Stuff You Should Know - Are stupid people happier?

Episode Date: July 21, 2009

Is there a negative correlation between happiness and intelligence? Is ignorance truly bliss? Josh and Chuck attempt to answer this age-old question by exploring the "science" of happiness in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Log on to AudiblePodcast.com slash Stuff today for details. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is Chuckles Bryant. How's it going Chuck? That was chuckling. Yeah. I think that might have gotten caught.

Yeah. I think that was an apropos victim. Yeah. Jerry's funny like that. Yeah. She made me laugh. I know. Let's do this, shall we?

Yes. Where's your awesome setup? My awesome setup is as follows, Chuck. Are you, do you consider yourself a happy person? Yes, I do. Well then Chuck, you may be dumb. Really? Yeah.

How so? Well, there's this long standing question of whether or not there's a negative correlation between intelligence and happiness. Take one Ernest Hemingway. He said something along the lines of, oh I don't know, happiness and intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. I'll one-up you. Oh, bring it buddy.

Charles DeGaul reportedly said happy people are idiots. Did he really? Mm-hmm. And I don't know if he meant the medical classification of days gone by idiots. I think he just meant, you know, idiots, mouth breathers. I've got one that's going to even top your Charles DeGaul one. Okay. Charlton Heston said you can pry my gun from my cold dead hand.

Yeah. He sure did. Was he happy? I don't know. Okay. I don't know. Happiness is a warm gun. That's what Paul McCartney said.

And the breeders. Man, we could just quote like song lyrics and people all day and end up with no result. Okay. So, well let's talk about this. Chuck, is there a negative correlation between intelligence and happiness? I mean, if you think about it in your own experience, you can make the case that ignorance is bliss, that kind of thing, that you're happier when you don't know about something bad that's already happened to you than you are after you get the news, but that really

has nothing to do with intellect. Well, does it though? No. This whole thing is kind of fraught with questions for me. Okay. Like, is it emotional intelligence? We're talking about ignorance. Like, when I think, and you don't want to use the words like stupid, you know, I know

Jerry says that schools don't like to use that word. And it's- School poo poo, the word stupid. Yeah. It's a pretty negative word, I'll admit. And people that don't score well on IQ test, I mean, that means nothing about how smart they are. It's like, I think it has to do more with emotional intelligence.

And like, when I think of dumb, I think, and happy, I think of like the dude sitting there picking his belly button and like laughing his head off at America's Funniest Home Videos. Would you call him intelligent? I don't know. I kind of link that as one of the dummies out there, but I'm jealous of that because I watch that show and I just can't sit still, it's just so awful, but some people think it's the funniest thing ever. I think it's kind of funny.

And they seem really happy. You know, a guy gets kicked in the groin and everyone gets a good laugh and he falls on his face and, you know, Beavis and Butthead, they were idiots. They were always laughing and happy. And you couldn't laugh at that show either? No, it was funny. Okay. But I was laughing at their idiocy.

I would consider you a pretty, I don't know if intellectual is the right word, but definitely intelligent. I would consider you an intelligent person. But I'm not intellectual in the least. No, but you're so, but I would also, I would say you're fairly happy. Yeah. But I could see you happier. Well, moods come and go, buddy.

Okay. But you're saying you think you're generally a positive, happy person. Yeah. I'd say generally I'm pretty happy person barring, you know, I'm moody as well, but that's, that's in the genes. So your questions as to this, these articles are like, is intelligence, emotional intelligence or intellectual intelligence? Right.

I think what they're talking about specifically is mental intelligence. Right. Like book smarts? Sure. Or I think you could make a case that street smarts comes out of intellect as well. Can you? I can. Okay.

I'm not going to here, but I could if I wanted to. Well, I think technically they've, they've done some studies that said there is no direct link between happiness and actual intelligence. Right. Yeah. Let's, let's put some substance into this pocket. Yeah. Seriously.

You can speculate all day. Okay. So yeah. Officially what they say is there is no link. That's the official line on that. And thank you for coming and listening to this one. Yeah. No, there isn't any, any, well, actually that's not true because I found a study.

Okay. Hit me. I found a study on the Freakinomics blog. Actually, there's a couple. He drew data from a study of 14,000 people. That's pretty good. They were given. Yeah.

