March 10, 2025 • 49 mins
Hell is other people. They can upset us, depress us and infuriate us. Their bad moods can bring us down. And their achievements can make us feel like failures. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Psychologist Ethan Kross says there are simple things we can do to make our daily interactions a source of fulfilment and joy.
Ethan's the author of Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You and founder of the Emotion and Self Control Lab at the University of Michigan
Recorded before a live audience of teen students at Choate Rosemary Hall.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin the Happiness Lab. Listeners today, you're in for a
special treat. If you're a regular listener of this podcast,
you've probably already gotten a chance to hear from my
good friend, the psychologist Ethan Cross. In fact, Ethan just
visited the show as part of our recent how To season,
(00:36):
where he gave us his top tips for hacking negative emotions.
Lots of these ideas come from his new book Shift,
Managing Your Emotions so they don't manage you. But in
that interview we only got to scratch the surface of
the cool work that Ethan does in his Emotion and
Self Control Lab at the University of Michigan. So to
mark the publication of his new book, Ethan asked me
to join him on stage for a live recording of
(00:57):
this podcast at Choate Rosemary Hall, an independent school not
too far from my hometown in New Haven, Connecticut. In
front of an audience of teen students, Ethan and I
got to chat not about hacking our emotions, but about
the effect that other people can have on our feelings
and the big effects we can have on other people too.
I definitely learned a lot from this conversation, and I
think you will too. Welcome to the Happiness Lab Live
(01:20):
where we are coming in from Rosemary Hall. We have
a fantastic audience of folks here for a really fun
conversation with one of my favorite psychologists, Ethan cross.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
So.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Ethan is a professor at the University of Michigan, both
in the Psychology Department and at the Roth School of Business.
He's the director of the Emotion and Self Control Lab.
He's an expert on strategies we can use to control
our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. As you might guess with
an expertise the school, Ethan's a sought after consultant and speaker.
He's worked with famous CEOs, professional basketball teams, and has
(01:57):
even been hosted at the White House, all to help
leaders and folks who need it regulate their feelings and emotions.
Ethan is the author of the national and international best
selling book Chatter, The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters,
and How to Harness It. This book was chosen as
one of the best new books of twenty twenty one
by Washington BOSTHS, CNN, and USA Today. But he's just
(02:18):
written a fabulous new book. I'm so exciting. We're here
on launch day today a fabulous new book entitled Shift
Managing Your Emotions so they don't manage You. Ethan is
already a regular on the Happiness Lab and I'm super
psyched that he's agreed to help me out with this
live episode today because we're going to be exploring an
important topic, how we can harness the people around us
(02:40):
to feel happier. Please join me and welcoming to the
Happiness Lab Live even talks all right, Ethan, So today
we're talking about a bit of a paradox when it
comes to our happiness and our emotions. You and I
talk a lot about things we can do to be happier,
and one of the biggest piece of advices that we
(03:01):
often give is just that we can use other people
to improve our happiness. Social connection is such a huge
predictor of the way we feel. Often a thing that
we can do to make ourselves feel good. But if
we're paraphrasing Jean Paul sart hell is, other people like
other people can also be a little bit of a
pain in the butt. As an expert in emotion, can
(03:25):
you resonate with this like completely?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
You know, other people can be our greatest ally or
our worst enemy when it comes to managing our emotional lives.
And what's really interesting to me about this issue is
we don't get a user's guide for how to steer
our interactions with other people. So I'm curious, and I
think the rules here are no hands. But if you
(03:49):
agree with something, clap? How many people here sometimes go
to someone else to chat about a problem and find
that it just makes you feel worse? Often not our intention,
but sometimes this happens with people we really care about.
Sometimes it's our loved ones. I often joke, but mem
is quite sick. Seriously, there are many people in my
(04:10):
life that I am exceptionally close to. DNA determines those
close connections, if you know what I mean. I don't
talk to them about problems because I know that when
I do, it's just going to take me down the
wrong path. And so I think it is critically important
to understand how to harness your relationships with other people
(04:31):
and also the way you interact with others to make
sure those interactions contribute to fulfillment, happiness, and so forth,
rather than push you in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So let's take a deeper look at some spots where
we get it wrong. One of the pieces of psychology
that I think is really relevant here is some work
on what's called emotional contagion, what's emotional contigion, and why
can it kind of take us off track when we're
dealing with other people.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So we are a social species. We are constantly looking
to other people for how to understand ourselves. And what
we have learned is that we actually catch feelings from
other people quite eas So when you enter a room
and you see people with a glum look on their face,
sadly as professors, I think this may happen more often
(05:19):
where they'd like to admit. Right, you go into the
room and you see everyone, This immediately gives me information
about what the temperature in the room is like, and
I experience that emotion and that could be adaptive. Right,
It signals to me, maybe I've got to loosen things up.
But we know that emotions cause what we call a
(05:40):
ripple effect. They very quickly cascade into our own lives.
And if you're not aware of this, like, you can
catch the wrong set of feelings. And so we're all
all vulnerable to this, for better or worse.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And I think one of the ways that I've seen
this play out. Is that it's not just a like
what on one contagion. It's not just like I might
catch the emotions that you have, or I might catch
the emotions from the audience, but then we tend to
kind of transmit that to other situations, to almost like
a virus. Right, So, say I have a conversation Ethan.
This never happened with Ethan because obviously Ethan's a very
happy person who's never gone. But let's say I have
(06:15):
a conversation with Ethan. He's feeling really frustrated, he's feeling
really down. I leave that conversation, and then I go
teach my class, and then I transmit that to my class,
or I go on social media and I post something
that's kind of frustrated and gloom or angry, like you
can see what researcher Sigall Barsai calls these affective spirals,
where it's like not just like one person catches one
(06:36):
person's emotion, but it's kind of a spiral that I
can almost transmit to a community. So it sounds like
this can be really bad when it comes to the
sort of emotions that are kind of naturally free floating around.
If we're dealing with negative emotion.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Well, with negative emotions, it can certainly be the case.
And I think that's particularly true with social media, where
we see the viral spread of negative emotions happening really
really fast. You come across news and it affects you. You
see someone else displaying a negative reaction, you feel it
as well, and then you quickly pass it on to
someone else on the feed, and then it just it
(07:09):
just cascades further and further and further. And so this
is where I think knowledge is power. So knowing about
how this works, I think for me and my experience
as a human being is very powerful. So if I
enter a room and I see one or two people are,
you know, conveying facial expressions that I don't particularly think
(07:29):
are conducive to the kinds of interactions I want to have,
I'll try to loosen those people up and try to
turn the you know, frown around.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
And I think it's important to this idea of knowledge
is power. I think in part when we're often in
these social situations where around other people, it can be
important to remember how affected we are by them, right.
I think about this a lot in like workplace settings, right,
where like you go to work and like the people
on your team might be kind of feeling optimistic or
they might be feeling not so happy, and like you're
(07:59):
going to catch that. But here we are at Chote today,
I think this is so important in school context, right,
whether it's like on your athletic team, whether it's in
your classroom, Like, the emotions of one person are going
to kind of transmit in this way that can be
again sort of dangerous if they're negative emotions that we're
dealing with.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Absolutely, how many people here have been told don't compare
yourselves to other people. So it sounds beautiful that piece
of advice, but easier bleeping said than done, right, Like
is that easy to do? Just stop comparing yourself to
(08:35):
other people. So talking about the way that other people
can affect us, I'm reminded of the time that my
daughter asked my daughter, who's you know in high school?
Wanted more screen time one night and was like really
really supreme court level like litigation here arguing for more
screen time. I was like, no, you know, and I said, well, no,
(08:58):
other families give their kids more screen time. And then
she comes back and goes, I thought you said, we
don't compare ourselves to other people? Was pretty slick, huh.
I mean I was proud inside, but I did not
show it. I regulated that emotion and I just held true.
But what I realized in that moment was that that
(09:22):
directive I gave, we don't compare selves to other people,
probably the worst advice I could ever give, because it
is not possible not to reference other people. We are
constantly looking to others to make sense of who we are. Right.
This is called social comparisons. That's how we operate, and
I think the more we embrace that, the better, because
(09:43):
then there's an opportunity to make social comparisons wiser, right,
to steer those comparisons so that they don't maybe negatively
affect us. There's also the opportunity to benefit from this
emotional contagion effect. Right Like earlier on when everyone else
was clapping, did that feel good to folks here? I
(10:05):
felt great? I loved it. I remember I was telling
Laurie the story earlier. When I was in college, one
of the most memorable classes I ever took was a
class on communications, and the instructor said, there is an
art to being a good audience member. I'm scanning you
all right now to see who's going to get an
A versus an F. A couple of f's here, right.
(10:27):
So the art to being a good audience member involves
a gentle kind of raising your cheap bone, smiling, not
your good I love it, keep going.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
And pointing at once. Today it was like really kind
of kindly smiling and looking.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
At I mean, it's fine to do that. In your head,
you could say this is terrible. Yeah, I can't wait
to go back to what I'm doing. It doesn't matter
for us up here, because we're catching these signals from you.
You're conveying information to us, and so you can use that.
If you know how this works, you can use it
to your benefit to make other people feel better or
(11:04):
not right. And so that's where the knowledge is power
for how I think all this works. And we'll talk
more about social comparison, I'm sure, but yeah, well.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Let's come into it now, because I think you know,
we were just talking about. Emotional contagion is one way
that we catch other people's emotions in person and also online.
As you mentioned, I think especially online, but also in person.
Another way that other people negatively affect our emotions is
through social comparison, and that can feels regularly frustrating because
sometimes even in a situation where you feel like you're
(11:32):
like objectively kind of doing okay, if you see somebody
doing better than you, it can make you feel kind
of crappy, whether that's oh, they had a better vacation
than me, or you know, again here we're in high school.
They're getting better grades than me, they'd perform better than me,
they're doing better at work, making more money. You know,
for folks in the adult world, it seems like all
of it makes you feel kind of bad about yourself.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
And it's always possible to find someone who's outperforming you.
