Speaker 1: Pushkin. The twenty twenty holiday season is going to be
Speaker 1: pretty strange for most of us because of COVID nineteen.
Speaker 1: Many families will be missing out on the fun times
Speaker 1: and companionship we usually associate with the most wonderful time
Speaker 1: of the year. But if you're a regular listener to
Speaker 1: the podcast, you know that we don't have to let
Speaker 1: bad circumstances affect our well being. The science shows that
Speaker 1: there are lots of things we can do to adapt
Speaker 1: to the changes twenty twenty has thrown our way. With
Speaker 1: the right strategies, you can make this holiday season the
Speaker 1: best one yet. Really, but to get it right, we
Speaker 1: need to learn the latest scientific insights. And that's why
Speaker 1: I decided to invite some of the people I admire
Speaker 1: most in Happiness Science to chat with you for two
Speaker 1: special holiday episodes. And to make it a bit more festive,
Speaker 1: we decided to throw our own little Zoom holiday party. Hello,
Speaker 1: Happy Holidays, Happy Holidays. And here was the guest list.
Speaker 1: Doctor Jamie Zaki from Stanford University, Jamille, are you there? Yes,
Speaker 1: I can hear you now. Doctor Liz Done from the
Speaker 1: University of British Columbia. Let's try yelling at you guys
Speaker 1: turn it up a little bit, and doctor Nick Eppley
Speaker 1: from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, I
Speaker 1: start listening to Christmas music and Labor Day. So yeah,
Speaker 1: that guy and a guy. I wore a dumb Santa
Speaker 1: hat for the occasion, but Liz put us all to
Speaker 1: shame by showing up in some pretty serious party duds.
Speaker 1: I have a shirt just like that, and I would
Speaker 1: have totally worn it today. It's a holiday party, right, Nick,
Speaker 1: Liz and Jamil are the scientists behind some of the
Speaker 1: best insights into how to stay happy this holiday season,
Speaker 1: stuff like gift giving, happiness hacks, and how to keep
Speaker 1: the peace around the family dinner table. My hope is
Speaker 1: that whatever your holiday season looks like this year, you'll
Speaker 1: take away some science tips to make your holidays happier
Speaker 1: and more stress free. So God Rescue Mary. Podcast fans
Speaker 1: get ready to rule your Yule with the Happiness Lab
Speaker 1: Expert Guide to the Holidays with me Doctor Laurie Santos
Speaker 1: and friends. So one of the big things that stress
Speaker 1: people out about the holidays is gift giving, right, you know,
Speaker 1: like spending money on the gifts and like what kind
Speaker 1: of gift to get and are people gonna like it?
Speaker 1: And all these things. And it strikes me that from
Speaker 1: a behavioral science perspective, one of the problems is that
Speaker 1: we get the theories of gift giving all wrong. And Nick,
Speaker 1: I take your work to basically, in a broad sense,
Speaker 1: be saying that, like writ large right. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: there are two aspects of gift giving that create positive value.
Speaker 1: One is the act itself. As Liz has shown in
Speaker 1: a bunch of her work, we feel better when we
Speaker 1: are doing good things for others, and you ought to
Speaker 1: embrace that. At the same time, the people who get
Speaker 1: gifts like the gifts that we give them when they
Speaker 1: like the gifts. Sometimes these two things are aligned. As
Speaker 1: a gift giver and often think that it's the thought
Speaker 1: that we put into the gift and all the things
Speaker 1: that give us value out of gift giving that the
Speaker 1: recipient will also appreciate. But the recipient can't see your thoughts,
Speaker 1: can't feel all of the time and effort and attention
Speaker 1: you put into it. They just see the gift you
Speaker 1: got them, this cute little computer mouse, and if they
Speaker 1: like the computer mouse, they feel great, And if they don't,
Speaker 1: they're trying to rationalize how you could have given them
Speaker 1: this gift. So yeah, I think people do misunderstand the
Speaker 1: nature of gift giving, and I think it's a reliable,
Speaker 1: ego centered bias that produces it. We assume that other
Speaker 1: people value the thought we put into a gift, and
Speaker 1: mostly we as gift givers, value the thought we put
Speaker 1: into a gift. Let's dig into the first part first, right, Like,
Speaker 1: how do we get the most out of that good
Speaker 1: feeling of doing something nice for others? So, Liz, your
Speaker 1: work has shown that it's pretty easy if we pay
Speaker 1: attention to it, right, Yeah, So I would say one
Speaker 1: of the big factors that can promote the joy of
Speaker 1: giving is getting to see the pous impact that you're
Speaker 1: having on the giver. So if you can't be with
Speaker 1: your recipient when they open their gift, like getting on
Speaker 1: zoom with them, so we go to the effort to like,
Speaker 1: you know, get my dad and stepmom on zoom and
Speaker 1: like chase my eight year old around the house so
Speaker 1: that like they can see him opening their gift because
Speaker 1: that's you know, that's really like this moment of pleasure
Speaker 1: for them. And again, you know, Nick's work suggests that's
Speaker 1: where the giver gets there, gets their juice. What about
Speaker 1: seeing someone enjoy their gift, not just the experience of
Speaker 1: them getting it, but actually them using it. I mean,
Speaker 1: I guess one thing that I keep on coming back
Speaker 1: to is this idea that oftentimes one really effective gift
Speaker 1: to give someone is just money, so that they can
Speaker 1: use it on whatever they want. I know it's not romantic,
Speaker 1: but I think that when we try to invest all
Speaker 1: this time in using our gift giving as a demonstration
Speaker 1: of our mind reading capabilities, we often end up failing.
