Kurt Nelson 0:00 Kurt, welcome to Behavioral Grooves, the podcast that explores the science behind why we do what we do. I'm Kurt Nelson and Tim Houlihan 0:13 I'm Tim Houlihan. On today's episode, we have the privilege of speaking with one of the world's leading researchers on the topic of a life well lived. Professor Shige Oishi, he's the author of hundreds of peer reviewed articles on subjective well being, and he's continuing the investigation on what makes for a happy Kurt Nelson 0:32 life. His research for the past few decades is taking our understanding of a happy life to a new level, and we should point out that modern research on happiness really didn't take off until about 40 years ago or so. So early definitions of a good life were developed by shigese mentor, Ed Diener at the University of Illinois, and they were based on how a person feels about their life, a very me centric idea, and at the time, that was the most important indicator of whether somebody is leading what we would call a good life. Yeah. So then Tim Houlihan 1:07 came along Carol riff from the University of Wisconsin, and she challenged the idea that I could live a good life by simply saying, Hey, I'm feeling pretty good about my life. Like, what if you were totally cruel to the people around you, but you actually liked it like would that really be a good life? So she proposed a second leg of the stool for by focusing on things that lead to finding meaning and making a positive contribution to the world around you together, these two ideas dominated our thinking about happiness for many years, Kurt Nelson 1:37 right? And so Shige went to the next thing, right? And so after 20 years of research, he reflected on his own life, and he asked if there was more to happiness than feeling good about his life, and if he was making a contribution to the greater good. And although he was good on those two levels, he felt it wasn't enough, so he and his students started researching, and they discovered that a well lived life also included feel it included feeling good about your life, having some meaning to your life, but it also benefited from having diverse perspective, changing experiences. So that's that third leg of the stool that Tim was talking about. So these three dimensions together are what makes up a really fulfilling life. And his research into this third dimension led to publishing a new book called The psychologically rich life. Tim Houlihan 2:33 So we were fascinated by how his personal journey led to this research, and that it was his own self reflection, and then collaboration with other research researchers that really sparked the collaboration and exploration of this third dimension of well being, Kurt Nelson 2:49 and that's another reason that his research is so important to us. He used his curiosity that inward focus and asked hard questions to help him really find his groove. Tim Houlihan 3:00 Something else we found fascinating is that she gays research looked at how these three dimensions of happiness correlate with our personality. It's like, are some people simply, are simply built to be happier? Yeah. Kurt Nelson 3:12 I mean, it's a really great question, and we've talked about the big five or ocean personality test before, the the way of measuring personality. That's probably the best in the industry right now, but we want to remind you of it here, because a happy life actually does match up with some very specific aspects of our personality. And Shige found that happiness correlates with three of the ocean traits, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness, and that psychological richness, that third leg of the happiness kind of equation uniquely correlates with a fourth trait, which is openness to Tim Houlihan 3:50 experience. So by adding psychological richness to your life, you bring a fourth element of your personality to connect with you to make a better life, and that is openness, and openness is something Kurt Nelson 4:02 I love, yeah. Well, there it is. And there's even a political dimension too, when controlling for overall positivity, psychological richness tends to correlate with political liberalism, while emotional happiness and meaning lead more towards conservatism. Yeah. Tim Houlihan 4:19 Shige also shared insights on what he calls the happiness trap, the modern American tendency to equate happiness with personal success, making it harder to accept negative emotions and leading to a maximizer mindset that might result in regrets later in life. Kurt Nelson 4:36 Yeah, and that was a particularly cool aspect of this, and it was a particularly cool conversation for us across the board, because we're interested in helping people find their groove, right? Tim, I mean, that's what we do. We help them find their groove, and a key part of finding your groove is knowing what brings you a sense of joy and satisfaction and fulfillment in your life. Yeah, and that might include, or probably does include, psychological richness, and it's a new aspect of this, and so it's a really key part of this. And we hope that you enjoyed this conversation as much as we did. So sit back Tim Houlihan 5:14 and relax and grab your psychologically rich beverage of choice and enjoy our conversation about what makes a truly fulfilling life with Shige Oishi. Tim Houlihan 5:33 Shige Oishi, welcome to Behavioral Grooves. Thank you so much for having me. It's really a pleasure to have you. We've been looking forward to talking with you for a long time, and so this is a bit of a dream come true. We're gonna start with a speed round. And first and foremost, we'd like to know, do you prefer coffee or tea? Speaker 1 5:52 I love both, but if I have to choose coffee, oh Tim Houlihan 5:57 yeah, did you grow up with tea? Was Was tea? Sort of Speaker 1 6:00 I grew up in the tea region. Actually, my parents had tea farm, a green tea. So I grew up totally like drinking tea all day long. I still love it, but just like when I have a, you know, rice, then I really need to have a green tea. But just other times I love coffee too. So Kurt Nelson 6:20 so you don't feel like you're letting your family tradition down by picking coffee over that tea. Speaker 1 6:25 Now that I mentioned it, I feel like, well, maybe I should have chosen, but I personally really love coffee. So Kurt Nelson 6:32 okay, okay. Second, second, speed. Round question, would you prefer to have dinner with your favorite musician or your favorite sports player, sports player, okay, yeah. And do you have a particular person that you are thinking of for having with that dinner? Speaker 1 6:50 Well, of course, Shohei or Tanya would be great. Tim Houlihan 6:57 Yeah, that would be great. Kurt Nelson 7:01 That would be an interesting conversation. I would just changing, changing the sport in and of itself. So, you know, Tim Houlihan 7:08 truly, okay, third speed round question, would you prefer to live in a small town or a big city? Speaker 1 7:17 Now that I lived in a big city, I don't mind small town again, Tim Houlihan 7:23 because you grew up in a small town in Japan. I Speaker 1 7:25 grew up in a very, very small town. Went to Tokyo for college and living in New York City, and now live in Chicago, but I spent so much time in Charlottesville, Virginia, and I loved it there too. So yeah, Tim Houlihan 7:40 yeah, but you don't mind the idea of going back to a small town, Speaker 1 7:46 no, no, not at all, as long as it's relatively close to a big city. I really want to go to art museums and go to major league baseball or basketball or something like that. So just day to day, small town sounds great, but like you know, some of many keys, a big city would be great too. Okay, Kurt Nelson 8:10 so taking a cue from the clash, they asked a very important question, and I want to get your take on this. All right, should I stay or should I go? You should go. You should just kind of what you decided to Speaker 1 8:32 do. Yeah, actually, I start my book with this quote from the classroom. You know, yeah, should I stay or should I go? And essentially, yeah, you should we should go, because we have a tendency to stay. I think we love the idea of going, but when it comes to the real decision, often time we will just really, really, you know, fond of certain familiarities. I think just, you know, you guys know this, like behavioral just, just bias towards Familiarity is just so great, right? And loss aversion is so great that we often not do it. And, and, you know, this is, I think, one of the greatest insight of social psychology, you know, Tom girovich, essentially, in the short run, we regret what we did, right? The stupid thing we said, a stupid thing we did, but lifetime regret long term, we often regret that we didn't the things