November 2, 2023 • 56 mins
Today we welcome Robert Waldinger to the podcast. Robert is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Zen priest. He is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development. His TEDx talk on this subject has received nearly 44 million views, and is the 9th most watched TED talk of all time. He is the co-author of The Good Life with Dr. Marc Schulz.In this episode, I talk to Robert Waldinger about the secret to a happy life. Robert shares with us the recent findings of The Grant Study, which is the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted. It’s been ongoing for more than 80 years now, and has had high profile participants like US President John F. Kennedy. Robert and I get into the details of how they continue to conduct research and how to make sense of both the new and old data. Sure enough, what the study has found consistent is the power of connection. We also touch on the topics of psychodynamic therapy, defense mechanisms, attachment, and psychological research.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I think what we have found is that the benefits
of connection and the hazards of loneliness and disconnection are
so powerful that the reason why we're excited about is
we feel like we really want to bring this message
to people.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is
sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to untangle the
stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations, and
humanity at large using the perception box lens. They do
this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research. Unlikely
(00:39):
Collaborators the only way forward is inward. Today we welcome
Robert Waldinger to the podcast. Robert is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst,
and zen priest. He is professor of psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he directs the
Harvard Study of Adult Development. His ted X talk on
this subject has received nearly forty four million views and
(01:01):
is the ninth most watched TED talk of all time.
He is the co author of the Good Life with
doctor Mark Schultz. In this episode, I talked to Robert
Waldinger about the secret to a happy life. Robert shares
with us the recent findings of the Grand Study, which
is the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted. It's
been ongoing for more than eighty years now and has
(01:22):
had high profile participants like US President John F. Kennedy.
In this episode, Robert and I get into the details
of how they continue to conduct research and how to
make sense of both the new and old data. Sure enough,
what the study has found consistent is the power of connection.
We also touch on the topics of psychodynamic therapy, defense mechanisms, attachment,
(01:43):
and psychological research and its methodologies. This is a really
awesome chat with someone who has led this legendary study.
We call this episode the Secret to Happiness, But there's
actually a bunch of secrets, and I don't want to
spoil it for you. I want some of the secrets
to be a surprise for you. So without further ado,
I bring you doctor Robert Waldingter. Hey, thanks for being
(02:05):
on the Psychology Podcast today. How you doing well?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I'm doing fun and thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah. I am a great admirer of the work you've
done and the research you're continuing to do. Can you
kind of start with telling our audience a little bit
about how you got into the position you currently have
and what your background is.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Sure, I am a psychiatrist. I'm a Jew who grew
up in Des Moines, Iowa, and I we knew any
psychiatrists growing up, and realized in medical school that psychiatry
was the most interesting thing I had found. And so
I trained actually as a psychoanalyst, and so my specialty
(02:50):
clinically is talk therapy. And then I wanted to learn
to do research, and so I retooled in my forties,
I went back and took statistics courses and did a
bunch of things that got the the wherewithal to do
(03:12):
number crunching kind of research. And at that point, the
third director of the study that I now direct, George Valiant,
took me out to lunch one day and said, how
would you like to inherit this study? So that's how
I got here twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I mean, that's incredible that he did. That is George
still alive? He is good? Good, because I've been planning
on meeting him. I think he's in San Francisco. I've
been planning meeting him for lunch.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
He's in the LA area.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I just don't want to put that off too much longer. Yeah, Oh,
it's he in the LA area. Now, okay, I definitely
need to reach out to him. So I'm a I'm
a big George Violent fan and v A I L
A N T. How do you pronounce his last name?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
He pronounces it valiant.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I always noticed that. But there's no extra eye in there.
I know that always confuses me. But anyway, okay, anyway,
George is such a legend and I'm a big fan
of his work on defense mechanisms, and I was, and
you know, he's I know you you emphasize connections, but
(04:20):
I feel like when he was when he was running
that show, he was emphasizing how certain defense mechanisms can
really carry us through life and the way that we
cope with adversity and the way we cope with things.
So I'm wondering, you know, how much are you interested
in in in the stuff that you that George studied.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I'm very interested. So as a psychoanalyst, I'm quite interested
in defense mechanisms and how yeah, defense mechanisms really serve
us pretty well. What George referred to as the more
mature defense mechanism, and some defense mechanisms don't work well
at all, and we see that play out in people's
(04:59):
lives in our study.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Okay, so let's talk about the study. What a what
a whopperduci? This one is? What is the I'm still
not so sure on the methodology of it. I'd love
to know more about this mysterious methodology that I used
to like, what are you measuring? You know, how do
you measure it? Do you just de ry on self reports? Basically,
(05:21):
this is the Nerdy Psychology podcast, So I want you
to feel really comfortable talking about the details with me
on this shaw, I'm a fellow psychologist.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Great, do you want me to explain the setup of
the study?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Like, yeah, if you could please explain the setup and
then you know, what are some of the mean measures
that you've been tracking all these years?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Sure? So the study was started in nineteen thirty eight,
and it was started with actually as two studies that
didn't know about each other. One was a group of
two hundred and sixty eight Harvard College sophomores nineteen year
old and they were gathered together for a study of
(06:03):
normal young adult development from adolescents to early adulthood. You know, so,
of course, you know, if you want to study normal development,
you study all white men from Harvard, right, It's like
so politically incorrect, but that's what they did at the time.
And then the other study was started at Harvard Law
School by a law professor named Sheldon Gluk and his
(06:26):
wife Eleanor Gluck, who was a social worker. They were
interested in juvenile delinquency and they were particularly interested in
how some kids born into really troubled and disadvantaged families
managed to stay on good developmental paths. So both groups
(06:46):
were studies of thriving but one very privileged, one very underprivileged.
And then you know, later on we brought in spouses.
Now we've brought in the children, so we have good
gender balance now in the study. But it was originally
all boys and young men.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
That is so interesting and seemingly very disparate life experiences,
you know, seemingly I guess it's possible that there were
Harvard students who grew up in poverty and maybe were
there any were there any like overlap, Well, you know, there.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Was a little not so much poverty, but some of
these guys were on scholarship. Half of the young men
had to work to pay at least part of their
way through college. So they weren't all rich kids. Harvard
was by then trying to bring in people who were
not wealthy, but you know, most of them were much
(07:51):
more advantage than the inner city so there wasn't that
much overlap. And the inner city sample was not just
poor kids, but kids from families that were known on
average to five social service agencies for things like domestic violence,
severe parental mental illness, physical illness, you know, very extreme poverty,
(08:14):
those kinds of things. And then you had asked, so,
what's the methodology, what did we study? And we really
have studied the big domains of life, so they are
mental health, physical health, work life including work satisfaction and
who gets promoted, who gets fired, and relationships. And then
(08:39):
for the world. For the Harvard men, they were all
of the age to go to World War Two and
almost all served in the war. The inner city men
were on average nine years younger, so they were not
old enough to go to the war, but we studied
World War two experiences as well.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Still alive, Yeah, wow, they must be old.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
They're really old. They're all in there either late nineties
or early one hundreds, and only about forty out of
seven hundred and twenty four.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Totally still amazing that forty still exist, that's still amazing.
I mean, yeah, I mean this is the biggest power
well of your study that I am aware of is
one that I talk about a lot, which is Epaul
Torrance's Creativity Study. I don't know if you're familiar with it,
but if you're not, I'd love to teach you everything
(09:32):
about it because they he initiated that in the fifties
and they have been still following up and they still
released the reports on what were the biggest predictors of creativity.
So you're focusing on happiness, so you're focusing on well being,
you know e. Paul Torrance asked a very similar question,
which is what who naturally grows up to be the
most creative? Were there any metrics of creative productivity in
(09:57):
your in your study?
Speaker 1 (09:59):
You know there were? I mean, so we have, of course,
metrics of income. We know how much everybody made, you know,
at regular intervals, we know about job promotions, we know
about professions, but we really never studied that question of
you know, who's more creative who's less creative?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, well, you know, I'd love to teach you all
about the Appaul Torne study and what they found. But
you know, obviously we're shining a spotlight in your amazing
study today. So in terms of happiness, I mean, as
you acknowledge in the book which I love, happiness is messy.
(10:40):
It is it's not just how feeling good. So when
you look at I assume that you attack this issue
from multiple different things that you triangulate to try to
figure out, you know, if they're happy someday in life.
What are some of the main things that you try
to triangulate Because you say in your book quote the
good life is a complicated life. You said that, you.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Said that I stand by it is.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Well, I stand by it too. I stand by your
right right.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So you know what we did. I mean, we're kind
of a text book case in the history of science.
So we've studied the same things for eighty five years,
but we bring in different methods as different methods come online.
So we started out with regular questionnaires, surveys, and we
(11:32):
did you know, the original founders of the study did
interviews and detailed physical exams, and then every few years
we'd send them a questionnaire every two years actually, and
we got their medical records from their doctors. But then
we began to audio tape them, and then we began
to videotape them. And now we draw blood for DNA
(11:57):
and messenger RNA, and we put people into the MRI
scanner and scan their brains. I mean, we deliberately bring
them into our lab and stress them out and then
watch they recover from stress.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Don't stress these one hundred year olds out too much,
my friend.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Well, we we were. We actually brought in the kids
and stressed. Oh okay, I gotchas. So what we do is
we bring in these different methods to try to look
at well being through different lenses.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
That's amazing. Yeah, you know, the originators of the study
would never in a million years have imagined A that
the study was still going on, and b that you'd
be that such methods would even exist. Imagine going to
nineteen thirty eight and showing them an fMRI machine.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Exactly, we're working in your brain or DNA, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, or DNA. Well, you know, you think about how
much science it's a whole other topic. But I'm fascinated
with the history of science and and even just the
past seventy years. You know, what we've gone from the
kind of a pre scientific world to a ultra scientific world. Anyway,
that's it's so fascinating. Well, what a what a wonderful
(13:07):
data set to inherit, so to speak. You know what
that that that you can play around with that nerds
like us can just jump in that. And and so
you're looking at well you're looking at lots of correlations.
