The Art of Manliness - Can You Trust Happiness Studies？

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast

00:00:10.980 how to be happier is a topic covered in countless books blogs and podcasts consume enough this

00:00:16.760 content and you repeatedly come across the same recommendations that have reportedly been proven

00:00:21.540 to increase happiness exercise spend time in nature meditate socialize and practice gratitude

00:00:27.940 but is there actual scientific evidence that these strategies work today in the show we'll find

00:00:34.100 out what professor of social psychology elizabeth dunn discovered when she did a study of happiness

00:00:38.720 studies and what the surprising findings have to do with the replication crisis that's occurred in

00:00:43.320 science in the second half of our conversation elizabeth shares the takeaways of a few well-vetted 0.85

00:00:48.820 happiness studies she's done herself including how to spend your money and use technology to

00:00:53.280 increase happiness and we discuss how to apply these findings and the findings of all happiness

00:00:57.980 studies in a wise way that takes into account your unique personality and peculiarities after the show

00:01:03.800 is over check out our show notes at aom.is happiness studies

00:01:07.280 all right elizabeth dunn welcome to the show thanks so much for having me so you are a social psychologist

00:01:24.780 and you research how money time and technology shape our happiness and recently you and your colleagues did

00:01:33.080 a study and you looked at the most frequently recommended strategies on how to be happier

00:01:38.620 that we see in blog posts magazine articles podcasts etc you wanted to study do these actually work

00:01:46.120 so what were some of the strategies that you all looked at yeah so we found what were the most commonly

00:01:52.940 recommended strategies out there in media stories and those were practicing gratitude being more sociable

00:01:59.040 practicing mindfulness and meditation engaging in physical exercise and spending time in nature

00:02:06.380 okay and what were you looking at in this study so you know this project all started with a phone call

00:02:13.880 that i got from a reporter that i knew who was at the time at the atlantic and he asked me you know

00:02:19.560 how good is the evidence really for these strategies that you hear about all the time in the media as ways of

00:02:25.260 promote happiness and i actually hadn't worked on most of these strategies you know i'd never done work

00:02:30.560 on mindfulness and meditation or nature or anything like that and i had to admit i didn't really know

00:02:35.300 and not knowing things like bothers me so i wanted to find out but trying to find out was actually a

00:02:41.540 really hard thing to do because there's massive literature all of these different strategies but

00:02:47.020 fortunately i have this amazing amazing grad student named dunnigan folk who reads a book a week

00:02:51.220 he's just like the fastest best reader i have ever met in my life so he was totally up for

00:02:55.820 reading like every study that had ever been conducted on these topics and trying to assess them

00:03:03.220 through a kind of updated lens of you know rigorous research practices and so that's exactly what we did

00:03:09.840 comb through these literatures and just try to figure out you know how good is the evidence you know

00:03:15.760 according to contemporary standards of what constitutes good strong research

00:03:20.040 how good is the evidence for these strategies that we're seeing being recommended in the media all

00:03:24.140 the time okay so you're actually looking at the studies on these strategies to see if they're

00:03:28.960 actually good so what did your study of these happiness studies find well we found that there was

00:03:37.300 surprisingly little strong evidence for some of these widely recommended strategies in particular

00:03:44.680 there just wasn't great evidence for the value of spending time in nature engaging in meditation and

00:03:51.780 mindfulness practices or engaging in physical exercise as strategies for promoting happiness

00:03:57.540 we found a little bit better evidence when we looked at sociability so there's a little bit

00:04:03.520 stronger evidence for the value of being more sociable and we saw pretty decent evidence for the value of

00:04:09.700 practicing gratitude but i have to say i was pretty shocked by the lack of evidence lack of strong

00:04:17.340 evidence for some of these really frequently recommended approaches to increasing happiness okay so what you

00:04:23.540 found in your study is that while these studies purported to show that x behavior increases happiness

00:04:29.260 when you actually looked at the evidence the evidence didn't actually prove that effect and this doesn't mean

00:04:36.100 that you know that a certain strategy won't work for an individual person i mean there's there just

00:04:40.280 doesn't there just isn't evidence that on average these things work to increase happiness one thing that i

00:04:45.860 think is really important to recognize is that we were intentionally looking at strategies that could

00:04:51.780 promote happiness in the general population so some of these strategies things like exercise or meditation

00:04:57.080 can actually be prescribed to people to deal with certain kinds of clinical conditions so for example you might be

00:05:03.080 instructed by your therapist to engage in meditation if you have an anxiety disorder or perhaps exercise if

00:05:08.500 you're suffering from depression and we were not examining whether these strategies are effective in

