How to Be a Better Human - Pods Fight Poverty: Why Giving Money to Others Makes us Happier | from The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

Money can buy you happiness – but not in the way we think. Giving money away – especially to help others – has been shown make us happier than spending on ourselves.Social psychologist Lara Aknin explains the best ways to spend on loved ones, friends and even total strangers to get the biggest happiness bang for your buck.And Harvard’s Josh Greene reveals how much money Happiness Lab listeners gave to charity via Giving Multiplier last year – and how many lives you saved.Pods Fight Poverty: https://GiveDirectly.org/betterhumanFor the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, how to be a better human listeners. As you know, we usually come to you on Mondays with a new episode, but we've got something special for you this week. We are joining with the Happiness Lab and dozens of other shows for Pods Fight Poverty. This is a campaign to raise $1 million to lift three villages in Rwanda out of extreme poverty. And the reason that we have chosen that goal is rooted in research by Dr. Lori Santos. So today we're going to share an episode from Lori with you. So Lori is the host of the Happiness Lab.

And this episode explores why giving makes us happier and how sending cash directly to families in need, no middlemen, no strings attached, can transform lives. I think you're going to love this episode because it's a way of addressing big international issues that is practical, actionable, and something that a regular person like me or you can actually do and really does make a big impact, as Dr. Lori Santos is going to explain. So if you're inspired by what you hear, you can join us and all of the other podcasts that are part of this campaign at give directly.org slash better human. Donations go straight to families in Rwanda and first time givers even get their gifts matched by giving multiplier. So your impact goes further. Okay. Without further ado, here is the Happiness Lab with Dr. Lori Santos. Pushkin.

Hello and welcome to a special edition of the Happiness Lab podcast. I hope all my listeners who celebrate had a happy Thanksgiving. But the day I really look forward to each November is the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Forget Black Friday and Cyber Monday. My holiday of choice is Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is the global holiday of charitable giving that falls right in the midst of our shopping frenzy. a day that's not about commerce, but compassion. Here at the Happiness Lab,

we tend to make a big deal out of giving Tuesday. Every year, we share a special episode that explores why doing good for others is super good for our own happiness. We also like to give our listeners a chance to team up and donate to a charitable cause that really does good in the world. For the past few years, that charity has been give directly, a nonprofit that takes your cash

and gives it directly to people in extreme poverty to spend as they see fit. But this year, we are going even bigger. We're bringing together the fans of some of my favorite podcasts to raise even more money to fight poverty. Think 10% happier with Dan Harris, on purpose with Jay Shetty, revisionist history, hidden brain,

how to be a better human, and dozens more. The campaign even has its own hashtag. Pods fight poverty. Pods fight poverty is trying to raise a million dollars this year, enough money to lift several villages in Rwanda out of extreme poverty. If you want to help, head to GiveDirectly.org slash happiness lab to donate what you can. That's give directly.org slash happiness lab. If you're a fan of this show, you've probably already heard about the great things

give directly can do with a small donation from a listener like you. Take the great work we did earlier this year in collaboration with author and YouTube star John Green. John and I asked you to partner up with GiveDirectly to tackle the deadly disease tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is an airborne disease that usually affects. the lungs. If left untreated, tuberculosis usually does result in death. Fortunately, since the 1950s, we've had a cure for tuberculosis. It's a bacterial infection, so the cure is antibiotics given every day over four to six months. The problem is that many people with TB live in parts of the world where they can't afford these life-saving drugs. So John and I asked our listeners to help out.

With lots of small donations of five or ten bucks, we raised over $100,000 to fight this disease. That's incredible, right? But what's even more incredible are the stories we heard about what this money did for people living with the disease. Take one recipient, Margaret, a 30-year-old TB patient living in Malawi. Margaret's TB could have easily been cured with a simple antibiotic, but lacking the resources to get treatment, she eventually got sicker and sicker. That is, until she received the cash donation we provided through Give Directly. With that small amount of money, she was able to pay for the bicycle taxi she needed

to travel to a far-off clinic where she was able to finally start her drug treatment. I was overjoyed when I received the cash transfer, Margaret wrote in her thank you letter to our listeners. It felt like my life had been given a second chance. I have hope again. Months later, I still think back to Margaret's story whenever I'm having a crappy day.

Taking a moment to remember what the five or ten bucks we collectively shared did, not just for Margaret, but for hundreds of other people who are struggling, that feels amazing, probably more amazing than any material gift I'll be getting this holiday season. That good feeling is what the rest of this episode is about. With the help of some amazing fellow podcasters, I'm going to explore the enormous psychological power of giving and receiving. We'll see how small acts of kindness, a spare bit of cash or a tiny gesture of

care, can create huge ripples in a person's life. I want these stories to serve as a reminder for something our lying minds often forget, that a great great thing. great way to treat ourselves is to do a small bit of good for somebody else. To kick off these stories of how doing good can make us feel good, let's look at how receiving an act of kindness can change us. And we'll do that with my first esteemed podcast host guest. Hi, my name's Tim Harford and I am the host of Cautionary Tales. Tim is a respected journalist and economist, but his story of being the recipient of kindness goes back to a time before he found fame working for the BBC or hosting cautionary tales.

