Dr. Laurie Santos: The Science of Lasting Happiness
Dr. Laurie Santos, Professor of Cognitive Science and Psychology at Yale University, takes a research-backed approach to creating lasting happiness.
Table of Contents
The Importance of Social Connection
Navigating Connection in the Digital Age
The Relationship Between Money and Happiness
How External Rewards Hijack Our Natural Joy
Psychological Mechanisms and Biases
Cultural Influences on Happiness
Effective Practices for Happiness
The Importance of Social Connection
Behaviors, Thoughts, and Social Connection
Huberman asks Dr Santos about the most effective approach to increasing happiness - should we focus on changing our feelings, thought patterns, or behaviors?
Dr Santos quickly addresses what doesn't work: changing life circumstances. Contrary to popular belief, quintupling your income or moving to a new location doesn't deliver the happiness boost most people expect. Instead, she suggests hacking behaviors, thought patterns, and feelings to achieve better results.
When it comes to behaviors that increase happiness, social connection stands out as particularly powerful.
Research shows that the two strongest predictors of happiness are time spent with friends and family, and time physically spent around other people. These aren't just correlations - experimental studies have demonstrated causation by having participants engage with strangers in settings like coffee shops.
Despite people's predictions that such interactions would feel awkward, the research consistently shows that talking to others increases positive emotions across personality types, including both introverts and extroverts.
Huberman raises a practical concern about social connection - the time trade-off. Spending time with others often means sacrificing time for other responsibilities, potentially leading to sleep loss and deteriorating well-being. Dr Santos acknowledges this challenge but argues that even brief social interactions can be beneficial.
Huberman recalls a professor who emphasized the need to see actual faces daily, not just on screens. This aligns with neuroscience research on dedicated brain regions for face recognition, suggesting we're hardwired for these interactions. Even brief encounters with others can shift our internal set point for well-being after periods of isolation.
Dr Santos elaborates that the most beneficial social connections happen in real-time. While in-person interaction is ideal, video calls that allow for real-time communication and facial expressions work reasonably well.
What doesn't work as effectively is asynchronous communication like texting or messaging apps. Our primate brains aren't designed for the delayed back-and-forth of text messages. Even old-fashioned phone calls can create meaningful connections because they happen in real time, engaging our language processing abilities.
This creates a modern dilemma. Our evolutionary biology didn't need to build in strong cravings for social connection because, historically, humans lived in small bands where interaction was constant and unavoidable.
Unlike our powerful drive for calorie-dense foods (which were rare in our evolutionary past), we don't have an equally strong biological drive pushing us toward social connection - even though we need it just as much.
Dr Santos offers practical advice: schedule real-life time with others or at minimum, real-time interactions via phone or video calls. She emphasizes that even if our brains aren't signaling a craving for connection, we should trust the research and experiment for ourselves.
Much like the nutrition and fitness strategies Huberman often discusses, the benefits of social connection often exceed our expectations once we experience them firsthand.
The Underestimated Power of Social Connection
Unlike processed food, where expectations often exceed the experience, social connections deliver more satisfaction than anticipated.
"This seems to be a spot where our predictions about how good something's gonna be don't necessarily match how good it ultimately will gonna be," notes Dr Santos.
While processed food might leave us feeling "kind of gross" despite high expectations, social interactions typically exceed our modest predictions.
University of Chicago psychologist Nicholas Epley coined the term "under sociality" to describe this phenomenon. People consistently underestimate the rewards from expressing gratitude, giving compliments, or reaching out to old friends. In his studies, participants predict these interactions might feel like a "three out of ten" but afterward report closer to a "six out of ten" experience.
The problem lies not in misunderstanding whether social connection is positive but in drastically underestimating its magnitude. This prediction error prevents people from seeking out these highly beneficial interactions.
Meanwhile, less fulfilling activities like scrolling through social media or watching Netflix alone become default behaviors despite often leaving us feeling "kind of yucky."
"The happiness space is one where the cravings we have, the rewards we seek out, the predictions we're making about what feels good, we're often just really wrong with them," Dr Santos observes. Our minds effectively lie to us about what will bring happiness, steering us toward money and quick dopamine hits instead of the social connections that truly satisfy.