00:05:14.240 treating specific clinical disorders so you know if you're somebody who's been prescribed meditation by your

00:05:20.260 therapist by all means carry on and continue all we're doing is trying to say okay for like the typical

00:05:25.960 person walking around on you know the average tuesday are these strategies likely to be effective in raising their

00:05:32.980 happiness so that's just a really important caveat that i want to emphasize so what was wrong with

00:05:38.680 those studies that lacked strong evidence how can they lack that strong evidence well you know the field

00:05:47.400 of behavioral science has changed dramatically over the past decade so you know i have really lived through

00:05:55.500 this scientific revolution where what constitutes strong evidence you know has changed substantially so

00:06:02.880 it used to be back in the day like when i was in grad school that behavioral scientists would run

00:06:08.200 studies with very small samples of people you know maybe 20 people in each condition and that would be

00:06:15.300 totally publishable and fine and everyone thought that was okay since then we've discovered that

00:06:21.640 actually when you run studies with such small samples they turn out to be really hard to replicate that is

00:06:26.880 when other people try and repeat your work and see the same effect if you've used a really small sample

00:06:32.040 that effect may just fail to come out again so what we've learned is sort of a basic thing but it's

00:06:37.060 super important is that in order to establish strong evidence for an effect you really do need to test

00:06:42.160 quite a lot of people and just to kind of give you a little bit of an idea of that like just to show

00:06:46.880 that men weigh more than women you would need 50 men and 50 women so that's like a pretty you know 1.00

00:06:54.760 basic effect you would think it's it's one of the easier things to detect you know interesting

00:06:59.400 psychological effects like what makes people happy are probably going to be a little harder to detect

00:07:04.360 and so you need more people and so we you know based on some fancy calculations that we did and some

00:07:10.720 recommendations from task force and stuff we said okay if you're going to run a typical study with a

00:07:16.100 couple different groups you're going to need more like you know 86 people per group to detect these

00:07:22.140 effects and actually that's quite a low bar like i'd really think behavioral scientists should

00:07:26.800 probably be running studies with more like 250 people per group so that was a big factor it's just

00:07:32.860 like looking at the sample sizes and going hey did this study actually have the kind of sample size

00:07:37.680 that would make us want to put faith in the results of the study so that was one of our key factors

00:07:44.720 is this part of this replication crisis that's been happening in the social sciences

00:07:49.340 yeah so the the replication crisis is something that i think sort of we all became aware of in

00:07:58.260 behavioral science around 2011 or so there was kind of a confluence of events that all happened right

00:08:04.640 around that time in particular a paper got published purporting to show that people can see into the

00:08:11.460 future and this paper was published in one of the top journals in the field and it seemed to follow

00:08:18.180 all of the same kinds of research practices that everybody was following and so if you can follow

00:08:24.260 standard research practices in a field and show that people can see the future either we've really

00:08:29.140 misunderstood like the whole world and people really can see the future or maybe there's something

00:08:35.720 wrong with the research practices that everybody's using so that was one of the big sort of events

00:08:43.020 that helped to set off this whole replication crisis and then you know people started trying to replicate

00:08:49.620 other findings other important findings in behavioral science and finding uh-oh like lots of effects that

00:08:56.680 we thought were real and reliable don't turn out to replicate and so then the next step was we'll

00:09:02.780 diagnose this problem like figure out what's going wrong and you know the beautiful sort of story of the

00:09:10.140 replication crisis is that it's really turned into what some people call a credibility revolution

00:09:15.980 that is we went from having this crisis to like figuring out what was wrong fixing the way that we

00:09:22.280 did research and now i think the field is just so much stronger and we have new standards for what's

00:09:28.600 considered rigorous research and so one piece of that is making sure that we have enough people in our

00:09:35.720 studies to really provide reliable and replicable results that is to find effects that then other

00:09:42.820 labs can go and test and find the same thing well you don't just see this in social science you can

00:09:48.200 also see this in health science as well where people you'll see a study being touted in the popular

00:09:54.620 press about if you know x food boosts longevity or whatever and then you actually look at the study and

00:10:00.980 they just looked at maybe 15 people you know well maybe i mean maybe i could just be like random that

00:10:07.380 a certain amount of people saw improvements in longevity because they ate x food so it doesn't

00:10:12.200 just apply to social science you see this across science as well absolutely and that's so important

00:10:16.600 to emphasize and you know this has been the replication crisis has been a very big issue for example in

00:10:23.040 cancer research it's even touched you know fields like physics so this is not something that is at all

00:10:28.780 limited to behavioral science if anything i think what's special maybe about social psychology is