we didn't do. So so I think that's that's really important to encourage ourselves when we faced with this. You know, frequent question, actually, should we stay? Where should we go? I think I tell myself, we should go. If I could Tim Houlihan 9:51 perfect. Have you acted on that in your own life? Have you? Have you been confronted with that situation where you're like, Yeah, I should go. Speaker 1 9:59 I think so. I. I did it maybe too often, right? Oh, my first job was at the University of Minnesota. When I had an offer from University of Virginia, I went, and then when I had to offer from Columbia, I went, and then I actually regret it, and went back to UVA, Chicago. So I really did, I really did go, yeah, Kurt Nelson 10:24 so she you've explored happiness, you've explored meaning, mobility and culture across your career. What sparked your interest in kind of that research that you do and what makes life fulfilling? What sparked that? Speaker 1 10:40 I think that my original Spark, actually, my undergraduate thesis, was already about midlife crisis. And, of course, as a college student, I thought about, like, what kind of life I would like to live. And I went to college during the bubble day, Japanese economy. So economy was great. Everybody was getting a job easy, but just seeing these business people working 60 hours long commute, I just couldn't imagine myself. So I think from the very beginning I started, you know, doing research on happiness and well being and good life, just to guide myself, you know, my own life, how to structure my life, how I should live life. And I think I could have gone to philosophy route. But luckily, I was exposed to the psychology and social psychology, so, so I went to my empirical route of asking these questions. Tim Houlihan 11:44 Yeah, you've noted that your your mentor was Ed Diener, yeah, that's right, that's right. We all revere because of his work, right? Speaker 1 11:52 He was amazing. So I started my PhD back in 1995 and back then, there were really one or two people who are doing happiness research and Ed most rigorously, really. And he was so open to my research. So he was such a hands off advisors. So some professors said, oh, you know, first year student, you should do this and do that. He's not at all like that, not at all. And because I'm from Japan, I question everything right, like the findings from the US, they don't seem to fit into Japanese or other other culture. And he was totally open, totally open. So, so he encouraged me to explore cultural variations in predictors of happiness, the meaning of happiness. And, you know, he was just unbelievable, amazing advisor and amazing person. And really his wife, Carol and Ed just made everybody around, like happy. So all my cohort, you know, graduate students around the time, we all say, you know, we spend our happiest time in urban champagne, anywhere in the world. And really, really, he was not just, of course, known as a researcher of happiness, but really practitioner. I mean, he he really made everybody, really welcome everybody happy, and he is really just a role model for me, not just a researcher, but really as a person Kurt Nelson 13:32 that's really fancy, fascinating. I love the idea that, you know, he's not only studying happiness, being at the forefront of that research, but that he's living that life and expanding that with with the people that are surrounding him. It's kind of a it's it. It caught me as you were talking about, like, the spark that you had, it's almost a bit of me search, right? It was like this idea of, like, I want to make sure my life is here. And when you talk about Ed, it feels like, maybe it's not me search, but it's like, Well, I'm a happy person. I want to understand that maybe a little bit. Maybe there's something about about that that was there. I don't know. Yeah, Speaker 1 14:10 definitely, definitely, he wanted to study happiness all along, from undergraduate, when he was undergraduate students at Fresno State, and he has these stories like, this is 19, you know, 60s. So, like he goes to Professor, you know, I want to study happiness, especially happiness of the farm workers, because he grew up in the ranch. And, you know, professor says, Mr. Dina, we all know the farmers. You know, farm worker laborers are not happy. So, so, so so don't study things like that. You should study conformity. Unknown Speaker 14:46 Wow. And Speaker 1 14:48 then in graduate school, he studied the D individuation and crowd behavior, because, you know, during the that time, there's a lot of demonstrations, and crowd behavior is a big thing in social psychology. So he got essentially job and tenure doing the research on aggression and crowd behavior and deindividuations. And then finally, when he got the tenure, he decided, okay, now I can study happiness. Finally, that really the topic I wanted to study. Wow. Tim Houlihan 15:18 So, so for those who aren't familiar what was Ed dieners thesis around happiness. Speaker 1 15:25 So he was very much like empiricist, namely, how to define, how to measure, how to quantify. So so he didn't go happiness research to sort of okay, how to make people happy. He really wanted to establish as something like IQ, right? IQ is very difficult, like exist, like phenomena everybody understand at the same time, very difficult to define, very difficult to measure. So he wanted to make sure we have a reliable measurement of the happiness. And he avoided the word happiness, and he used the subjective well being, used the life satisfactions and positive emotions and so forth. But, but his his first five years or so of the effort is really to see whether there is a such thing as a, you know, subjective well being and happiness, and whether it's quantifiable. So he created the measure of satisfaction with life scale. So five items, very reliable, self report, informant report, also reflect the day to day and moment to moment emotion. So he did a lot of experience sampling, method studies, daily diary study, official clinical interviews, not just a self report. So, so I think he's he, he really wanted to go a theoretical he didn't want to say, Oh, this is the theory of happiness. But rather, he wanted to explore, so what, what are the constitutes, defining characteristics of happiness, and how much you know, personality matters, how much genetics matter, how much culture matters, like, really, you know, as a pure scientist, so, so very different, I think, from current generation of happiness researchers who Want to sort of have particular take on the happiness. And, of course, I think, thanks to Ed's and other people's initial effort, we established the science of happiness. Therefore we can move on to interventions and things like that, but, but he was extremely concerned about laying, you know, very, very solid foundation of that happiness research and which, Kurt Nelson 17:43 which actually kind of goes along with your earlier statement, where he said, Yeah, go ahead and study the cultural difference, because it really expanding upon the understanding of that. Are there cultural differences do? How does that impact? And so, again, not the theory of it, but understanding the actual, you know, how it portrays itself in the real world. So, yeah, exactly. Speaker 1 18:07 So he was sometimes criticized not having his own theory of, you know, happiness and subject to well being. But, but to him, it was really important to the neutral, sort of scientific perspective and and whatever data tell us about the happiness that's that's what our job to really measure, find out, and then communicate to the world what it Tim Houlihan 18:31 is we want to get to your work. We want to get to psychological richness. And thank you so much for indulging us in the discussion about Ed Diener, there's a couple of things that are important, I think, that our listeners might need to know before we get to psychological richness, and that's the difference between the eudaimonic approach and the hedonic approach. And could you just spend a minute breaking those two apart and saying how they're different, right? So, Speaker 1 19:01 when Edina started his research calling subject to well being, the first paper was published in 1984 essentially, he put forward the idea that it is person who lives that life. How this person feels about their lives is the most important indicator of whether somebody is leading a good life. Therefore he thought, you know, the person has to be satisfied with this person's life, happy about where that life is going. In 1989 already, just just five years afterward, Carol riffs, famous professor at the University of Wisconsin published a paper entitled, happiness is everything, or is it essentially her critique of Edina