The Science of Happiness

fascinating conversations. Hi, I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn about the science of happiness. I'm delighted to be here today. I love teaching. I think that will be obvious over the next hour. I hate grading. Maybe some of you sat and watched me great um in preparation for today, and so this is really my ideal. I come and I talk for an hour, and I don't leave with anything I have to do. My name is Katherine Sanderson, and I'm a professor of psychology at AMers College in Massachusetts.

Presentation and if you'd like one, just choot me an email and you can have the entire presentation. What do you mean by happiness? So that's a really tricky question because it's actually currently in heated debate in the literature, and so different people. You could have this podcast, you know, five times, and you'd get five different answers. So some people think of happiness as a sense of overall contentment, comfort with their life, well being, well being, sure exactly.

Other people think of happiness as a much more sort of positive, joyful emotion. And you know, I think of the image in my mind is a little kid on a swing, you know, with their face in a big grim, you know, pumping their legs back and forth. So one of them is really a sense of contentment, life satisfaction overall I feel good. And one of them is a sense of utter and pure joy. And probably both of those are part of what happiness is. What is the thing that you really want to get over in your

lecture about the science of happiness? The biggest thing I want is for people to leave the lecture knowing that there are specific, concrete things they can do in their lives to increase their happiness. I think lots of people believe that happiness is beyond them, you know, some quirk of you know, bad genes or negative life experiences, environmental factors, etcetera.

And I end every lecture by giving people ten strategies that no matter where you start on the genetic lottery of happiness, no matter your life circumstances, there are specific, concrete things you can do in life that are within your reach to increase happiness. There are a bunch of little behaviors we can do so Exercising strongly associated with better psychological and physical well being, getting enough sleep, spending time in nature. Those are all very simple things. Reading

a book you love that brings great happiness. How good is the science of happiness? I think the science of happiness is strong, and in fact is getting stronger. So some of the most interesting research right now is extending prior research in two ways. One, a lot of research in the field of psychology in general has focused on Western cultures and largely the United States, And so then the ultimate question becomes, well, is this happiness in our

culture or is this happiness across cultures? And so there's growing evidence now that the predictors of happiness are in fact quite similar across cultures. And that's something that's very new and that we didn't know a decade ago. The other real advantage to current technology is that we're learning

much more about genes and about brain functioning. So there's research that I describe in the talk that looks at m r I data and literally has people think about a certain thing and then looks at what parts of the brain are activated. Researchers did a very interesting study in which they brought in people and put them in an MRI machine, so a machine that measures brain activation, and they had them look at different pictures. Um, the top scene is of an urban scene, it's a city skyline.

The bottom scene is of a nature scene water. So the researchers controlled very carefully for lots of things in the pictures. Um, the scenes were always pretty. It wasn't that you were showing you know, urban scenes of congestion or whatever. None of the pictures had people in them. So people are in an MRI machine and they show them a series of pictures and they measure brain activity. What they found was that looking at the urban city

skyline created lots and lots of brain activity. The brain was reacting, the brain was processing thinking, you know, activated. Looking at the nature scene, the brain was very calm, like you were meditating. So in response to the nature scene, people were relaxed. Brain waves were low, relaxed. It was literally like they were meditating. So that's some evidence for what looking at nature may do to us physiologically, and it may help explain this link between looking at nature

and feeling better. And so we're learning about neurological measures of happiness in particular situations that provide stronger evidence than we've had before, which is just self report data questionnaires and people responding, which may be accurate but can also

be subjected to some kind of bias. Yeah, because it must be difficult to design a questionnaire around happiness that that one person would report yeah, I'm happy or I'm in a happy relationship, and another person with exactly the same set of of objective criteria may report differently, right, And and of course one of the challenges in that example is that there are people in the exact same life circumstance that see the world in very different ways.

So I gave an example about being on a date shortly after college graduation with my boyfriend, and we were driving in urban Atlanta and had a flat tire. So we had a lovely day planned picnic and hike, et cetera, and we had this flat tire. So we pulled it side of the road, and I am in the passenger seat, freaking out. This is a terrible thing that happened. Our day is ruined. It's going to be really expensive. We're

gonna have to get the car tode. And I'm spiraling, and my boyfriend says, um, I'm just going to change the tire. So there's an example. And it was like ten minutes, but there's an example in which we were in the exact same circumstance and an event happened and I saw it in a very sort of negative and fatalistic way, and he saw it as no big deal. And and that I think sort of illustrates that one of the challenges happiness is that different people see the

same thing in different ways. How about you, Why are you personally so interested in this subject? So my answer to the last question probably probably already conveyed that. And I should start by saying that that boyfriend is now my husband because I sat in the well, I sat in that car knowing going like, huh, you know, he sees the world in a much better way than I do, which is which has been true, you know, throughout our marriage.