It seems like in terms of causa causative claims you're
a little bit more limited there. But what can you
(13:29):
still say? I mean, it is a longitudinal study, So
that's beautiful, you know that is that does make it
possible to make some but you don't have a good
control group. That's my concern.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
So no, it's really it's a really good concern. It's
an important question. You know what do we so unless
you do a tightly controlled experiment, Yeah, you can improve
causation right right, And we can't tightly control it and say, okay,
we're going to traumatize these children and we're gonna not
(14:00):
traumatize these children and then we're going to see how
their lives play up. That's unethical, right, It's unethical to
do most kinds of experiments on human beings. So what
we do, as you're mentioning, is we follow people along
and we don't prove causation. But what we can get
closer to is that kind of chicken and egg question
(14:23):
which comes first, and that's very helpful. So I'll give
you an example. Quite a number of people in our
study had the combination of depression and alcoholism. And when
you ask people who have those problems which came first,
the alcohol or the depression, they will always tell you, oh,
(14:48):
I got depressed and then I started to drink. But
when you actually look and we followed them, the drinking
comes first and then depression. So it's that kind of
question that we can shed some light on by following
people year after year over a lot of time.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
That's true, that's true, but a lot of things came
before their depression as well. Just to play devil's advocate,
not just you could have you could have said, you
can't make the same inference of value. Oh they got
divorced before the depression, you know exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
So what we do, and this is where you know
to your point, we make sure that other studies have
found the same things or are pointing in the same direction.
So we never claim our study alone has found it
and so you have to believe it. Yeah, because of
this problem that there needs to be replication of scientific
(15:43):
findings for us to have confidence that those findings are
not just by chance.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I got you. That's a good scientist in you. Today's
podcast is sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to
untangle the stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations,
and humanity at large using the perception box lens. They
do this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research.
(16:10):
Today's conversation with Robert really illustrates the importance of expanding
the walls of our perception box. The perception box is
the invisible mental box that we all live inside, and
it can seriously hinder our ability to understand one another
and to understand ourselves. In this episode, Robert reveals the
main lessons he has learned from the longest ever study
on human happiness. One of the major lessons is the
(16:31):
importance of cultivating human connections for being able to weather
the storms of life and to live a full, happy existence.
This lesson is very much tied to our perception box.
When our perception box walls are contracted, we see the
world in a very narrow way thanks to our own
stories and self judgments. These stories and self judgments limit
our potential to form deep connections with others. This is
(16:53):
especially the case when we perceive someone as being very
different from us, or we don't immediately feel a connection
with a person. Consciously and deliberately make the effort to
see outside ourselves and our stories, at least temporarily, the
walls of our perception box expand, and we're able to
encounter another human being with curiosity and openness. This can
help us cultivate the most unlikely connections and can lead
(17:16):
to some of the happiest moments in our lives. To
find out more about unlikely collaborators and the perception box,
go to Unlikely Collaborators dot com. You said you're a
psychoanalysts by training. That is so interesting because I don't
feel like psychoanalysts get a lot of get much love
these days, especially in psychology. You know, Phil in the
(17:36):
psychology feel we love We've like moved on where CBT
where you know act where? Well, they're all all the acronyms,
all the things. Do you think do you feel like
Freud is overrated or underrated?
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I think Freud is both some people over rate him,
very few actually, but many people underrate him. So yeah,
he in psychology. Now Freud has thought of as like
old school you know, almost witchcraft, because he had some
ideas that were really wrong right, but he had so
(18:16):
many fundamental ideas that were so right that now we
forget they were largely made popular by Freud. So CBT
was founded by a psychoanalyst. Aaron Beck was an analyst. Yeah,
you know that. There are many and there's a great talk.
I can't remember his name. He's a psychology professor at Yale,
(18:37):
but he gives a talk to his undergraduate students saying
you're going to hear that Freud is, you know, is
totally outdated, not useful at all, but let me just
walk you through all these concepts that we couldn't live
without in psychology because of Freud. So I would say
(18:57):
mostly he's underrated because we forget that a lot of
what everything is based on had to do with Freud.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Absolutely, I think you're referring to Paul Bloom by the way,
I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I loved his talk, whoever he was.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I think I think don't quote me on that. But
it sounds like something Paul would say. But well, first
of all, so that's that's cool, But also, let's give
some love to Anna Freud. Anna Freud, I mean that's
talking about defense mechanisms. I think Anna did more than
than then What's sign did. Yeah, and so let's give
some love there. And also I am such a big
(19:35):
Anyone who knows me knows I'm such a big fan
of Karen Horney. Oh yeah, And I have been trying
to resurrect Karen Horney and show some love to the
amazing work that she's done on well, the neurotic trends.
I don't know if you're feel that that idea of hers,
it's beautiful. And yeah, So as a as a psychoanalyst,
(19:56):
you know, do you do you think there's still a
place in the modern day world for psychoanalysis? Is we
don't need to move completely on from that?
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Oh my gosh, I mean it's really I run the
psychodynamic Teaching program at the residency at my hospital at
Massachusetts General Hospital and McLain Hospital, and it is a
teaching program that basically teaches people to talk and listen
rather than pulling out a manual. It teaches them. Okay,
(20:26):
how do you listen between the lines? How do you
listen to what someone's not able to tell you but
you can get hints of it. How do you listen
to their train of thought and from that draw some
inferences about what's most worrying them or what's most upsetting them,
And then how can you reflect it back to them
(20:47):
so that they feel heard, they feel understood. And it's
very different from taking out a manual and say today
we're gonna work on these four dysfunctional beliefs. CBT has
a lot of usefulness, don't get me wrong, But this
kind of more open ended, exploratory model of psychotherapy I
(21:08):
find just incredibly powerful. And the research is the research
says it's just as powerful as CBT. They CBT says
it's the only evidence based practice, but that's not true.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Oh yeah, you like those are fighting words.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
They are fighting words. But the studies show that psychodynamic
work is as effective and in some way in some studies,
longer lasting than the results of CBT for depression, for anxiety,
for a whole variety of well.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I know some CBT people where that would be fighting
words what you just said, but uh yeah, yeah, yeah,
because they do kind of have this attitude that there's
no evidence space, there's no evidence space, and that's so
not true.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I know, I know the evidence based well actually because
I've I've had to look into it in a man
a lot of the papers about it.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Well, do you feel like the close cousin of depth psychology,
which is of a psychoanalytic therapy, which I think is
depth therapy. Do you think that's underrated because I think
depth therapy that you know, Carl Jung's ideas about about
what therapy looked like, his vision for therapy. I think
that's really underrated too these days. Do you agree to
do too?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I do too. I think he had you know, Freud,
Freud wasn't an easy guy, right, and he had terrible
rivalries with Young.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
And honest, let's be honest. Yeah, yeah, so you know.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
So a lot of Freudians and Youngians kind of don't
talk to each other, which is of course silly. But
Freud had some I mean, Young had some very important
ideas and really expanded on what Freud did in important ways.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
I think so as well. And then you know, humanistic
psychology doesn't get as much love as it should. In
my open an existential humanist psychology. Yeah, Carl Rogers and yeah, yeah, yeah,
he's been on my podcast. He's been on my podcast
he has, yes, yes, recently, recently. Yeah, I'll send you
the episode. He's a legend. He's a legend.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Stuff, I really do.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Have you met him?
Speaker 1 (23:18):
I only I was at a conference where he spoke,
but I've never met him.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
He's such a he's such a great guy. His work
has influenced me a lot. Okay, so I know we've
strayed a little bit away from the details of your study,
but I just wanted to go into this realm of
what sort of therapies do you think are the you know, underrated,
underrated in this day and age. Let's tie it back
to your study. So do you view some of the
(23:45):
major findings through a lens of psychodynamics? I'm just curious.
And then obviously tell us some of the biggest findings.
I know you've you've spoken this on many podcasts, but
for our audience who maybe are not as aware of
some of the most significant findings, please tell with them
and then how to interpret them through what lens.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, sure, I would say that the interpretation that really
what we do is we think of questions to ask
that are informed in part by psychodynamics psychoanalytic theory. So
we've studied security of attachment in our older adults and
(24:23):
their partners. So we studied late life marriage and security
of attachment in late life marriage and its links with
brain functioning, all kinds of things. So my interest in
psychodynamics informs the kinds of things I study and measure
in the longitudinal study. And then there was another part.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
You asked me, uh, well, yeah, well, you know, go
through some of the most significant bindings.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
So probably the biggest takeaway and the biggest surprise from
this study was that the people who had the warmest
connections with other people weren't just happier, but they stayed healthier. Right,
that was the surprise, Like how could relationships get into
your body? And how could warm relationships make it less
(25:14):
likely that you'd get coronary artery disease or type two diabetes? Right? Like,
how could that be a thing? And then a lot
of other studies began to find the same thing, and
we came to understand that this is a robust finding.
So we've been studying the mechanisms.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
What do you think are Okay, in terms of the
measures you're referring to give me a specific dependent measure
from the psychological perspective, what sort of.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Tests do you use, tests of.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Whatever, whatever you're measuring psychologically. I just I don't even
I don't have a list of all the all the
sort of tests that you've administered, because it's like, because
I'm trying to wrap my head around how this is
something I'm trying to wrap my head around, and please
explain to me nineteen thirty eight when initiated, it's not
like you had very well psychometric validated tests that you
(26:05):
have today. So how are you able to look at
continuity over these different time periods when a lot of
these tests are recently developed. So that's one thing I'm
trying to understand.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
That's a great question. So you're right, So we you know,
my predecessors asked about the same things, but they asked
different questions. The wording of the questions was different. So
then how do you compare the data you get in
response to one question from the data you get fifty
years later in.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Response to my question questions.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
About marriage, for example, you know, or happiness whatever. So
one of the things that you can do is to
look at what are called latent constructs. So let's say
we ask about marriage in five different ways over forty years, right,
(26:59):
But you can and see, Okay, what's the latent construct,
the underlying thing we're trying to measure each time we
ask the question. And then there are statistical methods for
converting the data you get in response to each different
question into something that's comparable, where you kind of put
(27:19):
them on a level playing field. And so what you
do is you identify a latent construct and you then
harmonize different measures so that then you've got it's not
exactly repeated measures, but it's measures of roughly the same
thing over time. So that's what we do, and there
are some very well developed techniques for doing that.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Now, absolutely no, that makes complete sense to me. I
didn't even know you did that, so it's yeah, so yeah, there.
I mean, you can swim in the sea of lead
and variable analysis and and and and even you could
test some of the older items from the thirties now
and see how it loads on the factor of the
(28:01):
new factors. And I get it, and I get it now.
I mean I had so many of these unanswered questions
I don't get from your other interviews because there with
like people who don't know anything about psychology. So I'm
left with the more detail oriented questions. So, Okay, now
I get it. That's that's really cool.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And then you get to talk to you about this
because nobody else.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Asked that's what we do here on this show. That's
what we do here. Okay, that's cool. And so do
find that some of the kinds of questions they asked
that maybe like are outdated in terms of like, you know,
maybe not even put a correct like maybe a focused
on the male gender, right, you know, because and stuff.
