The surprising science of happiness Nancy Etcoff
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this is called hooked on a feeling the
pursuit of happiness in human design I
put up a somewhat dour Darwin but a very
happy chimp up there my first point is
that the pursuit of happiness is
obligatory
man wishes to be happy only wishes to be
happy and cannot wish not to be so we
are wired to pursue happiness only to
enjoy it but to want more and more of it
so given that that’s true how good are
we at increasing our happiness well we
certainly try if you look on the Amazon
site there are over 2000 titles with
advice on the seven Habits the nine
choices that ten secrets the 14,000
thoughts that are supposed to bring
happiness now another way we try to
increase our happiness is we medicate
ourselves and so there’s over 120
million prescriptions out there right
now for antidepressants prozac was
really the first absolute blockbuster
drug it was clean efficient there was no
high there was really no danger had no
street value in 1995 illegal drugs were
a 400 million-dollar business
representing 8% of world trade roughly
the same as gas and oil these routes to
happiness haven’t really increased
happiness very much one problem that’s
happening now is although the rates of
happiness are about flat as the surface
of the Moon depression anxiety arising
some people might say this is because we
have better diagnosis and more people
are being found out it isn’t just that
we’re seeing it all over the world in
the United States right now there are
more suicides and homicides there’s a
rash of suicide in China and in the
World Health Organization predicts by
the year 2020 that depression will be
the second largest cause of disability
now the good news here is that if you
take surveys from around the world we
see that about three-quarters of people
will say they’re at least pretty happy
but this does not follow any of the
usual trends so for example these two
show great growth in income absolutely
flat happiness curve my field the field
of psychology you know hasn’t done a
whole lot to help us move forward and
understanding human happiness
in part we have the legacy of Freud was
a pessimist who said it for suit of
happiness is a doomed quest is propelled
by infantile aspects of the individual
that can never be met in reality he said
one feels inclined to say that the
intention that man should be happy is
not included in the plan of creation so
the ultimate goal of psychoanalytic
psychotherapy was really what Freud
called ordinary misery and before you
know it part reflects the anatomy of the
human emotion system which is that we
are both a positivity and negative
system and our negative system is
extremely sensitive so for example we’re
born loving the taste of something sweet
and reacting aversive ly to taste of
something bitter we also find that
people are more averse to losing than
they are happy to gain the formula for
happy marriage is five positive remarks
or interactions for every one negative
and that’s how powerful the one negative
is they especially expressions of
contempt or disgust will you really need
a lot of positive so upset that I also
put in here the stress response we are
wired for dangers that are immediate
that are physical that are imminent and
so our body goes into an incredible
reaction where and dodges opioids come
in we have a system that is really
ancient and it’s really different
physical danger and so over time this
becomes the stress response which has
enormous effects on the body cortisol
floods the brain it destroys hippocampal
cells and memory and it can lead to all
kinds of health problems but
unfortunately we need this system in
part if we were only governed by
pleasure we would not survive we really
have to command posts their emotions are
short-lived intense responses to
challenge and to opportunity and each
one of them allows us to click into
alternate selves that tune in turn on
drop out thoughts perceptions feelings
and memories we tend to think of
emotions as just feelings but in fact
emotions aren’t all systems alert to
change what we remember how what kind of
decisions we make and how we perceive
things
so let me go forward to the new science
of happiness we’ve come away from the
forty and gloom and people are now
actively studying this and one of the
key points in the science of happiness
is that happiness and unhappiness are
not endpoints of a single continuum the
Freudian model is really one continuum
that as you get less miserable you get
happier and that isn’t sure when you get
less miserable you get less miserable
and that happiness is a whole other end
of the equation and it’s been missing
it’s been missing from psychotherapy so
when people’s symptoms go away they tend
to recur because there isn’t a sense of
the other half of what pleasure
happiness compassion gratitude what are
the positive emotions and of course we
know this intuitively that happiness is
not just the absence of misery but
somehow it was not put forward and to
very recently seeing these as two
parallel systems so that the body can
both look for opportunity and also
protect itself from danger at the same
time there’s no two reciprocal and
dynamically interacting systems people
have also wanted to deconstruct we use
this word happy and it’s a very large
umbrella of a term that three emotions
for which there are no English words
funeral which is to pride in
accomplishment of a challenge
schadenfreude which is happiness in
another’s misfortune and the malicious
pleasure and now this it’s sort of pride
and joy and one’s children absent from
this list and absence from any
discussions of happiness our happiness
in another’s happiness we don’t seem to
have a word for that we are very
sensitive to the negative but it’s in
part offset by the fact that we have a
positivity
we’re also born pleasure seekers babies
love the taste of sweet sweet and hate
the taste of bitter they love to talk
touch smooth services rather than rough
ones they’d like to look at beautiful
faces rather than playing for faces they
like to listen to constant melodies
instead of dissonant melodies babies
really are born with a lot of innate
pleasures it was once a statement made
by a psychologist that said that 80% of
the pursuit of happiness is really just
about the genes and this is difficult to
become happier as it is become taller
that’s nonsense
there’s there is a decent contribution
happiness from the genes about 50% but
there is still 50% that’s unaccounted
for let’s just go into the brain for a
moment and see where does happiness
arise from and evolution we have
basically at least two systems here and
they both very ancient one is the reward
system and that’s fed by the chemical
dopamine and it starts in the ventral
tegmental area goes to nucleus accumbens
all the way up to prefrontal cortex
orbital frontal cortex where decisions
are made high-level this was originally
seen as a system that was the pleasure
system of the brain in the 1950s olds
had milder put electrodes into the brain
of a rat and the rat would just keep
pressing that bar thousands and
thousands and thousands of time it
wouldn’t eat it wouldn’t sleep it
wouldn’t have sex it wouldn’t do
anything to press this bar so they
assumed well it must really this must be
the brains orgasmatron it turned out
that it wasn’t that it really is a
system of motivation a system of wanting
it gives objects what’s called incentive
salience it makes something look so
attractive that you just have to go
after it that’s something different from
the system that is the pleasure system
which simply says I like this the
pleasure system as you see which up is
the internal opiates there’s a hormone
oxytocin is widely spread throughout the
brain dopamine system the wanting system
is much more centralized the other thing
about positive emotions is they have a
universal signal and we see here the
smile and the universal signal is not
just raising the corner of the lips into
the zygomatic major it’s also crinkling
the outer corner of the eye the
orbicularis oculi up so you see even ten
month old babies when they see their
mother will show this particular kind of
smile extroverts use it more than
introverts people who were relieved from
depression show it more after than
before so if you want to unmask a true
look of happiness you will look for this
expression our pleasures are really
ancient and we learn of course many many
pleasures but many of them are based and
one of course is Biophilia that we have
a response to the natural world that’s
very profound very interesting studies
done on people recovering from surgery
who
found that people who faced a brick wall
versus people who looked out on trees
and nature the people who looked out the
brick wall were in the hospital longer
needed more medication and had more
medical complications there’s something
very restorative about nature nets and
it’s part of how we are tuned humans
particularly so we’re very imitative
creatures and we imitate from almost a
second we’re born here’s a three week
old baby and if you stick your tongue
out at this baby the baby will do the
same we are social beings from the
beginning and even studies of
cooperation show that cooperation
between individuals lights up reward
centers of the brain one problem that
psychology has had is instead of looking
at this intersubjectivity or the
importance of the social brain to humans
who come into the world helpless and
need each other tremendously is that
they focus instead on the self and
self-esteem and not self other sort of
me not we and I think this has been a
really tremendous problem it goes
against our biology and nature and has
it made us any happier at all because
when you think about it people are
happiest when in flow when they’re
absorbed in something out in the world
when they’re with other people when
they’re active engaged in sports
focusing a loved one learning having sex
whatever they’re not sitting in front of
the mirror trying to figure themselves
out or thinking about themselves these
are not the periods when you feel
happiest the other thing is that a piece
of evidence is if you look at
computerized text analysis of people who
commit suicide what you find there and
it’s quite interesting is use of the
first-person singular I mean mine not me
and us and the letters are less hopeless
and they are really alone and being
alone is very unnatural to the human and
is there’s a profound need to belong but
there are ways in which our evolutionary
history can really trip us up because
for example the genes don’t care whether
we’re happy they care that we replicate
that we pass our genes on so for example
we have three systems that that underlie
reproduction because it’s so important
there’s lust which is just when to have
sex and that’s really mediated by the
sex hormones romantic attraction that
gets into the desire system
and that’s dopamine fed and that’s I
must have this one person there’s
attachment which is oxytocin and the
opiates which says this is a long-term
bond so the problem is that as humans
these three can separate so person can
be no long-term attachment become
romantically infatuated with someone
else and what I have sex for the third
person the other way in which our genes
can sometimes lead us astray is in
social status
we are very acutely aware of our social
status and always seek you know to
further and increase it now in the
animal world is only one way to increase
status and as dominance you know I I
seize command by physical prowess and I
keep it by beating my chest and you make
submissive gestures now the human has a
whole other way to rise to the top and
that’s the prestige route which is
freely conferred so on has expertise and
knowledge and knows how to do things and
we give that person status and that’s
clearly the way for us to create many
more niches of status so that people
don’t have to be lower on the status
hierarchy as they are in the animal
world the data isn’t terribly supportive
of money buying happiness but it’s not
irrelevant so if you look at questions
like this life satisfaction you see life
satisfaction going up with each rung of
income you see mental sim and mental
distress going up with lower income so
clearly there’s some effect the defect
is is relatively small and one of the
problems with money is materialism what
happens when people pursue money to
avidly is they forget about the real
basic pleasures of life so we have here
this couple do you think the less
fortunate or having better sex but I’m
this kid over here saying leave me alone
with my toys and so one of the things is
that it really takes over that whole
dopamine wanting system takes over in
derails from any of the pleasure system
Maslow had this idea back in the 1950s
that as people rise above their
biological needs as the world becomes
safer and we don’t have to worry about
basic needs being met or biological
system that whatever motivates us is
being satisfied we can rise above them
to think beyond ourselves towards
self-actualization or transcendence and
rise above the materialist so just
quickly conclude with some brief data
that suggests this might be so one is
people who went under what was called a
quantum change they felt their life and
that whole values had changed and sure
enough if you look at the kinds of
values that come in you see wealth
adventure achievement pleasure fun be
respected before the change and much
more post materialist values after women
had a whole different set of values
shifts but very simply the only one that
survived there was happiness they went
to attractiveness and happiness and
wealth and self-control to generosity
and forgiveness I end with a few quotes
there’s only one question how to love
this world and yoga if your daily life
seems poor do not blame it blame
yourself tell yourself that you are not
potent enough to call forth its riches
and say to yourself what you would be
then do what you have to do thank you
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