A3: Individual Written Assignment

The Science of Happiness and Well-Being

Dr. Mukul Kumar

Summer 2020

Day 3

Signature Strengths: Seligman & Steen (2005)

Better Wanting Transitioning from Miswanting to Better Wanting

Better Wanting

• Time Affluence • Controlling One’s Mind • Social Connection • Kindness • Exercise • Sleep

Miswanting

• Lots of money and nice things • Great looks and body • Be loved by a fantastic person • Great job • (School) Great GPA

Miswanting items can make us happy too, if we have the right attitudes.

Your Choice?

• Tina values her time more than her money. She is willing to sacrifice her money to have more time. For example, Tina would rather work fewer hours and make less money, than work more hours and make more money.

• Maggie values her money more than her time. She is willing to sacrifice her time to have more money. For example, Maggie would rather work more hours and make more money, than work fewer hours and have more time.

Whillans & Dunn (2019)

• H1: Students who value time over money before graduation (at Time 1) will report greater subjective well-being (SWB) one year after graduation (at Time 2).

• H2: Students who value time over money before graduation (at T1) will be more likely to pursue intrinsically motivated activities one year after graduation (at T2).

Better Wanting 1. Time Affluence People Who Choose Time Over Money Are Happier Hal E. Hershfield, Cassie Mogilner, Uri Barnea, 2016 Research Article

Money and time are both scarce resources that people believe would bring them greater happiness. Across studies, even though the majority of people chose more money, choosing more time was associated with greater happiness—even controlling for existing levels of available time and money.

Better Wanting 2. Controlling One’s Mind - Meditation A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind, Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert

Humans think a lot about what is not going on around them (past and future events and even those that will never happen at all.

“Stimulus-independent thought” or “mind wandering” appears to be the brain’s default mode of operation. Though a positive evolutionary achievement, it bears emotional cost. Many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, “being here now.”

Mind Wandering Experiment

• 1. Set a 60 second timer on your phone • 2. After 60 seconds (timer) evaluate the thoughts you just had. List them.

Evaluate if they were about the past/present/future.

• Repeat 2-3 more cycles.

When the mind wanders…

When the mind wanders…

• Positive or Negative Thoughts?

Better Wanting 3. Social Connection

The Funds, Friends, and Faith of Happy People, David G. Myers

Close Relationships and Well-Being • Need to Belong • Friendships and Well-Being • Marriage and Well-being • Faith and Well-Being

Data from The Funds, Friends, and Faith of Happy People, David G. Myers. The data is a bit old and has changed a little since then due to changing cultural standards.

Better Wanting 4. Kindness Otake et al. (2006). Happy people become happier through kindness: A counting kindnesses intervention. Journal of happiness studies, 7(3), 361- 375.

• Subjective happiness was increased simply by counting one's own acts of kindness for one week.

• Happy people became more kind and grateful through the “counting kindnesses” intervention.

Counting kindnesses intervention: we count our own kind acts, say weekly.

Better Wanting 5. Exercise Be smart, exercise your heart: exercise effects on brain and cognition. Charles H. Hillman, Kirk I. Erickson and Arthur F. Kramer

An emerging body of multidisciplinary literature has documented the beneficial influence of physical activity engendered through aerobic exercise on selective aspects of brain function. Human and non-human animal studies have shown that aerobic exercise can improve a number of aspects of cognition and performance.

Testing the immediate physical impact of an activity – Flow activity

o Are you ready for a physical challenge? Here it is! o Whether you attend this online course from your bedroom,

living room or kitchen, find some space of 2 square meters around you.

o Try to shape these numbers with your body: 2, 1, 4, 8, 6, 9, 3.

o How many of them did you manage to shape?

The physical effects of our emotions we often overestimate the duration of our

bad moods and underestimate our capacity to adapt and bounce back from traumas

Better Wanting 6. Sleep

Image courtesy Huffington Post

.

Sleep: Better Insights, Fewer Complaints

2 Styles

• Write a short journalistic piece about yourself. Pick a short period of time, i.e. one week, may have already occurred or may be a future plan.

• Referring to the exact same week of your life, narrate the story / set the goals, by using first the verb HAVE. What do you have/will you want to have? Take some time.

• Second, Re-write the same goals setting, by using now the verb DO.

To Do or to Have? That Is the Question, Boven & Gilovich (2003) 1. Experiential purchases - those made with the primary

intention of acquiring a life experience - made people happier than material purchases.

2. More positive feelings after pondering an experiential purchase than after pondering a material purchase.

3. Anticipate that experiences would make them happier than material possessions after adopting a temporally distant, versus a temporally proximate, perspective.

Insight #5 – Experiences will make us happier

Beach Holiday

Images: Qatar Airways, Wikipedia

New Car

Data: Boven & Gilovich (2003)

• How you feel about your purchases

• How outsiders feel about your purchases

• Material purchases stop adding to happiness beyond $25,000 annual income in the USA (about $34,000 in 2019) but tail off.

• Experiential purchases keep adding to happiness.

Data: Boven & Gilovich (2003)

Why does happiness from experiential purchases keep increasing with income?

Boven & Gilovich (2003) say that experiences make people happier because:

1. Experiences are more open to positive reinterpretations 2. Experiences are a more meaningful part of one’s identity 3. Experiences contribute more to successful social

relationships.

Why will experiences make us happier?

Waiting for Merlot, Kumar, et al (2014) Waiting for experiences tends to be more positive than waiting for possessions. 1. Consumers derive more happiness from anticipation or

waiting for experiential purchases 2. Consumers derive value from anticipation, and that value is

greater for experiential than for material purchases.

Insight #6 – Anticipation (of experience) will make us happier

So tedious is this day As is the night before some festival To an impatient child that hath new robes And may not wear them.

- Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act III, Scene ii

Data: Kumar, et al (2014)

The hidden cost of value-seeking. Pchelin & Howell, (2014). 1. People expect life experiences to result in more well-being,

but material items to be a better use of money. 2. But people enjoy greater well-being from life experiences and

consider them to be a better use of money. 3. Therefore, prioritizing value may encourage people to prefer

material items instead of life experiences (and vice versa).

Insight #7 – Value-seeking Drives Material Purchases

The mediators of experiential purchases: Howell & Hill (2009),

Experiential purchases would cultivate stronger social interactions than material purchases and less affected by disadvantageous social comparisons.

Insight #8 – Experiences Lead to More Positive Social Comparison

Pictures Revisited

• Find the last 2 pictures you posted • Reflect back to your perspective as you took the picture. • Now explore one other lens through which you could see the same

picture/process differently.

• Share the 2 perspectives with your group.

Social Connection, Compassion, Kindness

What Actually Makes Us Happy!

Social Connection, Compassion, Kindness

The Opposite of Loneliness

Social Connection - #1 Very Happy People, Diener, Seligman (2000)

Study found: • Very happy people were highly social and had stronger romantic

and other social relationships. • More extroverted, more agreeable, less neurotic.

Social Connection - #1 Mistakenly Seeking Solitude, Epley and Schroeder, 2014

• Connecting with others increases happiness, but strangers in close proximity routinely ignore each other.

• The pleasure of connection seems contagious: In a laboratory waiting room, participants who were talked to had equally positive experiences as those instructed to talk. Human beings are social animals. Those who misunderstand the consequences of social interactions may not, in at least some contexts, be social enough for their own well-being.

Social Connection - #2 Mistakenly Seeking Solitude, Epley and Schroeder, 2014

• Study instructed commuters on trains and buses to connect with a stranger near them, to remain disconnected, or to commute as normal (control).

• In both contexts, participants reported a more positive (and no less productive) experience when they connected than when they did not. Separate participants in each context, however, expected precisely the opposite outcome, predicting a more positive experience in solitude.

“Shared” Experience

Social Connections Date # of Social Connections

Happiness 0 - 10

Spoke with stranger, called an old friend, Skyped with Dad

3 8

Practicing Social Connections

# Date Topic: My time at Hult…

Time is running out! Pick topic (such as your time at Hult, a family vacation, or similar, that will end soon). Write about your experience, being very conscious of passing time.

Due: June 21

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