I mean, it's remarkable we can always find that person sometimes.
I mean, a lot of people describe the experience of
being on social media, A lot of people here on
social media, I get. So anyone ever feel like when
you're on on Instagram or whatever platforms you're on that
(12:12):
it's kind of like navigating landlines, like you're going through it.
You're feeling good, you're seeing the funny movie great, great, great,
and then you catch something that, oh, crap, I suck,
Like does anyone ever have that experience? Just me yes,
So you go and know when it's going to happen.
And we do know from lots of research that most
(12:35):
of the social comparisons we make, and we are doing
these comparisons all the time, do tend to push us
in the negative direction. So we make comparisons against people
who a outperforming us in some way, we don't feel
great about our lives. You can actually reframe those comparisons
to your benefit. And up until I knew about the
(12:55):
science here, I was just a victim of these comparisons.
I feel kind of glum, you know. I go lay
on the couch, maybe put some washcloth on my head. Oh,
I'm such a failure having lived up to my blah
blah blah.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
That was a joke. Cook, he's trying to make it.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
The Yeah, we won't even try that one again because
that was just stre I like this where you could
just edit it.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
We just edit it up. If the joke doesn't work
in there, this is good.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So here's what you do. You can flip it. So
now when I come across that situation, I think, Wow,
they achieved this, so can I. And now it's not
competition now, it's this is information that I can use
to try to aspire to reach that goal. That's a
little little reframe we call it. That is powerful because
(13:40):
it neutralizes that negative social comparison is, which is inevitable.
And now that I know how to do it, and
you know, this was a big reason for writing this book,
is if you have the tools to push your emotions around,
it becomes really easy to do it. It doesn't have
to be super complicated. You can also do it in
the negative direction. You come across someone who is doing
(14:02):
a lot worse than you, and maybe you think yourself,
oh my god, what if this happens to me? Right?
That makes people really anxious. Sometimes rather than thinking about
making a comparison and feeling that way, you could flip it. Wow,
I'm so grateful this hasn't happened to me. Simple switch
puts you in a totally different direction. Do you ever
do this when you make social comparisons, like tell the world,
(14:25):
lurie you make you have be silent on you making
the comparisons. It's been just about me so far?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, I think so. This is one of the one
of the studies I teach in my class is just
like so profound at how not only how bad social
comparison makes us feel, but how much like sometimes when
we're socially comparing, we just like don't have any justification
for it at all. And it's a study that happened,
a very famous study with in sports researchers went and
(14:54):
they looked at olympians who were on the stand. So
these are people who won gold, silver, and bronze medals
at the Olympics standing on the stand, and what they
did was they videotape their facial expressions to see who
was kind of who was feeling which emotions right, and
so first the gold medalist, what are they feeling? Well,
they're feeling like happy, elated, they're smiling. It's fine, right,
they're best in the world. Right now we cut to
(15:15):
this silver medallist. What are they feeling? There's second best
in the world, like literally better in whatever their sport
is than billions of other people. What emotions are they
experiencing If you analyze their facial expressions, it's not happiness.
It's emotions like contempt, deep sadness, grief. Like they're not
even in the positive camp anymore. They're just experiencing only
(15:35):
negative emotions. Why there's a really obvious social comparison there
when you won the silver medal, you really almost got gold,
but you didn't get it. So what are you feeling.
You're not feeling like, you know, slightly less happy than
the best in the world, even though you are the
second best in the world. You're feeling awful, right, But
the reason I like this study is that it also
(15:55):
points to a way that we can do better because
those researchers also measure the emotions of the bronze medalist,
the person who did third. Right now, you might think,
what the silver medallist is feeling really terrible and contemptuous
and experiencing grief, then the bronze medalist is going to
be doing even worse, like they're going to be totally miserable.
Right turns out not so. The bronze medalist is showing
incredible elation, huge smiles, sometimes even huger smiles than the
(16:19):
gold medalist, which is weird. So you ask the question,
what's going on, Well, what's going on again is social comparison?
Who's the bronze medalist comparing himself against too not gold?
Because that was like several seconds or several points or
whatever away the bronze medalist is saying, oh my gosh,
you know, if I was just a little bit slower,
if I perform a little bit worse, I wouldn't be
(16:41):
getting any metal at all. Like I would just be
clapping from the back of the stands going home empty handed.
I feel awesome. The bronze medalist comparison makes him feel good.
And this is why always joke with my students that
when you're trying to fight social comparison, you shouldn't look
for the silver lining, because the silver maid you usually
look for the bronze lining. I want to go almost
(17:03):
like it was a good joke, thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
But but Laurie, like the way you just described it
so completely read with that route to harnessing social comparisons.
But when you describe the silver metallist as, hey, you
are number two out of seven.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Billion people on the planet right now.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
That's a reframe too that the silver medallist can use
that is really powerful. And if there's one big picture
lesson that I would love all of you to take
away from this conversation with us about managing your emotions,
it is that you can be proactive in how to
do it. Oftentimes we just stumble into emotional reactions. We
(17:45):
make the comparison, it leads us in a particular direction,
and then we just kind of ride it out until
it peters out. But you could get in there strategically
doing the kinds of things that Laurie and I are
talking about to nip those reactions in the bud, or
extend them, or lengthen them and increase their intensity, whatever
you want to do, if you understand the specific tactics
(18:07):
that exist.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And so when we get back from the break, we're
going to talk about some tactics we can use to
deal with not just the way other people affect our emotions,
but the way other people affect our behavior. The Happiness
Lab that we'll do what All Right, we're coming back
(18:34):
from the BAK the Happiness.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Lab and Show grows all live.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
It is returning. Okay, So before the break, we were
talking about ways that other people affect our emotions. Now
I want to get into ways that other people affect
our behavior what we're actually doing. And there's a long
history of this in the field of psychology.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Right, other people are in a position to push us
around in all sorts of ways. They can affect the
way we think they can affect the way we feel,
they can affect the way we behave Okay, so just
just look at Laurie and I right now. Anyone noticed
something similar, Like, they're all different ways we could have
chosen to sit Like I could have done this. I
(19:17):
was going to do a lotus position yoga. I can't
actually do it, but like a lot I could. I could.
I could be like.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
This, put your hands or popped over.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I could, you know, But we're like this, we're mimicking.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Cross knees, both looking exactly right and.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Kind of upright. So there is this chameleon effect where
if you are in the presence of someone in particular
at your level or above someone you admire, you tend
to automatically mimic their behavior. So if you've ever been
in an interaction where someone starts doing this, you cross
your hands, and then the person next to you crosses
(19:54):
your hands. Anyone ever like witnessed this kind of mimicking
that occurs. This is endemic to how we function, and
interestingly enough, it can improve rapport between people because there's
this matching between us.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
In fact, thing they often tell you to do if
you want to become friends with somebody. Get to know people,
let somebody else know that you're listening to them, is
to what's called mirror their behavior, So not like perfectly
copy it, but kind of do it. Turns out this
is actually a podcast or technique. When you're doing it
lives for me.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
To copy your actions.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So you make you feel like I have you been doing?
Speaker 2 (20:28):
I feel very welcome, presents, warm cup of tea.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
But what are some of the consequences of this? It
means that, like naturally, without realizing it, we're like soaking
in the behaviors of others and copying.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
In it other people. Look, the world is messy, the
world is unpredictable. We are constantly as human beings striving
to make sense of how to optimally navigate this world. You,
as someone who I can trust, someone I admire, you're
giving me all sorts of information. So I'm taking that
(21:03):
in and I'm using it to guide my own behavior
unconsciously because I could count on you. Now, if it's
someone else who I don't know and I don't trust,
I'm not going to mimic them as much. Now, you
can have fun with this effect if you want, Like
you might be talking to someone and you could push
its limits, you know, like Laurie does this when she
(21:25):
interviews new graduate students. I'm just joking about that's going
to be an added But but you could you can
do a little bit of experimenting to see how this
actually operates. It is a powerful, powerful phenomenon. And if
you see someone mimicking you, I think it's a sign
of a flattery, like they actually hold you at some
(21:46):
level of esteem. Now, if you're not mimicking, don't take
that the wrong way. If you're not being mimicked, right,
you could reframe it.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
So, but that's kind of the behavioral copying we do
just kind of unconsciously sometimes when we see other people's behavior,
it affects the way we think about things and reason
about things. This is a phenomenon that's often been called
social benchmarking.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
What's that. This is the this wonderful study where I
don't think you could actually do this nowadays in the lab.
This was done maybe sixty years ago, this study, and
participants came into the lab and they were actually injected
with adrenaline, but they didn't actually know it was adrenaline.
I think they were told it was vitamins or something
(22:29):
to that effect, and so they've got these kinds of
arousal symptoms. Right, they're like energized physiologically. They don't quite
know where this energization is that a word. We're gonna
run with it. It sounds okay, okay, energization is coming from.
(22:50):
It's definitely not a word that energized feeling. They don't
know where it's coming from. And what the experimenters do.
In one condition, they have this actor come into the
room and he acts like you fork like she's just
super super happy. And in another condition, have an actor
come in and he's really angry. And what the experimenters
(23:13):
want to see is does the subject who's been shot
up with this adrenaline does the behavior of the other
person change the way that they behave Right, So you've
got all this feelings, but you're not sure how to
make sense of it. And so what they end up
finding is that when you're in the presence of someone
acting really angry, you start acting more angry as well.
(23:34):
If you're in the presence of someone who is acting
you for, you kind of start behaving happier too. So
it's another example of how other people have a potential
to powerfully shape the way we ourselves respond and in
this case, behave. And that is particularly true when you
(23:54):
are not sure of how to behave, or you are
not sure how to make sense of what is going
on inside you.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
And I think that particularly fits with this study, right,
you know, these subjects are shot up with this chemical
like they thought they took a vitamin, and now all
of a sudden they're feeling like this sense of energy,
like they don't know what's going on, and so they
look to this other person to be like, oh, we're
angry now, we're angry at the experiment. Oh we're you
for it. But and that happened in this weird, strange,
you know, possibly an ethical now experiment, But this happens
(24:24):
all the time when we have an experience that we're
kind of not sure how to make sense of, and
we have to look to other people.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
So this reminds me of a story with my oldest
daughter and a couple of years ago, she transitioned to
a new school. It was a lot more demanding academically
than the school she was in before. And I go
up into her bedroom one night and I noticed she
is she's physically distressed and she's really getting worked up.
