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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