00:10:34.980 that social psychologists have played a really lead role in trying to tackle the crisis to be like

00:10:40.820 okay we've got a problem we're gonna fix it and to me you know i just really love science and one of

00:10:46.200 the things that i love about science is that it is self-correcting right so the idea of science is not

00:10:51.300 that we get everything right or that we always come to the correct answer the first time we try

00:10:55.700 but rather that we don't just accept things on faith and when we realize we have a problem

00:11:00.040 we try to fix it and that we're all in the business of trying to correct ourselves and correct each

00:11:05.500 other and i think that's actually happened in my field and it's been you know as difficult as it was

00:11:11.340 to live through the replication crisis living through the sort of second chapter of this credibility

00:11:16.020 revolution has been really inspiring besides the happiness studies are there any other popular

00:11:21.640 pieces of psychological advice that haven't held up under closer scrutiny there are a lot of effects

00:11:29.140 that have been called into question as a result of the replication crisis so just a couple of

00:11:34.180 examples one is the idea of stereotype threat so this is the idea that just being aware of a stereotype

00:11:42.200 about your group can imperial performance so for example if you kind of reminded me that i'm a woman

00:11:47.600 and that there's a stereotype that women aren't good at math that that could actually undermine my 0.99

00:11:52.600 performance on a subsequent math test it's a really compelling and interesting idea but it's

00:11:57.860 certainly been thrown into doubt by the replication crisis another one that i've heard about is the idea

00:12:04.440 of priming people right if you like give someone a hot beverage then they're going to feel more warm

00:12:11.420 to other people and i think recent research has said probably not not as strong as we think it is

00:12:18.200 that's right and i think you know some of the effects that were sort of the you know coolest

00:12:25.840 like oh wow that's so amazing that that's true like it's unbelievable it's like yeah it is unbelievable

00:12:32.560 it's not true it's something else i think contributed to the replication crisis i kind of sometimes i get

00:12:38.380 nostalgic for that period you know from 2005 to 2017 ish where all these books were coming out from

00:12:46.400 the social sciences about well if you do this thing it can improve your life i think what also was going

00:12:51.340 on there was sort of an incentive amongst professors it wasn't like these professors weren't they weren't

00:12:57.480 being evil or anything but there was an incentive there if they came up with a cool study that showed

00:13:02.240 you this counterintuitive idea if you do x it'll give you this x benefit where you get a ted talk

00:13:07.100 and then that could give you a book deal that will you know you could sell millions of copies and then

00:13:12.200 you can go on the the speaking circuit and so it may have contributed to people doing not so great

00:13:19.160 studies i think that's right and i think it's also really important the point that you made about

00:13:24.800 you know in not necessarily being intentional now there are people who do fake data like they literally

00:13:32.700 make stuff up right and that is fraud it is terrible it's i think relatively rare maybe not as rare as

00:13:41.940 people would like to think but it's certainly not that common in contrast the much more common problem

00:13:48.640 is what some folks call p hacking where you kind of massage your data a little bit so you play with

00:13:57.140 different ways of doing the analyses you could think of it like you know a scientist shoots a

00:14:03.400 bunch of darts at the wall and then draws the bullseye around you know wherever the dart happened

00:14:09.960 to land and yells you know eureka i found what i was looking for right so the idea is you can kind of

00:14:15.840 analyze the data a whole bunch of different ways and then something's probably going to come out if you

00:14:20.520 conduct you know hundreds of different analyses on the same data set you're probably going to get

00:14:24.120 something and then you just publish that and don't transparently report all the other ways that you

00:14:30.600 looked at the data and again that sounds bad but honestly it used to be considered sort of best practice

00:14:36.500 in the field so i remember when i was a graduate student a faculty member who i've never published

00:14:41.520 anything with so i'm not outing anybody here but a faculty member who i'd worked with on a project

00:14:46.180 i came into his office and i said you know the study didn't work that i that we did with you

00:14:50.780 and he said oh no one's ever come into my office and said that the study worked go back and analyze

00:14:57.200 your data better right so i was basically being told as this new grad student you know go do a

00:15:02.680 better job analyzing your data try analyzing in different ways you will find the effect if you

00:15:07.120 look hard enough and so this was really i think a fundamental misunderstanding you know we were thinking

00:15:13.740 of ourselves as kind of being like archaeologists chipping away at the dust and the dirt and sediment

00:15:20.480 to get to the true fossil that was really lying there and in fact we were more like sculptors

00:15:26.400 creating an image out of stone that never existed until we came along and made it ourselves so again i

00:15:35.060 think that's sort of in a really important distinction to recognize and the interesting

