No. 1 Happiness Expert: If Your Friends Get Divorced So Will You! Single Friends Will Keep You Single! Obesity Is Contagious

Arthur C. Brooks (0:00)

I was five years ago, because I finally cracked the code.

Steven Bartlett (0:02)

OK, so Arthur Brooks, the world-renowned social scientist, Harvard professor, best-selling author, who teaches people how to live a better, happier life.

Arthur C. Brooks (0:11)

I've studied the science of happiness, and I found that most of what society tells us is wrong. And we will go into all of this. For example, they found that happiness is about 50% genetic. Introverts tend to have more long-term happiness, and happiness is a mind virus. It will transmit from one person to another person to another person. Really? Yeah. They were looking at the trajectory of people's lives, measuring everything for many years, and they found obesity is contagious. When your friends get divorced, you're more likely to get divorced. But also, when your friends get happy, you're more likely to get happy. The problem is, happiness has been in decline since about 1990 One of the reasons is that we need struggle and suffering for us to actually get the joy that we seek. But we know that, for example, 95% of diets fail is the most unsuccessful industry in the world. Because the arrival fallacy that want to actually get rid of the belly fat, then I'm actually going to have a more wonderful life. That's actually not true. You actually get more satisfaction from the progress.

Steven Bartlett (1:04)

OK, so if not a weight number or a financial number, what's a better, more realistic goal to set that has more chance of success to being happier?

Arthur C. Brooks (1:12)

There are goals that actually do lead to the happiest life, and the more you have, the better off you are. The four goals that really matter are... Hello, Mr. Steve.

Steven Bartlett (1:30)

What do you do?

Arthur C. Brooks (1:32)

I am dedicated to lifting people up and bringing them together using the science and ideas around human happiness.

Steven Bartlett (1:42)

Where do you teach?

Arthur C. Brooks (1:43)

I teach at Harvard University.

Steven Bartlett (1:44)

Are you a professor of happiness?

Arthur C. Brooks (1:47)

Yeah, I'm a professor of leadership, technically, at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Harvard Business School, but my area is leadership and happiness. So I've studied the science of happiness, which is a huge growing field, multi-dimensional field across social psychology and neuroscience, behavioral economics, philosophy for a long time. And what I try to do is I bring it to future leaders and politics and policy and especially business and help them understand themselves as happiness teachers so they can be happier and they can be more successful and bring more happiness to the people they lead.

Steven Bartlett (2:22)

What is the state of happiness? Can we quantify that where we are in terms of, are we getting happier as a people or more unhappy as a people?

Arthur C. Brooks (2:28)

We can and we can't. So the United Nations and a lot of other places try to see the happiest country. You've seen those data a lot, the happiest countries. That was Denmark. It's always the Nordic countries. You can't do that. And that's like the way that that happens is they go to 100 countries and they survey a thousand people in each of 100 countries and say, how do you evaluate your life? That's like asking people in every country how much you like the music in your country.

And on the basis of the highest rankings internally, you say, who has the best music? It doesn't really make sense. It's bad methodology. You can look at the average well-being across a population where people are having more or less the same experience. So inside countries, inside communities over time, I'm willing to look at that. And that shows that in most of the OECD countries, including the United States and UK, our countries, happiness has been in decline since about 1990

Steven Bartlett (3:24)

‎Since about 1990?

Arthur C. Brooks (3:25)

‎Yeah. Is that when you were born?

Steven Bartlett (3:28)

‎Yeah, 92

Arthur C. Brooks (3:31)

‎It's not you. It's us.

Steven Bartlett (3:35)

‎I always think when people commit their lives largely to a topic, that must have very personal roots with that individual.

Arthur C. Brooks (3:42)

‎Sure.

Steven Bartlett (3:42)

‎What are your personal roots with the subject of happiness?

Arthur C. Brooks (3:45)

‎It's hard for me. It's hard for me. I'm not a naturally happy person. I'm way below average in happiness. And at least 50% of that is genetic, by the way. So there's a lot of research looking at identical twins. There's a whole database of identical twins born between the mid 1930s and 1960s that were adopted into separate families at birth, then reunited as adults. This was not an experiment that was cooked up by some, you know, diabolical Harvard social scientists like me. It was, it happened naturally just sort of over the course of events. And when they were reunited, they were given personality tests. You can see some of these meetings where they were reunited on YouTube, and they're wonderful. They're joyful and funny. You find that you have an identical twin you didn't know about, and it's like finding all these commonalities. But of course, there's always a bunch of social scientists, you know, with clipboards, you know, annoying them like me, you know, taking data. And so the personality tests all show that between 40 and 80% of your personality is genetic and the rest is environmental.