The Psychology of Happiness | Dr. Laurie Santos

About this episode

Dr. Laurie Santos discusses the misconceptions about happiness and shares evidence-based strategies for achieving well-being.

Why do we keep chasing happiness in ways that don't actually work? Dr. Laurie Santos is a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Yale, where she created the most popular course in the university's 300-year history, the Science of Well-Being . Since then, that course has reached millions of people around the world, and her podcast, The Happiness Lab , has become one of the most trusted resources on the science of living well. In this conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais, Laurie pulls back the curtain on why our minds so reliably get happiness wrong, and what we can do about it. The conversation starts with a sobering look at the student mental health crisis: more than 40% of college students report being too depressed to function, more than 60% report overwhelming anxiety. Laurie saw it firsthand at Yale, and it launched her on a mission to translate happiness research into practical tools that actually work. She explains why the things we predict will make us happy – more money, more success, more achievement – don't deliver the boost we expect, or the lasting satisfaction we hope for. She digs into the science of social comparison, why our brains default to the…

People in this episode

Host: Michael Gervais

Guest: Dr Laurie Santos

Topics covered

• happiness
• mental health
• psychology
• well-being
• social comparison

Keywords

• cognitive science
• Yale
• Science of Well-Being
• Happiness Lab
• student mental health crisis

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: The Psychology of Happiness, the Science of Well-Being, The Happiness Lab

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