#19 Why are some People Happier than Others? w/Richard Lucas

You may know that personality, to some degree, is heritable. In fact, 50-60% of your personality comes down to your genetic makeup. But did you also know that your level of happiness too is heritable, stable and hard to change? Some days, you may feel happier than others, yet your base-level of happiness is reasonably fixed. And it is connected to your personality traits. But what can we do to change our level of happiness? 

 In this episode of What Monkeys Do, I have invited Richard Lucas to talk about personality, happiness and why some people are happier than others. Richard is a leading professor in personality psychology and is internationally recognized for his research on happiness and well-being. Listen along to find out what you can do to increase your happiness. 

 RICHARD TALKS ABOUT

• What are personality and happiness, and how do the two relate?
• Do some personality traits correlate with higher or lower levels of happiness?
• Can money, in fact, buy happiness?
• 3 ways to increase your level of happiness

Episode Transcript

Morten Andersen (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to What Monkeys Do. My
name is Morten Kamp Andersen.
And this is a podcast about whatit takes to make a change and
make it stick.
I've never been very happy, notfor long periods at a time, at

(00:25):
least, of course, I've had myhighs, both of my children,
marriage, promotions, etc. Butin everyday, I don't have a very
high level of happiness. Atleast that's not what I think.
Because I don't really know howother people feel, what their
level of happiness or well beingis. So it's hard to compare. But
I believe that I have a lowerlevel of happiness compared to

(00:47):
many people. And some years ago,I found the reason for why that
is. It's called the HedonicTreadmill model. It's very
popular, widespread theory, youmight have read about it in
books, such as The AuthenticHappiness by Martin Seligman,
essentially, by that theory, weall have an individual level of
happiness that we're so to speakborn with, and we can have good

(01:09):
things happen to us and ourhappiness go up for a while. And
we can have negative thingshappen to us, and we become more
unhappy for a short while. Butafter that short, while our
happiness goes back to ourstarting point, our individual
base level, but that all pointsto a very bleak picture for our
ability to impact our happiness,because by that model, we are

(01:30):
born with a preset level ofhappiness. And there's not much
we can do about that. And thatdoes not bode well for me. But
is that model true? Can wepermanently increase our level
of happiness? Well, let's findout in this episode of What
Monkeys Do. My guest today is aprofessor of psychology at
Michigan State University. He isinternationally known for his

(01:51):
research on happiness, andsubjective well being, and the
effect of life events on lifesatisfaction, you earned his PhD
in psychology from theUniversity of Illinois. And one
of the things I do like a lotabout his work other than his
books is that he's also anoutspoken proponent for for
replicant studies, basically,conducting follow up research so

(02:13):
we can increase the confidencethat we have, in the results of
the original study. Andespecially after the replication
crisis that happened inpsychology a couple of years
ago, I think that we need morepeople like that is reading
several books. I've justfinished The Geat Myth of
Personality, but I'll also justhighlight Stability of
Happiness. Welcome to youRichard Lucas,

Richard Lucas (02:34):
Thanks. Thanks for having me.

Morten Andersen (02:36):
I'm really looking forward to this topic,
because this is something thatinterests me a lot. And in this
episode, we'll talk aboutpersonality, we'll talk about
happiness, and how they fittogether. But because these two
constructs are quitecomplicated, we'll first look at
what is personality, and thenwhat happiness is and how they
affect each other. And thenfinally, we'll try to find out

(02:56):
what can we, if at all, do tochange our level of happiness?
But before we begin, can youmaybe tell us a little bit about
who you are? And what isfascinating about our
personality and happiness?

Richard Lucas (03:09):
Yeah, sure. I do consider myself to be a
personality psychologist. Sothat's someone you know who who
focuses on this construct ofpersonality. And what I try to
do with that is often to focuson how much of personality we
can change what might be causingchanges in personality, or what
personality can itself cause.
And then I also do link that alot to subjective well being. So

(03:30):
understanding how these stablecharacteristics that we think of
as personality are related towell being. I think that my
interest in it is, you know,pretty general, and pretty
broad. And I think it is becauseof so many things that are
fascinating, but personality, Ithink maybe the thing that
stands out to me most is that wehave to study it in the first
place. Because you know, this iswho we are as individuals.

(03:51):
That's what personality is, it'ssomething that is presumably the
result of the thoughts that wehave inside of our heads and the
experiences we've had in thepast. And the fact that we don't
immediately have insight intothat, that we don't know why we
do the things that we do, wedon't know how to change our
personality, and that we needpsychologists out there
studying, you know, what it isthat causes this? I think that

(04:12):
fact is something that's it'skind of interesting to me. So,
um, so I like you know, applyingthe scientific method, trying to
understand who we are and how wecan make those changes.

Morten Andersen (04:22):
Great. So you mentioned personality a lot.
Let's start with that. Maybejust start by telling us what,
what is personality? And how dowe measure personality?

Richard Lucas (04:32):
That corresponds pretty well to the way that I
think that we use the word andeveryday language. I think the
standard definition that I woulduse is that it's our
characteristic pattern ofthoughts, feelings and
behaviors. So it's reallyincorporates lots of things
about us. It's again, thoughts,feelings, behaviors, all those
things fit as personality. Butit's the characteristic pattern.

(04:54):
It's something that is a patternthat stable person exhibits that
over time, and then kind ofdefined who that person is you.
So we really look for all thosethings as part of what we mean
by personality.

Morten Andersen (05:08):
And obviously, patterns and thoughts and
behavior, you would think thatthat's pretty fluid. So one day
I act in one way or another day,I act in another, but
personality is something thatyou say is pretty stable. So
those patterns of thoughts andbehaviors are pretty stable. Is
that correct?

Richard Lucas (05:27):
Yeah, I mean, obviously, we do change from day
to day. So some days, I feelmore outgoing than on other
days, some days, I am moreconstrained in terms of how
outgoing I can be. Some days, Imight wake up feeling like I can
work really hard and othersdays, I feel I feel lazy. So
those things do change from dayto day. But those general
tendencies if we kind of look atthings over time, or the

(05:47):
averages of our behaviors, andour thoughts and our feelings,
then we do find some amounts ofstability for long periods of
time, when in fact, we canrecognize this and other people,
we know that we have somefriends who are you know, we can
count on to be very punctualwhen we set up a meeting with
them or to be always want to goout to a party or something like
that. And it's that that patternthat we recognize, and other

(06:10):
people that makes us choosepeople as friends, or as co
workers, that stability that werecognize there, I think is what
we typically mean when we thinkabout a person's personality.

