The Key to Happiness: A Taboo for Adults?

Grownups aren’t supposed to play. We have problems. We’re too busy. We have important things to do. It turns out, though, that there are few things more important to your happiness than frequent doses of play. As a study led by Princeton researcher Alan Krueger found, of all the things on the planet, we’re at our happiest when we’re involved in engaging leisure activities. Why not do more of that?

When a 40-year-old goes headfirst down a water slide, that person is not 40 anymore. A few decades have been knocked off, because something inside has come alive again. It should be pretty obvious that the animating spark of play is the fast track to happiness. There is no quicker transport to the experiential realm and full engagement than through play, which brings together all the elements you want for the optimal moment.

Magic Mushrooms Can Change Personalities For The Better

Under scientific controlled conditions, researchers gave 51 adults either psilocybin or a placebo in up to five eight-hour sessions. In almost 60 per cent of patients, Of the 51, 30 had a mystical experience, after which their ‘openness’ scores rose. The 21 who did not have a mystical experience showed no change.

“I say this because we think of personality as being cemented in your 20s, certainly by your 30s,” he said. “So the fact that openness was increased, seemingly permanently, after a single experience of psilocybin is quite remarkable.

Do men generally grow grumpier with age?

My impression from following science journalism for a decade or so, and just confirmed by a quick google search, is that:

1. As people grow older, they tend to be happier/more positive.
2. As people grow older, men to be happier than women.

See [1] and [2] for references for the first claim, and [2] and [3] for references for the second claim.

Of course, for 1 it might be that the unhappy ones dies first.

“As a group, older adults are less likely to be depressed and less
affected by negative or unpleasant information,” said Stacey Wood, a
neuropsychologist from Scripps College in Claremont, Calif. who headed up the study.

[1]: http://www.livescience.com/4324-older-people-optimistic.html for the press coverage, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17760782 for the actual result.

The increase in happiness with age is consistent with the “age
as maturity hypothesis,” Yang said. With age comes positive
psychosocial traits, such as self-integration and self-esteem; these
signs of maturity could contribute to a better sense of overall
well-being

[2]: http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2008/04/16/age-comes-happiness-university-chicago-study-shows for the press release, http://asr.sagepub.com/content/73/2/204.abstract for the study

In later life these gender differences turn around. Men come closer than women to fulfilling their material goods and family life aspirations, are more satisfied with their financial situation and family life, and are the happier of the two genders.

[3]: http://psychcentral.com/news/2008/07/30/happiness-wanes-as-women-age/2668.html for the press release, http://www.springerlink.com/content/4j11681jx415315k/ for the study.

Papers might be behind paywall.

Web Surfing Makes You Work Better, Study Says

they assigned 96 undergraduate management students into one of three groups—a control group, a “rest-break” group and a Web-surfing group. All subjects spent 20 minutes highlighting as many letter e’s as they could find in a sample text. For the next 10 minutes, the control group was assigned another simple task; members of the rest-break group could do whatever they pleased, except surf the Internet; and the third group could browse the Web. Afterward, all of the subjects spent another 10 minutes highlighting more letters. The researchers found that the Web-surfers were significantly more productive and effective at the tasks than those in the other two groups and reported lower levels of mental exhaustion, boredom and higher levels of engagement.

Why is Web-surfing more restorative than, say, responding to a friend’s email? When browsing the Internet, people “usually choose to visit only the sites that they like—it’s like going for a coffee or snack break. Breaks of such nature are pleasurable, rejuvenating the Web surfer,” wrote Dr. Lim, in an email. By contrast, workers can’t control the kinds of email they receive, and reading and replying to each message is “cognitively more demanding, relative to Web surfing, as you need to pay attention to what is said on the email,” she added.

Guys are "over-aroused" by video games&porn... and that's connected to why they're 30% more likely to drop out of school.

 

Boys are 30 percent more likely than girls to drop out of school. In Canada, five boys drop out for every three girls. Girls outperform boys now at every level, from elementary school to graduate school. There’s a 10 percent differential between getting BA’s and all graduate programs, with guys falling behind girls. Two-thirds of students in special ed remedial programs are guys. And as you all know, boys are five times more likely than girls to be labeled as having attention deficit disorder — and therefore we drug them with Ritalin.

