The Top 10 Insights from the “Science of a Meaningful Life” in 2020. Part I

Our team names the most provocative and influential findings published during this past year.

In 2020, the study of well-being took on new meaning. The COVID-19 pandemic created a mental health crisis that is affecting people in all corners of the globe. In the United States, Americans have faced intense political polarization and a reckoning around racial justice. Many of us are left wondering how we can move forward toward a better future.

As the year rolled on, some well-being researchers were quick to turn their lens on the pandemic itself, tracking how people were doing and testing ways to help us cope better. Others continued to study how we can connect, bridge our differences, and build more just communities.

This year’s top insights speak to the moment, from concrete tips about how to bond with a friend to broader truths about how societies respond to diversity over time. All of them point toward strengths and solutions amid isolation, illness, and conflict. The final insights were selected by experts on our staff, after soliciting nominations from our network of more than 300 researchers. We hope they remind you how we’re all connected—and perhaps bring you a little bit of hope.

Rich and varied experiences may be an overlooked key to a good life

When we strive for a good life, what are we actually seeking?

“Happiness” is the simple answer for many people. In general, we want to feel satisfied with life, and experience more pleasantness than unpleasantness. We also strive for meaning and purpose—the sense that we matter, belong, and are engaged in service to something beyond ourselves.

Until now, psychological science has been focused on these three dimensions of well-being, which are technically called “evaluative” (satisfaction with our lives), “hedonic” (positive and negative feelings), and “eudaimonic” (meaning in life). 

Now, researchers led by the University of Virginia’s Shigehiro Oishi have proposed another dimension of well-being that has not been carefully studied yet: psychological richness.

Psychological richness involves having new, interesting experiences that promote curiosity or transform how you think. People with psychologically rich lives experience more intense emotions—positive and negative—and are more open to novelty and uncertainty. They might choose to live abroad, seek awe in nature, or explore complex intellectual problems. In contrast, the researchers suggest, happy or meaningful lives can be more routine, and possibly even boring.

In their paper, published in Affective Science, the researchers asked people from nine countries to journal freely about their ideal life. Then, the researchers asked them to analyze it: How happy, meaningful, or psychologically rich was it? The ideal life they envisioned tended to be very happy and meaningful, but also moderately eventful, interesting, and surprising—in other words, psychologically rich.

When people were forced to choose between the three types of ideal lives, most chose a happy or meaningful life—but 7-17% of people chose a psychologically rich life.

To get another window into people’s greatest aspirations for their life, the researchers surveyed people from the United States and Korea about their biggest regret. Here, 28% of Americans and 35% of Koreans said their lives would be psychologically richer (rather than happier or more meaningful) if they could undo this regret, suggesting that psychological richness is a dominant life goal for them.

These studies offer clues about a key value we hold that may not be captured by common conceptions of happiness or meaning—it has more to do with adventurous and thrilling experiences. “Taking the psychologically rich life seriously will deepen, broaden, and, yes, enrichen our understanding of well-being,” the researchers write.

If you want to connect with someone, call rather than text

As the pandemic isolates us from loved ones, many of us are trying to stay connected through texting, email, and social media, even taking the opportunity to reconnect with long-lost friends.

But if our goal is to feel closer to people and enjoy our conversations more, we’re best off picking up the phone, according to a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. There seems to be something special about hearing another’s voice that makes for more satisfying social interactions.

In the study, participants imagined having a conversation with a friend they hadn’t been in touch with for at least two years and made predictions about how it would feel to connect by phone versus email.

After being randomly assigned to connect with their old friend via phone or email, they reported back on the experience. Though most people thought talking by phone would be more uncomfortable, those who spoke on the phone were happier with the exchange, felt closer to the other person, and felt no more uncomfortable than those who’d emailed—even if they had preferred to email.

“We think it’s going to be awkward to talk to somebody, but that just turns out not to be the case,” says lead author Amit Kumar. “Instead . . . people form significantly stronger bonds when they’re talking on the phone than when communicating over email.”

The same result held true when the researchers had participants do a conversation exercise with strangers using either video chatting, audio-only chatting, or text-chatting. People who used media that included the voice had more satisfying exchanges and felt closer to their new acquaintance than the text-chatters.

Why? Likely it’s because our voices communicate a wide range of emotions, helping others to read us better and to feel like they really know us. Hearing someone’s voice enhances our empathy for them, too—in some cases, even more than video chatting.

