Isaac Prilleltensky || The Need to Matter

His most recent book is How People Matter, Why It Affects health, happiness, love, work, and Society, co author with his wife, doctor Ara pile al Tensky. Doctor Prilotensky, it is so great to have you on the Psychology Podcast today. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. I wanted to have you on the show for a long time.

The topics you study are so essential to the world, of course, to society, to politics, to lots of other things, but also the we both work in positive psychology, so I thought we could go through a lot of your work and wink it to these other things that I just mentioned. Great, great, Okay, let me start off by asking you what your own conceptuization of wellbeing is well.

In my view, wellbeing is multi dimensional, and my research team and I developed a multifaceted conception of well being which we summarize in the acronym I cope I interpersonal, community, occupational, physical, psychological, and economic well being. And in ourview, this model of wellbeing pays more attention to contextual factors than maybe other models like the spire more by tal Ben Shahar or the Perman model by Seligman, which is very well known.

So we felt that we needed to emphasize more the interaction between internal factors like psychological well being and external factors like occupational and community wellbeing, which have a huge impact on how we feel. So in other words, our framework is highly contextualized. Yeah, that is, I believe it or not not to you, but others. That's pretty novel.

The whole history of wellbeing research and thinking, even going back to you know, the humanistic psychologists, which I'm a big fan of, but a lot of people try to present. People have criticized Maso's ideas of self actuisation as being too individualistic. Now they're not aware of his more recent attempts are recent today, but towards the end of his life.

Recent attempts to bring in community and bring in ideas of transcendence and synergy with the environment, but still that idea of self accusation still has a very individualistic feel to it, doesn't it. Yes, I agree. So in the field of positive psychology, I feel there is a risk of what I call interiorization of well being, you know, making it all about the interior, what happens underneath the skin.

But yet at the same time, we're very aware of the impact of interpersonal well being, you know, where we know that social support, emotional support, the connectivity with other people is hugely influential in our own well being. So thinking about community well being, occupational well being, it's just an extension of something that we know very well from psychology, the impact of early forms of attachment, secure attachment, bonding

with your friends, friendships, peer relations, et cetera. So in a way, it's just an extension of that. It goes if we think about bronfe Brenner's ecological models, you know, we go from the person to the family, to the school, the community, church, all the way to the nation and

social policy. So I think it's really important to think about wellbeing as sitting residing at the nexus of all these spheres of influence, And in recent work we've done, we realize that if we think about wellbeing as an outcome, you know, people want to be happy, Okay, so let's consider that's an outcome. So we ask ourselves what are some of the antecedents of that wellbeing or happiness, or

health or mental health. And we found two interesting factors predicting happiness and wellbeing which have to do with the environment, and one is fairness. To what extent do you experience fairness in your relationships, at work, in the community, So fairness has a direct impact on the level of wellness, so to speak. So fairness impacts wellness, but it's also mediated by our feeling valued by other people and having

an ability to add value. So in other words, the more I feel respect it, treated fairly, treated with dignity, the more I feel valued, and the more I feel valued, the happier I become. But it's not just about feeling valued. It's about giving me opportunities to add value. So when I am in a context like wark or school where people build on my strengths, when people feel that I have something to contribute and encourage the expression of assets,

my happiness also goes out. So fairness in a way, in a way predicts feeling valued and adding value, and these two predict happiness as well. Yeah, thank you for explaining that. And those are the two components of the need to matter. It just so happens, so not just fair nights, but also your need to matter. That's your definition of the need to matter. So I want to

let's zoom in for a second on this need. Are you making the claim that there is a need to matter in humans that is a separable need from perhaps the need to belong and perhaps even the other needs. Then, like seft determination theory, even though that mass well proposed, or even that I proposed to my new book, is there? So is there? Is it a unique need that you

