I don't think people are resting on their Laurels. Hoping happiness is going to show up. I think people are actively working towards this stuff. They're just kind of going at it the wrong way.
Hello and welcome to the psychology podcast. Today we welcome dr. Laurie Santos on the show. Dr. Santos is a psychology professor and head of Silliman college at Yale University. Her course, psychology. And the good life is Yale's most popular course, in over 300 years and has been adapted into a free Coursera program that has been taken by. Over 3.3 million people to date dr. Santos is a winner of numerous Awards, both for her science and teaching from institutions such as Yale.
The American Psychological Association. She's also the podcast host of the happiness lab in this episode. I talk to dr. Santos about happiness. People are unhappy, not for lack of trying, but it's because they're applying ineffective strategies, dr. Santos identifies. Some of the cognitive biases, that can hinder our happiness. There's no magical antidote to our problems, but there are ways to boost well-being in small, but significant ways. We also discuss resilience social justice and mindfulness. It was great to catch up with
Tiwari who I've known for my graduate school days. I've long respected, her work and it's been really great watching her amazing developmental trajectory within her career. So, without further Ado, I bring you dr. Laurie Santos, Laurie Santos. Wow. So great to have you on the psychology
podcast thanks so much for having me on the
show. Yeah, you're such a superstar now and you're a superstar in my eyes. When I was a grad student over 10 years ago, it's
How time
flies it is indeed. Yes.
Somehow you have to sing
na same. Same same podcast State podcasting treats you. Well you know I think for both of us were looking great.
I really do look recognizable
list. Yes, definitely, definitely.
And you are super star in my eyes for a different reason than why you're a superstar today. That was I loved your work on cognitive processes and non-human animals. I'm in loved your research, during then, and I didn't even know at that time, that you were in.
Arrested in happiness and and, and I wasn't even interested in happiness then. So I didn't, I should say, I didn't know that I would become interested in happiness. So I just bring this up to start because both of us are kind of I want to bond here for a second here with you. Because I feel like, both of us started were unusual within the positive psychology world because you know, I'm a cognitive scientist. Right. You're a cognitive developmental psychologist who then got interested in positive psychology and I think that's a little quite different than a lot of people in the field of positive psychology, Who start off in that field and maybe don't have the the background on.
Rain and and and cognitive development. So I just wanted to kind of start off there. It's an interesting Journey.
Yeah, no. Say my man, if you had told me back then, when you were grad student, I was first starting at Yale that. I'd be studying happiness of you. Like what? Like monkey happiness? Like what are you talking about? So yeah, it's been an interesting Journey.
So catch me up. Yeah I don't even know what point what year were you like? Oh, I'm going to teach a course in happiness at Yale. I don't even know when that like how that the origin story of
that. Yeah, yeah. So it started when I took on a new role on Yale's campus, I became a head of college, right? So for those that don't know, Yale is one of these weird schools, like Hogwarts in Harry Potter where there's like colleges within a college. There's like, you know, the yo Gryffindor, Yale Slytherin. I became head of Silliman college and that means in that role, I was living on campus with students.
Right? Like I moved into their quad, I had a house. Like, in the midst of students, I was eating in the dining hall and hang out in the coffee shop. And I was expecting College Student Life to be like, what college student life was like, when I went to college, you know, and the late 90s, you know, I expected students, you know, to have their issues, but to generally be kind of happy and not so stressed and enjoying college life and that just like, was not what I saw on the ground. Like I just saw incredible numbers of students who are depressed or anxious or just stressed out. You know, I'd run into students even students who weren't struggling that much.
You know, in the quad and say, hey, how's it going? And they'd say, oh, if I could just fast-forward, two, midterms, or if I could just get to the summer and, you know, it was heartbreaking, right? Here's this community that, I'm supposed to be this like, benevolent off for, and I was just watching students students, struggle watching them fast-forward, this like, Precious short college experience. And, you know, it just struck me that, you know, we weren't necessarily giving students the right strategies to navigate this stuff, right? And, which is kind of odd, you know. I mean it also caused me to look really carefully at the Nationals.
Mystics on what's going on on college campuses and like right now, over 40 percent of college students report being too depressed to function over sixty percent, say they're overwhelmingly anxious. More than one in ten has seriously considered suicide in the last 12 months. Like, this was again, this is not yell, this is nationally. And so I was saying, like, whoa, I had no idea things are as bad as they were and and that really kind of jolted me. I was like, you know, I'm not I'm not teaching them anything. If 60% of the students in my classroom are so overwhelmed and so anxious that they can't.
Function. Right? You know if like with one in five is probably had some when they know may be seriously. Considered suicide like these were just striking numbers. And so I said we had to do something about this like our our psychology colleagues were like resting on their Laurels and not like taking action here. And so that was what I kind of retrained. I mean, my goal was to really just retrain enough that I could develop this introductory class on strategies that students could use to feel happier, but then it kind of got bigger than that go bigger than that in part because the class got bigger than I expected
And I expected, you know, 30 or so, kids to take this, this new weird class on strategies for improving happiness, but a quarter of the entire campus showed up. The first time I tried to teach it, we had to teach it in a concert hall, Woolsey Hall, which you might remember on campus. Yeah. And so that was it, minor logistical nightmare but it also taught me that students are like voting with their feet. They don't like this culture. I feeling stressed and anxious. I think they really wanted to do something, but they wanted to do something about it and like an Evidence base.