So, while texting can be useful, it’s not the best way to get the most out of socializing. If we’re looking for greater happiness and connection, we should give someone a call.

Acting like an extravert can make you happier

 

Forty years of research has found that introverts tend to experience less frequent positive emotions than extraverts. Does that mean they’re doomed to be less happy than their bubbly, loquacious counterparts?

Not necessarily. In fact, a paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General suggests that anyone can experience some of the benefits of being an extravert. All you have to do is act like one.

Researchers Seth Margolis and Sonja Lyubomirsky asked 131 undergraduate students, mostly Asian and Latino, to spend one week behaving like an extravert and one week behaving like an introvert (or vice versa). Acting like an extravert meant being talkative, assertive, and spontaneous, while acting like an introvert meant being deliberate, quiet, and reserved.

Based on surveys the students completed every few days, they experienced more positive emotions and felt more connected to others, competent, autonomous, and in “flow” during the extravert week compared to the introvert week.

This was true of both introverts and extraverts alike (although in the one previous study where people acted extraverted for a week, introverts didn’t benefit as much). The relationship was even stronger for people who wanted to be more extraverted, and for Latino students—perhaps, the researchers speculate, because extraversion is valued more in their culture.

As an introvert, you might object to the implication that to be happier, you shouldn’t be yourself. But the researchers take a more flexible view of personality and behavior than that. Research suggests that our personality can change over time, and how introverted or extraverted we act can vary week to week. Although introverts usually don’t believe acting extraverted will make them happier, it usually does.

At the very least, it can be something to experiment with—the same way you might try gratitude journaling even though you aren’t naturally very grateful. You don’t have to be the life of the party or spend all your free time on Zoom; you just have to try expressing yourself and engaging more with others.

After all, many extraverted behaviors involve connection—and research suggests that relationships are one of the most fundamental keys to happiness.

Cooperating with each other may encourage kids to work harder

 

It’s a message many kids get from the time they’re young: If they want to succeed in life, they need to look out for themselves.

But in January, a study published in Psychological Science challenged that conventional wisdom, suggesting that kids are more likely to achieve a goal if they know that someone else is relying on them.

In the study, researchers had two five- or six-year-old children meet and do a shared task before separating them into different rooms. Then, before leaving the room, the researcher left a cookie in front of each child and told them they’d get two cookies if they could resist eating the first one. In some cases, the children were told that they and the other child both needed to resist the cookie to get the bigger reward.

The researchers found that kids who were cooperating to earn the reward were able to resist longer than those who only had to think about themselves—even though counting on another child meant less chance for reward.

“In situations where individuals mutually rely on one another, they may be more willing to work harder in all kinds of social domains,” says Sebastian Grueneisen, a coauthor of the study.

Interestingly, the kids in this study came from two very distinct cultures—the Western democracy of Germany and a small farming community in Kenya—with different values around independence and interdependence. This suggests that cooperation may be universally motivating when it comes to delaying personal gratification.

Given that resisting temptation is a vital skill across so many situations in life—from persevering at school to avoiding addictions—these findings suggest we should encourage kids to work together cooperatively more, for the benefit of all.

Source: https://bit.ly/3rdBPzW

About Authors

Kira M. Newman is the managing editor of Greater Good. Her work has been published in outlets including the Washington Post, Mindful magazine, Social Media Monthly, and Tech.co, and she is the co-editor of The Gratitude Project.

Jill Suttie, Psy.D., is Greater Good’s former book review editor and now serves as a staff writer and contributing editor for the magazine. She received her doctorate of psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1998 and was a psychologist in private practice before coming to Greater Good.

Jeremy Adam Smith edits the GGSC’s online magazine, Greater Good. He is also the author or coeditor of five books, including The Daddy Shift, Are We Born Racist?, and (most recently) The Gratitude Project: How the Science of Thankfulness Can Rewire Our Brains for Resilience, Optimism, and the Greater Good. Before joining the GGSC, Jeremy was a John S. Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. 

Emiliana R. Simon-Thomas, Ph.D., is the science director of the Greater Good Science Center, where she oversees the GGSC’s fellowship program and serves co-instructor of its Science of Happiness online course.

Elizabeth Svoboda is a writer in San Jose, CA, and a regular contributor to Greater Good. She is the author of What Makes a Hero?: The Surprising Science of Selflessness. Her newest book, for kids, is The Life Heroic.