This disconnect raises evolutionary questions. Dr Santos theorizes that "the things that really, really matter for our happiness we just kind of got for free in the evolutionary environment," eliminating the need for built-in craving mechanisms for social connection.
Introverts and extroverts enact this in different ways. While extroverts gain energy from social interactions and larger groups, introverts typically prefer deeper one-on-one conversations and value alone time. However, research reveals something surprising: the prediction error about social connection is actually more pronounced in introverts.
"Extroverts predict social connection [will be] all right, not that great. Introverts predict it's going to be terrible, it's going to be awkward, I'm going to hate it," Dr Santos explains. Yet when studies force introverts into social situations, they report happiness levels better than expected.
Huberman clarifies this dynamic: introverts anticipate negative interactions but often experience positive ones, positioning them to derive more pleasure from social connections than extroverts, who enter with high expectations that require a "much bigger dopamine inflection" to feel satisfied.
This prediction error creates a problematic cycle for introverts. "They predict that social connection is going to be awkward so they don't engage in it," Dr Santos explains. Without experiences to correct their expectations, introverts may fall into cycles of isolation and loneliness.
Dr Santos describes Jessica Pan's book "Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: An Introvert's Year of Living Dangerously," which documents an introvert forcing herself into social situations for a year. Pan not only enjoyed these experiences more than anticipated but saw her habits and preferences evolve over time.
This highlights another misconception: that personality traits like introversion and extroversion are fixed. While predispositions exist, people can shift along the spectrum by updating their reward predictions through experience. For introverts, this might mean starting small—perhaps calling an old friend—and noticing the unexpected pleasure derived from the interaction.
Huberman, who identifies as "fairly introverted," questions whether introverts truly want to avoid people or just the expectation of deep engagement. He notes feeling comfortable in crowded cities but anxious about situations like parties where introductions and meaningful connections are expected.
Dr Santos suggests the answer might be "all of the above" but emphasizes that introverts typically handle one-on-one interactions better than large gatherings. Even small social moments—chatting with a barista or calling a friend—can significantly boost happiness.
She concludes with Epley's metaphor: happiness is like a leaky tire that slowly deflates. Each social interaction, however brief, helps reinflate it. These "micro-doses of social connection" can maintain happiness levels even for those who identify as introverts.
The Power of Social Rituals
In discussing habits that affect our happiness, Huberman and Dr Santos highlight how certain social rituals serve as bridges for human connection. Huberman shares an anecdote about how smoking, despite its health detriments, once functioned as social lubricant. Foreign postdocs would gather outside for cigarette breaks, creating casual interactions.
"Bumming a smoke" allowed people to engage with strangers—standing side by side while sharing an activity created connection.
Dr Santos builds on this observation by introducing the concept of "time affluence," the subjective sense of feeling wealthy in time. She explains that smoke breaks provided not just social connection but also valuable pauses in the workday. "My mom talks about this. She was a teacher educator for a super long time where you don't get a lot of breaks. But back in the 70s, if you're a smoker, they'd let you go outside for 10 minutes," Dr Santos recalls.
The absence of these breaks creates what researchers call "time famine"—a feeling of starving for time that dramatically impacts well-being. Dr Santos emphasizes the severity of this condition: "That's as big a hit on your well-being as if you self-report being unemployed."
This connection between time and happiness extends to economic discussions as well. Dr Santos references Harvard researcher Ashley Willins' study that showed low-income individuals suffer happiness deficits partly because poverty correlates with time scarcity—taking public transportation instead of owning a car, working multiple jobs, and generally having less control over one's schedule.
Dr Santos elaborates that it's not just about objectively having free blocks on your calendar, but the subjective feeling of having breaks. This distinction offers a practical approach to increasing happiness.
Dr Santos shares a powerful teaching moment from her happiness course at Yale. "I always felt that was really ironic because our young people today, especially at elite college institutions, are so time famished," she explains. Rather than lecturing about time affluence, she surprised students by canceling class, giving them an unexpected free hour and a half. One student burst into tears, confessing it was her first free time in three months.
This anecdote reveals how even small, unexpected breaks can feel monumental. Dr Santos suggests a simple hack: schedule empty blocks on your calendar months in advance as "time affluence" periods. When that time arrives, it will feel like a gift to yourself.