This story took place nearly a quarter of a century ago. I was visiting a friend in Cameroon, which is in West Africa, very poor part of the world. I was in my mid-20s, and I was on edge, because Cameroon was at the time rated as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. And corrupt or not, people there were often really desperate. As a tourist, you feel... like you're a target. And so I was always on the lookout. I had just had this sort of suspicion.

I went around my travels around Cameroon. I had a great time. Was treated wonderfully by everybody I met, but I never lost that feeling of you need to be careful. Then one day I was standing by the roadside in a smallish town called Bermenda with a couple of Western friends. And I think we were waiting for a bus. We just bought some egg and chips. We're having a good time. and we've just walked across country several miles on this dust road. And as we're waiting, a couple of guys zoom up behind us on a motorbike, two guys on one motorbike. I turn around, expecting some threat, and they stop right in front of me, and one of them just hands me something. And I look down at it, what is this?

And it's a passport. In fact, it's my passport. I mean, I'm completely bewildered. Why is this guy giving me my own passport? And, of course, I realized what's happened is the passport was in my back pocket, and I'd sat down by the roadside miles back, and the passport must have fallen out. And these guys have driven along this road on the motorbike. They've spotted a British passport, and they've gone all the way down the road

looking for the first guy they see who looks British, which is me. They've even got my photo in my passport. And the amazing thing was, They handed it over, and then they just drove off. They didn't sort of stand around waiting for a tip or reward or even really a thanks. There was just, you know, there you go. Thought you might need this. And off they went.

And I realized that this suspicion with which I'd been viewing everybody had been so much the opposite of how these guys had actually behaved. I mean, I would have been even more grateful if I had had a moment to realize they even had a problem. because if I had been stuck in Cameroon without my passport, that's a big problem. That's going to cause me a lot of headaches. But they had solved the problem before I even realized they'd solved the problem. They had completely defied my rather uncharitable expectations of the people of Cameroon, and they'd driven off into the sunset without even waiting for a thank you. It also seems like they did a lot of work.

It sounds like they were like chasing you as you're walking around all through the day to try to find you too. Probably they came a couple of miles on the motorbike. I mean, it was probably 10 or 15 minutes. Maybe I don't know at all really how much work they did. But all I know is that they did it. And they could easily have taken that passport and thought, well, maybe we can turn this into cash somehow. Or even just maybe we can try and get a tip out of this guy. Or just left it on the ground like, oh, well, you know, I don't know this guy.

Yeah. Yeah. there's someone else's problem. Yeah, just ignored it, but they didn't. I mean, I love that story, but it also points out how, like, so many of our societies are probably much more high-trust societies than we assume. Like, so many people are out there doing better things than we think. But I think we have minds that assume people are kind of mistrusting. I actually, unfortunately, Tim, I actually blame the economists on this a little bit because I feel like at least Oh, fine. Yeah, sure. We kick the economists. I mean, at least the standard economists have been

telling us for a long time that, you know, we are home economists, we are these selfish beings who are going to go out, you know, so maybe the folks who returned your passport would do it if they thought they could get, you know, some cash off you or they, you know, maybe they'd get some huge reputational benefits. Someone saw them do it and now they kind of like praising them and so on, but they wouldn't just do it just for the good of doing it. Well, I mean, let me push back a little bit. Let me push back a little bit and defend my fellow economists. So the classic economic model, all it says is that people have consistent preferences. And it's kind of convenient to assume that those preferences are about consumption.

Like, you're trying to spend as little money as possible and get as much stuff as possible for that money. It doesn't have to be. You could, and I've seen some beautiful economic models written where actually my pleasure is completely dependent on your pleasure, Laurie. Like the happier, I can just see the glow in your eyes. I know how happy you are. And the happier you are, the happier that makes me. There's nothing in conventional economics that that impossible. We tend not to make that assumption because it's kind of, why would you? And so we simplify and we talk about the purchase of goods and services and we ignore the altruistic bit. There's nothing in classical economics that says people can't be altruistic. We, I think, just haven't paid enough

attention to that possibility. And because we don't pay attention to the possibility, we just set it to one side. Are you surprised that we don't think of kind actions as as valuable, as impactful as they often are. If I can just be a kind of amateur evolutionary psychologist for a moment, I suppose you might naturally think that we had evolved to be a little bit more suspicious of people, particularly of strangers, because it's bad to have someone take advantage of you. But actually, of course, we evolved to be to be social beings. And maybe we shouldn't be so surprised that people often behave kindly to each other. I mean, I am aware of some research in psychology, you'll know this kind of work better than me, Laurie, but we often fail to generalise.

Like, we think, oh, if I found a wallet with like a driving license in it, then, you know, I'd contact the owner or I'd hand it into the police station. Yeah, of course, that's what I'd do. But then you ask people, you ask if other people would do that and we think, oh, no, other people wouldn't, wouldn't do that. And it's not like we think we're better than other people. it's just that the two questions don't even overlap. It's almost just that we've got a different circuit in our brain reflecting on how we would behave or reflecting on how we think somebody else will behave.