believe it deserves attention all on its own? Yes, And I believe that it's a meta need or in ambrella need because when you think about feeling valued, feeling valued incorporates feeling like you belong, a sense of community, attachment to your parents and family, just to name a few. These are about feeling valued, feeling like I belong to this group, to my family, to the community. When you think about adding value, adding value is an umbrella construct

for self determination, mastery, competence, freedom, self expression. So there are many human needs among others in self determination theory, autonomy, competence, and relatedness. So I believe that feeling value and adding value encapsulate a lot of psychological needs. And when you put the two construct together, the umbrella feeling valued with the umbrella adding value, you experience mattering and muttering I believe is a fundamental human need. It has many origins

in evolution. If it didn't belong to a group or a tribe or a family, you may be left to your own devices and you may not survive. When you add value to the tribe, to the community, you get rewarded, you get appreciated, you feel validated, you feel seen. And this has repercussions for today's political scene where in the very words Black Lives Matter, we're seeing an entire community saying we mutter, we want to feel valued and we want to portunities to add value. So this complementarity is

very important, feeling value and having opportunities to add value. Yeah, I really really do love that. And do you see this kind of seas all in a sense where when you some certain groups who have historically not have had as much power or the feeling to matter once they start to matter more. Along the lines of fairness, you see other groups, you know, maybe come out of what

work saying well, hold up, we matter too. So now you're seeing, you know, they're white supremacist group who are making the same case too, right, They're saying white people matter too, you know. So it's a it's an interesting sort of psychological psychological seesil dynamic of control of power at a very higher level, which leads me to think, how can we get out of that? Because ultimately we don't want to stay in a in a power play situation, right,

we want to I think beaten. Both me and you are united in in the in the desire for a self actualizing society that is grounded in fairness for everyone, where everyone feels like they matter and and my gosh, how does how how does one get to there? Right? And you are addressing a very important point which goes to the heart of the nexus between mattering and fairness, because some groups have expience historically a lot of privilege and they are having a hard time giving up some

of that privilege. So instead of saying, let's look at corrective justice. So what's corrective justice? What can we do to repair harms done in the past, right, maybe by my group? So what can we do in order to correct, repair, heal injustices of the past. When you are willing to engage in that act of reconciliation, then you come to terms with the fact that, well, maybe we need a firmative action, you know, because a firmative action is part

of a healing process. Maybe we need the reconciliation, truth and Reconciliation commissions, you know, like there was in South Africa, because they bring about healing. So when one group, let's say white supremacist, they say, oh, I am forgotten. Now I feel like society is too multicultural, you know, like they're paying attention too much to minorities and we white people are being forgotten. I believe that they are not paying attention to all the privilege that some groups have had.

And let me be very clear, I think we all mutter in society. We just we need to find a way for us to rectify injustices of the past and to learn not just to acquire more power, but also to share power. And this is for example, in New Zealand, in the eighteen hundreds, Maori people signed the Treaty of way Tangy with the Crown with the British Crown, and the treaty was never upheld. You know, the Maori people were never really given the rights that they thought they

were signing up for. So over the years, the white population in New Zealand, which they called the Pakeha population, they decided to give up some of their power and to engage in this process of reconciliation, educating the whole nation about the Treaty of wey Tangy. And for me, that's an example of people saying, I am willing and ready to give up some power so that we can all experience fairness. So it's not just the province of the white Europeans privileged groups. Yeah, no, I have to

get right to the harder matter. And it just does seem like the fight for power has trumped the fight for quality in some ways, you know, or the fight for fairness for everyone. I agree, and which doesn't mean, by the way, that we should neglect any aspect of the population. So when you when we think about the psychological reactions to feeling forgotten, you have two opportunities you know, you have a fork on the route that you need to decide. Am I going to become xenophobic to regain

my power? You know? Am I going to become a white supremacist to reclaim my lost diminished sense of power? Or or am I going to fight for fairness and justice for all the groups? And it's very important. You know, Historically it has happened that some oppressed groups, when they acquired more power, became the oppressive group. Yeah, and you know, people like Franz Fanon and Albert Memi, they documented that

in colonial settings like him Alja and Tunisia. So it's very important to be mindful of the psychology of acquiring too much power. I agree. I've been on the search for the perfect mattress for the past few years, and let me tell you, I've gone through so many mattresses. My friends have made fun of me because for so long I didn't actually own a mattress. I just went through so many free trials. I had no idea what it feels like to be well rested until I tried