00:15:39.940 thing with p hacking is that unless you have a way of stopping it it's going to happen because it's

00:15:45.940 just human nature to like try to thoroughly explore what's going on and then to have this motivation to

00:15:52.160 see the the way the analysis came out as being oh yeah that it makes sense that i would analyze the

00:15:56.880 data that way i mean of course we should control for gender because there turned out to be gender 0.94

00:16:00.920 differences on this variable so it totally makes sense that i should control for gender but i've just

00:16:05.940 seen that oh yeah the analysis comes out significant when i control for gender it doesn't if i leave

00:16:10.640 gender out so gosh i sure i sure i'm motivated to to get gender in there and so the the wonderful

00:16:16.820 new ish thing that's come into our field is what's called pre-registration where we say publicly here's

00:16:25.700 the study i'm going to do here's how i'm going to conduct the analyses and then i have to stick to that

00:16:31.940 or i have to be transparent and saying okay actually the analyses that i plan to do did not work but here are

00:16:37.440 some exploratory analyses that i'm doing and then everybody can see and kind of evaluate you know

00:16:42.600 what i really did and what i really found and so in our review what we wanted to do was to look for

00:16:48.020 studies that were not only had a decent sample size but we also looked for studies that were

00:16:53.700 pre-registered where people were committing to these analysis plans and therefore you know their hands

00:16:59.860 were tied they could not really engage in p hacking or at least we could tell if they were because they

00:17:05.500 had transparently committed to their analysis plans ahead of time do you have any recommendations on

00:17:11.680 how a layperson should approach research-backed psychological advice that they encounter in the

00:17:17.020 popular press i think people should be very skeptical if all they've seen is you know study shows x and x

00:17:26.840 seems really surprising and counterintuitive you know dig deeper and so a good a first question that i

00:17:33.240 would encourage people to ask is were participants in this study randomly assigned to condition so this

00:17:41.220 is very important because many studies out there are simply correlational so for example i might find

00:17:47.420 that people who eat more organic fruit and vegetables are happier than people who don't buy organic

00:17:53.580 and the discovery might be like eating organic makes you happier right but importantly that study

00:18:00.600 was just correlational i just showed that there was an association between buying organic vegetables

00:18:06.860 and happiness and of course the fact that you bought organic is probably correlated with lots of other

00:18:12.820 things including for example income you know wealthier people are probably going to be more able to buy

00:18:18.400 expensive organic produce for example and it might be really that income is related to happiness we know

00:18:24.040 that's true and that um organic vegetables is just like coming along for the ride and that you know if you started

00:18:30.780 eating more organic vegetables that wouldn't make you happier the truth is you would need to like have a lot more

00:18:36.300 money in order to get happier and so that's sort of the first bar that i would really encourage people to look at

00:18:41.220 it's just like were people randomly assigned a condition or was this a correlation and right there like that's

00:18:46.100 probably the biggest way of scraping aside lots of you know misleading headlines is just to look for that

00:18:53.600 and then the next more advanced step would be to think about you know look at the sample size right so when you

00:19:00.200 do see oh it was only 15 people or 25 people in a study be a little skeptical again it varies on in terms of

00:19:08.500 exactly what researchers are studying but if i were to give people just a really simple rule of thumb

00:19:12.700 i want to see like hundreds of people in a study before i put too much faith in it okay and this

00:19:19.660 this is actually useful advice for looking at any scientific study where you're getting some sort of

00:19:23.980 lifestyle advice health advice etc yeah and again it would vary a bit and there's certain things where

00:19:30.020 we just can't run experiments so for example it's pretty tough to you know look at for example whether

00:19:37.320 people who buy organic vegetables live longer because we'd have to wait like 30 years to find

00:19:44.180 out what happens and by that time you know it's kind of late right so there's some things where we it's

00:19:49.440 just like the nature of the question is limited to these correlational methods but when there's something

00:19:55.420 we can ask with an experiment like you know after two months of buying organic are you happier we can

00:20:01.980 absolutely study that with an experiment and so if it's just a correlational study that is getting

00:20:08.000 reported we want to be really careful in over and not putting too much weight on that especially if

00:20:14.200 we're going to make you know costly lifestyle choices on the basis of that finding we're going to take a

00:20:20.780 quick break for your words from our sponsors

00:20:22.220 and now back to the show well besides doing you know researching happiness studies and whether

00:20:32.180 these happiness strategies are effective you've done your own research on what makes us happy

00:20:38.220 particularly looking at how we spend our time our money how we interact with technology how these can

00:20:45.000 contribute or take away from our happiness so for example your research has found that buying time