What are the causes? Well, it’s an unintended consequence. I think it’s excessive Internet use in general, excessive video gaming, excessive new access to pornography. The problem is these are arousal addictions. Drug addiction, you simply want more. Arousal addiction, you want different. Drugs, you want more of the same — different. So you need the novelty in order for the arousal to be sustained.

And the problem is the industry is supplying it. Jane McGonigal told us last year that by the time a boy is 21, he’s played 10,000 hours of video games, most of that in isolation. As you remember, Cindy Gallop said men don’t know the difference between making love and doing porn. The average boy now watches 50 porn video clips a week. And there’s some guy watching a hundred, obviously. And the porn industry is the fastest growing industry in America — 15 billion annually. For every 400 movies made in Hollywood, there are 11,000 now made porn videos.

So the effect, very quickly, is it’s a new kind of arousal. Boys’ brains are being digitally rewired in a totally new way for change, novelty, excitement and constant arousal. That means they’re totally out of sync in traditional classes, which are analog, static, interactively passive. They’re also totally out of syncin romantic relationships, which build gradually and subtly.

 

This is a great talk. 

The idea that men are prone to “arousal addictions” is something worth thinking about as you come across various sorts of behavior in life.

The more porn you watch the less attractive your girlfriend is to you. via Porn, Novelty and the Coolidge Effect‏ | Psychology Today The Coolidge Effect is an ancient biological program that can override your sluggish contentment after orgasm if there are new mates begging to be fertilized.  What happens when you drop a male rat into a cage with a receptive female rat? First, there’s a sexual frenzy. Then, the male progressively tires of that particular female. Even if she wants more he has had enough. However, replace the original female with a fresh one, and presto! The male revives and gallantly struggles to fertilize her. You can repeat this process with fresh females until he nearly dies of exhaustion. Scientists know this phenomenon as the Coolidge Effect and it has been observed in females, too.   Too much synthetic stimulation can make your mate look like cold oatmeal. According to a 2007 study, mere exposure to a series of images of sexy females causes a man to devalue his real-life partner. He rates her lower not only on attractiveness, but also on warmth and intelligence. Also, after pornography consumption, subjects in a 2006 study reported less satisfaction with their intimate partner—including the partner’s affection, appearance, sexual curiosity, and performance. Even a few short decades ago, sex with a warm, receptive mate generally provided more dopamine than masturbating (again) to a sticky Playmate. After all, once Miss July was thoroughly “fertilized,” you got less of a dopamine hit from her airbrushed curves. You had to wait for Miss August. Then came adult stores. But how many times could you get off to the same video before it was time to fetch a new one? (Paying for porn…how quaint.) Today’s Internet porn, in contrast, offers endless fireworks at the click of a mouse. You can hunt (another dopamine-releasing activity) for hours, and experience more novel sex partners every ten minutes than your hunter-gatherer ancestors experienced in a lifetime. Dopamine hit after dopamine hit can induce a drug-like altered state. (Cocaine, for example, owes its high to excess dopamine circulating in the brain.) It’s powerful enough to override your brain’s normal sexual satiation mechanisms after orgasm. I have been masturbating to static porn images since I was a teenager. I never had a problem with ED until around 6 years ago. The problem began with access to free streaming Internet porn. As connection speed increased, so has the overwhelming availability to view as much as I could handle. I ended up rewiring my brain to get aroused only by masturbating to porn. I am in a relationship with a wonderful, gorgeous woman for the last 4 years and have notice a gradual decline in my libido and a rise in ED. I’ve written about this before. Besides the obvious value and emotional satisfaction that comes from something deeper, there are real world costs for swimming in this stuff.
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The more porn you watch the less attractive your girlfriend is to you. via Porn, Novelty and the Coolidge Effect‏ | Psychology Today

The Coolidge Effect is an ancient biological program that can override your sluggish contentment after orgasm if there are new mates begging to be fertilized. 

What happens when you drop a male rat into a cage with a receptive female rat? First, there’s a sexual frenzy. Then, the male progressively tires of that particular female. Even if she wants more he has had enough. However, replace the original female with a fresh one, and presto! The male revives and gallantly struggles to fertilize her. You can repeat this process with fresh females until he nearly dies of exhaustion. Scientists know this phenomenon as the Coolidge Effect and it has been observed in females, too. 