And this is a challenge for the organization that we've been working with give directly. Their philosophy is like, we're just going to give people money directly and let them do with it what they want, that people in need have the best ideas about how to spend their money to make their situation better. But a lot of the folks who are thinking about giving to give directly

often have the following problem, which is like, are people really going to know what to do with the money? Are they going to do something bad? Are they going to buy something frivolous or something like that? It seems like people just don't trust people to make the best decisions. And I feel like this is part of the same kind of bias we have. As undercover economists, how do you think of this bias? And what are we doing wrong? Give the economists some credit. We definitely trust people to make decisions in their own interests. There are cases where you might go, look, the money's only useful if it's coordinated. So actually what this village really needs is a bridge or a well. But in general, people are going to be good stewards of their own money and they're going to be

good judges of how to spend that money because there's so much they know about their situation, about the context and about their own ambitions that nobody else can know. And if you give them money, then you're putting them in the best possible position to take advantage of their own context and to fulfill their own ambitions. We're sort of trained to believe that if somebody really needs a handout, that must be because they lack judgment, that they have made many poor decisions in the past, otherwise they wouldn't need a handout.

But in somewhere like Cameroon, it's definitely not true. There are lots and lots of people in really difficult situations in many countries in the world, and absolutely not because of any bad decisions that they themselves have made. So I think we need to shake off this idea that if someone needs a handout, then by definition, they can't be trusted with the handout. We've got to kind of, we've got to break out of that because that's just nonsense. So even an economist says that giving is good for us.

If you want to put that advice into effect right away, then consider giving to the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. Just go to give directly.org slash happiness lab. The next podcaster to share a story on the power of giving is an old friend of the show. First of all, it's great to see you again. Yeah, it's been so much. It's been a minute. And has, yeah. Army veteran J.R. Martinez was badly wounded in Iraq when the humphy he was driving hit a roadside bomb.

Forced to end his military service, J.R. entered a dark chapter. But he eventually fought back, building a series of new careers. First as a TV actor, then as a Dancing with the Stars champion, and finally as the host of the inspiring podcast Medal of Honor. J.R. is a big fan of giving back. He's done an incredible amount of service for the veteran community. But today, he asked to share a story not of giving, but of receiving, specifically of receiving a life-changing gift that he didn't even know he needed. In 2009, I was asked to do the auction for a veteran's golf outing.

And it was going to benefit a nonprofit set up to help, you know, service members and their families. And immediately, I was like, of course. Now, I'm not an auctioneer, but I'll get up there and, you know, try to do my best. And I was like, well, what are some of the auction items? And they said, this, this, this, this, and a puppy. And so they bring out the puppy. He's eight weeks old, Black Lab.

And I hold him, and I feel this, like, connection. I'm financially going through my budget as a, you know, 27-year-old of, like, how much could I bid on this puppy? The max was like, I could probably do like 600 bucks. Like, that's the absolute max. So we get there and immediately, like, that number has surpassed. Like, we're not at 600. That number has moved on.

And so I'm holding the next auction item, this quilt. And I'm ready to move it along. And a lady raises her hand that bitted on the dog and says, may I say something? So we're like, of course. So she comes up to the stage. She says, we love animals. We love dogs. We love this dog.

We love this cause. But unfortunately, we have. you know, pets at home. So there's no room for this sweet dog at our house. And she says, so we want to give him to JR. And I'm like that quilt. Like I'm just like now using it to like wipe all the tears and the snod and everything. And I'm in shock. I was still going through my stages of, you know, like I was mad and I was navigating a lot of emotional things. And they give him to me and I take him home and Lori I mean he helped me heal and he was my he was my companion and all these stages of life that I navigated and I'm just forever like a grateful

and every time I would see the couple that that that did that gesture for me I mean as you can imagine I always felt forever indebted to them because of you know what they gave to me and the gift they gave to me. And when he passed, it was one of the hardest things that I've experienced in my life. What was his name? Romeo. And I remember, like, I named him warrior because I was like, well, it's for wounded warriors. You know, this is a mid-20s kid, you know, guy naming a dog.

And I was like, warrior, yeah, you're a warrior. Then I was like, what am I going to call you for short? War? And I was like, well, I don't know. I started noticing this pattern where people would see him and they would just like, gravitate to him and I was like, ah, you're no warrior. You're a Romeo. And every time I would look at him, no matter what stage of life that I was in, his look just always reminded me to just be, just to be present, just to be with him, just to be with the environment. Can't tell you how many times I would

take him to the park and we would just sit at the park, just he and I. It also seemed like you didn't realize at that moment that you really needed this kind gift, but then when it came in your life. It really changed it. I had no clue. I had absolutely no clue that this is what I needed. As much as I was sitting here budgeting, like, how much can I realistically afford to bid on this dog? I was then thinking about, my life is busy. I can't have a dog right now. Like, who's going to watch the dog for me when I'm when I have to travel? There were all these reasons why I also couldn't have one. And then the universe said, this is what you need and gave it to me. And guess what? I figured it out. I mean, I don't know how much folks ended up spending on Romeo.

