PODCASTThe Greater Good Podcast

Scroll down for a transcription of this episode.

Today’s Guests:

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY Ph.D., is professor of psychology at UC Riverside and the author of the best-selling books The How of Happiness and The Myths of Happiness. Dr. Lyubomirsky is a leader in the field of well-being science.

JASON MARSH, host of "The Greater Good Podcast”, is Director of Programs and  Editor in Chief of Greater Good Magazine.

Transcription:

JASON MARSH: Welcome to The Greater Good Podcast. I'm Jason Marsh. Few things seem more American than the pursuit of happiness, but are we going about it all wrong? That's one of the questions raised by the Myths of Happiness, the new book by Sonya Lyubomirsky. Lyubomirsky is a professor of psychology at UC Riverside, and one of the leading researchers in the field of positive psychology.

Her previous book, the How of Happiness, published in 2008 is a seminal text in positive psychology, chockfull of the best research-based practices for increasing happiness. The myths of happiness is in many ways a follow up to that book, explaining how our assumptions about what will and what won't bring us happiness are often flat out wrong.

Understanding those myths, Lyubomirsky argues, can help us avoid the psychological barriers to our rich and happy life. Sonya Lyubomirsky, welcome to the Greater Good Podcast. It's a pleasure to be here. So first I wonder, you talk about the myths of happiness in your book. I wonder if you could just give us an example of what one of those myths is.

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: Sure. Well, I really talk about two categories of myths, and the first category of myths is the idea that, well, I'm not happy now, but I'll be happy when, you know, X, Y, and Z happen. When I get married. I'll be happy when I, when I'm strike it rich, I'll be happy when I have kids, when I move to that city I've always wanted to live in.

And so the problem with that is that those events. Do make people happy, but they don't make them as happy or for as long as they think they will. 

JASON MARSH: And so what, what in particular, what are, what are the kinds of things that you think people falsely believe more specifically will actually make them happy that they then find, doesn't work that way?

Mm-hmm. 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: Well, I, you know, the book is divided into sort of chapters about marriage, about, uh, about, uh, aging money. And so I start, start with. Let's start talking about relationships, for example. So we think that, you know, once we're married, then we'll be happy. And, you know, marriage does make people happy.

But, the most famous study on marriage shows that that happiness boost only lasts for an average of two years. We also know that that passionate love that that media and movies and literature tell us. That we should all be [00:02:00] experiencing, tends to dissipate over time and tends to, , turn into what's called companionate love, which is really more about kind of deep friendship and loyalty.

And, and the problem is that a lot of us, I, I think we think that there must be something wrong with us when our relationships aren't as exciting to us, you know, a few years later than they were at the beginning. Same thing goes for our jobs or, or the amount of money that we make. Mm-hmm. 

JASON MARSH: For myths like that, especially about passionate love, which is so, like you said, perpetuated by the, the media.

To what extent is a myth like that you think the result of certain innate, perhaps psychological propensities, and to what extent is it culturally determined? Is it due to influences that are outside of ourselves? 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: Wow. That's a good question. So the myth itself, I mean, I think a lot of it is. It's sort of cultural.

They're cultural prescriptions. I think the myths are propagated by sort of media and culture. I don't know about kind of whether they're hardwired or revolutionarily adaptive. I, I will say that hedonic adaptation, which is a big theme of my book and hedonic adaptation, is basically the phenomena that human beings are remarkable at getting used to changes in their lives, especially positive changes.

Hedonic adaptation, I think is evolutionarily adaptive and. Perhaps hardwired. So all of us become used to the familiar and, and perhaps the reason is that when you think about our ancestral environment, that it, it was always adaptive or important for us to, to be vigilant or alert to change, right? So when there's a change in the environment, it might be a signal of a.

Threat or a danger, or it might be a signal of a reward or sort of opportunity for reward. And so when things are the same, when stimuli are constant, when things are familiar, then we don't tend to notice them or pay attention to them very, very much. And, and sort of the downside of that is that. When a, when a relationship becomes kind of familiar, you know, and constant over time when there's not a lot of change or surprise, uh, or when a job becomes familiar or when your new car becomes very familiar to you, then we start taking them for granted.

And then we don't, we sort of stop paying attention to them and that's when we have adapted. 

JASON MARSH: Right. And so you talk a lot obviously about hedonic adaptation. It's also called the hedonic treadmill. And especially when it's, when it's referred to as the hedonic treadmill, it sounds kind of negative, right?

That no matter how hard you push, you're always just gonna wind up in the same place. Uh. But there's a flip side to that, which is actually a kind of positive story that's, that speaks more to the human propensity or or skills at resilience, right? That's 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: right. That's right. So in fact, when, when, when the book is called The Myths of Happiness, 'cause they're really two types of myths and, and we were just talking about the first type, but the second type is sort of the myth.

That, you know, a lot of things would make us really unhappy, sort of dreadfully unhappy maybe forever. So if we got a divorce, we would get happy if our spouse died, if we got ill when we got, when we got older, if our dreams don't become fulfilled, then we'd be really unhappy. But that, but yeah adaptation takes place in response to negative experiences as well.

And, and so one of the themes of the myths of happiness is that human beings are remarkably resilient, right? That we are. We are really good at, at getting used to negative changes and not everything by the way. And a couple of studies, for example, recently have shown that, people who have experienced severe disability, do adapt to some extent, but they never go back to the original baseline.

And same thing for. Bereavement at a later age. So if you're, if you've spent, you know your whole life with your partner and they pass away, you do rebound after about four or five years, but you never go back to your original baseline. But on average, people are not as miserable, sort of don't stay miserable for as long, for as long as we think they do.

JASON MARSH: What are some examples that you could talk about where people really think that a certain life event is going to be catastrophic? The end all, be all the end of their life, but they find that in fact, you know, you can actually have a pretty happy life. I mean, you give two really great examples there, especially people who suffer a serious injury that's often pointed to as an example of people returning to their baseline, but research suggesting that it's not.

Quite as great a return as people might have thought previously? 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: Well, there actually several examples. I mean, one is divorce, you know, breaking up of relationships. It turns out that people are remarkably resilient after divorce, including children, you know, 'cause a lot of us don't divorce because we think it's gonna hurt our children permanently.

But, I was just looking at some data that shows that I think it takes a few years. But people after divorce are actually quite a bit happier than they were before. So they don't go to the baseline. They, they way exceed their baseline. Another example is being single, not finding a partner. We think, oh my God, if I don't find a life partner, a soulmate, I'll be forever unhappy.

It turns out that single people, and this has been pointed out to by Bella DePalo, who wrote a, this great book called Singled Out Single people are just as happy as married people. Married people are happier than divorce, separated or Berea, or, or I'm sorry, or widowed people. The single people are very happy.

And one of my favorite findings is that lifelong singles tend to have an average of a dozen meaningful friendships that they have maintained for decades. And I always think about, you know, people like me who are, who have, who are married, and who have kids. I mean, how many of us I. Have a dozen friendships that we've maintained for decades.

And single people also, of course get meaning and purpose from, you know, from their work, from hobbies, from sort of other domains of life. Mm-hmm. And then one of my favorite examples has to do with illness. Lots of studies on how people cope with severe illness. And I, I was just reading about a study of breast cancer patients.

It showed that two, this is kind of amazing. Two thirds of women who have breast cancer say that the cancer has actually sort of led to positive changes in their lives. It's almost as though it was a positive thing. Yeah, I mean, it's amazing they say that it led them to a renewed appreciation of the preciousness of, of life.

It led them to sort of understand what their true priorities are. It led them to sort of, realize that they have certain strengths of character that they didn't realize they had. You know, to sort of know who their true friends are. And so, yeah, so of course we wouldn't wanna wish upon anyone, you know, getting cancer or having any kind of adversity, but it, but, you know, many people experience what's called post-traumatic growth after adversity.

JASON MARSH: Uh, yeah, that. Research is, is fascinating. There's also really interesting research on children, and, and conflicting research. And it's something that you explore in the book. You sort of, sort of coincidentally, I dunno how coincidental it is. You dedicated the book to your young daughter who you learn when completing the book you were actually, uh, pregnant with.

Mm-hmm. And there's been this longstanding notion that people who have kids actually. Not only do they not find great happiness, but they're actually less happy. One finding, suggesting a few years back that people were less happy, uh, caring for their kids than they were doing housework. Uh, it was a study among, among women in, in Texas, but your lab actually more recently has come out with a finding suggesting that that research actually isn't true.

So where, where. What is the state of the research right now suggesting the relationship between having kids and being happy? Sure. 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: So there's a lot of conflicting findings out there. In fact, one of the, I would, I would say that one of the contributions of my book is that I try to kind of summarize or give a take home message to a lot of conflicting findings, whether it's about children and and, and happiness or about money and happiness and or other topics.