Do you find it still loads on on some some
(28:42):
some more global factors when you include other kinds of
items that are more modern day.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, yeah, you can you can see that. Oh actually,
this this loads really well. This this coheres really well
with some of the other measures, some of the other
questions we asked. Sometimes it's surprising how well they cohere
and surprising how all the predict things. So actually, George
Valiant measured defense mechanisms, and he did it in this
(29:08):
really creative way. He identified vignette stories people told about
a challenging time, a relationship, or a job challenge or something.
He'd take those stories and have people code them and say, Okay,
what defense mechanisms were being used here? And then we
have so we have a kind of measure of what
(29:32):
is someone's primary motive defending themselves against challenge, against anxiety?
What are their top two defense mechanisms. And then what
we find is that the maturity of their defenses, how
mature they are, is so predictive of so many things
later on. And so this kind of rough and ready
(29:56):
measure that we created by coding text, by coding stories,
turns out to be hugely predictive of health, of well being,
of work functioning. Right, So it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah, here everyone, I'd like to take a moment to
talk about one of my favorite products that help supports
my mind and energy. On the Psychology podcast, we often
highlight different forms of mind body connection, and neotropics are
a powerful example. Nutritional science supporting or not supporting brain
health can have a lot to do with our drive
(30:31):
to accomplish the richness of our experiences and the thriving
presence from peak mental wellness. Neurohacker Collective is a science
team founded in twenty fifteen that has advanced the frontier
of nutritionally supporting brain health. Personally, I've known the folks
at Neurohacker Collective for years now, and they really are
thoughtful about what they put into their products, always trying
to be as science informed as possible. They were specifically
(30:54):
founded with a neuroscience specialty in the field of supplementation,
and Quality of Mind is that effort. Quality of Mind
blends twenty eight of the most research back neotropics on
Earth into the most comprehensive formula to support short and
long term brain health, promote mental energy, and get things
done on a daily basis from a place of thriving.
Quality of Mind is vegan, non GMO, gluten free and
(31:17):
backed by a one hundred day money back guarantee. Quality
of Mind's impact on my own mindset, productivity, energy, and
inspiration have been really, really profound. To try Quality of
Mind up to fifty percent off go to neurohacker dot
com slash psychology and enter code Psychology at checkout for
an additional fifteen percent off. That's Quality of Mind Code
(31:38):
Psychology at neurohacker dot com slash Psychology for an additional
fifteen percent off. I'm obsessed with modern day measurement of
defense mechanisms. It's been a hobby of mine. I want
to send you a paper where we try to do
a big factor analysis of all different kind of defense
(31:59):
mechanism items from different scales to kind of see what
the essential features are. I'm actually I'm just trying to
google Google my paper right now, because I'll tell you
some of the major factors, and then I want to
know how it maps onto which factors you found are
most important? For you said two, there's two biggies, so
I want to like, keep keep the drum roll going
(32:21):
for a second.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Mean for defenses or for did you.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Say you found top two defense mechanisms. Did I understand
that correctly?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Oh? No, no, I was giving an example, like what
of this person? But we did find what My co
author Mark Schultz and I reorganized George's defense mechanism ratings
into two big categories, which were defenses that engaged the
world and defenses that avoided the world avoided reality. So
(32:54):
it was Waydon's versus engagement. And what we found was
that people who were higher on the engagement dimension were
much more successful in their lives than the people who
were higher on the avoidance dimension.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
That's huge. That's a huge finding, huge finding.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
They are called facing the music or burying our heads
in the sand. That's the title of the paper.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Oh my god, I'm gonna I got a chill because
I've been I love that finding. I've been really fascinated
with the research in the act approach on experiential avoidance
and how that underlies so many forms of psychopathology, and
so that I want to find that paper that is
really in wine with a lot of other research. So
(33:44):
you found those two counters, engagement and avoidance. So we
found four facts. We found four factors, and we just
read the factors to you. We did like a We
administured so many of these defense items, and these are
the four factors. One was maladapted of action patterns is
what we labeled this obviously with the subjective what you
(34:05):
able a factor, but we abled it. And they were
the kind of items like they included suppression I'm unable
to keep a problem out of my mind until i
have a time to deal with it, rationalization like I'm
unable to find good reasons for everything I do, or
I'm unable to keep a problem out of my mind.
I'm reverse coding it on the spot. I'm often told
I don't show my feelings, so so that actually seems
(34:26):
to have to do with avoidance. Yeah, I think that
maladaptive action patterns. I actually, as I'm reading these items,
I'm like, that seems to be avoidance suppression. The second
one we found was an image distortion factor, which tended
to have to do with changing oneself. I am like
I'm the greatest. That was very narcissistic sort of, you know,
(34:50):
ways of dealing. I ignore danger as if I were Superman.
Sometimes i think I'm an angel and other times I
think I'm a devil. Something to do with distortion of
one's self image.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Third we found were adaptive, very adaptive ones like like
using humor or using creativity, anticipation. And then the fourth
one was was more altruism. So I feel good when
I know someone when I when I know, I always
feel that someone I know is like a guardian angel.
If I were in a crisis, I would seek out
(35:22):
another person who had the same problem. So ways of
dealing and coping through altruism. Anyway, that was our four factors.
I'm just, I'm just my My nerdy question is do
you do you see any of those four playing a
role in what you found?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Well, we do. It's a it's a different way to
your buckets, but it's the same coping mechanisms, right, and
so like it's just it. And as you know, there's
like there's no standard list of defense mechanisms, right because
there's label it so many ways. And so what you're
trying to get at is four dimensions. We had divided
(35:57):
things into two dimensions, but we're all looking at the
same I know, styles of coping and so I'd love
to see what you did that would be great.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
We correlated it with narcissism and and okay, well this
is this is wonderful. And how does that how do
those findings avoidance approach, how does it link to the
off cited finding about the importance of human connection? How
do how do you can you relate those things to
each other at all? Like do people who have more
(36:30):
avoidance do they avoid relationships that would be beneficial for
them that sort of thing? Right, Yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
They often avoid dealing with problems in relationships.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Oh right, yeah, there you go attachment style.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh so we find that
avoidance doesn't work well interpersonally. Right. It also doesn't work
well in other things too, like dealing with a health crisis. Right, Yeah,
but certainly interpersonally not a good not a good thing.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Why do you emphasize connections so much? In uh, when
you talk about this, I mean, you're you're awesome ted
talk emphasized connection, You're the book does a lot. Is
that like the thing you're most excited about finding consistently or.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Because the findings are so powerful?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Right, that's the most powerful finding.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, I mean also taking care of your health, which
matters hugely so. But but I think what we have
found is that that the the benefits of connection and
the hazards of loneliness and disconnection are so powerful that
the reason why we're excited about it is we feel
(37:44):
like we really want to bring this message to people.
Yeah that in some ways, you know, it's not rocket science.
In some ways, it's stating something that we all deep
down know, but it's just bringing it out front and
center and saying, look, there's all this science behind it.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
It's so important and there is so much science behind
it for everyone. You know that almost every study you
find you identifind willeliness is predicts a lot of negative,
maladaptive of things in life. Again, I just want to
come back to the control question, the control group question.
(38:24):
What would that even in this kind of study, what
would that even look like like? You know, obviously the
two groups, the Harvard group and the juvenile group are
very different from each other. Do you compare them to
each other? Ever? Do you? Okay, so you can do
cross sample comparisons? Okay, absolutely, yes, that's great. What are
(38:45):
some findings, what are some findings from looking at the benefits,
because there's got to be benefits of being going to
Harvard and having that social support system, having people believe
in you versus going through and having people kind of expect,
you know, negative outcomes.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yeah. And actually, the most powerful finding we have on
that regard comparing them is that the Harvard guys live
on average ten years longer than the inner city guys. Wow,
so privilege matters a lot. But twenty five of the
(39:27):
inner city guys, twenty five out of four hundred and
fifty six went to college and graduated from college, and
those twenty five lived just as long on average as
the Harvard guys. So what we find is, and we
don't think it's because of their college diplomas. But we
think that the support they got first of all to
(39:49):
get to college and to stay in college that was
huge and probably had other effects on their lives and
their longevity. And then also the education, the value of
the education, because you know, the big public health messages
about the dangers of smoking, the dangers of addiction, the alcoholism,
(40:10):
all that really began to emerge in the sixties, seventies,
eighties come into the public health consciousness, and we think
that the Harvard guys, because of their education and reading
more widely, probably got those messages sooner and were able
to implement them sooner than the inner city guys. So
(40:32):
we think that education probably had something to do with
this longevity benefit.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. A lot of
the Obviously most of the participants are it's anonymous. We
don't know who they are, but it was leaked. You
know that JFK was one of the study participants, and
so you have, like you know, in some closet somewhere,
you have a lot of information about JFK and and
(41:00):
and and things we probably don't even know you know
about him that you know and in his life is
I'm not going to ask you to tell me any secrets,
but tell me some secrets.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Well, of course, and you know I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
I couldn't tell you, I know, but tell me.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
We don't have the information about JFK. So when he
was running for Senate from the state of Massachusetts, his
advisors thought it was best that he withdraw from the study.
I had remove his records because they felt that having
a bunch of private personal information in a in an
office somewhere, even though it was locked up, probably wasn't
(41:37):
a good idea. So those records are now in the
Kennedy Library. Oh, I see, okay, at the University of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Okay, I see that's open to the public. Yeah, I see.
I didn't know that. I didn't know that. That's cool. Well,
so they're obviously there are a lot of successful individuals
in the Harvard thing. What about the inner city guys.
I like how you refer to them as the inner
city guys, So I'm going to refer to them. Is
that as well? Anyone there you don't think give me names, obviously,
(42:07):
but anyone who became wildly successful from that cohort.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yes, there were there were people who became you know,
business owners, quite successful, maybe millionaires at a time when
a million dollars was a huge amount of money, that
kind of thing. So some of them, I think one
had a shop that made the first toll house chocolate
chip cookies, you know, and so very cool. Now I
(42:37):
will tell you are are the opposite of the success
story which I only found out when it was published
in the Boston Globe that in the delinquent sample, which
we did not follow the delinquent boys from that study,
one of them was the Boston Strangler.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Wow. We we're allowed to know that.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
We're allowed to know that because it was published in
the in the Boston Globe. Long.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Wow, Well, well, I don't know what lessons to learn
from about happiness from him? Was he? Because like what
if you found out that he was the Boston Strangler
but he was happy? You know, Like, what lesson do
we learn from that?
Speaker 1 (43:18):
No?
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Lesson?
