Can You Trust Happiness Studies？
Episode Stats
Summary
How to be happier is a topic covered in countless books, blogs, blogs and podcasts, and you repeatedly come across the same recommendations that have reportedly been proven to increase happiness: spend time in nature, meditate, socialize, and practice gratitude. But is there actual scientific evidence that these strategies work? In the show, we'll find out what Professor of Social Psychology Elizabeth Dunn discovered when she did a study of happiness studies, and what the surprising findings have to do with the replication crisis that s occurred in science.
Transcript
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brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast
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how to be happier is a topic covered in countless books blogs and podcasts consume enough this
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content and you repeatedly come across the same recommendations that have reportedly been proven
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to increase happiness exercise spend time in nature meditate socialize and practice gratitude
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but is there actual scientific evidence that these strategies work today in the show we'll find
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out what professor of social psychology elizabeth dunn discovered when she did a study of happiness
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studies and what the surprising findings have to do with the replication crisis that's occurred in
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science in the second half of our conversation elizabeth shares the takeaways of a few well-vetted
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happiness studies she's done herself including how to spend your money and use technology to
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increase happiness and we discuss how to apply these findings and the findings of all happiness
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studies in a wise way that takes into account your unique personality and peculiarities after the show
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is over check out our show notes at aom.is happiness studies
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all right elizabeth dunn welcome to the show thanks so much for having me so you are a social psychologist
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and you research how money time and technology shape our happiness and recently you and your colleagues did
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a study and you looked at the most frequently recommended strategies on how to be happier
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that we see in blog posts magazine articles podcasts etc you wanted to study do these actually work
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so what were some of the strategies that you all looked at yeah so we found what were the most commonly
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recommended strategies out there in media stories and those were practicing gratitude being more sociable
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practicing mindfulness and meditation engaging in physical exercise and spending time in nature
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okay and what were you looking at in this study so you know this project all started with a phone call
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that i got from a reporter that i knew who was at the time at the atlantic and he asked me you know
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how good is the evidence really for these strategies that you hear about all the time in the media as ways of
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promote happiness and i actually hadn't worked on most of these strategies you know i'd never done work
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on mindfulness and meditation or nature or anything like that and i had to admit i didn't really know
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and not knowing things like bothers me so i wanted to find out but trying to find out was actually a
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really hard thing to do because there's massive literature all of these different strategies but
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fortunately i have this amazing amazing grad student named dunnigan folk who reads a book a week
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he's just like the fastest best reader i have ever met in my life so he was totally up for
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reading like every study that had ever been conducted on these topics and trying to assess them
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through a kind of updated lens of you know rigorous research practices and so that's exactly what we did
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comb through these literatures and just try to figure out you know how good is the evidence you know
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according to contemporary standards of what constitutes good strong research
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how good is the evidence for these strategies that we're seeing being recommended in the media all
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the time okay so you're actually looking at the studies on these strategies to see if they're
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actually good so what did your study of these happiness studies find well we found that there was
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surprisingly little strong evidence for some of these widely recommended strategies in particular
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there just wasn't great evidence for the value of spending time in nature engaging in meditation and
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mindfulness practices or engaging in physical exercise as strategies for promoting happiness
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we found a little bit better evidence when we looked at sociability so there's a little bit
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stronger evidence for the value of being more sociable and we saw pretty decent evidence for the value of
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practicing gratitude but i have to say i was pretty shocked by the lack of evidence lack of strong
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evidence for some of these really frequently recommended approaches to increasing happiness okay so what you
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found in your study is that while these studies purported to show that x behavior increases happiness
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when you actually looked at the evidence the evidence didn't actually prove that effect and this doesn't mean
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that you know that a certain strategy won't work for an individual person i mean there's there just
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doesn't there just isn't evidence that on average these things work to increase happiness one thing that i
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think is really important to recognize is that we were intentionally looking at strategies that could
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promote happiness in the general population so some of these strategies things like exercise or meditation
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can actually be prescribed to people to deal with certain kinds of clinical conditions so for example you might be
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instructed by your therapist to engage in meditation if you have an anxiety disorder or perhaps exercise if
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you're suffering from depression and we were not examining whether these strategies are effective in
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treating specific clinical disorders so you know if you're somebody who's been prescribed meditation by your
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therapist by all means carry on and continue all we're doing is trying to say okay for like the typical
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person walking around on you know the average tuesday are these strategies likely to be effective in raising their
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happiness so that's just a really important caveat that i want to emphasize so what was wrong with
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those studies that lacked strong evidence how can they lack that strong evidence well you know the field
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of behavioral science has changed dramatically over the past decade so you know i have really lived through
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this scientific revolution where what constitutes strong evidence you know has changed substantially so
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it used to be back in the day like when i was in grad school that behavioral scientists would run
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studies with very small samples of people you know maybe 20 people in each condition and that would be
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totally publishable and fine and everyone thought that was okay since then we've discovered that
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actually when you run studies with such small samples they turn out to be really hard to replicate that is
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when other people try and repeat your work and see the same effect if you've used a really small sample
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that effect may just fail to come out again so what we've learned is sort of a basic thing but it's
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super important is that in order to establish strong evidence for an effect you really do need to test
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quite a lot of people and just to kind of give you a little bit of an idea of that like just to show
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that men weigh more than women you would need 50 men and 50 women so that's like a pretty you know
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basic effect you would think it's it's one of the easier things to detect you know interesting
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psychological effects like what makes people happy are probably going to be a little harder to detect
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and so you need more people and so we you know based on some fancy calculations that we did and some
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recommendations from task force and stuff we said okay if you're going to run a typical study with a
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couple different groups you're going to need more like you know 86 people per group to detect these
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effects and actually that's quite a low bar like i'd really think behavioral scientists should
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probably be running studies with more like 250 people per group so that was a big factor it's just
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like looking at the sample sizes and going hey did this study actually have the kind of sample size
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that would make us want to put faith in the results of the study so that was one of our key factors
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is this part of this replication crisis that's been happening in the social sciences
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yeah so the the replication crisis is something that i think sort of we all became aware of in
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behavioral science around 2011 or so there was kind of a confluence of events that all happened right
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around that time in particular a paper got published purporting to show that people can see into the
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future and this paper was published in one of the top journals in the field and it seemed to follow
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all of the same kinds of research practices that everybody was following and so if you can follow
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standard research practices in a field and show that people can see the future either we've really
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misunderstood like the whole world and people really can see the future or maybe there's something
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wrong with the research practices that everybody's using so that was one of the big sort of events
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that helped to set off this whole replication crisis and then you know people started trying to replicate
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other findings other important findings in behavioral science and finding uh-oh like lots of effects that
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we thought were real and reliable don't turn out to replicate and so then the next step was we'll
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diagnose this problem like figure out what's going wrong and you know the beautiful sort of story of the
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replication crisis is that it's really turned into what some people call a credibility revolution
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that is we went from having this crisis to like figuring out what was wrong fixing the way that we
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did research and now i think the field is just so much stronger and we have new standards for what's
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considered rigorous research and so one piece of that is making sure that we have enough people in our
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studies to really provide reliable and replicable results that is to find effects that then other
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labs can go and test and find the same thing well you don't just see this in social science you can
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also see this in health science as well where people you'll see a study being touted in the popular
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press about if you know x food boosts longevity or whatever and then you actually look at the study and
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they just looked at maybe 15 people you know well maybe i mean maybe i could just be like random that
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a certain amount of people saw improvements in longevity because they ate x food so it doesn't
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just apply to social science you see this across science as well absolutely and that's so important
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to emphasize and you know this has been the replication crisis has been a very big issue for example in
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cancer research it's even touched you know fields like physics so this is not something that is at all
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limited to behavioral science if anything i think what's special maybe about social psychology is
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that social psychologists have played a really lead role in trying to tackle the crisis to be like
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okay we've got a problem we're gonna fix it and to me you know i just really love science and one of
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the things that i love about science is that it is self-correcting right so the idea of science is not
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that we get everything right or that we always come to the correct answer the first time we try
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but rather that we don't just accept things on faith and when we realize we have a problem
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we try to fix it and that we're all in the business of trying to correct ourselves and correct each
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other and i think that's actually happened in my field and it's been you know as difficult as it was
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to live through the replication crisis living through the sort of second chapter of this credibility
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revolution has been really inspiring besides the happiness studies are there any other popular
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pieces of psychological advice that haven't held up under closer scrutiny there are a lot of effects
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that have been called into question as a result of the replication crisis so just a couple of
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examples one is the idea of stereotype threat so this is the idea that just being aware of a stereotype
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about your group can imperial performance so for example if you kind of reminded me that i'm a woman
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and that there's a stereotype that women aren't good at math that that could actually undermine my
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performance on a subsequent math test it's a really compelling and interesting idea but it's
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certainly been thrown into doubt by the replication crisis another one that i've heard about is the idea
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of priming people right if you like give someone a hot beverage then they're going to feel more warm
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to other people and i think recent research has said probably not not as strong as we think it is
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that's right and i think you know some of the effects that were sort of the you know coolest
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like oh wow that's so amazing that that's true like it's unbelievable it's like yeah it is unbelievable
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it's not true it's something else i think contributed to the replication crisis i kind of sometimes i get
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nostalgic for that period you know from 2005 to 2017 ish where all these books were coming out from
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the social sciences about well if you do this thing it can improve your life i think what also was going
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on there was sort of an incentive amongst professors it wasn't like these professors weren't they weren't
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being evil or anything but there was an incentive there if they came up with a cool study that showed
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you this counterintuitive idea if you do x it'll give you this x benefit where you get a ted talk
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and then that could give you a book deal that will you know you could sell millions of copies and then
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you can go on the the speaking circuit and so it may have contributed to people doing not so great
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studies i think that's right and i think it's also really important the point that you made about
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you know in not necessarily being intentional now there are people who do fake data like they literally
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make stuff up right and that is fraud it is terrible it's i think relatively rare maybe not as rare as
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people would like to think but it's certainly not that common in contrast the much more common problem
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is what some folks call p hacking where you kind of massage your data a little bit so you play with
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different ways of doing the analyses you could think of it like you know a scientist shoots a
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bunch of darts at the wall and then draws the bullseye around you know wherever the dart happened
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to land and yells you know eureka i found what i was looking for right so the idea is you can kind of
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analyze the data a whole bunch of different ways and then something's probably going to come out if you
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conduct you know hundreds of different analyses on the same data set you're probably going to get
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something and then you just publish that and don't transparently report all the other ways that you
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looked at the data and again that sounds bad but honestly it used to be considered sort of best practice
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in the field so i remember when i was a graduate student a faculty member who i've never published
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anything with so i'm not outing anybody here but a faculty member who i'd worked with on a project
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i came into his office and i said you know the study didn't work that i that we did with you
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and he said oh no one's ever come into my office and said that the study worked go back and analyze
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your data better right so i was basically being told as this new grad student you know go do a
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better job analyzing your data try analyzing in different ways you will find the effect if you
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look hard enough and so this was really i think a fundamental misunderstanding you know we were thinking
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of ourselves as kind of being like archaeologists chipping away at the dust and the dirt and sediment
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to get to the true fossil that was really lying there and in fact we were more like sculptors
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creating an image out of stone that never existed until we came along and made it ourselves so again i
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think that's sort of in a really important distinction to recognize and the interesting
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thing with p hacking is that unless you have a way of stopping it it's going to happen because it's
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just human nature to like try to thoroughly explore what's going on and then to have this motivation to
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see the the way the analysis came out as being oh yeah that it makes sense that i would analyze the
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data that way i mean of course we should control for gender because there turned out to be gender
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differences on this variable so it totally makes sense that i should control for gender but i've just
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seen that oh yeah the analysis comes out significant when i control for gender it doesn't if i leave
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gender out so gosh i sure i sure i'm motivated to to get gender in there and so the the wonderful
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new ish thing that's come into our field is what's called pre-registration where we say publicly here's
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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
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or i have to be transparent and saying okay actually the analyses that i plan to do did not work but here are
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some exploratory analyses that i'm doing and then everybody can see and kind of evaluate you know
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what i really did and what i really found and so in our review what we wanted to do was to look for
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studies that were not only had a decent sample size but we also looked for studies that were
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pre-registered where people were committing to these analysis plans and therefore you know their hands
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were tied they could not really engage in p hacking or at least we could tell if they were because they
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had transparently committed to their analysis plans ahead of time do you have any recommendations on
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how a layperson should approach research-backed psychological advice that they encounter in the
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popular press i think people should be very skeptical if all they've seen is you know study shows x and x
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seems really surprising and counterintuitive you know dig deeper and so a good a first question that i
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would encourage people to ask is were participants in this study randomly assigned to condition so this
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is very important because many studies out there are simply correlational so for example i might find
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that people who eat more organic fruit and vegetables are happier than people who don't buy organic
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and the discovery might be like eating organic makes you happier right but importantly that study
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was just correlational i just showed that there was an association between buying organic vegetables
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and happiness and of course the fact that you bought organic is probably correlated with lots of other
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things including for example income you know wealthier people are probably going to be more able to buy
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expensive organic produce for example and it might be really that income is related to happiness we know
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that's true and that um organic vegetables is just like coming along for the ride and that you know if you started
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eating more organic vegetables that wouldn't make you happier the truth is you would need to like have a lot more
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money in order to get happier and so that's sort of the first bar that i would really encourage people to look at
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it's just like were people randomly assigned a condition or was this a correlation and right there like that's
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probably the biggest way of scraping aside lots of you know misleading headlines is just to look for that
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and then the next more advanced step would be to think about you know look at the sample size right so when you
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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
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exactly what researchers are studying but if i were to give people just a really simple rule of thumb
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i want to see like hundreds of people in a study before i put too much faith in it okay and this
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this is actually useful advice for looking at any scientific study where you're getting some sort of
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lifestyle advice health advice etc yeah and again it would vary a bit and there's certain things where
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we just can't run experiments so for example it's pretty tough to you know look at for example whether
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people who buy organic vegetables live longer because we'd have to wait like 30 years to find
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out what happens and by that time you know it's kind of late right so there's some things where we it's
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just like the nature of the question is limited to these correlational methods but when there's something
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we can ask with an experiment like you know after two months of buying organic are you happier we can
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absolutely study that with an experiment and so if it's just a correlational study that is getting
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reported we want to be really careful in over and not putting too much weight on that especially if
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we're going to make you know costly lifestyle choices on the basis of that finding we're going to take a
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and now back to the show well besides doing you know researching happiness studies and whether
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these happiness strategies are effective you've done your own research on what makes us happy
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particularly looking at how we spend our time our money how we interact with technology how these can
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contribute or take away from our happiness so for example your research has found that buying time
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is a great way money can bring us happiness so how can buying time bring us happiness and then what
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keeps people from doing that yeah so one of the interesting discoveries just sort of from correlational
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research is that wealthier people don't always use their time in happier ways and even in some studies of
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really affluent folks research suggests that people may choose not to buy time so when we say buy
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time what we mean is using money to buy your way out of doing the stuff that you hate so for example
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for me i am like terrible at cleaning it takes me like an atrocious amount of time just to clean our
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teeny tiny kitchen for example and even just thinking about it kind of fills me with dread and so for me
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you know even this year where i'm taking a spaticle and so i'm actually making a lot less money than i normally
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do i'm going to keep our cleaners because they give me back time in this really valuable way
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and so along with my former student ashley willans who's now a professor at harvard business school
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we conducted a pre-registered experiment in which we basically gave people money and half the time we
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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
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material thing and what we found is that people felt better on the weekend where we told them to
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buy themselves some time rather than buying a material thing so this suggests that using your
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money to buy your way out of the like terrible ways of spending time to buy yourself a little bit more
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time can be a pretty good strategy for promoting happiness but you also have done research that people
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feel guilty about buying time why is that yeah i mean i think this is really interesting you know
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one of the things we see kind of over and over again is that when you tell people hey you know i'm
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going to give you some money and i want you to spend it on a way in a way that will make you happier
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rarely actually do they say that they're going to use it in a way that will buy them time and so we
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wanted to find out why that might be and i think there's a few barriers but one barrier is just this
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feeling of guilt that comes with buying time and the thing about buying time is that usually what
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we're buying our way out of are tasks that we fully well could do ourselves right so like i hate it i'm
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not great at it but i am capable of cleaning my own house and so i might feel a little bit of guilt about
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paying somebody else to do that for me in contrast you know i'm not going to feel guilty about like
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paying a dentist to fill a cavity for me because that's not something i could or should do on my
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own right but because these are tasks that almost by definition people are capable of doing themselves
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there is this potential for a feeling of guilt about paying someone else to do it and we see some
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evidence that that feeling of guilt can kind of serve as a barrier that prevents people even if they
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could afford it from using their money to buy their way out of the tasks that they hate doing
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so buying time could be hiring a cleaner be hiring a lawn service for example and i have a lawn service
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and i remember initially i felt kind of guilty about it but then i just realized oh my gosh like it takes
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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
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all the grass clippings out of the way make everything look sharp and then this lawn crew comes in and they
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knock it out in 15 minutes right and it's like why am i spending an hour and a half to two hours
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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
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it now but you know i could spend my time doing something else besides spending an hour and a half
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mowing the yard that's right and i think you know sometimes when i talk about this research
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somebody will raise their hand and say but i like mowing my lawn like yes my time is worth three
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hundred dollars an hour and i would be like smarter to pay someone else to do this for me but like
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it gives me a sense of satisfaction and so for the tasks that you enjoy doing i mean i think you
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should absolutely do them i my stepfather like loves vacuuming for some reason that i find completely
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inexplicable but he should by all means carry on right if it's satisfying great but you know it's about
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paying attention to those tasks that you know not only do you dislike doing them but maybe you
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procrastinate or you just feel like oh when you think about the fact that like this is going to be
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what your saturday afternoon entails and so those are the tasks where it's really great to go in and
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surgically say wait a second could i use some money to remove these tasks from my life could i make
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my saturday way better by spending that afternoon you know playing with my kids or catching up with
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old friends or getting outside for a bit to play tennis with someone or you know something like that
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as opposed to you know battling the lawn and so one strategy i would encourage people to do is if you
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are going to buy time think about like what are you going to then use that time for you know make that
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time maybe be special or think about as a kind of windfall of time that then you can use in a really
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positive way to potentially max out those benefits so yeah if you're gonna use that free time to just
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you know scroll your phone you'd probably be better off just doing the thing so make sure you actually
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have better things to do if you're gonna buy your time and as you said you know just buy time with the
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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
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00:40:39.520
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00:40:55.400
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