Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff mom never told you?
Speaker 1: From House Towards dot Com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: This is Molly and I'm Kristin and Kristin they we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk about happiness. So I wanted to stay in
Speaker 1: a good mood. But I do have a small confession
Speaker 1: to make to you. Okay, sometimes when I am in
Speaker 1: the vicinity of your home, which I know where it is,
Speaker 1: but I won't stay on the podcast. Thank you, Molly.
Speaker 1: I'm compelled to like Robert, to like Robert and to
Speaker 1: rob your house. There's one thing that I would want
Speaker 1: to take from your house if I could. I think
Speaker 1: I know what that is, Molly, because the last time
Speaker 1: you were at my house you tried to steal it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's this year book picture of Kristen. It's the most
Speaker 1: adorable photo ever because I was an adorable child. But
Speaker 1: she's wasn't third grade, no, Molly, that was thin. That
Speaker 1: was um K four. Okay, so she's around that age.
Speaker 1: She's young and cute, and she just got the biggest
Speaker 1: screen you could possibly imagine. Yeah, I was really proud
Speaker 1: of myself at that phase because I just lost both
Speaker 1: my front teeth, and I had a rock and mullet,
Speaker 1: and I was wearing my favorite T shirt dress if
Speaker 1: my mom had made me with matching bow, and that
Speaker 1: picture was taken right after playtime as well, so I
Speaker 1: I was just as happy as it could be. A
Speaker 1: rainy to go. Yeah, it's it's the kind of photo
Speaker 1: that I would want to, like try and sell to
Speaker 1: an photo agency because they could use it as the
Speaker 1: stereotypical happy child. Whereas my yearbook photos, the smiles a
Speaker 1: little bit more forced. I'm usually caught off guard by
Speaker 1: the photographer. It's doesn't capture my true happy essence. Well, Molly, um,
Speaker 1: researchers have been doing a lot of investigation into how
Speaker 1: much your smile reflects authentic happiness. Did you know, because
Speaker 1: right now the science of happiness is exploding. It started
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen nineties with a guy named Martin Seligmann,
Speaker 1: who is the former president of the American Psychological Association,
Speaker 1: and he decided that instead of figuring out why people
Speaker 1: become depressed and looking so much at these negative emotions,
Speaker 1: why not find out more about happiness and what makes
Speaker 1: us happy and what are the what are the characteristics
Speaker 1: shared among the happiest people. So we have this new branch,
Speaker 1: relatively new branch of psychology called positive psychology that really
Speaker 1: focuses on the science of happiness. Um. And they pay
Speaker 1: a lot of attention to smiles. You've run across some
Speaker 1: of these studies, right, Molly. Yeah. I found this study
Speaker 1: recently about you know, they basically go back to these
Speaker 1: yearbook They're going to go back and look at adorable
Speaker 1: little Kristen and semi for smiling little Molly, and they
Speaker 1: might look at us in like twenty years and see
Speaker 1: if we're still married. They're saying that, you know, your
Speaker 1: marriage can predict your I mean, your smile can predict
Speaker 1: your marital success, which is a lot of eight to
Speaker 1: put on like a five year old child. I really
Speaker 1: hope one day to say to my kid, better smile
Speaker 1: or you're getting divorced. That's life lesson there, Molly, that
Speaker 1: you'll impart to your children. Um. Yeah. Speaking of these
Speaker 1: smile studies, there was there was one that I found
Speaker 1: that tracked a hundred and forty one high school seniors
Speaker 1: into middle age. And I think these were all uh,
Speaker 1: female students, and they characterized the smiles and the photographs
Speaker 1: is either do Shane smiles which are caused by more
Speaker 1: muscle contractions and reflect authentic joy supposedly like Kristen's photo,