Speaker 1: I mean, Nick, you've shown over and over again that
Speaker 1: people can try, so you can put mighty amount it's
Speaker 1: of effort into trying to ascertain what will make someone
Speaker 1: else happy and not necessarily get it right. So I mean,
Speaker 1: sometimes when we give someone something like money, it gives
Speaker 1: them the autonomy to do whatever would make them happiest
Speaker 1: with it. And I imagine that that would in turn
Speaker 1: be intensified by being able to have them share with
Speaker 1: you what they liked about it, what they did with it,
Speaker 1: maybe even share an experience with you using the money
Speaker 1: that you give them. But again, I realized it's not
Speaker 1: maybe the crux of the holiday spirit. Well, so that
Speaker 1: raises a question, if we're going to give somebody money,
Speaker 1: how can we do that better? Right? Because sometimes we
Speaker 1: either don't have time or we have no clue. Especially
Speaker 1: in this current holiday season, people are busy. I feel
Speaker 1: like gift card giving is going to go up because
Speaker 1: people can't get into shops. Right, how do we do
Speaker 1: that better? So, my dad, even though I've had, like
Speaker 1: you know, a normal adult like paying job for many
Speaker 1: years now, my dad still gives any money for Christmas,
Speaker 1: which thank you, Dad, Like it's really nice. But the
Speaker 1: thing that I do being a happiness researcher is that
Speaker 1: I instead of just like sticking it in my bank account,
Speaker 1: which you know, because I do have a real job,
Speaker 1: like it could just sort of get lost in there,
Speaker 1: I try to like get it out in cash and
Speaker 1: like use it for something very specific and like send
Speaker 1: him a photo of me enjoying it so that it
Speaker 1: can actually give him the kind of pleasure of giving
Speaker 1: you a non monetary gift. So that is, if we
Speaker 1: give somebody money, we should like check up on them
Speaker 1: and say, like, hey, how did you spend it? So
Speaker 1: we can get the extra well being boost on the
Speaker 1: side of like noticing how they spent it, and that
Speaker 1: they spent it well and they enjoyed it. Things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess it could come off as a little obnoxious
Speaker 1: if you're the givers, better on the recipient end. So
Speaker 1: I think one thing that's important to unpack here is
Speaker 1: the psychology that's underlying these experiences, right, So so we
Speaker 1: can a little bit better understand why is it that
Speaker 1: gift givers, as Jamil said, feel better when you can
Speaker 1: see the recipient's action and as Liz was pointing out
Speaker 1: as well, and the reason is is that when you
Speaker 1: do something nice for somebody else, there are a couple
Speaker 1: of things that bring you pleasure from doing those pro
Speaker 1: social actions. One is it draws you closer to the
Speaker 1: other person, so it satisfies some relational needs. Emotions are
Speaker 1: nothing but signals that you have achieved a goal that
Speaker 1: you value, right, And so when you give somebody a
Speaker 1: gift and they say, hey, that was wonderful, I feel
Speaker 1: great about that. That draws you closer to them. You know,
Speaker 1: I love you. That's great, You've come closer, So that
Speaker 1: satisfies that. The other goal that it satisfies is competency.
