Dr. Laurie Santos is a cognitive scientist and Professor of Psychology at Yale University. She is also the host of the extremely popular podcast called “The Happiness Lab” which is on the Apple Top 100 charts. She joins Chris Van Vliet to talk about the science of being happy, 3 simple things we can do in our daily life to be happier, the course she teaches at Yale University called “Psychology and The Good Life” and how you can take her course for free on Coursera, how Covid has affected our well-being and much more!
On whether happiness is a science or an art:
“I think in some ways it is both. The reason why I air on the scientific side is because so many of the scientific works study the kind of things that make us a little bit happier. You might not think that it is a scientific topic, how do you study happiness? But when you start to think about it then it’s an easy thing to do. Basically researchers bring people into the lab who are happy, and then they reverse engineer what these people are doing. How are they spending their time? You can then bring other folks into the lab who are not feeling so happy, then make them engage with the practices the happy people are doing in a controlled environment. You can then see if that improves people’s wellbeing. These studies have been done for the last few decades.”
3 things to make us happier:
“It’s not the things we think like winning the lottery. The fastest thing you can do to improve your happiness is to get in some social connection. Even really simple studies show talking to someone on your commute can boost your positive mood. That is just with a stranger, yet alone connecting with your best friend or someone you haven’t spoken to in a while. We forget the sheer power of social connection in boosting our mood. Secondly is gratitude, something that all of us can do. If we focus on the blessings and not the gripes we can be happier. Thirdly is presence. Feel what it is like to be breathing right now or sitting in a chair. Even if you are not feeling good, just being with that can improve your wellbeing in a great way.”
On why people don’t necessarily feel happy:
“I don’t think we were built to happy. Natural selection and evolution had a plan for us but it wasn’t for us to be happy. It was to survive and pop out some kids. Evolution did not care if we were anxious or sad, it just wanted us to get the job done. I think a big thing is a lot of us are defying natural selection by trying to be happy. We wind up doing it wrong because we are focusing on the wrong things. We focus on accolades, achievements and money. Research shows that none of that makes us happy, and if it does it is only briefly. We peruse all those things at the opportunity cost to the things that actually make us happy.”
On how the science of happiness started:
“I’ve been a psychologist basically forever. The specific interest in happiness came to me when I took on this new role at Yale campus. I’ve been teaching at Yale for an embarrassingly long time. In the last few years I took on a new role as head of college on campus. Yale is like Harry Potter where there are schools within the school. I’m the head of Silliman College, which does sound like it is from Harry Potter. This new role meant I was a faculty member living with students on campus. When I signed up for the role I thought it would be great. Young, happy minds all running around.”
On the wellbeing of students:
But there is a national students health crisis right now. 40% of students feel like they are too depressed to function. Over 60% report feeling overwhelmingly anxious. Right now, 1 in 10 students have considered suicide in the last year. I didn’t know this stuff until I started interacting with students. We have students who are in dire straights, but then we have the students who are just so stressed out. I was watching the students fast forward this time of their lives and I felt for them. My interest in happiness started becasue I wanted to help my students. I decided to pull it all together and teach the students this stuff in the context of a class. I didn’t expect the class to go as viral as it did, it was the largest class in the 300 year history of Yale.”
On what is in the class:
“So you walk into this big concert hall. The class really is like a psychology class. The students are hearing about specific studies and there are exams and grades. It’s one thing to tell students to be grateful and to get enough sleep, but until you show them the graph of mood score after 5 hours sleep. Students then see that and don’t want to be in that zone. I think there is something about seeing the scientific effects. This is true with nutrition and exercise too. When we see what really works, it can supercharge our change in behaviours.”
On how you can take the class for free:
“The class went so viral on campus and off campus. We had national and international news outlets coming in, filming the class and talking about it. I was so taken by the mental health crisis at Yale, but it’s not just the students. Adults everywhere need this. So we put the class online [link here]. You can log on and get the short version for free.”
On how Laurie manages her happiness:
“One of the things is that it is nice to be happiness expert becasue you have to practice what you preach. If not, people will call you out on that, especially students. I have to be the person who is trying these strategies out, and that has been huge for navigating all these changes in my life. I say no to a lot of things becasue I am trying to protect my time allowance. If I say yes to something, I may have to say no to downtime with my husband. It is hard and goes against the hustle culture, but it has made me a lot happier.”
On how COVID affected people’s happiness:
“When COVID first hit in March 2020, there was a huge amount of depression and anxiety. But I think that everybody expected that and for it continue. In practice, it has been bad but not as bad as people first thought. Many people have gone back to baseline. This thing that we could not get used to, it’s not fun but we did get used to it. Just like we think good things like money will make us better, we think that bad things will make us worse. It does in the short term, but our psychological immune system kicks in to make us feel better. We rationalise stuff and start to form coping mechanisms. We do stuff to feel better, a lot of these things have kicked in during COVID. Statistically, this pandemic did not affect us all mentally as we first thought.”
On what Dr. Laurie Santos is grateful for:
“My husband, my students and my health.”
Dr Laurie Santos can be found on Twitter here.
The Happiness Podcast can be found here.
Featured image: The Happiness Lab