Interestingly, Dr Santos points out that contrary to popular belief, people actually have more free time now than 10-15 years ago. The difference is that this time comes in smaller fragments—what journalist Bridget Schultz calls "time confetti."
These brief moments—five minutes when a meeting ends early or ten minutes when a child falls asleep sooner than expected—can add up significantly if used intentionally.
Unfortunately, most people squander these brief periods by reaching for their phones. "Huge problem is, what do we do when we get the time confetti? Blow out our phone, check our email, scroll through. It's like, again, this sort of Nutri sweet dopamine hit," Dr Santos observes. Instead, she recommends using these moments for quick workouts, texting friends, or stepping outside for sunlight.
The conversation underscores that happiness doesn't require vast amounts of free time—rather, it depends on recognizing and intentionally using the time we already have, creating moments of connection and giving ourselves permission to experience time affluence in small but meaningful ways.
Using Character Strengths to Build Relationships
Huberman and Dr Santos explored how identifying and utilizing our core strengths can enhance both work and leisure activities.
Dr Santos explained that people can discover their signature strengths through the Values in Action assessment at www.viacharacter.org. This free psychometric test helps individuals identify their unique strengths from a list of 24 character traits and provides suggestions for putting them into practice.
"Some of these values are like prudence," Dr Santos noted. "It's like, how do I exercise prudence? And they'll have different suggestions." She recommends taking the assessment with friends or romantic partners to identify shared strengths, which can then be used to design meaningful activities together—what researchers call a "strength date."
The concept is simple but powerful: if you both value bravery, tackle an obstacle course; if humor ranks highly for both, attend a comedy show; if learning is a shared strength, visit a museum. This approach transforms leisure time into an opportunity for deeper fulfillment.
Dr Santos pointed out a common oversight in how we approach free time. "I think a lot of us have work that tends to use our strengths. We tend to gravitate towards careers, many of us, where we can use our strengths.
But in our leisure time, we don't often do that so much." Instead of defaulting to passive entertainment like watching Netflix, deliberately incorporating signature strengths into recreational activities can provide both enjoyment and purpose.
Huberman shared a personal example of finding fulfillment through service to others—setting up fish tanks in people's homes. "I don't know why, when I just kept setting up all these fish tanks for all these people, I delighted in it," he reflected. This experience highlighted how being useful to others in ways that align with our authentic selves creates profound satisfaction.
This led Dr Santos to introduce another powerful happiness hack: focusing on others rather than ourselves. Contrary to popular self-care advice, research shows that happy people tend to be other-oriented. "Controlled for income, happier people donate more money to charity than not so happy people. Controlled for the amount of free time people have, happy people tend to volunteer for others," she explained.
Research supports this counterintuitive finding. In one study conducted by Lara Acknen and colleagues, participants were given $20 to spend either on themselves or on someone else. Those who spent the money on others reported greater happiness than those who treated themselves—even when measured at later time points.
"If you're having a bad day, it's like 'I'm going to treat myself,'" Dr Santos observed. "But if you gifted that experience to your brother or your good friend, your coworker, your spouse, it might actually make you happier than having that experience yourself."
Huberman enthusiastically agreed: "I've discovered this in recent years. I love, love, love giving gifts. It's the best feeling."
Asking for Help as a Gift
Asking for help can be a powerful way to benefit others, according to Dr Santos. When someone asks for advice they can provide, it likely makes them feel competent and good about helping.
The person giving help experiences a happiness boost from the interaction. Unfortunately, many people forget that asking others for assistance, particularly when they're capable of providing it, can actually be a gift that makes the helper happy.
Dr Santos admits this can be difficult for her personally, as she's constantly concerned about her own competence and doesn't want to burden others or show vulnerability. However, she emphasizes that especially for self-sufficient individuals, asking for help can be remarkably beneficial.
She notes this is particularly relevant for those who might not have financial means to donate money or time to give gifts—simply asking for help creates a social connection and can be a gift to someone else.
The Impact of Technology
Social Media, Loneliness, and the Yearning for Genuine Interaction
In our digital age, the pervasive influence of technology on our social interactions has created concerning patterns, particularly among younger generations.
Dr Santos highlights a troubling statistic: approximately 70-75% of young people today report feeling extremely lonely. This represents a majority of youth experiencing significant social isolation despite growing up in an era of unprecedented connectivity.