So with regard to children, this is actually a very complicated topic. And so there's lots of conflicting findings in literature. So some show that. Parents are happier than non-parents. And some, some showed that parents are less happy. So we just published a paper that has three different studies that shows that show in general that parents are somewhat happier and report more meaning in their lives, both sort of overall as they go about their days, and also when they spend time with their children as opposed to when they're doing other things.

But you know, after we've published that paper, we actually sort of asked ourselves the question, well, is, is the question of whether. Parents are happier. Even really a very meaningful question. 'cause there's so many different kinds of parents. I mean, I mean, can you really, you know, lump together parents of newborns to parents of 30 year olds?

Right. And so, yeah, so we, I have these two great grad students and they just wrote this really great review paper where we looked at. All the literature on parenting and happiness. And so we, we reviewed it, we put it all together. And this actually kind of made it a little bit in the book, but not completely.

'cause the book was published, you know, or, or the book was sort of, uh, impressed by the time we did this. And so basically what we find is that, certain kinds of parents are happier. Parents who are middle aged and older, parents who are married. Mm-hmm. Parents who have children in their custody, parents who have relatively trouble free children.

And then other, and actually fathers. So it turns out that the effect is much stronger for fathers as as opposed to mother. So, so you have to really look at kind of the kind of parent and, and the kind of child that you have and what ages the child and what ages the parent. When you try to answer that question, sort of who is happier, you know.

Parents, but, but I think one of the bottom lines from the research is that, one of the most sort of consistent findings is that parents do report greater meaning, and purpose in their life when they have, after they have children. 

JASON MARSH: Right? So it's in some ways, not just a question of what kind of parent are you talking about?

What kind of happiness are you talking about? This sort of a. He, you know, really pleasure filled happiness and really feeling good, but also having that deeper sense of, of meaning and purpose, which, you know, is a different kind of happiness. 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: That's right. And they're both, they're both part of happiness.

They're both, they're different kind. I thank you for pointing that out. There's different kinds of happiness, and, and they're both important and they're actually correlated. They usually go together, but not always. Mm-hmm. 

JASON MARSH: So you, you take on a lot of these myths about what does and doesn't. Make us happy.

Uh, I wonder if you feel like there's any underlying human mistake or misconception that kind of runs across a lot of those myths and helps to explain most, if not all, of some of the poor decisions we make in pursuing happiness. 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: Right. Wow. That's a hard question. I mean, I guess the, the underlying theme is that nothing is as joy producing or as misery inducing as we think it is.

There's no sort of Sure. Course towards happiness and there's no sure course towards misery either. That's kind of the most abstract mm-hmm. Sort of summary of what I, what I find, but generally I, I, I think a hedonic adaptation really is at the root of a lot of the myths that I talk about, uh, both on the positive side and on the negative side.

Mm-hmm. 

JASON MARSH: You also talk about the ways that our. Emotions or sort of immediate emotional reactions to an event can be kind of misleading, right? You actually, you have a line in there that's sort of the challenge to Malcolm Gladwell. It's Think Don't blink. Uh, could you elaborate on that? Tell us a bit Sure.

What you mean by that. 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: You know, and, and I, I really enjoyed, uh, Gladwell's book Blink, but you know, the message there is sort of that our kind of gut intuitive reactions are often sort of the best reactions or the best sources of our decisions. And of course that's not true for all kinds of decisions and often our.

First reaction is just sort of not the right one. So for example, like getting back to relationships or jobs. Imagine you're in a job and, and you kind of feel like, ugh, you know, I, I, I don't think I like my job. Like, you don't wanna just take that gut reaction and go quit your job that day. You really wanna consider, you know, what is underlying it.

Maybe it's just this ordinary human process of adaptation and that everyone that, that the next job, you're gonna have the exact same. Path, the, the exact same trajectory. I also talk about in the book, about the phenomena called the ultradian dip, which is that about every 90 minutes or so all of us experience this sort of dip in energy.

And we always, we feel kind of lethargic and, and we can't concentrate. We if you don't feel motivated. And it's possible that those are the moments. During those old ultradian dips, that's when we're feeling like, uh, down on our job. You know? So we don't wanna, we don't wanna always sort of take that gut reaction.

Sometimes we just need to think, uh, and, and weigh sort of the costs and benefits of what we're of, of our decision. 

JASON MARSH: Yeah. I wonder if you could. Somebody's like, elaborate on that a little bit. Mm-hmm. It's so easy to fall prey to those, you know, immediate reactions and in some ways, deliberation. You know, kind of being mindful enough to take that time to, uh, think more deeply mm-hmm.

Is really challenging. I wonder if you, yourself, or you, through your research, have identified any strategies for. For encouraging that type of more reason deliberative reflection. 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: Right, right. But yes, the deliberative reflection is difficult for actually a couple reasons. One is it does take kind of more energy, more effort.

Also sometimes it can devolve into rumination. Mm-hmm. Which is sort of this passive dwelling. Yeah. That's no good for anyone. So we wanna really be careful it doesn't devolve into rumination or overthinking.  But, but there, there are various strategies. One strategy I talk about, which is kind of interesting is to.

Consider sort of the opposite of what your gut reaction is. So let's say your gut reaction is you wanna leave your, your marriage. So consider the opposite is that you really wanna stay and improve your marriage and, and kind of try to think about justification for the opposite. And that's just sort of a, a way to argue with yourself.

That's sort of almost like what a therapist might do when they, when they challenge your thinking. 

JASON MARSH: Right. Right. So it's the, the George Costanza approach. Uh, yes, exactly. Se Seinfeld approach. Yes. Mm-hmm. Totally. So in getting back to some of the questions about, I mean, it's really interesting for me in, in thinking about the examples you provide in the book, uh, to what extent, obviously, you know, I fall prey to them.

People I know fall prey to them, and also the extent to which they're culturally determined. You know, are these myths. Do you feel like they are particular to the United States? Are they especially prevalent in the United States? 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: I think some of the myths are like the, certainly the myths that, you know, money will make you happy is probably more prevalent to the western world, United States.

I mean, marriage, you know, is valued, you know, getting married. Having children, of course, is valued in probably every culture. The myth about aging, I mean, there's, there, there are definitely cultures where older people are highly revered and respected and they're considered the wise ones. And so I, I would bet in those, in those cultures there's not sort of as much of sort of this myth of, oh, I'll be so unhappy when I'm older. Because actually they realize that I'll be very highly respected when I'm older. So yes, to some extent these myths are culturally specific. 

JASON MARSH: Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. A lot of, you know, you're, you're Russian. Yes, yes. You were born in Russia. I was born in Russia. And I know, you know, in in some of your work you've compared, like, looked at differences between both assumptions about happiness.

Do you feel like, have you, how much have you looked at whether some of the, what are the other myths? Like if you were writing this book in Russia or somewhere else, what might be some of the other myths that we might see? Wow. Pop up. 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: I have no idea. No, no. That's a really good question. I should say that we have my lab.

It has ventured forth and we are doing quite a few studies cross-culturally. We have a collaboration with a professor in South Korea. Mm-hmm. And so we've done lots of studies in South Korea now and, and Japan. And we just finished a, a exciting study in Madrid. And you know what? We are not finding very big cultural differences.

Yeah, because I, and in part I think because, you know, the pursuit of happiness is really universal. I mean, it's just that, that how we define happiness might differ across cultures and how we pursue it is might differ. You know, the kind of myths that we have about what makes us happy or unhappy might differ.

But kind of overall, we all kind of wanna be happier. We want our children to be happy. 

JASON MARSH: Uh, right. You know, so there's that drive for happiness. But there's also obviously the misconceptions that can put people on the wrong path. And I wonder how much do you feel like people truly have the power to fight back against some of those misconceptions mm-hmm.

And misperceptions that they have on their own? Or, or, or. Without reading your book, I guess. And to what extent do you actually think that people, by understanding these processes, that we all can fall prey to? That they can actually make a substantial difference in their life? Right, right. 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: Well, you know, just by themselves.

Well, for example, research shows that older people are emotionally wiser. And so that's an argument to me that sort of with time when, with lots of experience and repeated experiences. Yeah. We can kind of by ourselves sort of figure these things out. But if you don't wanna wait until you're 60 or over, read my book, you can, you know, basically, you know, it's like that saying, you know, the beginning of wisdom is sort of realizing how little you know Yeah.

Or how what you don't know. And sort of the beginning of wisdom is, is to sort of understand what are these myths. And to what extent do they apply to you? Because you know, the myths are really about the average person. And so there's variability, and then I talk about what you can do about it, right? So it's not just depressing, right?

So some people think, oh, that's really depressing to find out that, you know, passion doesn't last and, and we all get bored with our jobs. And, you know, those kinds of things. At least on the positive side, the implications of the negative, the myths about the negative experience is actually more, right?

Kind of hopeful, right? Uh, but anyway, there's things that we can do as well. 