(24:52):
She seems very very anxious in a way I've never
seen her experienced that emotion before. I go, Sweetie, what's
going on, what's wrong? And she goes she's like breathing
heavy and like, I don't know what's happening, Like I'm
feeling these things in my stomach and what's going on on?
And so then that's my opportunity to get in there
(25:14):
and help her interpret this uncertainessy sweety, that's your body
doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing right now.
You've got a really important test tomorrow, and you're experiencing
this response that's saying, hey, you need to do a
little bit more studying before you go to bed. That's it.
You're actually lucky, you're fortunate you're experiencing this because it's
(25:35):
like a little internal queue telling you to prepare. And
the moment I gave her that interpretation, her entire demeanor changed, right,
the anxiety went way down, and she got into studying.
So what I've done there is I reframed the experience
for her. I reframed her bodily reaction. This is taking
(25:56):
a page straight out of research where you tell people
to either make sense of their physiological symptoms of anxiety,
either as a threat, oh my god, something may be wrong,
versus a challenge like this is your body rising to
the occasion and it worked like clockwork. And so that
is one powerful potential that other people have for us.
(26:20):
Other people are often in a position to help us
reframe our circumstances in ways that can really put us
on the right trajectory.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Or the problem is that, or put us on the
wrong trajectory. And I'm cognisance. We're having this conversation in
front of a high school audience. You know, students. How
many times have you you know, gotten a bad grade
on something? Not really sure how to take it, but
you show your parents or you show your friends, and
they either react and like that's fine, it's like just
one paper, or they're like, oh my gosh, like you
(26:52):
get that grade. I don't know how that's going to
affect your college, Like what does that do to you?
And so I think, you know, it's great that your
daughter had a parent who's so careful to help her
kind of rethink that emotion in a way. That's good.
I worry so often we do this in a way
that's like, that's not great. That like as parents, as
ment towards our first reaction is to kind of feel
upset at someone's failure rather than say like, oh, this
(27:14):
is great, this is a cool opportunity. But our reaction
is changing how somebody else might be feeling about a
particular situation they find themselves in.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
I worry about it too, And that's why I think
conversations like this, all the this aside with you all
are exceptionally important because what knowing about how this works
gives you the opportunity to do is number one. When
people come to you, when your friends, your siblings, later
on in life, other colleagues come to you for support,
(27:46):
you are now mindful of the powerful role that you
exert on their emotional lives, and you should take that. Really,
that's a serious responsibility that you have to do good
for other human beings, and if you know how to
steer their ways of thinking, you can really help them.
But it also gives all of you the opportunity to
(28:07):
be a lot more selective about who you talk to
about the issues that you are struggling with. I think
a lot of us don't think twice about who to
go to for support. We just feel like we've got
to talk to other people. Let's find someone and let
it out. And sometimes it's like flipping a coin. Who's
(28:28):
going to push you down the wrong path or the
right one? And it doesn't have to be that random.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So I think this is sometimes I think that's about
other people affecting us. That's so frustrating. Is like people
who are trying to do good, trying to give advice,
trying to help, sometimes wind up messing us.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And you've actually seen this in a new domain and
a new paper that just came out where the kind
of advice that people are giving, maybe even about the
benefits of social connection and talking to people, can sometimes
go awry. Tell me about the new Loneliness study.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
So this is some really exciting research. It's led by
a graduate student in my lab, MICHAELA. Rodriguez. And let
me start by just asking all of you, how many
if you here have heard quite frequently this messaging that
being alone is bad for you, it's toxic, right you
(29:21):
want to stay away from those experiences. This is a
pervasive message right now. There's a huge amount of attention
with this country and several others as well, there's i
think a Minister of Loneliness in the UK and Japan.
There's a huge amount of attention trying to help people
combat experiences of being alone and the feelings of loneliness
(29:41):
that accompany those states. Being lonely has been compared to
smoking cigarettes in terms of its impact on your health.
And so what we've done across a series of studies
is try to understand how the messaging that we are
giving to society about this might help or hurt folks.
And so here's what we've learned. Number One, there's actually
(30:05):
nothing intrinsically bad about being physically alone for you know,
circumscribed periods of time forever chronicization, but being how many
people here actually find value in being alone sometimes right,
it can be kind of great, It can be restorative,
(30:27):
It can be a source of creativity. So what we've
seen in lots of research is how you think about
being alone, is it good for me or bad for me,
directly impacts how you experience that site. If you think
being alone is bad for you, if you're sitting at
the lunch room and you're eating by yourself one day
and you think, oh boy, not good. That's going to
(30:48):
lead you to feel lonelier. If you think this is
an opportunity to rest and restore be alone with my thoughts,
this could be a good thing. You actually feel better
when you spend time alone. Okay, and we see that
over and over again. Here's why this is really important.
We did this analysis where we went back several years
and we looked at every major news article that talk
(31:10):
about being alone, and we coded it rigorously for are
you describing this experience of being alone as something that's
good for you or bad for you? Overwhelmingly, the media
describes experiences of being alone as bad for you, as toxic.
Why that matters, We've shown if you give people news
(31:31):
articles in one condition, they describe being alone as bad
for you, and in another condition being alone is good
for you. What information you are exposed to there directly
impacts how you think about what this state does for you.
So if you're reading these articles being alone is really
bad for you, you think it's bad for you, and
(31:52):
that in turn makes it bad for you. It's almost
a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So it's again it seems like another situation where hearing
how other people are talking about it is affecting how
we might think about it. Maybe we're kind of in
between of like, yeah, in good points and bad points
where you hear other people saying, oh, this is so bad,
comes a social benchmark which affects your own emotions when
you're in that state.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
That's right, And what's really what's really tragic about this
phenomenon is I genuinely think the folks who are behind
this messaging are pushing it out there to help people.
But what we are learning is that their attempts to
help society maybe actually backfiring.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
And so we want to avoid these moments where being
around other people winds it backfiring. We want to avoid
these moments when other people's emotions make us feel bad
or other people's behaviors make us do something that might
not fit with our goals. But how do we do that? Luckily,
when we get back from the break, Ethan is going
to help us out the Happiness Lab Live. I'm sure
it is very hard, we'll do it. We are back
(33:09):
to Happiness Love Live from show. So now we're going
to do the fun part of our conversation because we're
going to talk about how we can kind of use
other people in a way that really does make our
emotions feel better, that does allow us to achieve our
behavioral goals, and so on, a kind of set of
like social hacks that can be these powerful tools for
(33:31):
shaping our happiness ultimately. So let's go back to one
of the things we talked about before, emotional contagion. What
are some hacks that we can use to kind of
have other people like? What are some hacks that we
can use to catch other people's emotions in ways that
are good for us versus.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Bad for us? I think number one this more than
any phenomenon that we talked about today. This is where
knowledge is power is so unbelievably relevant. So I did
a little bit of intervention a little bit earlier where
I shared with all of you how your facial expressions
can impact us up here. And some of you are
(34:08):
have responded very nicely. Others I think there's still some
room for improvement.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Maybe a lot smalling asleep. We're having this conversations a
little early.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
That's it's all good, So I'm joking, but knowing how
this works can be really powerful. So as as someone
who leads different groups and teams, I'm exceptionally sensitive to
the kind of emotional displays in the group and the
demeanor in the group. And if I find that one
(34:37):
or two people are consistently showing up in a way
that is cascading and impacting everyone else, I intervene right away.
I do it with compassion. I often explain how this works,
and that is often enough, but it is really important
to do it, because the entire spirit of the lab
(34:59):
or the group can easily nose dive if I don't
address this right away.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
And I love the suggestion so much because I think
sometimes when we hear about these effects of emotional contagion,
we're like, oh my gosh, we're just totally at the
mercy of the people around us, and I'm just like,
my emotions are stuck. But what you have to understand
when you hear those effects is like, that also means
you have agency. Right if you roll into your team
and everybody's kind of feeling down, you have to remember, like, wait,
(35:25):
I have the agency that if I place a seed
of a little bit of optimism, a little bit of humor,
a little bit of something, a little bit more positive energy,
whatever you need, that seed is going to spread. And
what's really cool about the fact that there are these
ripple effects, these so called affective spirals. Is like, if
you plant that seed, and even if it's a little forced,
even if you're kind of trying a little bit, if
(35:47):
other people catch it, they're going to catch that a
little bit authentically and then they'll feed it back to you. Right,
So you can kind of be the seed that starts
the spiral of something.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
That's right, and you can leverage a lot of the
other effects that we've been talking about. So I'll often
purposefully overcorrect and positivity and happiness, Like don't I look
ridiculous in.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
A smiling He's smiling really jokingly. This evidents if you
see their faces, they're like, why is he making that expression?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah? Sure, yeah, but there we go. We got the laugh.
So like, I'll often focus in on the one person
who maybe isn't showing the right kind of attitude and
either not directly by through these kind of chameleon effects,
try to loosen them up, or maybe I'll ask them, hey,
so you know what's going on, anything could happen this weekend?
(36:32):
Try to shift their mood deliberately.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
So that's sort of emotional contiion. We talked a little
before about sort of venting this idea that sometimes we
want to share our emotions with other people or share
our troubles with other people, but often sometimes there are
people out there that don't necessarily mirror back to us
what we want to hear. They kind of can hype
us up or get us even more upset or more frustrated.
(36:56):
How do we do a better job picking people we
should vent to more successfully than others?
Speaker 2 (37:02):
So this, it turns out, is actually pretty simple to do.