Speaker 1 (43:19):
So well, we didn't we didn't follow him.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Follow it up? You didn't follow that up? Yeah, no,
I know. That's like, I know that got dark really quick.
But I'm just my point here is that the point
I'm trying to make is that I often feel like
when we talk about happiness. I always try to emphasize
to people, you know, it's it's how you acquire that
happiness that matters, sometimes even more. You know. Eric from
(43:46):
has this wonderful book called The Sane Society, which is
one of my favorite books, and I think it's so
important to recognize that being sane in it insane society
is actually a marker of insanity. You know, being happy
if everyone else around you is dying or suffering. You know,
do we just want to reward and say, look, let's
do whatever this person's doing because they're happy. No, you know,
(44:10):
so just zooming out to a broader context and not
just looking at the factors that predict happiness, but look
to see that those factors are increasingly net positive on
the world I think is important too.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Do you agree, yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
The Boston Stranger is just an example that I was
like because it's like that'd be cheeky, not cheeky, but like,
you know, you find well terms of the Boston Strangers
scores with the happiest of them all. Well, it's not
like we then want to like do whatever he did.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, we know that sociopaths
are often impervious to write to what other people think
of them, whatever you know, and so they seem untouchable
in terms of their happiness.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Yeah, I am so excited to announce that registrations are
now open for our soul self actualization Coaching Intensive. While
the coaching industry has taken great strides over the years
toward integrating more evidence based coaching approaches, there are still
a lot of work to be done. Many coach training
programs still lack strong foundations in science and do little
(45:15):
to incorporate research informed tools, methodologies, or approaches for helping
clients thrive. For twenty years, I've dedicated my career to
rigorously testing ways to unlock creativity, intelligence, and our potential
as human beings. Now, for the first time ever, I've
compiled some of my greatest insights to bring the new
science of self actualization to the field of professional coaching.
(45:36):
This immersive three day learning experience will introduce you to
self actualization coaching, an approach intended to enhance your coaching
practice by offering you evidence based tools and insights from
my research that will equip you to more effectively help
your clients unlock their unique potential. Don't miss out on
this unique opportunity. Join us and take your coaching practice
to the next level. Go to sacoaching door. That's sacaching
(46:02):
dot Org. I look forward to welcoming you in December.
In terms of like relationship the power, because I'm right
there with you in the power of relationships, and I
love that you're bringing that so foremost to the culture.
Your work has done a lot to bring that to
the foremost. I love that there's just there's obviously a
lot of nuance there, like being single. Like in terms
(46:25):
of romantic relationships, do you find I feel like a
good marriage is like one of the best, if not
the best, predictors of happiness. But but a bad marriage
is one of the best predictors of depression. So it's
not just like get married, it's like, no, no, get
married to the right person, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
And yeah, and figure out how to work on relationships
to make them better. Now, not every relationship is workable,
and so you know, as we know, many people split up,
and some couples really should split up, some friendships should
split up. But I think one of the things we
try to emphasize in the book is that it's really
(47:06):
important to see what's possible in a relationship to see
if it's possible to work through difficulties, because often it
makes a relationship stronger. And once you've invested in a relationship,
whether it's a romantic relationship or a friendship, there's huge
cost to blowing it off, to jettising it, jettison it.
(47:28):
So we want to be sure that we've done what
we can to see if differences can be worked out.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Oh, I completely agree with that. I'm bringing down some
of this stuff because I feel like you're giving me
good quotes for my next book. I think you're saying, yeah,
you're absolutely yeah, And of course I'm going to ask
your remission before I include it in my book. Yeah, Early,
you're giving you, you're giving, You're giving me good You're
saying such good things that I really agree with. Uh,
(47:58):
just getting back to the needy, gray details of what
you're looking at. Do you have measures of meaning? Do
you have measures you know, because like modern day well
being scales exist right that incorporate lots of different things. Purpose.
Do you feel like you sai? It's a purpose, a
sense of meaning in your life. Do you feel like
you matter? Do you feel like you're not just connection,
but other things. I'm wondering, are using any of these
modern day scales, And yeah, we do.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Like we use Ed Deaner's Satisfaction with Life scale, we
use some more expanded satisfaction with life scales, and they
include questions like, you know, do you feel like you
have meaning and purpose? Or what gets you up? And
do you know what gets you up in the morning
and that kind of thing. So we do, and we
(48:41):
use those scales because they are tested, they are tried
and true. Yeah, George Valiant and his predecessors made up
a lot of their own questions and they were great
at it. It's just that they didn't do psychometric testing
on them. And so now what we've done is to
bring in measures that have been tested, and that way
(49:03):
it allows us to compare our data to other studies
that are using the same measures.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Absolutely, because do you ever find that some things that
predict happiness maybe don't predict meaning and vice versa. You know,
something like when I say happiness, I mean just life
satisfaction scale one to ten. How satisfied with you are
your life? How what's the ratio of your positive to
your negative emotions? That's really just how the life satisfaction
(49:31):
questionnaire is. But do you find there maybe there's some
things that over the years have predicted a greater sense
of meaning and purpose but may show lower happiness scores.
Do you look at that differentiation at all?
Speaker 1 (49:43):
We don't, But I think you probably know of Carol
Riff's work, where she differently you know, hetonic while being
from eudaemonic being well for work. You know, there are
people who prioritize meaning and purpose and they'll defer gratification
in order to get that. And there are other people
who say, no, I really want to party now and
(50:05):
I want to have a good time right now. And
so we know that people differ a lot in the
extent to which they prioritize the being happy now versus
the deferred gratification kind of happiness.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm just curious if you looked at that
different differentiation at all. And then, of course the creativity
question is so interesting to me. Success have you looked
at like the role of self esteem or the role
of feeling like you are competent in your life and
how much that matters you. Have you looked at that
(50:41):
at all?
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Well? We have, you know, we haven't I would say,
we have not done really rigorous measurement of self esteem.
I wish we had, because it's something that I feel
is so vital. We haven't done that, but we know
people would men things that reflected high or low self
(51:02):
esteem a lot in their responses to us. But you know,
have we done a particular defined study of self esteem? No?
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Fair enough. I mean, you can't measure everything in the world.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
You know, when people like you ask really good questions
with oh, I wish we'd answer we had asked that.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Well, look, I mean it's it's still one of the best,
most unique studies in the history of psychology. Don't feel
you know, apologetic at all that you didn't didn't you
We didn't include every measure possible measure in the world.
The original architects of the study, did they ever plan
for this to be a longitudinal study or it just
turned out to be that way?
Speaker 1 (51:48):
Well? No, I think they planned to follow people maybe
five to ten years, okay, okay, but nobody, nobody ever
dreamed it would go on this long.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
It's a really remarkable achievement and that you're part of
a you're part of a remarkable lineage.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
You know, really lucky, really lucky.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Yeah, well you're worthy, You're worthy. But yeah, yeah, that's
the psychologist me.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
So with the connection thing, what are some of the
tell me some more of the benefits of connection that
you found. You know, people who were able to have
more connectionised we're also able to what in their lives,
like what tell me more of the correlations associations you
see there.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Well, they weathered hard times better, right, because relationships help
us get through the hard times. They were often more
successful at work and you know we know this from
lots of work. Now that says, you know, emotional intelligence,
people's skills. Being good with people often matters more than
(52:51):
IQ for how well you do at work. So there
are a lot of things we found about connection. They
just it has a lot of positive benefits and a
lot of benefits in terms of weathering the storms of life.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
And remind me how you measured the presence of high
quality connections, you know, that's that's a phrase you know
in the psychologic culture, high quality connections, which is different
than like the need for belonging. You know, you can
have you can feel a sense of belonging, but not
feel like there's a mutual intimate back and forth. So
(53:27):
I'm just curious, how do you measure the presence of
lots of high quality connections in one's life?
Speaker 1 (53:31):
Well, so in different ways. I mean, we'd ask people
about friends, how often do you see friends? What do
you do with your friends? I see, I saw that
kind of thing. And we would also talk about being satisfied.
How satisfied are you with friends? How satisfied are you
with your spouse? Uh? How good is your sex life?
I mean, there were a lot of things we asked
(53:52):
that tried to get at quality.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
It's great, it's pretty comprehensive.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
Well, I feel like I've don't worry. I think I've
exhausted my questions for today. I look at you every
time I started to ask question, I think you feel
like you're in the hot seat or something like, you know,
and where were Roberger? Where were you? One June second,
nineteen seventy two. But I really honor and treasure this
opportunity to be able to ask you those questions. I've
(54:21):
wondered them for a while. And I hope our listeners really,
you know, get the main points of this of the study.
They don't get lost in the factor analysis discussion, but
they understand the main points here. Any any other sort
of mean, you know, sort of points you want to
make about what you've gleaned from this enormous data set.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Well, I think that you know, we talk about what
we've called social fitness, and it's really just an analogy
with physical fitness. The idea that the people in our
study who were best at this were the people who
were active, you know, who would make sure they stayed
in touch with friends, who would make plans with friends,
who who were proactive, who didn't just wait for relationships
(55:06):
to take care of themselves. Because they didn't always take
care of themselves, some really good relationships would just wither
away and die. And so I think that's an important
message that's worth getting out there.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
Yeah, that's a beautiful place to maybe end. As I
get older, I feel like I hold on, you know,
more tightly to my most meaningful relationships, you know, trying
to make its investment. You make investments easy, you know,
calling mom, you know, you know, staying in touch more regularly,
calling your friend if who's on another coast or whatever.
(55:38):
And these investments and your research shows in a lot
of ways that these individuals who made these investments as
young as possible. It lived longer and you know, and
lots of really great things, Doctor Waldinger, Such an honor
to have you on my podcast day, and I wish
you all the best with the continuing studies of it great.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
This was a pleasure I really enjoyed by talking with you.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Thanks a lot, Thank you, thanks for listening to this
episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
to join in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com.
We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast. We also
(56:24):
put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube
page as well, so you'll want to check that out.
Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
and creativity.
I think what we have found is that the benefits
of connection and the hazards of loneliness and disconnection are
so powerful that the reason why we're excited about is
we feel like we really want to bring this message
to people.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Hello, and welcome to the Psychology Podcast. Today's episode is
sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to untangle the
stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations, and
humanity at large using the perception box lens. They do
this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research. Unlikely
(00:39):
Collaborators the only way forward is inward. Today we welcome
Robert Waldinger to the podcast. Robert is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst,
and zen priest. He is professor of psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he directs the
Harvard Study of Adult Development. His ted X talk on
this subject has received nearly forty four million views and
(01:01):
is the ninth most watched TED talk of all time.