Huberman approaches this phenomenon from a neurological perspective, comparing loneliness to a physical sensation like temperature discomfort. He suggests that reported loneliness indicates "a yearning" - a neurological drive signaling that something essential is missing.
This widespread feeling among digital natives suggests their lifestyle runs "inherently against the grain of their healthy neurology."
Dr Santos questions whether feeling lonely actually motivates people to seek meaningful connection. Rather than pursuing deep relationships, people might instead reach for "the easiest, fastest social connection" available - typically more digital interaction.
The Pervasive Impact of Phones: Stolen Attention and Diminished Connection
Dr Santos notes research by Elizabeth Dunn showing that merely having a phone present—not even looking at it—results in 30% less smiling at others in a waiting room setting. This statistic becomes particularly relevant when considering the current loneliness crisis.
During her time as a head of college at Yale, Dr Santos witnessed this phenomenon firsthand. Students walking through the courtyard were constantly looking down at their phones rather than engaging with those around them. These subtle missed interactions accumulate as our phones steal our attention from the real world.
Beyond social costs, there are performance implications too. When part of the brain is busy inhibiting the urge to check a phone, it affects overall cognitive performance.
Dr Santos shares an unexpected correlation: as iPhone ownership has increased, gum and candy sales at checkout aisles have decreased proportionally. The explanation is simple—people aren't looking around the checkout area anymore; they're staring at their phones.
Huberman shares an anecdote about a friend who's a successful musician who refuses to discuss social media content during in-person interactions. Initially taken aback, Huberman realized his friend was right. The issue extends beyond having phones present—it's also about conversations becoming secondhand reports of digital experiences rather than authentic, direct interactions.
"I don't want to talk about things that you experienced about somebody else's experience," Huberman's friend essentially communicated. This creates a "telephone bucket brigade game" of connection many degrees removed from the direct interactions humans are hardwired to experience.
Cultivating Presence and Mindful Technology Use
Dr Santos emphasizes that direct, sensory experiences significantly influence our happiness. She advocates for a simple presence-building technique: returning to our senses. "What are you looking at right now? What do you see right now?"
Noticing the lighting, sounds, temperature—this grounding exercise can quickly change one's breathing and mental state. Too often, we distract ourselves from the very sensory experiences that constitute our perception of the world.
Huberman shares a personal reflection about enjoying solitary time in his office during holidays while listening to TED talks or podcasts. Now he often listens to audio content while engaging in physical projects around his house. He questions whether this practice diminishes his presence.
Dr Santos offers a nuanced perspective: the key distinction is whether external content impedes presence in physical activities.
She notes that Huberman described his crafting experiences in embodied ways, suggesting he remained present despite the audio accompaniment. This approach can serve as an emotion regulation strategy, filling the mind with content to prevent rumination while still allowing engagement with physical tasks.
The appropriateness depends on the activity, Dr Santos explains. Listening to podcasts while driving might enhance an otherwise mundane experience. However, one wouldn't want to be listening to outside content while ballroom dancing or deeply engaging with art in a gallery.
The crucial question is whether the audio content prevents you from experiencing something meaningful in the real world.
While using audio content as an emotion regulation strategy can be beneficial, Dr Santos cautions against habitually avoiding our thought patterns altogether. Finding the right balance is essential—neither ruminating excessively nor completely disconnecting from our inner experience.
Navigating Connection in the Digital Age
The Illusion of Digital Connection and Its Neurological Impact
Huberman argues that seeing faces through screens may trigger our reward systems in ways that create an illusion of social connection.
This digital substitute allows people to scroll through faces, interact minimally with content, and check direct messages without leaving their couches—yet receive no genuine social connection in return.
He draws a parallel between this behavior and consuming highly processed foods, suggesting both offer convenience at the expense of real nourishment.
"I don't want to sound alarmist," Huberman notes, "but I am really concerned that certainly for the younger generation... if we don't have an intrinsic drive to go [connect in person], we stop doing it." This gradual drift away from real-world interactions may explain deteriorating social well-being.
Dr Santos elaborates by explaining the neuroscience behind these behaviors. "You know how the dopamine system works, right? It has these mechanisms to crave stuff that's quick," she points out.
Our brains reward us for consuming new information rapidly, especially social information. The problem lies in how technology has separated the reward value of interacting with real humans from the dopamine hit we get through digital means.
Modern technology prioritizes convenience over human interaction. Dr Santos references musician David Byrne's article "Eliminating the Human," which argues that most technological innovations of the past two decades have systematically removed human-to-human friction from our daily experiences.
"From Uber where I don't have to talk to the driver, to streaming music instead of visiting record stores where you might chat with other customers, to food delivery apps and online education—we're designing away human contact," Dr Santos explains.
Our technological tools assume we want to eliminate friction, but in doing so, they're eliminating meaningful human connections.
"Our primate brains are left with the little Nutrasweet dribbles of connection, when what we really need is something in real life and in real time," Dr Santos concludes.
Huberman observes how profoundly this shift has changed our understanding of human experience itself. Just 10-15 years ago, most of our knowledge about other humans came from real-life interactions. Today, that knowledge increasingly comes from digital encounters, fundamentally altering our schema of human experience.
Video content is particularly captivating in this ecosystem. "If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth 10 billion pictures," Huberman notes.
The algorithms' ability to track our "dwell time" and serve emotionally salient content creates a powerful feedback loop that keeps us engaged with screens rather than people.
While neither expert takes an alarmist stance about technology companies' intentions, they recognize that these platforms have effectively leveraged behavioral science to capture our attention—often at the expense of our social well-being.
Making Time for Real-Life Social Connection: Presence Over Distraction
Dr Santos emphasizes that people should aim for "more than you're doing now" when it comes to genuine social interaction. If happiness levels are low, she suggests adding more real-time connections while being mindful of other important activities like sleep and exercise.
Huberman reflects on how meaningful social connections often come from unstructured time together. He shares a personal memory of driving back from his girlfriend's grandmother's house with their dog, with no phone reception, as one of his "best days ever." The natural flow of that experience—without technological interruptions—created a profoundly satisfying connection.
Dr Santos suggests a useful question from journalist Katherine Price: "What were three times that you just had the most fun?" She points out that these memorable experiences almost always involve other people or beings, and rarely involve screens. The social element proves fundamental to our most enjoyable moments.
Dr Santos notes that Huberman's road trip memory showcases mindfulness—being attentive to sensory experiences like the dog moving between laps and the passing scenery. This kind of presence, she explains, is crucial for happiness.
Our phones, Dr Santos argues, are "the biggest attention stealers ever." She shares a vivid analogy from her colleague Liz Dunn: imagine trying to have a conversation while a wheelbarrow filled with photo albums, emails, news articles, and videos sits beside you. Though a phone appears smaller, it contains all those distractions and more. "Your brain's not stupid," Dr Santos notes. "Your brain knows even though your phone is much tinier than that wheelbarrow, that all that interesting dopamine-rich, exciting stuff is on it."
The impact of these digital distractions is significant. Dr Santos references Princeton studies showing "double-digit increases in performance" when students study with their phones in another room rather than nearby. The cognitive load of resisting the phone—using mental resources to avoid checking it—creates a constant state of partial attention that diminishes our experience and performance.
"A big hack, if you want to be more present, is to find ways to do activities without your phone," Dr Santos advises. When we think about our most fun experiences, we weren't pausing to check social media—we were fully present in the moment with others.
The Relationship Between Money and Happiness
When examining the relationship between income and happiness, data reveals some interesting patterns, particularly at different points along the economic spectrum.
For those with limited financial resources, the connection between money and happiness is straightforward. Dr Santos explains that if you can't afford basic necessities like food or shelter, "definitely getting a little bit more money is going to affect your happiness in a positive way." This is supported by research, including a famous 2010 study by Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman.
Kahneman's research showed that at lower income levels, happiness increases almost linearly with income—more money consistently produces greater happiness. However, this relationship changes at higher income levels. The study identified a threshold, around $75,000 in 2010 dollars ($100,000 in 2025), where the happiness benefits begin to plateau.
"If you get more than $75,000, you're not going to feel any less stressed. You're not going to experience any more positive emotion," Dr Santos notes. "Even if I double or triple or quadruple your income on those metrics, you're not going to see any increase."
Huberman questions whether money might at least buffer stress, even if it doesn't directly increase happiness. Dr Santos clarifies that Kahneman's original data suggested it doesn't reduce reported stress beyond that threshold. However, financial security can provide a psychological safety net that allows people to make different choices.
One key insight from the research is that humans evaluate their financial situation relatively, not objectively. "We don't do it objectively, we do it relative," Dr Santos emphasizes. This comparative mindset helps explain why even wealthy individuals may not feel less stressed—they're constantly comparing themselves to others with even more resources.
This pattern of comparison creates a perpetual cycle of dissatisfaction. Dr Santos shares an example from her podcast, where she interviewed a "wealth psychologist" who works exclusively with the ultra-rich. Despite their enormous wealth, these clients haven't abandoned the notion that more money will make them happy. When one financial goal doesn't deliver the expected happiness, they simply move the target rather than questioning the premise.
"They set some standard like as soon as I get 50 million, I'll be happy or as soon as I become a billionaire. But then they get to that point, they're not feeling any more positive emotion, they're not feeling less stressed," Dr Santos explains. Instead of recognizing that more money isn't the answer, they simply set a higher financial goal.
"It tends to be the kind of stuff that's much more under our control than our circumstances. It tends to be how we behave, what thought patterns we use, the emotions we seek out, the social connection we experience," Dr Santos says. These factors, rather than financial circumstances, appear to be the more reliable predictors of happiness.
How External Rewards Hijack Our Natural Joy
The Perils of External Rewards and the Erosion of Intrinsic Joy
As we grow up, we're taught to gauge our lives through external evaluations—stars on pictures, praise for good work, or today's "growth mindset" language. Huberman notes that while these external metrics become increasingly ingrained, there's rarely any guidance on how to evaluate our internal happiness. No one teaches us to assess whether we're truly savoring experiences like playing soccer or spending time with friends.
Dr Santos identifies a dangerous pattern in this dynamic: extrinsic rewards can actually steal our intrinsic joy. This phenomenon occurs when something inherently pleasurable becomes tied to external measurements. She explains how activities that once brought natural satisfaction can be transformed when they become about tracking, measuring, or performing for others.
The writer David Sedaris illustrates this perfectly in his essay "The Fitbit Life." What began as a genuine desire to get healthier through exercise—an intrinsic reward—became solely about hitting arbitrary numbers on his device. The pursuit of those numbers eventually made him miserable, to the point where he would simply shake his arm to register steps rather than actually enjoy walking or running.
This pattern extends far beyond fitness trackers. It permeates our lives in increasingly subtle ways. Dr Santos points out that even play—something natural for young mammals—has been compromised in human children.
Instead of engaging in free, joyful play, many children now participate in structured activities designed to prepare them for academic success. "Toddler university" replaces natural exploration with performance metrics aimed at future achievements.
Our culture has shifted toward externalizing everything that should be intrinsically rewarding. We've created countless metrics to measure progress, but these measurements often undermine the very experiences they're supposed to enhance.
Being mindful of our emotions is already challenging enough—we have to deliberately pay attention to our internal states. The proliferation of external markers makes this even more difficult, as we're continuously pulled away from our intrinsic experiences toward measurable outcomes.
The result is a society increasingly focused on external validation while growing disconnected from the intrinsic joy that makes experiences truly fulfilling.
The Disconnect: Affluence, Suffering, and Emotional Contagion
Referencing wealthy individuals in California, Huberman says, "you'd be amazed how much suffering they report". Despite external markers of success and pleasure—nice wine, beach access, material comfort—many wealthy individuals express significant unhappiness.
Dr Santos clarifies that this disconnect often occurs at the reporting level. The direct sensory experience might be positive, but when these individuals reflect on their lives more broadly, dissatisfaction emerges.
Interestingly, Huberman notes that when people with substantial resources express unhappiness, it rarely relates to material lack. Instead, their concerns typically center around loved ones—children struggling with mental or physical health issues, aging parents facing illness, or broader societal concerns.
Dr Santos affirms this observation with an insight: "So much of our happiness is made up of the happiness of other people." This connection works through emotional contagion—we literally "catch" the emotions of those around us. When family members or spouses experience intense negative emotions, it becomes extraordinarily difficult not to absorb those feelings ourselves.
This phenomenon explains why our happiness often depends heavily on the well-being of those closest to us. Their emotional states directly influence our own through fundamental psychological processes that operate largely beyond our conscious control.