And when I think about, like all the science written
about in this book, this is top five pieces of
information that I use in my own life and really
benefit from it quite a bit. So I think about,
who are the people in my life that when I
go to to talk to them about a problem, they
(37:24):
don't just listen and demonstrate that they support me and
have my back, but essentially egg me on, which is
what happens when you co ruminate with someone else. So
here's the situation, like something bad has happened to you
and you go to talk to someone else about it.
So I have a difficult interaction let's say with a colleague,
my call Laori Laurd Can you believe what this person
(37:45):
did and you say.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Oh my god, I can't believe they did that. They suck.
Why are you even in that university? It sucks like
you need to get rid of all your Like you
see what I'm doing. I'm just like feel in the
fire right. I haven't gone into problem solving mode. I
haven't tried to de escalate this.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
And when you do that for me, I love it.
I love it in the moment. It is indulgent, it
is Yes, Laurie's on my side, she hears me, feels me.
So that's really good for our relationship to do a
little bit of that kind of back and forth expression
and venting. Ideally, though, at some point in this conversation,
(38:21):
Laurie says to me, oh.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Man, that sounds tough, but like, how are we gonna
deal with the situation, Like, you know, like what we
should what should we do to shift your emotion? Let's
play Don't Stop Believing because that's a really fun song
and you'll feel better. Like we just do whatever to.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Kind of get back to she's playing that is one
of my favorites. Emotions shift for me.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
She wanted to play that coming out, but we nip
that in the button but uh, and that's important because,
as you said, the venting, the co ruminating, as we've
called it, it's really good for our relationship, but it's
really bad for both of our emotions ultimately.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
If I leave the conversation, that terrible interaction with the
colleague didn't even happen to me. But now I'm having
a terrible day too, and I haven't helped what I
think even probably wanted out of this conversation, which is
a way to shift his emotions back.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I mean, I had a converse sometimes like I'm a
you catch the emotion. A friend called me up and
they just they didn't even give me a chance to
help shift their perspective. They just rapid fire launched in
and then I hung up. Okay, I gotta go, And
for the next three hours, I'm just going over in
my head what happened to them. Yeah, and I'm taking
(39:27):
on all the emotional baggage. So those are not the
best kinds of conversations to make you feel better. The
best conversations do two things. First, the person you're talking to,
they listen, They empathize, They normalize what you're going If
your lord, you're not alone like anyone would feel experience.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
A lot of people have this bad day with colleagues.
It doesn't mean every day is going to be bad
with your colleagues.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
And so you start broadening the perspective. That is the
art of being a good emotional advisor. And so my
advice to everyone here is to, like, when you're done,
if you care about this, make a little table personal problems,
school problems. List out all the people you talk to
about those different kinds of problems. Some of you may
(40:10):
have the same names of people on each column, like
you talk to the same people about personal stuff and
school stuff. Others may have different names. Some of you
may have no names. It doesn't matter. I'm just doing
an audit here. Who is your emotional advisory board? Once
you have those names, then I want you to think
to yourself, Okay, who are the people on this list
(40:31):
who do two things? When I go to them, First,
they listen, they empathize with me. But then they help
broaden my perspective. They help shift the way I think
about That wasn't purposeful. That was just slipped in there.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
His book is called.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Tas That was terrible, non intended. But who are the
people who help you reframe how you're thinking about your
circumstances to ultimately allow you to move on. Those are
your emotional advisors. Circle those names for all the names
you didn't circle, You've got two choices. Number one, go
(41:06):
get a red sharp eiet and cross their names off
your list. It's something kind of cathartic about doing that, satisfying.
It's a legitimate option. There are some people who you
can be super close. You love them, talk to them
about other stuff, but not the big problems in life.
If they're not serving you well. There the other opportunity
(41:27):
you have is to educate those people who aren't serving
you well in this capacity by sharing with them what
you've learned. And you know, I feel like it's important
to give you a disclaimer. There's an art to doing
that well. I would not advise you to pull those
people aside and say, hey, I just went to this presentation.
(41:47):
You know what I learned. You suck as an advisor,
like you really you make me feel bad. I know
you love me, but it doesn't help, so quit it. Okay,
can do this and said probably not the most elegant
way of intervening. A better way is did you know
that actually just sharing out stuff and just get me
(42:08):
to rehearse things. And actually I had no idea that actually,
if you really want to help someone, you need to
look at that bigger picture. Or if you don't want
to do that, you could say I I just listened
to this awesome live taping of a happiness lab.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
It was at my schools.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
At my school, and I think you'll find it really interesting.
I learned all these things I never knew about. And
then you hope they get to the end of the podcast.
How many people get to the end of the podcast?
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Everybody?
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Everyone? Okay?
Speaker 1 (42:36):
That's that wasn't even a joke.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
I was just all right.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
So that's kind of dealing with sort of fighting motion antgion.
How we can sort of get people to help us
vent better, vent more effectively. How do we deal with
the social comparison? We talked a little bit before about
kind of using it more productively, but what are our
go to social hacks?
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Then? So social comparison. So number one, if you do it,
there's nothing wrong with you. I can't tell you how
many people I encounter who they feel bad about themselves
because they're making these social comparisons as though it's a
sign of weakness that you're referencing other people. This is
(43:20):
not a weakness. This is how you are wired. It
is how we are built, and simply recognizing that should
be liberating to some degree. It certainly is for me,
like I do it. I can't help it. It's how
we function. So Number one, recognize that that will help
Number two. If you find yourself making a comparison against
(43:42):
someone who is outperforming you in some way, flip it right.
It's no longer oh my god, they're doing so much better.
They did it, So can I use it as a
source of motivation, as fuel to propel you. It's showing
you what is actually possible, what you are capable of achieving.
(44:03):
We tend to feel worse about the comparisons we make
to people who are like us. Right, so you're like
you'd be a great example for me. You are like
me in many ways. If you are outperforming me in
some way, that's really gonna sting. But the fact that
you were like me also means that what you've achieved
is something that I can do too. I think you
(44:24):
will be amazed at how quickly this little reframe can
totally reroute your emotional experience.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
There's also an interesting way that you can use the
sort of social benchmarking with that too, which I find
can be really powerful. Right you think like, oh, that
person's like me, I can achieve that too, But then
you also then ask the further question of like, but
what are they doing that? Like I'm not doing absolutely.
I had this good friend of mine who is like,
I'm not a very fit person. She was also not
(44:53):
a very fit person, but kind of she'd gotten a
little bit sick and then just like really devoted herself
to fitness and just started going to the gym all
the time and so on. And I found myself doing
the like, man, she's getting so fit, Like she's just
like doing so well and feeling that social comparison that envy.
But with this hack, I could do the fall. I
was like, well, she was just like me before she
was also unfit. But then I asked myself the question,
well what's she doing. I'm like, well, she's going to
(45:14):
the gym every day, she really paying attention to what
she eats, she's going really hardcore with it. And then
I had this realization of like, well, I could do
that too, but I also have to do all the
other hard stuff that she's doing, and then you could
ask the question reasonably, do I want to do that
hard stuff or not? Right? I think this can be powerful,
right because you remember, like it's not just by you know,
some accident. Often that people are doing better, especially if
(45:36):
they've made a change, especially if they started like you.
Often you know they're putting some work into this, They're
making choices that maybe you are not making now, but
you could so better.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
I experienced the very similar phenomenon. It was not with
someone who was like me, per se. It was with
President Obama, okay and so not like me, and but
I remember it was like I was just starting as
an assistant professor, and you know, it was hard being
assistant professor. I was grinding away and I wasn't exercising regularly.
(46:07):
And I came across an article about how Obama exercised
every day, and immediately I come across this information. Now
I'm really feeling bad about myself, like my pants aren't
fitting to begin with, and now I'm finding out that
the president of the free world right like, is able
to do this Like not good? So what did I do?
(46:30):
And back then it took me a while to reframe
this because it wasn't top of mind as it is now.
But eventually I didn't. I thought to myself, you know what,
if that guy who's a lot busier than me and
a lot more important, can find time to exercise each morning,
so can I. And to this day that is a
(46:51):
guiding motivation I use to get me to the gym.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
It's so funny because I have this similar thing when
I'm at the gym and I have this trainer who
is trying to help me, but you know, it's tough
for him. But sometimes he'll make me do planks and
I hate doing clanks. But I remember hearing that the
Ruth Bader Ginsburg over Supreme Cut Purt Justice, did like
three minutes of planks every day and she was like
eighty And so when I hate this, I'm like Ruth
(47:16):
Bader Gibsburg who was so much older than me, and
she could do this, and I feel like I should
be able to do it too.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
What we are talking about here is weaponizing these social
comparisons to your benefit. Right we stumble into them, like,
don't wait to stumble into it, jump in there and
do it. And the quick flip side. I think we're
winding down here. Is It works the other way too.
(47:42):
If you find yourself coming across a case someone or
a group of people, tragedy has befallen them, and you
instantly interpret that as, oh my god, what if that
happens to me. I was just recently in DC, for example,
when the plane crash occurred. I actually flew in like
a half hour after that happened, and many people that
(48:06):
I was around were constant, really overcome with negativity because
they were thinking about, Oh my god, what if this
had happened to me? You can flip it right if
you don't want to feel that way. Oh my god,
how lucky am I that this didn't happen to me.
It's a very easy switch. So I'll say one more
(48:28):
thing fifteen seconds, and I'll throw it back to you.
A lot of people think that managing your emotions is hard.
It has to be hard. It sometimes is hard, but
it doesn't always have to be. There are lots and
lots of tools that we can use that make emotion
regulation easy. And I think the more you can familiarize
(48:52):
yourself with those easy to use, effortless shifts, and thank
you to you for helping share these things with the
world in your podcast. I think the happier we all
will be.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
So well, Ethan, thank you so much for helping us
figure out how we can use these social hacks to
shift our emotions. Speak for all the folks in the
room and listening at home, and say you're really feeling
like shifting is going to be a little bit easier.