It was clearly more than your 600 bucks that you're going to spend, but, you know, but my guess is whatever they spent, it actually wasn't as much as you wound up getting out of Romeo. Like, the act of doing something nice for somebody has these, like, incredible returns, like this huge return on investment that we just don't often realize. 100%. If Romeo was here today and someone offered 500 times more than what they spent, would I take it? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. There is no price that I can put on that. gesture of what they did for me. That's the place we got to operate from. Do, give, even if we never necessarily get to understand the full impact that it had. And if you want to follow JR's advice to do and to give, then here's the URL where you can donate to the Pods Fight Poverty campaign. It's give directly.org slash happiness lab. It's time for a quick break, but we'll return

with the story of a world famous author who carries cash for strangers in need and a scientist who's seen the firsthand benefits of an unexpectedly kind word. The Happiness Lab's special episode on the power of giving will return in a moment. Welcome back to the Happiness Lab's special Giving Tuesday episode. In the spirit of my favorite charitable holiday, I'm chatting with my favorite podcasters about their personal stories of generosity. Our goal is to remind you that one of the quickest ways to feel happier yourself is to give a little happiness back to somebody Next up, we have Michael Lewis, best-selling author of Moneyball and The Blindside, and host of the award-winning podcast Against the Rules.

Michael wanted to share a new strategy he's been using to make it as easy as possible for him to do good for people in need. I made a decision to always carry a bunch of $10 bills with me so that if I see anybody who asks me for money, I just automatically give them $10. People on the streets. So I started doing it. And so how does it feel? So it is completely true that when you give something to someone else, you feel good.

Totally feels good. But years ago, when I was working on the blind side, the Christian family, the dad and the family, said to me something in passing about giving that I've never been able to get out of my head. When I hit a little bump in my mind about giving, it's a touchdown for me. And it's, if it doesn't hurt a little bit, you haven't given enough. I thought that was a cool idea. And so, you know, it's not a natural act just to hand money over people.

It hurts the tiny bit. So that also is a reassuring feeling. I bet each of those $10 bills that you gave away, the benefit that came to you was way more than $10, that you would have blown on like two lattes or something silly. So this has only been going on for a couple months. So this only happened like five times. But I'm going to try to make this a habit forever,

just because I think it will change my relationship to just people on the street. I don't mean people who are homeless. I've just been like everybody around you, especially like if you're in a city, you kind of go through the world waiting for someone to ask you for something and you have all those defenses up.

And so those defenses don't just operate against the people who are asking you for money. They operate against everything. They're the enemy of moving through the world in a good way and an open way. So it opens up things a little bit. Yeah, I love this advice because it's so nicely ties,

to the type of thing that we're doing would give directly, right? Like, their whole deal is that they just give these cash transfers, no questions asked. And the act of doing that means you're not kind of thinking in ways where you're being mistrustful and kind of like analyzing people. Like, first of all, it's just like too much cognitive load of like, what is this money going to go to? Is it going to go to something good or whatever? But more than the cognitive load, you just wind up thinking all these bad theories about your fellow humans, right? Like they're going to spend this on something terrible. They're going to use drugs or something like that. So just committing like, No, I'm just going to give the money.

I'm going to trust that other people have good intentions and what they're going to do with it. First of all, you get the benefit that you get from giving. But also, beyond that, you don't have all this, like, yucky mistrust that comes with, like, wondering what somebody's going to do with the money. It's just, like, is a wonderful, like, cognitive load reducer and, like, negative social contagion reducer. Correct.

All correct. So we'll see if I persist in this, but this has been a little giving wrinkle in my life. I hope Michael's tiny wrinkle grows into a big ridge. a subtle shift that turns into real positive change. For Michael, and for anyone feeling a little inspired by his new giving tactic. And if you're feeling newly inspired to make a difference, you're at luck, because you can take part

in our pods fight poverty campaign right now. Just head to give directly.org slash happiness lab to give what you can. Next up is a story of kindness from one of my former Yale students, a fellow psychologist who is also the host of an award-winning podcast, plus is one of my dear friends. I'm Dr. Maya Shunker, and I'm the host of a slight change of plans. And so, Maya, what's your story of unexpected benefits of kindness?

My moment is actually one from elementary school. Well, we're going way back for this one. Yeah, we're going all the way back. I was bullied a lot as a kid. Wait, really? I'm surprised by this somehow. I didn't know this about you. Oh, my gosh.

