July 13, 2022 • 21 mins
What role do money, IQ, marriage, friends, children, weather, and religion play in making us feel happier? Is happiness stable over time? How can happiness be increased? Professor Catherine Sanderson describes cutting-edge research from the field of positive psychology on the factors that do (and do not) predict happiness. She provides practical (and relatively easy!) ways to increase your own psychological well-being.
Catherine Sanderson is the Poler Family Professor and Chair of Psychology at Amherst College and is often cited as the school’s most popular professor. Her research has received grant funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Health. She has published over 25 journal articles in addition to five college textbooks.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Please welcome Professor Catherine Sanderson, Thank you, Thank you. The
Science of Happiness, Appreciating modern painting, Dilemmas of modern medicine,
Abraham Lincoln, and the civil history of Jazz, Artistic genius
of Michel Angela, When Intuition, food turning, Points that changed
American history, Psychology of religion. One Day University. The most
(00:28):
acclaimed and popular professors from top colleges. They're best lectures,
fascinating conversations. Hi, I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn about the
science of happiness. I'm delighted to be here today. I
love teaching. I think that will be obvious over the
(00:49):
next hour. I hate grading. Maybe some of you sat
and watched me great um in preparation for today, and
so this is really my ideal. I come and I
talk for an hour, and I don't leave with anything
I have to do. My name is Katherine Sanderson, and
I'm a professor of psychology at AMers College in Massachusetts.
Presentation and if you'd like one, just choot me an
email and you can have the entire presentation. What do
(01:10):
you mean by happiness? So that's a really tricky question
because it's actually currently in heated debate in the literature,
and so different people. You could have this podcast, you know,
five times, and you'd get five different answers. So some
people think of happiness as a sense of overall contentment,
comfort with their life, well being, well being, sure exactly.
(01:33):
Other people think of happiness as a much more sort
of positive, joyful emotion. And you know, I think of
the image in my mind is a little kid on
a swing, you know, with their face in a big grim,
you know, pumping their legs back and forth. So one
of them is really a sense of contentment, life satisfaction
overall I feel good. And one of them is a
(01:53):
sense of utter and pure joy. And probably both of
those are part of what happiness is. What is the
thing that you really want to get over in your
lecture about the science of happiness? The biggest thing I
want is for people to leave the lecture knowing that
there are specific, concrete things they can do in their
(02:14):
lives to increase their happiness. I think lots of people
believe that happiness is beyond them, you know, some quirk
of you know, bad genes or negative life experiences, environmental factors, etcetera.
And I end every lecture by giving people ten strategies
that no matter where you start on the genetic lottery
(02:36):
of happiness, no matter your life circumstances, there are specific,
concrete things you can do in life that are within
your reach to increase happiness. There are a bunch of
little behaviors we can do so Exercising strongly associated with
better psychological and physical well being, getting enough sleep, spending
time in nature. Those are all very simple things. Reading
(02:58):
a book you love that brings great happiness. How good
is the science of happiness? I think the science of
happiness is strong, and in fact is getting stronger. So
some of the most interesting research right now is extending
prior research in two ways. One, a lot of research
(03:18):
in the field of psychology in general has focused on
Western cultures and largely the United States, And so then
the ultimate question becomes, well, is this happiness in our
culture or is this happiness across cultures? And so there's
growing evidence now that the predictors of happiness are in
fact quite similar across cultures. And that's something that's very
(03:39):
new and that we didn't know a decade ago. The
other real advantage to current technology is that we're learning
much more about genes and about brain functioning. So there's
research that I describe in the talk that looks at
m r I data and literally has people think about
a certain thing and then looks at what parts of
the brain are activated. Researchers did a very interesting study
(04:05):
in which they brought in people and put them in
an MRI machine, so a machine that measures brain activation,
and they had them look at different pictures. Um, the
top scene is of an urban scene, it's a city skyline.
The bottom scene is of a nature scene water. So
the researchers controlled very carefully for lots of things in
the pictures. Um, the scenes were always pretty. It wasn't
(04:27):
that you were showing you know, urban scenes of congestion
or whatever. None of the pictures had people in them.