That way they were like, what does the science say? The kinds of strategies we can use give them to me and I will put them into practice.
Yeah. What year was that?
This was in 2018 which is also kind of funny is not the right word ironic. Maybe like, you know, prescient like, you know, to be talking about well-being and college students before the covid-19 pandemic, right? Like I was worried about the levels of depression and anxiety, Then and you know, everything has changed since then.
Oh yeah. I express the same thing. I started teaching at positive.
A pain in 2016 while Angela Duckworth was writing her book grit. She said, Scott, do you want to teach my course? And I was like, sure. And then at ended up becoming whole thing that I just love doing so much. And I could see firsthand how unbelievably stressed these students are. And and I think it's complex and I wanted to just have an honest open conversation with you about it. I think there's a one hand and the other hand here I do see a lot more that teachers that professors can do to help students and have more compassion for.
For all the balls, they have to juggle, you know, and all the things they have to do. But the other hand, I'm also starting to see a little bit of a rise in entitlement to happiness among the students. And I wanted to hear your thoughts if you, if you know what I mean, if you maybe that's not happening at Yale, but I think it, It's gotta be happening at Yale if it's happening at Columbia. An expectation that well, I should be happy and part of my training and teaching in my course is actually to to not think necessarily that way, you know, what life doesn't really old.
Anything. But it sure would be nice to help the students and of course, but I think there's a little, it's a little complex there, and I want to get some more thoughts on
that. Yeah, I mean, this this I think fits with some of the ways that I teach the, the happiness class at Yale, you know, the class starts with this idea that our minds lie to us when it comes to happiness, right? There's so many ways that we get happiness wrong and I think one of them is just that that we think we should be happy all the time that it's normative to be happy all the time right there. One could even think strong.
Ball. Something's wrong with you if you're not happy all the time and and that I think you know, it's partly a lie of our mind but it's partly comes from, you know, the culture today. I think there really is an idea of toxic positivity, right? The new negative emotions you've done something wrong, like you're feeling anxious, you're feeling scared, like you must be broken. Like, do something about that, right? And I think, one of the things we talked about a lot in the class is that negative emotions are. Well, first of all their normative right there, just part and parcel of a like a a real good human life but
Now, after these important signals that we need to pay attention to, it's important to start seeing negative emotions, like any other negative, physical sensation, like you, stick your hand on a hot stove, that's an important signal that you're supposed to do something. You're supposed to move your hand, if you're feeling lonely, if you're feeling anxious, if you're feeling angry, those are in some ways, normative responses to certain situations but they're also really good sign posts that you might need to do something different, that you might need to behave differently. And so I to kind of get the sense that one of the misconceptions is like, oh, I'm feeling a little
depressed and won't be, you know, in the context of covid-19, something must be broken. Why am I not happy all the time? And I think one of my goals is to clear up some of those misconceptions that happiness isn't something you get all the time. It's also not a destination, right? I'm fond of telling my students. This lovely quote from Dan Gilbert like psychology professor at Harvard, he says happily ever after only works. If you have six minutes to live, it doesn't it's not like a, you know, a permanent solution there
that's so funny. He is so witty, that guy is so witty. So I think I need to step back.
And just ask you how you even define happiness. Maybe I that should have been my first question but I think there's different conceptualizations of it within the field. So what's your definition of
it? Yeah I kind of use the definition that that Sonja lyubomirsky is another positive psychologist uses. She talks about offer penis is being happy in your life and being happy with your life. So I think of being happy in your life, as having a decent ratio of positive to negative emotions. It's not no negative emotions, it's not positive. Emotion, you know, happiness Emoji all the time, but it's like
Like generally having a decent ratio of things like laughter and joy to things like, you know, sadness anger and so on, that's happy in your life. But then happy with your life is separate rights, the answer to the question. All things considered how satisfied are you with your life? It's a sense of purpose and meaning and kind of a bigger picture. And I like that definition for, for two reasons. One is, I think it shows you that these things dissociate, right? Like you can be totally happy in your life and have all these wonderful hedonic, experiences and positive emotions and just be completely empty when it
Comes to, you know, purpose and what you're doing with your life. The other reason I like these definitions is that my read is that many of the interventions we have to improve happiness. Many of the things we can do with our behaviors and our thought patterns to feel better, they wind up intervening on both of these constructs, right? Like, they wind up, increasing your positive emotions or decreasing, your negative emotions in some, but not all cases, and I think they wind up, making you a little bit more satisfied with your life. So, that's the one we tend to use. And it's also worth noting that that leaves out a lot of the ways. I think our culture
Archer characterizes happiness, but I think it's pretty good from a social science, you
perspective? Yeah, I've always been in awe of how predictive from a scientific point of view. A one item life satisfaction questionnaire survey can be. I mean, it's like one item, right? Like, how satisfied are you with your life? And I've read some really technical justification papers justifying why that's actually probably the best measure, probably better than objective because people in the field like, well, why can't we have objective met? You know,
Unreliable. Well, it's like yeah but maybe that's the except the exception is when it comes to life satisfaction things. I want to know how your experientially experiencing the world. Is that redundant to say that but yeah, you know how you're experiencing? Yeah, you're with me. You're with me
how you can freeze all the time. Ya know. I think, I think, I mean, yeah, I to women especially coming from, you know, the work with animals, right? Where there'd be these long debates about what can count as a real explanation and what can count is a real method you when I kind of came to the happiness work and I'm like, okay.