It's a pretty good sample. They, they were given a vocabulary test and then they were giving an analytical reasoning skills test and the people in the top third consistently also reported being happiest and they were less likely to be very unhappy. Right. Well, they need to get into what happy is and all that stuff. Not only here's, here's the big problem. This is the problem with everything.

Yes. This is, here is our problem. No one actually knows what happiness is. It's a subjective experience. Yeah. Or if it even exists, I've seen a couple of people posit that. The problem is, and here's the catch 22, all the people who are thinking about happiness are intelligent.

Right. If you're intelligent or if you're not intelligent, you're probably not thinking about happiness. You're just happy. Right. So the, the whole field of the study of happiness shoots itself in the foot every time it opens its mouth, true, because it's all smart people trying to figure out what happiness is and I can't think of anything that could make you unhappier than that. True.

So let's just stop doing this immediately. We should. Yeah. Well, we can talk about some little correlations here and there. I know that one researcher was talking about how our educational system doesn't really, you know, they tend to separate the intelligent ones. So in other words, early on in schooling, the really, really smart kids are oftentimes segregated and put in special classes, sometimes even special magnet schools.

They're not picked first on the kickball team. They're outcast in some ways because they're smart. And does that lead to happiness? Probably not. Yeah. Yeah. There's too many externalities that you can't really account for. Exogenous factors.

Yes. Nice. Wow. You have quite a memory, my friend. It's a recall from our super stuff guide to the economy. Another problem with trying to define happiness is every study of happiness is a survey. It's all self-reporting. Right.

True. And I can't remember. It rings a bell that you had said, like, we talked about this before and you had said something along the lines of it depends on when you take that kind of test. Oh, yeah. Sure. I mean, if somebody tested you right now, how would you test it? As far as the life satisfaction scale or happiness quotient goes?

Well, jeez, that's tough. I mean, like, right this minute. Well, I'm in a pretty rotten mood today. Exactly. But I wouldn't... What about yesterday? But I wouldn't call that... I wouldn't chart that on the life happiness scale.

But don't you think that the mood that you're in when you're taking a look, a survey on your life is going to influence everything? I would like to think that I would be able to step outside of that, but how can it not? You're right. Yeah. So the whole fact that it's all self-reported... Right. I mean, self-reported data is almost always discarded in every other area of science.

Yeah, that's true. It's anecdotal. Well, that's because this isn't really scientific, if you think about it. No, it's not. And let's talk about something that's not scientific. It's a field, a new sub-discipline, called positive psychology. Yes. That would be Martin Seligman.

Yeah. And you get the impression by the fact that his name is associated with something as ridiculously hippie-sounding as positive psychology, that he's a crackpot. Sure. He is not, in fact. He's a PhD. He runs the center, I think, for authentic happiness or something like that at the University of Pennsylvania.

So it was Bonafide. Yeah. He was the president of the APA, too. Yeah. And actually, he dedicated their millennial issue to positive psychology while he was president there. Cool. It was cool, but it was also pretty self-serving.

Right. And I'm sure he had his Birkenstocks on at the time. The whole field of positive psychology is basically they're exploring interventions, and an intervention is any kind of treatment in the field of psychology, right? Right. They're exploring basically what positive psychology is saying is, I read a quote in an article about it by another positive psychologist who said, psychology is very good at getting people from negative eight to zero, but hasn't learned how to get people from zero to eight.

Interesting. The positive eight, right? Yeah, yeah. And that's absolutely true. But at the same time, I mean, like, are you supposed to get people to positive eight? You know, I think about that. There's some real ethical questions that are raised. Let's say that we develop some sort of pharmacopsychiatric pill that can make a normal person happy.

Right. Should that person take that pill? I mean, we've already established as a society a baseline, which is zero, and anybody below that is suffering from a mental illness and deserves treatment to get back to zero. Why should we accelerate our happiness? And in doing so, are we edging out real experiences to e.g., the negative? Right. I mean, life is full of both, right?

Right. But are you going to bring that home with the smart, intelligent, or dumb, stupid thing? Or is that fall into the Ignorance's Bliss category? I don't know. I don't know how to categorize that, man. Interesting. Yeah, no. I was actually going to go into another kind of contrary therapy.

All right. Let's hear it. Well, I don't know. You want to talk some more about positive psychology? No, no, no. That's good. Are you sure? Yeah, yeah.

Okay. All right. We'll continue on that. Have you heard of, what is it, acceptance and commitment therapy? I have. I have not, actually. See, I have a leg up on you. I have to tell everybody.

I've written a bunch of articles on happiness recently, and poor Chuck's been writing nothing but social media stuff. Which is unhappy. If this were about Twitter, I'd be sitting here silently. Yeah, I would, too, actually. Would you? Yeah. There's a contrary field of therapy to positive psychology, it's called acceptance and commitment

therapy. And basically, it says, look, you have good and bad experiences. You can't just focus on the happy ones. Because you still have these negative experiences. You can't just crush them down, or else you're going to end up climbing a clock tower and shooting people. I believe in that, for sure. Right.

So this therapy basically says, what you do is you go back and, I've got a perfect example for you. When I was like five or six, we went to this KOA campground. And I had this awesome Pac-Man t-shirt. It had the red ring around the neck and the sleeves, and it was just like, I think an iron-on Pac-Man, right? And I decided to stuff a pack of firecrackers down the front of my shirt, stole them, and I got away with it, right?

And my family was traveling back from this campground, and we made it to Wendy's and stopped to eat. And I got up to go to the bathroom, and the firecrackers, I was too scared to do anything with them. I just left them in my shirt for two hours. Sure. And so when I stood up, my fat stomach pressed them up against the Pac-Man shirt and made this crinkling sound, and my mom immediately looked at me, and somehow, she's so intuitive.

She looked at me and was like, what's in your shirt? And that was that. That was so bad. Like it was right around my birthday. They took me home and showed me all the He-Man stuff. I wasn't going to be getting for my birthday that year. And they made me take it back and take the firecrackers to the guy. We turned around and went back.

Classic move. Yeah. It took the firecrackers back to the guy, and I had to apologize, right? I thought you were going to say they'd lit the firecrackers under your shirt. Right. And then, yeah, put them in my shirt and pushed me back into the store at the KOA campground. So that was something that definitely contributed to my outlook today. It's still very much in my mind.

And I wonder, like, just how much of that forms my personality, like how much guilt from that. So, under acceptance and commitment therapy, basically I or anybody else would look at that and say, really, okay, you stole a pack of firecrackers when you were six and you felt bad about it your whole life. Now that you're 32, is it really that bad? So you're basically becoming conscious of these experiences that are contributing to your outlook on life, that just accumulate all this crap, you know?

I definitely subscribe more to ACT than to positive psychology, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Me too, for sure. My shrink is real big on that, but just from a practical standpoint, it's not, I've never even heard him use those words. It just makes sense to me. It's practical. Sure.

As opposed to Emily's always talking about people that bliss out and that sometimes she wishes she has that quality to just bliss out and like, you know, leave it up to the cosmos or Christians say they'll just leave it up to God and let him take care of it. And you know, that's awesome if you can do that, but are you dealing with it? It's a great question, Chuck. The problem is we always say on this podcast to each his own. So if that is how you deal with life and it's working for you, fantastic, I can't do it any more than you or Emily can.

Right. But if that means that you end up on the couch, just laughing your head off, like I said it, America's funny in some videos. I'm trying to think of something worse than that. Saved by the bell? Saved by the bell? It's pretty bad. Okay.

Let's go with that. Okay. I find that show mortifyingly embarrassing. It is. And I still can't stop watching. It's like a train wreck. Do you remember the show Hey Dude? No.

Nickelodeon show on a dude ranch? Was it bad? Saved by the bell, but on a dude ranch and worse, if you can imagine that innovative right there. Yeah. So anyway, if that, if that's your end result and that's in your, in your on the couch, picking your boogers and eating them and your smiling, laughing, then who are we to say, you know, whether or not ignorance is bliss or blissing out is the right way to go.

Although possibly you should lay off the dope. Yeah. Maybe so. Yeah. Doritos are in the mixer somewhere. So I guess the answer to this question, Chuck, are stupid people happier? The answer is we don't know and whether you think that that's the case or not would definitely depend on whatever self-reported anecdotal survey you read.

Right. I think it's interesting. This is the one I want people to log on to the blog when I do my Friday recap. I'd like to hear about this. I'd like to hear some opinions. Calling out. I'm asking for it. Awesome.

A day of travel brings a basket full of learning in Mississippi with family friendly places like the Mississippi Aquarium, the Hattiesburg Zoo, and Tupelo Buffalo Park. Explore today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun. Mississippi, wanderers, welcome. Has your household been hit with COVID-19? Learn about a research study from the comfort of home. We are looking at ways to help people with COVID-19 feel better, faster. Learn more at active6study.org slash radio, that's activ6study.org slash radio.

So, Josh, this was a cool one. Remember in our Body Farms podcast, how toward the end you said something about the lies perpetrated by CSI, the television show? Yeah, I love this email. This is really interesting. Dude. Yes, dude, indeed. All right, here we go.

Here's my first-hand experience of the lies perpetrated by TV in general and CSI specifically. Five years ago, my wife was carjacked, robbed, and assaulted. She escaped by her own wits and strength. Her attacker had been smoking a cigarette during the attack. They fought over a knife. He had-that he had to her throat, and he cut her hands deeply. She pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tried to burn him with it, but it failed, which is-that's a great movie move, you know, turning it on.

After she escaped and the police found the car, they found the cigarette butt with her blood on the filter. Under the blood, they found his saliva, pulled the DNA from it, and found him in the CODIS data bank, which is the combined DNA index system. Or as they call it, the bad guy data bank. Exactly. Which is maintained by the FBI. She went through the lineup at the local precinct where they made the arrest.

The grand jury got the indictment. The trial happened complete with the dramatic, that's the man who did it, moment, and sentencing. After the case was closed, it was submitted by the county forensics chief and accepted by the FBI to be featured at that year's CODIS conference in DC. During every phase of the process, we were amazed at how much TV had lied to us about the process. The actual working in the system is so unlike what you see on television as to be unrecognizable. Thanks.

During the conference, they openly spoke of the CSI effect, so it's basically these cops and forensics guys actually talk about how that show is damaging their work. They're lying liars. They're lying liars. And how the public has been influenced so much by these shows. So basically, he hates those shows and he found it to be a lot of bunk. I did converse with him a couple more times via email, and he felt a lot of responsibility because he left his wife in a running car with the heat on and the radio on while he

ran in to get the ice cream. Oh, Lord. And this is what happened. And then she was attacked? And he had to say that in court, and he said, which made him feel like more of a jerk, then she was attacked, and he said it was just like a TV show except all the details of how it really goes down. Sure.

So it's nothing like... But the drama was all there. Yeah. Jerry Bruckheimer is systematically undermining the law enforcement community. Pretty cool. They put him off and the sky turns out had a rap sheet of rape and murder, and they couldn't get him on the murder charge because something had happened. I can't remember.

So he ended up going to prison for 25 to life. You think he's a pokey? In the pokey, in the hooskow, and the family of the raped and murder girl got closure at the trial, at this lady's trial. That's... Wow. So thank you, Christopher, for that harrowing tale. Seriously, I think they should get t-shirts.

You think so? Yeah, dude. That's actually... You went through this. We'll give you a t-shirt. That's all it's insulting. Oh, it's like the lease we can do. I know.

I'm just kidding. Yeah. It sounds insulting. We should knit her a t-shirt. Yeah, exactly. You narrowly averted death by your own wits, and we'll give you a t-shirt for that. We should make a t-shirt. We should knit it.

Well, Christopher, if you want to send us yours and your wife's t-shirt sizes and address, we will make sure that those go out to you. Again, it's the lease we can do. No insult intended. It's just a show of support for bringing us this e-mail. Yeah. And if you have a harrowing tale of survival, a near miss with death, or if you've run into any bad guys lately, let us know.

And you can send that in an e-mail to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com. For more HowStuffWorks, check out our blogs on the HowStuffWorks.com homepage. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready, are you? It's been said that a day of traveling will bring a basket full of learning. Fill your basket to the brim in Mississippi with family-friendly experiences like the new Mississippi Aquarium, the recently expanded Hattiesburg Zoo, the Tupelo Buffalo Park and

Zoo, and sports and literary attractions, too. Expand your sense of wander today at visitmississipi.org slash family fun, Mississippi. Wanderers, welcome. When I tested positive for COVID, I didn't know what to do at first. Then I learned about the Active Six Research Study. I enrolled in the study from the Comfort of Home. Study medications were shipped to me and I took surveys online. I hope this research will help find treatment options so my family and others in my community

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