was that, well, Hitler could have been happy about his life, and you know, that would pose a huge. Problem to the field, that the fact that everybody recognized he didn't lead the good life, but he could have felt his life was good, right? So she proposed her version psychological well being, but, you know, more recently, called more eudaimonic well being. So she provided the six dimensions of well being, focusing on more of the functioning. Does this person functioning well? So self acceptance, environmental mastery, personal growth, positive relationships and so forth. So emphasis is almost like you know, is it the personal happiness to to make yourself happy, or is good life to make other people's life happy, even at the expense of your own happiness? So so the personal happiness is more of a hedonic approach. You really make sure you feel genuinely you know feel good about your life. And I think that eudaimonic well being is more focused on your societal contribution, functioning as an individual and as an individual in the society. If Kurt Nelson 21:16 I understand right, the research subsequent to that, has shown that there's a lot of correlation, a lot of overlap. Is that correct? Or how does that work? Speaker 1 21:26 So, so when you pose the question, is a good life to make yourself happy, or to make other people happy, even at the expense of your own happiness, it sounds like diametric opposite, right? Of course, there are a lot of cases where you know, Mother Teresa, really, you know, toiled her life to make the world a better place. But it turns out, the person who says, Yes, I am making other people's life better, namely, I feel my life is meaningful. It's significant, it's purpose, driven and coherent, those are the people who actually also say their life is quite good and satisfying. So in terms of the correlation, we often see point 5.6 positive correlations. So this was actually surprising, and a lot of people started to saying, then, what's the point of distinguishing? Like, we've been arguing, which one is more important, hedonic or eudaimonic. But in the end, there's so much over that, what were we, you know, arguing, of course, like, if you look at this globally, then there's quite a bit of divergent between the happy life and the meaningful life. So if you look at within the United States, right, then the happy people tend to find their life to be meaningful too, and vice versa, but across the world. So you know, we all hear about the World Happiness Report and how you know Denmark and Finland and those countries are the top, and African countries are on the bottom. So if you look at the average happiness or life satisfaction of the nation, and correlate that with the GDP per capita correlation often is a point eight, 3.84 almost like linear correlation. You can really see linearly as the GDP per capita increase the average citizens, life satisfaction goes up. But in 2014 Edina and I published this paper analyzing the same data from the Gallup organization. But there was items about the meaning in life. Do you find your life to be meaningful, or you have important purpose. This was yes, no question. Shockingly, lots of African countries, they are very poor, they don't say their life is going well, but over 90% of those people said, yes, my life is meaningful and purposeful. And if you look at the mean national mean of the meaning in life, and correlate that with the GDP per capita. Now we have minus point four, nine correlation, the negative. Furthermore, if you look at the WHO suicide rate, then you actually you see that in a rich country, there are more suicide per capita, and actually it is correlated with the self reported meaning in life. So the richer country, the lower in meaning in life, and the higher rate of suicide. So so it is quite important to look at the two different things. So within the United States, individual differences, you know, meaning and happiness quite correlated, but if you just expand the horizon whole scale, then you do start seeing sort of divergent Kurt Nelson 24:55 so, so let's, let's take this to the next level, because now you. Have come and kind of bring in a third dimension to this, this conversation, can you talk about that, and talk about what that third dimension is, and how it parlays into all of this? Speaker 1 25:13 So, you know, in 2015, actually, 10 years ago, that summer, I was thinking back my life, and I was just shocked that I have been studying happiness and meaning like for 20 years. You know, it was shocking. And I asked, am I happy with my life? And I say, Yes, I'm happy. I'm full professor at University of Virginia, you know, happily married, two kids and so forth. Do I find my life to be meaningful? Yeah, I think so. You know, my teaching is going well. The student seems to like my social psych class. And, you know, I I tried to help my kids playing baseball and, you know, little league baseball stuff, so I felt like I'm useful to then, and, you know, making some difference in a small way, but so so found my life to be meaningful. But then I asked the next question, like, is this the full life? Is this the complete life? And I couldn't say yes. Although I was quite satisfied, I thought my life was going well and meaningful. So whenever I have questions like that, I will go to my lab meeting where there are undergraduate research assistant, PhD students and some postdoc so I ask, so what do you think somebody Tim says he is satisfied with his life, his life is meaningful. Is that the full, complete life. How many of you think this is a complete life? And then about half of them raise hand, and then she get You're kidding me. I mean, it's difficult to be happy. How greedy can you be? That's a damn good life? Sure, yeah, but then the other half said, Yeah, you're right. Like, something might be missing. So that's when we started looking at the literature a little bit more critically, and then I realized that happiness and meaning tend to lean toward more stable life that you know oftentimes we hear like, what is the key to happiness or meaning? Often time, close relationship, right? The very good romantic relationship, family relationship, you know, your friendships, and those are the stable factors. And also, of course, the financial stability is very important. So when you look at all and then there are political conservatism as well. They tend to be more happy. People tend to be more politically conservative. Those people who say their life is meaningful tend to be politically conservative as well, although correlation is very, very small. So what we realized was that that seems like missing out the other kind of good life, because we admire a life of adventure, life of curiosity, life of exploration. Indeed, academia is all about like, you know, searching for the truth and new knowledge. And you know, we are trying to encourage them to think differently, you have acquired new perspective and wisdom could be gained only through really experiencing a lot of different things, putting yourself out of the comfort zone, and when we look at the Kurt of meaning in life and happy life, we thought these two concepts are not really capturing that part. So if you look at the Big Five personality traits and how it correlates with happiness and meaning, essentially, extraversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and lack of neuroticism are very important for happy life and unmeaning but openness to experience is not really correlated with either of them. And openness to experience, of course, is an appreciation of the idea esthetics. And of course, like being, you know, open to new ideas, receptive of new ideas and so forth. So. So there are functions, and there are positive benefits of that too, but just a happy life and then a meaningful life are not really capturing and when we created this new construct of cycles for rich life, which we essentially define as the life filled with diverse interesting experiences that result in the perspective change, so sort of filled with interesting perspective changing experiences. Then and we created a scale then correlation is very different. So the strongest correlation, correlates of psychological reach life is openness experience. So it really capture the parts of the well being that have not been captured well. And. By happiness and meaning in life. I want to go Tim Houlihan 30:03 back to a comment that if you could help clarify Shige about political conservatism, happier, more meaning, stability, those, those things are kind of going together. Modest correlation there. How? How do those does that spectrum work within psychological richness? Then, yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah, that Speaker 1 30:28 perfectly makes sense. That's why we started to look at the political orientations and how it's related to the psychological richness, as opposed to happiness and meaning. So in general, first of all happiness, meaning and psychological rich life, three of them are positively correlated. So not a huge correlation, but somewhere between point so, richness and happiness, point 2.3, correlation, richness and meaning, point 4.5, correlation. Good. Yeah. So so often time that zero order correlation with the political orientation is almost zero, or even sometimes slightly toward the political conservatism, just because it's all positively correlated with the happiness and meaning as well. But if you partial out the overlapping part between the happiness meaning and richness, which is essentially positivity, is life good overall, right? If you take out, then the pattern of association is very, very different. So it is more like political liberalism. Tend to be more associated with that, uniquely associated with the richness and the conservatism is correlated with happiness. And meaning Kurt Nelson 31:45 which, which, on the surface, seems that kind of, it kind of fits, right, if you think about that, that openness and in different pieces, and kind of how the political spectrums self identify in some of those areas. So I think that's good. I want to kind of switch a little bit you talk a little bit about the happiness trap, and I think this fits in with some of this conversation. Can you tell us? Can you tell our listeners what the happiness trap is and the implications of that? Sure. Speaker 1 32:16 So one part of the happiness trap, I think, is that, you know, we think happiness is personal success, yeah. So it's very interesting. If you look at the ancient Greek, right, the happiness, the original word is eudaimonia, and you is good demon is the spirit. So good spirits on your side. It was totally good luck and fortune. But, but in America, it became not the good luck and fortune, but became the satisfaction of your desires and goals. So interesting, if you look at the Webster unabridged dictionary, 1800 version would say primary definition of happiness is the good luck and fortune. And I sent my students to the library and looked at every edition and every edition, up until 1961 primary definition is good luck and fortune. But in 61 they denote a cake no longer in use. And then the primary definition changed to the satisfaction of, you know, desires and goals and things like that. So So current Americans really have this notion that the happiness is the result of the personal, often career success, but that means that unhappiness when you're not happy, you think that you're not successful, and that is really, really hard. That's really, hard. That makes it really difficult for us to accept the negative events and negative emotions, and current generation in particular, suffering from the anxiety, right? Anxious generations, I think it's partially because we they just focus on maximization of happiness and equate that with the success. Therefore, I think that's the part of the trap that you know they cannot accept the negative emotion on the other hand, right? If you consider happiness as good luck and fortune, unhappiness is merely the you know unlucky and you know unfortunate. So so you know the luck will always turn around, and it's just a part of the life, and you can much more easily accept those negative emotions once you change that to that more ancient notion of happiness. So that's one part of the happiness trap. The other part of the second part of the happiness trap is that empirically speaking, when you look at the happy people, happy people are not the maximizers, but the satisfies, right? You know, Barry, Barry Schwartz famously did this amazing research showing happy people say this is good enough for me, whereas happy people keep looking for the best potential, you know, options. So in. Some, in many ways, in order to live happy life, you have to manage your expectation, and you have to be able to say, good enough. Indeed, when BBC went to Denmark in search of secret of Danish happiness, you interview Danish and then, so what's the secret of happiness? And they say, Oh, we don't expect that much in my expectation, right? So William James has this famous formula of self esteem. Self esteem is essentially success divided by your ambitions. American focus on maximizing success to increase self esteem or happiness. But what Buddhist as well as the Scandinavian country, are doing is working on denominator, just shrinking, managing the expectations and ambitions. And in many way, that's easier and manageable, because the success has a lot to do with your luck and fortune, really. So, so I think that's the trap, that in the end, you have to go like smaller and smaller and smaller. But if you go satisfies a mindset all the way, then at the end of your life, what have you accomplished? What did you do? It might be full of regret, right? You could have done so many things, but I thought this is good enough for me, because I wanted to maximize happiness. So, so the danger of that approach, again, is that you want to go, like, Should I Stay or Should I Go? They will always say, stay good here. So just like, appreciate what I have, and I'm just stay here. You know that that could, you know, result in a big regret in the end of life? So, so that's what I say, the happiness trap. And maybe I think happiness is important. I like happiness, but at the same time, if you're just too focused on this satisfies our mindset, then maybe once in a while, you have to remind yourself and maybe try a little bit of the psychological richness approach to life. Kurt Nelson 37:01 Hey, Groovers, we want to take a moment away from our conversation to thank you for listening to Behavioral Grooves. If you enjoy the conversations we're having and want to help us keep the groove going, here are a few simple ways that you can support the show. First Tim Houlihan 37:14 off, subscribing to our sub stack is a great way to stay connected with us between episodes. The weekly newsletter provides you with cool insights that are beyond the episodes, and they get delivered straight to your inbox. And Kurt Nelson 37:26 if you haven't already leaving a review or a rating of the podcast on a platform like Apple or Spotify or YouTube, helps other curious minds discover us. And there's two great things about that. One, it gives us a boost, and two, it costs nothing Tim Houlihan 37:42 and it only takes a second, but it makes a huge difference for us. Plus, we love hearing from you, so don't be shy. Leave us a review or give us a quick thumbs up. Kurt Nelson 37:53 We're coming up on 500 episodes, and we're doing this because we love the conversations we have with our guests. Yeah, Tim Houlihan 37:58 we also want to do it because we love bringing you insightful behavior, changing content every week, and we hope that some of those insights will help you find your groove. Kurt Nelson 38:10 So actually, this was fascinating. So there's like, a Goldilocks component to it, right? It's not too hot, not too cold, just right in between. And I know some of the work that you've done, or other people work that maybe you references this idea of of kind of well being or a good life coming from these great big moments of meaning and happiness versus the importance of having smaller moments of those. So the marriage, the job promotion, the getting the new house, versus walking my dog and appreciating the sunset and having a good cup of coffee with a friend. Is there? Is that the same thing of having some Goldilocks component, or is one, does one outweigh the other when you look at the research? So that's Speaker 1 38:58 exactly like, similar to the satisfies versus Maximizer kind of thing. So we have this so first generation of, I think, happiness research, one of the greatest insight comes from Don Gilbert, Tim Wilson, this affective focusing era that we think promotion and marriage and those big moments will really bring us happiness, which is true, but it doesn't last that long. So we have the hedonic adaptation. So Edina has a great chapter entitled, happiness is not intensity, but the frequency of positive emotion. So essentially, you don't want to look for the this intense, rare event, but rather, you should cherish this, you know, small joy in life, like having cup of coffee with best friend. You know, walk in the neighborhood if you want to maximize happiness. So, so that's, that's the thing, right? So we. We already know, like, what makes us happy? It's not this big success, but it's a it's not a personal career success, but really the interpersonal success, the relationships and so forth. So yeah. Well, along