Ep. 6 The Social Brain and the Truth About Happiness

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what makes up the good life. What makes us happy? In other words, what is a successful life? This is the question that we've been exploring in this podcast from various perspectives of philosophy, neuroscience, health and more. So it's actually asked that question. What do people actually think makes them happy? There are three massive studies that examine this exact question. They looked at the generational differences in life goals, the concern for others in the civic orientation of millennials Gen Xers and then compared them with baby boomers. So the first study looked at American high school seniors, and there are 460,000 people that were surveyed. Then they looked at college freshman, and there was 8.7 million people that participated in that survey. They compared those results with the baby boomers at the same age, and what they found was Gen Xers and Millennials actually considered goals related to extrinsic values such as making money image having fame more important than those related to intrinsic values such as self acceptance, affiliation and community. The millennials reported thinking about social problems, less having less interest in the government, making less effort to conserve energy and being less interested in taking quote unquote green actions to protect the environment either personally or through government action. Millennials will also less likely than boomers and Jenna Rex to participate in political process through voting, writing to public official, participating in demonstrations or giving money to a political costs. The decline in wanting to take action to help the environment was particularly steep three times as many. Millennials said they made no personal effort at all to help the environment. So 15% of the study when compared with baby boomers only 5% and 40% less millennials 9% when compared to the baby boomers of 15% said they made quite a bit of effort. So this is really surprising because the data analysed here suggests that the popular view of millennials, which is more carrying their more community oriented, politically engaged than previous generations, is largely incorrect And these are massive studies. We're talking 9.2 million people or surveyed and interestingly enough, saving the environment on area purported to be a particular concern to young Millennials instead showed one of the largest declines. These results are consistent with another recent large scale study concluding that only 4% of modern young people are genuinely civically and politically engaged, the Dalai Lama advises, If you would like to be selfish, you should do it in a very intelligent way. The stupid way to be selfish is the way we've always worked, seeking happiness for ourselves alone and in the process, becoming more and more miserable. The intelligent way to be selfish is to work for the welfare of others because doing so is intrinsically pleasurable. Let's contrast that those studies with the longest longitudinal study ever performed, with thousands and thousands of data points spanning over 80 years, four different program directors called the Harbor Study of Adult development. It began in 1938 with America just starting to come out of the Great Depression. It involved 268 male Harvard sophomores from some of the most privileged and wealthy families, including one person who actually went on to become the president of the United States. Then the study later expanded to include 456 people from some of the poorest areas of inner city Boston, and now includes 1300 of the original study participants Children who are now well into their fifties and sixties. This study tracked everything from comprehensive physical and mental health assessments, toe relational, marital quality all through the effects that aging has on our career and a retirement enjoyment. So what this study discover about our life and health and about what makes us happy? By far, the biggest correlation was at close relationships. More than money or fame are what keep people happy throughout their lives. Those relational ties actually help protect people from life's discontents. They delay mental and physical decline, and they're better predictors of long and happy lives than social class I Q. Or even genetics. Several studies that were done within the framework of this large study found that people's level of satisfaction with their relationships at 50 was a better predictor of physical health than their cholesterol levels were. But how much time and information do we spend on our cholesterol levels? In contrast to our relational health? Robert Waldinger, the most recent study director, said that the people who are the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 where the healthiest at age 80 this study found there were five main factors that predicted healthy aging. For Harvard men, number one was physical activity number two, absence of alcohol abuse and smoking. Number three. Having mature mechanisms to cope with life. Substance downs. Number four enjoying a healthy weight and number five having a stable marriage, friendships, community and social ties. In his book Social, Matthew Lieberman explores the neuroscience behind our social connections and how they affect our daily lives. He references how, over the last half century, there has been a steady decline in nearly all things social. Apart from social media, people are significantly less likely to be married today than they were 50 years ago. We volunteer less, we participate in fewer social groups, and we entertain people in our homes less often than we used to. Essentially, there's been a decline in all