He is the co author of the Good Life with
doctor Mark Schultz. In this episode, I talked to Robert
Waldinger about the secret to a happy life. Robert shares
with us the recent findings of the Grand Study, which
is the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted. It's
been ongoing for more than eighty years now and has
(01:22):
had high profile participants like US President John F. Kennedy.
In this episode, Robert and I get into the details
of how they continue to conduct research and how to
make sense of both the new and old data. Sure enough,
what the study has found consistent is the power of connection.
We also touch on the topics of psychodynamic therapy, defense mechanisms, attachment,
(01:43):
and psychological research and its methodologies. This is a really
awesome chat with someone who has led this legendary study.
We call this episode the Secret to Happiness, But there's
actually a bunch of secrets, and I don't want to
spoil it for you. I want some of the secrets
to be a surprise for you. So without further ado,
I bring you doctor Robert Waldingter. Hey, thanks for being
(02:05):
on the Psychology Podcast today. How you doing well?
Speaker 1 (02:08):
I'm doing fun and thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Yeah. I am a great admirer of the work you've
done and the research you're continuing to do. Can you
kind of start with telling our audience a little bit
about how you got into the position you currently have
and what your background is.
Speaker 1 (02:26):
Sure, I am a psychiatrist. I'm a Jew who grew
up in Des Moines, Iowa, and I we knew any
psychiatrists growing up, and realized in medical school that psychiatry
was the most interesting thing I had found. And so
I trained actually as a psychoanalyst, and so my specialty
(02:50):
clinically is talk therapy. And then I wanted to learn
to do research, and so I retooled in my forties,
I went back and took statistics courses and did a
bunch of things that got the the wherewithal to do
(03:12):
number crunching kind of research. And at that point, the
third director of the study that I now direct, George Valiant,
took me out to lunch one day and said, how
would you like to inherit this study? So that's how
I got here twenty years ago.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
I mean, that's incredible that he did. That is George
still alive? He is good? Good, because I've been planning
on meeting him. I think he's in San Francisco. I've
been planning meeting him for lunch.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
He's in the LA area.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
I just don't want to put that off too much longer. Yeah, Oh,
it's he in the LA area. Now, okay, I definitely
need to reach out to him. So I'm a I'm
a big George Violent fan and v A I L
A N T. How do you pronounce his last name?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
He pronounces it valiant.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
I always noticed that. But there's no extra eye in there.
I know that always confuses me. But anyway, okay, anyway,
George is such a legend and I'm a big fan
of his work on defense mechanisms, and I was, and
you know, he's I know you you emphasize connections, but
(04:20):
I feel like when he was when he was running
that show, he was emphasizing how certain defense mechanisms can
really carry us through life and the way that we
cope with adversity and the way we cope with things.
So I'm wondering, you know, how much are you interested
in in in the stuff that you that George studied.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
I'm very interested. So as a psychoanalyst, I'm quite interested
in defense mechanisms and how yeah, defense mechanisms really serve
us pretty well. What George referred to as the more
mature defense mechanism, and some defense mechanisms don't work well
at all, and we see that play out in people's
(04:59):
lives in our study.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Okay, so let's talk about the study. What a what
a whopperduci? This one is? What is the I'm still
not so sure on the methodology of it. I'd love
to know more about this mysterious methodology that I used
to like, what are you measuring? You know, how do
you measure it? Do you just de ry on self reports? Basically,
(05:21):
this is the Nerdy Psychology podcast, So I want you
to feel really comfortable talking about the details with me
on this shaw, I'm a fellow psychologist.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
Great, do you want me to explain the setup of
the study?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
Like, yeah, if you could please explain the setup and
then you know, what are some of the mean measures
that you've been tracking all these years?
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Sure? So the study was started in nineteen thirty eight,
and it was started with actually as two studies that
didn't know about each other. One was a group of
two hundred and sixty eight Harvard College sophomores nineteen year
old and they were gathered together for a study of
(06:03):
normal young adult development from adolescents to early adulthood. You know, so,
of course, you know, if you want to study normal development,
you study all white men from Harvard, right, It's like
so politically incorrect, but that's what they did at the time.
And then the other study was started at Harvard Law
School by a law professor named Sheldon Gluk and his
(06:26):
wife Eleanor Gluck, who was a social worker. They were
interested in juvenile delinquency and they were particularly interested in
how some kids born into really troubled and disadvantaged families
managed to stay on good developmental paths. So both groups
(06:46):
were studies of thriving but one very privileged, one very underprivileged.
And then you know, later on we brought in spouses.
Now we've brought in the children, so we have good
gender balance now in the study. But it was originally
all boys and young men.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
That is so interesting and seemingly very disparate life experiences,
you know, seemingly I guess it's possible that there were
Harvard students who grew up in poverty and maybe were
there any were there any like overlap, Well, you know, there.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Was a little not so much poverty, but some of
these guys were on scholarship. Half of the young men
had to work to pay at least part of their
way through college. So they weren't all rich kids. Harvard
was by then trying to bring in people who were
not wealthy, but you know, most of them were much
(07:51):
more advantage than the inner city so there wasn't that
much overlap. And the inner city sample was not just
poor kids, but kids from families that were known on
average to five social service agencies for things like domestic violence,
severe parental mental illness, physical illness, you know, very extreme poverty,
(08:14):
those kinds of things. And then you had asked, so,
what's the methodology, what did we study? And we really
have studied the big domains of life, so they are
mental health, physical health, work life including work satisfaction and
who gets promoted, who gets fired, and relationships. And then
(08:39):
for the world. For the Harvard men, they were all
of the age to go to World War Two and
almost all served in the war. The inner city men
were on average nine years younger, so they were not
old enough to go to the war, but we studied
World War two experiences as well.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
Still alive, Yeah, wow, they must be old.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
They're really old. They're all in there either late nineties
or early one hundreds, and only about forty out of
seven hundred and twenty four.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Totally still amazing that forty still exist, that's still amazing.
I mean, yeah, I mean this is the biggest power
well of your study that I am aware of is
one that I talk about a lot, which is Epaul
Torrance's Creativity Study. I don't know if you're familiar with it,
but if you're not, I'd love to teach you everything
(09:32):
about it because they he initiated that in the fifties
and they have been still following up and they still
released the reports on what were the biggest predictors of creativity.
So you're focusing on happiness, so you're focusing on well being,
you know e. Paul Torrance asked a very similar question,
which is what who naturally grows up to be the
most creative? Were there any metrics of creative productivity in
(09:57):
your in your study?
Speaker 1 (09:59):
You know there were? I mean, so we have, of course,
metrics of income. We know how much everybody made, you know,
at regular intervals, we know about job promotions, we know
about professions, but we really never studied that question of
you know, who's more creative who's less creative?
Speaker 2 (10:19):
Yeah, well, you know, I'd love to teach you all
about the Appaul Torne study and what they found. But
you know, obviously we're shining a spotlight in your amazing
study today. So in terms of happiness, I mean, as
you acknowledge in the book which I love, happiness is messy.
(10:40):
It is it's not just how feeling good. So when
you look at I assume that you attack this issue
from multiple different things that you triangulate to try to
figure out, you know, if they're happy someday in life.
What are some of the main things that you try
to triangulate Because you say in your book quote the
good life is a complicated life. You said that, you.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
Said that I stand by it is.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Well, I stand by it too. I stand by your
right right.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
So you know what we did. I mean, we're kind
of a text book case in the history of science.
So we've studied the same things for eighty five years,
but we bring in different methods as different methods come online.
So we started out with regular questionnaires, surveys, and we
(11:32):
did you know, the original founders of the study did
interviews and detailed physical exams, and then every few years
we'd send them a questionnaire every two years actually, and
we got their medical records from their doctors. But then
we began to audio tape them, and then we began
to videotape them. And now we draw blood for DNA
(11:57):
and messenger RNA, and we put people into the MRI
scanner and scan their brains. I mean, we deliberately bring
them into our lab and stress them out and then
watch they recover from stress.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Don't stress these one hundred year olds out too much,
my friend.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Well, we we were. We actually brought in the kids
and stressed. Oh okay, I gotchas. So what we do is
we bring in these different methods to try to look
at well being through different lenses.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
That's amazing. Yeah, you know, the originators of the study
would never in a million years have imagined A that
the study was still going on, and b that you'd
be that such methods would even exist. Imagine going to
nineteen thirty eight and showing them an fMRI machine.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
Exactly, we're working in your brain or DNA, you know.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Yeah, or DNA. Well, you know, you think about how
much science it's a whole other topic. But I'm fascinated
with the history of science and and even just the
past seventy years. You know, what we've gone from the
kind of a pre scientific world to a ultra scientific world. Anyway,
that's it's so fascinating. Well, what a what a wonderful
(13:07):
data set to inherit, so to speak. You know what
that that that you can play around with that nerds
like us can just jump in that. And and so
you're looking at well you're looking at lots of correlations.
It seems like in terms of causa causative claims you're
a little bit more limited there. But what can you
(13:29):
still say? I mean, it is a longitudinal study, So
that's beautiful, you know that is that does make it
possible to make some but you don't have a good
control group. That's my concern.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
So no, it's really it's a really good concern. It's
an important question. You know what do we so unless
you do a tightly controlled experiment, Yeah, you can improve
causation right right, And we can't tightly control it and say, okay,
we're going to traumatize these children and we're gonna not
(14:00):
traumatize these children and then we're going to see how
their lives play up. That's unethical, right, It's unethical to
do most kinds of experiments on human beings. So what
we do, as you're mentioning, is we follow people along
and we don't prove causation. But what we can get
closer to is that kind of chicken and egg question
(14:23):
which comes first, and that's very helpful. So I'll give
you an example. Quite a number of people in our
study had the combination of depression and alcoholism. And when
you ask people who have those problems which came first,
the alcohol or the depression, they will always tell you, oh,
(14:48):
I got depressed and then I started to drink. But
when you actually look and we followed them, the drinking
comes first and then depression. So it's that kind of
question that we can shed some light on by following
people year after year over a lot of time.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
That's true, that's true, but a lot of things came
before their depression as well. Just to play devil's advocate,
not just you could have you could have said, you
can't make the same inference of value. Oh they got
divorced before the depression, you know exactly.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
So what we do, and this is where you know
to your point, we make sure that other studies have
found the same things or are pointing in the same direction.
So we never claim our study alone has found it
and so you have to believe it. Yeah, because of
this problem that there needs to be replication of scientific
(15:43):
findings for us to have confidence that those findings are
not just by chance.
