The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - Why Giving is a Great Daily Habit

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

It's Giving Tuesday - a time when many people donate to charity (using websites like this: givingmultiplier.org/happiness). Giving money to help people makes them feel good, but it can also make you feel great too. Last year, Happiness Lab listeners gave over $100,000 to raise a whole village in Rwanda out of extreme poverty. Dr Laurie hears the stories of how we all helped transform lives in Kibobo.   With the aid of happiness expert, Nick Epley, we explain why helping Kibobo felt so uplifting and how we can make the act of giving a daily happiness habit.    If you want to donate money to help people in places like Kibobo - or give to any other charity you care to support - go to givingmultiplier.org/happiness. This episode of The Happiness Lab on the joy of giving is brought to you by the 2024 Subaru Share the Love Event. From now until January 2nd, when you get a new Subaru, Subaru and its retailers will donate a minimum of $300 to charity. To learn more, go to Subaru.com/share.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. even your kids, start to talk about money in a healthy way. I'll show you how to have your first positive conversation about money. I'll even show you how to create a healthy culture about money. And you'll learn from other couples just like you. Some of them are in lots of debt. Others are financially free but still worry about money. All of them want to create a rich life, but they don't quite yet know how to do it. With real stories from couples, this podcast will help you align your goals, get on the same page, and build a healthy relationship with money.

To find this podcast, just search Money for Couples. Hey, Happiness Lab listeners. Welcome to an episode brought to you by the 2024 Subaru Share the Love event. And I'm pretty excited because today is one of my favorite holidays, Giving Tuesday. Giving Tuesday is the one day of the year that focuses on giving back, whether that's gifting money to your favorite charity, checking in on a friend, or doing a random act of kindness for a stranger. Study after study shows that engaging in actions like these can have a big impact on our happiness. And that's the reason we tend to make a big deal out of Giving Tuesday here at the Happiness Lab.

If you're a fan of the show, you'll remember that each Giving Tuesday, we offer listeners an opportunity to help folks in need. In years past, we've partnered with groups like GivingMultiplier.org, a site that allows you to donate not only to your favorite cause, but also to a set of super effective charities recommended by experts, where every one of your dollars will do the most good. Last year, we focused our efforts

on just one of these super effective charities, GiveDirectly. GiveDirectly strives to end global poverty through a rather creative strategy. They find a community in need and give every single member of that community some much-needed cash. No strings attached. What we do is we send about $1,000 to each of the households in those villages.

This is Gloria Anguibere, GiveDirectly's country director in Rwanda, explaining where the donations usually go. 10% of the money goes to basic needs. So that would be food and the most essential items in the house. Another 20% to 25% goes to house renovation. And that's usually a basic need. If you're being rained on, you don't think straight and you don't continue sending the children to school and so on and so forth. And then the large portion, about 70%, usually goes towards productive investment. For example, if you buy a goat here,

that can turn into five goats within three years, right? And that means true revenue for the family. Gloria and her colleagues at GiveDirectly have found that letting people make their own choices about these cash transfers is incredibly cost effective. And the money doesn't just disappear, it kickstarts the local economy, making everyone better off. The research at GiveDirectly demonstrates that you get a 2.5 multiplier effect. So for every dollar that we send, you actually get an effect of $2.5 circulating in the market. After learning about the effectiveness of cash transfers, I couldn't wait to try them out. So last Giving Tuesday, I invited Happiness Lab listeners to take part in one of GiveDirectly's projects. And we had a very ambitious goal. We took one struggling village and vowed to raise

enough money to get every single household in that community out of extreme poverty. Gloria is on the show to tell you more about the community we picked, a place called Kibobo. more about the community we picked, a place called Kibobo. Kibobo is a remote, quite isolated village in Rwanda. It's at the peripheries of Kigali, which is the capital. In general, the population in Kibobo is quite poor and lives under a dollar a day. That's right, one dollar a day. The World Bank defines extreme poverty as households that survive on less than $2.15 a day. Before Happiness Lab listeners stepped in, nearly everyone in Kibobo was in that dire position. What you'd have in Kibobo is very little access to drinking water. This translates into long trips, one hour and more.

And by the time they bring back a jerry can full of water, they have to decide whether to shower or to feed the children. Those are the choices that these villagers are confronted with. Imagine having to walk for over an hour just to get something safe to drink. These are the conditions that Kabobo residents faced every day. They lack the home comforts that so many of us take for granted. Roofing is very poor. There's no flooring. And most of the time, sanitation is a problem. So you don't have access to a latrine and you sleep on the floor. These are admittedly huge challenges. But GiveDirectly has found that a little kindness

can go a long way towards fixing things in a place like Kabobo. A dollar in Rwanda has way more value than a dollar in the U.S. What it does here is it transforms a family's life. It transforms a community's life. And that was our goal. I wanted to rally Happiness Lab listeners like you to donate enough money to completely transform the life of every single resident of Kabobo.