Hey, where's you know, where our methods? It's like you just ask people and I'm like, what? You just asked, it's like a BuzzFeed quiz. That's the entirety of your like empirical method, exactly. But I kind of, you know, I came around. I mean, I came around in part, you know, because all this stuff, you know, right. Which is that these self-report measures correlate with a ton of things that you might think of as like slightly more objective, right? You know if I take all your tweets and I do machine learning on them to pull out the emotion words. If I do, these detailed like friend and family interviews, you know, and in cases where we have biological
Instructs. Which for the most part, we don't for happiness or positive emotion, but in cases, where we have things we could look at like cortisol or things like that, these things tend to correlate with it, but it, you know. So I came around to like, oh, maybe this isn't a silly BuzzFeed quiz. It really is a like a detailed scientific like construct that we can be using or not a construct. A detailed kind of scientific method for testing how you're really feeling.
Yeah, it's also just an interesting intellectual exercise to Think Through, well, let's say we could develop an objective. Well, being measured opposed to subjective.
Well, being okay. What would that even mean? First of all? But second of all, what if it clashes with the, what if it's like, does it? What if you
disagree? Yes. What am. I saying that you're only at and happiness. I'm like, no, I feel great.
Like are you allowed to like Trump? What the test says, it's almost I think of all as well with my homework and I start off in intelligence what if my actual intelligence them in the real world? You know, like defies what you predicted, my intelligence will be based on your
Cue test, you know, some kind of like think of it a little bit now because well, that even mean, I think the subjective is a lot more powerful and a lot of ways exactly how you are, experiencing the world, and sometimes people can experience the world, it positively, even if people all around them are experiencing it, negatively and that's fascinating. I mean, that's the whole resilience literature and then George Bonanno and my colleague Columbia, doing great work on that, you know, but like what explains how and why in certain environments, some people act one way and
other environments, people act another way. What have you come across in your research and your personal experience with the students that are the best predictors of that kind of resiliency to whatever life throws at
you? I think, honestly, my sense is that it's the kind of strategies they use. I mean, I've really come around to think that, you know, there are behaviors, we can engage in that, make us feel better there. I thought patterns, we can engage in to make us feel better and a lot of that's for many people that's really intentional. I think there is obviously, you know, heritable differences. In happiness. There's
Part of the variance out there in the world and people's well-being. That's explained by, you know, what genes you happen to get in the lucky Gene Lottery, right? But but I think my sense is that people who tend naturally to have a higher subjective well-being. They just had naturally to do the behaviors that like, wind up, improving your happiness and your, I have this one friend who I went in my brain, when I think of like, oh, you know, this happy person. I tend to think of this one friend of mine. So the wife of one of my my college friends and I think of what she does naturally and she's naturally like Justin
Most grateful person ever. Like, she's naturally like the most social person ever. I don't think I've ever heard of a night. When she's like, plopped down and watch Netflix, like, you know, she she's not like a, you know, a fitness freak. Was she like moves her body with regular frequency? She sleeps, like she just does all the things that like, you know, if I was like, listing all the criteria that people should engage in to feel better, she doesn't naturally.
Hardwired and
what's funny is people often assume, you know, now that I'm this newfound, you know, like happiness teacher that I do this stuff naturally and I'm like
Hell no that's not like my instincts are the apis. I think this is one of the reasons that the students that resonate with me, teaching this stuff in my my podcast listeners resume is like my instincts are exactly the wrong one so I kind of get it if you're struggling it's like nope. I also think that it would be better to you know be solo and just like leisurely watch TV. I also think I definitely do want to move my body. Also thank, you know, like every single negative thing you could be doing it. Like, yep, that's my instinct. But I think part of
Of doing better is to overcome those instances to recognize that your intuitions might be leading you astray.
The it's funny. You brought that up because I was going to ask you after all these years teaching this house has impacted your happiness. Personally I'm sure you get that question all the time but I am curious like how it must change you you in small ways that add up over time that maybe if you're not fully aware of but no toilet. No, I'm
aware. And, you know, Scott, I'm a nerd like, do my own little Perma once a month to just check out going and it honest.
I have, I've gone up on like it, you know, the standard 10-point ish happiness, scale, you know about point, right? So it's not like these practices take you from 0 to 100. That's not their goal, right? I think it's, you know, small but significant movements upward, and I definitely have experienced that. But I've experienced that in part because I do a lot more of these behaviors. You know, when you teach a class on this stuff, your students will love to call you out. Like if my students sees me and the Silman Courtyard, and I'm like, on my phone and not talking to someone, they'll say
Hawk Santo that our title is head of college. So I'm hoxsey just like Hawks and I was like, I thought you were supposed to be on your phone, like, or if my podcast producer catches me like, beating myself up and not engaging in self compassion. He'll just send like, little emojis that are like, hey, like just a reminder like not supposed to do that. You know, you have a whole freaking episode on this,
you know, you gotta love these students, you know, they're just like, it's just like, it's Deuce. Do you know it's such a privilege? We have, first of all, to be able to transform their lives and meaningful ways, like I'm very grateful.