of the things that actually make us happy and healthy. The most troubling statistics actually focus on our friendships. So there was a survey done in 1985 people were asked to list their friends in response to this question over the last six months, who were the people with whom you have discussed matters important to you? The most common number of friends listed was three, so 59% of the people surveyed said they had three friends that they could discuss. These important matters, with same survey was given again in 2004. This time, the most common number of friends and listed was zero, and only 37% of respondents listed three or more friends back in 1985. On Lee, 10% of people indicated that they had zero confidence in 2000 for this number skyrockets to 25% 1 out of every four of us is walking around with no one to share our lives with. This is scary. When we add the findings of the Harvard Study of Adult Development into the mix, it showed that people who are lonely are less happy. Their health declines earlier in midlife, their brain declined sooner, and they live shorter lives. Robert Waldinger, the director, said that loneliness literally kills. It's as powerful as smoking or alcoholism, so increasing the social connections in our lives is probably the single easiest way to enhance our well being. How does our definition of success shape how we live our daily lives? Join me, your host Michael Bellman as we create a life of success by exploring the cutting edge research and happy motivation, psychology, philosophy and welcome to thrive culture. Six. Most of you have probably heard of Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If you haven't let me explain them really quick. There are fundamental human needs that are arranged in a pyramid shape with the most important and crucial needs on the bottom. So that bottom level, you have your physiological meets. This is our need for food, water, sleep, sex and up above that, the next level you have your safety needs, so safety for your body, safety for your health, your resource is your family. As we continue to go up that third level, we have our love and our belonging needs. So this is friendship and family and sexual intimacy. Then, above that, we have a steam. So our confidence, our respect from others or recognition and then the last level is self actualization. You have morality, creativity except in spontaneity, those air on the final level of the pyramid. Matthew Lieberman, in his book Social, actually challenges this view by arguing that our most fundamental needs is actually social in nature. He supports this claim by referencing that the single most important need of an infant mammal is to be continuously cared for by an adult. Without this, all other needs of the infant go unmet and it will die. Creating ways to keep us connected is there for the central problem. By making threats to our social connection truly painful, our brains produce adaptive responses to these threats, such as an infants crying, which gets the caregivers attention and by making the care of our Children intrinsically rewarding and reinforcing our brains. Ensure that we will be there for our Children even before we're needed. Essentially, without having someone to care for us in her infancy, all our basic physiological needs wouldn't even maybe met, let alone the other human needs. So now what does their brain have to say about all this? Well, the brain seems to think that this is so important that is actually devoted over 10,000 hours of practice in social cognition and thinking about relationship to others. By the time we reached the age of 10 through its activation of what's called the Default Network, this network was studied and researched by having participants lie down in a pet scanner and perform simple cognitive tasks, such as indicating you know whether two letters on the screen are the same or different or doing a simple math problem. After doing this for a couple minutes, the word rest would appear on the screen. So when that word rest appeared, that's when we saw this default network activate, even if that rest time was on Lee for a couple seconds. Hence the name default network, as it was, activate. Essentially by default. This network has been correlated with the ability to mental eyes, which is thinking about the thoughts of other people and thinking about our connection to other people. When babies neural activity was study, this default network actually showed activity only two days after they were born. This is incredibly fascinating because two day old infants clearly haven't cultivated any conscious in for interest in the social world. Yet they can't even focus their eyes. But this default network actually preceded any conscious interest in the social world. Now let's go back to him as loves, hierarchy of needs for every need. With a capital end, there is a corresponding physical pain with a capital P that we feel when that need is not being met. So a lack of food leads to hunger, and this painful state of deprivation motivates us to find more food. A lack of water leads to thirst, which could be similarly painful and motivating. Physical injury leads to bodily pain, which motivates us to find shelter and rest. So if social needs really are basic survival, deeds with a capital end than unmet social needs should be experienced as a pain with a capital P, too. There been many studies that have shown the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex in our brain activates when they feel physical pain. It plays a large role in what's called the Pain Network. Matthew Lieberman, along with some other researchers, wanted to look at whether this area would activate when people experienced social