That's hundreds and hundreds of people. Now, I knew my listeners were a generous bunch, but could we really raise enough money to help an entire village? The answer, of course, was yes. Yes, we could. And yes, we did. Kibopo has about 193 families, and each of them was able to receive a cash transfer of about $1,100.

We are very grateful to have received that gift. Very generous and very impactful. I want to let that sink in for a second. We helped every single family in the entire village of Cabobo get a cash transfer of over $1,000. That is absolutely incredible. Take the effect it's had on one Cabobo resident, Talos Four.

Here he is talking about what life was like before we all donated. My name is Telusfor. We are a family of seven. Before receiving the transfers, we often had to go without meals, and it was heartbreaking when our little children asked for food, and we had nothing to give them. After receiving cash transfers, we bought our own land for farming. I also bought a cow, which is truly valuable as it provides both milk for our family and fertilizer for farming. I'm hopeful that we will have a great harvest. My son needed $200 to purchase a motorbike for work and now he's working as a

motor taxi driver. Before the transfers, I had very old and torn clothes, and I was not confident to meet other people. I'm no longer embarrassed to meet people or go to an event. He's a very proud man. He smiles all the time. He looks good. He looks clean. His wife looks happy. He's also managed to send his daughter and his two grandchildren to school. And his daughter, particularly, who couldn't access school back then, is getting really good grades. And Telus 4's family is not the only one to experience such radical improvements. You have people who have medical debt. So another family, the mother of the family, very sick before we got there, and they managed to clear about $700 debt.

And the alternative to that would have been that they sell the one little plot of land they were farming on. So really the cash transfers have come to save them and still left them with extra, allowing them to continue on the better path that they would have not reached if we hadn't been there. GiveDirectly has continued studying the impact of our donation. And Gloria says that many families found ways to spend their money on purchases that will have a positive impact on their families and communities for years to come. The households that we found under a dollar a day

are now ranging between $2.5 a day to $3 a day today. Wow. So they literally doubled or tripled their income. Definitely. I'll give you another example. Most of the recipients in Kiboba bought a cow, but in return from the cow, you get five liters of milk a day and you can sell four liters of milk and you bring back the one liter to your children and your family. And that provides for the nutritional input that so many families are lacking. If that cow then has two calves over the span of three years, you have saved the family. But Gloria also shared examples of families that made even more creative investments. Ones that I couldn't have imagined when we began this project. more creative investments, ones that I couldn't have imagined when we began this project.

So for example, there's a couple called Emmanuel and Aline, and they've started the first pub in the village. And that could be an atypical choice. Why would you spend the money towards a pub? But what they explain is this acts as a retail shop during the day, so they can make money. And at the end of the day, everybody gathers around them. They can serve drinks and they've described so much laughter, so much joy at the end of the day, so much relaxation that happens. And that was one of their objectives. They were like, how can we get the community more together, so to say. And now they are exploring the idea of a restaurant. You mentioned something about a mattress. Share that story with me, if you would. A mattress is considered luxury in Rwanda and you sleep on the floor. One of the first purchases is a mattress and it costs you about $60 to $70

in Rwanda, but it's true luxury. And most of the families in Kibobo Village have had that on their list of purchases. For Alphonse and Beatrice who live there, that was purchase number one. And they now confirm that they sleep way more comfortably than before. Beatrice was sick before. So that's an extra layer of comfort that you have managed to provide her. When we teamed up with GiveDirectly, I had a guess about the kinds of things our money would be spent on. Stuff like land, livestock, school books, and building repairs.

But I didn't know how our donations would actually feel to the people on the receiving end. Talking to Gloria had me beaming. I was so happy for Telus4 and the other residents of Gobobo, and so proud of us for sending whatever money we could. Hearing Gloria share what we were able to accomplish was just incredible. The first thing you notice when you get in Kabobo is how

many people smile at you. That's the most basic way of expressing the effect of what we are doing. And before that, it was a different feeling. And that's the most powerful thing we can do in life, whether it's giving cash transfers or something else. It's all about the love that you convey by sharing what you have. When I think about what we were able to do in Kobo, I'm brought to tears. But why don't we do this more often? What gets in the way of so many of us doing good in the world? We'll find out when this special Giving Tuesday episode of the Happiness Lab returns from the break. Finding playlists, especially that one filled with show tunes. More of you finding Gemini's because you know you always like them. More of you dating with intention because you know what you want.