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helixsleep dot com slash psychology Gay. Now back to this show, and for I would say for in groups to police themselves a little bit, because I think we have a tendency when someone has a moral transgression from our in group, to give it more of a pass than when we see a moral transgression from an outgroup. And I think that that needs to happen all around. You know, even

within the Black Lives Matter movement. You know, if if some individuals within the movement start to be discriminative against white people, you know, that seems to be not towards the aims of fairness either. So I think that there that this is just a very important thing that we all need to do, is to be wary of that

human tendency, regardless of what group we're in. Yes, And I'm reminded reminded of social movements in the sixties where supposedly everybody was fighting for social jesis, but a lot of women then the to be relegated to secondary jobs in the social movements, and that wasn't very fair, right, So it was a lot of white males leading social movements and really not paying a lot of attention to with either black people or women were saying in the

social movement, Yes, exactly, So we have to be very reflective and monitor our own tendencies, our blind spots, so to speak. Yeah, very well, very well. Put, I want to quote you for a second. You say that quote. Mattering is not even we distributed across populations. Some have too much of it while others have too little. In the right amount. However, mattering can contribute to personal and

collective flourishing. What I want to push you on all of it because I want to understand what you mean by what would it mean for someone have too much mattering? And that's an interesting idea, you know, that's interesting concepts like do you want to be the one in charge of saying what groups have too much and which ones

don't have enough? Yeah, that's a good point. And I think some people have narcissistic tendencies which are exacerbated by contemporary society, including social media and the need for everyone to become a celebrity on his or her own. So there are definitely contextual factors contributing factors to this push to celebritize yourself. And in my mind, yes, you can matter too much to the point that you are, You're

taking up a lot of space. You take up all the oxygen in the room, and you don't give enough mattering space to other people. So you can think of in the Aris Totilian construct of the royal path, you know, or or or the middle the middle way. Too little mattering, it's no good right. We feel neglected, forgotten, invisible. But too much mattering means that I am becoming a center stage and I'm really not balancing what's good for me

with what's good for other people. So in that quote, I talked about personal and collective wellness, which has to do with what I call a me culture and a weak culture. In me culture claims I have the right to feel valued so that I may be happy. In a weak culture, we say we all have the right to feel value. Then add the value so that we can all experience happiness and fairness. So, m if you're engage in a me type of behavior, you can matter too much. Frankly, and we all know these people and

their mattering comes at the expense of others. Yeah, I hear what you're saying, and it's subtle, but but your distinction does not map on completely to the difference in already in the psychological literature between individualistic and collectivistic cultures. One may seem one first blush to say, well, isn't he just saying that's a difference between like Eastern and Western you know, collective and it's no, I know, I get it, I get it, I get what you're saying.

It's it's subtle. But they're not the same thing, because one could still live in a collectivist culture and for the individual to not matter. Right, Yes, it is correct. And where I said about mattering too much or too little applies equally to well being in collective societies and individualistic societies. So I believe we need to find just the right balance between the two tendencies. I'll give you an example. My sister lived in Israel on a keyboots for many years. And you know, a kyboat is a

collective society. There is no private property. You work for the collective and in return you get all expenses paid. Right, you have a nice house and vacations paid, and health care and a car when you need it, and entertainment. In many ways, it's a very idyllic place Keyboots, But sometimes the societal norms that give you all these goodies,

all these resources, can become a little oppressive. So, to use my sister's example, she wanted to do a master's degree in educational administration, but the Keyboats said no, we want you to be a nurse. And she said, like, but I don't want to become a nurse. I want to become, you know, an educational administrator. This is just one little example of how a collective is. Society where you share everything can also become quite oppressive of individual expression, right,