For that opportunity. I'm sure it's video as well but at Barnard College, very social justice oriented. They're very social justice oriented. So, you know, a conversation that continually comes up in the classroom and I'm wondering if there's this is come up in, your classroom is well, they're like well Professor Kaufman. You know what about systemic issues, right? What about like structural issues and like, does this work that we're doing in validate that in some way or say that it's not important and we always it always leads to a really rich discussion in my classroom and like well we need to stop the either were thinking, you know, like life. It's not like
Let's change. Even the phrasing of that question, but that question always comes up, you know? And I'm wondering it has that come up in your
classroom. So yeah, definitely be dealt with it. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you know, I try to, you know, also make it clear that we're not talking about either or but but also that it's not even not either or there is an important Synergy in a balance that comes from thinking, about both of these issues. At the same time, I actually cover some work really looking at the extent to which happier people engage more in social justice stuff. This is a work by Kosta crucial if, and his colleagues that
This directly write they go and look at people who go to a black lives matter protest or people who go to a climate change rally and they measure people's level of well-being. So they survey for example in one study they surveyed. All these UVA students right after that, kind of nasty, white supremacist incident and they asked, hey, did you donate money to Black lives matter? Did you do something right? And what they find is that the people who are taking action, are the ones who are having some of the highest self-reported subjective well-being. So I did subjective well-being gives you kind of
Of the bandwidth to like not be, you know, in your house like eating ice cream. When you feel like the world's falling apart, you actually go out and do something. They did similar studies on climate change, right? So they look at who's worried about climate change and what you find is, that people who have lower levels of self-reported. Subjective well-being are more worried about climate change, right? It makes sense. You're just miserable at everything and climate change, looms, really large. You feel really anxious about it. But then they say, okay, well, who donated money to climate change? Went to a protest who did anything and what you find is exactly the opposite.
Don't write. So people who have that self-reported, highest levels of subjective, well-being are doing stuff. And so I share this this study with students because I say, you know, like you know, you're the future Yale students like, you know, college students your the future but like if you're all so miserable that 60% of you are and, you know, so anxious that you can't function most days, like you're not going to get out there and fix these problems and so. So I think it's not, I think we need to move students away, not just from the either or but to recognize there is a Synergy here, right? You know, you can actually help more if you're
Taking care of yourself. You know, that African American poet, audre Lorde talked about, you know, that self-care is a political act, right. And I think taking care of your own health through positive psychology interventions. You can also consider a political act, right? And so, so that's one, that's kind of one way to deal with it. The the other is just to recognize that. Again, these structural changes are so needed but they're they're not inexpensive this stuff, right? Like there's, there's no reason we can't be doing both of these at the same time.
Yeah, I love that.
The trauma loss and uncertainty of our world have led many of us to ask life's biggest questions such as, who are we? What is our highest purpose? And how do we not only live through? But thrive in the wake of tragedy Division and challenges to our fundamental way of living to help us all address these questions process, what? This unique time in human history has meant for us personally, and collectively, and emerge whole. I've collaborated with my colleague and dear friend, dr. Jordan Feingold MD to bring you our forthcoming book. It's called
Choose growth, a workbook for transcending trauma, fear and self-doubt. It's a workbook. Designed to guide you in a journey of committing to growth and the pursuit of self actualization every day. It's chock-full of research from humanistic psychology positive psychology developmental, psychology personality, psychology, cognitive science, and neuropsychology. So lots of themes that you hear about on this podcast and it seemed to help us all integrate, the many facets of ourselves and co-create, our new normal with a renewed sense of strength. Vitality,
And hope whether you're healing from Los adapting to The New Normal or simply looking ahead to Life's next chapter. Choose growth will help steer you there to deeper connection to your values, Your Life vision, and ultimately your most authentic self choose growth will officially hit the shelves September 13th and you can do it or your copy or the audio book in the u.s. now on Amazon Barnes & Noble, Indie bound, and all major retailers. If you're in the UK and Commonwealth you can build or now at Bookshop Dot org.uk.
We truly hope this book helps you grow and Thrive and become your best self.
Okay. Now, back to the show, there's a lot of things that were raised and with what you just said, so I'm trying to like they words when the first something interesting, I find about the subjective. Well-being, research is that that one item? You know, someone may think well, what happiness like, surely that just means Hedonism showing that just means, you know, feeling good all the time. But even the data itself shows and didn't have to be this way. This is how the data came out. It shows that subjective well-being is much more.
