Download Subtitles for What The Ultimate Study On Happiness Reveals

this video is about one of the most important questions what leads to a happy life realistically money being wealthy is definitely a big aspect of it to save a lot of money money money earning money it's very important to be rich it's easy for people to say they don't care about having money and that money can't buy happiness but that's really not true because I would rather cry on a yacht than in a like a Subaru clearly having a successful career and financial wealth are important to people is there a number in mind something you want to get to at least a million yeah yeah in a survey from 2018 of around 100,000 College freshmen about 55% said they wanted to be successful in their career and 83% reported that they wanted to become rich but do these accomplishments really increase happiness well that's what I want to find out in this video but how do you study what makes people happy well you can ask them what's going to make you happy um but people aren't really good at judging what will make them happy winning the lottery seems like it should make you happy but numerous studies on lottery winners find that after the initial surge of Happiness wears off many are no happier than the rest of us some are in fact more miserable than they were beforehand cuz you don't see as many people as you used to see obviously you become slightly isolated I think in some ways yeah I agree another problem is that people's memories aren't reliable we only detect encode and store in our brains bits and pieces of the entire experience in front of us it's called reconstructed memories it happens to us in all the aspects of our life all the time most studies on happiness find older people and ask them to recall what made them happy but as we've just seen memory is unreliable so a better way to conduct the study would be to follow people throughout their entire lives capturing the choices they make and how those affect their happiness that is really hard to do but there is one study like this that's been running since 1938 now 85 years is a long time to run a study so it has been passed down from one generation of researchers to the next it's currently run by its fourth director Robert waldinger what what is the claim to fame then of of the study you know the claim to fame is that it is as far as we know the law longest study of human development that's ever been done the longest study of any depth these are studies that take deep dives into people's lives and their mental and physical health the study actually began as two separate Studies by two groups of Harvard researchers that didn't know about each other the first group followed 268 young men from Harvard to find out how they would develop into early adulthood so of course if you want to study normal young adult development you study all white guys from Harvard right you know it's one of those limitations the second group studied 456 boys from middle school onwards from Boston's poorest and most disadvantaged families so there were these two studies both meant to be studies of what goes right in development and how we predict who does well as they grow up eventually the two studies merged into one the Harvard study of adult development at the start of the study the participants were interviewed and received extensive physical examinations and as they grew they entered all walks of life some of them became Brick Layers and doctors and Factory workers and lawyers and one even became president of the United States every 2 years researchers ask them questions about their lives like if you could stop working without loss of income would you what would you do instead how often do you feel isolated from others true or false life has more pain than pleasure and other questions about their marriage career friendships and their physical and mental health while the study started with just 724 participants over time their spouses and children were also included in the study so how many people are we talking about in total uh who have been part of the study between 2500 and 3,000 people all together in the study and as technology improved so did the methods of data collection we now draw blood for DNA you know DNA wasn't even imagined in 1938 we we measure messenger RNA DNA methylation we bring people into our laboratory we deliberately stress them out and then see how quickly they recover from stress looking at heart rate variability for example looking at cortisol deposited in hair uh because that seems to be a long-term measure of Circ ating cortisol but all of these new methods are in the service of studying the same big phenomena of human well-being so what do 85 years of research across entire human lives teach us about a healthy and happy life two huge takeaways really one is no surprise it's that if you take care of your physical health it has huge benefits for not just for your longevity but for how long you stay healthy eating well getting regular exercise not abusing alcohol or drugs not smoking getting preventive Health Care exercise is hugely important a Taiwanese study looked at the medical data of 416,000 healthy people between 1996 and 2008 8 years later they followed up with each person to look at the link between exercise and mortality they found that people who exercise just 15 minutes a day had a 14% % reduced risk of dying and a threeyear longer life expectancy every additional 15 minutes of exercise decreased the risk of dying by an extra 4% a large meta analysis from 2008 confirms that people who are Physically Active have a reduced risk of dying during the time frames investigated in each study exercise also protects our cognitive Health a meta analysis from 2014 found that participants with higher levels of physical activity had a 35% reduced risk of cognitive decline and a 14% reduced risk of dementia and then the big surprising finding is relationships not just keeping us happier but keeping us healthier and helping us live longer it's not just the Harvard study there's now a whole list of studies that show the importance of relationships to human happiness and health they teach us three main lessons the first is that relationships are great for our health in 201 researchers looked across 148 studies with a total of more than 300,000 participants they found that on average people with stronger social connections had a 50% increased likelihood of survival for any given year being married in particular has a large impact on how long people live there's one study uh I think it's pretty well respected that that suggests that married men live 12 years longer on average than unmarried men and married women live 7 years longer on average than unmarried women marriage is always a better deal for men on all parameters than it is for women and it's not because you have a marriage license right it's because people living together in an intimate partnership tend to keep each