And you know what? We love that for you. Someone else will too. Be more you this year and find them on Bumble. Welcome back. I wanted to better understand what gets in the way of us doing as much good as we can for others. So I decided to ask an academic expert and a Happiness Lab regular. I'm Nick Epley. I'm a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business.

And I study mind reading for a living. The inferences we make about each other's thoughts and beliefs and attitudes and mostly about how we screw that up and misunderstand each other in lots of different ways. My first question for Nick was why giving to others makes us feel so good. One answer, he said, comes from a psychological concept known as self-determination theory. This theory proposes we have kind of three basic motivations or needs. One is relatedness, connectedness. Another is competency, feeling like we are capable agents, we can do things effectively in the world. And autonomy, that we feel like we're responsible for this thing.

And kindness, particularly when it's effective, really hits all three of these in a major, major way. So it's going right to the sweet spot of what motivates us. Kindness connects us with others. When you do something positive for somebody else and you can see that it had a positive impact, that pokes right on that relatedness motive and satisfies it really well, particularly when it's a stranger, when it's somebody you're not already connected to. When you do something really powerful for them, that creates a connection that wasn't there before. That's powerful. It's also showing your competency that you are able to do something really powerful for somebody else when you put your mind to it, sometimes big, sometimes relatively

small. And when you feel responsible for that, when you feel more competent as a result of that, when you try to do something kind and it is effective, that tends to feel great. And most often our efforts to be kind are effective. When you pass along a compliment to somebody, when you get somebody a bed when they need it, that works, that works. And so that really hits the competency button as well. And then when you're choosing to do this, when you're the one who's decided to initiate this action and you feel responsible for it, that hits the autonomy button. So it really hits the trifecta, I think, of our motivations when we're doing kind things for other people. I was totally miscalibrated on just how nice it would feel.

And this is something that I know you've studied a lot, just like kind of how bad our miscalibrations are. You've used this term under-sociality. What's that? Yes. So under-sociality is a concept we use to describe a broad set of empirical results we find where it seems as far as we can tell, we might not be social enough for our own well-being. And part of that stems, I think, from the very experience that you had, which is just

underestimating how positive your act will feel for somebody else, how much of a positive impact you might be able to have on somebody else by reaching out and doing this act of kindness. So with your Give Directly campaign, typically when we give money to a charity, we don't necessarily see the outcome. We don't see how much good we're actually doing for somebody else. And it can be easy then to underestimate just how much good is actually being done. You got to see it directly, the positive impact you are having on somebody else. And so that was big. The other thing, though, that I think we seem to miss when we are doing kind things for other people is that a kind

act does two things for the recipient. On the one hand, there is some objective thing that we have done for them. So getting somebody a mattress that they can sleep on when they didn't have one, allowing somebody to go to school when they couldn't, those things are objective outcomes that matter. But in addition, a kind act also conveys relational connection to the recipient. It makes them feel connected to somebody else. It makes them realize somebody cares about them. It makes them feel seen.

That is a profound expression of warmth, to reach out, to do something positive for somebody else. And warmth is one of the things that we value most in other people. And when somebody is kind to us, that just feels great because it was kind. So a recipient gets two things. One is the thing that you're giving. But the thing we really seem to undervalue or underestimate is the positive impact that just the act itself, the expression of warmth will have on somebody else.

You did really big things with all of your listeners for this community in Rwanda. Really big things with all of your listeners for this community in Rwanda. Really big things. But in our daily lives, even small things that we do for other people around us that are easy to do, that are everyday habits we can take on, tend to have a surprisingly positive impact because we think the positive impact is going to come from just the thing that we're doing. And it does. But it also comes from the fact that we have been kind to them as well. And that's something that we don't seem to anticipate. And you've done all these clever studies to show just how systematically we underestimate the value that comes from these two things together. And one of my favorite studies that you've looked at was in the context of giving away

hot chocolate. So explain this hot chocolate study. Yeah. So this was a very simple, at least conceptually, simple thing that we asked people to do in Chicago. Wasn't big. It was a little thing. at least conceptually, simple thing that we asked people to do in Chicago. It wasn't big. It was a little thing. We went to downtown Chicago. So if you visited our fair Windy City, you will notice that right smack dab downtown is a massive park.