So that's not good. On the other my sister left the Keyboots eventually, by the way, because she felt that her needs were not being made. On the other hand, we have highly individualistic societies, you know, like the US culture, where in individual freedoms just tramp everything else. So, oh, you know, freedom is the single most important value. Therefore, I don't need to wear masks, I don't need to be vaccinated, basically saying I don't care about other people, right,

because freedom supersedes the well being of the community. So you can see, neither extreme is healthy. We have to create spaces where we balance the well being of the collective with the well being and needs of the individuals. Yeah, No, thank you for clarifying that. I understand very clearly now what you mean by in the right amount mattering can contribute to personal and collective for things. Thank you for

that clarification. You know argued you arguing on your papers that for mattering to materialize, certain moral values must be present. Can you explain what the more values are that you speak of. Yes, So, continuing the conversation on mattering too much, if we do not pay attention to the value of fairness, I very quickly can become obsessed with my own mattering, which we see all around us all the time pretty much. So what does fairness do? You can think of fairness

as balancing value. Because fairness there are different types. I talked to early about corrective fairness when we're trying to fix an injustice in the past. But there is also what we call distributive fairness, which is allocating people resources based on you know, what they deserve to each his or her do. There is also procedural fairness, making sure that if people make decisions affecting your life, that you have voice and choice you know about the decision, that

you're not left out of decisions impacting your life. Your career, your job, your community, et cetera. So we can talk about distributive justice and procedure and justice. So if I really want to create a healthy society, I will be concerned not just with my own mattering, but with your maltering as well. And I couldn't do that if I didn't pay attention to the value of fairness, right, because then it's look, in the absence of fairness, it's a free for all. So then I say, oh, I want

to marry. So you know, I don't care if I exploit my workers because I matter more. I don't care if I suppress women's voices or black people's voices because I care about my group more. In other words, mattering in the absence of fairness can very quickly degenerate into a type of narcissistic culture. Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely, which we're seeing a lot of today. Yes. Yes, you point out some interesting tensions among psychological, philosophical, and political perspectives

and mattering. I found that very very interesting when you point out can you just briefly touch on some of those tensions, because there's different you know, in different philosophies and different politics, there's different ideas about that balance, yes, exactly right. So to begin with psychology, we started the conversation with the risk in here and both in positive psychology and humanistic psychology, that we ascribe too many powers

to the individual, for example, to overcome adversity. And it is true that post traumatic growth is a real phenomenon and many people do overcome adversity and it's a testament to the human spirit. But it is also true that when you take inequality into account, the vast majority of poor people experience adversity that it's not so easy to overcome.

So I worry in psychology about the tendency to glorify greed and resilience too much, because it tends to ignore the plight of people who didn't have enough psychological resources to overcome adversity. Let me be personal for a second. I lost my parents in a car accident when I was eighty years old. Both of my parents died at

the same time. It was very traumatic, needless to say, but I had experience a lot of warmth and affection before my parents died, and after their death, I was adopted by an aunt who treated me like her own sign and my aunt really invested in me and I

enjoyed psychological resources that helped me pull through. Not everyone experiences the same worms and affection and psychological nurturance to overcome, especially individuals who because of poverty and marginalization, they have to juggle a million things at the same time, like two jobs, lack of transportation, eviction, nourisies, and a lot of in justice. Basically, so in philosophy, in politics, in psychology, there is this tendency which is a very American tendency

to bestow upon the individual more superpowers than we really have. Okay, so you see in liberal the neoliberal politics of today, which is all about the individual and become an entrepreneur and if you work hard, you can make it, you know, lift yourself from with your own bootstraps, et cetera, et cetera, all these metaphors which tend to perpetuate a sense of failure in people who cannot achieve these high status right because they just say, look all these people I get

it on the media all the time. They are telling me, if I work hard enough, I can make it. But you know what, some people have really adverse circumstances that unless we fix those for them, the path too resilience will be very hard. Yeah, your work seems tough tail with Bob Newbrough's work a bit who advocated for a balance among the values of liberty, fraternity, and equality. Can you compare contrast your theory with his? Yes, and actually Bob,