Core Concepts of Happiness
Defining Happiness
Dr Santos explains that social scientists define happiness through two distinct components: being happy in your life and being happy with your life. The first component represents the emotional dimension—experiencing positive feelings and fewer negative emotions as you move through daily experiences. The second involves cognitive assessment—how you evaluate your life's purpose and overall trajectory.
"Social scientists were like, 'ooh, happiness sounds too wooey, like we'll call it something else.' But it means exactly the same thing. It means subjective well-being," Dr Santos notes. This concept of subjective well-being has always incorporated both the affective, emotional aspects and the cognitive evaluation of one's life.
Huberman highlights an important distinction in Dr Santos's explanation: happiness in your life involves first-person experience—how you feel within your relationships, work, and daily activities. Meanwhile, happiness with your life requires a third-person perspective, evaluating yourself as if through an outside lens, assessing whether you're "doing well" by various measures.
This distinction raises an interesting question about priorities. Should we aim primarily for happiness in our immediate experience, regardless of external evaluations? Dr Santos suggests ideally we'd have both, though they often become disconnected.
Layering Happiness: Sensory Experience, Story, and Meaning
Huberman suggests that happiness exists on three distinct levels, each operating on different timescales.
The first level is pure sensory experience – the immediate physical sensations that create contrast and pleasure.
"The reason to take a cold shower," Huberman explains, "in addition to the fact that it'll save you on your heating bill, is that the warm shower that follows... feels so good, 10 times better than it would if you had just gotten into the warm shower."
This contrast principle applies to many experiences: hunger making food taste better, or the relief after exiting a cold plunge.
The second layer involves the stories we tell ourselves about our experiences. These narratives shape our perception of happiness beyond raw sensation. Huberman notes how these stories can either enhance or diminish our happiness: "There's also, and I've seen this before, like we were killing it for two years, and then this year was kind of a meh year." Our happiness becomes relative to our own past experiences or expectations rather than absolute.
The third and deepest layer is meaning. This encompasses the broader significance we attach to our experiences, even when they aren't immediately pleasurable. "Spending time with in-laws," Huberman offers as an example, "every moment of it might not be as awesome as you might like, but there's meaning in spending time with people that are extended family."
Psychological Mechanisms & Biases
The Brain's Reward System
Huberman explains that our dopamine-based reward system operates on relative experiences—comparing prior experiences to current ones and anticipated outcomes.
This creates what neuroscientists call "reward prediction error." When you expect something great and it happens, that's satisfying. But if you expect something great and get something less, it feels disproportionately disappointing. Conversely, when you expect something mediocre but experience something wonderful, the reward feels amplified.
Huberman reflects: "Maybe, just maybe, we're not supposed to be happy all the time or maybe even all that often." He suggests that perhaps feelings of displeasure or neutrality serve as the necessary contrast for us to experience happiness.
Drawing parallels to other neurological systems, Huberman points out that contrast is fundamental to how our brain operates. Our ability to see light depends on circuits that perceive darkness. Every system in our brain operates with push-pull dynamics—hunger and satiety, hot and cold, go and no-go. Why would happiness be any different?
The Science of Getting Used to Things
Dr Santos explains "hedonic adaptation"—our tendency to get used to things. She offers a simple example: "You grab the delicious ice cream cone. First bite is awesome. Bite number two, a little bit less awesome. By the tenth bite, it's not because you're full... it's just no longer as interesting."
When Huberman mentions walking into a bakery, where the amazing smell gradually becomes less noticeable the longer you stay, Dr Santos confirms this is exactly how our brains work. While this adaptation serves important biological functions, it creates a challenge for happiness: every good thing, if it remains constant, eventually becomes boring.
"The most amazing thing in life, if it gets repeated, just becomes boring," Dr Santos explains. "The first time your partner said 'I love you' feels amazing. But last week when my husband said 'I love you,' it's like, whatever, I'm just used to it."
The solution might be what researcher Liz Dunn calls "scarcity engineers happiness." By spacing out positive experiences rather than indulging in them constantly, we preserve their power to bring us joy when we return to them.
This hedonic adaptation has a positive side, too. The most terrible experiences in life also become less intense over time. Dr Santos references a famous study comparing lottery winners and people who became paraplegic. While people predict these events would permanently alter their happiness levels, research shows that a year after either event, people's happiness typically returns to baseline.