And there's a skating rink down there. And it's a very popular spot in the wintertime. And there is a kiosk right next to it that happens to sell hot chocolate. It gets cold here in the winter. a kiosk right next to it that happens to sell hot chocolate. It gets cold here in the winter, and it's hard to think of something that feels warmer, both literally and figuratively, on a cold day than getting hot chocolate. And so what we had people do was, in our experiments, if they were interested in participating, we walked up to them and we told them, congratulations, you're in this experiment. We are, today, giving you a free cup of hot chocolate.

Now, you can keep it for yourself if you'd like to, but what we'd really like you to do is to look around and find somebody here and give that cup of hot chocolate away to them. And this was a ticket, and so they weren't giving away an actual cup of hot chocolate. They were giving away this ticket that just turned out to be easier experimentally, if they were willing, and nearly everybody was, a few people gave it to their mostly girlfriends sitting next to them, but most people gave it away to somebody else overwhelmingly. Before we then went up and bought the cup of hot chocolate and went out and gave it to their recipient, we asked them to anticipate how's the recipient going to feel about this, positive or negative. They're going to feel on a couple of different measures. We then

went and got the cup of hot chocolate. We gave it to the recipient. We told them that somebody here in the park decided to give this to you today as an act of kindness. And they reported how it actually made them feel. Now, it's important to understand is every listener here on this podcast can appreciate that that would feel pretty good to receive. And our givers anticipated that. They knew that it would be pretty positive. But it turned out it was even more positive than that for the recipient. And what we learned in subsequent experiments that the part that they seemed to be missing

wasn't that they would like a cup of hot chocolate. When we gave a cup of hot chocolate away as a prize that they won as part of the experiment. The givers thought that the recipients would like that just as much as getting the cup of hot chocolate as an act of kindness. It didn't matter how they got the gift. What mattered was that they got the hot chocolate. The recipients, however, they felt better when they got the hot cup of hot chocolate as an act of kindness than when they won the hot cup of hot chocolate in a lottery because the cup of hot chocolate when it was an act of kindness was nice because it was hot

chocolate plus it had this added dose of kindness to it that made it feel even a little better and that's what our givers missed was that the kindness would make it feel even better and you've also found in some of your studies that this is like not just true in the sort of experimental setup with the hot chocolate. It's also true just in these really straightforward acts of kindness that people come up with on their own. Are people also miscalibrated where it's kind of their choice about what act to give and it's less experimentally induced? Absolutely, they are. We find this consistently as well when we just let people choose an act of kindness that they could do. So one of the ways I do this is with my MBA students here at the University of Chicago. I ask them to go out into the world and do some act of kindness for somebody. They just keep their eyes out. Sometimes they plan

it. Sometimes it's spontaneous. Sometimes they're big things. Sometimes they're tiny little things. Sometimes folks will say, I held a door for somebody else, which is, you know, a little bit of a stretch for an act of kindness. They're MBAs. They got to start small. They're busy people, right? Yeah, they're starting somewhere. So when we let them just choose it and then we reach out to the recipient of that, we

find that the recipients also value that act of kindness more than the givers anticipated. We find it across the board. So this is a so-called pro-sociality paradox. We're kind of consistently undervaluing like how much our act would mean to other people. And I kind of, we've talked about one of the reasons that is, right? We underestimate the warmth. I think particularly in this give directly case, there seems to be something else that's going on, which is sort of a funny framing effect, which is like when I think of like donating five bucks, it's like, well, it's not that helpful for me. It's a cup of coffee. But when I look at how that money helped the people in Kobo, it's like enormous, right? This is allowing people to like completely change their lives

around. Yeah. So I think to go back to what we were talking about just a moment before, when we do some act of kindness for somebody else, we're focused on the thing that we're doing, the act that we're engaging in, what we're giving somebody, what that means to us, right, as a giver. We can't but evaluate the world from our own unique egocentric perspective on it. So when we in the United States think of $5, we think about what that means to us. When we think about the effort we had to go through in giving this money away, it was super easy. It wasn't that hard. It just doesn't seem like a big thing to us. But to a recipient of that, if they're in a more precarious spot in

their life, $5 isn't $5 to us. It's $5 to them. And that currency exchange is big. And so when you go across perspective gaps like that, particularly one that goes in that direction, we're likely to think this is a much smaller material benefit to the recipient than it actually is. I mean, I think this is true in the financial situation with this particular case of give directly, but I think just in kind acts that we can engage in with the people around us, that I imagine that perspective taking bias comes in in a different way, which is like, you know, say I have a friend who's struggling, who's really in need, who's had a bad day in a bad way. When I'm simulating what it would feel like for me to reach out, I'm like, well, it's not going to matter because I'm not the one who's in a bad way. But if she's in a bad way, then maybe