pain. Specifically, the pain of social rejection they performed was named the Cyber Ball Study. Participants would lie in effort memory scanner, which was recording their brain activity while they played a simple video game over the Internet. They believed that there were two other people who are simultaneously having the brain scandal. They also played the same game the researchers told them they were interested in how the bane's coordinate with one another to perform simple tasks such like tossing a ball around. But what the researchers were actually studying was social rejection. The game was pretty simple. Participants would toss around a virtual ball between their avatars for a little while, and after a couple of minutes, these virtual avatars would start throwing the ball back and forth between just themselves. While excluding the participant that was actually being studied. The researchers wanted to see what area of the brain would activate when faced with this social rejection. Guess what it was. The dorsal interior singular cortex, the same exact region or network that is activated when we experience physical pain also activates when we experience social pain. This was the first study to show this link between physical and social pain. Looking at the F. M. R. I data side by side. Without knowing which was an analysis of physical pain and which was an analysis of social pain, you wouldn't have been able to tell the difference. This is pretty extraordinary finding because we treat physical pain and social pain very differently. But in reality, our brains treat them pretty. Similarly, we've all heard the staying sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. And when we know that words can hurt us and we all have been hurt by words, I don't think we fully understand how much words and social pain and rejection can affect us. There've been a number of studies that show that the effect of social pain and rejection stays with us far longer into adulthood than the physical pain of breaking a bone or getting scraped up. Let's garnish this physical and social pain. Link off with a cherry on top. Opiates. Opioids are the brain's natural painkillers. Their production and release diminish the experience of pain are anterior singular Cortex has the highest density of opioid receptors of any region in the brain, so it makes sense that physical and social pain may well be a linked in this specific region. This suggests that the same neurochemical that is instrumental in leaving the distress of physical pain may also be central in alleviating the distress of social pain. Naomi Eisen, Burger and some other social rejection researchers conducted a series of studies to test this hypothesis, using over the counter painkillers to see if they would also reduce social pain, not just physical pain. In the first study, they looked at two groups of people. Half of them took 1000 milligrams a day of acetaminophen, so Tylenol and half of them took equivalent size placebo pills with no active substances in them. Both groups took their pills every day for three weeks. And then each night, the participants answered questions by email regarding the amount of social pain that they had felt that day. By the ninth day of the study, the Tylenol Group was reporting feeling less social pain in the placebo group. Moreover, between the ninth day and the 21st day, the difference between the two groups kept widening. Neither group knew what they were taking. Yet. Taking a painkiller that we reach for to make a headache of away seemed to help make our feelings of heartache go away as well. So I'm definitely not recommending you take Tylenol for your social pain, and I'm not a doctor. This study did provide pretty hard evidence that social and physical pain are treated in similar ways by the brain. All of this is saying that our sensitivity to social rejection is so central to our well being that our brains treated like a painful event by activating the same network as with physical pain. So let's go back a little because we've covered a lot in this episode. Unfortunately, our entire culture has been shifting towards valuing extrinsic values such as money, fame, recognition more than our social connections, but has seen in the Harvard Study of Human Development the quality of our relation all connections is a better predictor of our health, our happiness and our well being. This is so important. It could even be classified as more important than our most fundamental needs, like food, water safety, because we have to have some sort of social connection to provide those fundamental physiological needs or we die in infancy. Our brains have a default network that has been seen as early as two days after being born, that associated with being able to think about the mental states and thoughts of other people and our relationship to the Not only that, but our brain actually activates the same network. When we experienced social pain and rejection as when we experience physical pain. In other words, our connections and relationships are incredibly important. They are arguably the most important thing we can invest our time in our energy into. And so in the next episode we will explore how where we're spending our time and our money relates to our actual values and how we can potentially shift that more towards the values that are really important, like a relationships and social connections. I hope to see you back for another episode of Thrive Culture Success Engineering with your host, Michael Baumann. If you enjoy this show, it would mean a lot if you left a rating and review wherever you get your podcasts. It really does help people find the show until next time. Thank you for listening.