00:20:50.660 is a great way money can bring us happiness so how can buying time bring us happiness and then what

00:20:57.900 keeps people from doing that yeah so one of the interesting discoveries just sort of from correlational

00:21:05.020 research is that wealthier people don't always use their time in happier ways and even in some studies of

00:21:13.500 really affluent folks research suggests that people may choose not to buy time so when we say buy

00:21:20.580 time what we mean is using money to buy your way out of doing the stuff that you hate so for example

00:21:27.780 for me i am like terrible at cleaning it takes me like an atrocious amount of time just to clean our

00:21:35.200 teeny tiny kitchen for example and even just thinking about it kind of fills me with dread and so for me

00:21:41.560 you know even this year where i'm taking a spaticle and so i'm actually making a lot less money than i normally

00:21:47.400 do i'm going to keep our cleaners because they give me back time in this really valuable way

00:21:53.400 and so along with my former student ashley willans who's now a professor at harvard business school

00:21:58.740 we conducted a pre-registered experiment in which we basically gave people money and half the time we

00:22:07.040 told them to spend it in a way that would buy them time and half the time we told them to spend it on a

00:22:13.260 material thing and what we found is that people felt better on the weekend where we told them to

00:22:18.900 buy themselves some time rather than buying a material thing so this suggests that using your

00:22:25.380 money to buy your way out of the like terrible ways of spending time to buy yourself a little bit more

00:22:31.180 time can be a pretty good strategy for promoting happiness but you also have done research that people

00:22:37.080 feel guilty about buying time why is that yeah i mean i think this is really interesting you know

00:22:42.820 one of the things we see kind of over and over again is that when you tell people hey you know i'm

00:22:48.360 going to give you some money and i want you to spend it on a way in a way that will make you happier

00:22:51.860 rarely actually do they say that they're going to use it in a way that will buy them time and so we

00:22:57.840 wanted to find out why that might be and i think there's a few barriers but one barrier is just this

00:23:03.160 feeling of guilt that comes with buying time and the thing about buying time is that usually what

00:23:08.480 we're buying our way out of are tasks that we fully well could do ourselves right so like i hate it i'm

00:23:15.240 not great at it but i am capable of cleaning my own house and so i might feel a little bit of guilt about

00:23:22.020 paying somebody else to do that for me in contrast you know i'm not going to feel guilty about like

00:23:27.960 paying a dentist to fill a cavity for me because that's not something i could or should do on my

00:23:34.460 own right but because these are tasks that almost by definition people are capable of doing themselves

00:23:40.480 there is this potential for a feeling of guilt about paying someone else to do it and we see some

00:23:46.920 evidence that that feeling of guilt can kind of serve as a barrier that prevents people even if they

00:23:52.780 could afford it from using their money to buy their way out of the tasks that they hate doing

00:23:57.520 so buying time could be hiring a cleaner be hiring a lawn service for example and i have a lawn service

00:24:05.880 and i remember initially i felt kind of guilty about it but then i just realized oh my gosh like it takes

00:24:11.020 me an hour and a half to mow my yard on my own the edging and the you know doing the leaf blower to get

00:24:17.380 all the grass clippings out of the way make everything look sharp and then this lawn crew comes in and they

00:24:22.340 knock it out in 15 minutes right and it's like why am i spending an hour and a half to two hours

00:24:28.700 doing this and i think part of it's like well you know i did this when i was a kid i should keep doing

00:24:34.320 it now but you know i could spend my time doing something else besides spending an hour and a half

00:24:40.020 mowing the yard that's right and i think you know sometimes when i talk about this research

00:24:45.220 somebody will raise their hand and say but i like mowing my lawn like yes my time is worth three

00:24:51.080 hundred dollars an hour and i would be like smarter to pay someone else to do this for me but like

00:24:55.900 it gives me a sense of satisfaction and so for the tasks that you enjoy doing i mean i think you

00:25:01.120 should absolutely do them i my stepfather like loves vacuuming for some reason that i find completely

00:25:06.260 inexplicable but he should by all means carry on right if it's satisfying great but you know it's about

00:25:12.640 paying attention to those tasks that you know not only do you dislike doing them but maybe you

00:25:18.680 procrastinate or you just feel like oh when you think about the fact that like this is going to be

00:25:23.260 what your saturday afternoon entails and so those are the tasks where it's really great to go in and

00:25:28.900 surgically say wait a second could i use some money to remove these tasks from my life could i make

00:25:36.540 my saturday way better by spending that afternoon you know playing with my kids or catching up with

00:25:43.520 old friends or getting outside for a bit to play tennis with someone or you know something like that