Oh, my God. So many tears, so much anxiety. Wait, who was your worst bully? Mine was, I won't say her name. I'll say it was Jessica T. She was terrible. Jacqueline, Kellynne, Lindsay. It was a trio. And Carly, too. But these were girls in my neighborhood that weren't super nice to me, and it was really hard. At the time, I just thought, oh, I'm a deeply flawed, broken person. With some hindsight, I realized, oh, how interesting I was one of very, very

few kids of color in my whole school. I wonder if maybe that played a role. But regardless of what contributed to the meanness and the cruelty, I spent my childhood feeling just really insecure and really, really anxious. And these bullies gave credence to my worst fears about myself. Was this like in the schoolyard, on the bus? Like, where did this happen? Oh, my God, cafeteria. So Carly one day was like, you're so ugly. It's painful for me to look at you. And then got up and went to another table. There was another episode in elementary school where the kids had decided in advance that they were going to pretend I was invisible that day. So when I went to go drink from my milk cart and I lifted up, they were like, oh, there's a

milk cart and floating in the air. How funny. And now there's a fork in the air. Like, oh, my God. I'm like, I can't believe they're pretending. I literally don't exist. I want to like jump through the Zoom and hug you. But wait, how is this a story about kindness? I just don't see where this is going. Okay. Sorry, sorry. So I was bullied a lot. And there were a few kids that were so deeply kind to me, and weren't just nice behind the scenes, but were advocates for me when it really mattered. So I remember there was this one girl in my neighborhood named Adrian, and we were on the school bus. The school bus was brutal because, like, a lot of the kids didn't want to sit next to me. So it was a whole thing. It's like, we'd rather sit five in a seat rather than sit next to Maya,

you know? Kids are terrible, right? So I remember some kids were saying some nasty things to me, and Adrian stood up and was like, all of you guys just shut up. Maya is awesome. I just remember those words in little kid Maya's brain were transformative. Like I had a transcendent experience in that moment. And I just remember being so moved by the fact that she was willing to stand up and say these things in front of the people that I was really scared by because I'm not exactly the type of person who would have fought back in those moments and like really stood my ground. Instead, I thought, oh, I know, let me try to kill them with kindness. Maybe that will win over the bully. And that is clearly a very losing strategy when it comes

to engaging with bullies effectively. So Adrienne did this for me. And it really helped change the landscape for me. It's not like the bullies were suddenly nice, but I now felt like Adrian was in my corner. And it changes your whole mentality when you feel like even one person is on your team. And I was fast forwarding decades to think about how this had affected me as a person. And actually, Lari, it was a moment from my time at Yale when I was your undergrad student. There was a guy in my dorm room who was being bullied because he was suffering from depression and bipolar disorder. And it didn't fit with the kind of frat boy machismo athlete vibe, I guess, that.

his social group entertained. And they were so cruel to him. They were so mean. And I remember being like, I'm going to be Adrian for him, for Noah. And I stood up to those guys and I was like, you guys suck. And Noah's amazing. And how dare you be so ignorant about mental illness and those struggles? I even remember at a reunion, I gave this guy so much. I don't know what a kosher word I can say on this podcast is, but it was not a fun exchange, I'll say for this other guy, because I was like, how could you treat Noah like that? And I actually just got a text message from Noah a couple months ago saying, I remember in college when I was going through such a hard time, Maya, you were so on my side and you were so nice to me. And it really touched my heart that I could

pay it forward like that because I remember having been on the receiving end of that. See, I told you, Laurie, it had a happy ending. Okay, that was good. I'm glad the happy ending came up. It wasn't just like Maya getting tortured on the bus. No, but I love this story because it shows like Adrian's probably not sitting there thinking about like how she helped us one person in elementary school. But you right now are thinking about how that helped you to this day. And a decade after that, it was also helping somebody else like in college. And so we forget not just like how long our kind events wind up helping the people that we do nice things for,

but also like how many times these turn into like these cascades where like more nice things happen over time. Absolutely. They have these beautiful spillover effects, right? And there's this concept in psychology called moral elevation. And it's basically when you witness someone else's extraordinary actions. So it could be their kindness or their courage or their self-sacrifice or their ability to forgive other people. Any character trait that you find really amazing and impressive, that can lead to this warm, fuzzy feeling in your chest that makes you feel like, wow, humans are capable of extraordinary things. But importantly, when you experience, moral elevation, it doesn't just feel good, it actually changes your brain. When you see someone

challenge your understanding of the world and about what humans are capable of, it cracks open your own imagination about what you are capable of. And I love that insight because what it's done in my own life is it's made me a more keen observer. So when I'm walking in the coffee shop, I'll notice someone being extra nice to the barista, or I'll notice that someone went out of their way to smile at me when I'm going on a walk. And these moments feel so good in the moment, but they also have these long-lasting effects on our psychology and our view of others and importantly of ourselves and our potential, our capabilities as people. And so it's really enriched my life to see the world through a moral beauty lens. This is such a great example.

I feel like especially in winter when everything's feeling so dark and so glum that like they're just these examples of beauty and kindness out there that we can find. And that seeing them isn't just like witnessing something that's beautiful. It's also changing us too. Exactly. And yes, winter is dark, but also the world. Like we're in a really dark place right now. It's very hard to stay hopeful and positive. And I have just felt like reminding myself that actually humans are so good at their core because you can witness these beautiful acts every single day and that's in my control. Unlike so much else that's happening in the world is a wonderful way of reclaiming my agency and allowing myself moments of happiness, moments of joy in everyday

life against the backdrop of a lot of suffering in the world, you know? And so, yeah, I've just been grateful for the gift that we've gotten from science in the space of moral elevation. And if Maya story has given you a moment of moral elevation, remember that you can choose to become an Adrian too. You can do that by joining me and dozens of other podcasters as part of the pods fight poverty campaign. Why not donate five bucks right now by heading to give directly.org slash happiness lab. That's give directly.org slash happiness lab. It's time for a break, but when we return, I'll get to share my own story of the power of giving and how four words that I quickly scribbled nearly 20 years ago said a little girl on the path to becoming an aerospace

engineer. The happiness lab will be right back. Welcome back to the Happiness Lab's special Giving Tuesday episode. Today, we're exploring just how much we underestimate the psychological power of small acts of generosity. And the next story is one that really hits home for me, because the person in this story doing all that underestimating of the power of giving was me. So in 2008, I was six years old. This is Avery Miller. And I didn't know too much, you know, about the world, I suppose, but I knew that I wanted to be an astronaut because I'd read books about them.

I'd seen them on TV, and my parents were very encouraging of all of that. And my mom realized there was an event called World Science Festival. The World Science Festival is a multimedia science education organization that began as an annual event in New York City to make science fun and accessible to the general public. Think panels and talks, interactive exhibits, and kid-friendly games. Avery's mom thought her daughter would love it. So the Millers decided to take the four-hour trek from their home in Boston to New York City.

So we went to the festival and there's a lot of really cool outside stuff and the typical kid activities. But my mom was like, you know, I think Avery would really love going to some talks, which an insane thing to think about a six-year-old, but that's my mom. So we went to quite a few talks,

but I think they were mostly men. So not really role models. That's when Avery stumbled on a panel that would change her life forever. It was called Cool Jobs, where scientists shared the cool questions they explored and the fun places they got to work. There was a Disney Imagineer, a forensics expert who used science to solve crimes, and an early career psychologist whose name you might recognize if you're a fan of the show. She spends a lot of time thinking about how we think and how we play and how we fall in love by hiking through the jungles of Puerto Rico, watching monkeys.

Please, a warm welcome for Dr. Lori Santos. Hello, everyone. Thanks for having me today. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about a job that I bet many of you are thinking about, and that's the kind of job that's involved with working with animals. So, fun fact. Long before I began studying happiness, I spent a lot of my early career trying to understand the human mind by studying the cognitive abilities of monkeys.

Back in 2008, I was asked to talk about that primate work on the cool jobs panel at the World Science Festival. The organizers of the panel assumed it would be of interest to college students thinking about their future careers. But what we didn't expect was to have so many little kids in the audience. Little kids who were apparently very impressed that there were jobs where you could hang out with monkeys. Little kids, just like Avery.

I was like, you get to be outside, you get to do science. And that was sort of a mind-blowing moment. of like, oh my God, there's someone like me who's doing all this really cool stuff. And my mom, again, being really cool, was like, well, let's go talk to her. Avery's mom wasn't the only audience member to have that idea.

As the New York Times would later report, quote, after the event, Dr. Santos was mobbed by a group of children curious about what she calls monkey magic tricks. I spent over an hour after that panel sitting on stage talking with kids about my work. And one of those kids was an eager little girl named Avery. So I went up and I think I told you all about how I wanted to be an astronaut and how I wanted to go to MIT because, you know, growing up in Boston, if you want to do science, you want to go to MIT. And we didn't have anything for you to sign except for the back of the ticket on the email my mom printed out. So you signed it. I have it here if you want to see it. Oh my gosh. Can you hold it up? Yeah. Oh my gosh. For like a monkey drawing. That's amazing. So I drew monkeys.

on it, as you can see, which I'm sure my mom told me not to, but you wrote, have fun at MIT, love Lori. And I was like, this is the coolest thing ever. A scientist thinks I can be a scientist. We framed it and then I put it on my desk. And then I guess I never moved it off my desk. I mean, like, I look at it all the time. In high school, I'd sit there and do my homework. And so it's like, you know what, this means I can do it. You know, as much as I hated chemistry at the time, okay, I got to get the chemistry. done because I'm going to go to MIT. So it was just this constant little reminder that like I could do that. I mean, it's so funny. I sign lots of things for lots of folks and just the idea that they would

keep them is really cool, but also just that it turned into an inspiration for you. I failed a class, almost failed a class in the eighth grade and it was science. And I was like, that means I can't do it because if everyone looks at you as the science kid and you're going around failing science classes, it's hard. So I looked at it and I was like, you know what? Someone says that I can do it. I saw someone else do it. You know, there were a lot of people rooting me on, but I had this thing from such a young age. One person telling you you can do it when you didn't even know that was an option is perhaps more meaningful. So yeah, it was a big deal to me then. It's still a big deal to me now. I had it on my desk all through college, all the dorms I lived in. I have it now that I live on my

own. It's just always lived on my desk. It's always just been there. I also have a Sally Ride picture, though. So you're up there with her. That's amazing. Sounds like you wound up going to college. Did you end up going to MIT or what happened? Yeah. So by senior year, I realized that I did not want to go to MIT. MIT's great, but it wasn't the right fit. I ended up going to Purdue. I became an aerospace engineer. Wait, like, mind-boggling. Like, you became an aerospace engineer. That's so cool. I reconnected with Avery and learned about her story when she sent me an email out of the blue, thanking me for being such an inspiration to her. As she wrote in her letter,