I'm missing something. Is this something we also see in some research? Absolutely. So we've conducted a bunch of experiments on expressions of support, right? So the simple thing, you know, somebody's going through a hard time, you reach out to them to express your support. It can often be hard for us to reach out to people at those times, because again, we're thinking about our act in terms of its objective features. What am I going to do for you, Lori, when you are in a tough situation to actually change the situation you're in, to actually make you feel better when you've lost a spouse

or when you're sick in some way? But what the recipient values, again, is not just the objective act. If somebody has just been diagnosed with some bad health condition, you're not going to remedy that health condition. You're not. That can often be a barrier to reaching out because we think that's what we have to do. That's not necessarily what the recipient values. Remember, the recipient values the relational connection

just like we do, and that's the part we can often miss. So psychologists in lots of different ways, from simple text messages to reaching out with a letter, which is what we've done in some of our experiments, we find that people underestimate how positively someone will respond when you just reach out to them. Tell them something even as simple, as small as, hey, I'm thinking of you.

And this is something that I think we get wrong in a different case, another way that we can sort of boost this relational connection, which is in some ways by asking for help, right? When I need help with something and I'm like, oh, I don't want to burden anybody. I'm kind of in my own headspace about it.

But to someone with whom I ask for help, that kind of feels really nice. And you've done some lovely work showing that we don't ask for help enough, right? Yeah, but I'm going to turn the tables on you here a little bit. Uh-oh. Now I'm going to turn the spotlight on you. Turn the spotlight on me?

Well, you'll find out what that means when the Happiness Lab returns in a moment. Welcome back to our special Giving Tuesday episode of the Happiness Lab. Before the break, I asked kindness expert Nick Epley why we don't ask for help as much as we should. But before answering my question, Nick wanted to flip the script a bit. I'll tell you about my research in a minute, but I'll tell you about a personal experience to your listeners. So last year, my daughter, Sion, our daughter, was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. And that's a very scary thing to have a teenage daughter diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She that's a very scary thing to have a teenage daughter diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She had the best medical care in the world.

She's in wonderful shape right now. Everything is great. But that was a very hard time. That was a very hard time for us. And when we were in the hospital, you will remember I reached out to you because we are big fans of yours. Sion and my wife, Jen, in particular remember I reached out to you because we are big fans of yours. Sion and my wife, Jen, in particular, we reached out to you because I knew that because of who you

are, I knew that you would be able to do something for her that would just really lift her up. It wouldn't cure her of ovarian cancer, but it would lift her up in a time when she really need to be uplifted. And you sent us t-shirts, which we still wear today. You sent us happiness lab mugs, which we still drink coffee from today. The most amazing, most amazing thing you did one day, you were, The most amazing thing you did one day, you were given a talk in Boston, a live talk, I remember. And you had the audience give a shout out to Sion. He held up your phone and had them call out, get well soon to Sion. Hey, Sion, I got a message for you. Get well soon, Sion.

We're all thinking of you at the Happiness Lab. And that was just so powerful. It was so powerful for us and so uplifting for her. And I knew just because I've seen 10,000 data points on this kind of stuff. I knew that this was something that you would be able to do that would not be a huge amount of effort for you. But that would have such a meaningful impact on my daughter because she would feel seen and uplifted by a celebrity even in our lives and that was just really really huge and i am certain you underestimated just how meaningful that was this morning when i left the house and told sion and jen my daughter and wife that uh

i was gonna be doing this podcast they just smiles all around. Oh, we love Lori. Say hello. That just stands out for us like a beacon. And I think the important... Well, before you say the important part, I mean, it's so incredible to hear you tell this story and you had a little thanks over email, but I'm watching you almost tear up explaining the story. And two things from my side, right? First, I had no idea it impacted you and Sion that much. I mean, if I had to guess, I'm like, oh, it's probably cool to get the video or to get the t-shirts. I had no idea you'd still be thinking about it. You'd still remember it, that you'd still be using the mugs, right? So completely underestimated the value to you.

But on my end, I thought it was so... When you reached out and I got that email about Sion, I thought, not excited is not the right word, but I felt so touched that you shared that with me. It seemed like such a personal thing about your family. I knew we're friends and colleagues and you've been on the show, but it just made me feel so much more connected to you to know you much more personally. And that felt so nice to kind of feel like you're willing to share that with me. And I was super excited to be able to do that. You know, like to me, the Happiness Lab t-shirts didn't feel like a big deal, you know, even the part about like, you know, having our live audience do that. But it was just fun for me. And honestly, it was fun for the folks at the live show. I think if I had to pick, you know, one of the best moments of that live show, they kind of enjoyed most like,

you know, screaming for Sion. So it's kind of off in two ways, right? It's like, you didn't realize the value that I would get from engaging and helping you. And I didn't realize, you know, even now the value that you got out of that action. And we, you and I are both like the world, you're a world expert on this. I'm the podcast, right? We should know how to do this better. Yeah. Well, I will say, I think to my credit, at least I have learned the power that kindness can have, particularly things that seem small and easy for somebody to do. We also learned through our research that people tend to underestimate how positively others respond when you reach out and ask them for help. Ask them to do things that they can do. Give them an opportunity to experience relational connection, competency, and autonomy.

I've actually come to think differently about asking for help from other people when I need it, when I think other people can really be helpful. I've come to think of it as an act of selfishness because I've deprived somebody else of the opportunity to feel good and more connected to us by helping us in some way. And I think this is a really important point on Giving Tuesday, right? Which is that we often think of acts of kindness as giving something, right? We have to give money to this campaign to give directly, which is great.

But one of the things we can actually do to help someone else is to let them help us. That can be really important for anyone who's listening, who's feeling like this Giving Tuesday, I either don't have the finances or I don't have the bandwidth to kind of do what I would normally like to do. Sometimes asking for help can be that gift back.

It's a way to sort of give to other people too. Yeah. So it turns out that when people, for instance, ask for advice, there's some interesting research on this. They think they're going to be seen as not very competent. But in fact, when you ask somebody for advice, I mean, think about how you feel when you actually give what you think is helpful advice to somebody else. That makes you feel good.

You're helping somebody else. That's an example of how we can ask for help when we need it in ways that are beneficial both to us and to the person giving us. And I think you're right. We think of this often as zero-sum. I'm giving and you're getting, and there's a zero-sum nature to this. But that's not the way kindness actually works psychologically. It can uplift both sides, particularly when we do kindness or we seek kindness in a way that's authentic, that has good intentions at heart. That's what tends to be uplifting. So we just talked about ways that you can ask for help and that's kind of participating in Giving Tuesday, even though it doesn't feel like it, because you might in some sense, even be getting monetary stuff from other people. Are there other ways that we can kind of give to others that don't

cost us any money? So the biggest ways to do this are in psychological self-affirming sorts of ways. And I think the two that at least we've studied in our research that are the clearest examples of this involve psychological acts of kindness where we express our appreciation to somebody else, either in the form of gratitude or in the form of compliments. Those are cases where you're not exchanging money. If I tell you that I like the necklace you're wearing today or that I'm so grateful for the kindness you showed us when we were going through a hard time. I'm not exchanging anything of objective value there, but what I'm doing is I am uplifting you in some way. I'm affirming you as a positive person when I'm feeling it. What's interesting to me is that in many cases,

when we feel these emotions, when we feel appreciation or gratitude for somebody else, when we have a kind thought about somebody else, we're a little nervous to share it, right? We're a little reluctant to send it out. One of my good friends in the field and somebody you know well, Jillian Sandstrom, who's in the UK, just ran a demonstration in her class there in the UK

where she had people write gratitude letters, gave them an opportunity to send it. Even when they wrote it, most people didn't send a letter. They were nervous, right? We've seen that in our research as well. We had people in one experiment generate compliments to send to somebody else in the experiment. We gave them a two-minute window to send it in the experiment. Like they had already generated it. It wasn't hard. They just had to send it out. And most people didn't send along the compliment. They were waiting for the right time or something. It was awkward at the moment. There were yet other barriers, right? And those barriers are interesting to me. We find in our work that with both appreciation and compliments,

people think it'll have a less positive impact on the recipient than it actually does. In the cases of expressing gratitude, these are folks who typically know each other very well, been together for a long time, or this is a person they've been very close to for a long time. And yet, even with that, they still think it'll be weird for somebody to receive this letter out of the blue. I do this in my MBA class every year. And every year I get stories from my letter writers that they just couldn't believe. Notes back saying, dude, don't send this to me at work. I can't sit here and cry at my desk. Right? Really, really powerful. Surprisingly powerful. I never expected my mother would respond this way. It is your mother. And you are underestimating how uplifted she'll be when you actually express your true beliefs to her. Even small compliments. I was on the train coming in

this morning, my morning commute. I got onto the platform in Flossmoor where we live. There was a woman standing there who had a shacket, like this, like a jacket shirt sort of thing that I thought my wife would love that. That looks really nice. So I went up to her and I told her, I love that jacket. And I think my wife would love it. Can you just tell me where you got it from?

Right? And she just beamed instantly when I told her how great this looked and shared with it. And I found it on the way in and she'll be getting it for Christmas. Jen, don't listen. Don't listen. No.

Well, it doesn't always have to be a surprise. But what's interesting is that we often have these barriers that we think it'll be awkward to give this compliment, and we find people just tend to be off about that. It's more positive for the recipient than we think it'll be. will just tend to be off about that. It's more positive for the recipient than we think it'll be. This kind of reminds me of another domain that I think we can help others that we often forget. And it comes from an experience I had recently. So a good friend of mine, I think someone you know, Nick, Jason Mitchell, he and his wife just had another baby. And I found this out and I was thinking like, oh, I want to help. Maybe I should kick some food or something. But I wasn't really sure how to do it. And what another friend of ours did, which was amazing, was she set up kind of a meal train.

So she emailed all of Jason's friends and was like, hey, here's the dates. Here's what they like. You know, here's, you know, bring it. And this friend was really helpful to me because I was sitting there thinking like, oh, I want to do something. But I kind of didn't have the permission or the structure. I think this is something else we can do a lot, right? If you have a cause and need, set up the structure, email your friends and say, here's how you're going to do it. Here's how much money, here's how you can help. We can think about intervening on these barriers in two ways. One is at the personal level. What

is it that I can do to overcome some of these barriers a little more wisely in cases where the barrier is kind of misplaced. So, you know, that would involve you figuring out what is the right thing to do or what is the thing I'm comfortable doing, right? That's an individual level intervention. But the other thing that is actually more effective at scale is a system level intervention. These are sometimes called S-level interventions by psychologists having to do with the system level. And that's what your friend did is set up a context that overcame this barrier. I'm not sure what to do. I'm not sure how to do

it, right? Those are barriers to doing kind things. Overcame that barrier for a lot of you and allowed people to contribute here. I did something like that with these barriers in mind a couple of years ago when one of our staff members here at the University of Chicago was going through a cancer scare of her own, we set up a gratitude chain. And so we set up for a few months at a time and extended it for a few months more. People were on call just to write something that they were grateful to this person for. This person is amazing. People have no shortage of things to be grateful for towards her. But what that meant is that she got a gratitude letter every day, spread out over time. She keeps them now in a scrapbook. And we had way more people express

their gratitude and appreciation to this person than would have otherwise, because you're right. We set up this kind of permission structure for people to do it. And that was very effective. So we can talk about one last barrier that I know for me winds up impeding more than I'd like my ability to do kind actions for other peoples. And that's the barrier of time, right? You know, even in this case where this good friend of mine had a baby, I was like, oh man, I want to do something. I want to get a onesie, bake something. And I went back into my calendar and it kind of went away. Right. I looked at like, when can I actually go over and visit him? I just didn't have any time.

And so any helpful strategies for how to kind of fight the sort of time famine that we all face that gets in the way of us doing nice stuff for others? Two ways I would think about this. One is to remind yourself of the concept, the psychological concept of affordances, which is that any given situation has a variety of different possible outcomes. A lot of different ways this could go. So our interview could have gone in many different directions here. My commute in on the train this morning could have gone in many different directions. My day, you know, I'm walking from the elevator to my office. I could do different things in that, right? There are opportunities. If you start keeping an eye out for opportunities for connection, things will pop up that don't require any more effort from you, don't require any more time. They're just sitting there. It's low-hanging fruit on the tree you just hadn't seen before. And you start spotting things.

right in this morning. I spotted this woman wearing this really nice shacket and I knew I should say, hey, that looks fantastic. And I came into the building this morning. There's a guy wearing a really nice suit. And I just thought to compliment on that. He looked really sharp. Those acts, when you start looking for them, they don't require more time. You're already doing something anyway. They don't require any more energy. They're like freebies almost. And you just don't see them otherwise. And once you start looking for them, you see more of them. So that's one thing is to start paying attention. The second is to disassociate your sense that the positive reaction to kindness is a function of how much you do, how hard it is for you to do, how much effort you put into this thing. And that's just not quite

true, right? So a charity like GiveDirectly has positive impact on people. They make it easy to give money that really matters for folks. It's not hard and has a huge impact on them. And our daily lives, the little things we can do for others around us are the things that really have an outsized influence. So when you're thinking about what you can do for Jason, you're thinking, oh, I got to put a lot of effort into it, right? And oh, that's hard. And thinking that he'll appreciate it more when it's really effortful. No, he just would like lasagna on a Thursday night, right? And it doesn't matter whether you cooked it yourself and mailed it. He just would, you know, you just want to make, so when when we when we think that something requires a lot of effort, that can often be a barrier and we won't do it. Once you start to realize that that's not required, just getting the thing done, just doing the thing is what really matters too often.

