santos, a psychologist at yale university, whose work on the science of happiness has reached millions thanks to her podcast and free online courses. can we, even now, be taught to be happy? professor laurie santos in new haven, connecticut, welcome to hardtalk. thanks so much for having me. it is a great pleasure to have you. would it be right for me to say that you have made it your mission, particularly in this time of covid, your mission to teach us all how to be happier? yeah, i think that's one way to put it. one of the things we learn from the research is that we have pretty bad intuitions when it comes to the kinds of things that will make us happy. and that means that, even in challenging times like this, a lot of us are working on our own happiness or working on our own mental health. but we're kind of doing it the wrong way. we're going after the wrong things. what are we going after that's wrong? well, one of the biggest misconceptions is that we need to change our circumstances. we need to get more money, or change ourjob, or buy something, right? and i think what the research really shows is that if you look at people who are going through tough times, it's not always the case that tough times mean unhappiness. you can look to people who've had, like, really devastating circumstances, like loss of their limbs, losing theirjobs, you know, just like the kinds of things that many of us would think if that happened to me, it would break me. and those folks not only self—report feeling happier, but they often report that these traumatic events give them meaning in life. they've shaped their purpose. they've strengthened their social connection. and so i think the idea that we have to change something about our circumstances to be happierjust doesn't fit with the research. and that's often the thing we go to when we think about what we should do to become happier. now, that's interesting and it takes us directly into, sort of, personal circumstance and anecdote. but i feel i ought to backtrack a little bit. i mean, are you regarding this as a scientific enterprise, and a scientific study you're undertaking? because i know you've set up something called the happiness lab, which makes me think of, sort of, experiments and test tubes, and all that sort of stuff. is this science? yeah. i mean, it's often funny to think about happiness science, as a word, because it feels like the kind of thing that should be relegated to, i don't know, philosophy or religion. but there is a way to take a scientific approach to happiness and to mental health generally. and this is what this field that i study, this field of positive psychology tends to do. it's pretty straightforward. you know, researchers go out and they find happy people. they're out there even in the middle of covid. you can find folks who self—report being happy. and then you do some quick anthropology. how do these folks spend their time? what are they doing that's different than the rest of us are doing? and that's when you get into the experiments. now you take people who self—report being not so happy. you have them try out the habits and behaviours of the people who are happier and you test empirically whether or not that improves their wellbeing. we now have three decades�* worth of work that's done this and found, you know, simple habits that will actually make folks happier. but i'm already seeing some problems here because you're talking about empirical evidence and data gathering and all that sort of stuff. and it does sound very scientific. but, the truth is, the very concept of happiness itself is so subjective and means different things to different people. so, when you go out and do your field work and you ask mrjones if he's happy, he may say, "yeah, i really am." and mrsjones may say she's not. and it's very hard to be scientific about one's feeling as against the others. how are you defining happiness? yeah, well, i totally agree with you. i mean, i came to the work in happiness from work in animal behaviour. we had these like, incredibly careful measures, often involving hormones and things that feeljust much more objective than, like, a subjective self—report of whether or not you're feeling happy. but i've come around to the work in this field for a couple of reasons. one is that the self—report measures that researchers use have been validated over, now, decades to try to get really accurate answers and really accurate information about how people are feeling. we also know that these self—report measures correlate with all the stuff we expect them to correlate. so, if mrjones says "i'm feeling "happy today," that will correlate with if i pulled all his social media tweets or i pulled hisjournals and did a detailed textual analysis about the emotional words he's using. it'll correlate with, say, if i interview mrsjones and say, "hey, how's mrjones doing?" and do a kind of detailed memory recollection with the people in mrjones�* life, his self—reports will correlate with that. and in cases where we have good hormonal measures of happiness and wellbeing — we don't often — but, in cases where we do, those kinds of self—reports correlate with those other, kind of, more objective measures. and, so, what seems like a kind of cheesy...my students call it, like, a buzzfeed quiz, like, is actually a real, scientific instrument that we're using. but i've actually come around to it for a different reason, which is this question of — what are we trying to maximise with all these interventions? i'm sure on this show, we'll talk about different habits you can use to boost your wellbeing. but what am i trying to do when i boost your wellbeing? well, honestly, what i'm trying to do, at least me, personally, is i'm trying to get you to say, "hey, i'm feeling happier now. "i'm experiencing more positive emotion. "i'm feeling more joy." if you tell me that, then whatever intervention i was doing is probably working. we will get to that and i promise we'll get to it very quickly. but, before we get there, there's one other interesting aspect of your research work that intrigues me. we've talked so far in the context of covid and all the challenges and difficulties that presents to people and their mental health. but i am very aware that you began this work long before the covid pandemic. and i think what really motivated you was your realisation, as a senior professor, at one of the best universities, ivy league universities in the united states, that a lot of the students you were meeting and working with, the student body itself, was getting more miserable. there was more signs of stress, anxiety and even chronic depression. so, why, in yourview, are these kids in one of america's elite universities showing such signs of unhappiness and depression? yeah, i mean, again, all of these are self—report measures, right? and so we have to, with all the caveats that come with that, but when you ask college students today about their depression levels, their anxiety levels, and so on, and you compare that with what was happening five years ago, ten years ago, what you find is that today the rates have just gone through the roof. rates of depression, for example, have doubled since 2009, you know, just over ten years. what we're seeing is double the rate of depression. right now, college students report being overwhelmingly anxious at rates of, like, 65%. so, almost two thirds of college students are saying they're overwhelmingly anxious. and this maps on to some really scary mental health behaviour. right now, nationally in the us, 12% of college students report having seriously considered suicide in the last year. so, this is not a couple of students reporting they're feeling unhappy or, kind of, snowflakes, as people talk about them. this is a really serious mental health issue. why? what is going on? i mean, that is the million dollar question, right? i mean, there's a lot of finger—pointing, right? we finger—point towards technology, and phones, and things like social media. we finger—point to the fact that college, and the act of getting into college is such a professional business for students now, where we even have, like, day—care centres reporting, their college statistics for li—year—olds, about whether or not that day—care is going to help students get in. and so i think there's a lot more pressure on students that folks have never faced. but the real, what's the smoking gun of where those statistics are coming from, like, why we're seeing such change so quickly, i think we're still trying to figure that out. and is it too early to add on to that bedrock of rising unhappiness, any sort of assessment of how much more damage is being done by covid, and all that comes with it — the isolation, the economic insecurity, the uncertainty about what the future holds, of course, as well, the health worries about friends and family. what extra level of stress, anxiety, depression is being added by covid—i9? can you assess that? yeah, well, i mean, this is the kind of thing researchers are looking at now with current surveys of college students, adults, all over the place. and the results there are pretty grim, too. i mean, if you had designed a disease that was, like, specifically figured out to wreck our mental health, covid would be it, right? it destroys our social connection. it makes it hard to connect with the friends and family members that we care about. it destroys our very routines. we are creatures of habit. part of our safety and wellbeing comes from the, sort of, daily routines. it destroys our social connection. it makes it hard to connect with the friends and family members that we care about. it destroys our very routines. we are creatures of habit. part of our safety and wellbeing comes from the, sort of, daily routines. those are all upended and we don't know when it's going to end. you know, humans hate uncertainty, right? and we've created this disease where it's, like, we're in lockdown, it's only two weeks and we're out. nope, we're back in lockdown. like, those continued changes, that continued uncertainty, all of that is awful for our anxiety and general mental health. do you think it's getting worse? i mean, of course, in the background, we have the great hope that comes with vaccines. but, in the meantime, there's talk of new mutant variants. there's fear that the vaccines may not be the panacea we all hope they'll be. do you get a sense that in sort of the second wave and the second lockdown and maybe the third in some countries that we're experiencing, that mental health problems are getting significantly worse over time? i mean, that's what a lot of people are self—reporting, right? i mean, i think when this first started, at least in the us, when we first went into lockdown, it was, "0h, this is kind of cool. "i'm with my family, i'm baking bread." you know, people kind of came up with new hobbies and things. i think on, like, lockdown number three orfour, like, we're getting sick of this. i think, especially in the us right now, we're coming up on this anniversary of march, when everyone started taking this really seriously. and i think that's a really scary anniversary because people thought like, "ok, i can handle this for a month," but trying to handle it for a year and an indefinite amount of time after this year, i think that, you know, it's a real, significant challenge. now, professor santostry very briefly in hopefully less than a minute to try and give a real, reduced version of what your key pointers are to being happier. it is about, you say, being more social, being grateful and giving thanks, living in the moment, resting, that is, sleeping, and exercising in the way that your body needs you to. and, lastly, being kind. now, all of those things i can totally relate to. they sound deeply positive and sensible, but, frankly, they also sound like plain old common sense. do you need a science lab to come up with all of that? well, i think yes and no, right? i mean, no, in the sense that these kinds of practices are part of ancient traditions. you know, these were the things that aristotle was suggesting. these are the things that many of our world's religious traditions were suggesting, things like gratitude and taking time for presents and prayer, doing kind things for others. so in that sense, these practices are thousands of years old. you might not have needed my cl
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