Speaker 1: That's the other thing we value a lot that Liz
Speaker 1: has pointed out in her work. So if I give
Speaker 1: Liz a gift and she feels bad about it, that's terrible,
Speaker 1: all right. I feel terrible about that, which is why
Speaker 1: seeing somebody appreciate the gift feels so good. Every year,
Speaker 1: when I teach my good Life class at Booth to
Speaker 1: my NBA students, I have them do random acts of kindness.
Speaker 1: In general, they love it. People feel great, but there's
Speaker 1: always like the one or two guys that just totally
Speaker 1: bomb it. They give the sandwich to the homeless person
Speaker 1: and the homeless person throws it back and says, I've
Speaker 1: gotten ten of those sandwiches today, I don't need another sandwich, right,
Speaker 1: And they feel terrible because they weren't competent. They didn't
Speaker 1: do the thing they were trying to do. So some
Speaker 1: of the things that are being suggested here are ways
Speaker 1: that we can think about being good gift recipients, right,
Speaker 1: being a good receiver, which we often don't think about.
Speaker 1: We think about being good givers, but we can also
Speaker 1: be good receivers. As Liz pointed out, if somebody gives
Speaker 1: you money, it's going to be hard to really feel
Speaker 1: great about that as a giver. I think because you're
Speaker 1: not putting in a lot of thought for it, that's
Speaker 1: drawing you closer the other person. But as a receiver,
Speaker 1: we can make the giver feel great by showing that
Speaker 1: person how we actually use that money, or showing the
Speaker 1: other person you know what we're doing when we're using
Speaker 1: a gift that they gave us, an experience that we're
Speaker 1: having with the thing, and so we've got a lot
Speaker 1: of power I think as receivers to make the holidays
Speaker 1: better too. Another problem with our gift giving is that
Speaker 1: we seem to fall into the same biases about what
Speaker 1: we think we want that are wrong, right. You know,
Speaker 1: there's so much evidence from all of your research that
Speaker 1: we kind of get that we buy for ourselves incorrect,
Speaker 1: and that means when we try to give stuff to
Speaker 1: others we mess up too. So on the specific kinds
Speaker 1: of gifts you can give, like what might be promoting
Speaker 1: happiness better than other stuff, well, I would suggest some
Speaker 1: of the same lessons that we know for buying things
Speaker 1: for ourselves we can take into account for, you know,
Speaker 1: buying for others. So, for example, I think a great
Speaker 1: one around the holidays is to consider buying time, so
Speaker 1: you know, is there someone that you know that's on
Speaker 1: your gift list that would really benefit from some extra
Speaker 1: time and that this can be a great one too,
Speaker 1: because if you don't have a lot of money, you know,
Speaker 1: time is something you can potentially give. So offering you know,
Speaker 1: a single parent, like a night of babysitting so that
Speaker 1: they can go out. Or here's an idea my friends
Speaker 1: and I came up with, which is to do like
Speaker 1: a dreaded task gift exchange. Like we all have the
Speaker 1: thing that like we just don't get around to doing,
Speaker 1: and it's like weighing on us, but it doesn't bother
Speaker 1: other people. So we pad you know, pasted our all
Speaker 1: along to the next person, and you just take care
Speaker 1: of it for them, you know, you like sign them
Speaker 1: up for that like program they've been meaning to do,
Speaker 1: or like renew their New York or subscript or like whatever,
Speaker 1: like dumb thing. It is right that you're just like
Speaker 1: I'm sitting on your bile. And I love that because
Speaker 1: it highlights that a gift cannot just be an addition
Speaker 1: to someone's life. It can also be a subtraction from
Speaker 1: their life of something that they might not want to do.
Speaker 1: I guess one other thing that's come up for me
Speaker 1: a lot with gift giving this holiday season, but not
Speaker 1: most holiday seasons, is trying to give a gift of
Speaker 1: coexperiencing something together because I think, unlike basically every other
Speaker 1: year of my life, at least, I'll be away from
Speaker 1: all of my relatives, like thousands of miles away from them,
Speaker 1: and so, you know, I'm trying to think a lot
Speaker 1: from my parents, especially about how can I give them
Speaker 1: experiences of being with me and especially with my kids.
Speaker 1: Can we sort of try to watch a movie together,
Speaker 1: or you know, I'm gonna send my mom a book
Speaker 1: by a novelist that she likes. But it's not just
Speaker 1: sending her the book. I'm gonna say I'll read it
Speaker 1: with you, you know, and we'll chat about it every week.