So people are in an MRI machine and they show
them a series of pictures and they measure brain activity.
What they found was that looking at the urban city
skyline created lots and lots of brain activity. The brain
was reacting, the brain was processing thinking, you know, activated.
(04:49):
Looking at the nature scene, the brain was very calm,
like you were meditating. So in response to the nature scene,
people were relaxed. Brain waves were low, relaxed. It was
literally like they were meditating. So that's some evidence for
what looking at nature may do to us physiologically, and
it may help explain this link between looking at nature
(05:11):
and feeling better. And so we're learning about neurological measures
of happiness in particular situations that provide stronger evidence than
we've had before, which is just self report data questionnaires
and people responding, which may be accurate but can also
be subjected to some kind of bias. Yeah, because it
(05:31):
must be difficult to design a questionnaire around happiness that
that one person would report yeah, I'm happy or I'm
in a happy relationship, and another person with exactly the
same set of of objective criteria may report differently, right,
And and of course one of the challenges in that
example is that there are people in the exact same
(05:52):
life circumstance that see the world in very different ways.
So I gave an example about being on a date
shortly after college graduation with my boyfriend, and we were
driving in urban Atlanta and had a flat tire. So
we had a lovely day planned picnic and hike, et cetera,
and we had this flat tire. So we pulled it
(06:16):
side of the road, and I am in the passenger seat,
freaking out. This is a terrible thing that happened. Our
day is ruined. It's going to be really expensive. We're
gonna have to get the car tode. And I'm spiraling,
and my boyfriend says, um, I'm just going to change
the tire. So there's an example. And it was like
ten minutes, but there's an example in which we were
(06:38):
in the exact same circumstance and an event happened and
I saw it in a very sort of negative and
fatalistic way, and he saw it as no big deal.
And and that I think sort of illustrates that one
of the challenges happiness is that different people see the
same thing in different ways. How about you, Why are
you personally so interested in this subject? So my answer
(07:03):
to the last question probably probably already conveyed that. And
I should start by saying that that boyfriend is now
my husband because I sat in the well, I sat
in that car knowing going like, huh, you know, he
sees the world in a much better way than I do,
which is which has been true, you know, throughout our marriage.
(07:24):
And so I think one of the reasons that I
like giving this talk is that happiness does not come
easily for me. So for some people, my husband, uh,
my oldest child, happiness comes very easily. I have a
teenage son that when we take the iPhone away from periodically.
He was in public school from kindergarten through eighth grade.
(07:46):
In ninth grade, he moved to an elite prep school
that he was woefully underprepared for in every sense of
the word. And it was a very rocky transition, involved
a lot of tears, mostly mine and uh and he
was doing very, very poor, like really across the board,
but especially in Spanish, and it's in Spanish. At the
end of the halfway through the first trimester and we
(08:07):
got his progress report and the progress report said he
had a fifty in Spanish. This is a school that
uses the traditional grading scale, so fifty was really good. Uh.
So at the end of the first trimester, Andrew calls
me and says, mom, I got my grades. Good news
about Spanish. I was like, what a relief. I'm so nervous,
you know what with the fifty. I'm like, what did
(08:27):
you get? He goes, I got a fifty eight, And
I was like, it's not good news, and he goes, no, no,
it is. It's eight points higher than I had in
in October. I go, it's an F and he says
it's really an F plus And I said, I am
(08:48):
a professor. There is no F plus that is not
one of the grade options. That doesn't is impossible. And
he says, but at the rate I'm going, I'm gonna
have a sixty six in January. And I said that's
a D. Like that's also not good. But so here
really is what is good Andrew? You know, by all accounts,
(09:08):
some days can end up in prison. Um and hopefully
not a Spanish speaking prison. I mean, that would be terrible.
But but he's going to be fine because he is
going to call home and be like, hey, I got
a bunk bed, I got this roommate. There are these
meals three times today, there's this exercise yard. And after
that I stopped worrying about him, because anybody who can
(09:30):
call their mom with the good news of the F plus,
he really is going to be fine. He's probably gonna
be living in my basement, but he's gonna be fine
as an adult. Where is Andrew? Now? Ye? So, so
here's the story about why this optimistic outlook, which is
so beneficial, really helps people. He continues he improves. At
(09:50):
the end of his freshman year of high school, he
has an a minus in Spanish, and his teacher calls
me and says, in all of my years of teaching,
it's the single biggest improvement I've seen an any student.
So Andrew stuck with Spanish throughout high school. He finished
high school, applied to college, got in, and came to
me and my husband in the spring of a senior
year in high school and said, I have a personal
(10:12):
goal before I start college. I want to be fluent
in Spanish, so I'd like to take a gap year
and spend it in Peru. And Andrew is currently a
freshman in college, continuing to say Spanish, but he spent
last year living in Peru with a family, speaking Spanish
full time and has basically become fully bilingual. And that's
(10:36):
an example of how his optimistic outlook let him take
what was literally a failure and and turn it into
a success, and in fact, it's been really life changing
for him. Most of us are on social media. Does
social media make us happier or more miserable? Is there
(10:59):
strong research on this. There is pretty consistent strong research
that social media is not good for psychological well being.
There's often a sense on social media in which people
only post the good. My kid is valedictorian. I just
ran the Boston marathon and under three hours. So one
(11:19):
there's this sense of look at all these people having
this great life, and my life doesn't measure up. You know,
my life is really not you know what other people
are experiencing. It's less good. The other key is that
social media often has the effect of making people feel excluded.
(11:39):
So I have three teenagers right now, and you know,
I vaguely remember being a teenager, and I'll say that
one thing my children have to deal with it I
never had to deal with is seeing pictures posted of
parties they weren't invited to. And that happens all the time.
So people on social media, you know, post events, parties,
social gatherings, and if you weren't invited, you're now vividly
(12:03):
aware that you weren't invited and can see all the
other people who were. One day university where we taught
(12:24):
to award winning and acclaimed professors the most popular on
their campuses. They're best lectures the one students love to hear.
Discover more on our website one day you dot Com
Now more with professor Catherine Sanderson of Amherst College, who
(12:44):
says many of us compare ourselves to others way too often.
I think that there are people who are always better
at it than other people, and I think there are
people who are always very focused on those comparisons. The
nature of the comparison may change, so it may be
this person took a better vacation, or this person drives
a nicer car or whatever. But we're often aware of
(13:08):
how we are different from other people, and that is
true across the lifespan, even if the specific parts of
comparison may change. What does studies say about how anxiety?
Are levels of anxiety affect happiness? It's a really important
question and seems to be something that is of growing
(13:31):
concern that you know, I see in college students, but
we see sort of, you know, across America. So people
vary tremendously in their overall baseline of anxiety. There's some
people who can sort of think about worst case scenarios
and and escalate situations, and there are other people who
seem to have the ability to take experiences in life
(13:53):
and take it in stride. It's obviously much harder for
people who are high in anxiety to find happiness. Is
there a way to deal with that? Sure, you really
try to think about the world in a new and
different way, so you change your thought patterns. When my
son was on the verge of what I thought was
failing out of prep school, what I continually said to
(14:14):
myself is he doesn't have leukemia. And that's the reality
that for me, there was this horrible tragedy of he
has an f in Spanish and may well get tossed
from his prep school. But the reality is there are
parents all across the country who have teenagers having chemotherapy
and hospital and they wish their kid was failing Spanish
(14:38):
in high school. And so that's an example of changing
the thoughts we have about something to recognize that what
we see as a terrible crisis and a terrible stressor
in reality is not that big a deal in the
scheme of things. What are the biggest mistakes that people
make around happiness? One, and this will not be surprising. Money.
(15:05):
We have a very strong belief in our society that
more money leads to more happiness. If I just had
more money, then I would be happier. Um. So here's
a picture of um, Tiger Woods's house, or maybe now
Tiger Woods's ex wife's house. Um, And we think, gosh,
if I lived in a house like that, surely I
would be happy every single minute of every single day.
(15:26):
And of course the reality is that isn't true. More
money does not lead to more happiness. Here's the important
exception for people living below the poverty line, for people
who are worried about are my kids going to have
enough food tomorrow? Will we have heat this winter? Do
I have a safe place to sleep? For people who
are living below the poverty line at the poverty line,
more money absolutely increases happiness. But for people who are
(15:49):
not living at that level of subsistence, more money does
not increase happiness. The keys that we acclimate, and that's
really sort of the fundamental principle. We think, will be
happy when we get more money, But the reality is
we acclimate when we get into college, when we graduate
from college, by a house, get a promotion. These are
(16:09):
all big, sort of substantial life events that we expect
will lead us to be happier, and they do, but
only briefly, because then we adapt. Given all the advances
and science and medicine, what are the prospects for instant
gratification in a in a happiness pill. Great question. I'm
(16:32):
going to say two things about that. One, there are
people who have chemical imbalances in their bodies that lead
them to experience chronic clinical depression, you know, severe anxiety.
And so I want to be very careful to say
that my lecture is not a substitute for therapy, psychopharmacological
(16:57):
you know, aids, etcetera. And that one of the challenge
is is that for people who are in the midst
of the throes of a serious psychological disorder, they simply
do not have the ability to say, oh, yes, let
me spend some time in nature and read a book
and you know, smile more often. That they really need assistance.
(17:17):
And so one of the things that we do, in
fact have is a magic pill, because the magic pills, antidepressants,
anti anxiety medication are actually correcting a chemical balance in
the brain that enables people to then take the steps
they need to find greater happiness. And your second point,
and my second point is that part of the joy
(17:40):
and happiness is the pursuit of happiness. It's not I
will have a pill so I feel happy and joyous
all the time. Part of what brings us happiness is
working towards that happiness. So how do we spend money.
You can spend money in better and worse ways in
terms of happiness. So a lot of people think wrongly
(18:02):
that happiness is about spending money on expensive possessions. You know, uh,
new car, new watch, you know, expensive purse or shoes
or whatever. And initially, yeah, that is new and it's exciting,
and it's your you know, nice watch or fancy purse
or whatever. And then it's just your watch, your purse.
So where we get much more happiness from is the
(18:25):
pursuit of experiences. So that could be, you know, tickets
to a Broadway show, it could be travel, it could
be going to a concert, or tickets to the Super
Bowl or whatever. And why that is a better way
to spend money on experiences is that it allows us
to anticipate, Oh, I'm going to be going to this
(18:47):
big game, I'm going to be going to the World Series. Well,
I'm going to see Hamilton's you know whatever that I've
always wanted to do. So we have this anticipation of
the event. Then we get to experience the event, and
then we get to look back on the event, and
we tell people about the event, and we savor the event.
When we spend money on experiences, we are pursuing happiness.
(19:10):
We are actively engaging in happiness, and that brings us
tremendous pleasure. Going further, any book recommendations, there's a wonderful
book I recommend all the time. Really should get royalties
on it, but I do not um And it's by
a neuroscientist at Stanford, and it's called why Zebras Don't
get Ulcers? And Zebras don't get ulcers because they only
(19:34):
react physiologically with great anxiety and stress and physiological reactions
like heartbeating fast and rapid breathing when they're about to die,
when they're being chased by a lion or tiger or whatever.
And as you can probably imagine, humans showed that stress
reaction all the time. I'm stuck in traffic, I have
(19:56):
a blind date, I have a job interview. And it's
one of reasons why humans have relatively high rates of
stress related illnesses. And the second book is a great
recommendation for women, and it's by Dr Susan Nolan HOA
Suma and it's called Women Who Think Too Much, And
(20:19):
it's really about the somewhat gendered pattern of how we
think about the world, which is that women are much
more likely than men to ruminate, to obsess about negative things,
to worry about negative things. And this book is really
an easy guide in terms of trying to help break
(20:39):
some of the negative cycles. But it but it doesn't
urge women to be like men. No, no, although there
is certainly research suggesting that men's ability to distract themselves
from negative events can actually be beneficial. Great, Thank you
very much, Thank you. This has been delightful. Professor Catherine
(21:06):
Sanderson on the Science of Happiness. I'm Richard Davies. Thanks
for listening. Sign off on our website one Day You
dot com to become a member and access over six
hundred full length video lectures from the world's finest professors.
Please welcome Professor Catherine Sanderson, Thank you, Thank you. The
Science of Happiness, Appreciating modern painting, Dilemmas of modern medicine,
Abraham Lincoln, and the civil history of Jazz, Artistic genius
of Michel Angela, When Intuition, food turning, Points that changed
American history, Psychology of religion. One Day University. The most
(00:28):
acclaimed and popular professors from top colleges. They're best lectures,
fascinating conversations. Hi, I'm Richard Davies. Let's learn about the
science of happiness. I'm delighted to be here today. I
love teaching. I think that will be obvious over the
(00:49):
next hour. I hate grading. Maybe some of you sat
and watched me great um in preparation for today, and
so this is really my ideal. I come and I
talk for an hour, and I don't leave with anything
I have to do. My name is Katherine Sanderson, and
I'm a professor of psychology at AMers College in Massachusetts.
Presentation and if you'd like one, just choot me an
email and you can have the entire presentation. What do
(01:10):
you mean by happiness? So that's a really tricky question
because it's actually currently in heated debate in the literature,
and so different people. You could have this podcast, you know,
five times, and you'd get five different answers. So some
people think of happiness as a sense of overall contentment,
comfort with their life, well being, well being, sure exactly.
(01:33):
Other people think of happiness as a much more sort
of positive, joyful emotion. And you know, I think of
the image in my mind is a little kid on
a swing, you know, with their face in a big grim,
you know, pumping their legs back and forth. So one
of them is really a sense of contentment, life satisfaction
overall I feel good. And one of them is a
(01:53):
sense of utter and pure joy. And probably both of
those are part of what happiness is. What is the
thing that you really want to get over in your
lecture about the science of happiness? The biggest thing I
want is for people to leave the lecture knowing that
there are specific, concrete things they can do in their
(02:14):
lives to increase their happiness. I think lots of people
believe that happiness is beyond them, you know, some quirk
of you know, bad genes or negative life experiences, environmental factors, etcetera.
And I end every lecture by giving people ten strategies
that no matter where you start on the genetic lottery
(02:36):
of happiness, no matter your life circumstances, there are specific,
concrete things you can do in life that are within
your reach to increase happiness. There are a bunch of
little behaviors we can do so Exercising strongly associated with
better psychological and physical well being, getting enough sleep, spending
time in nature. Those are all very simple things. Reading
(02:58):
a book you love that brings great happiness. How good
is the science of happiness? I think the science of
happiness is strong, and in fact is getting stronger. So
some of the most interesting research right now is extending
prior research in two ways. One, a lot of research
(03:18):
in the field of psychology in general has focused on
Western cultures and largely the United States, And so then
the ultimate question becomes, well, is this happiness in our
culture or is this happiness across cultures? And so there's
growing evidence now that the predictors of happiness are in
fact quite similar across cultures. And that's something that's very
(03:39):
new and that we didn't know a decade ago. The
other real advantage to current technology is that we're learning
much more about genes and about brain functioning. So there's
research that I describe in the talk that looks at
m r I data and literally has people think about
a certain thing and then looks at what parts of
the brain are activated. Researchers did a very interesting study
(04:05):
in which they brought in people and put them in
an MRI machine, so a machine that measures brain activation,
and they had them look at different pictures. Um, the
top scene is of an urban scene, it's a city skyline.
The bottom scene is of a nature scene water. So
the researchers controlled very carefully for lots of things in
the pictures. Um, the scenes were always pretty. It wasn't
(04:27):
that you were showing you know, urban scenes of congestion
or whatever. None of the pictures had people in them.
So people are in an MRI machine and they show
them a series of pictures and they measure brain activity.
What they found was that looking at the urban city
skyline created lots and lots of brain activity. The brain
was reacting, the brain was processing thinking, you know, activated.
(04:49):
Looking at the nature scene, the brain was very calm,
like you were meditating. So in response to the nature scene,
people were relaxed. Brain waves were low, relaxed. It was
literally like they were meditating. So that's some evidence for
what looking at nature may do to us physiologically, and
it may help explain this link between looking at nature
(05:11):
and feeling better. And so we're learning about neurological measures
of happiness in particular situations that provide stronger evidence than
we've had before, which is just self report data questionnaires
and people responding, which may be accurate but can also
be subjected to some kind of bias. Yeah, because it
(05:31):
must be difficult to design a questionnaire around happiness that
that one person would report yeah, I'm happy or I'm
in a happy relationship, and another person with exactly the
same set of of objective criteria may report differently, right,
And and of course one of the challenges in that
example is that there are people in the exact same
(05:52):
life circumstance that see the world in very different ways.
So I gave an example about being on a date
shortly after college graduation with my boyfriend, and we were
driving in urban Atlanta and had a flat tire. So
we had a lovely day planned picnic and hike, et cetera,
and we had this flat tire. So we pulled it
(06:16):
side of the road, and I am in the passenger seat,
freaking out. This is a terrible thing that happened. Our
day is ruined. It's going to be really expensive. We're
gonna have to get the car tode. And I'm spiraling,
and my boyfriend says, um, I'm just going to change
the tire. So there's an example. And it was like
ten minutes, but there's an example in which we were
(06:38):
in the exact same circumstance and an event happened and
I saw it in a very sort of negative and
fatalistic way, and he saw it as no big deal.
And and that I think sort of illustrates that one
of the challenges happiness is that different people see the
same thing in different ways. How about you, Why are
you personally so interested in this subject? So my answer
(07:03):
to the last question probably probably already conveyed that. And
I should start by saying that that boyfriend is now
my husband because I sat in the well, I sat
in that car knowing going like, huh, you know, he
sees the world in a much better way than I do,
which is which has been true, you know, throughout our marriage.
(07:24):
And so I think one of the reasons that I
like giving this talk is that happiness does not come
easily for me. So for some people, my husband, uh,
my oldest child, happiness comes very easily. I have a
teenage son that when we take the iPhone away from periodically.
He was in public school from kindergarten through eighth grade.
(07:46):
In ninth grade, he moved to an elite prep school
that he was woefully underprepared for in every sense of
the word. And it was a very rocky transition, involved
a lot of tears, mostly mine and uh and he
was doing very, very poor, like really across the board,
but especially in Spanish, and it's in Spanish. At the
end of the halfway through the first trimester and we
(08:07):
got his progress report and the progress report said he
had a fifty in Spanish. This is a school that
uses the traditional grading scale, so fifty was really good. Uh.
So at the end of the first trimester, Andrew calls
me and says, mom, I got my grades. Good news
about Spanish. I was like, what a relief. I'm so nervous,
you know what with the fifty. I'm like, what did
(08:27):
you get? He goes, I got a fifty eight, And
I was like, it's not good news, and he goes, no, no,
it is. It's eight points higher than I had in
in October. I go, it's an F and he says
it's really an F plus And I said, I am
(08:48):
a professor. There is no F plus that is not
one of the grade options. That doesn't is impossible. And
he says, but at the rate I'm going, I'm gonna
have a sixty six in January. And I said that's
a D. Like that's also not good. But so here
really is what is good Andrew? You know, by all accounts,
(09:08):
some days can end up in prison. Um and hopefully
not a Spanish speaking prison. I mean, that would be terrible.
But but he's going to be fine because he is
going to call home and be like, hey, I got
a bunk bed, I got this roommate. There are these
meals three times today, there's this exercise yard. And after
that I stopped worrying about him, because anybody who can
(09:30):
call their mom with the good news of the F plus,
he really is going to be fine. He's probably gonna
be living in my basement, but he's gonna be fine
as an adult. Where is Andrew? Now? Ye? So, so
here's the story about why this optimistic outlook, which is
so beneficial, really helps people. He continues he improves. At
(09:50):
the end of his freshman year of high school, he
has an a minus in Spanish, and his teacher calls
me and says, in all of my years of teaching,
it's the single biggest improvement I've seen an any student.
So Andrew stuck with Spanish throughout high school. He finished
high school, applied to college, got in, and came to
me and my husband in the spring of a senior
year in high school and said, I have a personal
(10:12):
goal before I start college. I want to be fluent
in Spanish, so I'd like to take a gap year
and spend it in Peru. And Andrew is currently a
freshman in college, continuing to say Spanish, but he spent
last year living in Peru with a family, speaking Spanish
full time and has basically become fully bilingual. And that's
(10:36):
an example of how his optimistic outlook let him take
what was literally a failure and and turn it into
a success, and in fact, it's been really life changing
for him. Most of us are on social media. Does
social media make us happier or more miserable? Is there
(10:59):
strong research on this. There is pretty consistent strong research
that social media is not good for psychological well being.
There's often a sense on social media in which people
only post the good. My kid is valedictorian. I just
ran the Boston marathon and under three hours. So one
(11:19):
there's this sense of look at all these people having
this great life, and my life doesn't measure up. You know,
my life is really not you know what other people
are experiencing. It's less good. The other key is that
social media often has the effect of making people feel excluded.
(11:39):
So I have three teenagers right now, and you know,
I vaguely remember being a teenager, and I'll say that
one thing my children have to deal with it I
never had to deal with is seeing pictures posted of
parties they weren't invited to. And that happens all the time.
So people on social media, you know, post events, parties,
social gatherings, and if you weren't invited, you're now vividly
(12:03):
aware that you weren't invited and can see all the
other people who were. One day university where we taught
(12:24):
to award winning and acclaimed professors the most popular on
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Discover more on our website one day you dot Com
Now more with professor Catherine Sanderson of Amherst College, who
(12:44):
says many of us compare ourselves to others way too often.
I think that there are people who are always better
at it than other people, and I think there are
people who are always very focused on those comparisons. The
nature of the comparison may change, so it may be
this person took a better vacation, or this person drives
a nicer car or whatever. But we're often aware of
(13:08):
how we are different from other people, and that is
true across the lifespan, even if the specific parts of
comparison may change. What does studies say about how anxiety?
Are levels of anxiety affect happiness? It's a really important
question and seems to be something that is of growing
(13:31):
concern that you know, I see in college students, but
we see sort of, you know, across America. So people
vary tremendously in their overall baseline of anxiety. There's some
people who can sort of think about worst case scenarios
and and escalate situations, and there are other people who
seem to have the ability to take experiences in life
(13:53):
and take it in stride. It's obviously much harder for
people who are high in anxiety to find happiness. Is
there a way to deal with that? Sure, you really
try to think about the world in a new and
different way, so you change your thought patterns. When my
son was on the verge of what I thought was
failing out of prep school, what I continually said to
(14:14):
myself is he doesn't have leukemia. And that's the reality
that for me, there was this horrible tragedy of he
has an f in Spanish and may well get tossed
from his prep school. But the reality is there are
parents all across the country who have teenagers having chemotherapy
and hospital and they wish their kid was failing Spanish
(14:38):
in high school. And so that's an example of changing
the thoughts we have about something to recognize that what
we see as a terrible crisis and a terrible stressor
in reality is not that big a deal in the
scheme of things. What are the biggest mistakes that people
make around happiness? One, and this will not be surprising. Money.
(15:05):
We have a very strong belief in our society that
more money leads to more happiness. If I just had
more money, then I would be happier. Um. So here's
a picture of um, Tiger Woods's house, or maybe now
Tiger Woods's ex wife's house. Um, And we think, gosh,
if I lived in a house like that, surely I
would be happy every single minute of every single day.
(15:26):
And of course the reality is that isn't true. More
money does not lead to more happiness. Here's the important
exception for people living below the poverty line, for people
who are worried about are my kids going to have
enough food tomorrow? Will we have heat this winter? Do
I have a safe place to sleep? For people who
are living below the poverty line at the poverty line,
more money absolutely increases happiness. But for people who are
(15:49):
not living at that level of subsistence, more money does
not increase happiness. The keys that we acclimate, and that's
really sort of the fundamental principle. We think, will be
happy when we get more money, But the reality is
we acclimate when we get into college, when we graduate
from college, by a house, get a promotion. These are
(16:09):
all big, sort of substantial life events that we expect
will lead us to be happier, and they do, but
only briefly, because then we adapt. Given all the advances
and science and medicine, what are the prospects for instant
gratification in a in a happiness pill. Great question. I'm
(16:32):
going to say two things about that. One, there are
people who have chemical imbalances in their bodies that lead
them to experience chronic clinical depression, you know, severe anxiety.
And so I want to be very careful to say
that my lecture is not a substitute for therapy, psychopharmacological
(16:57):
you know, aids, etcetera. And that one of the challenge
is is that for people who are in the midst
of the throes of a serious psychological disorder, they simply
do not have the ability to say, oh, yes, let
me spend some time in nature and read a book
and you know, smile more often. That they really need assistance.
(17:17):
And so one of the things that we do, in
fact have is a magic pill, because the magic pills, antidepressants,
anti anxiety medication are actually correcting a chemical balance in
the brain that enables people to then take the steps
they need to find greater happiness. And your second point,
and my second point is that part of the joy
(17:40):
and happiness is the pursuit of happiness. It's not I
will have a pill so I feel happy and joyous
all the time. Part of what brings us happiness is
working towards that happiness. So how do we spend money.
You can spend money in better and worse ways in
terms of happiness. So a lot of people think wrongly
(18:02):
that happiness is about spending money on expensive possessions. You know, uh,
new car, new watch, you know, expensive purse or shoes
or whatever. And initially, yeah, that is new and it's exciting,
and it's your you know, nice watch or fancy purse
or whatever. And then it's just your watch, your purse.
So where we get much more happiness from is the
(18:25):
pursuit of experiences. So that could be, you know, tickets
to a Broadway show, it could be travel, it could
be going to a concert, or tickets to the Super
Bowl or whatever. And why that is a better way
to spend money on experiences is that it allows us
to anticipate, Oh, I'm going to be going to this
(18:47):
big game, I'm going to be going to the World Series. Well,
I'm going to see Hamilton's you know whatever that I've
always wanted to do. So we have this anticipation of
the event. Then we get to experience the event, and
then we get to look back on the event, and
we tell people about the event, and we savor the event.
When we spend money on experiences, we are pursuing happiness.
(19:10):
We are actively engaging in happiness, and that brings us
tremendous pleasure. Going further, any book recommendations, there's a wonderful
book I recommend all the time. Really should get royalties
on it, but I do not um And it's by
a neuroscientist at Stanford, and it's called why Zebras Don't
get Ulcers? And Zebras don't get ulcers because they only
(19:34):
react physiologically with great anxiety and stress and physiological reactions
like heartbeating fast and rapid breathing when they're about to die,
when they're being chased by a lion or tiger or whatever.
And as you can probably imagine, humans showed that stress
reaction all the time. I'm stuck in traffic, I have
(19:56):
a blind date, I have a job interview. And it's
one of reasons why humans have relatively high rates of
stress related illnesses. And the second book is a great
recommendation for women, and it's by Dr Susan Nolan HOA
Suma and it's called Women Who Think Too Much, And
(20:19):
it's really about the somewhat gendered pattern of how we
think about the world, which is that women are much
more likely than men to ruminate, to obsess about negative things,
to worry about negative things. And this book is really
an easy guide in terms of trying to help break
(20:39):
some of the negative cycles. But it but it doesn't
urge women to be like men. No, no, although there
is certainly research suggesting that men's ability to distract themselves
from negative events can actually be beneficial. Great, Thank you
very much, Thank you. This has been delightful. Professor Catherine
(21:06):
Sanderson on the Science of Happiness. I'm Richard Davies. Thanks
for listening. Sign off on our website one Day You
dot com to become a member and access over six
hundred full length video lectures from the world's finest professors.
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