Speaker 2 (15:50):
I got you. That's a good scientist in you. Today's
podcast is sponsored by Unlikely Collaborators. Their mission is to
untangle the stories that hold us back as individuals, communities, nations,
and humanity at large using the perception box lens. They
do this through storytelling, experiences, impact investments, and scientific research.
(16:10):
Today's conversation with Robert really illustrates the importance of expanding
the walls of our perception box. The perception box is
the invisible mental box that we all live inside, and
it can seriously hinder our ability to understand one another
and to understand ourselves. In this episode, Robert reveals the
main lessons he has learned from the longest ever study
on human happiness. One of the major lessons is the
(16:31):
importance of cultivating human connections for being able to weather
the storms of life and to live a full, happy existence.
This lesson is very much tied to our perception box.
When our perception box walls are contracted, we see the
world in a very narrow way thanks to our own
stories and self judgments. These stories and self judgments limit
our potential to form deep connections with others. This is
(16:53):
especially the case when we perceive someone as being very
different from us, or we don't immediately feel a connection
with a person. Consciously and deliberately make the effort to
see outside ourselves and our stories, at least temporarily, the
walls of our perception box expand, and we're able to
encounter another human being with curiosity and openness. This can
help us cultivate the most unlikely connections and can lead
(17:16):
to some of the happiest moments in our lives. To
find out more about unlikely collaborators and the perception box,
go to Unlikely Collaborators dot com. You said you're a
psychoanalysts by training. That is so interesting because I don't
feel like psychoanalysts get a lot of get much love
these days, especially in psychology. You know, Phil in the
(17:36):
psychology feel we love We've like moved on where CBT
where you know act where? Well, they're all all the acronyms,
all the things. Do you think do you feel like
Freud is overrated or underrated?
Speaker 1 (17:52):
I think Freud is both some people over rate him,
very few actually, but many people underrate him. So yeah,
he in psychology. Now Freud has thought of as like
old school you know, almost witchcraft, because he had some
ideas that were really wrong right, but he had so
(18:16):
many fundamental ideas that were so right that now we
forget they were largely made popular by Freud. So CBT
was founded by a psychoanalyst. Aaron Beck was an analyst. Yeah,
you know that. There are many and there's a great talk.
I can't remember his name. He's a psychology professor at Yale,
(18:37):
but he gives a talk to his undergraduate students saying
you're going to hear that Freud is, you know, is
totally outdated, not useful at all, but let me just
walk you through all these concepts that we couldn't live
without in psychology because of Freud. So I would say
(18:57):
mostly he's underrated because we forget that a lot of
what everything is based on had to do with Freud.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Absolutely, I think you're referring to Paul Bloom by the way,
I don't remember.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
I loved his talk, whoever he was.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
I think I think don't quote me on that. But
it sounds like something Paul would say. But well, first
of all, so that's that's cool, But also, let's give
some love to Anna Freud. Anna Freud, I mean that's
talking about defense mechanisms. I think Anna did more than
than then What's sign did. Yeah, and so let's give
some love there. And also I am such a big
(19:35):
Anyone who knows me knows I'm such a big fan
of Karen Horney. Oh yeah, And I have been trying
to resurrect Karen Horney and show some love to the
amazing work that she's done on well, the neurotic trends.
I don't know if you're feel that that idea of hers,
it's beautiful. And yeah, So as a as a psychoanalyst,
(19:56):
you know, do you do you think there's still a
place in the modern day world for psychoanalysis? Is we
don't need to move completely on from that?
Speaker 1 (20:04):
Oh my gosh, I mean it's really I run the
psychodynamic Teaching program at the residency at my hospital at
Massachusetts General Hospital and McLain Hospital, and it is a
teaching program that basically teaches people to talk and listen
rather than pulling out a manual. It teaches them. Okay,
(20:26):
how do you listen between the lines? How do you
listen to what someone's not able to tell you but
you can get hints of it. How do you listen
to their train of thought and from that draw some
inferences about what's most worrying them or what's most upsetting them,
And then how can you reflect it back to them
(20:47):
so that they feel heard, they feel understood. And it's
very different from taking out a manual and say today
we're gonna work on these four dysfunctional beliefs. CBT has
a lot of usefulness, don't get me wrong, But this
kind of more open ended, exploratory model of psychotherapy I
(21:08):
find just incredibly powerful. And the research is the research
says it's just as powerful as CBT. They CBT says
it's the only evidence based practice, but that's not true.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
Oh yeah, you like those are fighting words.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
They are fighting words. But the studies show that psychodynamic
work is as effective and in some way in some studies,
longer lasting than the results of CBT for depression, for anxiety,
for a whole variety of well.
Speaker 2 (21:41):
I know some CBT people where that would be fighting
words what you just said, but uh yeah, yeah, yeah,
because they do kind of have this attitude that there's
no evidence space, there's no evidence space, and that's so
not true.
Speaker 1 (21:54):
I know, I know the evidence based well actually because
I've I've had to look into it in a man
a lot of the papers about it.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Well, do you feel like the close cousin of depth psychology,
which is of a psychoanalytic therapy, which I think is
depth therapy. Do you think that's underrated because I think
depth therapy that you know, Carl Jung's ideas about about
what therapy looked like, his vision for therapy. I think
that's really underrated too these days. Do you agree to
do too?
Speaker 1 (22:23):
I do too. I think he had you know, Freud,
Freud wasn't an easy guy, right, and he had terrible
rivalries with Young.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
And honest, let's be honest. Yeah, yeah, so you know.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
So a lot of Freudians and Youngians kind of don't
talk to each other, which is of course silly. But
Freud had some I mean, Young had some very important
ideas and really expanded on what Freud did in important ways.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
I think so as well. And then you know, humanistic
psychology doesn't get as much love as it should. In
my open an existential humanist psychology. Yeah, Carl Rogers and yeah, yeah, yeah,
he's been on my podcast. He's been on my podcast
he has, yes, yes, recently, recently. Yeah, I'll send you
the episode. He's a legend. He's a legend.
Speaker 1 (23:15):
Stuff, I really do.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
Have you met him?
Speaker 1 (23:18):
I only I was at a conference where he spoke,
but I've never met him.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
He's such a he's such a great guy. His work
has influenced me a lot. Okay, so I know we've
strayed a little bit away from the details of your study,
but I just wanted to go into this realm of
what sort of therapies do you think are the you know, underrated,
underrated in this day and age. Let's tie it back
to your study. So do you view some of the
(23:45):
major findings through a lens of psychodynamics? I'm just curious.
And then obviously tell us some of the biggest findings.
I know you've you've spoken this on many podcasts, but
for our audience who maybe are not as aware of
some of the most significant findings, please tell with them
and then how to interpret them through what lens.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yeah, sure, I would say that the interpretation that really
what we do is we think of questions to ask
that are informed in part by psychodynamics psychoanalytic theory. So
we've studied security of attachment in our older adults and
(24:23):
their partners. So we studied late life marriage and security
of attachment in late life marriage and its links with
brain functioning, all kinds of things. So my interest in
psychodynamics informs the kinds of things I study and measure
in the longitudinal study. And then there was another part.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
You asked me, uh, well, yeah, well, you know, go
through some of the most significant bindings.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
So probably the biggest takeaway and the biggest surprise from
this study was that the people who had the warmest
connections with other people weren't just happier, but they stayed healthier. Right,
that was the surprise, Like how could relationships get into
your body? And how could warm relationships make it less
(25:14):
likely that you'd get coronary artery disease or type two diabetes? Right? Like,
how could that be a thing? And then a lot
of other studies began to find the same thing, and
we came to understand that this is a robust finding.
So we've been studying the mechanisms.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
What do you think are Okay, in terms of the
measures you're referring to give me a specific dependent measure
from the psychological perspective, what sort of.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Tests do you use, tests of.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Whatever, whatever you're measuring psychologically. I just I don't even
I don't have a list of all the all the
sort of tests that you've administered, because it's like, because
I'm trying to wrap my head around how this is
something I'm trying to wrap my head around, and please
explain to me nineteen thirty eight when initiated, it's not
like you had very well psychometric validated tests that you
(26:05):
have today. So how are you able to look at
continuity over these different time periods when a lot of
these tests are recently developed. So that's one thing I'm
trying to understand.
Speaker 1 (26:16):
That's a great question. So you're right, So we you know,
my predecessors asked about the same things, but they asked
different questions. The wording of the questions was different. So
then how do you compare the data you get in
response to one question from the data you get fifty
years later in.
Speaker 2 (26:34):
Response to my question questions.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
About marriage, for example, you know, or happiness whatever. So
one of the things that you can do is to
look at what are called latent constructs. So let's say
we ask about marriage in five different ways over forty years, right,
(26:59):
But you can and see, Okay, what's the latent construct,
the underlying thing we're trying to measure each time we
ask the question. And then there are statistical methods for
converting the data you get in response to each different
question into something that's comparable, where you kind of put
(27:19):
them on a level playing field. And so what you
do is you identify a latent construct and you then
harmonize different measures so that then you've got it's not
exactly repeated measures, but it's measures of roughly the same
thing over time. So that's what we do, and there
are some very well developed techniques for doing that.
Speaker 2 (27:41):
Now, absolutely no, that makes complete sense to me. I
didn't even know you did that, so it's yeah, so yeah, there.
I mean, you can swim in the sea of lead
and variable analysis and and and and even you could
test some of the older items from the thirties now
and see how it loads on the factor of the
(28:01):
new factors. And I get it, and I get it now.
I mean I had so many of these unanswered questions
I don't get from your other interviews because there with
like people who don't know anything about psychology. So I'm
left with the more detail oriented questions. So, Okay, now
I get it. That's that's really cool.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
And then you get to talk to you about this
because nobody else.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Asked that's what we do here on this show. That's
what we do here. Okay, that's cool. And so do
find that some of the kinds of questions they asked
that maybe like are outdated in terms of like, you know,
maybe not even put a correct like maybe a focused
on the male gender, right, you know, because and stuff.
Do you find it still loads on on some some
(28:42):
some more global factors when you include other kinds of
items that are more modern day.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Yeah, yeah, you can you can see that. Oh actually,
this this loads really well. This this coheres really well
with some of the other measures, some of the other
questions we asked. Sometimes it's surprising how well they cohere
and surprising how all the predict things. So actually, George
Valiant measured defense mechanisms, and he did it in this
(29:08):
really creative way. He identified vignette stories people told about
a challenging time, a relationship, or a job challenge or something.
He'd take those stories and have people code them and say, Okay,
what defense mechanisms were being used here? And then we
have so we have a kind of measure of what
(29:32):
is someone's primary motive defending themselves against challenge, against anxiety?