Speaker 1: like my photo, I was just a Douchhane child, um,
Speaker 1: whereas Molly probably had more of a Pan American smile,
Speaker 1: which is a little more rigid and pose, not little forced,
Speaker 1: little forced Molly so um. In the study they found
Speaker 1: that down the road, the study found that the dou
Speaker 1: Shane smilers reported more of life satisfaction and had more
Speaker 1: marital relationship success than the Pan American smiles, which I say,
Speaker 1: take it or leave it. I mean, you know that's
Speaker 1: you can read your book. Photo really really predict that much. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the thing about studying happiness in general is it's
Speaker 1: so subjective. You know. The best they can say is that,
Speaker 1: you know, if you smile authentically when you're a child,
Speaker 1: it just means that you might be a happier person overall,
Speaker 1: which means that once you get married, you might be
Speaker 1: more willing to work it out, have a positive outlook
Speaker 1: on your marriage. So it's it's a lot of sort
Speaker 1: of gross generalizations. In my opinion. But you can't deny
Speaker 1: that everyone's studying happiness. Who can get a grant to
Speaker 1: do so. They're studying whether certain cultures are happier, whether
Speaker 1: you know, certain ages are happier. And of course this
Speaker 1: comes down to one of the biggest differences of all
Speaker 1: and that's why we're going to discuss it today. Are
Speaker 1: men or women happier? And Uh, there were a lot
Speaker 1: of large scale happiness studies that have been going on,
Speaker 1: like you mentioned global studies. UH. For instance, Um, there's
Speaker 1: this thing called the UH I think it's the World
Speaker 1: Happiness Map that has mapped out happiest places in the world.
Speaker 1: Denmark is is number one. I don't know why, but
Speaker 1: they are. So maybe I'm gonna go to Denmark for
Speaker 1: my next vacation. Um. And they've broken down these all
Speaker 1: this data into male and female trends. And overall, in
Speaker 1: a lot of these large scale surveys, as a group,
Speaker 1: women come out on top a little bit, a little
Speaker 1: bit more happy. Yeah. Um. And this is based on
Speaker 1: the Pew Global Attitudes Project that surveyed thousand men and
Speaker 1: women across forty four countries and the Nielsen Happiness Survey
Speaker 1: that was conducted in fifty one countries, but mollly once
Speaker 1: we start breaking those groups down into different age groups
Speaker 1: and different nationalities, some differences do emerge. Correct right, women
Speaker 1: from certain countries, including kind of surprisingly to US, Pakistan, Japan,
Speaker 1: and Argentina are much much happier than the men living there.
Speaker 1: It seems like the women in these surveys tended to
Speaker 1: focus more on personal and domestic issues that they might
Speaker 1: have more control over. Right where they're saying, the men
Speaker 1: are just burdened by the weight of the world, and
Speaker 1: they look out and there's you know, their a wars,
Speaker 1: there's a recession, and that weighs more heavily on the men,
Speaker 1: whereas women are just worried about grocery shopping. But see then,
Speaker 1: once you kind of flip that and take these sort
Speaker 1: of ideas about what men and women are preoccupied with
Speaker 1: and take it to the United States, that's where the
Speaker 1: women don't hold up quite as well. University of Pennsylvania
Speaker 1: researchers in two thousand and eight found that American women
Speaker 1: today aren't as happy as they were thirty years ago.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of surprising when you look at
Speaker 1: happiness data for Americans in general, because We've been doing
Speaker 1: these kind of surveys since about nineteen seventy nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 1: and Americans happiness level has been just pretty much flat line.
Speaker 1: We haven't We're about as happy as we were thirty
Speaker 1: years ago, supposedly, but women aren't as doing quite as well.