other healthier you have somebody who's kind of watching looking out for you it's a very real concrete effect if feeling well connected to others makes us happy happier healthier and extends Our Lives then what happens if we feel disconnected there's a researcher Julianne Hol lunad out of the University of Utah who did a metaanalysis of a a whole slew of studies of the physical effects of loneliness and her calculation was that being lonely is as dangerous to your health as smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day or as dangerous as being obese feeling disconnected from others also makes you more prone to disease a large meta analysis from 2016 found that poor social relationships were associated with a 29% increase in risk of heart disease and a 32% increase in risk of stroke so these have real sort of quantifiable consequences when we look at studies of thousands of people one caveat is that most studies on the health effects of loneliness focus on people aged 50 and older and loneliness is on the rise the US Surgeon General today declared a new Public Health epidemic in America loneliness we're now finding that one in two adults report measurable levels of loneliness and it turns out that young people are most affected and here's why this is so concerning it's because we've realized that loneliness is more than just a bad feeling it has real consequences for our mental and physical health the UK has appointed a minister of loneliness um many many countries are concerned about this breakdown in Social connection a question about uh loneliness like what does that look like because obviously everyone experiences some periods of loneliness so you know what what is when does it become sort of really detrimental and how do we Define that well loneliness is different from being alone right so you can be alone and quite content and many people are in fact the ability to be content when you're alone is quite a skill and it's it's a wonderful ability loneliness is that subjective experience of being less connected to people than you want to be and that's why you know you can be lonely in a crowd we're all on a spectrum between extraversion you know wanting lots of people in our lives and introversion actually needing a lot of solitude and and not wanting a lot of people a lot of people are stressful for introverts and what we know is that neither one is healthier right like introverts are perfectly healthy they just may need one or two really solid relationships and don't want a lot more people nothing wrong with that at all whereas extroverts may want lots of people in their lives so the second lesson is that it's not how many people you know or see or even whether you're married or not because a bad marriage can be worse for your health than getting divorced instead it's about the quality of your close relationships that matters when we' followed all the original people out to their 80s we said okay what data actually are the best predictors at age 50 of who's going to be happy and healthy at age 80 as opposed to sick or dead and we thought we were going to be looking at blood pressure and cholesterol level at age 50 as the strongest predictors it was there relationships it was particularly their satisfaction with their marital relationships that was the strongest predictor and relationships don't just keep us happier and physically healthier they also protect our brains people who are in Secure relationships in their 80s where they feel that they can rely on the other person find that their memories stay sharper for longer and people who feel lonely well their memories fade quicker a study of retired us adults found that the rate of cognitive decline was 20% higher over 10 years for those who felt lonely a meta analysis from 2018 further confirms the detrimental effects of loneliness finding that it also increased the risk of dementia but there's still a big open question what is it about the relationships that makes them particularly healthful or helpful the best hypothesis for which there's some pretty decent research now is that relationships are emotion Regulators they're stress Regulators so stressful things happen every day to many of us right so then what happens well the body goes into fight ORF flight mode blood pressure goes up respirations become more rapid circulating stress hormone levels rise but then the body is meant to go back to equilibrium after that normal fight ORF flight response when we face a challenge if I can come home and there's somebody here to talk to I can literally feel my body calm down what we're pretty sure happens is that people who are isolated that they're more likely to stay in a kind of chronic fight or flight mode and that what that means is that they have higher levels of circulating cortisol higher levels of chronic inflammation and that those things gradually wear away body systems so that's how for example chronic stress can predict coronary artery disease but also arthritis and also type 2 diabetes because of this common mechanism that breaks down multiple body systems the key to preventing this breakdown is simple just spend a little more time with the people you care about unfortunately we seem to be doing the exact opposite before going into why we're doing the exact opposite this part of the video was sponsored by betterhelp there are many things that can negatively impact our happiness it could be stress or fear or a clinical mental health issue like depression or anxiety but regardless of which one it is therapy can help you by giving you the tools to approach your life in a very different way and that's where better help comes in they connect you with an experienced licensed therapist who is trained to listen and give you helpful unbiased advice I know that finding a good therapist is hard especially when you only have the options in your city but better help changes the game on this because it's an online platform and by filling out a few questions you'll get matched with a professional therapist so you can get talking in most cases within 48 hours and then you can have your therapy session as a phone call as a video chat or even via messaging if you prefer that just whatever's the most comfortable version of therapy for you and it's easy to sign up there's a link in the description it is betterhelp.com / veritasium clicking on that link both help support this Channel and it also gets you 10% off your first month of better heal so you can try it out and see if it helps you and if you don't really fit with your first therapist which is pretty common you can easily switch to a new one for free without stressing about insurance who's in your network or anything like that if you feel like you could benefit from talking to someone getting feedback advice and help for anything that might be affecting your happiness and progress in life then visit betterhelp.com veritasium or click that link in the description below so