What are their top two defense mechanisms. And then what
we find is that the maturity of their defenses, how
mature they are, is so predictive of so many things
later on. And so this kind of rough and ready
(29:56):
measure that we created by coding text, by coding stories,
turns out to be hugely predictive of health, of well being,
of work functioning. Right, So it's pretty cool.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Yeah, here everyone, I'd like to take a moment to
talk about one of my favorite products that help supports
my mind and energy. On the Psychology podcast, we often
highlight different forms of mind body connection, and neotropics are
a powerful example. Nutritional science supporting or not supporting brain
health can have a lot to do with our drive
(30:31):
to accomplish the richness of our experiences and the thriving
presence from peak mental wellness. Neurohacker Collective is a science
team founded in twenty fifteen that has advanced the frontier
of nutritionally supporting brain health. Personally, I've known the folks
at Neurohacker Collective for years now, and they really are
thoughtful about what they put into their products, always trying
to be as science informed as possible. They were specifically
(30:54):
founded with a neuroscience specialty in the field of supplementation,
and Quality of Mind is that effort. Quality of Mind
blends twenty eight of the most research back neotropics on
Earth into the most comprehensive formula to support short and
long term brain health, promote mental energy, and get things
done on a daily basis from a place of thriving.
Quality of Mind is vegan, non GMO, gluten free and
(31:17):
backed by a one hundred day money back guarantee. Quality
of Mind's impact on my own mindset, productivity, energy, and
inspiration have been really, really profound. To try Quality of
Mind up to fifty percent off go to neurohacker dot
com slash psychology and enter code Psychology at checkout for
an additional fifteen percent off. That's Quality of Mind Code
(31:38):
Psychology at neurohacker dot com slash Psychology for an additional
fifteen percent off. I'm obsessed with modern day measurement of
defense mechanisms. It's been a hobby of mine. I want
to send you a paper where we try to do
a big factor analysis of all different kind of defense
(31:59):
mechanism items from different scales to kind of see what
the essential features are. I'm actually I'm just trying to
google Google my paper right now, because I'll tell you
some of the major factors, and then I want to
know how it maps onto which factors you found are
most important? For you said two, there's two biggies, so
I want to like, keep keep the drum roll going
(32:21):
for a second.
Speaker 1 (32:23):
Mean for defenses or for did you.
Speaker 2 (32:26):
Say you found top two defense mechanisms. Did I understand
that correctly?
Speaker 1 (32:30):
Oh? No, no, I was giving an example, like what
of this person? But we did find what My co
author Mark Schultz and I reorganized George's defense mechanism ratings
into two big categories, which were defenses that engaged the
world and defenses that avoided the world avoided reality. So
(32:54):
it was Waydon's versus engagement. And what we found was
that people who were higher on the engagement dimension were
much more successful in their lives than the people who
were higher on the avoidance dimension.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
That's huge. That's a huge finding, huge finding.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
They are called facing the music or burying our heads
in the sand. That's the title of the paper.
Speaker 2 (33:20):
Oh my god, I'm gonna I got a chill because
I've been I love that finding. I've been really fascinated
with the research in the act approach on experiential avoidance
and how that underlies so many forms of psychopathology, and
so that I want to find that paper that is
really in wine with a lot of other research. So
(33:44):
you found those two counters, engagement and avoidance. So we
found four facts. We found four factors, and we just
read the factors to you. We did like a We
administured so many of these defense items, and these are
the four factors. One was maladapted of action patterns is
what we labeled this obviously with the subjective what you
(34:05):
able a factor, but we abled it. And they were
the kind of items like they included suppression I'm unable
to keep a problem out of my mind until i
have a time to deal with it, rationalization like I'm
unable to find good reasons for everything I do, or
I'm unable to keep a problem out of my mind.
I'm reverse coding it on the spot. I'm often told
I don't show my feelings, so so that actually seems
(34:26):
to have to do with avoidance. Yeah, I think that
maladaptive action patterns. I actually, as I'm reading these items,
I'm like, that seems to be avoidance suppression. The second
one we found was an image distortion factor, which tended
to have to do with changing oneself. I am like
I'm the greatest. That was very narcissistic sort of, you know,
(34:50):
ways of dealing. I ignore danger as if I were Superman.
Sometimes i think I'm an angel and other times I
think I'm a devil. Something to do with distortion of
one's self image.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:01):
Third we found were adaptive, very adaptive ones like like
using humor or using creativity, anticipation. And then the fourth
one was was more altruism. So I feel good when
I know someone when I when I know, I always
feel that someone I know is like a guardian angel.
If I were in a crisis, I would seek out
(35:22):
another person who had the same problem. So ways of
dealing and coping through altruism. Anyway, that was our four factors.
I'm just, I'm just my My nerdy question is do
you do you see any of those four playing a
role in what you found?
Speaker 1 (35:36):
Well, we do. It's a it's a different way to
your buckets, but it's the same coping mechanisms, right, and
so like it's just it. And as you know, there's
like there's no standard list of defense mechanisms, right because
there's label it so many ways. And so what you're
trying to get at is four dimensions. We had divided
(35:57):
things into two dimensions, but we're all looking at the
same I know, styles of coping and so I'd love
to see what you did that would be great.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
We correlated it with narcissism and and okay, well this
is this is wonderful. And how does that how do
those findings avoidance approach, how does it link to the
off cited finding about the importance of human connection? How
do how do you can you relate those things to
each other at all? Like do people who have more
(36:30):
avoidance do they avoid relationships that would be beneficial for
them that sort of thing? Right, Yeah, and.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
They often avoid dealing with problems in relationships.
Speaker 2 (36:38):
Oh right, yeah, there you go attachment style.
Speaker 1 (36:40):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So, uh so we find that
avoidance doesn't work well interpersonally. Right. It also doesn't work
well in other things too, like dealing with a health crisis. Right, Yeah,
but certainly interpersonally not a good not a good thing.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Why do you emphasize connections so much? In uh, when
you talk about this, I mean, you're you're awesome ted
talk emphasized connection, You're the book does a lot. Is
that like the thing you're most excited about finding consistently or.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
Because the findings are so powerful?
Speaker 2 (37:20):
Right, that's the most powerful finding.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, I mean also taking care of your health, which
matters hugely so. But but I think what we have
found is that that the the benefits of connection and
the hazards of loneliness and disconnection are so powerful that
the reason why we're excited about it is we feel
(37:44):
like we really want to bring this message to people.
Yeah that in some ways, you know, it's not rocket science.
In some ways, it's stating something that we all deep
down know, but it's just bringing it out front and
center and saying, look, there's all this science behind it.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
It's so important and there is so much science behind
it for everyone. You know that almost every study you
find you identifind willeliness is predicts a lot of negative,
maladaptive of things in life. Again, I just want to
come back to the control question, the control group question.
(38:24):
What would that even in this kind of study, what
would that even look like like? You know, obviously the
two groups, the Harvard group and the juvenile group are
very different from each other. Do you compare them to
each other? Ever? Do you? Okay, so you can do
cross sample comparisons? Okay, absolutely, yes, that's great. What are
(38:45):
some findings, what are some findings from looking at the benefits,
because there's got to be benefits of being going to
Harvard and having that social support system, having people believe
in you versus going through and having people kind of expect,
you know, negative outcomes.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yeah. And actually, the most powerful finding we have on
that regard comparing them is that the Harvard guys live
on average ten years longer than the inner city guys. Wow,
so privilege matters a lot. But twenty five of the
(39:27):
inner city guys, twenty five out of four hundred and
fifty six went to college and graduated from college, and
those twenty five lived just as long on average as
the Harvard guys. So what we find is, and we
don't think it's because of their college diplomas. But we
think that the support they got first of all to
(39:49):
get to college and to stay in college that was
huge and probably had other effects on their lives and
their longevity. And then also the education, the value of
the education, because you know, the big public health messages
about the dangers of smoking, the dangers of addiction, the alcoholism,
(40:10):
all that really began to emerge in the sixties, seventies,
eighties come into the public health consciousness, and we think
that the Harvard guys, because of their education and reading
more widely, probably got those messages sooner and were able
to implement them sooner than the inner city guys. So
(40:32):
we think that education probably had something to do with
this longevity benefit.
Speaker 2 (40:38):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. A lot of
the Obviously most of the participants are it's anonymous. We
don't know who they are, but it was leaked. You
know that JFK was one of the study participants, and
so you have, like you know, in some closet somewhere,
you have a lot of information about JFK and and
(41:00):
and and things we probably don't even know you know
about him that you know and in his life is
I'm not going to ask you to tell me any secrets,
but tell me some secrets.
Speaker 1 (41:11):
Well, of course, and you know I couldn't.
Speaker 2 (41:12):
I couldn't tell you, I know, but tell me.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
We don't have the information about JFK. So when he
was running for Senate from the state of Massachusetts, his
advisors thought it was best that he withdraw from the study.
I had remove his records because they felt that having
a bunch of private personal information in a in an
office somewhere, even though it was locked up, probably wasn't
(41:37):
a good idea. So those records are now in the
Kennedy Library. Oh, I see, okay, at the University of Massachusetts.
Speaker 2 (41:45):
Okay, I see that's open to the public. Yeah, I see.
I didn't know that. I didn't know that. That's cool. Well,
so they're obviously there are a lot of successful individuals
in the Harvard thing. What about the inner city guys.
I like how you refer to them as the inner
city guys, So I'm going to refer to them. Is
that as well? Anyone there you don't think give me names, obviously,
(42:07):
but anyone who became wildly successful from that cohort.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Yes, there were there were people who became you know,
business owners, quite successful, maybe millionaires at a time when
a million dollars was a huge amount of money, that
kind of thing. So some of them, I think one
had a shop that made the first toll house chocolate
chip cookies, you know, and so very cool. Now I
(42:37):
will tell you are are the opposite of the success
story which I only found out when it was published
in the Boston Globe that in the delinquent sample, which
we did not follow the delinquent boys from that study,
one of them was the Boston Strangler.
Speaker 2 (42:56):
Wow. We we're allowed to know that.
Speaker 1 (43:01):
We're allowed to know that because it was published in
the in the Boston Globe. Long.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Wow, Well, well, I don't know what lessons to learn
from about happiness from him? Was he? Because like what
if you found out that he was the Boston Strangler
but he was happy? You know, Like, what lesson do
we learn from that?
Speaker 1 (43:18):
No?
Speaker 2 (43:18):
Lesson?
Speaker 1 (43:19):
So well, we didn't we didn't follow him.
Speaker 2 (43:23):
Follow it up? You didn't follow that up? Yeah, no,
I know. That's like, I know that got dark really quick.