Speaker 1: And like you said, it's it's pretty surprising because think
Speaker 1: of all the things that women have accomplished in the
Speaker 1: past thirty years. You know, we've got a lot more
Speaker 1: women in the workplace, which seems to indicate that women
Speaker 1: have more license to sort of follow their dreams, have
Speaker 1: a career beyond equal footing with men that you know,
Speaker 1: they're not just sitting at home raising children. Uh. And
Speaker 1: so some you know, in my mind kind of snotty
Speaker 1: researchers are saying, you know, those fifty stereotypical housewives didn't
Speaker 1: know what they're missing. They were kind of blindly happy,
Speaker 1: and now that women are getting out in the workforce
Speaker 1: and having dreams come true or not come true, they're
Speaker 1: they're less happy. Basically, Yeah, the horizons are broadened, so
Speaker 1: you have more of an idea of what you don't
Speaker 1: have right than you know, a more limited sphere of
Speaker 1: things that you can control. The University of Pennsylvania researchers
Speaker 1: equated this shift in mood or happiness of women American
Speaker 1: women UM to a nation that has gone from a
Speaker 1: four percent to twelve point five percent unemployment rate. It's
Speaker 1: that same kind of drop morale, and it's not just
Speaker 1: you know, the University of Pennsylvania. Maybe they're just you know, unhappy,
Speaker 1: But they found the same thing at Princeton, so maybe
Speaker 1: the whole Northeast is unhappy. But basically, what Princeton did
Speaker 1: was they looked at common activities like gardening and watching television,
Speaker 1: things that should make you happy, um, versus things that
Speaker 1: you just sort of have to do, like paying bills,
Speaker 1: household chores, and it seemed that women were spending more
Speaker 1: time on the ungratifying task, about ninety more minutes than
Speaker 1: men on average. So some researchers say that this might
Speaker 1: reflect more still, the second shift idea that women have
Speaker 1: to work that's very gratifying to them. They go off
Speaker 1: to work, they might be happy with that, but then
Speaker 1: they've got to come home and have this second job
Speaker 1: taking care of the house, whereas men have been able
Speaker 1: to sort of just stay with the same level of housework, job,
Speaker 1: sitting in from the television, and mollly if you if
Speaker 1: you look at this research broken out into the different
Speaker 1: activities that men and women are doing. I think it
Speaker 1: also reflects the impact of the aging humor population. A
Speaker 1: lot of these women are now having to not only
Speaker 1: come home and possibly care for children, but they're also
Speaker 1: having to care for aging parents. There is a pretty
Speaker 1: stark contrast between the enjoyment level of from between men
Speaker 1: and women of having spending time with their parents. Percent
Speaker 1: of women found time with parents as being more burdensome
Speaker 1: and more of a chore, whereas when the seven percent
Speaker 1: of men found it to be enjoyable. Unenjoyable in this
Speaker 1: in this survey because they're less likely to be the
Speaker 1: main caregiver so they can go over watch television, hang out,
Speaker 1: Whereas if a woman goes over, she might be more
Speaker 1: likely to be paying all their bills, um, you know,
Speaker 1: arranging medications for the week. And so what this research
Speaker 1: really kind of indicates is that women have a lot
Speaker 1: more staff to juggle, a lot more like, yes, they
Speaker 1: have this new career that might be fulfilling, but it's
Speaker 1: a ball in the air with all these other balls
Speaker 1: exactly um, and when you break down specific age groups
Speaker 1: of women, there is yet another interesting trend that emerges
Speaker 1: because at for ears, when we're younger and Molly, you
Speaker 1: and I are in our mid twenties right now, if
Speaker 1: we average it all out, we are going to be
Speaker 1: probably happier than men at this age. And hooray, hooray, yeah,
Speaker 1: which I mean it's a pretty generalized statement, but the
Speaker 1: thinking behind that is women are more apt in their
Speaker 1: younger years to get things that they'll find more fulfilling,
Speaker 1: such as, you know, finding mate and settling down, starting
Speaker 1: a family, building a home, whereas men are at the
Speaker 1: bottom of their career ladders and having to slowly, painfully
Speaker 1: climb up it and try to make more and more money.
Speaker 1: Which I don't know that I buy that completely, but
Speaker 1: that is the general logic behind it. But there's a
Speaker 1: study in the Journal of Happiness Studies that established forty
Speaker 1: eight at the age of forty eight when men's happiness
Speaker 1: actually starts to overtake women's happiness. And so while women
Speaker 1: are on this downward slope, the men and then the
Speaker 1: meantime have gotten into management positions. Life is just gonna
Speaker 1: long And then to even add to their happiness at
Speaker 1: age sixty four, men appreciate their families even more than women. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like they're finally at the top of their careers.
Speaker 1: They can kind of kick back. Hopefully they've saved up
Speaker 1: for retirement and now they can really start looking around
Speaker 1: them and saying, hey, look at my beautiful family, look
Speaker 1: at maybe my young, adorable grandchildren. This is so great.
Speaker 1: And women are still supposedly grappling with uh you know, identity. Yeah,
Speaker 1: unfulfilled dreams and identity. Uh thanks researchers. Yeah, but but Molly,
Speaker 1: it's not all bad. Tell me why. Well, okay, first
Speaker 1: of all, all these happiness surveys, I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: you're gonna find conflicting results in them, such as a
Speaker 1: two thousand eight University College of London survey found that
Speaker 1: women over fifty years old we're more optimistic than their
Speaker 1: male counterparts. So it might depend where you live. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it could be geography. Maybe it's just the American dream
Speaker 1: ain't so cheerful after all for the ladies. Dark Kristen,
Speaker 1: But I know you like darkness because you like the
Speaker 1: idea of anti happiness, right, I do a little bit.
Speaker 1: There's this whole idea of positive, positive psychology and searching
Speaker 1: for the new science of happiness has kind of been
Speaker 1: overblown so much that there's now this kind of backlash
Speaker 1: of anti happiness literature that's coming out and saying, hey, Okay,
Speaker 1: we all want to be happy, and that's fine, well
Speaker 1: and good, but let's not forget that sometimes the best
Speaker 1: times in life are met because you've overcome a struggle,
Speaker 1: and like, there can be definite value in having to
Speaker 1: overcome hardships in life that make things really worth living
Speaker 1: and really genuinely joyful. So but I mean, we'll go
Speaker 1: ahead and buy into this happiness idea, and I know
Speaker 1: that you are very much in love with the Grant Study. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's this uh awesome study And yes, I just said
Speaker 1: awesome study. Um it's a seven me two years study
Speaker 1: that's taken place at Harvard University that tracked over two
Speaker 1: hundred male students since they were freshmen at Harvard. And now,
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of these guys have actually gone
Speaker 1: and they died. A lot of them are, you know,
Speaker 1: an old age in their eighties, and it has tracked
Speaker 1: their happiness throughout life to try to find out what
Speaker 1: what makes a happy man. And one of the biggest
Speaker 1: findings that's come out of this research, because you know,
Speaker 1: these are Harvard graduates. They had some of them, didn't
Speaker 1: all have you know, uh, wealthy upbrings, but they leaving Harvard,
Speaker 1: you would think that they were all kind of on
Speaker 1: the equal footing to succeed at the end of the
Speaker 1: day seventy two years later, the biggest finding from the
Speaker 1: study is that it's not social aptitude or intelligence or
Speaker 1: social class that leads to happy aging relationships Molly relationship
Speaker 1: matter more than anything else. And this is something that
Speaker 1: I've seen in all of these happiness articles that have
Speaker 1: come out. At the end of the day, the biggest
Speaker 1: predictor of happiness isn't male or female, or smart or
Speaker 1: unintelligent or what have you. It's the social networks that
Speaker 1: you build. It's when things go wrong, are you going
Speaker 1: to have a network there to help you recover? Sounds good.
Speaker 1: So if I could sum up everything I've learned so
Speaker 1: far in this podcast, you can just smile big for
Speaker 1: your yearbook photo, and then when you order the prints,
Speaker 1: you give them to as many people as possible to
Speaker 1: start building your social networks. Right there, you go and
Speaker 1: pass your yearbook around to get them to sign them
Speaker 1: so you build, yeah, make more friends. And Molly, we
Speaker 1: do have one more silver lining for all of this
Speaker 1: happiness research. By and large, when we get older, people
Speaker 1: are just happy people. Older people, male or female, are
Speaker 1: happier than younger people. And that's because, you know, despite
Speaker 1: maybe unfulfilled career dreams or hardships along the way. Hopefully
Speaker 1: by the time we're in our seventies, we can sit
Speaker 1: back and look at all the things that have happened
Speaker 1: and say, well, I made it this far. That's something
Speaker 1: to be happy about. And if all else fails, just
Speaker 1: look at cute pictures of kittens on the internet. Kittens.
Speaker 1: That's happy. That's very happy. Hey, you know what makes
Speaker 1: me happy talking at the same time, um, listener mail.
Speaker 1: Listener mail is very happy. Making Yeah, listener mail will nice.
Speaker 1: Listener mail at least makes Molly and me happier than
Speaker 1: a lot of other things at work, it seems. So
Speaker 1: let's read some mail. So, uh, first mail I wanted
Speaker 1: to read came as a response to our is Roller
Speaker 1: Derby Sport or Spectacle podcast. It's from Monica, who writes,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for doing an episode on Roller Derby
Speaker 1: and explaining what the current sport is like today. Um,
Speaker 1: people still have so many misconceptions as to what Derby
Speaker 1: is and she thinks that we are for after when
Speaker 1: we said it is sport and spectacle. She says, it's
Speaker 1: insanely hard work, it's athletic, it's sexy, it's empowering. And
Speaker 1: then Christian special message to you, since you were talking
Speaker 1: about your roller Derby dreams, she told you don't give
Speaker 1: up on skating. Monica just started skating for the first
Speaker 1: time last November. She was all over the rank, falling
Speaker 1: and being latched by five year olds and she assumed
Speaker 1: she was crazy for you've been trying. But just a
Speaker 1: couple of months later, she's a skater. She can pick
Speaker 1: it up, So do not give up. I would say,
Speaker 1: if you want to see kristin roller Derby, let's write in.
Speaker 1: Let's make it a rite in campaign. Thank you Monica
Speaker 1: for those encouraging words. We had another former roller girl
Speaker 1: rock Still a rampage of the Jet City roller Girls
Speaker 1: right in and she said, I've listened to your podcast
Speaker 1: about roller Derby, and one important thing that was not
Speaker 1: mentioned was the amount of time that these women dedicate
Speaker 1: to the sport. As a former roller girl, I would
Speaker 1: spend a minimum of six hours each week for practice
Speaker 1: and or bouts, and that was at the low end
Speaker 1: of time dedicated to the sport. This is not the
Speaker 1: type of hobby for people who are just looking to
Speaker 1: be a weekend warrior. And I will say that when
Speaker 1: I talked to Tania Hyde with the Atlanta roller Girls,
Speaker 1: that was one thing we talked about was that girls
Speaker 1: are out there skating probably five times a week, so
Speaker 1: I mean, and that's I'm sure that's at least six hours.
Speaker 1: So these these women are always out there skating, getting
Speaker 1: better and then competing in bouts. So something for you
Speaker 1: to keep in mind. Christen, Yes, time management. And then
Speaker 1: one last email. We do not have this person's name,
Speaker 1: but we loved the email. She listened to the podcast
Speaker 1: What does a Feminist look Like and she quite agreed
Speaker 1: with a lot of what we talked about, particularly about
Speaker 1: how modern day women do not want to be labeled
Speaker 1: as feminist because of the negativity surrounding the word, especially teenagers.
Speaker 1: She wrote, I usually do not like labels and especially stereotypes,
Speaker 1: but I am proud to call myself a feminist. I
Speaker 1: am Mexican, which is very male dominated culture, and that
Speaker 1: has influenced my beliefs, especially I do not shave my legs,
Speaker 1: but I don't mind wearing a little black dress now
Speaker 1: and then I am fifteen that I've been voicing my
Speaker 1: opinions on the subject ever since I was young and
Speaker 1: at times naive ten year old, and the podcast inspired
Speaker 1: her to go out and buy a this is what
Speaker 1: a feminist looks like t shirts? So fifteen year old
Speaker 1: ready to put the feminist label on her, even with
Speaker 1: the negative stereotypes. And I'm sure she was not that
Speaker 1: naive at ten year old. Yes, sounds verymature, awesome. So
Speaker 1: if you guys want to write us, I've got an
Speaker 1: email address. It's Mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: And if you want to read more about happiness and
Speaker 1: how to get happy, you should head on over to
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com?
Speaker 1: Want more how stuff works? Check out our blogs on
Speaker 1: the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to
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