Strongly correlated with pro-social purpose then Hedonism. So I think that just telling people that like, you know, because they it's not like even like we're top down saying, the theory, is that purpose is more gives you Greater Life satisfaction. He doesn't we're saying this is what the data shows,
right? But, I mean, you know, we start, we start with, you know, our mutual colleague, when we yell Peter salvi's idea of the feel good, do good effect, right? Which is just like, if you are in a better mood, you do nicer stuff like in, it's like
So yeah I think it's fun. I mean I think again you know these are students who are facing these structural issues head-on for the first time, you know, in college and I think are learning about them are learning how important they are. So I think it makes sense that they're like wait what about this? And I think the key is just to recognize like like all these structural issues are solved by individuals with a certain set of like psychological processes. And so we just need to remember that to fix these things. We need to pay attention to those psychological processes and the kind of psychological bandwidth
Resilience that people are bringing with
them. Yeah, absolutely. One thing that I fell has been remiss in the field of positive. Psychology is is integration with the fields of Personality psychology, the fields of Developmental Psychology. I mean, how is it not better integrate with the field of development as they call it and the field of cognitive science has just been something? I've been just like it's like I go to the conference's right? Go I go to HIPAA and I'm like there's no developmental psychologist at this entire Conference of but how is that possible, right? So like just the
Question of, how do these things develop seems to be so important as opposed to just like taking having people take the questionnaire and then and then just seeing where they're at. Where do you think the non-genetic composed? We don't need to go into the genetic component but the non-genetic the non-genetic component of developing happiness. What are the the mean environmental sources you think that that really comes
from? Yeah I mean I you know, I think they're from a lot of different places. I mean I think one way to answer that question, especially when we think about
Scary statistics. I just talked about in college students is to ask. Where did those kind of terrible statistics come from right? I think one thing to know about those statistics, as they've gotten really much worse, even just over the last 10, 20 years. In fact, that statistic about college student depression, my understanding is that his doubled since 2012, which is kind of terrifying. And so one could then flip the question on its head and say okay well what has changed in the last 10 or 20 years that's causing some of these like really devastating mental health outcomes.
And I think we could Point our fingers a bunch of different ways, right? You know I think if you plot the slope of college student depression and you plot the slope of cell phone use or social media use, you know the Lines line up and very you know scary I know correlation does not equal causation but this looks really gross kind of way. We also see you know I think this is also the time when achievement culture is kicking in in a really incredible way right? You know since the 80s of No Child Left Behind and the u.s. News & World Report College.
Kings I think, you know, the idea of student achievement has just been at the Forefront in a way that causes many students before they get to college to like, you know, not be sleeping enough. Not prioritize, their friendships like we're prioritized achievement and grades at all cost and I think these cultural factors are really impacting, the psychological development of our young people honestly. And in many ways in ways, we don't really understand. And so, I don't know if there's like a red herring of, like, here's the one thing that has caused these changes over time, but I think it's important to start.
Looking at these things to figure out like how did this change? And how did it change so rapidly?
Yeah, absolutely. And and then, you know, we could have course talk all day, nerding out about the genetics and Collective, you know, variation where people are genes, can subtly influence us to make certain choices which in the long run, do add up to happiness, or the feeling of being happy or feeling of being satisfied with one's life, through the own active process, not just a passive process. So that that
Interesting to but all the stuff are deeply. Intertwined culture and environment genes. Yeah.
As there's a recognition that we need to pay attention to well-being even more and that it's a scientific Pursuit. I mean I think that's another misconception that a lot of people have. It's like, some fluffy, woo thing that we leave to the like, you know, I don't know. Gwyneth Paltrow, Thai people to like, talk about happiness, right? We realize like then another, this is like a real true scientific basis of study then we can start like doing a deeper dive into some of the
Epigenetics using the kind of really cool tools that we have now that I understand way less well than you do, but that you can tell us what we should be doing on the genetic side.
Well, who's that? Yeah, alright. Now, that studying the science of well-being, besides you there. Who's that? Y'all right now.
I mean we've lots of folks who are doing this for ya, not many. I mean, honestly, I think there's there's a lot of folks doing the like when things go downhill, you know, clinical mental health side, right? But not as many people doing positive psychology, which is kind of interesting. You know, I
You know, Peter in the camp of doing some really pivotal work on this. Feel good, do good effect, and emotional intelligence, but yeah, not as many like card-carrying positive psychologist as you'd expect.
That's a shame. That's a shame. I always, you know, may he rest in peace. But one of my advisors from all singer, you know, I always found his work relevant like daydreaming and creativity and I loved how he Infuse that into Clinical Psychology and I love and the emerging field of pot. Sorry,
going I think, you know,
Saying there's not any card-carrying positive psychologist, but I don't think they're the only ones that are strongly contributing to work in the, in the domain of kind of Happiness science. Like we have people at Yale who are looking at the Neuroscience of mindfulness and meditation people, like how do you Cobra, right? You know, we have philosophers who are thinking about the good life and how we use imagination and fiction, people like Tamar gendler who are thinking about this stuff so I think even though yell doesn't have, you know, folks who might go to it by and all these kind of, you know, like I'm a positive psychologist in that.
I am we have people, you know, who are adjacent were really thinking about these questions, more broadly. And honestly it, maybe this is just, you know, a show of my Heritage of not growing up as a positive psychology, the same way, you didn't grow up as a positive psychologist, I think that's where the real answers. Are you going to come from? I look at the work that I find most exciting right now and it's often done by people who didn't grow up in that field. People like Liz done people like Mike nor n people like Nick Eppley who are you doing this? Great work about social connection and money and how it impacts our happiness and they
not necessarily go to these conferences either, but I think they have really important things to say.
Definitely, definitely. Yeah, it's a fine idea. I didn't grow up and in positive psychology and I know you mean, well, I was just gonna make some jokes like just like yeah. Like if possibly ecology is, is your core identity and like I'm a positive College. That's a certain Vibe. That's a
Vibe. Well, this kind of came up, you know, like I think you know in the midst of when I taught this class it was really like white knuckling. Like you know, we had thousands of students. I didn't expect it was the first time I was teaching the class, we depress there, you know, some like checking my PowerPoint for type.
It's the first time I made the PowerPoint one, like the Today Show, is there something like a? But at the class got this, tremendous amount of press, and I think it's just like anything yell, does, is going to get pressed yellow. Just one of these places that like anything that happens on campus, and York Times is going to show up, but I guess there was a lot of discourse. Among the positive psychologist about like, who's this chick? She's gonna come in and like, you know, being the New York Times for being a positive psychologist. She's not really one of us and in fact, it was Marty Seligman forwarded me. This kind of thread that was in one of these news, you know, like kind of like group.
It lists and he's like, well, let's let's let Laurie speak for herself on this and it was funny to see all these, you know, so-called positive psychologist. Fact, it was one researcher who studied humility, who's like, who is this? Who is this interloper, who's coming in? You know, and I wrote back and I'm like, you know, like, hey, I think we can retrain right? You know, and it's helpful to have people. Yeah. I think some of the best people doing animal work or people who weren't necessarily trained in the comparative cognition tradition. Right. You do bring other things as like second like, you know, I'm not like showing up and trying to get a job.
The positive psychology, I'm just like teaching undergrad class. That was how, this all started, right? And then yeah, man, I didn't say in a lot of ways. I didn't say it. Like, in third. You study humility. Dude. Like, oh my God. But I didn't
say, yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah. In a lot of ways, like, I mean, it's like, I didn't choose this life. This life chose me, folks, you know. Yeah. Yeah. You wanted to start out with a 30-person seminar, you know. Yeah, I can't even imagine like the must have like a circus to have the the media there to have that many students. I mean, what did that feel like, do you feel like I did? He feel
A rock star like that. Like performing at like the one of these big
festivals, mostly felt exhausted. Yeah. It there's a kind of deep irony about this path to happiness about, you know, apart from, you know, students calling me I am you doing more of these practices myself, whether or not the busyness that came with, this is really helpful for my happiness. And one thing I talked about a lot and the classes time affluence and is this is a lovely work that actually was another kind of non card-carrying psychologist who's doing really great work and positive.
Ecology, you know, she finds that you are sense of having free time because really matters for our well-being much more so than our wealth affluence. Our time affluence matters a lot. I think if there's one thing that's taken a major hit, since I started doing a lot of this happiness work, it's my it's my time affluence. So and especially true that semester. It was a rough time, a little bit of a surreal time. But again, it's put me on this path, you know. I think, you know, I loved doing the work with primates and that was amazing and I still have a lab that does some of that stuff. But
Just the impact that you can have teaching people about these Concepts and hearing the emails about people. Like I tried, you know, social connection as you suggested or I try to gratitude list and like it's really changed in my life. Like there's this sense that I'm doing something that's old meaningful in a different way than the work I was doing before and definitely reaching way more people than I was reaching before and that feels pretty
good. How does that? Well, I'm glad you didn't feel imposter syndrome or at least you didn't feel it enough to prevent you from going for
it, so I definitely felt it, but I did.
Don't stop you. And because you just look how many students you've helped like will come and in a lot of ways, it must be very, very worrying for you. I don't need to ask like it's a more rewarding than the capuchins, you've changed their lives, but but I will guess that it has been very meaningful for you and really you know, I imagine they send you a cards at the end of the semester, right?
Like this is actually a really funny story but it's not just my Yale students because we now put that class online as one of yells online digital offerings.
On coursera.org it's called the science of well-being and 4 million people have taken it which is completely, they'll be good. Yeah, I like nuts to me but but I had this funny situation. So, you know, cut to like, you know, like August of 2020 everything, shut down. Like no one's been in office for forever. I haven't been in office for a forever and this was around the time that some of the staff were coming back and I get this email from one of the administrators in the psych office, remember these lovely folks who are like so kind and nice and never never have a harsh word but one of them had a harsh word for me. They were
You got to come in and I'm to your mailbox. Your mail box is overflowing. You need to get an ear like right now and I was like, what? And so by go in and you remember the little Cubbies we used to has over folks that don't know this like deprived of these little Cubbies so my cubby was full the the whole little bench under my cubby was fall and had spilled onto the floor and it was just cards and letters and artwork by people who take in the online class that like yeah. When I tell you, there was like a teary afternoon when I went
well, first one was like impossible to carry back. I to make two trips to the department to get all these cards and letters but beautiful how I mean when you see that you're really impacting people. Yeah, it's just amazing, just amazing.
So you've really in recent years has really been interested in this idea of how we lie to ourselves. What are some of the other things we lie to ourselves about? Can you tell me some of the things that Forefront of your mind right now?
Yeah, I mean you know, so many things and I think this is a spot where the work on happiness really.