But I'm just my point here is that the point
I'm trying to make is that I often feel like
when we talk about happiness. I always try to emphasize
to people, you know, it's it's how you acquire that
happiness that matters, sometimes even more. You know. Eric from
(43:46):
has this wonderful book called The Sane Society, which is
one of my favorite books, and I think it's so
important to recognize that being sane in it insane society
is actually a marker of insanity. You know, being happy
if everyone else around you is dying or suffering. You know,
do we just want to reward and say, look, let's
do whatever this person's doing because they're happy. No, you know,
(44:10):
so just zooming out to a broader context and not
just looking at the factors that predict happiness, but look
to see that those factors are increasingly net positive on
the world I think is important too.
Speaker 1 (44:21):
Do you agree, yes, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (44:25):
The Boston Stranger is just an example that I was
like because it's like that'd be cheeky, not cheeky, but like,
you know, you find well terms of the Boston Strangers
scores with the happiest of them all. Well, it's not
like we then want to like do whatever he did.
Speaker 1 (44:38):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, we know that sociopaths
are often impervious to write to what other people think
of them, whatever you know, and so they seem untouchable
in terms of their happiness.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Yeah, I am so excited to announce that registrations are
now open for our soul self actualization Coaching Intensive. While
the coaching industry has taken great strides over the years
toward integrating more evidence based coaching approaches, there are still
a lot of work to be done. Many coach training
programs still lack strong foundations in science and do little
(45:15):
to incorporate research informed tools, methodologies, or approaches for helping
clients thrive. For twenty years, I've dedicated my career to
rigorously testing ways to unlock creativity, intelligence, and our potential
as human beings. Now, for the first time ever, I've
compiled some of my greatest insights to bring the new
science of self actualization to the field of professional coaching.
(45:36):
This immersive three day learning experience will introduce you to
self actualization coaching, an approach intended to enhance your coaching
practice by offering you evidence based tools and insights from
my research that will equip you to more effectively help
your clients unlock their unique potential. Don't miss out on
this unique opportunity. Join us and take your coaching practice
to the next level. Go to sacoaching door. That's sacaching
(46:02):
dot Org. I look forward to welcoming you in December.
In terms of like relationship the power, because I'm right
there with you in the power of relationships, and I
love that you're bringing that so foremost to the culture.
Your work has done a lot to bring that to
the foremost. I love that there's just there's obviously a
lot of nuance there, like being single. Like in terms
(46:25):
of romantic relationships, do you find I feel like a
good marriage is like one of the best, if not
the best, predictors of happiness. But but a bad marriage
is one of the best predictors of depression. So it's
not just like get married, it's like, no, no, get
married to the right person, you know.
Speaker 1 (46:43):
And yeah, and figure out how to work on relationships
to make them better. Now, not every relationship is workable,
and so you know, as we know, many people split up,
and some couples really should split up, some friendships should
split up. But I think one of the things we
try to emphasize in the book is that it's really
(47:06):
important to see what's possible in a relationship to see
if it's possible to work through difficulties, because often it
makes a relationship stronger. And once you've invested in a relationship,
whether it's a romantic relationship or a friendship, there's huge
cost to blowing it off, to jettising it, jettison it.
(47:28):
So we want to be sure that we've done what
we can to see if differences can be worked out.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Oh, I completely agree with that. I'm bringing down some
of this stuff because I feel like you're giving me
good quotes for my next book. I think you're saying, yeah,
you're absolutely yeah, And of course I'm going to ask
your remission before I include it in my book. Yeah, Early,
you're giving you, you're giving, You're giving me good You're
saying such good things that I really agree with. Uh,
(47:58):
just getting back to the needy, gray details of what
you're looking at. Do you have measures of meaning? Do
you have measures you know, because like modern day well
being scales exist right that incorporate lots of different things. Purpose.
Do you feel like you sai? It's a purpose, a
sense of meaning in your life. Do you feel like
you matter? Do you feel like you're not just connection,
but other things. I'm wondering, are using any of these
modern day scales, And yeah, we do.
Speaker 1 (48:20):
Like we use Ed Deaner's Satisfaction with Life scale, we
use some more expanded satisfaction with life scales, and they
include questions like, you know, do you feel like you
have meaning and purpose? Or what gets you up? And
do you know what gets you up in the morning
and that kind of thing. So we do, and we
(48:41):
use those scales because they are tested, they are tried
and true. Yeah, George Valiant and his predecessors made up
a lot of their own questions and they were great
at it. It's just that they didn't do psychometric testing
on them. And so now what we've done is to
bring in measures that have been tested, and that way
(49:03):
it allows us to compare our data to other studies
that are using the same measures.
Speaker 2 (49:10):
Absolutely, because do you ever find that some things that
predict happiness maybe don't predict meaning and vice versa. You know,
something like when I say happiness, I mean just life
satisfaction scale one to ten. How satisfied with you are
your life? How what's the ratio of your positive to
your negative emotions? That's really just how the life satisfaction
(49:31):
questionnaire is. But do you find there maybe there's some
things that over the years have predicted a greater sense
of meaning and purpose but may show lower happiness scores.
Do you look at that differentiation at all?
Speaker 1 (49:43):
We don't, But I think you probably know of Carol
Riff's work, where she differently you know, hetonic while being
from eudaemonic being well for work. You know, there are
people who prioritize meaning and purpose and they'll defer gratification
in order to get that. And there are other people
who say, no, I really want to party now and
(50:05):
I want to have a good time right now. And
so we know that people differ a lot in the
extent to which they prioritize the being happy now versus
the deferred gratification kind of happiness.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm just curious if you looked at that
different differentiation at all. And then, of course the creativity
question is so interesting to me. Success have you looked
at like the role of self esteem or the role
of feeling like you are competent in your life and
how much that matters you. Have you looked at that
(50:41):
at all?
Speaker 1 (50:42):
Well? We have, you know, we haven't I would say,
we have not done really rigorous measurement of self esteem.
I wish we had, because it's something that I feel
is so vital. We haven't done that, but we know
people would men things that reflected high or low self
(51:02):
esteem a lot in their responses to us. But you know,
have we done a particular defined study of self esteem? No?
Speaker 2 (51:14):
Fair enough. I mean, you can't measure everything in the world.
Speaker 1 (51:20):
You know, when people like you ask really good questions
with oh, I wish we'd answer we had asked that.
Speaker 2 (51:27):
Well, look, I mean it's it's still one of the best,
most unique studies in the history of psychology. Don't feel
you know, apologetic at all that you didn't didn't you
We didn't include every measure possible measure in the world.
The original architects of the study, did they ever plan
for this to be a longitudinal study or it just
turned out to be that way?
Speaker 1 (51:48):
Well? No, I think they planned to follow people maybe
five to ten years, okay, okay, but nobody, nobody ever
dreamed it would go on this long.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
It's a really remarkable achievement and that you're part of
a you're part of a remarkable lineage.
Speaker 1 (52:04):
You know, really lucky, really lucky.
Speaker 2 (52:07):
Yeah, well you're worthy, You're worthy. But yeah, yeah, that's
the psychologist me.
Speaker 1 (52:13):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
So with the connection thing, what are some of the
tell me some more of the benefits of connection that
you found. You know, people who were able to have
more connectionised we're also able to what in their lives,
like what tell me more of the correlations associations you
see there.
Speaker 1 (52:30):
Well, they weathered hard times better, right, because relationships help
us get through the hard times. They were often more
successful at work and you know we know this from
lots of work. Now that says, you know, emotional intelligence,
people's skills. Being good with people often matters more than
(52:51):
IQ for how well you do at work. So there
are a lot of things we found about connection. They
just it has a lot of positive benefits and a
lot of benefits in terms of weathering the storms of life.
Speaker 2 (53:06):
And remind me how you measured the presence of high
quality connections, you know, that's that's a phrase you know
in the psychologic culture, high quality connections, which is different
than like the need for belonging. You know, you can
have you can feel a sense of belonging, but not
feel like there's a mutual intimate back and forth. So
(53:27):
I'm just curious, how do you measure the presence of
lots of high quality connections in one's life?
Speaker 1 (53:31):
Well, so in different ways. I mean, we'd ask people
about friends, how often do you see friends? What do
you do with your friends? I see, I saw that
kind of thing. And we would also talk about being satisfied.
How satisfied are you with friends? How satisfied are you
with your spouse? Uh? How good is your sex life?
I mean, there were a lot of things we asked
(53:52):
that tried to get at quality.
Speaker 2 (53:55):
It's great, it's pretty comprehensive.
Speaker 1 (53:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:58):
Well, I feel like I've don't worry. I think I've
exhausted my questions for today. I look at you every
time I started to ask question, I think you feel
like you're in the hot seat or something like, you know,
and where were Roberger? Where were you? One June second,
nineteen seventy two. But I really honor and treasure this
opportunity to be able to ask you those questions. I've
(54:21):
wondered them for a while. And I hope our listeners really,
you know, get the main points of this of the study.
They don't get lost in the factor analysis discussion, but
they understand the main points here. Any any other sort
of mean, you know, sort of points you want to
make about what you've gleaned from this enormous data set.
Speaker 1 (54:43):
Well, I think that you know, we talk about what
we've called social fitness, and it's really just an analogy
with physical fitness. The idea that the people in our
study who were best at this were the people who
were active, you know, who would make sure they stayed
in touch with friends, who would make plans with friends,
who who were proactive, who didn't just wait for relationships
(55:06):
to take care of themselves. Because they didn't always take
care of themselves, some really good relationships would just wither
away and die. And so I think that's an important
message that's worth getting out there.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
Yeah, that's a beautiful place to maybe end. As I
get older, I feel like I hold on, you know,
more tightly to my most meaningful relationships, you know, trying
to make its investment. You make investments easy, you know,
calling mom, you know, you know, staying in touch more regularly,
calling your friend if who's on another coast or whatever.
(55:38):
And these investments and your research shows in a lot
of ways that these individuals who made these investments as
young as possible. It lived longer and you know, and
lots of really great things, Doctor Waldinger, Such an honor
to have you on my podcast day, and I wish
you all the best with the continuing studies of it great.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
This was a pleasure I really enjoyed by talking with you.
Speaker 2 (56:02):
Thanks a lot, Thank you, thanks for listening to this
episode of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react
in some way to something you heard, I encourage you
to join in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com.
We're on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast. We also
(56:24):
put up some videos of some episodes on our YouTube
page as well, so you'll want to check that out.
Thanks for being such a great supporter of the show,
and tune in next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior,
and creativity.
Popular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!