And so I think one of the reasons that I like giving this talk is that happiness does not come easily for me. So for some people, my husband, uh, my oldest child, happiness comes very easily. I have a teenage son that when we take the iPhone away from periodically. He was in public school from kindergarten through eighth grade. In ninth grade, he moved to an elite prep school that he was woefully underprepared for in every sense of

the word. And it was a very rocky transition, involved a lot of tears, mostly mine and uh and he was doing very, very poor, like really across the board, but especially in Spanish, and it's in Spanish. At the end of the halfway through the first trimester and we got his progress report and the progress report said he had a fifty in Spanish. This is a school that uses the traditional grading scale, so fifty was really good. Uh. So at the end of the first trimester, Andrew calls

me and says, mom, I got my grades. Good news about Spanish. I was like, what a relief. I'm so nervous, you know what with the fifty. I'm like, what did you get? He goes, I got a fifty eight, And I was like, it's not good news, and he goes, no, no, it is. It's eight points higher than I had in in October. I go, it's an F and he says it's really an F plus And I said, I am a professor. There is no F plus that is not

one of the grade options. That doesn't is impossible. And he says, but at the rate I'm going, I'm gonna have a sixty six in January. And I said that's a D. Like that's also not good. But so here really is what is good Andrew? You know, by all accounts, some days can end up in prison. Um and hopefully not a Spanish speaking prison. I mean, that would be terrible. But but he's going to be fine because he is going to call home and be like, hey, I got a bunk bed, I got this roommate. There are these

meals three times today, there's this exercise yard. And after that I stopped worrying about him, because anybody who can call their mom with the good news of the F plus, he really is going to be fine. He's probably gonna be living in my basement, but he's gonna be fine as an adult. Where is Andrew? Now? Ye? So, so here's the story about why this optimistic outlook, which is

so beneficial, really helps people. He continues he improves. At the end of his freshman year of high school, he has an a minus in Spanish, and his teacher calls me and says, in all of my years of teaching, it's the single biggest improvement I've seen an any student. So Andrew stuck with Spanish throughout high school. He finished high school, applied to college, got in, and came to me and my husband in the spring of a senior year in high school and said, I have a personal

goal before I start college. I want to be fluent in Spanish, so I'd like to take a gap year and spend it in Peru. And Andrew is currently a freshman in college, continuing to say Spanish, but he spent last year living in Peru with a family, speaking Spanish full time and has basically become fully bilingual. And that's an example of how his optimistic outlook let him take what was literally a failure and and turn it into a success, and in fact, it's been really life changing

for him. Most of us are on social media. Does social media make us happier or more miserable? Is there strong research on this. There is pretty consistent strong research that social media is not good for psychological well being. There's often a sense on social media in which people only post the good. My kid is valedictorian. I just ran the Boston marathon and under three hours. So one there's this sense of look at all these people having

this great life, and my life doesn't measure up. You know, my life is really not you know what other people are experiencing. It's less good. The other key is that social media often has the effect of making people feel excluded. So I have three teenagers right now, and you know, I vaguely remember being a teenager, and I'll say that one thing my children have to deal with it I never had to deal with is seeing pictures posted of parties they weren't invited to. And that happens all the time.

So people on social media, you know, post events, parties, social gatherings, and if you weren't invited, you're now vividly aware that you weren't invited and can see all the other people who were. One day university where we taught to award winning and acclaimed professors the most popular on their campuses. They're best lectures the one students love to hear.

Discover more on our website one day you dot Com Now more with professor Catherine Sanderson of Amherst College, who says many of us compare ourselves to others way too often. I think that there are people who are always better at it than other people, and I think there are people who are always very focused on those comparisons. The nature of the comparison may change, so it may be this person took a better vacation, or this person drives

a nicer car or whatever. But we're often aware of how we are different from other people, and that is true across the lifespan, even if the specific parts of comparison may change. What does studies say about how anxiety? Are levels of anxiety affect happiness? It's a really important question and seems to be something that is of growing concern that you know, I see in college students, but we see sort of, you know, across America. So people

vary tremendously in their overall baseline of anxiety. There's some people who can sort of think about worst case scenarios and and escalate situations, and there are other people who seem to have the ability to take experiences in life and take it in stride. It's obviously much harder for people who are high in anxiety to find happiness. Is there a way to deal with that? Sure, you really try to think about the world in a new and

different way, so you change your thought patterns. When my son was on the verge of what I thought was failing out of prep school, what I continually said to myself is he doesn't have leukemia. And that's the reality that for me, there was this horrible tragedy of he has an f in Spanish and may well get tossed from his prep school. But the reality is there are parents all across the country who have teenagers having chemotherapy and hospital and they wish their kid was failing Spanish

in high school. And so that's an example of changing the thoughts we have about something to recognize that what we see as a terrible crisis and a terrible stressor in reality is not that big a deal in the scheme of things. What are the biggest mistakes that people make around happiness? One, and this will not be surprising. Money. We have a very strong belief in our society that more money leads to more happiness. If I just had

more money, then I would be happier. Um. So here's a picture of um, Tiger Woods's house, or maybe now Tiger Woods's ex wife's house. Um, And we think, gosh, if I lived in a house like that, surely I would be happy every single minute of every single day. And of course the reality is that isn't true. More money does not lead to more happiness. Here's the important exception for people living below the poverty line, for people who are worried about are my kids going to have

enough food tomorrow? Will we have heat this winter? Do I have a safe place to sleep? For people who are living below the poverty line at the poverty line, more money absolutely increases happiness. But for people who are not living at that level of subsistence, more money does not increase happiness. The keys that we acclimate, and that's

really sort of the fundamental principle. We think, will be happy when we get more money, But the reality is we acclimate when we get into college, when we graduate from college, by a house, get a promotion. These are all big, sort of substantial life events that we expect will lead us to be happier, and they do, but only briefly, because then we adapt. Given all the advances and science and medicine, what are the prospects for instant gratification in a in a happiness pill. Great question. I'm

going to say two things about that. One, there are people who have chemical imbalances in their bodies that lead them to experience chronic clinical depression, you know, severe anxiety. And so I want to be very careful to say that my lecture is not a substitute for therapy, psychopharmacological

you know, aids, etcetera. And that one of the challenge is is that for people who are in the midst of the throes of a serious psychological disorder, they simply do not have the ability to say, oh, yes, let me spend some time in nature and read a book and you know, smile more often. That they really need assistance.

And so one of the things that we do, in fact have is a magic pill, because the magic pills, antidepressants, anti anxiety medication are actually correcting a chemical balance in the brain that enables people to then take the steps they need to find greater happiness. And your second point, and my second point is that part of the joy and happiness is the pursuit of happiness. It's not I will have a pill so I feel happy and joyous all the time. Part of what brings us happiness is

working towards that happiness. So how do we spend money. You can spend money in better and worse ways in terms of happiness. So a lot of people think wrongly that happiness is about spending money on expensive possessions. You know, uh, new car, new watch, you know, expensive purse or shoes or whatever. And initially, yeah, that is new and it's exciting, and it's your you know, nice watch or fancy purse or whatever. And then it's just your watch, your purse.

So where we get much more happiness from is the pursuit of experiences. So that could be, you know, tickets to a Broadway show, it could be travel, it could be going to a concert, or tickets to the Super Bowl or whatever. And why that is a better way to spend money on experiences is that it allows us to anticipate, Oh, I'm going to be going to this big game, I'm going to be going to the World Series. Well, I'm going to see Hamilton's you know whatever that I've

always wanted to do. So we have this anticipation of the event. Then we get to experience the event, and then we get to look back on the event, and we tell people about the event, and we savor the event. When we spend money on experiences, we are pursuing happiness. We are actively engaging in happiness, and that brings us tremendous pleasure. Going further, any book recommendations, there's a wonderful

book I recommend all the time. Really should get royalties on it, but I do not um And it's by a neuroscientist at Stanford, and it's called why Zebras Don't get Ulcers? And Zebras don't get ulcers because they only react physiologically with great anxiety and stress and physiological reactions like heartbeating fast and rapid breathing when they're about to die, when they're being chased by a lion or tiger or whatever. And as you can probably imagine, humans showed that stress

reaction all the time. I'm stuck in traffic, I have a blind date, I have a job interview. And it's one of reasons why humans have relatively high rates of stress related illnesses. And the second book is a great recommendation for women, and it's by Dr Susan Nolan HOA Suma and it's called Women Who Think Too Much, And it's really about the somewhat gendered pattern of how we think about the world, which is that women are much more likely than men to ruminate, to obsess about negative things,

to worry about negative things. And this book is really an easy guide in terms of trying to help break some of the negative cycles. But it but it doesn't urge women to be like men. No, no, although there is certainly research suggesting that men's ability to distract themselves from negative events can actually be beneficial. Great, Thank you very much, Thank you. This has been delightful. Professor Catherine Sanderson on the Science of Happiness. I'm Richard Davies. Thanks

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