.
Speaker 1: Placency.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's kind of like a like a Pollyanna hypothesis
Speaker 2: where I'll just be like, it's like the dog and
Speaker 2: that meme with the fire where he's sitting in the
Speaker 2: fire and he's like, this is fine. Like if we're happy,
Speaker 2: we're like, this is fine. I don't care if the
Speaker 2: world's on fire. But that's a hypothesis about how the
Speaker 2: human mind works. It's a hypothesis that when we're in
Speaker 2: a positive mood, we're more likely to ignore the bad
Speaker 2: stuff going on in the world, and we're more likely
Speaker 2: to kind of just engage in inaction rather than doing
Speaker 2: something good about it. And RESEARCHERR. Constantin Kushlev at Georgetown
Speaker 2: has actually tested this. He's asked the question, Okay, who
Speaker 2: are the people who are out there doing the like
Speaker 2: really important social justice things in life, For example, who's
Speaker 2: going to a Black Lives Matter protest or who's taking
Speaker 2: climate action, like not just being anxious about the fact
Speaker 2: that the climate is changing its scary right now, but
Speaker 2: really doing stuff to protect it. And what he finds
Speaker 2: is that people's positive mood winds up predicting the amount
Speaker 2: of social justice action that people take. In other words,
Speaker 2: like the people who are in the best mood are
Speaker 2: the ones who are going to the protests, who are
Speaker 2: engaging in climate action and so on. And whenever I
Speaker 2: say that result, I'm always like, oh, yeah, of course
Speaker 2: that had to be the case, right, Like, if you're
Speaker 2: too depressed a function most and you're feeling overwhelmingly anxious,
Speaker 2: you're not like getting out there to do stuff, like
Speaker 2: you're just like in bed, like not able to do anything.
Speaker 2: These data are great because I think they give me
Speaker 2: a license to say, Oh, if I want to actually
Speaker 2: change the bad stuff in the world, I do need
Speaker 2: to focus on my mental health. I do need to
Speaker 2: focus on my positive mood. It matters. It is the
Speaker 2: path to having the bandwidth and the wherewithal to actually
Speaker 2: make the changes that we want to see in the world.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's the best answer I could have
Speaker 1: possibly imagined. I didn't know about that research. And you know, Laurie,
Speaker 1: I'm reflecting in this moment on my own life, and
Speaker 1: you're giving me so much food for thought, and I'm
Speaker 1: realizing that, Okay, that's the macro stuff where you're trying
Speaker 1: to fight these big social justice issues. When I think
Speaker 1: about the happiest periods of my life, I was a
Speaker 1: better friend, I was a better daughter, I was a
Speaker 1: better mentor, I was a better coworker, I was just
Speaker 1: better to everyone in my life during those periods. And
Speaker 1: so this is operating at a micro and at a
Speaker 1: macro level in terms of our positive impact on the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and there was a really early paper by a
Speaker 2: Yale professor Peter Salive, who I know you know well,
Speaker 2: on what he called the feel good do good effect,
Speaker 2: which is like, if you happen to put people in
Speaker 2: a positive mood, then they do these little tiny acts
Speaker 2: of kindness towards the people around them. These were like
Speaker 2: old studies where you'd have people hear some positive news
Speaker 2: on the radio and they'd be more likely to like
Speaker 2: help someone who drop their contact, you know, in the
Speaker 2: mall or something like that. Or you kind of have
Speaker 2: people listen to happy music at the gym and they'll
Speaker 2: be more likely to help someone who needs some assistance
Speaker 2: with their study of handing out leaflets or something like that.
Speaker 2: These the ideas that when we're feeling good, we end
Speaker 2: up doing good both for the people who are close
Speaker 2: to us in our lives and just like people generally.
Speaker 2: And again, I think we just have this like incorrect
Speaker 2: view that like if we're good, if we're feeling good, yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll just ignore everybody else. We'll just kind of focus
Speaker 2: on our own good. But it's the opposite. You know.
Speaker 2: So many positive emotions are what's called pro social emotions,
Speaker 2: things like gratitude and so on, Like they make us
Speaker 2: want to do good for other people, and so Eric go,
Speaker 2: if we want good things to happen in the world,
Speaker 2: we might want to focus on people's mental health and
Speaker 2: give them more of those positive emotions.
Speaker 1: I love it all right, Thanks so much, Laurie. Happy World,
Speaker 1: Happiness Day.
Speaker 2: Happy World, Happiness Day. A, Maya, thanks so much for
Speaker 2: having me on the show.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, thanks for coming. Hey, thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed this conversation, I reckon then checking out
Speaker 1: Laurie's podcast, The Happiness Lab. We'll link to it in
Speaker 1: the show notes, and we'll be back with a brand
Speaker 1: new season on April first. See you then. A Slight
Speaker 1: Change of Plans is created, written, and executive produced by
Speaker 1: me Maya Shunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner
Speaker 1: Tyler Green, our senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our senior
Speaker 1: producer Trisha Bobida, and our engineer Eric o'quang. Louis Scara
Speaker 1: wrote our delightful theme song and Ginger Smith helped arrange
Speaker 1: the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production
Speaker 1: of Pushkin Industries, so a big thanks to everyone there,
Speaker 1: and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
Speaker 1: You can follow a Slight Change of Plans on Instagram
Speaker 1: as doctor Maya Shunker. See you next week.