Morten Andersen (06:20):
And and why is it important for psychology to
have a construct like, say, likepersonality? What is what is the
purpose of, of making that andand correlating that with so
many things? Yeah,

Richard Lucas (06:32):
I mean, so one of the things we do know about
personality is it relates toimportant outcomes. And so
again, I think that in our dailylives, we have an intuition that
it does, again, we choosepartners, because we think that
they're going to be a niceperson to live with, we choose
our friends, because we thinkthat there'll be there for us
and the times when it matters,we think that those
characteristics do something.
There's something that we eitherjust enjoy being with or has

(06:53):
some benefit for us. And I thinkpsychologists approach the
personality with the same goalsin mind that we know that people
that have certaincharacteristics have different
outcomes in their lives. Soresearchers who study the
personality trait ofconscientiousness, which is
again, how punctual howorganized, how a little bit
driven, these sorts ofcharacteristics. And we know
that those are correlated, atleast with outcomes, like

(07:16):
outcomes related to health andmortality outcomes related to
career success. And oftentimes,those associations between
personality traits, and theseconsequential outcomes are as
high as other things that wetypically think of as being
important, like intelligence orsocioeconomic status. And so I
think that personalitypsychologists want to know, what
is it about people's personalitythat leads to these important

(07:39):
outcomes, with the aim of like,just general understanding, but
also, if people want to livehealthier lives, more successful
lives? Is there anything we canlearn from those personality
associations that can helppeople do that better?

Morten Andersen (07:53):
Hmm. So you're talking about conscientiousness
there? How do you measurepersonality?

Richard Lucas (07:59):
Yeah, that's a good question. So personality is
something that's kind of hidden,right, we have a sense that
someone is conscientious andsome people are more
conscientious than others. Butthere isn't some thing that we
can tap into that is thisperfect indicator. So a lot of
times what personalpsychologists do is they ask for
people's impressions of theirown personality or someone
else's personality. And thenwhat we do is we try to then use

(08:22):
that as a starting point, butthen really questioning
ourselves as in terms of whetheror not that's a good measure or
not. So I might first askpeople, you know, their self
reports of their personality,but then also ask their friends
and family members and see tothe extent to which the those
those measures agree. But thenwe could also do behavioral
measures, too, so we couldactually look at what people do,

(08:43):
are they punctual over time anduse that as an indicator of how
conscientious they are? Now,each one of these measures is
not perfect. And so you know,that's a constant, you know,
effort within personalitypsychology is to improve our
measures to ask questions aboutour measures to see whether
they're doing a good job.

Morten Andersen (09:01):
I think when I read through literature, there
is one way of measuring thatseems to be the one that
academia used by far the most,which is the Big Five. So that
has a long history back fromhands, I think, and all the way
up to now. But that seems to bethe gold standard for talking
about personality in academia.
Is that is that right?

Richard Lucas (09:22):
Yeah. So the Big Five, I think, is the standard
way that we would conceptualizepersonnel. If we wanted a broad
measure of personality, one thatencompasses a lot of the
different ways people differfrom one another, the Big Five
would would be probably the mostpopular way of doing that right
now.

Morten Andersen (09:39):
Yeah. And it's self reporting. So I get a
questionnaire and I've filledthat out and then I get my
scores and the Big Five. And Ijust think that on some days, I
probably see myself as a littlebit more outgoing and maybe sort
of achieving more but then Ihave other days when, you know,
it's raining outside and I don'treally feel so good about
myself. So I might score myself.
Do differently. But on the otherhand, you also say that

(10:01):
personalities are very stable.
So basically, I report my ownpersonality, and I feel a little
bit different about myself fromday to day. But on the other
hand, it's a stable thing. Howdoes that go hand in hand?

Richard Lucas (10:14):
What you're pointing out is exactly right,
is that I can take aquestionnaire today. And it
might be different than the waythat I take it tomorrow. And so
I think that, personally,psychologists are generally
pretty careful aboutinterpreting the precision with
which, you know, we get thesemeasures. And and we might know
that there is some error there.
So what we would typically findis it Yes, your reports on this

(10:35):
personality measure might changefrom day to day, but they're
within a general range, and thatrange is relatively consistent,
and your range might bedifferent than my range. And so
we wouldn't necessarily say,okay, you are a 123 out of 140.
On this tray, we would get ageneral sense about what your
trait level is. And that's whatwe would think of as your

(10:57):
personality score. And thosethat range is generally pretty
stable.

Morten Andersen (11:02):
Okay. I think many of our listeners may know
others; MBTI, Myers Briggs is avery well known outside of
academia, it's actually probablythe most used way of talking
about personality, either forself development, or in
companies when you want toeither select employees or you
want to develop employees. SoMyers Briggs is is wildly used.

(11:25):
I know, you critique MBTI. Andwhat do you think is the issue
with with that particular way oflooking at personality?

Richard Lucas (11:32):
Yeah, so it is definitely widely used. I think
a lot of people know what scoresthey would get from The MBTI.
And, and I think that there aresome things that are valuable
about it. I think that withinacademic psychology, we
typically don't use it for acouple of reasons. One is that
the way that it's scored, or theway that it's typically scored,
it isn't always scored this way.
But one of the ways that it istypically scored is to put

(11:53):
people into categories. Soyou're one category or you're
another, and it doesn't reallydistinguish among people within
those categories. And what we'velearned from research within
personality psychology is,individual differences don't
generally work in thatcategorical way. Usually,
there's a distribution ofscores. So like with
extraversion, it isn't the casethat there's a group of people

(12:14):
who are clearly extroverts and agroup of people who are clearly
introvert, and you're one or theother. Instead, there's
generally a distribution andmost people are really actually
in the middle of thedistribution on extraversion.
And then there are some peoplethat are far out in that
distribution that we think of asextroverts and some people who
are far out and on the otherend, and we think of them as
introverts, but again, mostpeople are in the middle. And so

(12:35):
with the underlying idea of TheMBTI, it's more putting people
in those boxes, which isn't, youknow, the way that the
personality really works. Theother thing, I think, is that it
doesn't have quite as much ofthis, this long, empirical
history linking this to likesome of the models like the Big
Five does, so it wasn'tnecessarily as empirically

(12:57):
based, even if they do researchon the validity of the measure
now, or the utility of themeasure now. So I think that
kind of having that long historyof empirical research behind it
makes us believe that what youknow, the big five might be
capturing might be a little bitmore robust, a little bit, tap
into things that we that we knowmore about than The MBTI does.
The items on The MBTI areprobably are often similar to

(13:20):
the things that we would have,it's just the way that you
combine those and score themthat might not be exactly the
way that we would categorizepeople's personality using these
well established models.