You took the time to speak to me, learn my name, and just made me feel like no matter what I could do it. Thank you for being an inspiration in six-year-old me's life. I know that you carved the way for this field to be one that women like me can thrive in. I mean, wow. I had no idea that scribbling those four little words nearly 20, years ago would have had such an impact on someone's life. I also didn't realize that those words would ripple into the next generation of scientists too. I think one of the things that I learned

and I really appreciated when I met you when I was young was that you didn't talk to me like I was a little kid. I never felt like someone was talking down to me, which I think in STEM we have a tendency to do when people don't understand stuff. I think it was Einstein though. I could be misquoting who said, if you can't explain it to a five-year-old, you don't understand it. There's something to be said for approaching someone on their level. That's how people can hold on and be like, wow, I really do want to learn more. It definitely makes me think about how I'm giving my time because, like, I mentor middle schoolers. And I'm like, maybe one day one of these middle schoolers will reach out and, you know, same sort of thing of like, oh, you impacted me.

So who knows? Look at you. The six-year-old has become the adult now. I know. I mean, one of the reasons this story is so compelling for me also just that, like, I affected someone who's so cool and doing such cool stuff now is just amazing. The fact that someone who speaks to John Green thinks I'm cool is possibly the coolest thing ever. I'm sure he would think you're cool too.

But I mean, it's just like you just have these short interactions in life where you don't necessarily realize how much you're affecting people. And I think if you can have those interactions in a way that are like positive or encouraging, we just like don't know the ripple effect of the kind of thing that we can do to other people. And so it was just such a reminder of like, oh my gosh, I can have this like incredibly long-standing, like, you know, 20-year-ish positive effect. And I might not be realizing I could do that right now. And also the fact that I can reconnect with you after 20 years and it still be something meaningful. I'm curious, was there a moment that you decided to reach back out? Like, was there like a catalyst of why you decided to reach out when you did? I'm hoping to go back to school eventually.

So I've been studying for exams. And sometimes you have just a day where you're looking at your exam book and you're like, there is no way that I can keep doing this. There's no way I can keep answering problems. And I looked at the note, which again, sits on my desk all the time. So I'm looking at it. And I'm like, you know, I should really reach out to her and tell her that this is impactful. This really just like blew my mind.

It really, even this conversation, I feel like my face is going to hurt from smiling after talking about this. Me as well, which is a great thing. Avery's story is a powerful example of how a few simple words can shape someone's life in unimaginable ways but it also shows how absolutely great it feels to be the person who gives that small act of kindness and yet even when we know these small gestures matter

most of us still struggle to actually do them we put off reaching out we delay helping we wait for the right time to give why do we procrastinate on doing the very thing that will make us and other people feel so good. To find out, I tagged in our final podcast host guest, a behavioral scientist who has studied this exact problem. Katie, do you want to start by introducing yourself? I'd be delighted.

My name is Katie Milkman, and I'm a professor at the Wharton School, host of the podcast, Choiceology, and author of the book How to Change. So Katie, we've just heard all these amazing things that happen when people are nice to each other and do nice things for each other, including with money. We've also just heard not just what happens to the people who receive these wonderful things, also what happens to you, the donor, in terms of your happiness and how great you feel. But the problem is that our minds are stupid. And sometimes we can know all this stuff and still not put it into practice. This is the kind of thing that you study, right?

Yes, although I wouldn't say our minds are stupid. I think our minds are incredible, but they're constantly taking shortcuts and they're sort of wired for situations that don't always optimize our current environment in the modern era. So, like, the mind is amazing. I don't want to denigrate the mind. Okay, yeah. No dis to the mind. Great. You know, we're walking around really smart primates, built the internet, all this stuff. But we sometimes forget the importance of doing for other people. Like when it comes to our social connection, I think this is about where we really get it wrong. Yeah. No, absolutely. We don't anticipate how good it will feel to, you know, engage in conversations, engage in gift giving. Just be kind to others in a wide variety of ways. We don't realize how much that will actually generate happiness for us. Our minds are also stupid in that we just like forget stuff. Like, I'm guessing a lot of people right now, like, oh, my gosh, it's a great opportunity to give directly.

But, like, you actually have to do that. And, like, forgetfulness and friction is bad. That's right. Yeah, follow through is one of the main barriers to change that I have studied. Like, we need to remind people. We need to catch them in a moment when they can take action. And actually, this relates to some research I did a number of years ago related to giving. So this was a project led by Amanda Chuan, who's an amazing professor at Michigan State.

and also with my colleague here, Judd Kessler, where we were able to get data from the University of Pennsylvania's hospital system on asks they made to pass patients to give, right? So you've had experience with the University of Pennsylvania hospital system. You were here inpatient for some sort of service or treatment. You have to stay overnight, right?

That's kind of a big deal. Or you're checked into the hospital. So you're probably feeling a lot of gratitude right now. And you have an opportunity when the university asks, would you give to this hospital system? you have an opportunity to express that gratitude. The data we got allowed us to look at whether or not those mailings came right away or at a time delay because they send them in batches every few months.

So if the batch send happens to occur just a couple weeks after you leave the hospital, you're going to get it real quickly. But if it happens a few months later, well, then it's going to be a long time after your inpatient stay that you're going to be asked, would you be willing to reciprocate and make a donation? And what was interesting is that we found a pretty steep decay. So if we hit you right after you've had this positive experience, you're much more likely to give your feeling still that warmth and gratitude and remembering how meaningful it was to be taken care of. Whereas if a little time passes, the hot state, the sort of warmth and the reciprocity feelings, those positive feelings that generate the decision to give, those are what's decaying. And that also presumably suggests that you're not going to feel as good about making that reciprocal gesture if your strong feelings have dissipated and you wait. So one of the things I think that teaches us about giving is generally when we are remembering, when we're in that hot state,

when we realize how good it will make us feel, like take action right away, don't let that moment slip. And I think more similarly in so many parts of your life, like when you're feeling gratitude to someone or when you've had a really positive experience and you want to make sure you don't forget to tell someone, you know, you were a great professor. Lori, and I'm so grateful for this thing you did, or, you know, thank you for mentoring me. Whatever it is, express that gratitude immediately because you're going to forget if you let the moment pass. And I think, you know, one of the things I've studied in my research in other domains is just that our motivation in general waxes and wanes, like over time, right?

We years ago did an episode together, Lori, about some of my work with Heng Chen Dai of UCLA on the Fresh Start Effect, that there are these moments when we're more motivated to make a change in our lives. And I think that's just part of a bigger process. Like, we don't walk around the world with, like, constant flat states of emotion and motivation. We're moving all over the place. And capitalizing on the hot state feelings is important to doing the things that are good for us in the long run that are good for our relationships and our happiness. Because whenever we do it, we're going to feel good doing that, right? In your first start work, when do people start exercising? Whenever you get the exercise habit going, that's going to have benefits for you. Whenever you actually get the gift done,

the kind words said, you're going to experience benefit. But if you wait and the motivation goes away, then you're never going to wind up getting those benefits. Exactly. So if someone's listening to this right now and they're thinking, oh my gosh, I want to give to give directly, how do they lock it in? Do they like pause the episode and just go do it right now?

Pause the episode and do it right now. Do not wait. That's right because that feeling will decay faster than you realize. And so this is the moment to do it. Don't wait. Don't delay. You think you're going to do it tomorrow, but you won't. So do it right now.

Okay. We're going to do a pause. So hopefully during that little audio break, some folks pause the episode and actually gave to give directly. But I'm guessing some folks maybe couldn't do it immediately. Are there other social science hacks we can use if we're motivated right now, but we can't actually hit like send immediately? Yeah, absolutely. Maybe you're driving right now, but you can talk to a virtual assistant in your phone. You might ask it to put. a calendar alert in your calendar for later today when you know you might have a moment to

remind you to follow through and choose a specific time. You could also ask that virtual assistant to send a ping, a text or an email to someone who can hold you accountable and check in and say, hey, please ask me when you see me partner, roommate, friend tomorrow if I've followed through on my pledge to give to give directly. We know that social accountability and making concrete plans with reminders are two ways we can hold our future self to account for the things we want to get done. And I especially love the social accountability suggestion because that gives us a little bit of social connection and maybe, just maybe that partner, friend, roommate might also donate to give directly and get a little happiness boost themselves. I love that. Perfect. Yes. Ask them to

both nag you and to give themselves. Love this. Katie, thank you so much for helping us try to figure out how we can use our biases to feel better and do better in the world. Thanks so much for having me and for putting together this wonderful compilation. I love Give Directly, and I'm really excited about it. Even small acts of generosity, a moment of encouragement, a few kind words, 10 bucks donated to a good cause, can have incredible ripple effects. And the sooner you act on a charitable impulse, the sooner you'll experience that positive impact. So go ahead and join the Pods Fight Poverty campaign by donating at give directly.org slash happiness lab. That's give directly.org slash happiness lab.

And if you're not in a position to give, that's fine. Maybe you'd consider sharing our campaign with your friends and colleagues. Just use the hashtag Pods Fight Poverty to raise awareness, fight extreme poverty, and unwrap a little gift of happiness for yourself too. The Happiness Lab will continue in the holiday spirit for the rest of the year. Next week, we'll be tackling your holiday happiness woes with a very hilarious special guest, actor and podcaster, Rain Wilson. That's all next time on the Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos.