In the first week of class, we covered some of what I talked about in last week’s post. Here is the rest! There were two surveys: one asking about a range of emotions and one about your signature strengths. We aren’t doing anything with them yet, but I do love the idea of signature strengths. I love thinking about how we assess ourselves and I love breaking open the idea that it is somehow bad or cringy to talk about what you are good at, or be balanced in your knowledge of yourself. Think about something that others regularly compliment you on…can you agree with that compliment? More on this later.
The rest of week one talks about two really good concepts to remember: miswanting, and the GI Joe Fallacy. Miswanting is the term used to describe how bad our brains are at predicting what will make us happy. Laurie Santos goes into several studies that debunk some of our favorite beliefs about what makes a happy life: Money, stuff, grades, social media.
For money, it turns out that there really is a bump to your happiness if you don’t have any money at all and then you get some. If you can’t meet basic needs, money is important, and it bumps your happiness levels quite a bit. However, once people get a certain amount of money, everything above it doesn’t lend more happiness. However much more you get past what meets basic needs, it doesn’t add extra happiness, the level stays the same. Even once you have tons of money. Mo Money Mo Problems!
The same is true for acquiring cool things and stuff. Unfortunately, the data suggests even further that the correlation between material items and happiness is actually negative! The more stuff you get, the less happiness you feel!
The same applies to grades, sadly, but maybe not surprisingly? It turns out, over multiple studies, that as your GPA goes up, your sense of wellbeing actually goes down. Same for your self-esteem and optimism! Now, I’m not sure what this actually means, and here is a place that I would LOVE to have people weigh in. My feeling is that a sense of perfectionism gets built into your self-esteem in a way that encourages the belief that you will never be good enough. I am not suggesting that anyone stop doing their schoolwork! But maybe the stress and strain that comes with it could be reduced? Maybe there is a way to detach it from the value we place on ourselves? Let’s discuss.
Social media: Overall, it turns out that the negative effect of social media isn’t as large or as dire as many adults might think. The studies show that it is a negative effect on your happiness, but not a big one. There were two interesting things though. One is that “active” social media is better than “passive.” When you are posting things or connecting in some way actively while on social media, it seems to lessen the negative effects of social media.
The other is that the negative effects of social media are not a thing you will notice right away. The negative effect shows up in a decreased sense of satisfaction with your own life and it doesn’t show up until hours later. Interesting! Finally, there is something called “an opportunity cost” to social media. You know when you are scrolling through that you are losing time that you might have used for something else more fulfilling.
The GI Joe fallacy is where I will end this week. It is the mistaken belief that knowing is half the battle (it’s from the public service announcement portion of the GI Joe cartoon show). It is a fallacy because it turns out that knowing really ISN’T half the battle. We all have biases, ways that we like to THINK things work even though they don’t work that way. I’m going to end my post on this notion because I love it. KNOWING the science behind what makes us happier and what does not make us happier is great, but we will all revert to our old patterns of thought and behavior if we don’t build in habits, daily patterns, and community to support the knowledge that we gain. This is why this class is being presented to my community. It is also why I am at work on these concepts just as much as anyone else. It’s not easy. And knowing is not half the battle, it’s only the beginning of it.
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