Nancy Etcoff on the surprising science of happiness

[PADillaLuiz]

pesquisadora cognitiva Nancy Etcoff analisa a felicidade — os meios que usamos para alcançá-la e aumentá-la, como está ligada à nossas circunstâncias reais, e seu surpreendente efeito em nossos corpos.

[vaidotas86]

MILF

[MutantBamHammer]

MILK

[dalindes]

There IS a word for taking happiness from the happiness of others (mentioned about 7:50 in)!

The word is: Compersion.

It hasn't made it into all the dictionaries yet, so let's get it there.

[Icc4rus]

I think happiness is achieved subconsciously, so if we try and see what makes us happy and try and do it and do it all the time and thinking about how we are going to be happy then we will never be happy. Don't try to be happy, feel happy.

[Scofield0085]

This was pointless. She was rambling.

[bentothetenthpower]

Your comment is pointless.

[ssips720]

this one was so fascinating!

[xlovenuggetx]

damn this was good.

[hottytoscotty23]

Metajoy for happiness in ones happiness

[xlovenuggetx]

are you saying what we humans perceive as happiness is as such?

[BartenderMix]

15:04 she's just pointing out the triangular relation of replication, not the triangular relation of love.

The triangular relation of love is

lust/pleasure/attraction

Fondness-friendship

and commitment.

[BartenderMix]

she seems to forget the amygdala reaction is part of genetics. Yes nurture does play a huge part in happiness, but the reaction and socialialization is an interaction. To say that genes do not play a part is nonsense, is not what a psychologist should say.

[BartenderMix]

7:32

3 emotions for which there are no words in the english language to describe. uhh, when you defined them, you gave them words.

fiero- pride in accomplishment/ forfillment in a task/ satisfaction in the task/ Flow

schadenfreude- satire

naches- supportive vicariousness

[JS25mac]

She meant singular words, but yeah I know what you mean.

[56jmoney]

8:00 - "most people are above average in happiness" .

Given that MOST ppl are above average... Wouldn't that raise the average, to make most people, idk, average in happiness?

[jdogatl]

Possibly not, if you are not assuming a weighted average. The average does not have to be 0. I think she is trying to say that most people are happy on a scale of unhappy-happy. -shrug-

[56jmoney]

alright... that would make sense. Most people are more happy than not... either that or most people are delusional ;)

I am curious, though... who here is happy with their life? I'd consider myself content... not overly happy and not depressed - I suppose I'd consider myself average on that sliding scale.

[nospacesallowed]

Or the people who say they are unhappy say they are really unhappy.

[doloppost]

If I could make a suggestion relating to the persuit of Happiness: read the Happiness Hypothesis from Christian Haidt, also a Tedster or check out his video. He has, I find, an approach thats more appealing to listen to.

[afthefragile]

And so the only way one can seem to socialise now is go out and get drunk with other people where you're too out of your consciousness to socialise.

Or you go on the internet or use txt messaging to communicate with others in where you're too alienated from the person you're communicating with to feel connected with them like you would if you were physically with the person.

Its this progressive diminishing of human social physical contact that i believe is making us less happy.

[Cakerolled]

RSMOKE POT DRINK ALCOHOL DROP ACID

[mastershake1000]

Just be happy and ignore everyone trying to put you down.

[austpom333]

Big tip here for happiness: dont take any drugs ( dont smoke, dont drink alcohol or any other drug, dont smoke tobaco or any other drug. Besides the other positive affects, you will recieve some ( not much ) respect.

[badboyfrvr]

How does not taking drugs make one have a happy life? :/

[austpom333]

self respect, health.

[badboyfrvr]

How does self respect make one happy?

How does taking drugs reduce your self respect?

Having a crappy health does not necessarily mean one will be sad.

Also, taking drugs doesn't always mean one's health will deteriorate. Moderate use of drugs will not affect one's health noticeably.

[BartenderMix]

I believe your response is suggesting a correlational one.

But it is important to note that when one's health deteriorates significantly, it does put a cost on other people and yourself.

[afthefragile]

cuz you're not dependent on the drug anymore to feel happy.

Its a very artificial happiness when you're drugged. There is no sense of satisfaction in there. Its just a form of escape.

[austpom333]

A lot of things that effect happines is out of our control: Jobs , Girl / Boyfriends, share market, Yer - peoples comments, other life events.

[david0aloha]

That's rather ironic, because those are all ideas that we've created. I disagree - I think we can easily gain control, but it involves detaching yourself from the environment we've created and reconnecting in other ways.

[afthefragile]

I do see where you're coming from. I believe we have lost our touch with nature over the past years. All this technology has alienated us from the nature. We demand things like cars, tv, internet and all while out level of human communication has been getting less intimate and elaborate.

Even a couple of years ago people used to constantly meet up at cafes and parks regularly to share ideas but now we've got internet forums and cellphones. The level of physical contact has greatly diminished.

[austpom333]

They say the best approach to life is to have the view that its "all fu...d any way"

[austpom333]

Freud was a nut

[afthefragile]

True. He took a very materialistic and objective view towards human behavior. Also a lot of his theories were used to back up the atrocities committed back in the early 20th century.

[56jmoney]

afthefragile - idk why you got thumbs down.

Just as Darwinism has been the basis of our capitalistic ideas including "survival of the fittest" which, if I may add, is destructive to society as a whole.

If we continue to believe in these philosophies, and continue to work against one another, I doubt we'll be around much longer as a species. Even some separate species "work together" because they know cooperation is essential to survival.

[afthefragile]

I'm not the biggest fan of Darwin but survival of the fittest is how nature works and i think we should accept this rather than fight it.

If everyone just looks after themselves, the world will be a better place. Society and cooperation will come naturally as we are social beings.

You can't fix humanity. What we see is the state of humanity and although its harsh its how nature works. You can't change it. Neither should you try to. That will only make it worse. Look at the war on terrorism.

[Paomnnehal]

Survival of the fittest is not just about who is stronger physically. Humans have cooperate very well for the past 100 000 something years, you give them too little credit.

[afthefragile]

I didn't mean survival of the fittest in the physical sense but more in the mental sense. The one who works the hardest goes the furthest. This is how it has worked all along.

The lazy, not very intelligent and not talented or skilled people are the ones towards the bottom of the pyramid. And i should mention i believe talent and skill needs to be developed through practice and hardwork or else its of no use.

So the ones who use their resources the best and work the hardest are at the top.

[newo82]

"The lazy, not very intelligent and not talented or skilled people are the ones towards the bottom of the pyramid"

Cant help but think of George Bush after reading that post.

[afthefragile]

He did work hard though to become the president. Though you he had a lot of resources at hand and i did mention it the ones who make the best use of their resources.

[MellumFellum]

Bush did work hard -- if he'd been totally lazy he couldn't have made it through campaigns -- but he didn't work a fraction as much as, say, a coal miner or dishwasher. Nor was he a particularly good resource manager; he has proven a mediocre executive at best. What he had above all was a lucky social context: wealth as raw material, and advisors to steer him toward power.

[MellumFellum]

You are also mistaken in claiming that the mentally 'fittest' do better than the mentally 'less fit.' Although that might be true if all else were equal (i.e., two people in idential social contexts would differ only with respect to their talent and drive), in our reality a better predictor of individual human 'fitness' is that very social context, i.e., upbringing, education, opportunity. In our social world, a below-average income is a much bigger hindrance than below-average skill, intellect.

[smkymcnugget420]

Survival of the fittest is how nature works, except when the richest and most powerful families on earth decide that they are the fittest to survive and work to exterminate the rest of the worlds population...did you know that Darwin & Francis Galton are first cousins... and Francis Galton is the founder of a little thing called Eugenics AKA creating the master race. AKA Hitler (except Hitler got his ideas from the USA, he just took it in a different direction)

[afthefragile]

Yup, i know that. Which is why i said i'm not a big fan of darwin. My argument was against equality which can never be achieved. There will always be social classes based on wealth. The rich, the poor and the middle classes. No one can change that.

Now there is an imbalance between these classes because a few have become too wealthy and powerful and are starting to rule the planet according to their plans.

[MellumFellum]

... Or are you trying to go back to the pre-Darwinian idea that evil is in that family line's genes? :)

It is likely that there will always be social classes. But that does not mean that the lowest class will always be so desperately poor that they are literally starving to death. Inequality will always exist, but that in no way prevents us from alleviating most suffering.

Evolution is not a ladder or a staircase toward perfection; it is opportunistic, short-sighted, and blundering.

[GregorJMendel]

Agree...we must not forget that Evolution is not followed by deterministic rules, it's just leads to improvement according to the micro-environment you are living in.

[MellumFellum]

The same thing can occur in nature, as environments change: what is fit in one environment can be horribly unfit in another, as shown by the dinosaurs.

Incidentally, Darwin was not an advocate of social 'Darwinism' (which is really based on Lamarckism) or eugenics (which is really pre-Darwinian ARTIFICIAL, not natural, selection). If your best way of attacking Darwin's character is to point out that he's first cousins with Galton, you're really scraping the bottom of the slander barrel here.

[MellumFellum]

"Survival of the fittest" is not how nature works, nor is it a scientific designation. It's an inaccurate metaphor invented by the sociologist Herbert Spencer, and misapplied to Darwin's theory, which is more correctly described as "survival of the fit." Natural selection is not about being 'perfect' or 'the best'; it's about being GOOD ENOUGH. This is why, for example, old age is so debilitating: selection doesn't care about ailments and flaws which don't directly impede simply being adequate.

[GregorJMendel]

Correct me if i;m wrong but the idea of the "survival of the fittest" was first adopted by Thomas Malthus (demograph and sociologist). But the right term is not survival of the fittest, because only a small percentage of the creatures would have chances of survival. The right term is" non-random-elimination"

[momentinpassing]

I think of it as evolution by default. After going through the wash of a variety of good and bad luck, whatever makes it through the reproductive hoop is part of the changing gene pool. In a way it is random if one doesn't believe in genuine choice. If everything is fated or predestined then it might as well be random because choice is only illusion and who does or doesn't survive was already destined perhaps infinite big bangs ago. Perhaps we're all just spectators duped into perceiving choice.

[GregorJMendel]

"Choice" is not a standing term in evolution, because it premises the existence of a selector, something that leads us to the theory of creationism, which sets God as the 'selector'. The most accepted term is: Non random elimination. Which means, the lesser adapted is not accepted by the 'laws' of nature. Also evolution is not pre-set by default, because nature is not a static system, on the opposite is something dynamic that changes all the time. So every time the parameters are different.

[momentinpassing]

The laws that govern the interaction/interplay of matter and energy are static, nature is merely an extension of those laws, and so I use the term default. It's redundant, fated. whatever. semantics.

[GregorJMendel]

My friend you are making a grave mistake right now...If was as simple as you are describing it, we would be able to create models that could predict with precision the reaction of each creature...Nature is the most multifactorial system...Just think of the randomness of weather and mutations. Determinism just doesn't fit in evolution

[momentinpassing]

It is projection of human insecurity into scientific theory to say that "if I cannot fully describe, model, and predict something, it must involve chance." It is a similar projection when physicists fly in the face of the law of conservation to imagine the universe is infinite. It must have an infinite history, but a finite sum of matter and energy. What exists must have always in some shape or form because neither can something come from nothing, nor can something become nothing.

[skliris80]

What you say is undoubtably correct, but the problem is that these laws apply to longer living organisms than us. What i mean is that, if we could survive for a million years we would be able to be discussing patterns through time, but for us, these string-theory level of default can only be translated as random dynamic changing...

[GregorJMendel]

Seems like I wasn't clear and you have a few right points in your statement. I didn't say that since we cannot parametrize something, is sheer chance and randomness. NO. I said that nature is a multifuctorial system. An open thermodynamic system (if you want me to speak in terms of physics) that involves a lot of different parameters; many of them not stable, and also involves a lot of stochastic events. So you can't describe evolution with deterministic notion.

[GregorJMendel]

Still, we are able to give a prediction, with a considerable amount of error, of which will be the fate of a creature in the evolutionary time, within a predefined environment.

[MellumFellum]

Although humans are evolved creatures, if we wish to survive in the long run, our only hope is to modify our evolutionary drives by cultivating reason over instinct, foresight over greed, and compassion over selfishness.

It is easy to change 'human nature' (which is at least as much socially constructed as it is genetic). In fact, if species had an unchangeable 'nature,' evolution would be impossible. The lesson of biology is that anything can change. All you need is time, and pressure.

[GregorJMendel]

And luck...not always pressure gives the desired effect...we have to take into account the plasticity of the behavior of the creature we want to study. Human apart from the genetic "locks" they have..they also have moral and social locks that keep them within norms...But still there are a lot of thing we can do

[xlovenuggetx]

well said.

[austpom333]

Test

[MovieMan14]

gross i would not attend a zoo ever!

[dabecc247]

Compersion is the word for experiencing pleasure or happiness in another's happiness/pleasure.

[Waranoa]

Compersion? That's not a real word is it?

[dabecc247]

U haz teh interwebs, yes? Google it...I didn't make it up :)

[Waranoa]

My internets tell me the following: "The feeling of joy associated with seeing a loved one love another; contrasted with jealousy"

This is not exactly the same as what you describe, which is normally known as compassion. In certain cases, sympathy is also used; I personally think 'compassion' is better suited for the specific sentiment you mention than 'sympathy', but for our capacity to feel what others feel, the term 'sympathy' is normally used I believe.

[dabecc247]

funny, my internets say:

"Compersion is a term used by practitioners of polyamory to describe the experience of taking pleasure that one's partner is experiencing pleasure, even if the source of their pleasure is other than yourself. The feeling may or may not be sexual. Quite often it's not."

It's not a big leap to take it from the poly context and use it in a broader context...at least, not for me. It's at least much closer than her claim there is NO word for the phenomenon.

[Waranoa]

polyamory is the practice of having romantic relationships with more than one person, I think that's what my internets meant as well. I'm not trying to convince you it's a wrong term, I just found it uncommon or unknown; anyway, her claim is indeed wrong; compassion and sympathy suffice as descriptors of our ability. There might not be a description for the sensation/emotion itself, but I don't think 'Compersion' will deliver: 'I was feel so compersed when that happened!' 'you felt *what*? LOL'

[dabecc247]

Haha, yeah, I get your drift ;) Polys would say, "I felt all frubbly when that happened", lol.

[ChillpointNews]

I think this kind of information is what a lot of people need to hear to understand their depression and sadness better, and by understandning they might be able to change. I say this as a person who's been fighting depression for over 9 years and I think this TEDtalk has helped me understand myself more than any psychiatrist has.

[misterwrightjos]

The dumber you are the happier you are some people need fear . If they don't have one they make it up.

[Inupiatun]

I like the last quote the best.

[1schwererziehbar1]

wow money isn#t a prime source of happyness. this observation has never been made before by any psychologists.

i bet you fucking dumbwits feel really enlightened now.

[1schwererziehbar1]

sure there is no danger in prozac. *facepalm*

[Undeterminable]

Did you listen to the whole thing? or did you just stop listening after that was said?

[1schwererziehbar1]

i posted the comment after that was said and listened to the rest then but it did not surprise me. the same old facts that have not only been scientifically shown for decades but also been discovered by philosophers many centuries ago are being sold as something new. and then all these dellusional idiots here think they are watching the smartest video ever and revel in their percieved wisdom. idiots who think they are the smartest persons around are a thing that really annoys the shit out of me.

[GaddingImp]

there's a difference between science and philosophy even if they say similar things. since you don't know that, you probably don't know much about either. no one is saying this is historically new, but yes it may be new material for some people. that's the whole point of repeating information. people discover the same information at different moments and from different sources. that's a good thing. so of course you're annoyed, you're acting selfish and pretentious. TED doesn't just serve you.

[mooxim]

not one of the best presented but certainly very interesting. I think she tried to fit too much in.

[Mrmoc7]

So self-absorption is the root of all unhappiness?

Mmmh, this might actually help me.

[MusicStudyMan]

It won't help me I'm fantastic already and thegbreatest perosn I know.... :o)

[mtgliquidations]

Okay for a general liberal-arts overview of different fields' scientific perspectives on happiness over the last 50 years; nothing really new, barely acknowledges Positive Psychology, and doesn't draw any significant conclusion.

More a slide show than meta-analysis; pretty timid. Surprised it actually made it on TED. Check out Tal Ben Shahar, Martin Seligman and Chris Peterson's work for significant, new, very worthwhile perspectives on Happiness.

[chairde]

I find her voice to be annoying.

[sirlanc]

Happiness in anothers happiness is Love

[simplybornhuman]

and SEX

[paulmercy]

What a brilliant and delightful observation - simplicity & truth so often go hand in hand.

[rstottjr2]

Unless that "Happiness" is from one man to another, in which case that "Love" is another word for SIN. I think far too many in the Good 'ol USA are getting their happiness from what Nancy Etcoff described as "Schadenfreude".

[phnixlady]

I am sorry, but those who say it is untethered to our circumstances are fooling themselves. Try living alone, having no career, having no way to travel, and having constant pain. Then smile!!

[jtoptimistic]

quadriplegic?(or something equally immobilizing? )

[sudiin]

I find it amazing that as a scientist, she fails to touch even once on the history of finding happiness in ourselves, as seen in the history and cultures of many of the various eastern 'religions' which are many millenia older than our 'modern' psychology. I also find very wrong to do away with each and every person who uses any kind of 'drug' with the statement "obliterate themselves". GG

All in all yes, psychology can be interesting, but there are 0% new 'ideas' in anything she says.

[rata0071]

how do you measure happiness? you ask them?

[romerojromero]

yup :P

[clearmenser]

The word for happiness in another's happiness is "compersion"

[tenisplayer]

purpose its the key of living. Happiness its the success or maintained a purpose, and its no for ever.

whats its your purpose?

[BFDK]

Great!

Happiness and its nature have always interested me, especially because of the western materialism in society.

[HiAdrian]

The "self" as defined in western culture is a bit of a fraud and unsatisfying partly because it has little effect on the material world. Like a gear without teeth that produces much noise and little motion beyond itself.

I admire that old systems like Taoism and Buddhism saw this, and i hope we inquire more into it.

I also think the eastern (non)attachment model is far more useful than the materialism vs spirituality model.

Great talk overall.

[Piitsi]

good talk it goes well with the Ted's flow talk - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi: Creativity, fulfillment and flow -

[paulmercy]

I just watched the Csikszentmihalyi talk - SO interesting. Thanks for the reference.

This talk touches clearly & rapidly on many concepts of happiness & invites the listener to explore specific areas in further detail. I've heard somewhere that English has more synonyms for happiness than any language (though I can't verify that). If it's true, it may explain our cultural preoccupation with Happiness™ - and the dubious quick-fix industry built around it.

[TheInvinciblePixel]

ProZach again?!...

[trylonperisphere]

"Can anyone tell which is the fake and the real smile on top here? Yeah, it's B"

Which is B? Fake or real? She doesn't say.

[Jahaison]

It's 'B', ya it's 'B'. She probably doesn't even know herself and wasn't expecting anyone to answer.

[HiAdrian]

A = fake.

[bentinho]

B is real

[Joerexia]

YouTube comments = enlightened discourse

[killintymm]

congrats

[BaileysBeads]

Good job man.

[comicool]

yeh dude, good on you!

[devourerofbabies]

Dude you got first that's awesome lol

[dackjaniels555]

Well done!

[pinochska]

bombastic!

[darkkiwirichard]

You made me proud being human

[pookiehohn]

CONGRADULATIONS!