Then I think it frees you up a little bit. We just had a teaching assistant of mine from last spring, Kyle Fredrickson, and his wife just had a baby as well. And I wanted to send them something, but it was hard to get the card and get the thing mailed to me and I'll wrap it and send it. So instead I just sent it through Amazon. Now that's not as nice. It's not as personal, but I got it done. Right. And that's what I try to focus on more is just getting it done. And I think this is really powerful because it's also an act of kindness to yourself. I know sometimes when I'm trying to do something kind, I'm so focused on that competence piece

that you talked about before that I'm like beating myself up, that I'm not doing it right. I mean, I had this even when I was making the food for Jason. I'm like, what kind of food should I make? Seems like chili is really easy, but is that not cool? And it's like, no, just be kind to yourself. What matters is the act. You can kind of give yourself some grace that it doesn't have to be perfect. It's still actually going to have more impact than you think. Exactly. The difference between good and really good is small. It can sometimes require a huge amount of investment on your side with very little impact on the recipient side. So do the thing that you can do that is good enough because it'll likely be great for the recipient. So any last minute

advice on this Giving Tuesday of what people can do to be happier themselves and make the world a better place? So I think probably two things. Opportunities for kindness and forgiving are all around us. They're just everywhere in our day-to-day lives. And they don't have to be big things. One of the most influential findings for me from research on happiness and well-being is how important just repeated acts are. We've talked before, happiness is like a leaky tire. You pump it up and you feel good for a little bit, and then it leaks back down. And you pump it back. And that means you got to keep doing it, keep repeating it, right? And it turns out the amount of uplift or pumping up you get and others get from an act of kindness isn't as dependent on how big the act is, as you might imagine, right? And so I think we can really enrich our lives if

we realize, if we just keep an eye out for the low-hanging fruit around us, that's a good way to keep kindness kind of sustainable. Because there's just so many, in addition to the big things we might do, the rational, effective things we might do, there are also so many little uplifting things we can do. Expressing kindness, expressing gratitude, giving compliments, saying hello to people, being civil, don't require a lot of effort, but keep that tire pumped up in a way that keeps us and others feeling good. I started this show by saying how much I like Giving Tuesday, but Nick's right to point out that we should really be trying to make generosity a daily habit, not just an annual thing. But Giving Tuesday is as good a day as any to start that long-term habit. So if you have a

dollar or two to spare, why not start right this minute by making a donation that can help people in need, the same way we helped the people of Cabobo last year. The work goes on. The list of villages like Cabobo is still long. I wish one day we don't have to send cash transfers to people. But in the meantime, there is a need and we need to continue the work. For 2024, we're teaming up with our friends at Giving Multiplier to handle all your

donations. So head to givingmultiplier.org slash happiness. That's givingmultiplier.org slash happiness. On that site, you can send money to villages like Kabobo via GiveDirectly, while at the same time directing money to a charity that's close to your heart. What could those charities be? Thank you. and friendly visits to our seniors. The National Park Foundation, which is helping all of us get out in nature. There's Make-A-Wish, which is allowing the dreams of ill children to come true. And the ASPCA, which protects animals from cruelty while giving caring pet owners the help they need. The point is, there are lots of groups out there

doing good work. So head over to givingmultiplier.org and donate what you can. That's givingmultiplier.org slash happiness. May your Giving Tuesday donation be just the first step in exploring both the good that you're able to do in the world and the good that being kinder can do for you. Happy Giving Tuesday, everyone. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi. You may have seen my money show on Netflix, but today I've got something new for you.

It's a podcast called Money for Couples, and it will help you and your partner and even your kids start to talk about money in a healthy way. I'll show you how to have your first positive conversation about money. I'll even show you how to create a healthy culture about money. And you'll learn from other couples just like you. Some of them are in lots of debt. Others are financially free but still worry about money.

All of them want to create a rich life, but they don't quite yet know how to do it. With Real Stories from Couples, this podcast will help you align your goals, get on the same page, and build a healthy relationship with money. To find this podcast, just search Money for Couples.