 Too much synthetic stimulation can make your mate look like cold oatmeal. According to a 2007 study, mere exposure to a series of images of sexy females causes a man to devalue his real-life partner. He rates her lower not only on attractiveness, but also on warmth and intelligence. Also, after pornography consumption, subjects in a 2006 study reported less satisfaction with their intimate partner—including the partner’s affection, appearance, sexual curiosity, and performance.

Even a few short decades ago, sex with a warm, receptive mate generally provided more dopamine than masturbating (again) to a sticky Playmate. After all, once Miss July was thoroughly “fertilized,” you got less of a dopamine hit from her airbrushed curves. You had to wait for Miss August. Then came adult stores. But how many times could you get off to the same video before it was time to fetch a new one? (Paying for porn…how quaint.)

Today’s Internet porn, in contrast, offers endless fireworks at the click of a mouse. You can hunt (another dopamine-releasing activity) for hours, and experience more novel sex partners every ten minutes than your hunter-gatherer ancestors experienced in a lifetime. Dopamine hit after dopamine hit can induce a drug-like altered state. (Cocaine, for example, owes its high to excess dopamine circulating in the brain.) It’s powerful enough to override your brain’s normal sexual satiation mechanisms after orgasm.

I have been masturbating to static porn images since I was a teenager. I never had a problem with ED until around 6 years ago. The problem began with access to free streaming Internet porn. As connection speed increased, so has the overwhelming availability to view as much as I could handle. I ended up rewiring my brain to get aroused only by masturbating to porn. I am in a relationship with a wonderful, gorgeous woman for the last 4 years and have notice a gradual decline in my libido and a rise in ED.

I’ve written about this before. Besides the obvious value and emotional satisfaction that comes from something deeper, there are real world costs for swimming in this stuff.

Nonverbal signals to tell others they are liked

Our brains continually scan the environment for friend or foe signals. People who pose a threat give off foe cues and people who do not pose a threat give off friend cues. When you meet people, ensure that you send the right nonverbal cues that signal that you are not a threat. 

Eyebrow Flash

The eyebrow flash is a quick up and down movement of the eyebrows. As people approach one another they eyebrow flash each other to send the message that they do not pose a threat. Since eyebrow flashes can be seen at a distance, people typically eyebrow flash as they approach others.

Head Tilt

The head tilt is a slight tilt of the head to one side or the other. This cue signals that the approaching person is not a threat because they are exposing their carotid artery. The carotid artery is the primary source for blood to reach the brain and if disrupted, causes severe brain damage or death within minutes. Exposing the carotid artery sends the signal that the person exposing their carotid artery does not pose a threat nor does the person they are approaching pose a threat.

Smile

A smile sends the message “I like you.” When you smile at someone, they have a hard time not returning the smile. A smile triggers a small endorphin release in the brain, which promotes a feeling of well-being. In other words, when you smile, you feel good about yourself. This supports the notion that people will like you if you make them feel good about themselves.

People in corporations often say, “It’s business, it’s not personal.” But this simply isn’t true.

Work Is Personal | Psychology Today

Great article. Read the whole thing.

Playing hard to get is a timeworn technique for snagging that desired significant other. And there’s a reason, say Stanford researchers. Being rejected increases many people’s motivation to pursue that elusive objective—with a vengeance.
But there’s a catch. It turns out that being rebuffed, in fact, makes people less fond of what it is they think they want more. Once they obtain the desired goal, many are quicker to lose interest in it.

“When someone is thwarted from obtaining his original desire, he, in fact, comes to find the attractiveness and appeal of his target to be diminished. Yet, perversely, he may feel he wants it even more. The thrill becomes the chase.”

Marketing: Being Jilted Can Make You Yearn More—or So You Think

In the study, participants were asked to solve several puzzles and were told that if their performance was in the top 25th percentile, they would receive a gift. Then, at random, some were told they had met the goal, while others were told that they had not.

Those who were denied the gift were then asked how much they would be willing to pay for it in a store. Participants who did not receive the gift were willing to pay more for it than those who later did actually receive it. “This shows that being rejected made them want it more,” says Shiv.

“Jilted” participants then completed a second set of tasks to obtain the same gift, and all were told they had won. They were subsequently asked whether they would like to trade the item for another of equal value. Significantly more subjects who had been denied the gift the first time were willing to trade it away than those who had received it on round one.

Brilliant study. I love seeing the whole playing hard to get game get downplayed by a study.

How to Resist Temptations

She placed three groups of people in a room containing a delicious-looking chocolate cake and the implements to divide and eat it.

The first group was put into the room and told to think about the shame and guilt they would feel if they ate it.

The second was told to think about how proud they would be ofnoteating it.

The third group, the control group, was put in the room and given no instructions.

Here were the results:

The control group ate the most.

The group that was told to think about pride ate the least.

MacInnis concluded that shame and guilt do not work as well as a sense of pride to help resist temptation.

I believe I know why: Shame and guilt consume energy, subtracting energy from our will to resist temptation. Pride, on the other hand, gives energy, allocating more energy to the willpower to resist.

Applicable to all sorts of life temptations.

This is pathetic: guys like girls that laugh at their jokes more than they like girls who make them laugh.

we measured the importance participants placed on a partner’s production of humor vs. receptivity to their own humor. Men emphasized the importance of their partners’ receptivity to their own humor, whereas women valued humor production and receptivity equally. In a second task, participants chose whether they preferred a person who only produced humor or a person who only appreciated their own humor for several types of relationships. Women preferred those who produced humor for all types of relationships, whereas men preferred those who were receptive to their own humor, particularly for sexual relationships. Our results suggest that sexual selection may have operated on men’s and women’s preferences during humorous interaction in dramatically different ways.

Is it true that "less intelligent" people are happier than smart people?

No. Here’s a really good meta-analytic review of the many studies done in this area.

Some key findings in this research area:
  • In a meta-analysis of 26 studies of individuals, intelligence was NOT found to be correlated with happiness. In short, cognitive abilities do not, on the average, lead to more or less happiness.
  • The effect was found for both longitudinal studies and snapshot studies.
Here’s also a much earlier (1934) study showing the same thing. So what’s clear is that this is a very stable and consistent finding.

Hedonic treadmill

The hedonic treadmill, also known as hedonic adaptation, is the supposed tendency of humans to quickly return to a relatively stable level of happiness despite major positive or negative events or life changes. According to this theory, as a person makes more money, expectations and desires rise in tandem, which results in no permanent gain in happiness

The daily activities most associated with happiness are sex, socializing after work and having dinner with others. The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting. According to one study, joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. According to another, being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year. If you want to find a good place to live, just ask people if they trust their neighbors. Levels of social trust vary enormously, but countries with high social trust have happier people, better health, more efficient government, more economic growth, and less fear of crime (regardless of whether actual crime rates are increasing or decreasing).

Op-Ed Columnist - The Sandra Bullock Trade - NYTimes.com

From a larger article on how money doesn’t buy happiness…

Bhutanese believe happiness equals wanting what you have — imagine gratitude — divided by having what you want — gratification. The Bhutanese aren’t on some aspirational treadmill, constantly focused on what they don’t have. Their religion, their isolation, their deep respect for their culture and now the principles of their GNH movement all have fostered a sense of gratitude about what they do have. How many of us here, as TEDsters in the audience, spend more of our time in the bottom half of this equation, in the denominator? We are a bottom-heavy culture in more ways than one.

The reality is, in Western countries, quite often we do focus on the pursuit of happiness as if happiness is something that we have to go out — an object that we’re supposed to get, or maybe many objects. Actually, in fact, if you look in the dictionary, many dictionaries define pursuit as to “chase with hostility.” Do we pursue happiness with hostility? Good question. But back to Bhutan.

Bhutan’s actually bordered on its north and south by 38 percent of the world’s population. Could this little country, like a startup in a mature industry, be the spark plug that actually influences a 21st century of middle-class in China and India? Bhutan’s actually created the ultimate export, a new global currency of well-being. And there are 40 countries around the world today that are actually studying their own GNH. You may have heard, this last fall, Nicolas Sarkozy in France, announcing the results of an 18-month study by two Nobel economists, focusing on happiness and wellness in France. Sarkozy suggested that world leaders should stop myopically focusing on GDP and consider a new index, what some French are calling a “joie de vivre index.” I like it. Co-branding opportunities.

Chip Conley: Measuring what makes life worthwhile | Video on TED.com