I would like to thank you for all of
Pushkin the Happiness Lab. Listeners today, you're in for a
special treat. If you're a regular listener of this podcast,
you've probably already gotten a chance to hear from my
good friend, the psychologist Ethan Cross. In fact, Ethan just
visited the show as part of our recent how To season,
(00:36):
where he gave us his top tips for hacking negative emotions.
Lots of these ideas come from his new book Shift,
Managing Your Emotions so they don't manage you. But in
that interview we only got to scratch the surface of
the cool work that Ethan does in his Emotion and
Self Control Lab at the University of Michigan. So to
mark the publication of his new book, Ethan asked me
to join him on stage for a live recording of
(00:57):
this podcast at Choate Rosemary Hall, an independent school not
too far from my hometown in New Haven, Connecticut. In
front of an audience of teen students, Ethan and I
got to chat not about hacking our emotions, but about
the effect that other people can have on our feelings
and the big effects we can have on other people too.
I definitely learned a lot from this conversation, and I
think you will too. Welcome to the Happiness Lab Live
(01:20):
where we are coming in from Rosemary Hall. We have
a fantastic audience of folks here for a really fun
conversation with one of my favorite psychologists, Ethan cross.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
So.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
Ethan is a professor at the University of Michigan, both
in the Psychology Department and at the Roth School of Business.
He's the director of the Emotion and Self Control Lab.
He's an expert on strategies we can use to control
our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. As you might guess with
an expertise the school, Ethan's a sought after consultant and speaker.
He's worked with famous CEOs, professional basketball teams, and has
(01:57):
even been hosted at the White House, all to help
leaders and folks who need it regulate their feelings and emotions.
Ethan is the author of the national and international best
selling book Chatter, The Voice in Our Head, Why it Matters,
and How to Harness It. This book was chosen as
one of the best new books of twenty twenty one
by Washington BOSTHS, CNN, and USA Today. But he's just
(02:18):
written a fabulous new book. I'm so exciting. We're here
on launch day today a fabulous new book entitled Shift
Managing Your Emotions so they don't manage You. Ethan is
already a regular on the Happiness Lab and I'm super
psyched that he's agreed to help me out with this
live episode today because we're going to be exploring an
important topic, how we can harness the people around us
(02:40):
to feel happier. Please join me and welcoming to the
Happiness Lab Live even talks all right, Ethan, So today
we're talking about a bit of a paradox when it
comes to our happiness and our emotions. You and I
talk a lot about things we can do to be happier,
and one of the biggest piece of advices that we
(03:01):
often give is just that we can use other people
to improve our happiness. Social connection is such a huge
predictor of the way we feel. Often a thing that
we can do to make ourselves feel good. But if
we're paraphrasing Jean Paul sart hell is, other people like
other people can also be a little bit of a
pain in the butt. As an expert in emotion, can
(03:25):
you resonate with this like completely?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
You know, other people can be our greatest ally or
our worst enemy when it comes to managing our emotional lives.
And what's really interesting to me about this issue is
we don't get a user's guide for how to steer
our interactions with other people. So I'm curious, and I
think the rules here are no hands. But if you
(03:49):
agree with something, clap? How many people here sometimes go
to someone else to chat about a problem and find
that it just makes you feel worse? Often not our intention,
but sometimes this happens with people we really care about.
Sometimes it's our loved ones. I often joke, but mem
is quite sick. Seriously, there are many people in my
(04:10):
life that I am exceptionally close to. DNA determines those
close connections, if you know what I mean. I don't
talk to them about problems because I know that when
I do, it's just going to take me down the
wrong path. And so I think it is critically important
to understand how to harness your relationships with other people
(04:31):
and also the way you interact with others to make
sure those interactions contribute to fulfillment, happiness, and so forth,
rather than push you in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
So let's take a deeper look at some spots where
we get it wrong. One of the pieces of psychology
that I think is really relevant here is some work
on what's called emotional contagion, what's emotional contigion, and why
can it kind of take us off track when we're
dealing with other people.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
So we are a social species. We are constantly looking
to other people for how to understand ourselves. And what
we have learned is that we actually catch feelings from
other people quite eas So when you enter a room
and you see people with a glum look on their face,
sadly as professors, I think this may happen more often
(05:19):
where they'd like to admit. Right, you go into the
room and you see everyone, This immediately gives me information
about what the temperature in the room is like, and
I experience that emotion and that could be adaptive. Right,
It signals to me, maybe I've got to loosen things up.
But we know that emotions cause what we call a
(05:40):
ripple effect. They very quickly cascade into our own lives.
And if you're not aware of this, like, you can
catch the wrong set of feelings. And so we're all
all vulnerable to this, for better or worse.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
And I think one of the ways that I've seen
this play out. Is that it's not just a like
what on one contagion. It's not just like I might
catch the emotions that you have, or I might catch
the emotions from the audience, but then we tend to
kind of transmit that to other situations, to almost like
a virus. Right, So, say I have a conversation Ethan.
This never happened with Ethan because obviously Ethan's a very
happy person who's never gone. But let's say I have
(06:15):
a conversation with Ethan. He's feeling really frustrated, he's feeling
really down. I leave that conversation, and then I go
teach my class, and then I transmit that to my class,
or I go on social media and I post something
that's kind of frustrated and gloom or angry, like you
can see what researcher Sigall Barsai calls these affective spirals,
where it's like not just like one person catches one
(06:36):
person's emotion, but it's kind of a spiral that I
can almost transmit to a community. So it sounds like
this can be really bad when it comes to the
sort of emotions that are kind of naturally free floating around.
If we're dealing with negative emotion.
Speaker 2 (06:46):
Well, with negative emotions, it can certainly be the case.
And I think that's particularly true with social media, where
we see the viral spread of negative emotions happening really
really fast. You come across news and it affects you. You
see someone else displaying a negative reaction, you feel it
as well, and then you quickly pass it on to
someone else on the feed, and then it just it
(07:09):
just cascades further and further and further. And so this
is where I think knowledge is power. So knowing about
how this works, I think for me and my experience
as a human being is very powerful. So if I
enter a room and I see one or two people are,
you know, conveying facial expressions that I don't particularly think
(07:29):
are conducive to the kinds of interactions I want to have,
I'll try to loosen those people up and try to
turn the you know, frown around.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
And I think it's important to this idea of knowledge
is power. I think in part when we're often in
these social situations where around other people, it can be
important to remember how affected we are by them, right.
I think about this a lot in like workplace settings, right,
where like you go to work and like the people
on your team might be kind of feeling optimistic or
they might be feeling not so happy, and like you're
(07:59):
going to catch that. But here we are at Chote today,
I think this is so important in school context, right,
whether it's like on your athletic team, whether it's in
your classroom, Like, the emotions of one person are going
to kind of transmit in this way that can be
again sort of dangerous if they're negative emotions that we're
dealing with.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
Absolutely, how many people here have been told don't compare
yourselves to other people. So it sounds beautiful that piece
of advice, but easier bleeping said than done, right, Like
is that easy to do? Just stop comparing yourself to
(08:35):
other people. So talking about the way that other people
can affect us, I'm reminded of the time that my
daughter asked my daughter, who's you know in high school?
Wanted more screen time one night and was like really
really supreme court level like litigation here arguing for more
screen time. I was like, no, you know, and I said, well, no,
(08:58):
other families give their kids more screen time. And then
she comes back and goes, I thought you said, we
don't compare ourselves to other people? Was pretty slick, huh.
I mean I was proud inside, but I did not
show it. I regulated that emotion and I just held true.
But what I realized in that moment was that that
(09:22):
directive I gave, we don't compare selves to other people,
probably the worst advice I could ever give, because it
is not possible not to reference other people. We are
constantly looking to others to make sense of who we are. Right.
This is called social comparisons. That's how we operate, and
I think the more we embrace that, the better, because
(09:43):
then there's an opportunity to make social comparisons wiser, right,
to steer those comparisons so that they don't maybe negatively
affect us. There's also the opportunity to benefit from this
emotional contagion effect. Right Like earlier on when everyone else
was clapping, did that feel good to folks here? I
(10:05):
felt great? I loved it. I remember I was telling
Laurie the story earlier. When I was in college, one
of the most memorable classes I ever took was a
class on communications, and the instructor said, there is an
art to being a good audience member. I'm scanning you
all right now to see who's going to get an
A versus an F. A couple of f's here, right.
(10:27):
So the art to being a good audience member involves
a gentle kind of raising your cheap bone, smiling, not
your good I love it, keep going.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
And pointing at once. Today it was like really kind
of kindly smiling and looking.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
At I mean, it's fine to do that. In your head,
you could say this is terrible. Yeah, I can't wait
to go back to what I'm doing. It doesn't matter
for us up here, because we're catching these signals from you.
You're conveying information to us, and so you can use that.
If you know how this works, you can use it
to your benefit to make other people feel better or
(11:04):
not right. And so that's where the knowledge is power
for how I think all this works. And we'll talk
more about social comparison, I'm sure, but yeah, well.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
Let's come into it now, because I think you know,
we were just talking about. Emotional contagion is one way
that we catch other people's emotions in person and also online.
As you mentioned, I think especially online, but also in person.
Another way that other people negatively affect our emotions is
through social comparison, and that can feels regularly frustrating because
sometimes even in a situation where you feel like you're
(11:32):
like objectively kind of doing okay, if you see somebody
doing better than you, it can make you feel kind
of crappy, whether that's oh, they had a better vacation
than me, or you know, again here we're in high school.
They're getting better grades than me, they'd perform better than me,
they're doing better at work, making more money. You know,
for folks in the adult world, it seems like all
of it makes you feel kind of bad about yourself.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
And it's always possible to find someone who's outperforming you.
I mean, it's remarkable we can always find that person sometimes.
I mean, a lot of people describe the experience of
being on social media, A lot of people here on
social media, I get. So anyone ever feel like when
you're on on Instagram or whatever platforms you're on that
(12:12):
it's kind of like navigating landlines, like you're going through it.
You're feeling good, you're seeing the funny movie great, great, great,
and then you catch something that, oh, crap, I suck,
Like does anyone ever have that experience? Just me yes,
So you go and know when it's going to happen.
And we do know from lots of research that most
(12:35):
of the social comparisons we make, and we are doing
these comparisons all the time, do tend to push us
in the negative direction. So we make comparisons against people
who a outperforming us in some way, we don't feel
great about our lives. You can actually reframe those comparisons
to your benefit. And up until I knew about the
(12:55):
science here, I was just a victim of these comparisons.
I feel kind of glum, you know. I go lay
on the couch, maybe put some washcloth on my head. Oh,
I'm such a failure having lived up to my blah
blah blah.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
That was a joke. Cook, he's trying to make it.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
The Yeah, we won't even try that one again because
that was just stre I like this where you could
just edit it.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
We just edit it up. If the joke doesn't work
in there, this is good.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
So here's what you do. You can flip it. So
now when I come across that situation, I think, Wow,
they achieved this, so can I. And now it's not
competition now, it's this is information that I can use
to try to aspire to reach that goal. That's a
little little reframe we call it. That is powerful because
(13:40):
it neutralizes that negative social comparison is, which is inevitable.
And now that I know how to do it, and
you know, this was a big reason for writing this book,
is if you have the tools to push your emotions around,
it becomes really easy to do it. It doesn't have
to be super complicated. You can also do it in
the negative direction. You come across someone who is doing
(14:02):
a lot worse than you, and maybe you think yourself,
oh my god, what if this happens to me? Right?
That makes people really anxious. Sometimes rather than thinking about
making a comparison and feeling that way, you could flip it. Wow,
I'm so grateful this hasn't happened to me. Simple switch
puts you in a totally different direction. Do you ever
do this when you make social comparisons, like tell the world,
(14:25):
lurie you make you have be silent on you making
the comparisons. It's been just about me so far?
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah, I think so. This is one of the one
of the studies I teach in my class is just
like so profound at how not only how bad social
comparison makes us feel, but how much like sometimes when
we're socially comparing, we just like don't have any justification
for it at all. And it's a study that happened,
a very famous study with in sports researchers went and
(14:54):
they looked at olympians who were on the stand. So
these are people who won gold, silver, and bronze medals
at the Olympics standing on the stand, and what they
did was they videotape their facial expressions to see who
was kind of who was feeling which emotions right, and
so first the gold medalist, what are they feeling? Well,
they're feeling like happy, elated, they're smiling. It's fine, right,
they're best in the world. Right now we cut to
(15:15):
this silver medallist. What are they feeling? There's second best
in the world, like literally better in whatever their sport
is than billions of other people. What emotions are they
experiencing If you analyze their facial expressions, it's not happiness.
It's emotions like contempt, deep sadness, grief. Like they're not
even in the positive camp anymore. They're just experiencing only
(15:35):
negative emotions. Why there's a really obvious social comparison there
when you won the silver medal, you really almost got gold,
but you didn't get it. So what are you feeling.
You're not feeling like, you know, slightly less happy than
the best in the world, even though you are the
second best in the world. You're feeling awful, right, But
the reason I like this study is that it also
(15:55):
points to a way that we can do better because
those researchers also measure the emotions of the bronze medalist,
the person who did third. Right now, you might think,
what the silver medallist is feeling really terrible and contemptuous
and experiencing grief, then the bronze medalist is going to
be doing even worse, like they're going to be totally miserable.
Right turns out not so. The bronze medalist is showing
incredible elation, huge smiles, sometimes even huger smiles than the
(16:19):
gold medalist, which is weird. So you ask the question,
what's going on, Well, what's going on again is social comparison?
Who's the bronze medalist comparing himself against too not gold?
Because that was like several seconds or several points or
whatever away the bronze medalist is saying, oh my gosh,
you know, if I was just a little bit slower,
if I perform a little bit worse, I wouldn't be
(16:41):
getting any metal at all. Like I would just be
clapping from the back of the stands going home empty handed.
I feel awesome. The bronze medalist comparison makes him feel good.
And this is why always joke with my students that
when you're trying to fight social comparison, you shouldn't look
for the silver lining, because the silver maid you usually
look for the bronze lining. I want to go almost
(17:03):
like it was a good joke, thank you.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
But but Laurie, like the way you just described it
so completely read with that route to harnessing social comparisons.
But when you describe the silver metallist as, hey, you
are number two out of seven.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
Billion people on the planet right now.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
That's a reframe too that the silver medallist can use
that is really powerful. And if there's one big picture
lesson that I would love all of you to take
away from this conversation with us about managing your emotions,
it is that you can be proactive in how to
do it. Oftentimes we just stumble into emotional reactions. We
(17:45):
make the comparison, it leads us in a particular direction,
and then we just kind of ride it out until
it peters out. But you could get in there strategically
doing the kinds of things that Laurie and I are
talking about to nip those reactions in the bud, or
extend them, or lengthen them and increase their intensity, whatever
you want to do, if you understand the specific tactics
(18:07):
that exist.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
And so when we get back from the break, we're
going to talk about some tactics we can use to
deal with not just the way other people affect our emotions,
but the way other people affect our behavior. The Happiness
Lab that we'll do what All Right, we're coming back
(18:34):
from the BAK the Happiness.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
Lab and Show grows all live.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
It is returning. Okay, So before the break, we were
talking about ways that other people affect our emotions. Now
I want to get into ways that other people affect
our behavior what we're actually doing. And there's a long
history of this in the field of psychology.
Speaker 2 (18:54):
Right, other people are in a position to push us
around in all sorts of ways. They can affect the
way we think they can affect the way we feel,
they can affect the way we behave Okay, so just
just look at Laurie and I right now. Anyone noticed
something similar, Like, they're all different ways we could have
chosen to sit Like I could have done this. I
(19:17):
was going to do a lotus position yoga. I can't
actually do it, but like a lot I could. I could.
I could be like.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
This, put your hands or popped over.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
I could, you know, But we're like this, we're mimicking.
Speaker 1 (19:29):
Cross knees, both looking exactly right and.
Speaker 2 (19:32):
Kind of upright. So there is this chameleon effect where
if you are in the presence of someone in particular
at your level or above someone you admire, you tend
to automatically mimic their behavior. So if you've ever been
in an interaction where someone starts doing this, you cross
your hands, and then the person next to you crosses
(19:54):
your hands. Anyone ever like witnessed this kind of mimicking
that occurs. This is endemic to how we function, and
interestingly enough, it can improve rapport between people because there's
this matching between us.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
In fact, thing they often tell you to do if
you want to become friends with somebody. Get to know people,
let somebody else know that you're listening to them, is
to what's called mirror their behavior, So not like perfectly
copy it, but kind of do it. Turns out this
is actually a podcast or technique. When you're doing it
lives for me.
Speaker 2 (20:25):
To copy your actions.
Speaker 1 (20:26):
So you make you feel like I have you been doing?
Speaker 2 (20:28):
I feel very welcome, presents, warm cup of tea.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
But what are some of the consequences of this? It
means that, like naturally, without realizing it, we're like soaking
in the behaviors of others and copying.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
In it other people. Look, the world is messy, the
world is unpredictable. We are constantly as human beings striving
to make sense of how to optimally navigate this world. You,
as someone who I can trust, someone I admire, you're
giving me all sorts of information. So I'm taking that
(21:03):
in and I'm using it to guide my own behavior
unconsciously because I could count on you. Now, if it's
someone else who I don't know and I don't trust,
I'm not going to mimic them as much. Now, you
can have fun with this effect if you want, Like
you might be talking to someone and you could push
its limits, you know, like Laurie does this when she
(21:25):
interviews new graduate students. I'm just joking about that's going
to be an added But but you could you can
do a little bit of experimenting to see how this
actually operates. It is a powerful, powerful phenomenon. And if
you see someone mimicking you, I think it's a sign
of a flattery, like they actually hold you at some
(21:46):
level of esteem. Now, if you're not mimicking, don't take
that the wrong way. If you're not being mimicked, right,
you could reframe it.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
So, but that's kind of the behavioral copying we do
just kind of unconsciously sometimes when we see other people's behavior,
it affects the way we think about things and reason
about things. This is a phenomenon that's often been called
social benchmarking.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
What's that. This is the this wonderful study where I
don't think you could actually do this nowadays in the lab.
This was done maybe sixty years ago, this study, and
participants came into the lab and they were actually injected
with adrenaline, but they didn't actually know it was adrenaline.
I think they were told it was vitamins or something
(22:29):
to that effect, and so they've got these kinds of
arousal symptoms. Right, they're like energized physiologically. They don't quite
know where this energization is that a word. We're gonna
run with it. It sounds okay, okay, energization is coming from.
(22:50):
It's definitely not a word that energized feeling. They don't
know where it's coming from. And what the experimenters do.
In one condition, they have this actor come into the
room and he acts like you fork like she's just
super super happy. And in another condition, have an actor
come in and he's really angry. And what the experimenters
(23:13):
want to see is does the subject who's been shot
up with this adrenaline does the behavior of the other
person change the way that they behave Right, So you've
got all this feelings, but you're not sure how to
make sense of it. And so what they end up
finding is that when you're in the presence of someone
acting really angry, you start acting more angry as well.
(23:34):
If you're in the presence of someone who is acting
you for, you kind of start behaving happier too. So
it's another example of how other people have a potential
to powerfully shape the way we ourselves respond and in
this case, behave. And that is particularly true when you
(23:54):
are not sure of how to behave, or you are
not sure how to make sense of what is going
on inside you.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
And I think that particularly fits with this study, right,
you know, these subjects are shot up with this chemical
like they thought they took a vitamin, and now all
of a sudden they're feeling like this sense of energy,
like they don't know what's going on, and so they
look to this other person to be like, oh, we're
angry now, we're angry at the experiment. Oh we're you
for it. But and that happened in this weird, strange,
you know, possibly an ethical now experiment, But this happens
(24:24):
all the time when we have an experience that we're
kind of not sure how to make sense of, and
we have to look to other people.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
So this reminds me of a story with my oldest
daughter and a couple of years ago, she transitioned to
a new school. It was a lot more demanding academically
than the school she was in before. And I go
up into her bedroom one night and I noticed she
is she's physically distressed and she's really getting worked up.
(24:52):
She seems very very anxious in a way I've never
seen her experienced that emotion before. I go, Sweetie, what's
going on, what's wrong? And she goes she's like breathing
heavy and like, I don't know what's happening, Like I'm
feeling these things in my stomach and what's going on on?
And so then that's my opportunity to get in there
(25:14):
and help her interpret this uncertainessy sweety, that's your body
doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing right now.
You've got a really important test tomorrow, and you're experiencing
this response that's saying, hey, you need to do a
little bit more studying before you go to bed. That's it.
You're actually lucky, you're fortunate you're experiencing this because it's
(25:35):
like a little internal queue telling you to prepare. And
the moment I gave her that interpretation, her entire demeanor changed, right,
the anxiety went way down, and she got into studying.
So what I've done there is I reframed the experience
for her. I reframed her bodily reaction. This is taking
(25:56):
a page straight out of research where you tell people
to either make sense of their physiological symptoms of anxiety,
either as a threat, oh my god, something may be wrong,
versus a challenge like this is your body rising to
the occasion and it worked like clockwork. And so that
is one powerful potential that other people have for us.
(26:20):
Other people are often in a position to help us
reframe our circumstances in ways that can really put us
on the right trajectory.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
Or the problem is that, or put us on the
wrong trajectory. And I'm cognisance. We're having this conversation in
front of a high school audience. You know, students. How
many times have you you know, gotten a bad grade
on something? Not really sure how to take it, but
you show your parents or you show your friends, and
they either react and like that's fine, it's like just
one paper, or they're like, oh my gosh, like you
(26:52):
get that grade. I don't know how that's going to
affect your college, Like what does that do to you?
And so I think, you know, it's great that your
daughter had a parent who's so careful to help her
kind of rethink that emotion in a way. That's good.
I worry so often we do this in a way
that's like, that's not great. That like as parents, as
ment towards our first reaction is to kind of feel
upset at someone's failure rather than say like, oh, this
(27:14):
is great, this is a cool opportunity. But our reaction
is changing how somebody else might be feeling about a
particular situation they find themselves in.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
I worry about it too, And that's why I think
conversations like this, all the this aside with you all
are exceptionally important because what knowing about how this works
gives you the opportunity to do is number one. When
people come to you, when your friends, your siblings, later
on in life, other colleagues come to you for support,
(27:46):
you are now mindful of the powerful role that you
exert on their emotional lives, and you should take that. Really,
that's a serious responsibility that you have to do good
for other human beings, and if you know how to
steer their ways of thinking, you can really help them.
But it also gives all of you the opportunity to
(28:07):
be a lot more selective about who you talk to
about the issues that you are struggling with. I think
a lot of us don't think twice about who to
go to for support. We just feel like we've got
to talk to other people. Let's find someone and let
it out. And sometimes it's like flipping a coin. Who's
(28:28):
going to push you down the wrong path or the
right one? And it doesn't have to be that random.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
So I think this is sometimes I think that's about
other people affecting us. That's so frustrating. Is like people
who are trying to do good, trying to give advice,
trying to help, sometimes wind up messing us.
Speaker 2 (28:43):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (28:44):
And you've actually seen this in a new domain and
a new paper that just came out where the kind
of advice that people are giving, maybe even about the
benefits of social connection and talking to people, can sometimes
go awry. Tell me about the new Loneliness study.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
So this is some really exciting research. It's led by
a graduate student in my lab, MICHAELA. Rodriguez. And let
me start by just asking all of you, how many
if you here have heard quite frequently this messaging that
being alone is bad for you, it's toxic, right you
(29:21):
want to stay away from those experiences. This is a
pervasive message right now. There's a huge amount of attention
with this country and several others as well, there's i
think a Minister of Loneliness in the UK and Japan.
There's a huge amount of attention trying to help people
combat experiences of being alone and the feelings of loneliness
(29:41):
that accompany those states. Being lonely has been compared to
smoking cigarettes in terms of its impact on your health.
And so what we've done across a series of studies
is try to understand how the messaging that we are
giving to society about this might help or hurt folks.
And so here's what we've learned. Number One, there's actually
(30:05):
nothing intrinsically bad about being physically alone for you know,
circumscribed periods of time forever chronicization, but being how many
people here actually find value in being alone sometimes right,
it can be kind of great, It can be restorative,
(30:27):
It can be a source of creativity. So what we've
seen in lots of research is how you think about
being alone, is it good for me or bad for me,
directly impacts how you experience that site. If you think
being alone is bad for you, if you're sitting at
the lunch room and you're eating by yourself one day
and you think, oh boy, not good. That's going to
(30:48):
lead you to feel lonelier. If you think this is
an opportunity to rest and restore be alone with my thoughts,
this could be a good thing. You actually feel better
when you spend time alone. Okay, and we see that
over and over again. Here's why this is really important.
We did this analysis where we went back several years
and we looked at every major news article that talk
(31:10):
about being alone, and we coded it rigorously for are
you describing this experience of being alone as something that's
good for you or bad for you? Overwhelmingly, the media
describes experiences of being alone as bad for you, as toxic.
Why that matters, We've shown if you give people news
(31:31):
articles in one condition, they describe being alone as bad
for you, and in another condition being alone is good
for you. What information you are exposed to there directly
impacts how you think about what this state does for you.
So if you're reading these articles being alone is really
bad for you, you think it's bad for you, and
(31:52):
that in turn makes it bad for you. It's almost
a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1 (31:57):
So it's again it seems like another situation where hearing
how other people are talking about it is affecting how
we might think about it. Maybe we're kind of in
between of like, yeah, in good points and bad points
where you hear other people saying, oh, this is so bad,
comes a social benchmark which affects your own emotions when
you're in that state.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
That's right, And what's really what's really tragic about this
phenomenon is I genuinely think the folks who are behind
this messaging are pushing it out there to help people.
But what we are learning is that their attempts to
help society maybe actually backfiring.
Speaker 1 (32:36):
And so we want to avoid these moments where being
around other people winds it backfiring. We want to avoid
these moments when other people's emotions make us feel bad
or other people's behaviors make us do something that might
not fit with our goals. But how do we do that? Luckily,
when we get back from the break, Ethan is going
to help us out the Happiness Lab Live. I'm sure
it is very hard, we'll do it. We are back
(33:09):
to Happiness Love Live from show. So now we're going
to do the fun part of our conversation because we're
going to talk about how we can kind of use
other people in a way that really does make our
emotions feel better, that does allow us to achieve our
behavioral goals, and so on, a kind of set of
like social hacks that can be these powerful tools for
(33:31):
shaping our happiness ultimately. So let's go back to one
of the things we talked about before, emotional contagion. What
are some hacks that we can use to kind of
have other people like? What are some hacks that we
can use to catch other people's emotions in ways that
are good for us versus.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
Bad for us? I think number one this more than
any phenomenon that we talked about today. This is where
knowledge is power is so unbelievably relevant. So I did
a little bit of intervention a little bit earlier where
I shared with all of you how your facial expressions
can impact us up here. And some of you are
(34:08):
have responded very nicely. Others I think there's still some
room for improvement.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Maybe a lot smalling asleep. We're having this conversations a
little early.
Speaker 2 (34:16):
That's it's all good, So I'm joking, but knowing how
this works can be really powerful. So as as someone
who leads different groups and teams, I'm exceptionally sensitive to
the kind of emotional displays in the group and the
demeanor in the group. And if I find that one
(34:37):
or two people are consistently showing up in a way
that is cascading and impacting everyone else, I intervene right away.
I do it with compassion. I often explain how this works,
and that is often enough, but it is really important
to do it, because the entire spirit of the lab
(34:59):
or the group can easily nose dive if I don't
address this right away.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
And I love the suggestion so much because I think
sometimes when we hear about these effects of emotional contagion,
we're like, oh my gosh, we're just totally at the
mercy of the people around us, and I'm just like,
my emotions are stuck. But what you have to understand
when you hear those effects is like, that also means
you have agency. Right if you roll into your team
and everybody's kind of feeling down, you have to remember, like, wait,
(35:25):
I have the agency that if I place a seed
of a little bit of optimism, a little bit of humor,
a little bit of something, a little bit more positive energy,
whatever you need, that seed is going to spread. And
what's really cool about the fact that there are these
ripple effects, these so called affective spirals. Is like, if
you plant that seed, and even if it's a little forced,
even if you're kind of trying a little bit, if
(35:47):
other people catch it, they're going to catch that a
little bit authentically and then they'll feed it back to you. Right,
So you can kind of be the seed that starts
the spiral of something.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
That's right, and you can leverage a lot of the
other effects that we've been talking about. So I'll often
purposefully overcorrect and positivity and happiness, Like don't I look
ridiculous in.
Speaker 1 (36:06):
A smiling He's smiling really jokingly. This evidents if you
see their faces, they're like, why is he making that expression?
Speaker 2 (36:11):
Yeah? Sure, yeah, but there we go. We got the laugh.
So like, I'll often focus in on the one person
who maybe isn't showing the right kind of attitude and
either not directly by through these kind of chameleon effects,
try to loosen them up, or maybe I'll ask them, hey,
so you know what's going on, anything could happen this weekend?
(36:32):
Try to shift their mood deliberately.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
So that's sort of emotional contiion. We talked a little
before about sort of venting this idea that sometimes we
want to share our emotions with other people or share
our troubles with other people, but often sometimes there are
people out there that don't necessarily mirror back to us
what we want to hear. They kind of can hype
us up or get us even more upset or more frustrated.
(36:56):
How do we do a better job picking people we
should vent to more successfully than others?
Speaker 2 (37:02):
So this, it turns out, is actually pretty simple to do.
And when I think about, like all the science written
about in this book, this is top five pieces of
information that I use in my own life and really
benefit from it quite a bit. So I think about,
who are the people in my life that when I
go to to talk to them about a problem, they
(37:24):
don't just listen and demonstrate that they support me and
have my back, but essentially egg me on, which is
what happens when you co ruminate with someone else. So
here's the situation, like something bad has happened to you
and you go to talk to someone else about it.
So I have a difficult interaction let's say with a colleague,
my call Laori Laurd Can you believe what this person
(37:45):
did and you say.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
Oh my god, I can't believe they did that. They suck.
Why are you even in that university? It sucks like
you need to get rid of all your Like you
see what I'm doing. I'm just like feel in the
fire right. I haven't gone into problem solving mode. I
haven't tried to de escalate this.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
And when you do that for me, I love it.
I love it in the moment. It is indulgent, it
is Yes, Laurie's on my side, she hears me, feels me.
So that's really good for our relationship to do a
little bit of that kind of back and forth expression
and venting. Ideally, though, at some point in this conversation,
(38:21):
Laurie says to me, oh.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Man, that sounds tough, but like, how are we gonna
deal with the situation, Like, you know, like what we
should what should we do to shift your emotion? Let's
play Don't Stop Believing because that's a really fun song
and you'll feel better. Like we just do whatever to.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
Kind of get back to she's playing that is one
of my favorites. Emotions shift for me.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
She wanted to play that coming out, but we nip
that in the button but uh, and that's important because,
as you said, the venting, the co ruminating, as we've
called it, it's really good for our relationship, but it's
really bad for both of our emotions ultimately.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
If I leave the conversation, that terrible interaction with the
colleague didn't even happen to me. But now I'm having
a terrible day too, and I haven't helped what I
think even probably wanted out of this conversation, which is
a way to shift his emotions back.
Speaker 2 (39:06):
I mean, I had a converse sometimes like I'm a
you catch the emotion. A friend called me up and
they just they didn't even give me a chance to
help shift their perspective. They just rapid fire launched in
and then I hung up. Okay, I gotta go, And
for the next three hours, I'm just going over in
my head what happened to them. Yeah, and I'm taking
(39:27):
on all the emotional baggage. So those are not the
best kinds of conversations to make you feel better. The
best conversations do two things. First, the person you're talking to,
they listen, They empathize, They normalize what you're going If
your lord, you're not alone like anyone would feel experience.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
A lot of people have this bad day with colleagues.
It doesn't mean every day is going to be bad
with your colleagues.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
And so you start broadening the perspective. That is the
art of being a good emotional advisor. And so my
advice to everyone here is to, like, when you're done,
if you care about this, make a little table personal problems,
school problems. List out all the people you talk to
about those different kinds of problems. Some of you may
(40:10):
have the same names of people on each column, like
you talk to the same people about personal stuff and
school stuff. Others may have different names. Some of you
may have no names. It doesn't matter. I'm just doing
an audit here. Who is your emotional advisory board? Once
you have those names, then I want you to think
to yourself, Okay, who are the people on this list
(40:31):
who do two things? When I go to them, First,
they listen, they empathize with me. But then they help
broaden my perspective. They help shift the way I think
about That wasn't purposeful. That was just slipped in there.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
His book is called.
Speaker 2 (40:46):
Tas That was terrible, non intended. But who are the
people who help you reframe how you're thinking about your
circumstances to ultimately allow you to move on. Those are
your emotional advisors. Circle those names for all the names
you didn't circle, You've got two choices. Number one, go
(41:06):
get a red sharp eiet and cross their names off
your list. It's something kind of cathartic about doing that, satisfying.
It's a legitimate option. There are some people who you
can be super close. You love them, talk to them
about other stuff, but not the big problems in life.
If they're not serving you well. There the other opportunity
(41:27):
you have is to educate those people who aren't serving
you well in this capacity by sharing with them what
you've learned. And you know, I feel like it's important
to give you a disclaimer. There's an art to doing
that well. I would not advise you to pull those
people aside and say, hey, I just went to this presentation.
(41:47):
You know what I learned. You suck as an advisor,
like you really you make me feel bad. I know
you love me, but it doesn't help, so quit it. Okay,
can do this and said probably not the most elegant
way of intervening. A better way is did you know
that actually just sharing out stuff and just get me
(42:08):
to rehearse things. And actually I had no idea that actually,
if you really want to help someone, you need to
look at that bigger picture. Or if you don't want
to do that, you could say I I just listened
to this awesome live taping of a happiness lab.
Speaker 1 (42:21):
It was at my schools.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
At my school, and I think you'll find it really interesting.
I learned all these things I never knew about. And
then you hope they get to the end of the podcast.
How many people get to the end of the podcast?
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Everybody?
Speaker 2 (42:35):
Everyone? Okay?
Speaker 1 (42:36):
That's that wasn't even a joke.
Speaker 2 (42:40):
I was just all right.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
So that's kind of dealing with sort of fighting motion antgion.
How we can sort of get people to help us
vent better, vent more effectively. How do we deal with
the social comparison? We talked a little bit before about
kind of using it more productively, but what are our
go to social hacks?
Speaker 2 (42:59):
Then? So social comparison. So number one, if you do it,
there's nothing wrong with you. I can't tell you how
many people I encounter who they feel bad about themselves
because they're making these social comparisons as though it's a
sign of weakness that you're referencing other people. This is
(43:20):
not a weakness. This is how you are wired. It
is how we are built, and simply recognizing that should
be liberating to some degree. It certainly is for me,
like I do it. I can't help it. It's how
we function. So Number one, recognize that that will help
Number two. If you find yourself making a comparison against
(43:42):
someone who is outperforming you in some way, flip it right.
It's no longer oh my god, they're doing so much better.
They did it, So can I use it as a
source of motivation, as fuel to propel you. It's showing
you what is actually possible, what you are capable of achieving.
(44:03):
We tend to feel worse about the comparisons we make
to people who are like us. Right, so you're like
you'd be a great example for me. You are like
me in many ways. If you are outperforming me in
some way, that's really gonna sting. But the fact that
you were like me also means that what you've achieved
is something that I can do too. I think you
(44:24):
will be amazed at how quickly this little reframe can
totally reroute your emotional experience.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
There's also an interesting way that you can use the
sort of social benchmarking with that too, which I find
can be really powerful. Right you think like, oh, that
person's like me, I can achieve that too, But then
you also then ask the further question of like, but
what are they doing that? Like I'm not doing absolutely.
I had this good friend of mine who is like,
I'm not a very fit person. She was also not
(44:53):
a very fit person, but kind of she'd gotten a
little bit sick and then just like really devoted herself
to fitness and just started going to the gym all
the time and so on. And I found myself doing
the like, man, she's getting so fit, Like she's just
like doing so well and feeling that social comparison that envy.
But with this hack, I could do the fall. I
was like, well, she was just like me before she
was also unfit. But then I asked myself the question,
well what's she doing. I'm like, well, she's going to
(45:14):
the gym every day, she really paying attention to what
she eats, she's going really hardcore with it. And then
I had this realization of like, well, I could do
that too, but I also have to do all the
other hard stuff that she's doing, and then you could
ask the question reasonably, do I want to do that
hard stuff or not? Right? I think this can be powerful,
right because you remember, like it's not just by you know,
some accident. Often that people are doing better, especially if
(45:36):
they've made a change, especially if they started like you.
Often you know they're putting some work into this, They're
making choices that maybe you are not making now, but
you could so better.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
I experienced the very similar phenomenon. It was not with
someone who was like me, per se. It was with
President Obama, okay and so not like me, and but
I remember it was like I was just starting as
an assistant professor, and you know, it was hard being
assistant professor. I was grinding away and I wasn't exercising regularly.
(46:07):
And I came across an article about how Obama exercised
every day, and immediately I come across this information. Now
I'm really feeling bad about myself, like my pants aren't
fitting to begin with, and now I'm finding out that
the president of the free world right like, is able
to do this Like not good? So what did I do?
(46:30):
And back then it took me a while to reframe
this because it wasn't top of mind as it is now.
But eventually I didn't. I thought to myself, you know what,
if that guy who's a lot busier than me and
a lot more important, can find time to exercise each morning,
so can I. And to this day that is a
(46:51):
guiding motivation I use to get me to the gym.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
It's so funny because I have this similar thing when
I'm at the gym and I have this trainer who
is trying to help me, but you know, it's tough
for him. But sometimes he'll make me do planks and
I hate doing clanks. But I remember hearing that the
Ruth Bader Ginsburg over Supreme Cut Purt Justice, did like
three minutes of planks every day and she was like
eighty And so when I hate this, I'm like Ruth
(47:16):
Bader Gibsburg who was so much older than me, and
she could do this, and I feel like I should
be able to do it too.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
What we are talking about here is weaponizing these social
comparisons to your benefit. Right we stumble into them, like,
don't wait to stumble into it, jump in there and
do it. And the quick flip side. I think we're
winding down here. Is It works the other way too.
(47:42):
If you find yourself coming across a case someone or
a group of people, tragedy has befallen them, and you
instantly interpret that as, oh my god, what if that
happens to me. I was just recently in DC, for example,
when the plane crash occurred. I actually flew in like
a half hour after that happened, and many people that
(48:06):
I was around were constant, really overcome with negativity because
they were thinking about, Oh my god, what if this
had happened to me? You can flip it right if
you don't want to feel that way. Oh my god,
how lucky am I that this didn't happen to me.
It's a very easy switch. So I'll say one more
(48:28):
thing fifteen seconds, and I'll throw it back to you.
A lot of people think that managing your emotions is hard.
It has to be hard. It sometimes is hard, but
it doesn't always have to be. There are lots and
lots of tools that we can use that make emotion
regulation easy. And I think the more you can familiarize
(48:52):
yourself with those easy to use, effortless shifts, and thank
you to you for helping share these things with the
world in your podcast. I think the happier we all
will be.
Speaker 1 (49:02):
So well, Ethan, thank you so much for helping us
figure out how we can use these social hacks to
shift our emotions. Speak for all the folks in the
room and listening at home, and say you're really feeling
like shifting is going to be a little bit easier.
I would like to thank you for all of
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