00:25:49.020 as opposed to you know battling the lawn and so one strategy i would encourage people to do is if you

00:25:54.760 are going to buy time think about like what are you going to then use that time for you know make that

00:26:00.900 time maybe be special or think about as a kind of windfall of time that then you can use in a really

00:26:07.220 positive way to potentially max out those benefits so yeah if you're gonna use that free time to just

00:26:13.820 you know scroll your phone you'd probably be better off just doing the thing so make sure you actually

00:26:19.560 have better things to do if you're gonna buy your time and as you said you know just buy time with the

00:26:26.300 tasks you personally don't like and that's going to vary from person to person it's like i outsource

00:26:32.140 our lawn care but we clean our own house and we we do it as a family because you know i don't mind

00:26:37.560 doing it and i also think it's important for our kids to have some chores around the house so there

00:26:42.640 isn't a one size fits all with this idea that's right and i do think that's sort of one problem with

00:26:48.460 some happiness recommendations is when they are too broad so if i said you know just buy your way out of

00:26:53.880 everything right that wouldn't be good advice it's instead like pay careful attention to the tasks

00:27:00.920 that for you personally you find really unpleasant and think about what better thing you could do with

00:27:08.260 that time if you bought your way out of it that's going to be a sort of much more i think effective

00:27:14.120 and potentially more sort of personalized approach to considering how to go from you know the research

00:27:20.340 out there to actually applying this in your own life yeah that's another bit of advice on taking

00:27:25.140 advice you have to take into account your personal personality your situation in order to figure out

00:27:31.800 is this advice actually going to help me and the author also to remember a lot of these studies

00:27:36.080 they're based on averages right so it might work for the average person which is sort of this

00:27:41.660 statistical thing that you know the researchers put together but it might you might be an outlier

00:27:47.180 you got to take into account your own personal peculiarities about yourself that's right and i

00:27:52.220 think this is such an important point you know going back to our study of studies looking at these

00:27:57.420 different strategies for promoting happiness you know i as a very avid sort of fitness nut was

00:28:05.080 really surprised by the lack of strong evidence supporting the happiness benefits of exercise but i actually

00:28:11.380 know that for me going running substantially improves my mood and so i kind of thought before this must

00:28:19.140 be true for everybody right like this must be a really reliable effect that would be super easy to

00:28:23.140 detect and so the fact that it isn't you know points to this variability and i was chatting with my

00:28:28.940 mother-in-law about our work and she was like thank you for publishing this paper because exercise never

00:28:34.700 puts me in a better mood like if anything it puts me in a worse mood and i was like oh that's interesting

00:28:39.320 like it just points to you know how much variability there is and so to some extent one thing that i

00:28:44.900 think is just a really helpful recommendation is to experiment on yourself right like try these

00:28:50.460 different things and so for example if you think well you know spending more time in nature that might

00:28:55.020 that might be worth trying for me go spend more time in nature and just pay attention to how you feel

00:29:00.380 afterward and if it's something that is making you happier that's really good to know and then even like

00:29:06.200 noticing what particular aspects is it being alone in nature that you find really helpful is it being

00:29:12.600 with a few other people in nature is it sort of that 10 minute nature walk or is it like lying down in

00:29:18.100 the forest and gazing up at the trees for an hour you know we can figure these things out for ourselves

00:29:22.820 but often people don't because we don't necessarily pay close attention to the factors that are shaping

00:29:27.940 our moods okay so spending money to buy time will likely could make you happy some people they actually

00:29:34.160 enjoy doing those things mowing the lawn cleaning house you got to figure out what works for you

00:29:37.880 you also done research about how spending our money on others can make us happy what's going on there

00:29:44.420 yeah so this is one of the findings that's kind of most near and dear to my heart it's something

00:29:49.440 that we started working on sort of way back in the day around 2008 and one of our first studies on

00:29:55.680 this topic we actually went out on our campus at the university of british columbia

00:29:59.620 and literally handed people money so we gave them either a five or twenty dollar bill which we asked

00:30:04.680 them to spend by the end of the day and then we called them back i'm sorry and i should say we also

00:30:09.280 told half of the people that they had to spend this money in a way that benefited others we told half

00:30:14.700 the people they had to spend this money in a way that benefited themselves and then we called them

00:30:18.740 back at the end of the day and basically asked them how happy they had felt that day and what we

00:30:24.280 discovered was that people felt happier on a day where they had used this money to benefit others

00:30:29.160 compared to other folks who had been told to use the money to benefit themselves now importantly that

00:30:35.080 was a very small study not pre-registered but since then we've gone back and using various kinds of

00:30:43.500 methodologies we have been able to successfully replicate this kind of core effect with much larger

00:30:50.200 samples using pre-registration and what we see is that on average people do seem to get more

00:30:57.100 happiness from using money in ways that benefit others rather than themselves are there any

00:31:03.740 conditions that need to be in place in order to get that happiness from spending money on others

00:31:08.360 yeah so it's certainly not the case that everybody everywhere all the time feels happier from spending

00:31:14.620 their money on others and so we have been able to identify at least some of the conditions that seem to

00:31:19.080 be important in turning good deeds into these good feelings and i would say the most important

00:31:25.100 one is that it's really important to be able to see the impact that your generosity is having on

00:31:33.080 somebody else so for example you know often we might go on to some charitable website and you know make

00:31:41.920 a donation and we hope that we're doing some good but it's really hard to have any insight into how

00:31:48.920 we're actually making a difference at the other end of the spectrum you can think of for example

00:31:53.360 you know buying a gift for a friend and giving it to them and their face lights up and they're so

00:31:59.680 happy and it's exactly what they wanted and you feel great right and so that sort of ability to either

00:32:06.140 directly see or at least vividly imagine how your generosity has made a difference is is really

00:32:12.880 important and i think this is a particularly key lesson for folks who are working on charitable campaigns

00:32:21.160 to recognize that you know it's this really wonderful beautiful thing about humans as a species that we

00:32:27.780 can derive joy from giving to others but again it's not automatic we need to be able to get that window

00:32:33.640 into how we're making a difference and the more sort of real and precise and vivid and immediate that it

00:32:38.860 can be the better and so this can look like you know something as simple as just telling people

00:32:44.140 you know for example the charity spread the net tells people for every ten dollars you donate we will buy

00:32:51.100 one bed net to protect a child from malaria and so that kind of a clear promise enables people to really

00:33:00.320 have a sense of how they're making a difference you know other charities have done this in really

00:33:04.740 interesting ways by for example enabling people to see exactly the individual that they're giving to

00:33:11.140 for example you can give to like a specific teacher in a specific classroom to help them you know buy

00:33:18.200 microscopes for underprivileged kids and enable them to do this whole really cool you know project about

00:33:25.560 pond life or something you know and having those kinds of details really makes a difference in terms of

00:33:31.080 our ability to vividly understand how we're making a difference so i think that's probably you know the

00:33:36.860 number one key i think takeaway that's that i think is worth applying from this work another is just

00:33:42.980 that we're more likely to feel good about giving when we feel a real sense of connection with the

00:33:47.880 people or the cause that we're helping so you know i know in the wake of the disastrous fires in maui

00:33:55.660 one of my friends is quite close and connected to people in hawaii and so it's been really important

00:34:00.920 to her to give to folks there because she does feel a real sense of connection with that place and with

00:34:06.520 those people and so it's much more emotionally resonant even though she recognizes it would

00:34:11.300 probably be equally important to give to other areas of the world or other folks that have

00:34:15.580 experienced disasters it's particularly resonant for her to give to those people because she feels

00:34:21.480 a sense of connection with them so you've also done research on the role technology can play in our

00:34:27.500 happiness so first how can technology sap our happiness what does your research say

00:34:32.160 yes so what we see is that the problem with technology we focus specifically on smartphones

00:34:38.520 we started doing this work when we noticed as people who study social interactions and happiness

00:34:44.120 we noticed that suddenly there was like this new player in the room you know around 2010 or a little

00:34:50.380 before where everybody was having these social interactions but also with each other in person but also

00:34:55.760 engaging with their phones and so we realized that for one thing these smartphones might create a form of

00:35:03.700 distraction that would undermine people's ability to really fully connect with close others around

00:35:10.860 them and for example we did an experiment where we basically took over the table of a local cafe for

00:35:17.060 about six months and we would invite people in to have dinner on our tab with their friends or family

00:35:23.580 and we would subtly slip in an instruction either for them to have their phones out and available

00:35:29.020 during the meal or to just go ahead and put them away during the course of the meal and what we

00:35:33.920 discovered even though this instruction was really subtle and people didn't know that this was what the

00:35:37.600 study was about what we discovered was that people felt more distracted during the meal when they had

00:35:43.800 their phones out and available compared to when they were put away and that this did have an impact on how much

00:35:48.520 they enjoyed the whole experience so you know a simple takeaway tip is like for the love of god just

00:35:54.300 put away your phones if you're having dinner with friends and family it will make a little bit of a

00:35:58.280 difference and it's such an easy thing to do so so that's one sort of way in which technology and

00:36:03.560 smartphones specifically can kind of undermine our social interactions is just by creating a sense of

00:36:08.340 distraction we also find that smartphones can lead people to just not even engage with those around

00:36:16.220 them particularly with you know the strangers surrounding them they'll turn to their phones

00:36:20.560 for information and entertainment rather than engaging with people around them so for example

00:36:26.440 in a new study that we just published we actually brought people groups of students into our lab

00:36:31.220 and we had a big game of giant jenga set up so they could like play giant jenga if they wanted to but

00:36:36.780 they didn't have to they could also just sit around and we either had everybody put all of their stuff

00:36:41.440 into a locked cabinet beforehand or we had people put all their stuff in the locked cabinet but they

00:36:46.160 could hold on to their phones and what we discovered is that when people had their phones

00:36:50.600 they were less likely to engage with each other to for example you know start playing this game and

00:36:57.180 really like chatting with the other folks in the room and they ended up enjoying this whole experience

00:37:02.480 a little bit less as a result of you know those interactions being kind of less likely to occur

00:37:07.980 or occurring to less of an extent because people could just be like yo I'm sitting here in a room

00:37:13.380 with some random people you know I'm just gonna like hop onto social media or I'm gonna do whatever

00:37:19.440 on my scroll through my phone rather than chatting with these you know strangers who are actually

00:37:24.760 potential friends you know they're at the same university during this you know little in this

00:37:29.200 kind of lab room that we'd set up to be like a romper room you know something place where you can

00:37:33.500 engage with people or not phones seem to make a difference so my kind of takeaway there is that if you

00:37:38.060 were organizing you know like a back to school event perhaps organizing some kind of like cocktail

00:37:43.080 party mixer if you can find a subtle way to get people to not have their phones they will be more

00:37:48.720 likely to engage with strangers and enjoy the event okay anything in your research that's found that

00:37:55.540 technology or smartphones can help boost positive social engagements well the upside of technology is that

00:38:04.120 it can provide us with information and entertainment and so what we see for example in one study we sent

00:38:09.880 people out on campus to try to find a building that they were not familiar with and most of them were

00:38:15.480 able to do this most of them got to the building but people who had their smartphones got there a little

00:38:22.100 faster and they were in a better mood because this task was just easier the cost though was that they

00:38:29.120 didn't ask anybody for help they just used their phones and so they did feel a little bit less

00:38:34.320 socially connected so the cost in terms of smartphone use seems to be missing out on these in-person

00:38:40.700 social interactions now of course you might think well the good thing with phones is they make it really

00:38:45.200 easy to stay connected to people we care about like I have a group of friends that we're always kind of

00:38:50.120 texting each other and that does make me feel a nice sense of connection interestingly though in some

00:38:56.220 research that other folks have conducted such as Susan Holtzman she finds that text-based

00:39:02.300 interactions don't seem to be as satisfying as in-person interactions so I think the takeaway here

00:39:07.560 is like if you're sitting by yourself in a waiting room it would be better to have your phone and be able to

00:39:14.000 like entertain yourself maybe text some friends but if you're sitting around a waiting room with people

00:39:19.520 that are like potential future colleagues or fellow students at a university or something you're probably

00:39:25.120 better off chatting with those people than engaging with your phone well Elizabeth this has been a

00:39:29.740 great conversation where can people go to learn more about your work if they're interested in money

00:39:35.220 and happiness and how they can get more happiness out of their money whether they have a little or a lot

00:39:40.400 of it my book happy money co-authored with Michael Norton is a great place to look they can also follow

00:39:46.880 me on x at done happy lab and all of my work is also as much as possible we make it freely available

00:39:54.480 on my website so just google my name Elizabeth Dunn and it'll should University of British Columbia and

00:40:00.600 that should pop right up for you fantastic well Elizabeth Dunn thanks for your time it's been a pleasure

00:40:04.400 oh thanks for having me my guest today was Elizabeth Dunn she is the author of the book happy money it's

00:40:10.340 available on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you can find more information about her work at her

00:40:14.240 website dunn.psych.ubc.ca also check out our show notes at aom.is slash happiness studies

00:40:21.420 where you can find links to resources we delve deeper into this topic

00:40:23.940 well that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast make sure to check out our website at

00:40:35.280 artofmanly.com where you find our podcast archives as well as thousands of articles that we've written

00:40:39.520 over the years about pretty much anything you'd think of and if you haven't done so already I'd appreciate

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00:40:51.300 think would get something out of it as always thank you for the continued support and until next time

00:40:55.400 this is Brett McKay reminding you to not listen to AOM podcast but put what you've heard into action

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The Art of Manliness - September 25, 2023

Can You Trust Happiness Studies？

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