Aligns closely with my work on capuchins in a very weird way. I mean, but back in the day I was really interested in whether or not these cognitive errors that we have as humans are shared with monkeys and we looked at things like loss aversion. We looked at things like cognitive dissonance. We looked at like, we looked at all these kind of classic biases to see. Are these things built in? Are these things that are involved? Are they going to be hard to overcome? And I think this is the kind of perspective that I've taken on a lot of the happiness work. Is that a lot of the reason we're not as happy as we could be, isn't because we're not trying. We're
NG in tons of effort. We're just like doing it wrong. And I think we're doing it wrong in part because we don't think about happiness, the right way. We have these cognitive biases when it comes to happiness and achieving happiness. And so, you know, one of the big ones is that we don't realize our minds get used to stuff. You know, we assume that you know, we're going to buy the next Gadget and will be happy forever and we get married. We get that new promotion at work will be happily ever after, you know, staring that we just shown is wrong, you know? Tal ben-shahar calls this, the arrival fallacy, right? You know, it's like, we think we're going to get there and we're going
Good forever, but not so. And that's in part because not just because of hedonic adaptation, but because we're blind to hedonic adaptation. We don't realize that we get used to stuff over time. I think another bias of our mind is that we, we assume that we pay attention to it. Things in absolute terms that if I get absolutely more money, or absolutely more success, I'd feel happier. But in practice, that's just not how our mind looks at things. Our minds, our big relative machines, we just compare against some random reference point and that's how we feel.
And stupidly. Our minds are very good at picking random reference points that make us feel terrible.
This is like, in a way you're kind of like, you're like adding on to the cognitive biases list, you know, like you're adding things within the realm of things that have more direct implications for our happiness. I don't know if you thought about it that way at all within that framework. But
yeah, yeah. I mean I think you know, I think you know I'm not the one who's identified these biases rim to synthesizing, the great work you know in the case of hedonic adaptation of Dan Gilbert, you know and you know social comparison tons of folks including common and
Screw you thought about this and, you know, want to Nobel Prize in part for this stuff, right? But, you know, the way I think about it is you have these aren't just kind of haphazard ways that our minds work. These could be deep-seated structure ways that our minds work, just like the kinds of things. I was studying in capuchins, and that means they're going to be hard to overcome that. Merely understanding these mechanisms doesn't mean that you somehow can avoid them. And I think that's really important, that kind of changes the calculus of like, okay, how do we deal with these things, right? We have to kind of work with our
These instead of against
them. Oh yeah, we're honest. So important awareness. So important, which actually doesn't lead me to a discussion of the latest science of mindfulness. Because I mean, I think that some of the claims are a bit overhyped, some of these mindfulness programs. When you actually look at the data, you're like, you see a much more circumscribed, set of things that that has reliably been that mindfulness produces. I was worrying where you kind of stand on that, what your thoughts are about, the latest science of mindfulness, and
It shows its benefits are.
Yeah I mean I think you know mindfulness is definitely not a Panacea empirically but none of these positive psychology interventions are right. My read is like every single one of them in many cases, not in all cases. But in many cases for most people because, of course, individual differences. And I have to tell you about individual differences. But yes, individual differences, right? Like what they do is they on average give a small but consistent boost, right? I mean, if you look at it like,
Attitude journaling that on average gives you a small but consistent Buddhist but you're looking at like, again, it depends on the study, but, you know, like not more than a point bump up on a 10-point, happiness. Scale on average, right? The key though, is that for a lot of these, I think it's. And again, it's on average, right? Not everybody is necessarily going to show that bump the key though. Is I think that these things give us some tools that we can try out, right? We can try them out on ourselves and see are these the kind of things that make us feel better and I put mindfulness in this category. If I try this
Make me feel anxious and we're going to heat it. Or is this going to like, give me a practice that allows me to be more present than the allows me to notice stuff that allows me to curb my mind wandering and you got to do like the experiment for yourself and I think, you know, to be there. These small but like, like significant and consistent happiness boosts. Like, I'll take them. You know, I'd much rather be a 7 on a happiness scale than a 6 out of 10. You know, I got a ten right and so yeah, but I think it is important. I think whenever these things get talked about in the popular media, they wind up like
Like, way more hyped than, you know, than the results often show. And I feel like, that's not exactly the fault of the researchers might be the fault of some researchers, but most researchers I think are honest about the magnitude of their effect sizes, but then they get written about, you know, in these huge ways. But that's true. You have never read any paper that like, you know, chocolate or coffee or wine. And cancer is not like it will stop cancer. I'm like pretty sure. Like it's an overall average of a small percentage of, you know.
Yeah, I think it's very important to point that out that any specific.
Is or targeting anyone specific domain really doesn't move it that much more than 12 points but I want to be a little more optimistic and say, could it
be? That is like domestic. Like I mean like that is
optimistic I guess that is
good. Like like if you if there is a good drug company that had a pill that they were like, if anybody takes this pill, they're going to go up. One point, on a 10-point happiness, scale, that drug would make so much money and we have every drug at all these interventions.
Yes, true. But more optimistic. Don't let me stop you there.
I was gonna say, I was gonna say I don't want people to then extrapolate that to mean that the most you can increase. Your happiness is only one to two points because I think the point here is the more exercise. The more you you make this, a daily part of your life and you have it. You can see even more substantially, move the dial on your life satisfaction. So I was wanting to make that point just wanted to make that
point. I think this is one of the reasons I love Sonja lyubomirsky
Work so much is, you know, she she talks about like it's work. Yo, like, you gotta just say, yeah, like, put the work, like, just like anything else. You know, I saw one of my students had posted a meme about, you know, it's like like, you know, hopped on the treadmill for 15 minutes. And I'm not a size, you know, extra small anymore, like WTF. And I think, people think this with the happiness interventions to, it's like I wrote in my gratitude Journal. Why am I still having any sadness? I mean, it was a joke. It was a meeting, right? It's like, you know, but I think we think we think that would Fitness, right? We're
Like I went to the gym every day this week like what's going on? Like why are you know like why can't I fit in my pants? And I think the same about happiness. We just assumed we want quick fixes right? Our brain just is I think another interesting bias of the brain is like it's hard for us to see small incremental changes you know especially ones that don't go up in a linear slope that kind of go up and down over time. Like you just can't integrate that but that's what's happening with these interventions. If you if you do them and you're consistent about them and you make them a daily practice, they do work in a
Small. But significant way.
At what point should people accept some things really won't change that much within themselves and they're actually for their happiness that self-acceptance is actually the most important thing for them. I think about this all the time, you know? Because it's like some things, you know, you would be happier if you put your efforts into something else. Write like for instance, some people are obsessed with their physical appearance, right? And it's like actually I think you'd be a little happier if you have got more obsessed about your pro-social purpose, then the yet another sort of face
All, you know, reconstruction surgery. So I just try to think about this and that and how you will have you thought about that?
Yeah, I mean, one of the things we talked about in the way structure, the classes, we start with things that won't make you happier and things that will make you happier in your things that will make you happier. You know, if you're living above the poverty, line with a decent, middle-class income, more money's not going to make you happier, you know, like you body and looks, you know, there's so much evidence that in many cases diet and weight loss plastic surgery. Doesn't, you know, increase your happiness at least in the way people are predicting. Right? We make incorrect effective.
Forecast about how good this stuff is going to ultimately feel, right? And like by and large, If your circumstances are reasonable, like you changing them is not going to help. And so, you know, I explicitly point this stuff out to students and this is the part where I get like the most student push back and then you deal with these, you know, smart ivy league, kids are like, they'll be like okay, about hikes. And I was like, what if, you know, I really make this much money and I donate this money like you know like can I get my dollar Investment Banking job? So I think knowing what's not going to work is really important and really
To go. And that way, again, you can start putting your energies towards the kind of stuff that really will improve your happiness again. It's not, I don't think people are resting on their Laurels. Hoping happiness is going to show up. I think, people are actively working towards this stuff. They're just kind of going at it the wrong way,
nice very well put. So what are some things you'll be talking about in the upcoming season of your podcast? Do we get any previews Coming Attractions? Yeah, these are the, I think you have a really famous psychologist coming up. His name starts with an
S Scott.
Yes, you're actually, you will be featured not in the next season. We have. I want to transcend this to be its own episode. So it's sitting there waiting till we come back for like, a full interview show because I didn't want to mix and match you with other other folks. So you're waiting in the wings, my Transcendence episode which I love and reach seven older yet to see that. It's actually really fun. We're talking about that the psychology of negative experiences. Why we sometimes like pain and fearful thing.
Like haunted houses and so on. And so
that problem on,
we do have Paul Bloom on and we have this wonderful journalist leek, Howard, who like, Paul has written a book about things that painful experiences and why they feel good. But Lee they have decided to experience all those experiences. So they ate like the world's hottest, hot pepper and they engaged very publicly in the book in like, BDSM like sex play. Like so they like only Paul likely, like they would like their money where their mouth is.
I really like what for you don't know about Paul, we chatted about that the podcast. He said you know like you know if I do engage in that stuff I'm not going to talk about in the book. Yeah, that's right, that's right. Yeah, but yeah, but why do we like that stuff? You know and in some cases when we know it's fake like in the context of sad books and scary movies. Why do we fall for it? We're also doing a whole episode on fandom and why fandom bring us happiness. This allows me because I'm like, a huge sci-fi nerd to nerd out. We have Wil Wheaton on the show.
Who talks about how being a geek, isn't about what you love. It's about how you love it. And the happiness inducing practices of loving, something like your life depends on it. So, it's a little bit of, you know, mixed bag of all kinds of interesting things, but it's going to be a fun season.
I love it. I love it. Well, congratulations to you. I hope you're getting some real rest. I don't know if it's public knowledge that you're you're on. Sabbaticals
was in the New York Times.
She's like I just read in the New York Times or take.
Well, I just really hope that this is a real restorative time for you. And congratulations on all your successes and also congratulations on an ongoing your head. You're like the same Laurie Santos that I remember from like a decade ago. I mean, you're humble and
Sweet and smart, and, and funny. So yeah, it's just, it's really nice to reconnect with you and thanks for being on my show today. Thanks so much for
having me.
Thanks for listening to this episode of the psychology podcast. If you'd like to react in some way to something you heard I encourage you to join in the discussion at the psychology podcast.com or on our YouTube page, the psychology podcast. We also put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well. So you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain behavior, and creativity.