Nowbro was the person who recruited me to Vanderbilt University. Wow, I didn't know that. Yes, So I have a very warm spot in my heart for Bob, who was really a wonderful scholar and friend. And Bob advocated or this balance between really the values of the French Revolution, right, you know, which is basically about liberty, fraternity, and equality. And if you put liberty and equality on two ends of a continuum. Okay, so let's say liberty. It's all

about freedom. What's good for me. I don't want to be encumbered by social norms, whatever doctor Fauci tells me. I just want to do my own thing. Right. So that's one extreme of liberty, and the other extreme of equality is maybe it doesn't matter how hard you work, you're going to get pay the same lousy payment that we're paying everybody. So think Cuba, for example, right, where it's equality with the very lowest denominator, so there's no

incentive to do anything because I'm not going anywhere. Or you can think about my sister's example on the keyboots, right, so oh yeah, we're also equal that it doesn't matter what I want to study because it's all for the benefit of the whole anyways. Right, so you can think about vices on either end of the continue. Okay, so now you ask the question, how do you reconcile what

the individual needs with what the collective needs? And this is where fraternity comes in because what's fraternity Fraternity is relational well being. And in the absence of relational wellbeing, where we say, Scott, how about Scott and Isaac having a chat and seeing whether we can resolve our differences. It's about civic engagement. It's about civil friendship, this Aristotelian construct.

It's about the thinking about the common good and when we engage in other extreme, either the individualistic, which is a society completely built on a meritocracy. Right, if you work hard, if you're smart, you can deserve all the goodies America can offer you. You know, that's one bad extreme. The other bad extreme is really Cuba, you know, or the former Soviet Union, where you know your individuality was

completely erased. I have many good friends in Cuba. It doesn't matter how hard you work, the government is going to tell you what to do, when to do it, how to do it. So you live a very oppressed existence. So then I ask myself, how do we solve these tensions? And healthy society have robust participatory democracies where people can

engage in a dialogue about how to resolve differences. So an interesting study was conducted by Swiss economists Free and Stutzer a few years ago now where they compared happiness and longevity of people in cantons where they voted more often for decisions affecting their lives. So that's a form of voice and choice, people participating in dialogue about what do we need as a community. For example, do we want more pedestrian zones? Do we want to block car

access to the downtown? You know? Do we want to force people to recycle more? Etcetera, etcetera. Well, it turns out that people who vote on referenda more often are happier and live longer. So something is telling us that when I am valued not just as an individual but also as a citizen, my happiness goes up. And I can give you opposite example, Scott, I grew up in Argentina where there is a great deal of corruption, and corruption is toxic. So what do people do when there

is corruption? They don't trust the government, they don't trust the authorities, and people just withdraw from the system, and there is higher levels of criminal behavior or alienation, et cetera, et cetera. Wow, Wow, you've thought about this for a while. I can tell well, yes, And I have to say, you know, I've lived in five countries and I grew up and the fascist dictatorship of a military dictatorship in Argentina.

