Sonja Lyubomirsky || The How of Happiness

her PhD in Social personality psychology from Stanford University. Her research has been featured in hundreds of magazines, newspapers, shows and documentaries in North America, South America, Asia, Australia and Europe. Doctor Lubimirski's best selling books, The How of Happiness and The Myths of Happiness have been published and translated in over sixteen countries. In this episode, I talked to Sonya

about happiness. Across all of her research, Doctor Lubamirski has found the connection is what makes people happy, So then how do we form high quality connections? Doctor lubermers He gives us insight on how to use kindness, reciprocity and gratitude to maintain and strengthen our relationships. We also touch on the topics of psychedelics, interpersonal chemistry, and social media. It's always fun chatting with Sonia. She's a friend and I really admire her research in the field. She's a

real pioneer in the science of happiness. So I'm excited to share her ideas with this audience today. So, without further ado, I bring you Sonya Lubimirski. How are you doing today? I am doing amazing. How are you? I'm doing amazing. Today was the first day of school, so it's a big day. Well, thank you for taking the

time to be on my humble podcast. It's a pleasure. Well, so, as you know, I'm a such a big fan of yours and preparing for today's episode and reviewing your work, it's like wow, Like how there's so many fascinating things to discuss. And you've been studying the topic of happiness for thirty years. More than thirty years, is that right? Yes, In twenty three of those years, e've been studying how to increase it. Why'd you get interested in this topic

to begin with? You know, it was serendipitous. Actually, on the very first day of graduate school, I met with my advisor, whose name is Lee Ross, and he is one of the world's experts on conflict and negotiation, which is like the opposite of happiness. And we walked around and I don't know who said it, probably he first said it. He said, uh, you know, what is the secret to happiness? And why are some people happier than others?

And back then this was in nineteen eighty nine, so yeah, you did your math, so more than thirty years ago. You know, there's only one person who really was studying happiness. That was Ed Diener, kind of the founder of the field of happiness, and there were just a few other kind of writers thinking about it. Obviously for thousands of years, you know, thinkers and writers and poets have been talking about happiness, but empirical research was very minimum. So yeah,

so it was kind of serendipitous. Yeah, I'm trying to like get my head back that time period. What was being published in psychology at the time, So there was stuff on subjective well being, life satisfaction. Martin Seligman had he initiated positive psychology. No, no, that was ten years ten years later, because I was nineteen ninety eight, So there probably wasn't even much talk about things like such as purpose within the umbrella of happiness, right there really

was a focus on No. Of course, there's a humanistic tradition, you know, a mass love of course that already had been talking about these sort of positive constructs more you know, in terms of theory than the you know, like experimental research. So I think we, you know, myself and many others started kind of a very like rigorous empirical tradition studying

these positive constructs experimentally. And you wrote The How of Happiness, which has amazing collection of activities and things we can do. When this discussion of happiness comes up, a lot of people ask me just how much we can change and how much is in our genes. I wanted to start up with just a higher level overview of that because you've thought of that in a really really nuanced Wayne, I believe you wrote a paper with Kenon Sheldon on

this topic. We could just give it a high level overview of you know, just how much is within our control? That would be wonderful, sure, sure, well, you know, originally we came up, Ken and I came up with a theory that we call the pipe chart and the idea there is that there's sort of three main determinants of happiness, kind of like three buckets of influences on happiness. One is our genetics, you know, personality, which is very much

influenced our genetics. The second one is our life circumstances, Right, so if you're poor, if you live in a war zone, you know, if you're in an abusive relationship, right, you're going to be really unhappy. And then the third bucket is like what we actually can do in our daily lives to kind of maintain happiness, either make us happier or less happy for that matter, in terms of a kind of a daily behave in the ways that we

think about things. And a long time ago, we kind of we tried to put numbers on those three categories, and we think that was a mistake because you know, we really don't know what the numbers are. So now I guess our more nuanced perspective is that we still believe that there are these three types of influenced unhappiness.

Genetics really are pretty powerful. Research with twins, research that compares twins that are identical to twins that are fraternal, shows that there's a really high like heritability component for happiness, like there is for almost any human trait, including love of jazz music, right including your blood pressure. And so identical twins are much more similar in their happiness levels than our fraternal twins. So we know that suggests that

there's sort of genetic component happiness. So that is true, you know that, But that doesn't mean that you're faded right to be a certain level. Our circumstances absolutely matter. But if we're kind of you know, maybe maybe a lot of the listeners of your podcast are like fairly comfortable, Like they're not they're not living in a war zone, and so their circumstances don't affect their happiness sort of as much as probably they think they will, but they

do matter of course. And then, like what I've been studying, what a lot of researchers have been studying, is like what can we actually do to change your happiness? Like, you know, can we actually change our habits? Can we actually think in ways that are different? Different? And so that's like the third component. So really all of those three components matter, All of those three buckets matter. I just I just don't like to put numbers on them anymore.

So you know, we can't say, like this percent of your happiness is due to like this factor. Yeah, because you know, heritability is all about there's some misunderstandings of what it means. It's just it's a population statistic. You can't parse out what percentage within a person is genetic and which parts and environment it's all connected within a person. You're only talking about partitioning sources of variance technically with

the heritability coefficient. Yeah. No, no no, and this is consistently misinterpreted. That's why, like we want to right, but like, for example, we know that nations differ hugely in how happy like the average citizen is, and that really is consistent with research on genetics, because if you take the entire environment and you make it more fertile, you know, you make it, you know, more positive than like, everyone's going to be, you know, happier well to some extent. So good points,

good point, Scott. Yeah, when the environment is equalized, genetics becomes more important in explaining the variance in an outcome. People don't realize that either, you know, like in a way, the extent to which genetics matter is the extent to which you have a just and fair society. So absolutely, Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's just it's just it's a and uh and Page Hardin has done some great work on that, and she was on my podcast talking about that. Yeah, I read

your article wrote about her. That was really fascinating. Oh cool. So, the the idea that I have always resonated with and I was wondering, tell me what the latest thinking about is is the set point theory of happiness. It does seem like we adapt quickly to the hot, extreme highs and extreme loads in our life, and we tend to return to a sort of baseline level of happiness that is maybe set by the genes in terms of reaction range. And I was wondering where your thoughts are on the

latest thinking about that? True? Sure, so again, I think I want to offer kind of more nuanced perspective on

that than I think the average person might have. So the stet point theory is sort of the idea that we all have kind of like a set point or like a baseline happiness maybe impartantly, you know, influence our genes and in our environment, and then when things happen to us, like let's say we get like a raise at work or we have a baby, or we have some kind of downturn, we lose our jobs, then our

happiness kind of goes up and down. But then eventually it sort of goes back to the set and that process of sort of going back to our baseline kind of what comes up must come down, or what comes down must come up. It's called hedonic adaptation. Now, dot adaptation is a pretty powerful phenomenon, right, Human beings are really good at getting accustomed to changes in their lives. You can argue that evolutionarily adaptive that like we need

to you know, be really attuned to changes in our environments. Right, we have to be attuned to sort of threats or to opportunities. But then when things are kind of the same, like we get to raise at work, or we buy a new house, and first we're really excited about it, but then it's sort of the same, right, Like the our house is kind of the same every day. Our

new car, you know, is the same every day. We sort of adapt now, but research shows that we adapt much more quickly and much more completely to positive things than to negative things. Right, So positive things like I just mentioned, like we buy a new motorcycle, we buy a new bag. We even a relationship, right, we kind of adapt to Like research shows that people tend to adapt to marriage. You know, on average, after two years,

people kind of go back to their previous baseline. Of course, there's lots of individual differences there that are kind of hidden by the by the average. But with negative of things like when we lose our jobs, we get divorced, we we have a disability, people tend to not adapt completely to a lot of those things. They still adapt, right, so they got to go go down and they kind of start coming back up, but they don't adapt completely.

So it so are kind of quote set points. I don't really believe in set points, but those baselines could actually change, so we could sort of permanently, you know, become like a little bit less happy, say after experiencing a disability or after unemployment, which which almost surprisingly to me, unemployment on average people don't adapt to completely. Super interesting I think about it obviously in terms of personality, psychology

and and one dimension. I know you've been studying recently because you've really got an interest in connections as kind of this as the overriding central theme that runs through a lot, not overwriting, but just a central theme that runs through a lot of different areas of positive psychology.

I'd like to double click on this introversion extraversion dimension for a second, because you know, we might have a set point in the sense of like, I don't like the idea sespment, but like a baseline, a baseline on average temperament that exists, that's really exists. Some people are grumpy. Some people are grumpy people. Some people are like, how are you doing? And you know those people are annoying. But but but anyway, that's my own judgement. We are,

but we're not. Hopefully we're not annoyingly happy. Right, there's a difference. There's a difference. That's a new construct, annoyingly happy. There's also I'm right now, yeah, Like there's a scale.

We should create that scale, you know. But anyway, what's so interesting is that you may be temperamentally an introvert, but your research shows that you can experimentally get people, regardless of whether they're temperamentally an introvert expert into certain situations and it has effects that average over what your temperament is like that over you can override your temperament in terms of the benefits of connection and sociality. So I'd love to hear about your research about that because

it's so fascinating, so fascinating exactly. So, first of all, just a tiny bit of background. I've been for years, I've been doing these interventions where we try to make people happier by experimentally kind of prompting them to engage in certain kinds of strategies or new habits, like try to be more grateful in your daily life, you know,

do acts of kindness, engage socially more with others. And it hit me a few years ago that almost all the interventions that we've ever done that have work to make pople happier work by making them feel more connected or interacting more with other people. So when you write a gratitude letter to your mom, it makes you feel

more connected to your mom. Right, when you do acts of kindness, it makes you feel more connected to the world in general, or do the people that you're helping, and so, you know, but one of my favorite studies, so I think connection is really the key to happiness. So it sounds like such a cliche, right, but it took me like twenty years at the point where I'm

like realizing connection is the keep happiness. So one of my favorite studies I did with my former student Sethner Goolas where we ask people for one week to act more extroverted and then the sort of try to be more extroverted than usually are, and then the second week, try to be more introverted than usually are. We didn't actually use those terms because they have sort of connotations or vice versa. And people got a lot happier during

the week that they acted extroverted. They got less happier when they acted introverted, and it didn't matter whether they were originally kind of high or low on extraversion introversion, which really surprised that. We thought. Susan Kane has this lovely work, this lovely book called Quiet. I'm sure your listeners know about it, and she's, you know, she argues that it's exhausting for introvert to act extroverted. Now, in our study, we didn't make them act extroverted all the time.

They could sort of choose when, and so maybe in May in a week was not that long. Now, there's another study that did something very similar coming out of Melbourne. They did find that introverts didn't benefit they still benefited from the intervention to act more social, they didn't benefit as much. And also they showed bigger decreases in feelings of authenticity, which does make sense, right, they felt kind

of less authentic. So there's some work now, very very new trying to figure out like what happens when you act kind of counterdispositionally, right, like you count, you act kind of against your personality. You might feel less authentic. I would argue you feel less authentic at first, but then over time it becomes a little bit more natural, just like anything when you try a new try on a new identity or role, you know you first, like when I bem a professor, right, I felt really an authentic.

I felt like an impostor. But then over time I just kind of got used to it. Yes, Jesse Sun is doing wonderful research along as line, but she did in Melbourne study. I know, homegirl, I know. That's why I want to give her credit. I want to give her credit. And I wrote about that article about her research and Scientific American if people want to read that article.

But the so there's some nuances here, and I do think it's also interesting there that there was a study that came out showing that if you give extroverts too much socializing, they get tired too. They're not superhuman, They're not like you know, like like both introverts and extroverts get exhausted with too much socializing, but their thresholds differ exactly exactly. I want to make Another point is that we have another paper that was looking at so why

is it lots of use. It shows that extroverts are happier than introverts, which, by the way, that doesn't make me happy to know that finding, because I kind of I do agree with Susan Kaine that like, there's a lot of benefits to being introverted in our society and others, but they are happier. But it turns out that it's really like the energy component of extraversion. Experversion has three components assertiveness, sociability, which is what most people think extraversion is,

but also energy level. They're sort of more energized, enthusiast energy component that's related to happiness of extraverty. Yeah, and the Big ten model Colony Young calls that enthusiasm and they label the enthusiasm high positive emotion. Really, but the there is research showing that that there's a modifier there that happy introverts exist, and that happy introverts that the monitoring factor is the extent to which they have self acceptance.

So I find I've always found that research. I've wrote about that as well. So funny we're talking about I actually just I just tweeted this out like the so well, I retweeted someone who quoted me saying the biggest key

to being a happy introvert is simply self acceptance. So is that like self compassion or well, just the extent to which you don't feel shame for being introvert, the extent to which you own it as part of your identity, you know, because there are those who read, you know, the Suan Kane's book, and then they make that introversion is like a really positive part of their identity, you know, and their cultural differences of course, because then other cultures

is much more desirable to be introverted. But but yeah, this research you've conducted on this is so interesting and it does show the power of social can Now, social connection is not necessarily the same thing as what energizes extroverts, which is social novelty. So social connection part can come within the agreeableness, demean Perhaps these things can be fractionated.

That is true, although you know there's ours and other studies have we just simply sometimes ask people to just interact more socially so he doesn't have to be in a particular way. And it's interesting just engaging more socially makes people happier. There's some lovely work by Nick Epley and his colleagues that shows that just you know, if you ask people to like talk to a stranger on the bus or on the train. Liz Done has done this, like at a coffee shop, people feel better. They think

they won't make them happy, but it actually does. So it's actually kind of amazing the power of social attractions. You know, we are for social animals, and so you know, research theory suggests that, you know, this is how like human human Uh, I'm totally blanking Homo sapiens, what are we called? What are we called survived like relative to others like Homo habilists, you know what happened to them?

Because we're social, right, we're social creatures. So it's not surprising that being social would be associated with happiness and flourishing. It makes sense, It makes sense 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 an emerged whole. I've collaborated with my colleague and dear friend, doctor Jordan Finnggeld, 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 design to guide you in a journey of committing to growth and the pursuit

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Whether you're healing from loss, adapting to the new normal, or simply looking ahead to life's next chapter, Choose Growth will help steer you there two deeper connection to your values, your life vision, and ultimately your most authentic self. Choose Growth will officially hit the shelves September thirteenth, and you can border your copy or the audiobook in the US now on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indie Bound, and all major retailers. If you're in the UK and Commonwealth, you

can border now at bookshop dot org dot UK. We truly hope this book helps you grow and thrive and become your best self. Okay, now back to the show. What happens if you force psychopaths to be more social? Do they become less psychopathic? So they probably would just use it to their they do, oh yeah, to their evil ends, right, that's true. They're very manipulative. Yeah, that's a good point. I want to do that study from AFAR.

Another fastening area of research that you've you've been looking at lately is how MDMA can boost connection well also can be a window into understanding what what underlies feeling understood and connected. So can you tell me a little bit about some of your work on this and what you call quote here we go, psychedelic social psychology end quote love that did you coin that? I kind of want to inspire someone to start a new field called

psychedelic social psychology. I know someone could listeners can read. So I'm really excited about this work. So MGMA that the molecular name for it is three four methylene dioxy methodphetamine. It's otherwise called MALI or ecstasy, and it's a it's a compound that has has been shown both in sort of clinical trials and experimental research and also anecdotally to sort of foster feelings of closeness, warmth, trust, connection, empathy.

People while they're on the drug, they feel they feel grateful, they feel compassionate, they want to help others, really really really connected. And so I thought, like, what a great drug to study as a window into studying SOFA connection. And so when you're the a the acute effects of MDMA is that people feel really like connected, really understood, valued and cared for, which is whether this is called partner responsive is Perry Reese one of my favorite theories

in psychology, and so studying this drug can be. We could use it as a research tool as like a window to try and understand like what are the psychological ingredients and what are the neurobiological roots of feeling really connected? And so that research is ongoing and someone has already been done. But also we can use it in an applied way to try to improve people's lives. Right, so,

we have loneliness epidemic. I think the UK even appointed a Minister of Loneliness, and so what if we give empt may to lonely people, maybe just once, maybe with a booster. I'm not saying that we should need to take it repeatedly to have it effects, because people say that they're really transformed when they take it because they feel so close your walls kind of come down. You're really able to sort of engage with people in a

deep way. It's used for couples counseling, I think for not surprisingly because you know, imagine a couple that's trying to like talk about conflict, conflict or something that's painful. People on MT may don't feel defensive, you know, they don't feel the same kind of anxiety or fear. So it's really like kind of a beautiful molecule to study if you're interested in social connection, which of course is like a really important topic to study. Social connection is

a basic human need. It's really a public health concern. It's associated with health and mental health and physical health and longevity. So yeah, I'm really excited about this research, and there's like a lot to be done. Of course, psychedelic science and cycholatic medicine is really taking off recently, so there's so much more to be done in this area. Now. Is this purely a theoretical interest, Yeah, it is, Yes, it is if you say so, Yes, okay, if I

say so. In the aspects is Finally, I discuss further questions whether using MDMA for enhancing connection can backfire, and so I thought that's interesting part of this paper as well. You know, how can that backfire? You know, I think that's that's important too. Whenever you're talking about a drug,

it's a scheduled one substance. And by the way, there's lots of things that are schedule one that have been actually I have to have shown to have say much less harm than things like alcohol or nicotine that are that are not scheduled one, which means so schedule one means it's it's illegal, but it is being used in research and really amazing research coming out right now. So

in terms of backfiring, we always have to be cognizance. So, for example, if it makes you feel really really close to others, theoretically you could you know, become really close to like a really bad person, right or an abuser or like a Nazi or something. You know. So, so that hasn't actually happened. I'm not aware of that. It could lead to like infidelity, right, it could. It could lead you maybe to feel like you have to be

on the drug to feel close right now. Again, I haven't seen that evidence in research, but I think we really need to look at that. I'm actually really interested

in backfiring effects like the pursuit of happiness. I know, I know, so yeah, if I might say a little bit about that, I have a chatter with a student about about how the pursuit of happiness itself can backfire, where you could, for example, try to be grateful, try to do acts of kindness for others, and maybe your acts of kindness kind of doesn't make people feel good, right, and so you feel kind of less competent or you might feel taken advantage of, or you might feel like

it's a burden. Gratitude can make people feel kind of embarrassed or ashamed for needing the help in the first place, or not expressing gratitude earlier, or like a burden on other people when they realize how much you know others have done for them, or sometimes it's awkward to share gratitude. So even these really positive habits and activities could sometimes have negative effects. So I think we have to be

always sort of cognitizant of those are aware of those possibilities. Yes, it's such an important topic that I want to double click on it. You and Megan m Fritz coin this term the happiness boomerang effect, which is exactly what you're describing when positive activities backfire. Not just positive activities, but can it backfire if happiness is your main goal in life, Like if you try to directly try to chase chase happiness every day of your life, can that backfire as well? Absolutely?

And actually that's a really great question because I think a lot of people are doing that. You know, they're like, I want to be happy, And there's some really nice work by IROs Mouse and Grouper and others that show that like overvaluing happiness basically like really being preoccupied or kind of obsessed with like the pursuit of happiness can can actually undermine it. Right, So the idea is that like when you're constantly tracking your happiness and asking yourself,

am I happy yet? Am I happy yet? Right, that might actually make you feel disappointed, you know. The idea this is kind of again like kind of hokey, but the ideas that you want to sort of enjoy the journey to get there as opposed to just sort of focus on the goal, you know, because then you'll probably be disappointed. So so I usually advise not to sort of focus too much on happiness, but focus on like

the like the strategy. So, for example, try to be more kind to others, try to interact more, act more extroverted, be more social, be more kind, but not necessarily say I'm doing this to make myself happier and is it working? Is it working? Because you might be disappointed? Yeah. No, that's exactly right. I think happiness is an epi phenomenon of other things that you focus on in your life,

like meaning and purpose. For sure. I just I love this art of wrote, you know, with doctor Fritz You right, yeah, I really love this article. And you know, you make a really interesting point in there that when someone else is the recipient of kindness, you know, like there could be this utopian kind of idea in positis echology. It's like, oh, well, of course, you know that's going to give us well being benefits. But look, we're human too. I mean, can't

like jealousy come in. Can't like, you know, like normal other human drives that pos psichologist sometimes don't They're like, don't talk about it. Don't talk about that. You know, I'm not And I don't like the word positive psychology because it's not it's not positive. I just kind of go where the data lead. And so sometimes we find that, for example, we find that sometimes gratitude makes people feel

a little worse. It makes them feel indebted. For example, right when you're grateful to others, it makes you feel humble, which is usually a good thing. So, you know, you mentioned jealousy. We did a study because we're interested in like social media, what if you express gratitude on social media, maybe that might make other people feel kind of bad, you know, like you know, more like when you call out people say at work, like, oh, thank you so

much to Scott, he's doing such an amazing job. And then maybe your colleagues don't, you know, don't feel so good about that. So we're interested to sort of pursuit of happiness kind of like online too, because of course it's such a big part of our lives. Now. Yeah, anyway, I couldn't agree with you more. Yeah, it's just it's so important. I love it you're doing this, and it's just you're so productive. It's incredible. It's incredible. I mean,

you know, it's all my students and collaborators. I have the best students of collaborators, and they are That helps us love them so much. Yes, that helps. But you know, even with all that wonderful modesty, even aside, there are solo authored publications I'm looking at right now. So so you know, you can't hide from your your amazingness for

too long, because your sole amazingness. You can't hide from it for too long because even like this paper toward a new science of psychedelic so it's sole authored paper and it's a it's just really brilliant, really brilliant, truly brilliant how you integrate and bring together so many different threads within social psychology. You know, you have this, you have a chart of the different areas which it can be impacted. And I love how much in creativity, by

the way, because that's my area of study. Well, so is that on the chart creativity you put creativity? Yeah? Oh yeah, yeah. I have to say that paper because I was so interested in this brand new when I started working on it was about three years ago. Even then, you know, psychedelic medicine hadn't really been taking off as much.

But I actually ended up sending it to like twenty five colleagues because I thought maybe a few of them would give me feedback, and like twenty four of them, and I'm not going to call out the one person who didentif give feedback back, twenty four of them gave me extensive, detailed feedback. Was actually a beautiful and then I and I really worked hard to try to to try to incorporate, you know, other people's ideas into that. So it's like it took a village to write that paper.

I appreciate that. I do appreciate that. Well, you have a lot of projects on in your lab right now, right, a lot of things happening, and I just wanted to go through and discuss some of them. One is what makes for good listening? And I know it's in the very early stages of research, but it's a very important topic.

One near and dear to my heart, and the principles of Karl Rogers on conditional positive regard, active listening, a lot of that stuff that really inspired me in his writings, and I was wondering, what modern day science, what you're finding so far? So this is a really brand new project. We're also looking at conversations, right, like what makes for great conversations? Because if the key to happiness is connection, and how do we connect by talking to each other? Basically,

mostly it's involved talking. I mean sometimes there's no talking, but there's yeah, mostly. So I'm working with this really amazing researcher from Israel in Israel whose name is Guy, It's Chakoff, And I was actually just messaging with him

just now, and he's an expert on listening. So he's teaching us a lot about listening, and he talked he studies what's called high quality listening, you know, and I actually and I have lots of ideas that you know, I want to test, that we want to test, but sort of this idea that some of it, of course is sort of maybe it might sound obvious, like the kind of nonverbal you know, gestures and expressions, eye contact that you need to show to show that you really

are truly listening, the kinds of questions that you're asking my own pet peeve. I mean, you're you know, you're a podcast host, so you're used to asking people questions. A lot of people don't ask questions or they don't ask detailed questions that show that you're really listening, that you're really getting it, and that you want to know more right and again getting to partners right, that you

really are that makes people feel understood. Right, So listening, the kind of listening that makes people feel really understood and valued and cared for, is the kind of listening that it's going to improves relationships. No, it's good to know that how the framework and the way that you and your colleagues are looking at that issue is going

to be so important. I was thinking about Carl Rogers's notion of active listening, which is is asking good questions, and that's what makes a good coach as well, is powerful asking very powerful questions. And yeah, so listening is so important, right for like doctor patient relationships, right, therapist client relationships, student teacher relationships, romantic relationships, friendships. Right, It's just so important. So I am really excited about the

sort of new line that we're coming into. I'm excited that you're looking into that. I saw a very interesting study the other day that tried to quantify what the optical amount of talking is for a conversation for the for the other partner to perceive you as a good conversation partner. And I actually found and the researchers actually found that people tend to underestimate how much talking they

should actually do in a conversation. That people who talk more than than they think they should are actually perceived as more confident and actually the other person enjoys the conversation. So that's kind of the interesting other side of the coin. You know, listening is important, but maybe too much. Again, it goes back your backfire effect. Backfire effect. Too much listening can be like geez, do you have you have

anything to say yourself? Right, it has to be reciprocal, and there's this paradigm called fast friends, where it's using research, it's also used sort of an applied context where people kind of ask each other a series of increasingly personal questions. But and so because self disclosure is really important too, right, because it had if you're self disclosing, you're really showing a part of yourself. It's you can't really feel understood if the other person doesn't really see what you truly

are like inside. But it has to be what's the word symmetric, right, Like if you're doing all the talking, if you're one person you're listening, it feels uneven, right, And so it has to be especially so this fast friends procedure, people take turns, right, So I might ask you, you know, a personal question like when was the last time you cried in front of someone? And you might answer that question, and then I really listened to my follow up and then you and then I it's my

turn to answer the same question. And so that kind of reciprocation is really important to having like a deep connection. And also, uh, we'll trust. Trust is a really valuable one within within a high quality connection. How much do you like or studied, or rely or draw on the work of Jane Dudden and high quality connections. Yeah, absolutely, so I've I've read her work, right, So, yeah, high quality h QCs right, high quality connections correct current right.

And so she has a theory of sort of what makes up for a quite quality connections that are that is really relevant right to what we're studying. We're trying to sort of draw on everything there is on this in this research. For so. Bob Rosenthal, for example, is one of my colleagues at UC Riverside where I am a professor. He a long time ago he did research on rapport and so he had a theory of sort of here are three aspects of rapport, including like synchrony.

We haven't talked about synchrony, but that's connection. You know, we're kind of mirroring each other's gestures or movements, and so that's part of like having rapport. So that's also part of having and I believe that's also part of Jane Dunnan's work. And then Barb Fredrickson has worked on what she calls positivity resonance, which is also sort of a theory about sort of sharing kind of positive positive emotion positivity. Although you know, we argue that you could have.

You can have sort of this resonance or feeling and sync even when it's not positive, right imagine shared grief, you know, or like shared anger and injustice, right, so you could have sort of negative don't know what to call it, exactly negative resonance, but anyway, Yeah, So, like, really I think it's really important to sort of stand on the shoulders of giants and see like what they've written and then kind of try to extend beyond what they have done. And again, my my mo is to

do experimental search. So we try to sort of test things that maybe have been shown like naturalistically happen in real life, and then we try to bring them in and sort of manipulate them to see if, like, if you get people to sort of listen in this way or if you get people to uh, you know, interact in this way, will they you know, will they become happier?

I love. It also relates to Sarah al Jo's work Positive Interpersonal Processes right buying what does it bind, find and remind or is it bind bind and remind theory? So absolutely so she talks for example, what's really relevant to us as the role of gratitude in relationships, and basically she pauses that the main function of gratitude is actually to kind of maintain and like strengthen social relationships. So yeah, absolutely, really really relevant work. I love it.

I'm also super interested in your work on interpersonal chemistry and yet how to create it, because don't you talk to people sometimes and you feel a severe lack of interpersonal chemistry off the bat and you kind of like, you know, you check your watch, you like look for the exit. What's going on there? Yeah, so I have quite a bit to say about chemistry. We have so Harry Reese, who's the uh sort of the who developed part and a responsive theory, which is the importance of

feeling understood and cared for and valued. So he and I and my student Andy Reagan wrote a paper that kind of presented a theory of chemistry because I believe no one had actually like kind of just visually kind of described what chemistry is. And so basically we propose

that there's kind of two aspects of chemistry. What chemistry kind of looks like, you know, when you see it, Like when you see chemistry, sometimes you see two people talking, And that's basically a series of what we call responsive interactions where I sort of say something and you really you respond in a way, you listen in a way that make me really feel understood and cared for and appreciate it. And then like and then I do the same to you. So we have this sort of interaction

that that keeps going. But then what did chemistry actually feel like? So, and I can kind of throw this out to your listeners, like when you've had when you've experienced chemistry with a person or with a group for that matter, or like a sports team, what does it feel like? Well, there's sort of three components. One is it feels good, you know, it feels positive, there's sort of liking attraction, warmth. Another is you feel a sense of like shared identity, like or similarity, right you're like

on the same team or you're a couple. And then the third is you're typically you're pursuing goals, you know, So like if you and I have chemistry right now talking, we have kind of a shared goal in mind, which is this conversation or this podcast. You have sort of these shared mutually you know, interdependent goals. But like we really, Harry and Anny and I really believe that chemistry is something that can be built. You know, it's not like, oh,

you either have it or you don't. Just like happiness, it's not easy, right. So my example is like I have to you know, I have a lot of kids. I have four kids, and so I've been to a lot of like kid birthday parties, and I don't love going to kid birthday parties cause just go stuck talking to people they don't don't really know, you know, these other parents and so like, let's say you're sort of talking to this other parent and they're not that interesting

to talk to. How do you draw them out right? How do you build chemistry with them? Well, self disclosure is important, So how do you get to kind of get them to disclose? So then you disclose and maybe you start asking them questions. You know. I remember talking to someone who wasn't that interested in and so I was, but I said, well, have you traveled? What's your favorite place where you traveled to? And he said Greece, And actually I've never been to Greece. So I was like, well,

tell me about that. What does Greece really like? You know? And so we ended up having a really nice conversation that had a little chemistry with it in it, you know, we kind of felt like, oh, felt a little bit in sync. By the way, feeling in sync is probably the most the key to chemistry. Yes, but it sounds like these other things are precursors to synchrony. It seems like synchrony is more an outcome or like a it's agen yeah, emergence, yeah, yeah, yeah, these are all emergent phenomena.

So I think it's eatable, right, like sort of where in the time course things can happen. We kind of debated that a lot, so yeah, we could talk about that sort of the nuances there. You know, I love nuance. I mean this is such a roundbreaking paper, you know, because you and you distinguish between what chemistry looks like

versus what it feels like. Now, these two things can come apart, right, Like, you know, you can have all the people in the media and be like, oh, Mary Sue and John the two celebrities, you know, like look at their amazing chemistry they have and they'll be together forever, and then they get divorced the following week. So sometimes these things can come apart, right. Our perceptions can be different from how people actually experience it and know it's true.

It's true, we consumer be wrong. But again, when we say what chemistry looks like, that's what I'm talking about that those those interactions. So you really need to see Mary and John in conversation and really kind of be a fly on the wall, So not just kind of them like taking photos together, but like really see like when they're having that conversation, are they making are they kind of like throwing the ball back and forth in a way that makes them feel like they're they're feeling

understood and appreciated. They really are, uh, you know, in sync with each other. So but I agree sometimes we could just be wrong. We can be we can be okay, can we be wrong too? Like in terms of our own perception? Like it's like what if I'm what if I'm like, oh wow, you know, Sonya, I think we're having such amazing chemistry right now, and you're like, Scott, nah, Nah. It's actually a question that we even maybe have it somewhere in the paper we considered can it Can chemistry

be one sided? Right? Like you feel what I'm saying exactly, That's what I asked, and can I exactly? I know that's why, Yeah, that's why I brought it up, so so we don't really know. Like I think this debatable, like is it really chemistry when only one person feels it? But I think we kind of settled on like maybe yes, Like if you really feel you have all the sort of symptoms of chemistry, You're feeling the chemistry, you know, and I'm not feeling it, or vice you're not feeling it.

I'm feeling I'm feeling. I was just I was just joking. I'm feeling amazing chemistry right now. I think my compliment you, Scott, I think your superpower is that you make people feel like at easy. You're very easy to talk to, and I can actually that's one like channel into chemistry, right. You know, people who are kind of awkward and they don't say much and they pause and they kind of look at you. You know, it's harder to develop chemistry with them, and you you have a thank you, you know,

thank you. I really appreciate that. Well, people should know, you know that we were friends in real life. We're friends in real life. Yeah, we are friends in real life. People might not know that, so this is not as awkward as it sounds. Closure we are friends in real life although new friends. Okay, So what is this idea of you know that you can count too many blessings? I find that research fasting. I saw you actually at a NIPPA conference talk about that research like six years ago,

and it fascinated me ever since. And we still don't have all the data. Oh okay, fair enough, and you count too many blessings okay. So there's a phenomenon in social psychology called the effort as information heuristic. Okay, effort as information heuristic, And the classic study was done by Norberg Schworts at USC and they ask people I think, I don't remember the numbers with something like list like five assertive behaviors that you have done recently like assertive behaviors,

or list like fifteen assort of behaviors. So the more people, the more behaviors people are forced to list, the less assertive they think they are because it's harder for them to think of fifteen assertive behaviors. Or you ask college students at the end of a class, list like twelve things you liked about your professor, or list three things

you like to be a professor. That people who list or ask to list twelve things actually don't like the professor as much overall because it's hard for them to think of twelve things. So could that be true for counting blessings? Right? If I ask you to think of like twenty things that are good in your life right now, and maybe you have some trouble coming up with twenty things, you might conclude that your life is not as fortunate as you thought it was. It also could just be

kind of a burden. So we did a study where we asked people to count two blessings, four blessings or eight or sixteen or thirty two blessings and and sort of measured their affect and we found that what do you think was the goldilocks kind of number of blessings two, four, eight, sixteen or thirty two? I was gonna say eight, you know, I thought it before, but eight is actually the right answer. It totally felt right to me. But we are trying

to replicate that study. We haven't been able to replicate it, so, you know, just disclosure. We'll see what happens if that's that's a real effect or not. It's such a valuable nuance within the field that says, like count your blessings

you know, it's like, yeah, another nuance in the field. Again, My student Annie did a study for her like faster thesis, where we she compared what's what sort of more happiness promoting for gratitude writing a gratitude letter or like gratitude list right kind of your blessings, And it turns out that letters or kind of essays are more happiness inducing than lists. And I think it's not that surprising. When you're writing like a whole essay, it's more meaningful, it's

more rich. Right, you could talk about like, oh my mom has done all these things for me. If it's just a list, it's sort of not as it's a little bit more trivial. That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. Yeah, I know. The topic you could go on all day about is the use of smartphones and social media and how it's making us maybe unhappy in some ways. Can you talk about the research you found on the association between these things. Yeah, I'm gonna try it. Yeah, and I'm gonna try to

be sort of brief. So another former student, Lisa Wallas, this is going to been this is sort of her wheelhouse, and she did a dissertain, So we there's lots of research on this. Gen twenty published a lot of research showing that, you know, smartphone news or technology. Yeah, I would say digital media use is associated with lower wellbeing, more socidality, you know, more depression, especially in girls and really maybe only in girls. Boys tend to video play,

vating video games that are more social. Anything that's sort of more social tends to be happiness inducing or at least not reducing, so especially in girls and especially in teen and tween girls. That's where you kind of see the negative correlations. Other researchers show or try to argue that the correlations are really tiny. So there's sort of this debate about like are they really tiny? I mean,

they are tiny, but like does that matter? And Gene twenty Full Disclosure is also a friend of mine and a collaborator. She argues, No, No, even though these are small correlations, they really do matter, especially when you break them down by gender and age. So there's a debate, you know. So again, my take on the debate is that smartphone news, but particular social media use does seem to be negatively associated with well being. But it's mostly true for girls and for young girls. Okay, so that

sort of my take on the literature. Now, those are all correlations, right, So it could be that, you know, if you're depressed to begin with, you're going to use social media more. No mixed evidence on that, so really we need to do experimental research. So there's some studies on this. So so Lisa did for a dissertation a big experiment where she asked people to for a week or about eight days, to give up their smartphone use as much as possible, or their social media use. So

she actually had actually kind of brilliant dissertation. She had four groups. Either you are asked to as much as possible get off all digital media all smartphone use now of course, like if you have to absolutely do something for work, or you know, or check Facebook because there's an event happening and you want to know where it is. That's okay. So one condition they're giving up as much as possible, there's there digital media use. Another condition, they're

just only give up social media use. Another condition they're sort of not doing anything. We're just tracking them. And then we wanted to have a control condition where people are kind of like giving up something that maybe makes them feel a little bit good. And it was really hard to come up with that, right because we thought like maybe they should give up sugar or but it doesn't work for everyone. Es. Actually, my teenage daughter had

the idea is to use less water. Right, So we live in California, have water is really well in lots of places. It's very valuable. So you know, whatever, you not drink less water, useless water. Yeah, And so what we found was that, you know, we didn't have big effects. We did find just with the reducing social media some positive effects of reducing social media. We actually find a really interesting correlation, we really correlations between uses of these

different technologies and well being. And by the way, the uses were tracked by what's it called screen time app in iPhone. So this was like very right, hardcore, rigorous tract or like you know, because people don't know how much, like how many hours did you use your phone today? Right? You you don't know. And it turned out that some apps were associated with less happiness than some worth more or not or or not associated and the less was

like Twitter, Facebook, more happiness, Snapchat. I mean, we don't know why. And I'm not like an I'm not like a promoter of that company, But that was kind of interesting finding. What about TikTok, I'll have to look that up, I think, Yeah, in fact, I can look it up now if it's so popular. Yeah, I know, maybe the

most popular. What about Instagram versus Twitter, I think both of them were negatively associated with happiness, Yeah, because I see that with Twitter, but I feel like Instagram's happy. I feel like people on Instagram were happier, like just in terms of the way they write and talk to each other's Yeah, we didn't find that in terms of their own happiness, but maybe like positivity if you code, is that we were saying, kind of your code positivity

in people's posts. I don't know what I'm saying. It just seems like Instagram. What I'm saying is it seems like from my experience that people are happier on Instagram people are grumpy or on Twitter. There's lots more heart emoticons on Instagram. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay. So the positive relations with happiness are gaming apps, right, so, because again they're more social news apps. Actually, yeah, camera app is

positive with happiness. That makes sense because you're kind of taking photos and Snapchat is positives with happiness negative associations that are that are actually significant are let's see dating apps Tinder, Twitter, Safari, Male, Facebook, Blackboard. That's funny. We Chat blackboard is the one that you know, college students use, so I guess they're yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But

not Instagram. Uh, let's see where Instagram is. I think Instagram is just not significantly related to Oh yeah, here it is Instagram negative, but it's basically zero. And TikTok is also the same as Instagram. It's basically zero correlation with happenings. So interesting, and as you said, it really probably matters when you break it down to the demographics,

even more by age and gender and other demographics. Right, all participants in this study were all what are called eegen or gen Z because that's the that's the you know population we're kind of more worried about. But yeah, we'd love to do something with like across you know, lots of age groups. Yes, it'd be really important research, really important. The last question I wanted to ask you is this connection between mind and body. I know you've

done some physiological and hormone markers and various things. How can acts of kindness boost our immune profile and then how have you investigated that? Yeah, I'm super excited about this work. So this has worked with my students and foremost students. Thank you. And actually a former grad school buddy and friend named Steve Cole who is a social psychologist who retrained as an immunologist. He's at UCLA and so he does what are called genomic analysis looking at

RNA gene expression. So we now have two different studies because we replicated the first where we ask people again it's an experiment, we ask people to do acts of kindness for others. We have one group do as a kindness for others, another group of do acts of kindness for yourself, which I think is a great comparison condition because it makes you feel good in the moment to kind of treat yourself to like a massage or a

candy bar or something or nap. And then we also have sort of a group that sort of tracks their activities, so they're kind of trying to organize their time, but it's kind of fairly neutral. And what we find is that only the group that does acts of kindness for others is over period of four weeks, we collect their blood spots, their blood before and after the intervention. Only that group shows changes in their RNA gene expression that are associated with a healthier immune profile. So they show

less pro inflammatory gene expression. So think inflammation. More inflammation is bad, So we have less pro inflammatory gene expression. We have some indication in the second study of we're not sure about that, of more anti viral gene expression. So really really cool. So again, doing acts of kindness for others leads people to show in their blood sort of downregulation of pro inflammatory genes. So we're super excited

about that. I am super duper excited about that. We need to get the word out there, you know, in this in this environment of lots of divisiveness, and yeah, that kindness matters. So yeah, to do so helping others makes you really makes you happy. But it maybe might even prevent you from from catching viruses or getting sick, but we don't know that because this is just a marker, right, so we actually are not looking at real health. Thank you for that nerdy caveat Sonya. It is amazing to

have you finally on the psychology podcast. Why haven't you asked me to be on it before I have? But you know I have I have you've been. You're a busy human. Yeah, you're you're a busy human. But h honored to call you a friend and yeah, I'm just I'm so I'm so uh enamored your career and uh, I mean you are legitimately a legend in the field of psychology. You're a legend. Thank you, Scott. No. I love doing this work and again, my students are cloud. The best part of it because of you know, because

of connection. Right, the best part of it is working with other humans, right, with my students and collaborators and doing this kind of thing like talking talking to you, talking to other people to disseminate the science is really super fun. Can't wait to get this out there. Thanks, thank you, pleasure, 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 Thusycology podcast dot com. We're 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.