Speaker 1: In essence, right, I mean to try to cultivate some
Speaker 1: coexperiences in a time that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: us will being for them even more than usually in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. And I love that suggestion, Jamil, because it
Speaker 1: impacts like it's like three different areas of psychology that
Speaker 1: we know work really well, right, Like one is, sharing
Speaker 1: experiences is just better than doing them by themselves, right,
Speaker 1: you're giving like an extra hit just because you're sharing
Speaker 1: the experience. The second is, like, experiences at all are good. Right,
Speaker 1: we know the data. We've actually talked about this on
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab already that experiences are just better than
Speaker 1: material possessions. So the experience of reading a book is
Speaker 1: better than just like I don't know, getting like a
Speaker 1: mug or something, or you know, it's a sort of
Speaker 1: material object that looks nice, but you're never going to
Speaker 1: use it. Right, But then this year in particular, sharing
Speaker 1: experiences is the one thing we're all hurting for psychologically, right,
Speaker 1: Like we're all just like starving this kind of social
Speaker 1: connection and so forcing people to like get the shared experience,
Speaker 1: like the sharing is good and the experience is good,
Speaker 1: and like, right now we need that more than ever.
Speaker 1: So I love that suggestion. The other thing that we
Speaker 1: might think about, too, is segregating some of these gifts
Speaker 1: across time. One of the most interesting things about happiness
Speaker 1: or well being or mood to me is how insensitive
Speaker 1: it can be to scope particularly positive mood. When somebody
Speaker 1: does this little nice thing for you, they give you
Speaker 1: a compliment in the whole that can feel great, like
Speaker 1: you're up to a nine on your ten point scale,
Speaker 1: and that's wonderful. You're like maxing it out for that
Speaker 1: little thing. And happiness responds to the frequency of positive events,
Speaker 1: not the intensity of them. So often at holiday times,
Speaker 1: what we do is we give a lot of gifts
Speaker 1: that can be experienced like right then at that time,
Speaker 1: instead of spread out across time. So you know, we
Speaker 1: can think about giving people gifts to go and see
Speaker 1: a show or to go to a restaurant sometime off
Speaker 1: in the future, perhaps especially now, we would do that
Speaker 1: oft in the future. They could do this in the
Speaker 1: spring or in the summer, and that way they're sort
Speaker 1: of spreading out that whatever the holiday cheer is and
Speaker 1: into other points. They get to enjoy anticipating the event,
Speaker 1: and then they experience it segregated from all of these
Speaker 1: other things, and we'll get a bigger boost out of it,
Speaker 1: I think as a result. I've done this with my dad,
Speaker 1: who's like, he's really into experiences, and he's really into
Speaker 1: food experiences. If you met my dad, you would understand why.
Speaker 1: But I'll often give him, like, you know, like a
Speaker 1: chocolate tasting experience. But it's one of these things that
Speaker 1: happens on a particular day, and that day feels really
Speaker 1: far away on Christmas, right, you know, sometimes I feel
Speaker 1: bad of like, yeah, and March, You're really going to
Speaker 1: enjoy this chocolate tasting, you know, But then when March
Speaker 1: comes around, he calls me back and he's like, the
Speaker 1: chocolate was awesome. And he often wears a goofy Sanah
Speaker 1: hat like I'm wearing when he goes because it was
Speaker 1: a Christmas present, right, Like, you know, then the holiday
Speaker 1: cheer kind of extends like well in time, so yeah,
Speaker 1: and then he gets to be at a at a
Speaker 1: nine on his ten point scale two days instead of
Speaker 1: at a nine from two events on a single day. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, anticipation is in general a way to extend
Speaker 1: happiness and well being. But gosh, I mean, right now,
Speaker 1: I think many of us really need things to look
Speaker 1: forward to, right because we feel like we're in this
Speaker 1: amorphous time blob where weeks are just passing by like
Speaker 1: they're in a flipbook. And so I think that having
Speaker 1: giving people something to look forward to after they're able
Speaker 1: to go to a chocolate tasting, I mean imagine that
Speaker 1: just being able to understand that that will be in
Speaker 1: the future somewhere would I think maybe even not just
Speaker 1: bring happiness, but also a sense of hope and optimism.
Speaker 1: Hope and optimism that would certainly be a great holiday
Speaker 1: message to end on. But we're only getting started with
Speaker 1: the Happiness Lab Expert Guide to the Holidays. After the break,
Speaker 1: we'll discuss an experiment that reveals the awful toll that
Speaker 1: buying the wrong gift can have on your relationships, and
Speaker 1: we'll bring you some shocking news about the cookie monster.
Speaker 1: Shock and my mind is reeling from this new information.
Speaker 1: The Happiness Lab Expert Guide to Holidays will be right back,
Speaker 1: So Laurie, can I go back to one of the
Speaker 1: things we discussed at the very beginning. Even though we
Speaker 1: covered a whole range of topics during our virtual party, Nick,
Speaker 1: Liz and Jamil wanted to return to that central tradition presence,
Speaker 1: and I'm glad they did because I know firsthand that
Speaker 1: it's a topic that can cause a lot of unhappiness
Speaker 1: at this time of year. In fact, you're about to
Speaker 1: hear the awful consequences of a gift gone badly, and
Speaker 1: also some great advice on how to make the whole
Speaker 1: present process a source of real joy. So One of
Speaker 1: the pleasures that people derive out of giving thoughtful gifts
Speaker 1: is because they have personally spent time thinking about the
Speaker 1: other to give this gift. When I give my wife
Speaker 1: a Christmas gift, I experience that positively because of the
Speaker 1: time that I invested in thinking about her. Whether she
Speaker 1: likes it or not is going to be independent of
Speaker 1: the amount of thought I put into it. But that's
Speaker 1: one thing I think we might be able to do
Speaker 1: in creating this holiday season. It's going to give us
Speaker 1: a lot of time to think about, well, what would
Speaker 1: make my dad really happy? To Nick's point, can I
Speaker 1: shout out the card? I think that, you know, we
Speaker 1: undervalue the card that's on top of the gift. That's
Speaker 1: oftentimes the best part of it because a in writing it,
Speaker 1: you get to think about and appreciate the person that
Speaker 1: you're giving it to and be even if the gift
Speaker 1: that's underneath it isn't perfectly calibrated with their preferences, that
Speaker 1: might be the most rewarding thing is to see what
Speaker 1: you think of them, what you appreciate about them, especially
Speaker 1: in these hard times. You know, one really crappy thing
Speaker 1: about online gifts is that they have character limits to
Speaker 1: the notes that you can attach to them, and they're draconian.
Speaker 1: It's like a hundred characters. You can barely say hello
Speaker 1: in that much space. So, you know, maybe we should
Speaker 1: consider whatever we send to people, whatever we give, whatever
Speaker 1: we do, bringing back the card and turning it into
Speaker 1: a letter. You know, that's something that we can do
Speaker 1: with our time, something that we can use to focus
Speaker 1: on the people that we love, even if they're far away,
Speaker 1: and something that can remind them how we feel about them.
Speaker 1: Other people appreciate your thoughts when you reveal those thoughts
Speaker 1: to other people. One of the things that we're going
Speaker 1: to try this holiday season, which I'm kind of excited about.
Speaker 1: There's a bunch of interesting work about how we don't
Speaker 1: adapt quite as quickly to pro social experiences as we
Speaker 1: do to pro self selfish kind of experiences. So when
Speaker 1: you give to other people, you feel good, and when
Speaker 1: you do that over and over again, you continue to
Speaker 1: feel really quite good. We find the same thing with compliments.
Speaker 1: We ran an experiment over the summer where we had
Speaker 1: couples create sort of a compliment calendar for the person
Speaker 1: they were with. Just for the next week. They wrote
Speaker 1: down one compliment for each day the following week. So
Speaker 1: they gave them five compliments, and each day we gave
Speaker 1: the recipient one of those compliments. We asked observers, just
Speaker 1: separate people to read these compliments and predict how happy
Speaker 1: the recipient would feel each day. And they thought the
Speaker 1: recipient would feel pretty great that first day, that's really nice,
Speaker 1: and then the second day a little less, and the
Speaker 1: third day little less. For a fifth day, come on,
Speaker 1: let's knock this off. This is too much. You know,
Speaker 1: we have these theories about adaptation, but when we looked
Speaker 1: at the recipients, they were just at eleven, like, they
Speaker 1: were not at the top of the scalebear every day,
Speaker 1: every compliment was new and positive and pleasant. And because
Speaker 1: it's separated by a day, like, they were fully able
Speaker 1: to adapt to the compliment from yesterday and then experience
Speaker 1: this one a new So every year since going back
Speaker 1: to when I was a kid, we would have these
Speaker 1: Advent calendars raised in the Christian tradition, and our Advent
Speaker 1: calendars had candy in them. So every day, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a child and I don't have anything against candy
Speaker 1: for sure, but we're going to do a different thing
Speaker 1: this year. In my family, which is we're going to
Speaker 1: do a compliment calendar. We'll probably do candy two and
Speaker 1: we're gonna except for my four year old, we're gonna
Speaker 1: write a series of compliments to each of the other
Speaker 1: things we're grateful about, things we like about this person.
Speaker 1: And then we're going to take those or we're going
Speaker 1: to roll them up into a ring and staple them together,
Speaker 1: and then we'll just create a chain. You'll just will
Speaker 1: open one up every day we'll get something nice that
Speaker 1: a family member thought about us that they might not
Speaker 1: have said otherwise. I think that could be fun. I
Speaker 1: think that's a great strategy for highly functional families. I
Speaker 1: would worry that in more dysfunctional families the compliments might
Speaker 1: be worrisome. So here's an exercise I experienced once. It's
Speaker 1: a version of that that is like more robust to
Speaker 1: problematic compliments, which is, you walk around a room with
Speaker 1: you know, and so maybe in COVID you could do
Speaker 1: this in a park or something, and every time you
Speaker 1: look at someone you think something nice about them, you
Speaker 1: send them a compliment, but you don't say it out loud.
Speaker 1: So again, if you have a more extended family with
Speaker 1: some more fraught dynamics. I think that could be an
Speaker 1: interesting variation just to remove the actual content. Well, I
Speaker 1: know the content is part of it, but just knowing
Speaker 1: that someone else is thinking something nice about you also
Speaker 1: feels surprisingly good. You can also have a like a
Speaker 1: someone edit, you know, like my spouse could go in
Speaker 1: and edit and take out the compliments that I don't
Speaker 1: want to see from my family members. Right, so you
Speaker 1: just have a slightly shorter chain than usual. I love Nick.
Speaker 1: Any other things that you all do in your own
Speaker 1: family are planning to do differently this year, Liz, you
Speaker 1: had one that I think I read some holiday article
Speaker 1: that you were quoted in about hiring somebody else to
Speaker 1: wrap gifts or something like that, like any other kind
Speaker 1: of time saving tips that you use to pay people
Speaker 1: to do yucky stuff, especially during the holiday. I mean,
Speaker 1: I definitely think that that can be a great gift,
Speaker 1: because we know in some of our research, we've seen
Speaker 1: that even though people really benefit in terms of their
Speaker 1: happiness from time saving purchases, they feel many people feel
Speaker 1: a lot of guilt about doing so. So like, even
Speaker 1: if I have enough money that I could afford some
Speaker 1: kind of time saving service, for some reason, it just
Speaker 1: induces a lot of guilt to pay somebody else to
Speaker 1: do something that I'm capable of doing for myself. And
Speaker 1: this is where I think gifts come in handy. Right,
Speaker 1: when you receive something as a gift, you don't feel
Speaker 1: guilty about spending the money on that thing, Right, So
Speaker 1: I think this is like a particularly good gift to
Speaker 1: give because it removes that guilt that otherwise might kind
Speaker 1: of get in the way of people either experiencing joy
Speaker 1: from that time saving service, or even just being willing
Speaker 1: to purchase it in the first place. One other thing
Speaker 1: I would say is there's this class economics paper you
Speaker 1: guys probably know called the Deadweight Loss of Christmas about
Speaker 1: how like we lose so much economic value on buying
Speaker 1: gifts because givers spend so much more money on the
Speaker 1: gifts than like recipients would value these gifts that And
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's interesting because the way I
Speaker 1: think of it isn't so much just about you know,
Speaker 1: how the giver experiences the gift or how the recipient
Speaker 1: experiences the gift, but also about the impact on the relationship,
Speaker 1: So this sort of space between the two people, right,
Speaker 1: And you know, the most sort of like dramatic study
Speaker 1: I've ever done, or like the study that I almost
Speaker 1: wonder if it was unethical was back in graduate school.
Speaker 1: I ran a study where we had broad and romantic
Speaker 1: partners and we had people pick out a gift for
Speaker 1: their romantic partner. Each person picks out a gift for
Speaker 1: their partner, they're in separate rooms, unbeknownst to them. We
Speaker 1: of course mess with their choices and we give each
Speaker 1: person like the second lowest ranked item as the gift
Speaker 1: from their partner, and like people freaked out. Like I
Speaker 1: had to dive in between romantic partners, like to brief
Speaker 1: them before they could like get at each other. And
Speaker 1: it was amazing. You know, we saw these pretty dramatic
Speaker 1: effects where people were actually these were you know, undergraduate
Speaker 1: couples who had been dating for a while. They were
Speaker 1: after getting a bad gift. Men. After the men got
Speaker 1: a bad gift from their girlfriends, they were less likely
Speaker 1: to report and interest in marrying this woman. So you know,
Speaker 1: it suggests it suggests that gifts can have or put differently.
Speaker 1: You know, getting a good gift can be good for
Speaker 1: the relationship. So you know, and I think anthropologists have
Speaker 1: recognized us for a long time that gift giving is
Speaker 1: really important in building relationships, and so, you know, aside
Speaker 1: from just thinking in this very individualistic way about the
Speaker 1: giver's experience or about the recipients experience, I think it's
Speaker 1: important to think about the impact that the gift can
Speaker 1: have on the relationship, and in particular, you know, my
Speaker 1: recommendation to people picking out gifts it is always try
Speaker 1: to think about the what you have in common. You know,
Speaker 1: it's just so hard to pick out gifts for people
Speaker 1: that if you have, if there's something that you share
Speaker 1: in common with them, picking something along those lines I
Speaker 1: think can be helpful just because it makes you do
Speaker 1: a better job. There's not as much of an egocentric
Speaker 1: gap basically because you're similar to the person in that way.
Speaker 1: And it's really what we saw on our study is that,
Speaker 1: you know, a bad gift can call into question the
Speaker 1: perception that we are similar, right, So you know, I
Speaker 1: think it's actually worth you know, spending a little extra
Speaker 1: time thinking about what gift you're going to give people
Speaker 1: and taking some of the extra time that we might
Speaker 1: have because of COVID to choose carefully, not only because
Speaker 1: it might feel good to do so, but because I
Speaker 1: would argue gift giving really matters for our relationships, which
Speaker 1: of course are critically important for our happiness. Can I
Speaker 1: suggest to follow ups to that. It's just it's very
Speaker 1: hard to know what's on the mind of another person.
Speaker 1: It just shockingly hard. I mean, I'm just consistently stune.
Speaker 1: When you bring people together, even married couples, and you
Speaker 1: have them predict the other person's beliefs, they're just wildly overconfident.
Speaker 1: They just think they know their spouse's beliefs way better
Speaker 1: than they actually do. And so the only thing that
Speaker 1: we find allows you to understand what's on the mind
Speaker 1: of another person is to ask them and then to listen.
Speaker 1: That is totally unromantic, I understand. I get that. However,
Speaker 1: my wife is really happy when I just get her
Speaker 1: the things she would really like, and it turns out
Speaker 1: if I've asked her beforehand, really doesn't mat Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like at least I had the self awareness to ask
Speaker 1: her what she wants and then to go out and
Speaker 1: get that thing. So so that's one strategy. The other
Speaker 1: strategy is you can ask in subtler ways too. So, hey, Liz,
Speaker 1: have you've done anything recently that that's been really fun.
Speaker 1: Tell me about it, then I know what you think
Speaker 1: it's fun. Then I can go out and get you
Speaker 1: that thing. So we can be to Jamille's point earlier
Speaker 1: about being more empathic, we can be better listeners around
Speaker 1: the holidays and start probing and doing more listening than guessing.
Speaker 1: The other thing I would suggest is, again this gets
Speaker 1: back to the start of our conversation. We were talking
Speaker 1: about being good, but I think it's also important to
Speaker 1: be a good recipient. I don't doubt Liza's recipients in
Speaker 1: her study one bit. Getting the wrong gift can intuitively
Speaker 1: seem you know, just horrified. How could you possibly done that?
Speaker 1: I show when I give a talk off and I
Speaker 1: show a cartoon of Cookie Monster getting a gift from
Speaker 1: his wife and it's a box of crackers, and he's
Speaker 1: just horrified. I thought you knew me, right. But that's
Speaker 1: where we can be good good recipients as well, is
Speaker 1: to recognize it's a hard problem and other people often
Speaker 1: try and when they get it wrong, like it's okay,
Speaker 1: it's a hard problem. We can practice forgiveness as recipients
Speaker 1: as well. During the holidays. Oh, I'm like it, shock
Speaker 1: and awe that cookie monster has a spouse. My mind
Speaker 1: is reeling from this new information. I want to see this,
Speaker 1: this fellow character. But you know, I mean, I think
Speaker 1: to your point, we can be better recipients in a
Speaker 1: couple of different ways. You're totally right that perspective taking
Speaker 1: is so difficult. You know, we can put us and
Speaker 1: someone else's shoes, but our feet are different than theirs,
Speaker 1: and so they might feel different in someone else's shoes,
Speaker 1: that we might totally get them wrong even if we
Speaker 1: attempt to simulate what we'd feel like in their position.
Speaker 1: And so I think what you're describing Nick's perspective getting right.
Speaker 1: So sort of doing the intel, doing the work to
Speaker 1: extract a perspective from somebody else. You know, I often
Speaker 1: think that we can also be good in the language
Speaker 1: of sort of empathy and empathic accuracy. There's an observer,
Speaker 1: the person guessing, and then there's the target, the person
Speaker 1: who's being guessed about. And we work so hard to
Speaker 1: be better observers. How can I be better at understanding you?
Speaker 1: I think we don't think enough about how we can
Speaker 1: be better at being understood. Can we clarify our perspective more?
Speaker 1: Can we verbalize it more? So maybe you know, one
Speaker 1: favor that we can do to our loved ones is
Speaker 1: drop some real clear hints about stuff that we like
Speaker 1: or might like, right, I mean, because that way we
Speaker 1: unburden them from having to seem like they like they
Speaker 1: don't know us by asking, but nonetheless give them the
Speaker 1: intel that they need to make a good choice. And
Speaker 1: another way to be a good recipient is to actually
Speaker 1: just like tell people how you feel about the gift,
Speaker 1: especially when that's positive. I think you don't want to
Speaker 1: tell people how you feel about the gift when that's negative. Yeah,
Speaker 1: But often in the holiday season we can just be
Speaker 1: so into getting what we're going to get and getting
Speaker 1: everybody's presence that we don't do the pause to really
Speaker 1: express gratitude and like the strong way that we know
Speaker 1: would bump up well being. My colleague Tim Hartford, who
Speaker 1: runs the Cautionary Tales podcast here at Pushkin, has this
Speaker 1: wonderful thing that he does with his kids where every
Speaker 1: time the kid opens a present, they have to stop
Speaker 1: and write a gratitude letter before they can open another present,
Speaker 1: but before they can like interact with and play with
Speaker 1: that first present. First of all, it make sure that
Speaker 1: the thank you cards get done. But it also causes
Speaker 1: the kids to reflect on what they like about that,
Speaker 1: you know, because now it's really stailing. It's like I
Speaker 1: want to play with this toy right now. And I
Speaker 1: love that sort of suggestion because it's kind of just
Speaker 1: making sure that gratitude doesn't get lost in the mix.
Speaker 1: Those kids are very well behaved. They're British, They're they're British. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: trying to make my year old depend, aren't imagine. I
Speaker 1: would also add, if you really don't know what your
Speaker 1: gift recipient would want, going back to some of the
Speaker 1: core happiness principles I think can be useful. So one
Speaker 1: of the things we know is that quality social relationships
Speaker 1: matter and that this is going to be a really
Speaker 1: challenging time to maintain them during COVID. So after like
Speaker 1: heavy hints were dropped by me, my husband got me
Speaker 1: as for a birthday gift. Just recently. He turned our
Speaker 1: normal average deck into a covered, heated porch so that
Speaker 1: I could have friends over. Now. It is like basically
Speaker 1: fancy saran wrap that is like enclosing it and just
Speaker 1: like beams of wood. He bought it at home depot.
Speaker 1: It is not fancy at all, but it means that
Speaker 1: I can actually safely have contact with like a couple
Speaker 1: of friends at a time in the middle of winter
Speaker 1: when it's pouring rain and terrible here, and like that
Speaker 1: to me is a pretty pretty amazing gift if you
Speaker 1: still have gifts to buy. I'm sure you've gotten a
Speaker 1: ton of great ideas from this conversation, But of course,
Speaker 1: the holidays are about more than just presents, So join
Speaker 1: us for the second episode of The Happiness Lab Expert
Speaker 1: Guide to the Holidays, where you'll get more science backed
Speaker 1: advice on how to boost your well being at a
Speaker 1: time when many of our favorite holiday traditions seem to
Speaker 1: be on hold. The Happiness Lab is co written and
Speaker 1: produced by Ryan Dilley. The show was mastered by Evan Viola,
Speaker 1: and our original seasonal holiday music was composed by Zachary Silver.
Speaker 1: Special thanks to the entire Pushkin crew, including mail La Belle,
Speaker 1: Carli mcgliori, Heather Faine, Sophie Crane, mckibbon, Eric Sandler, Jacob Weisberg,
Speaker 1: and my agent, Ben Davis. The Happiness Lab is brought
Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries and me Doctor Laurie Sanders