JASON MARSH: Great. You know, more generally speaking, positive psychology, it's often touted as sort of having found some of the answers to happiness. But in some ways, you know, your book is a pushback against some of those assumptions and, and not just in your book, I mean, a lot of the work coming out of your lab in general is looking at taking a more nuanced approach to the many different paths to happiness.

Mm-hmm. It seems like, to what extent do you feel like some of the messages from positive psychology have gotten simplified to the point that people have? Uh, maybe, perhaps, perhaps even perpetuate some of these myths that there is a surefire root or that there's a magic formula for happiness. 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: Right. That is interesting.

You know, because, you know, you do a study and let's say you show that being grateful makes you happy, which it does. Right. And then, but I guess if it's sort of repeated over and over again in the media, then people kind of think, oh, well it's easy. All I have to do is just be grateful. Whereas actually, it's much more, it's much harder than that.

It's actually very hard to be grateful and to be grateful on a regular basis and at the right time and sort of for the right things. So yeah, and I guess what I, what really my lab is maybe what's unique. About my lab is that we are really interested not in sort of what, just what makes people happy, uh, or what thwarts adaptation, but sort of what are kind of the factors that, that they, that are, that sort of impact the pursuit of happiness.

And so we just published a paper, or we have a paper in press introduces a model sort of, that kind of explains all of research in one picture, Uhhuh. And so we talk about kind of what, what factors impact happiness. So for example, there's sort of things about the person like, so. People differ, you know, so some people have a lot of social support, some people have little social support, some people are extroverted, some people are introverted.

And so you have to kind of take it into account the, the happiness seeker, uh, before you give them advice, right, about what should make them happy. And then there's sort of factors that, that, are relevant to the. Activity that you do. So whether, so how is it that you're trying to become happier? How is it that you're trying to stave off adaptation?

Are you trying to appreciate more, are you trying to do more acts of kindness? Are you trying to savor the moment? Kind of the, the different kinds of activities and how often you do them and where you do them is going to matter? Sure. 

JASON MARSH: Mm-hmm. Sure. I mean, it's something you go into in how happiness different types of activities for different types of, of person to try to.

Provide the right fit, which is a big concept you, you emphasize again and again. Uh, but even once you find the right fit, you know, how you practice, the activity you emphasize a lot really matters. It's not just right, 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: and that, that's why the first book was called The How of Happiness. So partly, partly why, but you know, even and with the midst of happiness, I get, I, I still give a lot of, suggestions all based on research, on sort of what people can do.

Kind of like, okay, so I'm not, I'm not as excited about my job or, or I've made a lot of money and I. Feel empty, you know, what do I do? And so I do talk about kind of research based strategies, you know, kind of how to spend money in ways that make you happy, how to introduce novelty and, and surprise and challenge and variety to your relationships to try to kind of maintain that satisfaction and passion.

So there's, so I still, there's still kind of a. So some of what is in the how of happiness I have, it's not the same, it's sort of different kinds of ideas, but I still talk about kind of how people can become happier and how people can sustain happiness in this new book as well. 

JASON MARSH: Right? I mean, so I assume you must get asked all the time, how do I become happier?

Someone looking for the, for the secret formula. What do you tell those people? 

SONJA LYUBOMIRSKY: Yeah. You know, women's magazines often will tell me, will ask me things like, alright, I need. Six, five minute happiness strategies. And I say, well, there aren't any five minute happiness strategies. This is something you have to do kind of every day for the rest of your life.

Just like if you wanted to, if you wanna raise, you know, moral children or if you wanna advance in your career, it's something that, it's a goal that you pursue your whole life. So, yeah, there's no, there's no kind of simple answer to that. So, again, the have happiness, you know, ha talked about 12 different strategies that people can use to become happier.

Sort of 12 different categories, and had to do with, with being more sort of positive, optimistic, grateful, investing in relationships, meditating, exercise. You know, practicing your spirituality, you know, many, many, many things. And again, some of those themes are in the new book as well. 

JASON MARSH: Great. Well, Sunki, thanks very much for talking with us.

It's a pleasure to talk to you. The Greater Good Podcast is a production of The Greater Good Science Center at the University of California Berkeley. Alton Doe and Bernie Wong are our interns. Special thanks to the university's graduate School of Journalism and Jim Richards for production assistants.

You can listen to more greater good podcasts and find articles, videos, and other materials from Greater Good. At www.greatergoodscience.org. I'm Jason Marsh.