That will really make you socially aware really quickly. And then I lived in Israel for nine years, which is a very interesting, very multicultural and complicated democracy. I lived in Canada for fifteen years, i lived in Australia, and I've been in the US since two thousand and three, so I've been around. And I think when you're exposed two different ways of organizing yourself as a society, you

begin to learn from exemplars. And you know, for example, you know in Canada people pay more taxes than in the US, but I lived there fifteen years. I never paid a cent for excellent medical care. I recy right, So what is that telling you? It's telling you that there are different ways for societies to organize themselves where the individual can experience more self expression because you're not

so encumbered by all these worries. So it's a wonderful I mean, it deeply connected to my own sort of thinking and what does the self actualizing society look like? So I really appreciate this conversation, and it's very clear to me, abundantly clear to me that the field of community psychology needs to be better integrated in the field of positive psychology. I don't know why. Why does it kind of feel like you're you're just out there like

this outlire in our field. It shouldn't be that way. Yes, yes, And I think part of it has to do with they yet to be fulfilled promise of positive psychology paying attention not just to individuals but also to institutions. Remember when the field was founded, you know, it was being founded on these complementary pillars of not just flourishing individuals, but also flourishing institutions and societies. And I think we have gotten a little stuck at the individual end of

the continuum. And I think it's not one or it's not either or right. It's not an either or proposition that I'm advocating for forgetting the benefits of positive interventions like gratitude and savoring and mindfulness meditation, And I just want to democratize those practices so that everyone can have access to them and not just be the province of a selected few. Just want everyone to enjoy the science of positive psychology, which is not today, it's not what's

happening today. I agree, I agree democratize gratitude. That that's a call hashtag democratize well democratize well being more generally. Yeah, yeah, democratized happiness. To tell you the truth, yeah, okay, Yeah. It's abundantly clear that social conditions create scarcity for some people. And there is a fabulous book by Molay Nathan and Schaffir and economists and psychologists from Harvard than Princeton, and they wrote this book Scarcity, And what do they say.

They say that when you happen to be poor, all your mental energy goes to pay the bills and to buy shoes for your kid, and to pay for school. Fees when there is an outing right, so you are consumed. You are consumed by what you don't have, scarcity, right, you don't have enough money, so there is very little, if any, any psychological energy to invest in flourishing because you don't know where the next paycheck will come from and you don't know how you're going to pay rent

before you are evicted. So I think we need to pay attention to the to the ground, to the fertile ground where happiness grows. And at present, we just think that happiness can grow out of nowhere or just out

of your hide. That's poor science, that it's not paying attention to the contextual factors that make you resilient enough as in my case, you know, I lost my parents when I would say that's pretty traumatic, but things can be compensated when you have the right psychological nurturance around you. And that's a privilege that not everyone benefits from because basically social injustice. Let me put it this way, I think it's in the simplest form, I love what you're saying.

I want to get a little bit differ though at an existential level, why why does it matter so much to be to feel valued? You know, is it. I'm gonna try to play Devil's advocate for a second, Like, couldn't someone say that's just so tied up with the need for self esteem, you know that, Like shouldn't we transcend that ultimately? That like I demand to be you know, valued. You know, it's that demand that that demand and that

need itself feels selfish to a certain degree. So I don't know if I'm believing everything I'm saying right now, but I'm just trying to just for the sake of it. Yeah, why is it so important? I think from an evolutionary point of view, today love has become with safety and food used to be for our ancestors. Wow, and so they need because of evolutionary reasons, we're comparing machines. When when we enter a room full of people, we tend to compare ourselves with others. You know, am I as

good looking as these other people? Am I as well dressed, well spoken, well educated, well petty greed as other people? It just happens because it's a need for survival to scan the environment and to see how do I stuck up? Will people? You know, if I have a heart attack, where will anybody rush to save me, or will they go to this dude who is very well dressed and high status. So when you think about it, it has to do with survival and existing in a group, in

a tribe. So that's why I want to feel valued. Now, most of us who are lucky, we have our basic needs met. You know, I'm not worrying about being eaten up by a mastodon in the African savannah. So what do I worry about. I worry about being popular. I worry about being loved. And it is true what you're saying that in excess, that can become a self obsession, which was the problem with the self esteem movement. So

how do I guard against that tendency. My definition of mattering is that you need to feel valued by yourself and others, and you need to add value to yourself and others and others. So build into my definition of mattering is the need to pay attention to the well being of other people. That's the difference between a me culture and a weak culture. In a me culture, it's all about self esteem. As you were saying, you know, I have the right to feel valued. Basically says love me.

I'm here, I'm great, my definition of mattering says that this is fifty percent. This is one hundred percent correct, about fifty percent of the problem, right. The other fifty percent of the problem is that unless you are actually adding value to other people, you run the risk of becoming self obsessed. So that's why, that's why you cannot truly matter unless you're adding value to other people. Wow wow, wow,

wow wow. This is so interesting. So would you say, a real wild, brash narcissist who who just doesn't add value to the world at all, but just can't stanly screaming I matter, I matter, would you actually say, actually, you don't. You don't yet you don't need exactly exactly when you say that, Yeah, I would absolutely say that. I would say, you're narlyssis. You're not mattering. You're not adding value to anybody. You're actually reducing value to the

community by your actions, by your self obsession. So here is. You asked me before about the intersection between psychology and politics and philosophy, and you cannot just propagate a meat type of mattering because in a me type of mattering, you're forgetting the fairness part. In a weak type of mattering, all of us have the right and responsibility to feel valued and add value so that we can all experience

happiness and fairness. So pay attention to the keywords not just right to feel value, but right and responsibility, not just to feel valued, but to feel value and add value so that we can all experience not just happiness but also fairness. So six words, okay, rights, responsibilities, feeling value, adding value, happiness and fairness. These six constructs must be present. If you take out a piece of it, the whole

thing falls apart. This is revolutionary, I mean, this is also This might be at odds with someone who would say, you know, you could see someone in the positive psychotic community in doing a mindfulness meditation and saying close your eyes you matter because you're human, you exist. That's it. That's all you need to do the matter. I feel like you're kind of saying, you know, that's not really necessarily true, right, And I you know, there is a

big movement in mindfulness self compassion. It's a bit of a misnomer because when you really dig into it, it's more about mindfulness compassion. It's not just self compassion. I know, you know where self compassion started with CHRISTA Kneff, and then it grew with Chris Germer. But both of them have been highly influenced by Paul Gilbert, who's a British psychologist who wrote a fantastic book about mindfulness compassion, and

I think compassion embodies self and other compassion. But I agree with you that if this is all about me experiencing higher levels of self actualization without paying attention to the vicissitudes of suffering other people, I don't believe in that kind of self compassion. I believe in self compassion that nurtures your compassion for other people. And if you follow that trend of thought, there cannot be compassion without justice.

I hear you. You're a bit of a rebel. Though in a field of positive psychology it shouldn't be the case, but I hear you. I hear you. Yes, I'll tell you a little historical note that may be of interest. I wrote a philosophical dissertation in psychology. You know, most psychologists right empirical studies, right, you know, conduct the study, collect they analyze statistics, etc. Well, I wrote a dissertation, a philosophical dissertation which my department didn't want to approve

because I was a rebel. I was calling into question the let's call it the monopoly of wor in empirical studies. And I said, no, I can't write a philosophical study that's worth of a dissertation. So I did what was it called psychology and the STATEUS School. It was a critique of how different branches of psychology upheld social injustice because of what I was saying before that psychology tended to interiorize social problems as opposed to contextualize social problems.

So I wrote a critique of the atomization of psychology. So just to show you, I wrote my dissertation in nineteen eighty nine. Whoa, and I've been a bit of a rebel ever sees. I guess I think that was even before. That was before a lot of happiness research was systematically initiated, even at dinner's work. Yeah right, so I so I guess it was a critic before there was something to criticism. I was gonna say, that's amazing, that's amazing. Well, good for you, Good for you. Now,

this is a very important, very important question. Can I matter? If I never can learn how to roll ours like you do you, I can grant you special dispensations. So so for a very small contribution to the Isaac PRILEL. Tensky Foundation, I can grant special dispensations. Thank you, because I didn't know if that was one of your criteria for mattering. Now now many people don't know this about you, but you're a humor writer as well. You want to know you know this is this is also a very

important to mention of you. You know one in a war. You wanted a word for your humor writing in twenty fifteen by the National Newspaper Association. Yes, is that a real society? Is that real? Yes? Actually it's Google Ball, so it must be real. Okay, well, I'd love to read some of your humor writing if you, if you can somehow send me some wings, I'll put in the

show notes. Right, So, very quick story about that. My wife and I were thinking of writing a book based on an intervention we developed the it's called fundfour wellness dot com. It's free to the public if people are interested. We conducted randomized control trials on that. So long story short, we developed a wellness intervention and I said to my wife, you know, I think if I write some humor pieces, you know, it may just lighten up the whole intervention.

People may be more engaged. So that led to my publishing dozens and dozens of humor columns in the Miami Herald in Miami Today, and I got very positive responses. So then I said to Ura, my wife and my co author, I said, you know, how about we write a series of books combining humor with science. Because you know, when it comes to health and wellness, there's a lot of ceremonizing, you know, like, oh, if you don't eat your vegetables, you will die young and destitute. You know

that kind of thing. So I said to Urah, we can just teach people how to become happier and healthier through humor. So we wrote a trilogy, The Laughing Guy to well Being, The Laughing Guy to a Better Life, and the Laughing Guy to Change, and the trilogy all the books combined humor with science to become happier and healthier. So it was an interesting experiment, and people resonate with a humor message. I call it smarter through laughter. I

love it. I love it. I'm actually in the middle of taking a stand up comedy class right now, and how is it going it's going well. It's going well, performing tonight open mic. Oh well, good luck? Any youtubes please send me? Oh yes, I will. But we're not ready for prime time yet, that's for sure. I'm not ready for but someday maybe. Now you related to this. You lead a research team that developed wwwww dot fundfour

wellness dot com. So this is a research based online platform to promote health and wellness using videos, games and humor. Tell me a little bit about this. I hadn't heard about this since I was right, right, right, So, following the philosophy I was describing of engaging people in health promotion through fun, we created a platform with the video clips with professional actors basically enacting some struggle in their

lives interpersonal problems, occupational problems, weight issues. So we follow these characters. It's like a mini soap opera, you might say, in which the characters have a dilemma, have a challenge, They use certain strategies that we propose in the intervention, and then there is some kind of resolution and the participants play video games. We created videos and self reflection exercises and games, all in an effort to learn health and wellness skills through fun. And joy. So we teach,

for example, people and their behaviors. We teach people housery, goal and how to create a positive habit and the remote. We have a module on emotions, how to nurture positive emotions and how to manage negative emotions and their thoughts. We teach people how to challenge negative assumptions about themselves and how to write a new story, a new narrative about themselves. We teach people about interactions, how to connect with others, and how to communicate. So there are a

lot of skill building in this platform. All told takes about twelve hours to do, but even if you engage with it for about two and a half hours, our research team found statistically significant improvements in all the I cope themins of well being that I was describing earlier. So yeah, we subjected this to two randomized control trials and we've had a number, like are not twelve fifteen papers published on it. This is amazing, Isaac, the work you do so much. I'll leave with a quote of yours.

You say, psychologists, especially positive psychologists, must be very careful not to be complicit in the move to interiorize well being. I really hope this podcast today helps people listening if they're in the field of pod psychology, and if they're not, you know, they're just thinking about well being generally, to include more of the contextual factors that you're talking about and incorporate this need to matter in their own models of human thriving. So thank you so much for the

work you do. It's so important for the field. Can't wait to release this episode. Thank you so much for the opportunity to Scott. It was fun. 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 dot com. That's the Psychology Podcast dot com. Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show, and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity called