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Happiness, 5.11 (V) Week 5 Video 8 - Process (vs. Outcome) as a Source of Happiness

[MUSIC] Hi there, my friend. So good to see you again. I have to tell you something. I think my neighbor is stalking me. She's been Googling my name on her computer, you know how I know? Because I saw it with my own two eyes. I was watching her through my telescope last night. [SOUND] » [LAUGH] » Last video we saw how most of us tether our happiness to outcomes even though a case could be made that we shouldn't be doing this since. We really don't have the wisdom to figure out all of the downstream consequences triggered by outcomes. At the same time, we also saw how de-linking happiness from outcomes like the old man and the GTBTWK story that raises some concerns. Including this one, which is the one that I wanna focus on in this video. If not for outcomes, on what ends can we depend on for our happiness? That's a great question, and to answer it, allow me to ask you a question of my own. Imagine that you are in an unfamiliar city for some work. After you finish with your work, you get into your rental car and you're driving, on your way to your hotel, your GPS tells you that you can take one of two routes. Taking the shorter route, let's call this route A, will get you to your hotel in 30 minutes. Taking this route however will involve idling for about ten minutes at a construction site. For these ten minutes you'll have no option but to sit in your car doing nothing. Taking the longer route, let's call this route B, will not involve any idling. However, it will involve driving for a longer duration. Forty minutes in all to reach the hotel. So your two options are route A which involves a 30 minute drive enduring ten minutes of idling time, or route B, which involves a 40 minute drive with no idling time. Which route would you prefer? From a purely economic perspective, that is in terms of time and effort involved, route A is clearly better than route B. However, from a psychological perspective, it's not clear which route is better. If time spent idling, doing nothing is aversive to you, then route B may be more appealing, even though it is a longer route. Indeed, when I pose this type of question to my students, generally speaking, most of them prefer route B to route A. One time I found out that 78% of the students preferred route B to route A. Chris Hsee, who is a professor at the University of Chicago, and his colleagues referred to people's aversion for doing nothing as the need to be busy. In one study, they asked participants to fill out a survey, then they told participants to drop the survey off at another location. Participants were given the option of dropping it off either at a nearby location which would involve a 2 to 3 minute round trip, or at a faraway location which would involve a 12 to 15 minute round trip. Participants were told that after dropping the survey, they would have to return back to the experimental room and wait out the remainder of the time. That is, participants understood that if they chose the nearby location, they would spend more time doing nothing after they returned. If they chose the far away location, they would spend less time doing nothing but they would have to spend more energy walking to and from the drop-off location. For reasons that will become clear shortly, participants were also told that as a token of appreciation for completing the survey, they would be given a piece of candy at the drop-off location. In addition to telling participants that they could drop this survey off at the nearby location or the far away location, the experimenters also told one set of participants that they would get the same candy, dark chocolate let's say, regardless of which drop-off location they chose. Another set of participants, by contrast, were told, that they would get one type of candy, let's say dark chocolate, if they chose the nearby location, and another type of candy, say white chocolate, if they chose the far away location. So in other words, participants in this different candy condition had some justification for choosing the following location. Walking the longer distance would give them an opportunity to consume a different type of candy. What do you think the researchers in the study found? Here's what the findings showed. The participants' preference depended on whether they had justification for walking to the far-away location. Among participants who were told that they would get the same candy regardless of where they dropped off the survey, only 32% chose the far-away location. But in the other condition, the condition where the participants were told they could choose a totally different candy if they dropped the survey at that location, that far away location almost double that proportion, 59% chose the faraway location. So other spends who had some reason, even if it was only a trivial one, for walking a longer distance preferred being busy to being idle. In a formal study, conducted by the same researchers, participants were forced, this time, to drop the survey off that they had just completed at either the nearby location or the far away location, and then they had to come back to the experimental room and wait out the rest of the duration. Then, while they were waiting, they were asked to report how happy they were. The finding showed the participants who had been forced to be busy, these were the participants who had asked to drop the survey off at the faraway location, were happier than the participants who were not busy. What these findings tell you, is that people are happier being busy than being idle. Of course people may not be happy if they're kept busy for business sake, as we saw from our first study. It seems that people need a reason to be busy. However, so long as they have reason, even it's a relatively flimsy one like getting a different candy, they prefer being busy. Of course, if the reason for being busy is not a flimsy one but actually a meaningful one, so much the better. Results from our clever set of studies by Dan Ariely, the behavioral economist from Duke, whom we encountered earlier in week two and his colleagues showed this. In one study, what Dan and his colleagues did was ask a bunch of participants to assemble pieces of a lego set that eventually took the shape of a bionicle. Each time, the participants assembled a bionicle, they were paid some money for it, but the amount that they were paid got progressively lower over time. For the first bionicle, they were paid two dollars. For the second, they were paid $1.89. For the third, $1.78 and so on. Some of the participants were told that the bionicles that they had assembled would be given away as toys to children. These participants were thus made to feel that assembling the bionicle was a meaningful activity. It would make some kids happy. Other participants, by contrast, were told that the bionicles that they assembled would be disassembled so that other future participants could assemble them. These participants felt that assembling the bionicles was really a meaningless activity. Dan and his colleagues were interested in whether being meaningfully busy would make a difference to the number of bionicles that the participants assembled, and it did. On average, those in the meaningful condition, assembled two and a half more bionicles than those in the meaningless condition. These findings probably don't really surprise you since they are entirely consistent with what Professor Hsee and his colleagues have found in studies of flow. As you might remember, flow has a lot to do with doing something meaningful and what we saw was that doing something meaningful engaged in flow activity which we find meaningful makes us happy. So where does this leave us? The fact that we're happier when we're busy than when we're not particularly when we are engaged in something meaningful suggests that we don't need to depend on outcomes for happiness. We could derive all of our happiness from the process of working towards our goals. We could for example, derive happiness from preparing for an exam or from planning for a vacation. That is, even if we don't eventually pass the exam, or go on the vacation, we could derive a significant amount of happiness from working towards these outcomes. So the first concern with de-linking happiness from outcomes, the concern that we would never be happy again is, it turns out, not really valid. We could still be happy so long as we're engaged in meaningful pursuits, but that still leaves the second concern with de-linking happiness from outcomes, the concern that we wouldn't know which outcomes to pursue if we're totally indifferent among or between outcomes. How valid is this concern? That's what we're gonna find out in the next video. Hasta la vista, till then. Bye, bye. [MUSIC]


[MUSIC] Hi there, my friend. So good to see you again. I have to tell you something. I think my neighbor is stalking me. She's been Googling my name on her computer, you know how I know? Because I saw it with my own two eyes. I was watching her through my telescope last night. [SOUND] » [LAUGH] » Last video we saw how most of us tether our happiness to outcomes even though a case could be made that we shouldn't be doing this since. We really don't have the wisdom to figure out all of the downstream consequences triggered by outcomes. At the same time, we also saw how de-linking happiness from outcomes like the old man and the GTBTWK story that raises some concerns. Including this one, which is the one that I wanna focus on in this video. If not for outcomes, on what ends can we depend on for our happiness? That's a great question, and to answer it, allow me to ask you a question of my own. Imagine that you are in an unfamiliar city for some work. After you finish with your work, you get into your rental car and you're driving, on your way to your hotel, your GPS tells you that you can take one of two routes. Taking the shorter route, let's call this route A, will get you to your hotel in 30 minutes. Taking this route however will involve idling for about ten minutes at a construction site. For these ten minutes you'll have no option but to sit in your car doing nothing. Taking the longer route, let's call this route B, will not involve any idling. However, it will involve driving for a longer duration. Forty minutes in all to reach the hotel. So your two options are route A which involves a 30 minute drive enduring ten minutes of idling time, or route B, which involves a 40 minute drive with no idling time. Which route would you prefer? From a purely economic perspective, that is in terms of time and effort involved, route A is clearly better than route B. However, from a psychological perspective, it's not clear which route is better. If time spent idling, doing nothing is aversive to you, then route B may be more appealing, even though it is a longer route. Indeed, when I pose this type of question to my students, generally speaking, most of them prefer route B to route A. One time I found out that 78% of the students preferred route B to route A. Chris Hsee, who is a professor at the University of Chicago, and his colleagues referred to people's aversion for doing nothing as the need to be busy. In one study, they asked participants to fill out a survey, then they told participants to drop the survey off at another location. Participants were given the option of dropping it off either at a nearby location which would involve a 2 to 3 minute round trip, or at a faraway location which would involve a 12 to 15 minute round trip. Participants were told that after dropping the survey, they would have to return back to the experimental room and wait out the remainder of the time. That is, participants understood that if they chose the nearby location, they would spend more time doing nothing after they returned. If they chose the far away location, they would spend less time doing nothing but they would have to spend more energy walking to and from the drop-off location. For reasons that will become clear shortly, participants were also told that as a token of appreciation for completing the survey, they would be given a piece of candy at the drop-off location. In addition to telling participants that they could drop this survey off at the nearby location or the far away location, the experimenters also told one set of participants that they would get the same candy, dark chocolate let's say, regardless of which drop-off location they chose. Another set of participants, by contrast, were told, that they would get one type of candy, let's say dark chocolate, if they chose the nearby location, and another type of candy, say white chocolate, if they chose the far away location. So in other words, participants in this different candy condition had some justification for choosing the following location. Walking the longer distance would give them an opportunity to consume a different type of candy. What do you think the researchers in the study found? Here's what the findings showed. The participants' preference depended on whether they had justification for walking to the far-away location. Among participants who were told that they would get the same candy regardless of where they dropped off the survey, only 32% chose the far-away location. But in the other condition, the condition where the participants were told they could choose a totally different candy if they dropped the survey at that location, that far away location almost double that proportion, 59% chose the faraway location. So other spends who had some reason, even if it was only a trivial one, for walking a longer distance preferred being busy to being idle. In a formal study, conducted by the same researchers, participants were forced, this time, to drop the survey off that they had just completed at either the nearby location or the far away location, and then they had to come back to the experimental room and wait out the rest of the duration. Then, while they were waiting, they were asked to report how happy they were. The finding showed the participants who had been forced to be busy, these were the participants who had asked to drop the survey off at the faraway location, were happier than the participants who were not busy. What these findings tell you, is that people are happier being busy than being idle. Of course people may not be happy if they're kept busy for business sake, as we saw from our first study. It seems that people need a reason to be busy. However, so long as they have reason, even it's a relatively flimsy one like getting a different candy, they prefer being busy. Of course, if the reason for being busy is not a flimsy one but actually a meaningful one, so much the better. Results from our clever set of studies by Dan Ariely, the behavioral economist from Duke, whom we encountered earlier in week two and his colleagues showed this. In one study, what Dan and his colleagues did was ask a bunch of participants to assemble pieces of a lego set that eventually took the shape of a bionicle. Each time, the participants assembled a bionicle, they were paid some money for it, but the amount that they were paid got progressively lower over time. For the first bionicle, they were paid two dollars. For the second, they were paid $1.89. For the third, $1.78 and so on. Some of the participants were told that the bionicles that they had assembled would be given away as toys to children. These participants were thus made to feel that assembling the bionicle was a meaningful activity. It would make some kids happy. Other participants, by contrast, were told that the bionicles that they assembled would be disassembled so that other future participants could assemble them. These participants felt that assembling the bionicles was really a meaningless activity. Dan and his colleagues were interested in whether being meaningfully busy would make a difference to the number of bionicles that the participants assembled, and it did. On average, those in the meaningful condition, assembled two and a half more bionicles than those in the meaningless condition. These findings probably don't really surprise you since they are entirely consistent with what Professor Hsee and his colleagues have found in studies of flow. As you might remember, flow has a lot to do with doing something meaningful and what we saw was that doing something meaningful engaged in flow activity which we find meaningful makes us happy. So where does this leave us? The fact that we're happier when we're busy than when we're not particularly when we are engaged in something meaningful suggests that we don't need to depend on outcomes for happiness. We could derive all of our happiness from the process of working towards our goals. We could for example, derive happiness from preparing for an exam or from planning for a vacation. That is, even if we don't eventually pass the exam, or go on the vacation, we could derive a significant amount of happiness from working towards these outcomes. So the first concern with de-linking happiness from outcomes, the concern that we would never be happy again is, it turns out, not really valid. We could still be happy so long as we're engaged in meaningful pursuits, but that still leaves the second concern with de-linking happiness from outcomes, the concern that we wouldn't know which outcomes to pursue if we're totally indifferent among or between outcomes. How valid is this concern? That's what we're gonna find out in the next video. Hasta la vista, till then. Bye, bye. [MUSIC]