Morten Andersen (13:33):
So for instance, introversion and
extraversion is the same on bothMBTI and Big Five. But the
difference is that with MBTI,either you are introvert or your
extrovert, whereas with the bigfive, you are somewhere on the
scale. And I can definitely seethat if you are a little bit
introverted, you're basicallygrouped together with a person
who's very introverted. And ifyou are little bit extroverted,

(13:56):
you are grouped together withsomebody who's very extroverted.
Whereas you probably have morein common with a person who's a
little bit introverted, ratherthan the extreme extroverted. So
that's, that's, I guess, it'sthe difference.

Richard Lucas (14:07):
Yeah. And that also goes back to your question
about, you know, whether today Ifeel I answered the question a
little bit differently than I dotomorrow. If we're putting you
on this continuum, then thoselittle differences don't make
that much of a difference interms of how we interpret your
personality. But a slightdifference in the way that you
respond to that skill couldcompletely change whether you're
categorized as an extrovert oran introvert if we're only going

(14:28):
based on this categoricalapproach. So there's, there's
more of a chance that we getthat category wrong, as opposed
to just slightly off when we usesome sort of dimensional
scoring.

Morten Andersen (14:37):
So obviously, a really interesting question
about personality is our topicis where do we get it from?
Well, where did it come? And sohow much of of our personality
do I get from my parents I isinherent, and how much is coming
from my upbringing, and how muchcan I influence myself? Do we
know anything about that?

Richard Lucas (14:55):
Yeah, so I mean, that's a definitely a really big
question within personalityPsychology is Where is it coming
from? You know, and so we dohave things like twin studies
where we look at people,especially twins who might have
been separated at birth, andthen we measure their
personality later on inadulthood and say how similar
are twins who grew up indifferent households to one

(15:16):
another in terms of thepersonality. And, you know, one
of the things that we know thatmany, many characteristics, most
characteristics, most individualdifferences do show a lot of
similarity across those twins,even if they're separated at
birth, which suggests thatsomething about their genes are
responsible for the personalitytraits that they have. Now, we
don't know exactly what that is.
So the way that genes lead topersonality could be through

(15:37):
things that people elicit fromtheir environment, could be
through the way that theyinterpret things in their
environment, or it could be moredirect in terms of, you know,
there might be something thatdirectly influences the emotions
that people experience on atypical basis. So there does
seem to be some heritabilitythere. When we look for, you
know, common experiences thatpeople have that then lead to

(15:58):
the personality traits that theyhave later on, it's a little bit
harder to find systematicdifferences. In for instance,
the childhood upbringing ofpeople who are extroverts versus
introverts are between those whoare conscientious and those who
are not. So I think that there'sgood evidence that something
about our upbringing orenvironment helps influence the
personality traits that we have,but narrowing down and really

(16:21):
precisely precisely identifyingwhat those things are, has been
difficult for us. So there isn'tsomething that I can point to,
as this critical thing that'shappened to us the causes of
personality traits.

Morten Andersen (16:34):
I think those twin festivals that there are
where you basically werebasically twins and and twins
separated at birth meet and thenare being exposed to all sorts
of questions every year arereally interesting. And there
are definitely some things weit's probably the most valid way
of finding out how much ofthings are genetic and what his

(16:55):
environment and some thingsseems to be very high like
height, an eye color seem to bevery much but down to our genes,
which particular sportsinterest, we have very little, I
seem to have read somewhere thatit's something around 60% for
many of our personality traitsthat are down to genetics, which

(17:16):
means that there is still a 40%,which is not, but we don't
really know what that 40% is,because we don't have systematic
data for that. Is that correct?

Richard Lucas (17:26):
Yeah, definitely.
I mean, it actually is some ofthe estimates might even be a
little bit lower than that. 50%,or around there. And yeah, so we
don't know exactly what thosecauses are in terms of or what
the factors in that 40 to 50%are. But again, we also don't
know of the 50% that'sheritable. You know, I think
that one of the dangers, Ithink, interpretation of those
findings is that because it'sheritable, it means that it's

(17:50):
not changeable means that thereisn't something about the
environment that's playing intothose can be the fact that what
we have, you know, built into uselicits reaction, you know, it
makes us react to theenvironment in a certain way.
And if we could figure out whatthat process was, even that
heritable part might bechangeable if we knew more about
how those processes wereworking.

Morten Andersen (18:10):
Okay, so that leads me to the stability of our
personality. Do we know a littlebit about how stable our
personality is? So if I had mybig five taken when I was 15,
when I was 25, 35, and so on?
how stable would that be overtime? Yeah, so

Richard Lucas (18:28):
that's one of the things we do know a lot about.
Now, there's a lot of bigstudies that have been conducted
either in huge samples overreasonably long periods of time,
you know, 10-20 years, orsmaller samples that have been
conducted for even longerperiods of time. So 50-60 years.
And so we do know that there isquite a bit of stability in
personality traits. It doeschange over time. So there are

(18:49):
periods of the life wherestability is higher than others.
So when you go throughadolescence, there's more room
for change. stability is lowerfrom 15 to 25, than it is from
35 to 45. But there is stabilityacross all those those different
periods of life. And once we getto middle age, then stability
coefficients get really high. Sothere's still some change going

(19:10):
on. But but there is quite a bitof stability at that point.

Morten Andersen (19:13):
And I think neuroticism, which is one of the
big five, that tends to decreaseover age, is that correct? So
yeah, if you do pass the 35,that's actually one of the big
five that do decrease.

Richard Lucas (19:26):
So we know a little bit about mean level
changes as well. And so there'sthere are some good things that
happened. So there's somethingcalled the maturity principle
that people kind of as they getolder, they kind of change in
ways that make them seem moremature. So conscientiousness
seems to increase, agreeablenesssometimes increases, neuroticism
tends tend to decrease overtime. And so there are some

(19:48):
changes that typically happennot with everybody, but on
average, that are, you know,positive changes.

Morten Andersen (19:54):
Yes. So and just to maybe recap for for
people that don't know the bigfive, so the five Dimensions:
one is extraversion which youcan score higher low one. So I
guess when you score low, you,you are an introvert. And
neuroticism is another one,which is generally considered a
poor one to score high on, we'llget to that a little bit later
maybe neuroticism is essentiallyhow, how do you see things in a

(20:19):
positive or negative way? Wouldthat be correct?

Richard Lucas (20:21):
Yeah emotionality and that sort of thing. Yep.

Morten Andersen (20:25):
openness, which is the dimension of how open you
are to ideas, thoughts and andnew experiences. agreeableness
is how it could you sayfriendly, maybe friendliness and
warmth?

Richard Lucas (20:38):
Yeah, characteristics like that.

Morten Andersen (20:40):
And the last one was a constant we get
conscientiousnessconscientiousness? And that one
is how do you explain that one?

Richard Lucas (20:48):
Kind of how there's there's different facets
to all these. But so how orderlyyou are, how hard working you
are, some of thesecharacteristics often fall with
the under conscientiousness?

Morten Andersen (20:57):
Yes, okay. we correlate them with many
different outcomes. So forinstance, people who tend to get
a higher pay rise than others,the ones who score lower on
agreeableness, and, and maybehigher on conscientiousness, as
well. So basically, if you ifyou have the courage to go into
your manager's office and say, Idemand this pay rise, because

(21:18):
I'm worth that, then you're morelikely to get it. And people who
score lower on agreeableness ismore likely to do that, et
cetera, et cetera. Sometimessomething spectacular happens in
our life, good or bad. Andsometimes, obviously, it's the,
it's those events, we would callthem significant life events,
they can leave a mark on us,they will definitely leave a

(21:39):
mark on our life story, thestory that we tell about our
life, but do they also leave amark on our personality?

Richard Lucas (21:47):
Yeah, so that's one, then one big surprise, I
think, in the literature onpersonality is how hard it's
been to find effects ofsignificant life events on the
personality traits that peoplehave. So there's been a lot of
work on this. I mean, I will saythat studies on this are hard to
do. It requires having a largegroup of people that we follow
for very long periods of timeand where we regularly measure

(22:10):
their personality. So we haveenough information to know
whether that personality haschanged. And so I think that in
total recent years, we haven'thad those large studies that
have allowed us to do this. Nowthere are more and more of those
studies that have beenconducted. So far, when reviews
these studies to look at theeffects of life events, the
results have been somewhatinconsistent. So for instance,

(22:30):
we know from adolescence tothrough early adulthood, and to
men to middle age,conscientiousness goes up,
that's the kind of the typicalpattern that we see. And it goes
up relatively dramatically.
That's the kind of the biggestperiod of change that we've
seen. And so a lot ofpersonality psychologists
assumed that if we would be ableto take that period of growth,
and look for significant lifeevents that might actually be

(22:51):
responsible for the changes thatare occurring. So lots of people
start their first job duringthat period of time, lots of
people become parents duringthat period of time, lots of
people get married during thatperiod of time. And so what we
try to do is use these biglongitudinal studies to link
those changes in conscientiousas to those life events. And the
results have been kind ofsurprisingly, not robust in

(23:13):
terms of being able to linkthose in that way. So I think
that we have been surprised thatwe haven't been able to find
those associations as much as wethought we would. But we might,
we also are starting to thinkabout some of the problems or
some of the challenges andmethodologically that might make
us not be able to find thoseright away. So it might be the
case that you have a child. Butit isn't until three or four

(23:34):
years later that actually theeffect of that builds up enough
to for us to see the effect onconscientiousness. And the same
with later events that happen tous. So if we lose a spouse, or
if we get, you know, marriedsome point later on in our life,
the way that that affects usmight be a little bit more
idiosyncratic. And so it mightnot have an average effect, even
though it's affecting somepeople significantly.

Morten Andersen (23:57):
Okay. That was a little bit of our personality
we have a personality isbasically made up of the
patterns of our behavior andthoughts, relatively stabled
best measured through the BigFive, large part of our
personality is actuallysomething we inherit, it's a
genetic, about 50% on on most ofthe items. And even though that

(24:18):
our significant life eventsmatters a lot to our identity
and to our life story, itactually doesn't impact our
personality as much as as wewould think. And personality is
interesting, because itcorrelates with a lot of life
events or life outcomes, and oneof them is happiness. So let's
have a look at that. But beforewe do that, let's have a break.

(24:48):
Okay, so that was personality.
And the thing about personalityis it's something that we cannot
see, we have to ask people toget an understanding of their
personality, although we can useother ways as Well, happiness is
a bit the same. So we cannot,you know, just look at people
and see how happy they are, wecannot measure it objectively we
have to ask them. That's alsowhy we often call it subjective

(25:10):
well being. And happiness is oneof those things that if we ask
people, most people would say,that's a good thing. We want to
be happy that some people mighteven say that's the purpose of
life is to have a happy life. Solet's start with what what is
happiness? And how do we measurehappiness or well being.

Richard Lucas (25:29):
So again, I think like personality, the way that
we in psychology use happinessor subjective well being is
pretty consistent with I thinkhow we would do it in a non
site, when a non scientists willtalk about it, I do think it's a
little bit important todistinguish happiness, a couple
of meanings of happiness. One isthis positive emotion that you
might feel in a particularmoment. And I think that we have

(25:50):
the sense that it's somethinglike joy, or these positive
feelings about something that'shappening. And the reason that
we sometimes distinguish theword happiness from subjective
well being is because we canalso think about happiness is
this bigger thing that youexperience in your life, where
you just have this general sensethat my life is a good one, that
it's going well, it might nothave positive emotion every

(26:12):
minute, but I have some sort ofoverall evaluation of that life
as being positive. And wesometimes use happiness. And
that way in this broader sense.
So I too use the word happinessto kind of mean that broader
thing. In our writings, we tryto be more precise by talking
about that broader thing asbeing subjective well being
because it might not necessarilycorrespond with feeling joy,

(26:32):
every moment of your life, itmight also involve satisfaction
with things that might actuallybe challenging and difficult in
our lives.

Morten Andersen (26:42):
So what are some of the questions that you
ask a person that he or sheevaluates on?

Richard Lucas (26:49):
Yeah, so I think that, again, we have different
ways we can do this, there is noperfect way of measuring
happiness. So sometimes it'svery simple. And we'll ask them,
are you satisfied with your lifeor on a scale from one to 10 how
satisfied are you with your lifeas a whole, and we assume that
people whose lives are goingwell, and who have good things
in their lives will respond morepositively to those items. We

(27:09):
also have this idea that, youknow, people who are who have a
good life, or who have a lifethat they like, will experience
more positive moments in thatlife. So we can do things like,
you know, signal people withtext messages a couple times a
day, and ask them, How are youfeeling at this moment, and then
we can aggregate those over timeto see whether they have more
good moments in their life. Andso these are some of the

(27:31):
different ways that we assesshappiness in people's lives.

Morten Andersen (27:35):
And I suppose, like with personality, I mean,
that could also depends on whichday that you asked me to what I
think my level of overallhappiness is.

Richard Lucas (27:45):
Yes, definitely.
And so especially if we askabout emotions, and feelings,
those fluctuate much more thanpersonalities do. And so how
people feel Monday of this weekmight be very different than how
they feel on Friday of thisweek, how they feel in the
morning might feel verydifferent than how they feel,
you know, before they go to bed.
And so definitely, if we takethat sampling of emotions

(28:05):
perspective on measuringhappiness, we know that there's
a lot more fluctuations that goalong. But even when we talk
about life satisfaction, so howsatisfied are you with in
general, that is stable overtime, but not quite as stable as
personality traits?

Morten Andersen (28:18):
Okay. So happiness is something that we,
we are interested in, because weknow that's an outcome most
people would like. And I guessfrom a psychological point of
view, we're trying to find outwhat factors influence the level
of happiness? And what good doesit bring to be happy so to
speak, I can see that a lot ofthe studies that I've looked at
in this respect, are very, it'sbased on correlations. And I

(28:42):
don't really want to say theobvious correlation does not
equal court causality. But it istrue that it doesn't. So I
guess, I know that people whoare happy they generally also,
most of them might be married,or they might be living in safe
countries, or they may have somespecific coping strategies that
they're working well with someof the things that we see from a

(29:02):
lot of the research, but howmuch do we know whether, you
know, they are happy becausethey in a good marriage? Or
because they you know, in amarriage, because they're which
way does the arrow points so tospeak?

Richard Lucas (29:13):
Right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that
this is a really important issuethat, again, we're struggling
with, as researchers who studythese topics. And I think that
people who are reading about it,you know, in popular press, I
think, need to be careful aboutthese sorts of things. Because
we do we want to look at thisevidence, and we want to
interpret it causally because wewant to know what we can do to
change our happiness or a lot ofpeople do. And I think that the

(29:35):
way that I perceive the field isthat we are at a stage where
we've kind of gone through,we've used as much information
as we can to get a really gooddescriptive sense of what the
happy person looks like. And soit is often very correlational.
It has advantages over someother areas in psychology is
that we have oftenrepresentative samples of
populations, where we can getpretty good information about

(29:56):
what are the things thatcorrelate with well being but it
is Through that we are left withcorrelational data. And we don't
necessarily know what causes it.
So I think that at this pointwhere we have a pretty good
descriptive sense of what thatlooks like, and I think people
are developing theories thatthey can then test with
additional evidence for what thecausal factors are there, I will
say that it's a tricky area,because it possibly is the case

(30:18):
that there are causal factorsthat are going to be difficult
to study experimentally. So ifit is the case that you know,
your FCS, or socioeconomicstatus has a major impact means
your causal impact on yourhappiness, it's going to be hard
for us to use some of thetypical methods that we would
have for establishing causalityto establish the importance of
that factor.

Morten Andersen (30:40):
But what what things do we know that at least
correlates highly withhappiness?

Richard Lucas (30:45):
Yeah, I mean, so some of the ones that people
don't like, or are one of theones is that I do think that
income correlates withhappiness. You know, there's
debates right now about the sizeof that effect, there was just a
study that got a lot ofattention that just came out,
showing that even among wealthypeople that having more money is
correlated with with morehappiness. Again, the debates

(31:06):
are about whether it's a bigeffect or a small effect, but it
is there, I think it's prettyconsistent that people who have
higher incomes and more wealth,or happier than people who are
lower, I think that there's anumber of health characteristics
that we can point to ondisability status, these sorts
of things that I think areassociated with lower levels of
well being. And then I thinkbeyond that, I think that I

(31:27):
mean, personality we do, youknow, that's also a big
predictor of happiness. And thenother things like, you know,
people often point to socialrelationships as being important
for happiness as well. Andagain, with all of those the
point that you made that wedon't know necessarily whether
they're causal factors oroutcomes, or the result of some
other variable that's causingboth of these, something that we

(31:48):
always have to consider.

Morten Andersen (31:49):
Okay, some of my relevant big five factors is
that I am an introvert, I scorevery high on neuroticism, and I
score low on agreeableness. Imentioned them because I think
they are relevant here. Withthat information, can you say
something about a group of 1000?
Mortens; how they would belikely to feel regarding
happiness?

Richard Lucas (32:10):
Right, yeah. So I mean, it is the case that all
three of those would be, we'd bepredispose you to I mean, there
would be associated with lowerlevels of happiness. And so
those are some of the bigpersonality traits that do seem
to be correlated. So people whoare high in neuroticism are
generally lower and reports asubjective well being people who
are agreeableness also, andextraversion, those are kind of

(32:33):
the bigger ones there. Now,again, I think the one of the
other things to keep in mindabout happiness, and the
distributions of happiness isthat actually, most people tend
to be towards the positive endof the scale. So if we do have a
one to 10, or zero to 10, scaleand happiness, in western
countries, at least, the meansrelatively wealthy Western
countries, at least, the meanstend to be around seven or eight

(32:55):
on those skills. And therearen't that many people that are
dropping below six or five onthese things. And so when we
talk about some of theseassociations with personality
traits, or even with income, no,we're talking about relatively
happy or, you know, relativelymore or less happy, not kind of
that these factors make peopledepressed in their lives or

(33:15):
things like that.

Morten Andersen (33:16):
So I can, I can take comfort in that I might not
be as happy as, as most but atleast I'm not dropping off the
scale and at a six is actually asolid six.

Richard Lucas (33:25):
Right, exactly.

Morten Andersen (33:26):
That's so funny. And obviously, you can
also be, so if I think about mylife, and how happy I am in my
life, I might think in differentparts of my life are different
roles I have, I might thinkabout my work. And I might have
one number might think about myhome, my family situation, as
one number might think about myfriends and hobbies and so on.
So is that is that normal thatpeople think about their overall

(33:50):
subjective happiness as as, ashaving different different
subcategories sub numbers orother other one some categories
that account for more thanothers?

Richard Lucas (34:01):
Yeah. It's an interesting question in terms of
whether or not we kind of buildup our happiness from all the
different components of ourlives. So you know, one model of
how people make judgments abouttheir life as a whole, as
they'll look and say, okay, ismy relationship good? Is my work
good? Is my health good, andbasically evaluate their
happiness in each of thosedomains, and then kind of

(34:24):
average those to say, How happyAm I on average? Now another
model, though, is that thatpeople actually are just either
happy or not or, you know, theyfall somewhere on this, this
dimension. And then thatbasically shapes how they view
their relationship and their joband their health. And it
actually influences theirperception of the different
domains in their lives. And Ithink actually, there's probably

(34:45):
evidence for both of those. Ithink that people who are happy
in general might be okay withtheir job even objectively, it's
not a good job or has some badcharacteristics. But having a
bad job, I also do think isprobably going to be likely to
have an impact on people'soverall happiness. So when we
look at When we try to measurethose things explicitly, if I
say how satisfied are you withyour relationship? how satisfied
are you with your job? howsatisfied are you with your

(35:07):
health? What we find is thatsometimes there are stronger
correlations among those ratingsthan we would expect, just based
on the objective characteristicsof those domains, suggesting
again, that there is this kindof top down view of all the
different areas of our lives.
But there is also some evidencethat if we change your job, make
it better or worse, that thatcan also have an impact on the

(35:27):
global judgments that youprovide about your life as a
whole.

Morten Andersen (35:32):
Yeah, I would, I would think that the things
that you attach a lot of meaningto or a big part of your
identity, those parts wouldprobably take up more of the
overall part of your overallhappiness. So in parts where
your job is a big part of youridentity, and also maybe the
time that you spend, then therecan almost be a one to one

(35:55):
correlation between how happyyou are with your work compared
to how satisfied you are withyour life in general, I suppose.

Richard Lucas (36:02):
Yeah. And I think that's a really intuitive idea.
And a lot of psychologists have,have thought that would be the
case, too. I think it stillmight be when we try to
investigate that explicitly. Sofor instance, we have a group of
people and we say, how importantis your job to you? And then we
corrolate, we kind of look atthe differences in the
association between jobsatisfaction and life

(36:23):
satisfaction. That importancerating doesn't really change the
association as much as we wouldexpect it to, which has been
surprising to psychologists, Ithink, it might be surprising to
you and your listeners. Yeah. SoI think that the intuition makes
a lot of sense. But we haven'tfound a lot of evidence for
that. Now, there might be sometechnical reasons about the way
that we measure these thingsthat are not allowing us to find

(36:46):
that pattern that you wouldexpect. And the psychologists
have tried to find we thereisn't a lot of evidence in the
way that we measure these forthat type of effect. But again,
I agree that it's totallyintuitive. And it might be due
to the methods that we're usingto assess it.

Morten Andersen (37:01):
That's really interesting, because the I would
have thought that that wouldhave been how it was. So that's
really interesting. Now, I thinkmost people would know, or have
guessed that our personality,our genetic makeup is a large
part of that. I don't think manypeople would assume that
happiness and our level ofhappiness is, is something that

(37:23):
we're born with, or isheritable. What do we know about
how how much genetics play arole in our level of happiness?

Richard Lucas (37:33):
Yeah, so it's, it's really, it's pretty similar
to what we find for personalitytraits. So you know, maybe a
little bit lower. So some of theheritability estimates for a
single measurement of happinessmight be 40%, or something like
that. So it's, you know, similarto personality. And yeah, and I
think people are surprised aboutthat. It depends a little bit on
how you think about it, though,I think that a lot of times, it

(37:55):
might be surprising to us,because we can kind of look back
on our lives and say, Oh, I wasreally unhappy when that thing
happened to me. And so wenoticed the changes that we
noticed the associations withevents. And we don't see the way
that our, you know, our outlookon life leads to this constant
positive or negative evaluationsof the things that are happening
to us. So in terms of what wewould attend to, I think that we

(38:17):
might miss the ways that ifthere is this constant effect of
our genes in terms of on ouroutlook, it might not be quite
so obvious to us. It's only whenwe look across different people
and see how they approach theworld differently and view the
world differently, that it makesa little bit more sense, he
would have those effects there.

Morten Andersen (38:33):
So in the beginning, I talked about the
hedonic treadmill model, whichessentially say that we have a
baseline of happiness. And thatbaseline is different from you
and me, and you can you can bemaybe I'm a little bit lower,
maybe you're a little bithigher, who knows. But at the
end of the day, we have a setbaseline. And once we have happy

(38:53):
experiences, we it goes up, butthen it goes back to that
baseline. And if we havenegative experiences, we'll feel
unhappiness, but then they'll goback to baseline. How true is
that model? Do you think?

Richard Lucas (39:04):
Yeah. And that's a big part of what I've been
studying in my career. And we'velooked at it in lots of
different ways to try to findthis. And I think that there's
some good evidence for andthere's some things that make me
question how useful that modelis. So one of the things that is
evidence for it is the fact thatlife events, many life events
don't have as big of an effect,as we would think, at least in

(39:25):
the long term. So, you know,we've done studies where looked
at what happens to people's lifesatisfaction when they get
married, and it has an effect onthem for a little bit, but then
they kind of on average, comeback to where they were those
types of studies, I think peoplehave pointed to as evidence that
there's a hedonic treadmill. Butat the same time when we do
these studies, where we now have20 or 30 years worth of data,
where we sample people everyyear and ask them what their

(39:46):
life satisfaction is. There's anincredible amount of stability
from year to year, which seemsconsistent with hedonic
treadmill. But actually once weget out to 20, 25, 30 years,
then there is actually a lot ofchange that's going on in
people's happiness, which seemsto contradict that hedonic
treadmill type of idea. And soit is possible that it's not
that we're so stable that wecan't change and life events

(40:09):
don't matter. It's again that wehave these very idiosyncratic
reactions to life events thatmake it appear like life events
don't matter. But it's reallythat we just have very different
reactions to those life events.
So over the years, I've becomemore convinced that even though
I do believe that personalitymatters, and I believe that
there probably is this,something like a baseline or
something like a constant effecton the way that we view the

(40:30):
world, become more open to theidea that there are ways that
we're changing over long periodsof time with events changes, but
that are difficult to study,because they might be pretty
idiosyncratic in the way that wereact to things.

Morten Andersen (40:44):
Yeah, and I guess, because our personality
also changed. So neuroticismdeclines over over the years and
conscientiousness increase overthe years. And those two things
are actually likely to lead to alittle bit higher level of of
happiness, so to speak, you'dprobably expect happiness to
increase over the lifetime of aperson, I suppose, I suspect.

Richard Lucas (41:05):
Yeah. And there's, there are some patterns
that are consistent. Andactually, it's a little bit it's
not doesn't map on completely tothat. But there are some
changes. So actually, the mostcommon pattern that people find,
which isn't always found, but isthere's a U shaped curve from
young adulthood through olderadulthood. So people when
they're, you know, 18-20,they're pretty happy, they then

(41:26):
decline into and so, you know,middle age 40-45 is supposed to
be the worst part of this, andthen people start to climb back
up. And then people who are, youknow, in their 70s, and 80s, are
supposed to be as happy as thepeople that were 20. That
pattern is found in a lot ofstudies, at least in western
countries. So I think there'ssomething robust about that.
Yeah.

Morten Andersen (41:46):
I've seen some people correlate that with when
they get children and when theyget their grandchildren. Things
like that.

Richard Lucas (41:53):
Yeah, exactly.

Morten Andersen (42:03):
So we come to the point of our conversation,
where we turn to discuss how orif it's possible to influence
our happiness. And I guess,there are only so many of my
children, I can see being bornand there's only so many
marriages I can go through. So Ican create moments and life
events that will createhappiness for me. But what about
long term well being if I wantto raise my level of long term

(42:27):
well being? Is there anything Ican do to do that?

Richard Lucas (42:31):
Yeah, so I think that that is the the big
question, I think and happinessresearch right now. So again, as
I said, we have now have apretty good sense about what
sorts of things correlate withwell being. And now people are
trying to translate that intowhat could we do either in terms
of big interventions that weapply broadly, or in terms of

(42:52):
decisions that people can makein their own lives to make them
make themselves a little bithappier? Unfortunately, I have
not been super impressed withthe intervention studies that we
have done. So there are somethere are some that argue that
there are successful strategiesthat people can use. I think
that there's some preliminaryevidence, but I think we need to
do a lot more to know for surewhether those things are

(43:14):
working. So you know, the bigtypes of targets, I think that
people have investigated inthese studies are things like
mindfulness interventions, Somindfulness, meditation, these
sorts of things, some thingsthat have to do with
appreciating good things. Sogratitude journals, and these
sorts of things. And I thinkthat there's some promise there,
but I want to see more evidencethat these work before I would

(43:37):
be confident they do. So I thinkthat you know, for I think, for
individuals or for even for myown life, what sorts of things I
would try to do would be to do acouple of things, which is to
look at that descriptiveresearch and see the things that
I think that are most stronglyassociated. And then even if
there isn't strong evidence,maybe try some of those things

(43:57):
out, and also then maybe tailorthem to the types of things that
I think I value most, you know,there is research that social
relationships are matter forwell being. Again, I have some
questions about the nature ofthat causal Association there.
I, you know, I think that if Ihad to bet on it, I would say
that pursuing strong socialrelationships is probably

(44:18):
something that is going to begood for people's well being.
And I think that there's lots ofreasons why we might expect it,
I think it's often pleasant tobe around people that you like,
but they also can provide, youknow, support in times when
things are bad. And all thesethings might add up to
improvements in people's overallhappiness. I do tend to believe
although I think that again,finding evidence for this is

(44:39):
difficult, but I think that youknow, finding engagement in
different types of activities,finding some source of meaning
in your work or your hobbies orthese sorts of things, even
though I don't have aintervention study that I can
point to to prove that this iscorrect. I think that those are
the types of things that I thinkthat that are going to be likely
to make a difference for people

Morten Andersen (45:00):
Okay, I think that makes a ton of sense of the
social relationship, thoseextroverted people generally
tend to be happier. And thatthat could maybe be the reason
for that they are more likely toengage in social relations. And
therefore that that sounds likea really interesting one. Yeah.

Richard Lucas (45:15):
One other piece of information of evidence that
I think is important there too,is that I think that even for
introverts, I think introvertsget a lot of benefit from social
interaction as well, it justmight be a very different kind.
So we've done studies where wehave, you know, followed people,
you know, by sending textmessages, you know, multiple
times per day. And you know, oneof the possibilities from those
studies was that the extrovertsare going to love being with

(45:38):
people and the introverts, we'regoing to be loved, we're going
to love being alone. But in allof our studies, and other people
have found this as well, bothextroverts and introverts are
happier when they're with otherpeople than when they were
alone. And it may just be theextroverts want to go to group
settings and parties and thesesorts of things. And introverts
want to spend time with one ortwo other people. And they might

(45:59):
have different different socialactivities that they want, but
they might both get somethingout of social activity. So even
for introverts, I think we canpoint to some of the
associations with socialactivity in general to say that
they would probably stillbenefit from some type of social
activity and socialrelationships, even if it's
different than what extrovertsdo.

Morten Andersen (46:18):
Okay, great.
That that gives me a little bitof hope still. Right now of my
personality traits, you know,you have to to like who you are,
so to speak. But if there wasone that I would like to change,
that would probably be my myhigh level of neuroticism. And I
know that that might decrease asI age. But is there anything I
can do to change that trait? Canyou actually go in and take a

(46:41):
particular trait and say, Iwould like to, to work on that.
Is that possible? Yeah.

Richard Lucas (46:47):
So I think that for people who have really
extreme levels of neuroticism, Ithink the you know, this, you
know, actually, I think thattherapy is not actually an
unreasonable solution for thosepeople. I think that some of the
things that happen in therapy,and there is some evidence,
there's some now, some newermeta analyses and studies
looking at the extent to whichtherapy can lead to changes in

(47:07):
personality traits, and one thatit does seem to be related to
his changes in neuroticism. Andso I think that to the extent
that there are extreme, youknow, people have extreme scores
on these things. I think thatthat that can work. And then I
think it is possible that someof the things that we're
investigating, you know, theresearchers are investigating in
terms of happiness interventionsmight actually be interventions

(47:28):
for personality traits likeneuroticism. So if it is the
case that something like amindfulness intervention works,
you could see it working throughsome of the characteristics of
neuroticism, so not worrying somuch letting things go least not
ruminating about things. So it'spossible that some of the
interventions that people arepursuing will ultimately have

(47:50):
their effects through the impacton things like neuroticism,
there is some hope, at least,and some theories that would
suggest that by changing thoseways of thinking about the
world, that you'd be able tomake a difference in the on
those traits,

Morten Andersen (48:05):
what I hear from you is essentially you're
saying that the treadmill, it'sprobably not as stable as that
model is suggesting that you,you have a baseline and you
cannot do anything about that.
But I'm also not hearing thatyou can do something and
tomorrow, you are a completelydifferent person, you know that
it will take time and effort,and you can change it a little
bit. But it's it's probably notgoing to be dramatic. Is that?

(48:27):
Is that sort of where you standon this? Yeah, I

Richard Lucas (48:30):
think so. And the other thing I think, to keep in
mind is that because we haven'tfound the secret doesn't mean
that people aren't successful inchanging their happiness. And
again, part of my intuition,based on my reading of the
research, but also just, youknow, my observation of myself
and other people is that thesechanges are idiosyncratic. So I
think that sometimes peoplemight look at the literature on

(48:50):
happiness interventions and getreally discouraged about their
ability to change. It is worthtrying, the solution for you
might be different than thesolution for me. And the
interventions that people aretalking about may affect some
people, but not others. And so Ithink that kind of paying
attention to what are the thingsthat make people happy? And what

(49:11):
are the things that seem to beworking for them might be the
best approach and just in termsof, you know, learning about
possibilities, trying newthings, seeing what works for
them, and recognizing that thisis something that might take
some time and might be unique toyou. And it might not be quite
so general.

Morten Andersen (49:28):
When I read through the research and
literature on happiness andpersonality, one thing that
strikes me is the low level ofcorrelations. So when I worked
in finance, when we did thestatistical models, we didn't
look at anything below pointseven or point eight. And in
psychology, we're down to point2-3. And we're all happy and

(49:49):
just that sounds a little bitnerdy, but just for the
listeners. So correlationessentially just means how much
a second variable changes if wechange the first variable. So
for instance, Let's say that youincrease. So your change of of
neuroticism goes down. How muchdo your does your happiness
increase? And what is thecorrelations between these two,

(50:11):
and the correlation is actuallyreally, really low. So I think
it's point 14-15-16, orsomething on neuroticism, and
happiness. So how muchconfidence do we have in this
when it sort of boils down toit?

Richard Lucas (50:24):
Yeah, I think that that's a really important
point. And I mean, there'sdifferent ways of looking at
that. So I think people havebeen disappointed with the size
of some correlations. And to me,it makes perfect sense, because
we all have into differentintuitions about what things
matter, or we have intuitionsthe different things matter. So
for instance, I think the bestexample is with income. You
know, the correlation betweenincome and happiness is often

(50:47):
around point 1.5 or point 2, itjust seems like a very small
correlation. And peoplesometimes dismiss it as being an
important. But we would onlyexpect income to have a really,
really strong correlation, if itwas the only factor that
mattered. So if the correlationwas super high, then that would
mean that health couldn'tmatter. And it would mean that
social relationships couldn'tmatter. And it would mean that

(51:08):
how much you liked, your jobcouldn't matter. And so every
time we have another factor thatmatters, it's going to reduce
the correlation between incomeand happiness, because someone
could have a low income, buthave good relationships, good
health, and a job that theyliked. So to me, I think that
the small core, I think that thesmall correlations do have
implications for how we're ableto study these things, and what

(51:30):
types of methods that we'regoing to be able to use. And it
means that we have to be reallycareful about those methods. But
to me, the size of thecorrelations themselves just
reflects the fact that these arecomplicated things. And there's
complex factors that caninfluence us. And once we get
there, we have to have smallcorrelations.

Morten Andersen (51:47):
Great to finish off with, I always ask a
question, which is sort of topthree advice or do's and don'ts.
So if you should give ourlisteners sort of three good
advice to increase their levelof happiness, however hard and
was small that might be? Whatwould they be?

Richard Lucas (52:04):
So one again, just going back to what I said
earlier, is that I think thatfor the people that are really
low in happiness, I think thatsome of the things that we've
been talking about in terms ofstability, and these sorts of
things are not necessarilyrelevant to what they want to
do. And they're in those cases,I do think that, you know,
thinking about therapy, andthose sorts of things, I think,
could be really useful. And sothose people shouldn't get
discouraged or depressed by kindof the fact that you know, that

(52:27):
there is evidence for stability.
And I think that that would beone thing I think that people
could try in that case. A secondone is to kind of have a sense
of what you know, is what otherpeople are like. So I think that
we may have the sense that, youknow, if I'm not perfectly happy
all the time, that everybodyelse is always ecstatic. And so,
in some ways, I think people cankind of feel like, even if
they're fine, they might feellike they're missing something

(52:49):
by not being as happy as otherpeople. So I think one of the
things that is useful is just tolearn that very few people are a
10, out of 10, on these skills,lots of people kind of
experience on happiness, andworry and anxiety. And if that's
working for you in your life,and you're only a seven or an
eight, maybe you don't need tobe a nine or a 10. And so I
think sometimes actually justkind of not worrying about

(53:11):
worrying or not worrying aboutnot being happy enough, I think
can kind of make people focus onother things, which is
ultimately beneficial. And thenthe third piece of advice, then
I think, would be just to kindof think about the things that
are the biggest correlates. Andthat's where some of the other
strategies that we talked aboutbefore in terms of Mount it's
probably worth it to try makingsure that social relationships

(53:33):
are pretty good. It's probablyworth it to try to think about
things that you can be engagedin and find a sense of meaning,
even if we're not 100% sure thatthose are causal effects there.
I think that there's a goodchance they are, I think that
it's worth trying. And so thoseare the types of things that I
would try to spend my time on ifI was concerned about getting
happier.

Morten Andersen (53:53):
Fantastic.
Listen, Richard, thanks a lotfor taking the time to speak
with me. I really, reallyenjoyed this. I enjoyed your
book as well. I'll encourage mylisteners to to read your books.
I think they are fantastic.
Thanks a lot for your time andinsights.

Richard Lucas (54:06):
Great, thanks so much for having me

Morten Andersen (54:09):
thanks What a great interview, I took
three things away from my talkwith Richard one. Our level of
happiness is linked with ourpersonality, our personalities,
the pattern in our thoughts,beliefs, and behavior. Although
it may change slightly from dayto day, our personality is as a

(54:31):
whole quite stable over time.
The most tested and valid way tomeasure personality is the big
five, neuroticism, extraversion,openness, agreeableness, and
conscientiousness. And our scoreon those big five correlates
with our level of happiness. Inparticular, the higher your

(54:54):
score on extraversion andagreeableness and the lower your
score on the right The system,the more likely you are to be
happy to our personality and ourlevel of happiness is pretty
stable and quite heritable.
About 50% of our personality isgenetic. We know this from
extensive twin studies whereidentical twins separated at

(55:16):
birth I compared, I was notsurprised that our level of
personality was heritable. But Iwas surprised to learn that our
level of happiness was alsohighly heritable. About 40 to
50% of our level of happiness isgenetic. And three, we can
influence our base level ofhappiness. Although Richard is

(55:41):
not suggesting that it's easy tochange our level of happiness,
he does suggest three thingsthat you can do. One therapy
does work to manage your socialrelations and three, engage in
meaningful activities. theycorrelate well with happiness
and they will make a difference.

(56:02):
Richard has studied personalityand happiness for a long time
and he is right. We need to knowmore about what makes us happy.
Until next time, take care