Speaker 1: I think what we have found is that the benefits
Speaker 1: of connection and the hazards of loneliness and disconnection are
Speaker 1: so powerful that the reason why we're excited about is
Speaker 1: we feel like we really want to bring this message
Speaker 1: to people.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is
Speaker 2: sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to untangle the
Speaker 2: stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations, and
Speaker 2: humanity at large using the perception box lens. They do
Speaker 2: this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research. Unlikely
Speaker 2: Collaborators the only way forward is inward. Today we welcome
Speaker 2: Robert Waldinger to the podcast. Robert is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst,
Speaker 2: and zen priest. He is professor of psychiatry at Harvard
Speaker 2: Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he directs the
Speaker 2: Harvard Study of Adult Development. His ted X talk on
Speaker 2: this subject has received nearly forty four million views and
Speaker 2: is the ninth most watched TED talk of all time.
Speaker 2: He is the co author of the Good Life with
Speaker 2: doctor Mark Schultz. In this episode, I talked to Robert
Speaker 2: Waldinger about the secret to a happy life. Robert shares
Speaker 2: with us the recent findings of the Grand Study, which
Speaker 2: is the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted. It's
Speaker 2: been ongoing for more than eighty years now and has
Speaker 2: had high profile participants like US President John F. Kennedy.
Speaker 2: In this episode, Robert and I get into the details
Speaker 2: of how they continue to conduct research and how to
Speaker 2: make sense of both the new and old data. Sure enough,
Speaker 2: what the study has found consistent is the power of connection.
Speaker 2: We also touch on the topics of psychodynamic therapy, defense mechanisms, attachment,
Speaker 2: and psychological research and its methodologies. This is a really
Speaker 2: awesome chat with someone who has led this legendary study.
Speaker 2: We call this episode the Secret to Happiness, But there's
Speaker 2: actually a bunch of secrets, and I don't want to
Speaker 2: spoil it for you. I want some of the secrets
Speaker 2: to be a surprise for you. So without further ado,
Speaker 2: I bring you doctor Robert Waldingter. Hey, thanks for being
Speaker 2: on the Psychology Podcast today. How you doing well?
Speaker 1: I'm doing fun and thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I am a great admirer of the work you've
Speaker 2: done and the research you're continuing to do. Can you
Speaker 2: kind of start with telling our audience a little bit
Speaker 2: about how you got into the position you currently have
Speaker 2: and what your background is.
Speaker 1: Sure, I am a psychiatrist. I'm a Jew who grew
Speaker 1: up in Des Moines, Iowa, and I we knew any
Speaker 1: psychiatrists growing up, and realized in medical school that psychiatry
Speaker 1: was the most interesting thing I had found. And so
Speaker 1: I trained actually as a psychoanalyst, and so my specialty
Speaker 1: clinically is talk therapy. And then I wanted to learn
Speaker 1: to do research, and so I retooled in my forties,
Speaker 1: I went back and took statistics courses and did a
Speaker 1: bunch of things that got the the wherewithal to do
Speaker 1: number crunching kind of research. And at that point, the
Speaker 1: third director of the study that I now direct, George Valiant,
Speaker 1: took me out to lunch one day and said, how
Speaker 1: would you like to inherit this study? So that's how
Speaker 1: I got here twenty years ago.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's incredible that he did. That is George
Speaker 2: still alive? He is good? Good, because I've been planning
Speaker 2: on meeting him. I think he's in San Francisco. I've
Speaker 2: been planning meeting him for lunch.
Speaker 1: He's in the LA area.
Speaker 2: I just don't want to put that off too much longer. Yeah, Oh,
Speaker 2: it's he in the LA area. Now, okay, I definitely
Speaker 2: need to reach out to him. So I'm a I'm
Speaker 2: a big George Violent fan and v A I L
Speaker 2: A N T. How do you pronounce his last name?
Speaker 1: He pronounces it valiant.
Speaker 2: I always noticed that. But there's no extra eye in there.
Speaker 2: I know that always confuses me. But anyway, okay, anyway,
Speaker 2: George is such a legend and I'm a big fan
Speaker 2: of his work on defense mechanisms, and I was, and
Speaker 2: you know, he's I know you you emphasize connections, but
Speaker 2: I feel like when he was when he was running
Speaker 2: that show, he was emphasizing how certain defense mechanisms can
Speaker 2: really carry us through life and the way that we
Speaker 2: cope with adversity and the way we cope with things.
Speaker 2: So I'm wondering, you know, how much are you interested
Speaker 2: in in in the stuff that you that George studied.
Speaker 1: I'm very interested. So as a psychoanalyst, I'm quite interested
Speaker 1: in defense mechanisms and how yeah, defense mechanisms really serve
Speaker 1: us pretty well. What George referred to as the more
Speaker 1: mature defense mechanism, and some defense mechanisms don't work well
Speaker 1: at all, and we see that play out in people's
Speaker 1: lives in our study.
Speaker 2: Okay, so let's talk about the study. What a what
Speaker 2: a whopperduci? This one is? What is the I'm still
Speaker 2: not so sure on the methodology of it. I'd love
Speaker 2: to know more about this mysterious methodology that I used
Speaker 2: to like, what are you measuring? You know, how do
Speaker 2: you measure it? Do you just de ry on self reports? Basically,
Speaker 2: this is the Nerdy Psychology podcast, So I want you
Speaker 2: to feel really comfortable talking about the details with me
Speaker 2: on this shaw, I'm a fellow psychologist.
Speaker 1: Great, do you want me to explain the setup of
Speaker 1: the study?
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, if you could please explain the setup and
Speaker 2: then you know, what are some of the mean measures
Speaker 2: that you've been tracking all these years?
Speaker 1: Sure? So the study was started in nineteen thirty eight,
Speaker 1: and it was started with actually as two studies that
Speaker 1: didn't know about each other. One was a group of
Speaker 1: two hundred and sixty eight Harvard College sophomores nineteen year
Speaker 1: old and they were gathered together for a study of
Speaker 1: normal young adult development from adolescents to early adulthood. You know, so,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, if you want to study normal development,
Speaker 1: you study all white men from Harvard, right, It's like
Speaker 1: so politically incorrect, but that's what they did at the time.
Speaker 1: And then the other study was started at Harvard Law
Speaker 1: School by a law professor named Sheldon Gluk and his
Speaker 1: wife Eleanor Gluck, who was a social worker. They were
Speaker 1: interested in juvenile delinquency and they were particularly interested in
Speaker 1: how some kids born into really troubled and disadvantaged families
Speaker 1: managed to stay on good developmental paths. So both groups
Speaker 1: were studies of thriving but one very privileged, one very underprivileged.
Speaker 1: And then you know, later on we brought in spouses.
Speaker 1: Now we've brought in the children, so we have good
Speaker 1: gender balance now in the study. But it was originally
Speaker 1: all boys and young men.
Speaker 2: That is so interesting and seemingly very disparate life experiences,
Speaker 2: you know, seemingly I guess it's possible that there were
Speaker 2: Harvard students who grew up in poverty and maybe were
Speaker 2: there any were there any like overlap, Well, you know, there.
Speaker 1: Was a little not so much poverty, but some of
Speaker 1: these guys were on scholarship. Half of the young men
Speaker 1: had to work to pay at least part of their
Speaker 1: way through college. So they weren't all rich kids. Harvard
Speaker 1: was by then trying to bring in people who were
Speaker 1: not wealthy, but you know, most of them were much
Speaker 1: more advantage than the inner city so there wasn't that
Speaker 1: much overlap. And the inner city sample was not just
Speaker 1: poor kids, but kids from families that were known on
Speaker 1: average to five social service agencies for things like domestic violence,
Speaker 1: severe parental mental illness, physical illness, you know, very extreme poverty,
Speaker 1: those kinds of things. And then you had asked, so,
Speaker 1: what's the methodology, what did we study? And we really
Speaker 1: have studied the big domains of life, so they are
Speaker 1: mental health, physical health, work life including work satisfaction and
Speaker 1: who gets promoted, who gets fired, and relationships. And then
Speaker 1: for the world. For the Harvard men, they were all
Speaker 1: of the age to go to World War Two and
Speaker 1: almost all served in the war. The inner city men
Speaker 1: were on average nine years younger, so they were not
Speaker 1: old enough to go to the war, but we studied
Speaker 1: World War two experiences as well.
Speaker 2: Still alive, Yeah, wow, they must be old.
Speaker 1: They're really old. They're all in there either late nineties
Speaker 1: or early one hundreds, and only about forty out of
Speaker 1: seven hundred and twenty four.
Speaker 2: Totally still amazing that forty still exist, that's still amazing.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I mean this is the biggest power
Speaker 2: well of your study that I am aware of is
Speaker 2: one that I talk about a lot, which is Epaul
Speaker 2: Torrance's Creativity Study. I don't know if you're familiar with it,
Speaker 2: but if you're not, I'd love to teach you everything
Speaker 2: about it because they he initiated that in the fifties
Speaker 2: and they have been still following up and they still
Speaker 2: released the reports on what were the biggest predictors of creativity.
Speaker 2: So you're focusing on happiness, so you're focusing on well being,
Speaker 2: you know e. Paul Torrance asked a very similar question,
Speaker 2: which is what who naturally grows up to be the
Speaker 2: most creative? Were there any metrics of creative productivity in
Speaker 2: your in your study?
Speaker 1: You know there were? I mean, so we have, of course,
Speaker 1: metrics of income. We know how much everybody made, you know,
Speaker 1: at regular intervals, we know about job promotions, we know
Speaker 1: about professions, but we really never studied that question of
Speaker 1: you know, who's more creative who's less creative?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, I'd love to teach you all
Speaker 2: about the Appaul Torne study and what they found. But
Speaker 2: you know, obviously we're shining a spotlight in your amazing
Speaker 2: study today. So in terms of happiness, I mean, as
Speaker 2: you acknowledge in the book which I love, happiness is messy.
Speaker 2: It is it's not just how feeling good. So when
Speaker 2: you look at I assume that you attack this issue
Speaker 2: from multiple different things that you triangulate to try to
Speaker 2: figure out, you know, if they're happy someday in life.
Speaker 2: What are some of the main things that you try
Speaker 2: to triangulate Because you say in your book quote the
Speaker 2: good life is a complicated life. You said that, you.
Speaker 1: Said that I stand by it is.
Speaker 2: Well, I stand by it too. I stand by your
Speaker 2: right right.
Speaker 1: So you know what we did. I mean, we're kind
Speaker 1: of a text book case in the history of science.
Speaker 1: So we've studied the same things for eighty five years,
Speaker 1: but we bring in different methods as different methods come online.
Speaker 1: So we started out with regular questionnaires, surveys, and we
Speaker 1: did you know, the original founders of the study did
Speaker 1: interviews and detailed physical exams, and then every few years
Speaker 1: we'd send them a questionnaire every two years actually, and
Speaker 1: we got their medical records from their doctors. But then
Speaker 1: we began to audio tape them, and then we began
Speaker 1: to videotape them. And now we draw blood for DNA
Speaker 1: and messenger RNA, and we put people into the MRI
Speaker 1: scanner and scan their brains. I mean, we deliberately bring
Speaker 1: them into our lab and stress them out and then
Speaker 1: watch they recover from stress.
Speaker 2: Don't stress these one hundred year olds out too much,
Speaker 2: my friend.
Speaker 1: Well, we we were. We actually brought in the kids
Speaker 1: and stressed. Oh okay, I gotchas. So what we do is
Speaker 1: we bring in these different methods to try to look
Speaker 1: at well being through different lenses.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. Yeah, you know, the originators of the study
Speaker 2: would never in a million years have imagined A that
Speaker 2: the study was still going on, and b that you'd
Speaker 2: be that such methods would even exist. Imagine going to
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty eight and showing them an fMRI machine.
Speaker 1: Exactly, we're working in your brain or DNA, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, or DNA. Well, you know, you think about how
Speaker 2: much science it's a whole other topic. But I'm fascinated
Speaker 2: with the history of science and and even just the
Speaker 2: past seventy years. You know, what we've gone from the
Speaker 2: kind of a pre scientific world to a ultra scientific world. Anyway,
Speaker 2: that's it's so fascinating. Well, what a what a wonderful
Speaker 2: data set to inherit, so to speak. You know what
Speaker 2: that that that you can play around with that nerds
Speaker 2: like us can just jump in that. And and so
Speaker 2: you're looking at well you're looking at lots of correlations.
Speaker 2: It seems like in terms of causa causative claims you're
Speaker 2: a little bit more limited there. But what can you
Speaker 2: still say? I mean, it is a longitudinal study, So
Speaker 2: that's beautiful, you know that is that does make it
Speaker 2: possible to make some but you don't have a good
Speaker 2: control group. That's my concern.
Speaker 1: So no, it's really it's a really good concern. It's
Speaker 1: an important question. You know what do we so unless
Speaker 1: you do a tightly controlled experiment, Yeah, you can improve
Speaker 1: causation right right, And we can't tightly control it and say, okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to traumatize these children and we're gonna not
Speaker 1: traumatize these children and then we're going to see how
Speaker 1: their lives play up. That's unethical, right, It's unethical to
Speaker 1: do most kinds of experiments on human beings. So what
Speaker 1: we do, as you're mentioning, is we follow people along
Speaker 1: and we don't prove causation. But what we can get
Speaker 1: closer to is that kind of chicken and egg question
Speaker 1: which comes first, and that's very helpful. So I'll give
Speaker 1: you an example. Quite a number of people in our
Speaker 1: study had the combination of depression and alcoholism. And when
Speaker 1: you ask people who have those problems which came first,
Speaker 1: the alcohol or the depression, they will always tell you, oh,
Speaker 1: I got depressed and then I started to drink. But
Speaker 1: when you actually look and we followed them, the drinking
Speaker 1: comes first and then depression. So it's that kind of
Speaker 1: question that we can shed some light on by following
Speaker 1: people year after year over a lot of time.
Speaker 2: That's true, that's true, but a lot of things came
Speaker 2: before their depression as well. Just to play devil's advocate,
Speaker 2: not just you could have you could have said, you
Speaker 2: can't make the same inference of value. Oh they got
Speaker 2: divorced before the depression, you know exactly.
Speaker 1: So what we do, and this is where you know
Speaker 1: to your point, we make sure that other studies have
Speaker 1: found the same things or are pointing in the same direction.
Speaker 1: So we never claim our study alone has found it
Speaker 1: and so you have to believe it. Yeah, because of
Speaker 1: this problem that there needs to be replication of scientific
Speaker 1: findings for us to have confidence that those findings are
Speaker 1: not just by chance.
Speaker 2: I got you. That's a good scientist in you. Today's
Speaker 2: podcast is sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to
Speaker 2: untangle the stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations,
Speaker 2: and humanity at large using the perception box lens. They
Speaker 2: do this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research.
Speaker 2: Today's conversation with Robert really illustrates the importance of expanding
Speaker 2: the walls of our perception box. The perception box is
Speaker 2: the invisible mental box that we all live inside, and
Speaker 2: it can seriously hinder our ability to understand one another
Speaker 2: and to understand ourselves. In this episode, Robert reveals the
Speaker 2: main lessons he has learned from the longest ever study
Speaker 2: on human happiness. One of the major lessons is the
Speaker 2: importance of cultivating human connections for being able to weather
Speaker 2: the storms of life and to live a full, happy existence.
Speaker 2: This lesson is very much tied to our perception box.
Speaker 2: When our perception box walls are contracted, we see the
Speaker 2: world in a very narrow way thanks to our own
Speaker 2: stories and self judgments. These stories and self judgments limit
Speaker 2: our potential to form deep connections with others. This is
Speaker 2: especially the case when we perceive someone as being very
Speaker 2: different from us, or we don't immediately feel a connection
Speaker 2: with a person. Consciously and deliberately make the effort to
Speaker 2: see outside ourselves and our stories, at least temporarily, the
Speaker 2: walls of our perception box expand, and we're able to
Speaker 2: encounter another human being with curiosity and openness. This can
Speaker 2: help us cultivate the most unlikely connections and can lead
Speaker 2: to some of the happiest moments in our lives. To
Speaker 2: find out more about unlikely collaborators and the perception box,
Speaker 2: go to Unlikely Collaborators dot com. You said you're a
Speaker 2: psychoanalysts by training. That is so interesting because I don't
Speaker 2: feel like psychoanalysts get a lot of get much love
Speaker 2: these days, especially in psychology. You know, Phil in the
Speaker 2: psychology feel we love We've like moved on where CBT
Speaker 2: where you know act where? Well, they're all all the acronyms,
Speaker 2: all the things. Do you think do you feel like
Speaker 2: Freud is overrated or underrated?
Speaker 1: I think Freud is both some people over rate him,
Speaker 1: very few actually, but many people underrate him. So yeah,
Speaker 1: he in psychology. Now Freud has thought of as like
Speaker 1: old school you know, almost witchcraft, because he had some
Speaker 1: ideas that were really wrong right, but he had so
Speaker 1: many fundamental ideas that were so right that now we
Speaker 1: forget they were largely made popular by Freud. So CBT
Speaker 1: was founded by a psychoanalyst. Aaron Beck was an analyst. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that. There are many and there's a great talk.
Speaker 1: I can't remember his name. He's a psychology professor at Yale,
Speaker 1: but he gives a talk to his undergraduate students saying
Speaker 1: you're going to hear that Freud is, you know, is
Speaker 1: totally outdated, not useful at all, but let me just
Speaker 1: walk you through all these concepts that we couldn't live
Speaker 1: without in psychology because of Freud. So I would say
Speaker 1: mostly he's underrated because we forget that a lot of
Speaker 1: what everything is based on had to do with Freud.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I think you're referring to Paul Bloom by the way,
Speaker 2: I don't remember.
Speaker 1: I loved his talk, whoever he was.
Speaker 2: I think I think don't quote me on that. But
Speaker 2: it sounds like something Paul would say. But well, first
Speaker 2: of all, so that's that's cool, But also, let's give
Speaker 2: some love to Anna Freud. Anna Freud, I mean that's
Speaker 2: talking about defense mechanisms. I think Anna did more than
Speaker 2: than then What's sign did. Yeah, and so let's give
Speaker 2: some love there. And also I am such a big
Speaker 2: Anyone who knows me knows I'm such a big fan
Speaker 2: of Karen Horney. Oh yeah, And I have been trying
Speaker 2: to resurrect Karen Horney and show some love to the
Speaker 2: amazing work that she's done on well, the neurotic trends.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you're feel that that idea of hers,
Speaker 2: it's beautiful. And yeah, So as a as a psychoanalyst,
Speaker 2: you know, do you do you think there's still a
Speaker 2: place in the modern day world for psychoanalysis? Is we
Speaker 2: don't need to move completely on from that?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I mean it's really I run the
Speaker 1: psychodynamic Teaching program at the residency at my hospital at
Speaker 1: Massachusetts General Hospital and McLain Hospital, and it is a
Speaker 1: teaching program that basically teaches people to talk and listen
Speaker 1: rather than pulling out a manual. It teaches them. Okay,
Speaker 1: how do you listen between the lines? How do you
Speaker 1: listen to what someone's not able to tell you but
Speaker 1: you can get hints of it. How do you listen
Speaker 1: to their train of thought and from that draw some
Speaker 1: inferences about what's most worrying them or what's most upsetting them,
Speaker 1: And then how can you reflect it back to them
Speaker 1: so that they feel heard, they feel understood. And it's
Speaker 1: very different from taking out a manual and say today
Speaker 1: we're gonna work on these four dysfunctional beliefs. CBT has
Speaker 1: a lot of usefulness, don't get me wrong, But this
Speaker 1: kind of more open ended, exploratory model of psychotherapy I
Speaker 1: find just incredibly powerful. And the research is the research
Speaker 1: says it's just as powerful as CBT. They CBT says
Speaker 1: it's the only evidence based practice, but that's not true.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, you like those are fighting words.
Speaker 1: They are fighting words. But the studies show that psychodynamic
Speaker 1: work is as effective and in some way in some studies,
Speaker 1: longer lasting than the results of CBT for depression, for anxiety,
Speaker 1: for a whole variety of well.
Speaker 2: I know some CBT people where that would be fighting
Speaker 2: words what you just said, but uh yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: because they do kind of have this attitude that there's
Speaker 2: no evidence space, there's no evidence space, and that's so
Speaker 2: not true.
Speaker 1: I know, I know the evidence based well actually because
Speaker 1: I've I've had to look into it in a man
Speaker 1: a lot of the papers about it.
Speaker 2: Well, do you feel like the close cousin of depth psychology,
Speaker 2: which is of a psychoanalytic therapy, which I think is
Speaker 2: depth therapy. Do you think that's underrated because I think
Speaker 2: depth therapy that you know, Carl Jung's ideas about about
Speaker 2: what therapy looked like, his vision for therapy. I think
Speaker 2: that's really underrated too these days. Do you agree to
Speaker 2: do too?
Speaker 1: I do too. I think he had you know, Freud,
Speaker 1: Freud wasn't an easy guy, right, and he had terrible
Speaker 1: rivalries with Young.
Speaker 2: And honest, let's be honest. Yeah, yeah, so you know.
Speaker 1: So a lot of Freudians and Youngians kind of don't
Speaker 1: talk to each other, which is of course silly. But
Speaker 1: Freud had some I mean, Young had some very important
Speaker 1: ideas and really expanded on what Freud did in important ways.
Speaker 2: I think so as well. And then you know, humanistic
Speaker 2: psychology doesn't get as much love as it should. In
Speaker 2: my open an existential humanist psychology. Yeah, Carl Rogers and yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: he's been on my podcast. He's been on my podcast
Speaker 2: he has, yes, yes, recently, recently. Yeah, I'll send you
Speaker 2: the episode. He's a legend. He's a legend.
Speaker 1: Stuff, I really do.
Speaker 2: Have you met him?
Speaker 1: I only I was at a conference where he spoke,
Speaker 1: but I've never met him.
Speaker 2: He's such a he's such a great guy. His work
Speaker 2: has influenced me a lot. Okay, so I know we've
Speaker 2: strayed a little bit away from the details of your study,
Speaker 2: but I just wanted to go into this realm of
Speaker 2: what sort of therapies do you think are the you know, underrated,
Speaker 2: underrated in this day and age. Let's tie it back
Speaker 2: to your study. So do you view some of the
Speaker 2: major findings through a lens of psychodynamics? I'm just curious.
Speaker 2: And then obviously tell us some of the biggest findings.
Speaker 2: I know you've you've spoken this on many podcasts, but
Speaker 2: for our audience who maybe are not as aware of
Speaker 2: some of the most significant findings, please tell with them
Speaker 2: and then how to interpret them through what lens.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, I would say that the interpretation that really
Speaker 1: what we do is we think of questions to ask
Speaker 1: that are informed in part by psychodynamics psychoanalytic theory. So
Speaker 1: we've studied security of attachment in our older adults and
Speaker 1: their partners. So we studied late life marriage and security
Speaker 1: of attachment in late life marriage and its links with
Speaker 1: brain functioning, all kinds of things. So my interest in
Speaker 1: psychodynamics informs the kinds of things I study and measure
Speaker 1: in the longitudinal study. And then there was another part.
Speaker 2: You asked me, uh, well, yeah, well, you know, go
Speaker 2: through some of the most significant bindings.
Speaker 1: So probably the biggest takeaway and the biggest surprise from
Speaker 1: this study was that the people who had the warmest
Speaker 1: connections with other people weren't just happier, but they stayed healthier. Right,
Speaker 1: that was the surprise, Like how could relationships get into
Speaker 1: your body? And how could warm relationships make it less
Speaker 1: likely that you'd get coronary artery disease or type two diabetes? Right? Like,
Speaker 1: how could that be a thing? And then a lot
Speaker 1: of other studies began to find the same thing, and
Speaker 1: we came to understand that this is a robust finding.
Speaker 1: So we've been studying the mechanisms.
Speaker 2: What do you think are Okay, in terms of the
Speaker 2: measures you're referring to give me a specific dependent measure
Speaker 2: from the psychological perspective, what sort of.
Speaker 1: Tests do you use, tests of.
Speaker 2: Whatever, whatever you're measuring psychologically. I just I don't even
Speaker 2: I don't have a list of all the all the
Speaker 2: sort of tests that you've administered, because it's like, because
Speaker 2: I'm trying to wrap my head around how this is
Speaker 2: something I'm trying to wrap my head around, and please
Speaker 2: explain to me nineteen thirty eight when initiated, it's not
Speaker 2: like you had very well psychometric validated tests that you
Speaker 2: have today. So how are you able to look at
Speaker 2: continuity over these different time periods when a lot of
Speaker 2: these tests are recently developed. So that's one thing I'm
Speaker 2: trying to understand.
Speaker 1: That's a great question. So you're right, So we you know,
Speaker 1: my predecessors asked about the same things, but they asked
Speaker 1: different questions. The wording of the questions was different. So
Speaker 1: then how do you compare the data you get in
Speaker 1: response to one question from the data you get fifty
Speaker 1: years later in.
Speaker 2: Response to my question questions.