I want to thank betterhelp for sponsoring this part of the video and now back to the importance of relationships there is an alarming Trend in our society social engagement with friends decreased from 60 minutes a day in 2003 to just 20 minutes A Day in 2020 the technology has fundamentally changed how we interact with one another and how we communicate with one another and unfortunately has often replaced what used to be rich iners connections uh with online connections which often are of lower quality now you may say you're an introvert and you don't need to spend much time with people to feel good and while it's true that introverts and extroverts need different amounts of social stimulation both need human Connection in 2015 Hol lunstad and her colleagues looked at the data of 70 independent studies with more than 3 million total participants similar to other studies they found that the subjective feeling of loneliness increased the risk of premature death death by 26% but they also looked at the objective measure of social isolation how much time you're actually spending with other people and they found that social isolation increased the risk of premature death by 29% and unfortunately introverts are more at risk of being socially isolated just like many young people today many participants from the Harvard study also believed that money and achievement were what they should go after to have a good life but what this study and plenty of others show is that the people who were the happiest were those that leaned into their relationships with their partner friends family and community and when they were in their 80s the researchers asked them what are you most proud of and what is your biggest regret many people said that they were proudest of something to do with their relationships so it could be I was a good boss I was a good parent I was a good friend I was a good Mentor nobody said I made a fortune right nobody even said you know I won the Nobel Prize which a few people did it wasn't about those badges of achievement right that we think of as oh that's that's what we got to get to feel like we've had a meaningful life Everybody Looking Back mention their relationships the biggest regret was particularly among the men cuz this was the World War II generation they said I wish I hadn't spent so much time at work I wish I had spent more time with the people I care about so what about our original question do achievements and money really make us happy well according to the Harvard study Badges of achievement do not necessarily make us happier but doing meaningful work can and what about money does that make us happier well there's a famous study from 2010 by Daniel conman and Angus Deon that found that above an income of around $75,000 a year there is no improvement whatever in the measures of emotional well-being but 11 years later Matthew Killingsworth studied data on 33,000 employed us adults and he found that higher incomes corresponded to higher levels of well-being so he wrote there was no evidence for an experienced well-being Plateau above $75,000 a year contrary to some influential past research in 2022 Conan and Killingsworth set out to resolve the conflict with Barbara mellers as a mediator when they analyzed Killingsworth data they discovered an interesting pattern depending on how happy people were relative to others earning more resulted in different increases in happiness for each income level they divided people into groups based on their happiness low medium high and so on they found that below a threshold of roughly $100,000 a year a higher income was associated with more happiness for all groups but if you go above that threshold then for the unhappiest group a further increase is not associated with more happiness however for all the happier groups higher incomes do seem to lead to more happiness and the real twist is that those who were the happiest to start with stand to gain the most with increasing income relationships meaningful work and money all play a role in our happiness so why can it be so hard to realize just how important relationships are you know if you think about it relationships have been there since before we have memory right so they're like the air we breathe we take them for granted so you don't think about that as something you cultivate in order to make yourself happy we we don't think about that at all and yet when we study it scientifically we find that that turns out to be an enormous predictor of Happiness as well as physical health what's going to make you happy um being wealthy is definitely a big aspect of it but uh that loving family is kind of like the foundation of it you know what I mean realistically money but like building deep connections with people are what's going to make me happy that's awesome having like good relationships with other people you raise a family have a family and provide friends and family seeing my family happy that's all I really care about giving back to the community where you came from the world a strong family based just to come home to every night I want to get married have have a ton of kids um I want to how many is a ton probably like five or six as many as many as I can afford in fact when I interviewed people I was pleasantly surprised to see how many identified the importance of relationships so if you could give people advice on what to start doing today to uh to start being happier what suggestions would you make to think about it as analogous with physical fitness if you go work out today you don't come home and say I'm done I don't ever have to do that again right you there it's like a a practice right that the people who were best at relationships were the people who made it a practice day after day week after week to stay connected to the people they cared about you know to talk on the phone to go for walks to have coffee to to do whatever to play basketball the people who took those actions again and again regularly were the people who stayed very connected and stayed happy that way so so what we propose is that this is a practice we can cultivate and that that they're tiny actions that that people can take we have many stories of people who thought that they were no good at relationships that they were never going to have happy lives and then it changed and many times it changed when they didn't expect it so like we have a story about one man who really didn't have a good marriage and was kind of distant from his kids didn't have any friends and then when he retired he joined a gym and he found this group of friends that became for the first time a kind of tribe for him and that's just one example of how uh Our Lives take these twists and turns that we usually can't predict that we don't expect and many of those turn turns are in Positive Directions the message that the science tells us is don't don't give up on this aspect of your life cuz um many things can change at any age