The Psychology of Happiness | Dr. Laurie Santos

Laurie Santos (0:00)

Right now, nationally, more than 40% of college students report being too depressed to function most days, and one in ten students has seriously considered suicide in the last six months.

Michael Gervais (0:09)

Those stats are staggering.

Laurie Santos (0:11)

They're scary.

Michael Gervais (0:12)

Why do so many of us chase happiness and then still feel like something's missing?

Laurie Santos (0:16)

These kids are 19, they're in the Ivy League, they've made it, right? I would switch with them in a heartbeat, but looking that so many of them were struggling and needed these strategies to do better was, I think, eye-opening for everyone.

Michael Gervais (0:27)

Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery Podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Gervais.

SPEAKER_3 (0:35)

A high-performance psychologist named Michael Gervais.

Michael Gervais (0:38)

Who Pete Carroll brought in to work with the Seahawks.

SPEAKER_3 (0:41)

Famous for his work with Felix Baumgartner when he jumped out of space in the Stratos Project.

SPEAKER_4 (0:46)

Olympic athletes depend on something more than just training and talent. They have to stay mentally tough.

Michael Gervais (0:51)

Today's guest is Dr. Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Yale. Where she created the most popular course in the university's history on the science of well-being. She's also the host of the Happiness Lab podcast. In this conversation, we explore how our minds are wired to compare, often in ways that leave us feeling worse.

Laurie Santos (1:11)

I had done this brief work with a professional basketball team. And I said, well, who's your comparison for like the best, you know, three-pointer like Steph Curry? And I was like, who's your comparison for like, you know, who is making the most money at the time it was Steph Curry? I was like, who's your comparison for like, what's the appropriate height to be in basketball?

At the time they saw a taco fail. And I was like, okay, why isn't it Steph Curry for height? And they're like, well, we wouldn't like, he's sure. Like, we wouldn't, it was like, why is it Steph for everything else? Like, if you compared yourself with Steph now, all of a sudden you'd be like, well, I'm much better, right? And so this is the problem with what's called reference points, these social comparisons. We pick the one that makes us feel crappiest.

Michael Gervais (1:49)

And she also shares a handful of simple tools that can meaningfully change the way we live our life.

Laurie Santos (1:55)

Notice how self-critical you're being. I got to push myself. And the way I push myself is I scream at myself in my head like a drill instructor all the time, when all the research shows that we'd be better off engaging in a little self-compassion, which I think we confuse with self-indulgence.

Michael Gervais (2:10)

So with that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Dr. Laurie Santos.

Laurie, this has been a long time coming. You have held space for the science of happiness and well-being, and you're making a real dent in the community about how people can live better. So this has been a long time coming, and for a while, I wasn't sure what to think about happiness.

And the reason being is because the aspiration to just be happy seemed flat to me, it seemed too narrow. Yeah, yes, I want to be happy. I think we all probably do, but there's so much more to life that I didn't want to just narrow in on being able to align with just one emotion, if you will. And then I came to learn that it's not quite that simple, and you've had a big hand in that. So I'm really delighted to have you here.

Laurie Santos (3:03)

Thanks so much for having me on the show.

Michael Gervais (3:04)

Why did you want to study happiness?

Laurie Santos (3:06)

Well, it started when I took on a new role. I'd been teaching psychology for forever, but for a long time, I was really focused on studying the origins of the mind, how we evolved to be the kind of smart species that we are.

And I got interested in happiness when I took on this new role on campus, where I became what's called the head of college. So this is a faculty member who lives with students on campus. I'm like living in the dorm, I'm eating in the students' dining hall. And I thought college was like what college was going to be like when I was in college, which was, you know, last year. No, it was back in the 90s, right? When like folks were stressed, but you know, it was fine. We were really thriving and flourishing and having fun and so on. And that just was not what I saw with my college students.