Speaker 1: About marriage, for example, you know, or happiness whatever. So
Speaker 1: one of the things that you can do is to
Speaker 1: look at what are called latent constructs. So let's say
Speaker 1: we ask about marriage in five different ways over forty years, right,
Speaker 1: But you can and see, Okay, what's the latent construct,
Speaker 1: the underlying thing we're trying to measure each time we
Speaker 1: ask the question. And then there are statistical methods for
Speaker 1: converting the data you get in response to each different
Speaker 1: question into something that's comparable, where you kind of put
Speaker 1: them on a level playing field. And so what you
Speaker 1: do is you identify a latent construct and you then
Speaker 1: harmonize different measures so that then you've got it's not
Speaker 1: exactly repeated measures, but it's measures of roughly the same
Speaker 1: thing over time. So that's what we do, and there
Speaker 1: are some very well developed techniques for doing that.
Speaker 2: Now, absolutely no, that makes complete sense to me. I
Speaker 2: didn't even know you did that, so it's yeah, so yeah, there.
Speaker 2: I mean, you can swim in the sea of lead
Speaker 2: and variable analysis and and and and even you could
Speaker 2: test some of the older items from the thirties now
Speaker 2: and see how it loads on the factor of the
Speaker 2: new factors. And I get it, and I get it now.
Speaker 2: I mean I had so many of these unanswered questions
Speaker 2: I don't get from your other interviews because there with
Speaker 2: like people who don't know anything about psychology. So I'm
Speaker 2: left with the more detail oriented questions. So, Okay, now
Speaker 2: I get it. That's that's really cool.
Speaker 1: And then you get to talk to you about this
Speaker 1: because nobody else.
Speaker 2: Asked that's what we do here on this show. That's
Speaker 2: what we do here. Okay, that's cool. And so do
Speaker 2: find that some of the kinds of questions they asked
Speaker 2: that maybe like are outdated in terms of like, you know,
Speaker 2: maybe not even put a correct like maybe a focused
Speaker 2: on the male gender, right, you know, because and stuff.
Speaker 2: Do you find it still loads on on some some
Speaker 2: some more global factors when you include other kinds of
Speaker 2: items that are more modern day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you can you can see that. Oh actually,
Speaker 1: this this loads really well. This this coheres really well
Speaker 1: with some of the other measures, some of the other
Speaker 1: questions we asked. Sometimes it's surprising how well they cohere
Speaker 1: and surprising how all the predict things. So actually, George
Speaker 1: Valiant measured defense mechanisms, and he did it in this
Speaker 1: really creative way. He identified vignette stories people told about
Speaker 1: a challenging time, a relationship, or a job challenge or something.
Speaker 1: He'd take those stories and have people code them and say, Okay,
Speaker 1: what defense mechanisms were being used here? And then we
Speaker 1: have so we have a kind of measure of what
Speaker 1: is someone's primary motive defending themselves against challenge, against anxiety?
Speaker 1: What are their top two defense mechanisms. And then what
Speaker 1: we find is that the maturity of their defenses, how
Speaker 1: mature they are, is so predictive of so many things
Speaker 1: later on. And so this kind of rough and ready
Speaker 1: measure that we created by coding text, by coding stories,
Speaker 1: turns out to be hugely predictive of health, of well being,
Speaker 1: of work functioning. Right, So it's pretty cool.
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Speaker 2: fifteen percent off. I'm obsessed with modern day measurement of
Speaker 2: defense mechanisms. It's been a hobby of mine. I want
Speaker 2: to send you a paper where we try to do
Speaker 2: a big factor analysis of all different kind of defense
Speaker 2: mechanism items from different scales to kind of see what
Speaker 2: the essential features are. I'm actually I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: google Google my paper right now, because I'll tell you
Speaker 2: some of the major factors, and then I want to
Speaker 2: know how it maps onto which factors you found are
Speaker 2: most important? For you said two, there's two biggies, so
Speaker 2: I want to like, keep keep the drum roll going
Speaker 2: for a second.
Speaker 1: Mean for defenses or for did you.
Speaker 2: Say you found top two defense mechanisms. Did I understand
Speaker 2: that correctly?
Speaker 1: Oh? No, no, I was giving an example, like what
Speaker 1: of this person? But we did find what My co
Speaker 1: author Mark Schultz and I reorganized George's defense mechanism ratings
Speaker 1: into two big categories, which were defenses that engaged the
Speaker 1: world and defenses that avoided the world avoided reality. So
Speaker 1: it was Waydon's versus engagement. And what we found was
Speaker 1: that people who were higher on the engagement dimension were
Speaker 1: much more successful in their lives than the people who
Speaker 1: were higher on the avoidance dimension.
Speaker 2: That's huge. That's a huge finding, huge finding.
Speaker 1: They are called facing the music or burying our heads
Speaker 1: in the sand. That's the title of the paper.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm gonna I got a chill because
Speaker 2: I've been I love that finding. I've been really fascinated
Speaker 2: with the research in the act approach on experiential avoidance
Speaker 2: and how that underlies so many forms of psychopathology, and
Speaker 2: so that I want to find that paper that is
Speaker 2: really in wine with a lot of other research. So
Speaker 2: you found those two counters, engagement and avoidance. So we
Speaker 2: found four facts. We found four factors, and we just
Speaker 2: read the factors to you. We did like a We
Speaker 2: administured so many of these defense items, and these are
Speaker 2: the four factors. One was maladapted of action patterns is
Speaker 2: what we labeled this obviously with the subjective what you
Speaker 2: able a factor, but we abled it. And they were
Speaker 2: the kind of items like they included suppression I'm unable
Speaker 2: to keep a problem out of my mind until i
Speaker 2: have a time to deal with it, rationalization like I'm
Speaker 2: unable to find good reasons for everything I do, or
Speaker 2: I'm unable to keep a problem out of my mind.
Speaker 2: I'm reverse coding it on the spot. I'm often told
Speaker 2: I don't show my feelings, so so that actually seems
Speaker 2: to have to do with avoidance. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 2: maladaptive action patterns. I actually, as I'm reading these items,
Speaker 2: I'm like, that seems to be avoidance suppression. The second
Speaker 2: one we found was an image distortion factor, which tended
Speaker 2: to have to do with changing oneself. I am like
Speaker 2: I'm the greatest. That was very narcissistic sort of, you know,
Speaker 2: ways of dealing. I ignore danger as if I were Superman.
Speaker 2: Sometimes i think I'm an angel and other times I
Speaker 2: think I'm a devil. Something to do with distortion of
Speaker 2: one's self image.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Third we found were adaptive, very adaptive ones like like
Speaker 2: using humor or using creativity, anticipation. And then the fourth
Speaker 2: one was was more altruism. So I feel good when
Speaker 2: I know someone when I when I know, I always
Speaker 2: feel that someone I know is like a guardian angel.
Speaker 2: If I were in a crisis, I would seek out
Speaker 2: another person who had the same problem. So ways of
Speaker 2: dealing and coping through altruism. Anyway, that was our four factors.
Speaker 2: I'm just, I'm just my My nerdy question is do
Speaker 2: you do you see any of those four playing a
Speaker 2: role in what you found?
Speaker 1: Well, we do. It's a it's a different way to
Speaker 1: your buckets, but it's the same coping mechanisms, right, and
Speaker 1: so like it's just it. And as you know, there's
Speaker 1: like there's no standard list of defense mechanisms, right because
Speaker 1: there's label it so many ways. And so what you're
Speaker 1: trying to get at is four dimensions. We had divided
Speaker 1: things into two dimensions, but we're all looking at the
Speaker 1: same I know, styles of coping and so I'd love
Speaker 1: to see what you did that would be great.
Speaker 2: We correlated it with narcissism and and okay, well this
Speaker 2: is this is wonderful. And how does that how do
Speaker 2: those findings avoidance approach, how does it link to the
Speaker 2: off cited finding about the importance of human connection? How
Speaker 2: do how do you can you relate those things to
Speaker 2: each other at all? Like do people who have more
Speaker 2: avoidance do they avoid relationships that would be beneficial for
Speaker 2: them that sort of thing? Right, Yeah, and.
Speaker 1: They often avoid dealing with problems in relationships.
Speaker 2: Oh right, yeah, there you go attachment style.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh so we find that
Speaker 1: avoidance doesn't work well interpersonally. Right. It also doesn't work
Speaker 1: well in other things too, like dealing with a health crisis. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but certainly interpersonally not a good not a good thing.
Speaker 2: Why do you emphasize connections so much? In uh, when
Speaker 2: you talk about this, I mean, you're you're awesome ted
Speaker 2: talk emphasized connection, You're the book does a lot. Is
Speaker 2: that like the thing you're most excited about finding consistently or.
Speaker 1: Because the findings are so powerful?
Speaker 2: Right, that's the most powerful finding.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean also taking care of your health, which
Speaker 1: matters hugely so. But but I think what we have
Speaker 1: found is that that the the benefits of connection and
Speaker 1: the hazards of loneliness and disconnection are so powerful that
Speaker 1: the reason why we're excited about it is we feel
Speaker 1: like we really want to bring this message to people.
Speaker 1: Yeah that in some ways, you know, it's not rocket science.
Speaker 1: In some ways, it's stating something that we all deep
Speaker 1: down know, but it's just bringing it out front and
Speaker 1: center and saying, look, there's all this science behind it.
Speaker 2: It's so important and there is so much science behind
Speaker 2: it for everyone. You know that almost every study you
Speaker 2: find you identifind willeliness is predicts a lot of negative,
Speaker 2: maladaptive of things in life. Again, I just want to
Speaker 2: come back to the control question, the control group question.
Speaker 2: What would that even in this kind of study, what
Speaker 2: would that even look like like? You know, obviously the
Speaker 2: two groups, the Harvard group and the juvenile group are
Speaker 2: very different from each other. Do you compare them to
Speaker 2: each other? Ever? Do you? Okay, so you can do
Speaker 2: cross sample comparisons? Okay, absolutely, yes, that's great. What are
Speaker 2: some findings, what are some findings from looking at the benefits,
Speaker 2: because there's got to be benefits of being going to
Speaker 2: Harvard and having that social support system, having people believe
Speaker 2: in you versus going through and having people kind of expect,
Speaker 2: you know, negative outcomes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And actually, the most powerful finding we have on
Speaker 1: that regard comparing them is that the Harvard guys live
Speaker 1: on average ten years longer than the inner city guys. Wow,
Speaker 1: so privilege matters a lot. But twenty five of the
Speaker 1: inner city guys, twenty five out of four hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty six went to college and graduated from college, and
Speaker 1: those twenty five lived just as long on average as
Speaker 1: the Harvard guys. So what we find is, and we
Speaker 1: don't think it's because of their college diplomas. But we
Speaker 1: think that the support they got first of all to
Speaker 1: get to college and to stay in college that was
Speaker 1: huge and probably had other effects on their lives and
Speaker 1: their longevity. And then also the education, the value of
Speaker 1: the education, because you know, the big public health messages
Speaker 1: about the dangers of smoking, the dangers of addiction, the alcoholism,
Speaker 1: all that really began to emerge in the sixties, seventies,
Speaker 1: eighties come into the public health consciousness, and we think
Speaker 1: that the Harvard guys, because of their education and reading
Speaker 1: more widely, probably got those messages sooner and were able
Speaker 1: to implement them sooner than the inner city guys. So
Speaker 1: we think that education probably had something to do with
Speaker 1: this longevity benefit.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. A lot of
Speaker 2: the Obviously most of the participants are it's anonymous. We
Speaker 2: don't know who they are, but it was leaked. You
Speaker 2: know that JFK was one of the study participants, and
Speaker 2: so you have, like you know, in some closet somewhere,
Speaker 2: you have a lot of information about JFK and and
Speaker 2: and and things we probably don't even know you know
Speaker 2: about him that you know and in his life is
Speaker 2: I'm not going to ask you to tell me any secrets,
Speaker 2: but tell me some secrets.
Speaker 1: Well, of course, and you know I couldn't.
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell you, I know, but tell me.
Speaker 1: We don't have the information about JFK. So when he
Speaker 1: was running for Senate from the state of Massachusetts, his
Speaker 1: advisors thought it was best that he withdraw from the study.
Speaker 1: I had remove his records because they felt that having
Speaker 1: a bunch of private personal information in a in an
Speaker 1: office somewhere, even though it was locked up, probably wasn't
Speaker 1: a good idea. So those records are now in the
Speaker 1: Kennedy Library. Oh, I see, okay, at the University of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2: Okay, I see that's open to the public. Yeah, I see.
Speaker 2: I didn't know that. I didn't know that. That's cool. Well,
Speaker 2: so they're obviously there are a lot of successful individuals
Speaker 2: in the Harvard thing. What about the inner city guys.
Speaker 2: I like how you refer to them as the inner
Speaker 2: city guys, So I'm going to refer to them. Is
Speaker 2: that as well? Anyone there you don't think give me names, obviously,
Speaker 2: but anyone who became wildly successful from that cohort.
Speaker 1: Yes, there were there were people who became you know,
Speaker 1: business owners, quite successful, maybe millionaires at a time when
Speaker 1: a million dollars was a huge amount of money, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So some of them, I think one
Speaker 1: had a shop that made the first toll house chocolate
Speaker 1: chip cookies, you know, and so very cool. Now I
Speaker 1: will tell you are are the opposite of the success
Speaker 1: story which I only found out when it was published
Speaker 1: in the Boston Globe that in the delinquent sample, which
Speaker 1: we did not follow the delinquent boys from that study,
Speaker 1: one of them was the Boston Strangler.
Speaker 2: Wow. We we're allowed to know that.
Speaker 1: We're allowed to know that because it was published in
Speaker 1: the in the Boston Globe. Long.
Speaker 2: Wow, Well, well, I don't know what lessons to learn
Speaker 2: from about happiness from him? Was he? Because like what
Speaker 2: if you found out that he was the Boston Strangler
Speaker 2: but he was happy? You know, Like, what lesson do
Speaker 2: we learn from that?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Lesson?
Speaker 1: So well, we didn't we didn't follow him.
Speaker 2: Follow it up? You didn't follow that up? Yeah, no,
Speaker 2: I know. That's like, I know that got dark really quick.
Speaker 2: But I'm just my point here is that the point
Speaker 2: I'm trying to make is that I often feel like
Speaker 2: when we talk about happiness. I always try to emphasize
Speaker 2: to people, you know, it's it's how you acquire that
Speaker 2: happiness that matters, sometimes even more. You know. Eric from
Speaker 2: has this wonderful book called The Sane Society, which is
Speaker 2: one of my favorite books, and I think it's so
Speaker 2: important to recognize that being sane in it insane society
Speaker 2: is actually a marker of insanity. You know, being happy
Speaker 2: if everyone else around you is dying or suffering. You know,
Speaker 2: do we just want to reward and say, look, let's
Speaker 2: do whatever this person's doing because they're happy. No, you know,
Speaker 2: so just zooming out to a broader context and not
Speaker 2: just looking at the factors that predict happiness, but look
Speaker 2: to see that those factors are increasingly net positive on
Speaker 2: the world I think is important too.
Speaker 1: Do you agree, yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2: The Boston Stranger is just an example that I was
Speaker 2: like because it's like that'd be cheeky, not cheeky, but like,
Speaker 2: you know, you find well terms of the Boston Strangers
Speaker 2: scores with the happiest of them all. Well, it's not
Speaker 2: like we then want to like do whatever he did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, we know that sociopaths
Speaker 1: are often impervious to write to what other people think
Speaker 1: of them, whatever you know, and so they seem untouchable
Speaker 1: in terms of their happiness.
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Speaker 2: In terms of like relationship the power, because I'm right
Speaker 2: there with you in the power of relationships, and I
Speaker 2: love that you're bringing that so foremost to the culture.
Speaker 2: Your work has done a lot to bring that to
Speaker 2: the foremost. I love that there's just there's obviously a
Speaker 2: lot of nuance there, like being single. Like in terms
Speaker 2: of romantic relationships, do you find I feel like a
Speaker 2: good marriage is like one of the best, if not
Speaker 2: the best, predictors of happiness. But but a bad marriage
Speaker 2: is one of the best predictors of depression. So it's
Speaker 2: not just like get married, it's like, no, no, get
Speaker 2: married to the right person, you know.
Speaker 1: And yeah, and figure out how to work on relationships
Speaker 1: to make them better. Now, not every relationship is workable,
Speaker 1: and so you know, as we know, many people split up,
Speaker 1: and some couples really should split up, some friendships should
Speaker 1: split up. But I think one of the things we
Speaker 1: try to emphasize in the book is that it's really
Speaker 1: important to see what's possible in a relationship to see
Speaker 1: if it's possible to work through difficulties, because often it
Speaker 1: makes a relationship stronger. And once you've invested in a relationship,
Speaker 1: whether it's a romantic relationship or a friendship, there's huge
Speaker 1: cost to blowing it off, to jettising it, jettison it.
Speaker 1: So we want to be sure that we've done what
Speaker 1: we can to see if differences can be worked out.
Speaker 2: Oh, I completely agree with that. I'm bringing down some
Speaker 2: of this stuff because I feel like you're giving me
Speaker 2: good quotes for my next book. I think you're saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're absolutely yeah, And of course I'm going to ask
Speaker 2: your remission before I include it in my book. Yeah, Early,
Speaker 2: you're giving you, you're giving, You're giving me good You're
Speaker 2: saying such good things that I really agree with. Uh,
Speaker 2: just getting back to the needy, gray details of what
Speaker 2: you're looking at. Do you have measures of meaning? Do
Speaker 2: you have measures you know, because like modern day well
Speaker 2: being scales exist right that incorporate lots of different things. Purpose.
Speaker 2: Do you feel like you sai? It's a purpose, a
Speaker 2: sense of meaning in your life. Do you feel like
Speaker 2: you matter? Do you feel like you're not just connection,
Speaker 2: but other things. I'm wondering, are using any of these
Speaker 2: modern day scales, And yeah, we do.
Speaker 1: Like we use Ed Deaner's Satisfaction with Life scale, we
Speaker 1: use some more expanded satisfaction with life scales, and they
Speaker 1: include questions like, you know, do you feel like you
Speaker 1: have meaning and purpose? Or what gets you up? And
Speaker 1: do you know what gets you up in the morning
Speaker 1: and that kind of thing. So we do, and we
Speaker 1: use those scales because they are tested, they are tried
Speaker 1: and true. Yeah, George Valiant and his predecessors made up
Speaker 1: a lot of their own questions and they were great
Speaker 1: at it. It's just that they didn't do psychometric testing
Speaker 1: on them. And so now what we've done is to
Speaker 1: bring in measures that have been tested, and that way
Speaker 1: it allows us to compare our data to other studies
Speaker 1: that are using the same measures.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, because do you ever find that some things that
Speaker 2: predict happiness maybe don't predict meaning and vice versa. You know,
Speaker 2: something like when I say happiness, I mean just life
Speaker 2: satisfaction scale one to ten. How satisfied with you are
Speaker 2: your life? How what's the ratio of your positive to
Speaker 2: your negative emotions? That's really just how the life satisfaction
Speaker 2: questionnaire is. But do you find there maybe there's some
Speaker 2: things that over the years have predicted a greater sense
Speaker 2: of meaning and purpose but may show lower happiness scores.
Speaker 2: Do you look at that differentiation at all?
Speaker 1: We don't, But I think you probably know of Carol
Speaker 1: Riff's work, where she differently you know, hetonic while being
Speaker 1: from eudaemonic being well for work. You know, there are
Speaker 1: people who prioritize meaning and purpose and they'll defer gratification
Speaker 1: in order to get that. And there are other people
Speaker 1: who say, no, I really want to party now and
Speaker 1: I want to have a good time right now. And
Speaker 1: so we know that people differ a lot in the
Speaker 1: extent to which they prioritize the being happy now versus
Speaker 1: the deferred gratification kind of happiness.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, I'm just curious if you looked at that
Speaker 2: different differentiation at all. And then, of course the creativity
Speaker 2: question is so interesting to me. Success have you looked
Speaker 2: at like the role of self esteem or the role
Speaker 2: of feeling like you are competent in your life and
Speaker 2: how much that matters you. Have you looked at that
Speaker 2: at all?
Speaker 1: Well? We have, you know, we haven't I would say,
Speaker 1: we have not done really rigorous measurement of self esteem.
Speaker 1: I wish we had, because it's something that I feel
Speaker 1: is so vital. We haven't done that, but we know
Speaker 1: people would men things that reflected high or low self
Speaker 1: esteem a lot in their responses to us. But you know,
Speaker 1: have we done a particular defined study of self esteem? No?
Speaker 2: Fair enough. I mean, you can't measure everything in the world.
Speaker 1: You know, when people like you ask really good questions
Speaker 1: with oh, I wish we'd answer we had asked that.
Speaker 2: Well, look, I mean it's it's still one of the best,
Speaker 2: most unique studies in the history of psychology. Don't feel
Speaker 2: you know, apologetic at all that you didn't didn't you
Speaker 2: We didn't include every measure possible measure in the world.
Speaker 2: The original architects of the study, did they ever plan
Speaker 2: for this to be a longitudinal study or it just
Speaker 2: turned out to be that way?
Speaker 1: Well? No, I think they planned to follow people maybe
Speaker 1: five to ten years, okay, okay, but nobody, nobody ever
Speaker 1: dreamed it would go on this long.
Speaker 2: It's a really remarkable achievement and that you're part of
Speaker 2: a you're part of a remarkable lineage.
Speaker 1: You know, really lucky, really lucky.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well you're worthy, You're worthy. But yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: the psychologist me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So with the connection thing, what are some of the
Speaker 2: tell me some more of the benefits of connection that
Speaker 2: you found. You know, people who were able to have
Speaker 2: more connectionised we're also able to what in their lives,
Speaker 2: like what tell me more of the correlations associations you
Speaker 2: see there.
Speaker 1: Well, they weathered hard times better, right, because relationships help
Speaker 1: us get through the hard times. They were often more
Speaker 1: successful at work and you know we know this from
Speaker 1: lots of work. Now that says, you know, emotional intelligence,
Speaker 1: people's skills. Being good with people often matters more than
Speaker 1: IQ for how well you do at work. So there
Speaker 1: are a lot of things we found about connection. They
Speaker 1: just it has a lot of positive benefits and a
Speaker 1: lot of benefits in terms of weathering the storms of life.
Speaker 2: And remind me how you measured the presence of high
Speaker 2: quality connections, you know, that's that's a phrase you know
Speaker 2: in the psychologic culture, high quality connections, which is different
Speaker 2: than like the need for belonging. You know, you can
Speaker 2: have you can feel a sense of belonging, but not
Speaker 2: feel like there's a mutual intimate back and forth. So
Speaker 2: I'm just curious, how do you measure the presence of
Speaker 2: lots of high quality connections in one's life?
Speaker 1: Well, so in different ways. I mean, we'd ask people
Speaker 1: about friends, how often do you see friends? What do
Speaker 1: you do with your friends? I see, I saw that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. And we would also talk about being satisfied.
Speaker 1: How satisfied are you with friends? How satisfied are you
Speaker 1: with your spouse? Uh? How good is your sex life?
Speaker 1: I mean, there were a lot of things we asked
Speaker 1: that tried to get at quality.
Speaker 2: It's great, it's pretty comprehensive.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like I've don't worry. I think I've
Speaker 2: exhausted my questions for today. I look at you every
Speaker 2: time I started to ask question, I think you feel
Speaker 2: like you're in the hot seat or something like, you know,
Speaker 2: and where were Roberger? Where were you? One June second,
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy two. But I really honor and treasure this
Speaker 2: opportunity to be able to ask you those questions. I've
Speaker 2: wondered them for a while. And I hope our listeners really,
Speaker 2: you know, get the main points of this of the study.
Speaker 2: They don't get lost in the factor analysis discussion, but
Speaker 2: they understand the main points here. Any any other sort
Speaker 2: of mean, you know, sort of points you want to
Speaker 2: make about what you've gleaned from this enormous data set.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that you know, we talk about what
Speaker 1: we've called social fitness, and it's really just an analogy
Speaker 1: with physical fitness. The idea that the people in our
Speaker 1: study who were best at this were the people who
Speaker 1: were active, you know, who would make sure they stayed
Speaker 1: in touch with friends, who would make plans with friends,
Speaker 1: who who were proactive, who didn't just wait for relationships
Speaker 1: to take care of themselves. Because they didn't always take
Speaker 1: care of themselves, some really good relationships would just wither
Speaker 1: away and die. And so I think that's an important
Speaker 1: message that's worth getting out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a beautiful place to maybe end. As I
Speaker 2: get older, I feel like I hold on, you know,
Speaker 2: more tightly to my most meaningful relationships, you know, trying
Speaker 2: to make its investment. You make investments easy, you know,
Speaker 2: calling mom, you know, you know, staying in touch more regularly,
Speaker 2: calling your friend if who's on another coast or whatever.
Speaker 2: And these investments and your research shows in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways that these individuals who made these investments as
Speaker 2: young as possible. It lived longer and you know, and
Speaker 2: lots of really great things, Doctor Waldinger, Such an honor
Speaker 2: to have you on my podcast day, and I wish
Speaker 2: you all the best with the continuing studies of it great.
Speaker 1: This was a pleasure I really enjoyed by talking with you.
Speaker 2: Thanks a lot, Thank you, thanks for listening to this
Speaker 2: episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
Speaker 2: in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
Speaker 2: to join in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com.
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Speaker 2: and creativity.