Tim Houlihan 40:14 those lines, is there an aspect of leading a fulfilling life that is most under appreciated in your view. Speaker 1 40:24 I think just just in general, how approach to the everydayness and the smallness actually is, is what keep us going, and, you know, give us more of the Sustainable I think well being so so I think that aspect still is the underappreciated part of the well being. I think we still, you know, focus on the big thing or just some strategies x and y, but it is really a lot of people who say they are happy, or who say they lead the meaningful life and also the rich life. They're actually not really consciously pursuing those things, almost like happiness, meaning and richness, a by product of what they like to do and sort of the behavioral tendencies. So so I think we focus so much on the strategies and mindsets and so forth, which is, of course, important too. But at the same time, the underappreciated part is that, you know, not unconsciously pursuing those goals actually might be the way to get there. Kurt Nelson 41:37 Wow, counter counter intuitive, almost to a certain degree, right? You can't get it if you're searching. If I'm, if I'm aiming for it, I will never get it. But if I, if I not, then that happens to me. And I think there's an aspect of that that is again to this part, like, do I look at my life and try to identify, do I want to be that, hedonic happiness. Do I want to have that, you know, meaningful aspect, or do I want that richness of it? And is your take on that? Or help me understand I should just be looking? Do I emphasize one or the other? Or is it independent of based on who I am? How do we Yeah, if I'm a listener, what do I do? Speaker 1 42:24 Yeah, so I think it's you have to be a honest to yourself, right? It's really helpful to know your personality, your values. And some people really want calm, quiet, just a pleasant life without hustles and drama, right? And probably what you're looking for is a happy life. Yeah, you know, some people really want to make a difference in the world, and that's that's what they care. Then it's really just, you should go for the meaningful life. But then there are some other people who don't care about the happiness of me making difference in the world, then maybe you're looking for something like psychological, rich life and really just depending on your personalities and life stage. I think what's, what's, what's most important to you changes. So, so I think it depends on the stage too. So when we asked undergraduate students, what kind of college life ideally you would like to have, right? Freshmen like, Would you like to have psychological rich college life, happy college life, or meaningful college life, right? The number one, most popular one, is psychological rich life, because they want to explore, right? They just got there. They want to explore. You look at the sophomore, it's like almost, you know, even okay. And then the Junior is a happy but if you look at the senior, it's a meaningful college life. They want to leave right now that they know they're leaving, they want to leave some legacy, or make sure there was some point to my college life. So, so, in some way that makes perfect sense, right? When you start out something new, then you really want to explore first before you settle. So, so I think, I think that stage of life, obviously, that the psychological rich life might be the good mindset. But at the same time, if you feel like you explored enough and now I know what I want, then sure, focusing on one area to maximize happiness or meaning makes perfect sense to me. And also toward the end of your career or life or certain period, right? Just reflect upon what did I do? Did I did it? Make it? Was there any point to it? Then, of course, you want to make sure you have some meaning, right? So I think I'm not really saying everybody should have a psychology. It's like not at all. So what I'm saying, really, in my book and everywhere, is that, you know, before people are concerned about happy life or meaningful life, which is good, but at the same time, maybe for some psychological rich life might be the type of life they actually wanted to pursue. And even if you don't have happiness and meaning you could have rich life. So I was just trying to provide the third alternative, but not at all to say happiness is bad, meaning is bad, or anything like that. I think, I think everybody ideally want to have all three. And what maybe different phase of life, and enough of it, yeah. Kurt Nelson 45:41 And what I'm hearing you say, though, is that these switches in what is most important to me can happen relatively quickly. I mean, if you looked at that freshman to senior in your college students, and probably throughout the your life as well, different demarcation inflection points in your life, and you might need to take that assessment. So this isn't a one and done. I'm looking at my life and, oh, I need to, I'm going to live a happy life, and that's going to be good for me for the rest of my, my, my, however long I live, right? This is a constant assessment. Yeah, yeah. And Speaker 1 46:17 also, like, you don't have to even, like, consciously assess, right, right? Like, if you're tired of exploring, like, you know, when you go to met Metropolitan Museum in New York City, it's just like so many galleries and artworks, like you get exhausted, right? Of course, that's too much richness. So it's like you need to, you know, sit down and just quiet down and just like, relax, right? So you cannot just go all out and maximize richness all the time either. I mean, I moved around a lot, so I feel like this time I had enough richness, so I need just calm down. Happiness is fine, you know, for a while, and if happiness become too boring, then like, you know, make, you know, exploration. So, so, so I think it's really just a cyclical kind of thing. But also, like, metaphor might be something like a vitamins, right? Like, different kinds of vitamins you need, nutrient you need. And if you just focus on just one thing, maybe it's a little bit, you know, difficult and constrained, and you want to have certain flexibility of just focusing on one over another, you know. So I love Tim Houlihan 47:33 that. I love the way you explain that, because I feel like I have had too much richness in my life for the last few years, and I'm really glad to kind of be settling a little bit and for and I'm sure I'll get bored with that as well. Yeah, exactly. You know, I think about one of the things that has come up in popular culture in terms of contributing to a fulfilling life has been social connections. What is, how is your understanding and what the research has said about social connections and its relationship and impact on that fulfilling, happy life, over, over your career. Yeah, Speaker 1 48:12 no, I think the social relationship is really, really crucial for happiness, and you know meaning too, because, like, meaning, in the end, you're trying to make the world better place and make other people happy, or other people's life happy. So, so social connection is sort of really important there. Like when you see, like you're connected with somebody, and this person appreciate what you do what you've done, then you finally, you feel like your life is meaningful. On the other hand, you do all the volunteer work, you know, serve, as you know, soup kitchens and so forth, and if the person don't appreciate you, then, then it's like you feel meaningless, right, what you're doing. So so I think the social relationships is is extremely important. And oftentimes people say gratitude is important, in part, because when we are grateful for others like the other person, really appreciate you. And that's the basis of you know, relationship, right? So in 2003 Bob Emmons published this famous paper about the gratitude interventions, and for the first time, I thanked my parents. Right up to that point, parents are supposed to, you know, support me, because they are parents. That's their their responsibility, yeah, but I read the papers like I never really properly thanked. So I thank my parents, and all of a sudden they were so shocked that I finally appreciated what they did. And then the relationship really just changed dramatically in a good way, right? Good, yeah, because, because, for the first time, I expressed my gratitude explicitly, and. They recognized that I actually appreciated all the things they did before I really didn't show anything, and indeed, I wasn't appreciative of what they did. So I think those recognizing other people are appreciating what you do is a fundamental, I mean, part of the social connection. It's not just clicking with somebody and so forth, right? I mean, sure you can talk about Dodgers or tiny whatever, and just connect, but that kind of connection is not a deep connection or so forth, whereas with your friends and family, and when you realize that, oh, actually, they really appreciate what you did, and they're so glad to see you right after a while you didn't see them, and I think that is really much more permanent sense of yes, my life is going well. I have people who care about me, and when I have some trouble, you know, I can count on and so forth. So, so without, without, you know, other people really, we cannot survive in this world. So, yeah, basic happiness, meaning richness, less so empirically, actually, correlation between the quality of social relationship and happiness and meaning is a lot stronger than because richness can be you know, obtained through music, through literature, through arts, you know, and other forms. Whereas when you think about happiness and the meaning really just it is very difficult to obtain that without other people, right? Surely yourself is hard so, so I think the social connections is a little bit more closely tied with happiness and meaning, although, of course, helpful for richness as well. Kurt Nelson 51:56 Again, thank you that that is fantastic to kind of delineate out some of those, those nuances of that as well. You've done a bunch of research in like culture, in income inequality, different pieces help us understand a little bit. And again, we don't need to get in deep here, but income inequality and its relationship to happiness? Because I think there's some, I think many people, many of our listeners, might think, well, and you already talked about the global differences on that happiness and income, but there's nuances within there on just the inequality part, isn't there? Speaker 1 52:37 Yeah. So you know, inequality and happiness literature is very, very mixed. So when we first did publish the first paper in 2011 and I also wrote the book called psychological Wealth of Nations. So there's a chapter about societal conditions of well being. And I talk about income inequality there. But if you look at the cross sectionally across the world, Gini coefficient is not correlated with the average happiness of nation. Well, even if there is zero order correlation, once you statistically control for the GDP per capita, then the income inequality, Gini coefficient is not correlated with them, because a lot of Latin American country, which has a lot of income inequality, say they are quite happy. So, so, so income inequality and average happiness of the nation is not straightforwardly correlated, which is kind of surprising. Yeah, but when we look at within the one nation, of course, when you look at the cross cultural, cross national coalition, there are a lot of third variables and so forth. So it's very messy. So you want to look at the one nation at a time, over time, and the US is a great example. So General Social Survey started in 1970 so we have a great nationally representative data on happiness since 1970 then we can look at how the American average happiness changed over time, and is it correlated with the increase of, you know, income inequality. And what we found in the 2011 paper was the indeed, that's the case in the 1970s and 80s, when income inequality was smaller, average Americans were happier than much more recent years, when there's huge income inequality. But most interestingly, when you look at the happiness of the richest 20% of American and the happiness of the poorest 20% of Americans separately over time, then the top 20% their happiness haven't changed at all over time. So, so, so their happiness hasn't gone down at all since 1970s on the other hand. The poorest 20% of American their happiness really substantially went down there. There the bottom 20% happiness and the Gini Coefficient correlation is very, very substantial, very substantial, point 6.65, whereas top 20% 00, correlation, yeah. Then indeed, we looked at the richest 20% of happiness, whether any kinds of societal conditions, like, you know, unemployment rate, whatever matter. Nothing matters. Nothing matters because their happiness is in person, not affected by the societal conditions. Whereas, of course, the poorest 20% their happiness is very heavily depending on what's going on in the society. Kurt Nelson 55:47 Tim, I think we might need to groove on some of that, just in the comment around the this aspect of it plays a lot into maybe some of the elements that are going on in our culture right now, and political and and just sociological, you know that those, those aspects that brings in a whole different dynamic of, nope, nothing. My happiness is set. I mean, it's, we're, we've, it's been set. If for those top 20% versus other people within that that income Speaker 1 56:20 great. And of course, if you look at the trust, general trust, and you know, fairness perceptions, of course, the bottom 20% down, down, down substantially over the last 40 years. Now, on a separate paper, we looked at the money, income, happiness correlation over time. You know, in the 1970s and 80s, income, happiness, correlation was barely point one, zero, very weak, very weak. Wow. If you plot year by year, it just increased over time. And shockingly, money matters more like correlation becomes point two, 5.27, and we looked at the European countries over time, same thing, and then Latin American country is different. Latin American country, it's even or just slightly going down. But interestingly, if you look at the income inequality Latin American country last 20 years, income inequality stays same, or went down, even, oh, rest of the world went up. And essentially, in the country where income inequality increased, the money happiness correlation increase as well. So that was the paper we published and show, unfortunately, in places like America, money is becoming playing more and more substantial roles compared to 3040, years ago. Yeah. Tim Houlihan 57:47 Shige, looking ahead, what? What do you think are some of the most important questions that have not yet been answered when it comes to the research? On, on, yeah. So subjective, well, being, happiness, etc, Speaker 1 57:59 trying to look at sort of the last 10 years, 15 years, really, I started with, you know, who is happy, you know, and who says they have meaningful life, to sort of the societal question, you know, what? What is a happy society? What is the society where people say they have meaningful life and so forth. So So I want to identify a little bit more societal factors that encourage happiness, the meaning and also psychological richness. And psychological richness, of course, is a newest one construct, and the Gallup organization doesn't have the really psych richness items, so it's a little bit harder to figure out. But we are using a lot of other techniques, like linguistic techniques, to look at the Google reviews and things like that. And within the United States where we find, you know, happy city, meaningful city, and psychological rich city and those, I think that the living conditions and infrastructures and so forth that might be conducive for, you know, happy life, meaningful life and the rich life. I think it's a pretty important, you know, questions and we want to figure out what, how to, you know, give people chance to maximize happiness, meaning and the richness, Kurt Nelson 59:22 fantastic. All right. Shige, last, my last question here is, when you, when you go to a dinner party and you talk to somebody, and you tell them that you study happiness and meaning and psychological, written richness, what's what's their response? What's the most common question that you get from Unknown Speaker 59:41 they always ask, so what can I do? Kurt Nelson 59:47 That would have been my question too. Unknown Speaker 59:55 So what can I do? Tim Houlihan 59:57 So, yeah, that's good. Well, thank you for. For giving us an answer to that, we appreciate that one of the things that we talk about here on Behavioral Grooves is this idea of living in a groove, you know, sort of, sort of like, you know, chink sent to Maha had flow, this very focused state, we kind of think of a groove. Nick Apley actually explained it as sort of a first year PhD student idea, but, but it's like what, you know, it's a good life. It's, it's, it's setting yourself up for appreciating all those small things and enjoying and being productive and that sort of thing in your life. Shige, what? What is it like being in a groove for you? Speaker 1 1:00:38 Hmm, yeah, I think I often think about, yeah, chicks on the highest floor is, I think, very close to the concept of groove. I think that when I'm really just absorbed in the activities that I do, I mean just when I just get the data after, you know, finishing the experiments and studies and analyze data. I mean, just so exciting, just so totally absorbing. And also, like, you know, reading the great novels and listening to, you know, great music films. I think, I think there's so many things we do, you know, when we are interested in, like, we are so absorbed. And I think that's, that's what makes me feel like I'm in groove, and I hope to increase, I think that the frequency of the groove experiences. And as Chik sanghai said, I think it's a really you have to find your level of skills, and then that matching level of difficulty, right? If it's too easy, too boring, if it's too difficult, then just you're not gonna try. So just, just have to find the right level of difficulties and a new area of knowledge that you want to explore, and then that, I think that's where you find a lot of grooves. Tim Houlihan 1:01:58 Back to, yeah, yeah. Back to that Goldilocks effect, yeah? And Speaker 1 1:02:02 also, like exploring a little bit, just going beyond your comfort zone a little bit. And that's that's when I think you, you find that Tim Houlihan 1:02:14 thank you for that. We, we know that you love sports, yeah, but, but we have a question about music. We would like to talk about music for just a minute. So imagine you are on a desert island for a year, and you have a listening device, but it only has two musical artists on it. Now you get their whole catalog, everything that they ever recorded under any circumstances, but you only get two which two artists would you take with you? Speaker 1 1:02:45 Maybe one is someone from classical music world. It's a little bit tough, but maybe Brown, you know, or Chopin, somebody like that bit, Beethoven. The other one, I will say maybe Charlie Parker, okay, wow, yeah, I like jazz. And I was gonna say Clifford Brown, but Clifford Brown didn't have that many albums. So if it's one song that I think Clifford Brown or heartbreaky, but the whole year, then Charlie Parker, the Yeah, Miles Davis, just need a little more Tim Houlihan 1:03:26 well. And Charlie Parker, in his relatively short lifetime, he did, he created a lot of Unknown Speaker 1:03:32 a lot, a lot, a lot. Kurt Nelson 1:03:35 Okay, okay, Shige, I'm gonna, I'm gonna add to this. This is new. This is the top, top of my head. You get a television, but it can only be showing one sport. It shows one sport the whole time. What sport are you going to have on that television on your island when you're not listening to music? Speaker 1 1:03:55 I think baseball. Yeah, baseball. I like watching, actually, basketball, maybe more. But if it's a one year, then, like baseball, you know, it's slow game, so you can just be away a little Kurt Nelson 1:04:12 bit. That is true. That is very simple, like, one minute Unknown Speaker 1:04:15 can change everything, right? So Kurt Nelson 1:04:17 I wasn't just dense, I was just timber playoff game last night. And, you know, yeah, I mean, you look at any of the playoff games that have happened recently in the NBA, and, you know, 20 points disappears in a quarter, which is crazy, when you think about it, right? Speaker 1 1:04:33 Ncwa tournament. Duke, right? Like, yes, I went to bed. Like, Kurt Nelson 1:04:39 okay. Duke. Like, over. Yeah, many times. So many times of that. Well, thank you. We are so, so appreciative of all of your insight, all of your great work, and for taking time out of your busy schedule and sharing that information with us and our listeners. So Thank. From bottom of our hearts, Unknown Speaker 1:05:01 yeah, he was fun. Thank you. Kurt Nelson 1:05:11 Welcome to our grooving session where Tim and I share ideas on what we learned from our discussion with Shige. Have a free flowing conversation and groove on whatever else comes into our psychologically poor brains. Tim Houlihan 1:05:22 Oh, psychologically poor. Kurt Nelson 1:05:25 Well, you and my brain. You know, everybody else's brain is psychologically rich, so, Tim Houlihan 1:05:30 but we live good lives. We Kurt Nelson 1:05:33 do. Live good lives. I will, I will. Yes, we do and we live. We are both, I think cycle, actually, in reality, I was trying to be a little facetious there. We probably do live psychologically rich lives. I think you and I are both very open to experience. I think yes, both like adventure and travel to a certain degree. I think that there is an aspect of continually challenging our beliefs and our ideas and learning new things that is part of this that you and I just thoroughly love, right? So, yes, so, so yes, that was being facetious. Okay, Tim Houlihan 1:06:19 so where would you like to start this grooving session? What would be a good thing? Because first of all, can I just, I should just say this. I have to get out my fan experience. I know of getting the talk with Shige Oishi right, like that. He was such a gracious guest, and he's a monument in of of psychological research. So, like, this was really cool, getting them to, I Kurt Nelson 1:06:45 mean, this is, yeah, I mean, he's up there with with the greats. And it's just fascinating that we get to talk to these people. Still amazes me, after how many episodes we talked to these people, and it's like they're talking with us, like they're having conversations with you and me, and they're, they're kind and nice and insightful and wonderful. It's, it's amazing. I really do appreciate, and you know, thank thanks she gave for adding to the psychological richness of our lives. Because I think that really was there. I think there is so asking about what we want to talk about we could, we could go on and on about psychological richness. I think we will the happiness trap. Yeah, that really. I loved how he talked about it as a trap. I love this idea of the way that it was framed, in a manner that it's the hedonic treadmill with a different perspective, but I think it makes it hits home really hard. Yeah, it's a really kind of a terrible Tim Houlihan 1:07:57 thing in the modern world that we've started to say that happiness is highly correlated with success, yeah, and that without some certain degree of success, we're not going to achieve some level of happiness, right? That we're always behind. We're always sort of reaching a little farther to get that brass ring, like, if I'm successful enough, I'll be happy enough. But like you said, this is a hedonic treadmill kind of a thing that really doesn't take us anywhere, Kurt Nelson 1:08:32 right? And I loved how he brought in that happiness used to mean good fortune, that I didn't know that was an interesting piece. And so if you think about good fortune versus success, they're two very different things. You know, having this idea of being lucky to a certain degree, yes, as an aspect of happiness, that's that's really interesting. Wouldn't Tim Houlihan 1:09:00 it be kind of cool if we could return to that? If we could actually just return to say, Wow, having good fortune in my life is a really wonderful thing. And by the way, let's look for good fortune, because it can be everywhere around us. Kurt Nelson 1:09:15 Well, I think that the I think there's an aspect of that that you I like how you said that that good fortune is all around us. But I think too often people think about good fortune as, oh, I won the lottery or something, right? And that idea of good fortune really is about, and I'll go to the stoic kind of viewpoint of appreciating what I have, yeah, and that's great when you can do that. That lends itself into a more fulfilled, happy life, as opposed to always striving for that next level, the new job, the more echo. Leads that I want. I got 10 likes on that last post. I need to get 15 on my next one. How many followers do I have? And attributing our success with then the happiness that is supposedly correlates with that. And we know that isn't necessarily true. You get a, yeah, small, you know, increase in dopamine and other, you know, neurotransmitters, but it doesn't last. Tim Houlihan 1:10:27 I'm glad you brought up the stoics first, because you love them so much, and love that work. But it's also correlated with Buddhism, you know, this idea of, let's try to to to get to shed some of that expectations and desires that we have to live a happier life. And I think this actually kind of gets to an interesting aspect of the way William James talked about how self esteem was a result of success divided by our expectations. So if we have so success in modern thinking ends up being something that is influenced by by how I how I thought I was going to do and how compared to how I'm doing. Kurt Nelson 1:11:11 So effective forecasting errors, right? I Tim Houlihan 1:11:14 guess so, to some degree, because if I really thought that I was going to be number one, this is the gold medal, silver medal, bronze medal. If I thought that I was going to be the gold medalist and I ended up getting silver, I'm super disappointed, but if I get the bronze medal, I'm just so happy to be in the medal round. So yeah, of course, I was striving to be first. That's why I was running the race, but the fact that I actually came in third was still a really good thing. It's the silver medalist that that their expectations Miss start to misconstrue how they feel about their own success. Well, this goes back to Kurt Nelson 1:11:54 Gilbert and Wilson, right? Dan Gilbert, and he doesn't really, if people haven't heard his TED talk on happiness, fantastic, right? And he's, I think there's a couple of them, actually, but he talks about this idea of, we always think that that next thing is going to make us happy, that that, and we're not very good predictors of what actually makes us happy, right? Right? Even if we sit down and think about it, we are not very good at that, right? So how can we make good choices about our life if we're wrong about what is going to lead to that good life? And this is the this is the stuff where I love. She gave his work because I think it adds to this idea of for people, what do I need to have in my life in order to be fulfilled and happy and feel like it's a good life. Tim Houlihan 1:12:54 This also connects to his analogy on the vitamin thing, where he where he talked about, like one person, and you and I have talked about this in the past, where, like one person might need a lot of vitamin C, somebody else needs a lot of vitamin D and maybe less vitamin C. Everybody's a little bit different in this way. But if we, if we miss out on, if you're thinking, All I want is vitamin C, vitamin C, vitamin C, but we don't do the vitamin D, or any of the other ones, we miss out on some of the richness of what might come from these other vitamins in this well, Kurt Nelson 1:13:27 and we can, we get sick, right? It's not, it's not good for us. So I mean, if we're, if we're vitamin deficient in some areas, then we that actually is a detriment. And so it's a detriment to our happiness if we're only focused in on one of these. And the other element of that analogy is that our need for different vitamins changes over the course of our life. And the same thing with these three aspects of happiness, they're not always going to be it's not like I at 18, my happiness Trifecta percentages are set, right? I need this much, you know, you know happiness, of just, you know meaning I need this actually means of just fun. What's the word I'm looking for? Tim, you got to help me out here. My brain is fumbling, enjoyment, happiness. Well, yeah, what's that called? It's hedonic, hedonic, yeah, okay. Oh, my God. Brain, not hedonistic, the hedonic, hedonic happiness. You know, so much meaningful happiness, so much of this in the psychological richness aspect of it, and that shifts during time you talked about, like when you were in your early 20s, all you wanted to do was go be a musician and live out of a car and a road, and then you fell in love. And that shifted. Tim Houlihan 1:14:50 It did. It did. And you have a colleague who has lived so much of his life on incredible adventures and well now he's been. Even he's been Kurt Nelson 1:15:00 on the show. You know, Ben is a long time collaborator, friend, employee, and, oh, my God, I live vicariously through his life because he's, he's going to Afghanistan this past year to ski. He's, he's like, going through Taliban checkpoints to go skiing by himself. And then he, you know, he's gone to the Amazon River and been on a raft. And you know him and his wife, like have traveled around the country in lived in RVs for three, four or five months at a time. And you know Lake Tahoe and up by Seattle, they Alaska to Central America. You're right. He lived in Belize for a couple months, and worked out of there. We talked, you know, so his his need, and I'm making an assumption, so Ben, correct me, if I'm wrong here, his need for psychological richness is probably a lot more than yours and mine. At least he lives his life that way, and he does find enjoyment from that so on Tim Houlihan 1:16:05 that level, but I might find more psychological richness in going to art museums or right or reading 19th century British literature, for instance. I might I do actually British Kurt Nelson 1:16:19 literature. Oh, my God. Tim, okay, beyond that, right? But no, you're true. And like being like getting to talk with the people that we talk with on the show, and having all of this, I think there is different ways to fulfill psychological richness. There is also this idea of finding meaning and making a contribution to the world. And then, as we said, the hedonic piece, and we all need all three of those in differing levels. Yeah. Tim Houlihan 1:16:49 So I think it's important just to point out that there is this lovely correlation and connection between psychological richness. And one aspect of our personality foundations in the in the ocean or Big Five personality tests, and that's openness. And that might not be you like you might be low on openness. And so psychological richness of reading 19th century British novels might be not so interesting for you, and that's okay, right? Or, or the kind of adventure that that Ben goes on and you know around the world that might not be your groove, and that's okay. It's just, it's, I think it's more about sort of tailoring your life for things that are psychologically rich for you, and that might mean an art museum or making sure that you become the balloon dad at the kids happy birthday parties, you know, whatever brings you psychological or there's a whole variety of things that we can, we can do well, Kurt Nelson 1:18:00 That, I think, is the real interesting part, is psychological richness is not just adventure and travel. That's a main that's a key piece. That could be a key piece, but it is so much more and that, if anything, is what people can take away from this episode, along with the fact that we need all three of them. And, you know, there's this aspect of, I think that is really cool about that. So, Tim Houlihan 1:18:27 yeah, I think there was also a note to talk about correlations, that when statisticians do these correlations, they're looking for some statistical base to say this actually correlates. There's actually some relationship between these, these things, and they often use sort of a minimum of point two or point three in this factoring. And when we get above point three, then it's like, then we have a really good correlation. If we have two things that are basically identical, their correlation is one, right, right? So that's the maximum one. 1.0 would be perfectly identical and perfectly correlated. But when you get above point three, you actually start to see, oh, there's a, there's actually a real relationship here between these. Yeah, this is where Shige is going with this. Yeah. Kurt Nelson 1:19:17 And when correlations get up to the point 6.7 Those are huge in most of the social science research. Yeah, maybe not so much in the physical sciences, but, you know, even then, I think probably more so. But in social sciences, those are huge, and then that's a really interesting piece, and so they're meaningful at that point 3.4, point five, it starts to get big. 678, man, those are huge, really, highly, highly correlated, and it's really good. So absolutely all right, is it time for me to call this grooving session a wrap? Tim Houlihan 1:19:57 Yeah? Yeah. I think so. But I think that the golden nugget, and I'm going back to our conversation with Feisal on golden nuggets, not golden Kurt Nelson 1:20:05 nuggets, not the silver bullet. Yes, I get that nice is that happiness is, while desirable, can become a trap if we pursue it as the benchmark of success, rather than just letting it emerge as a life well lived, right? That was an interesting part where we didn't really groove on it all that part that of shigese conversation is this idea that if I chase happiness, then happiness becomes elusive. But if I, if I try to just live my life, and then happiness issues. And I think that is been shown over and over again with other researchers in the happiness field as well. And sometimes, you know, letting go of that pressure to be happy and learning and leaning into the richness and unpredictability of life is the path, maybe some to something deeper, something more meaningful, and ultimately Unknown Speaker 1:20:56 happier, Tim Houlihan 1:20:59 really, truly happier. So we hope that this absolutely JAM PACKED episode of really great ideas can help you this week as you apply them in your life and you go out and find your groove, you Transcribed by https://otter.ai