"That's kind of good news about hedonic adaptation for happiness," Dr Santos notes. "The worst thing possible could happen to you, and you have all these processes that are just going to get used to it over time and it's going to be okay."
This understanding has practical implications. Often we avoid taking risks because we fear the lasting impact of potential failure. But hedonic adaptation means negative experiences won't affect us as long as we anticipate.
The Evolution of Thought Patterns and the Negativity Bias
Dr Santos highlights our natural evolutionary tendencies that often work against contentment. "We're just built to notice all the scary stuff, all the bad stuff, all the potentially risky stuff," she explains.
This negativity bias served our ancestors well—it's more beneficial for survival to notice potential dangers than to appreciate the absence of threats.
Huberman observes that dissatisfaction might even have adaptive features. "You could imagine an adaptive feature to lacking satisfaction," he notes, as it could drive humans to pursue more resources. Dr Santos agrees, pointing out that "if we're noticing the negative, we tend to fix it," and craving or wanting gets people to take action.
This evolutionary advantage comes with a happiness trade-off. While Steve Jobs famously encouraged people to "stay hungry," Dr Santos notes that this mindset makes "great evolutionary sense" but "doesn't make as good happiness sense." One of the best paths to happiness, she suggests, is appreciating what we already have.
The Psychology of Awe: Embracing Complex, Destabilizing Emotions
The psychology of awe encompasses complex emotional states that defy simple positive-negative classifications.
Dr Santos explains that the feeling experienced when witnessing remarkable technological achievements—like the SpaceX "chopsticks" rocket landing moment—represents awe.
This emotion emerges when encountering something greater than oneself, whether human achievement, cosmic vastness, or natural wonder.
Awe contains an inherent duality—it feels destabilizing yet positive simultaneously. When experiencing awe, one senses humanity's mastery alongside the vastness of what lies beyond our understanding. This complexity makes awe particularly valuable for those seeking richer emotional experiences beyond straightforward positive or negative feelings.
Dr Santos draws a parallel between awe and psychedelic experiences, noting both share this quality of being emotionally complex rather than purely positive. These experiences expand consciousness and perspective in challenging but meaningful ways.
Huberman agrees, acknowledging that even therapeutic psychedelic experiences can sometimes be terrifying.
He elaborates on what made the SpaceX rocket landing so awe-inspiring—the controlled harnessing of engineering and physics at a scale approaching outer space. The precise slowing and capture of such a massive object created a particularly gratifying sensation of awe.
This technological achievement exemplifies a broader pattern in human evolution: our brain's fascination with creating "action at a distance."
Cultural Influences on Happiness
Regional and Cultural Variations in Happiness and Communication
Regional cultural differences play a significant role in shaping our attitudes toward happiness and communication styles, Dr Santos explains. These differences emerge not just across countries but within regions of the same nation.
Huberman shares an anecdote about a family member from New Jersey who distinguishes between "West Coast, California, squishy stuff" and the more direct communication style she prefers from East Coast guests.
This highlights how deeply ingrained regional communication patterns can be—with Huberman noting that in New Jersey, "language is kind of a weapon," while Midwestern states often display higher baseline levels of politeness and decency.
These regional and cultural differences extend to our baseline happiness levels as well. Huberman reflects on growing up in an environment where cynical humor was rewarded, something he later recognized as inconsistent with his genuine preferences.
"I don't like cynicism. It bums me out. It doesn't feel good," he admits, suggesting that people might need to examine whether their happiness levels are influenced by social programming internalized during childhood.
Dr Santos agrees, exploring the concept of a "happiness set point" and questioning its origins. "Do we have a happiness set point? And if we do, where does it come from?" she asks. The answer likely involves a complex mix of genetic predisposition and environmental influences, including the regional cultures we inhabit.
On a global scale, these differences become even more pronounced. Dr Santos points to decades of research from the World Happiness Report, which consistently shows significant country-level variations in happiness. "The US for a very wealthy country is not very happy," she notes, adding that America recently dropped below the top ten in happiness rankings for the first time.
By contrast, Scandinavian countries—particularly Denmark—consistently rank among the happiest nations. Their cultural practices seem to nurture wellbeing through structural support for social connection, reasonable work hours, and abundant opportunities for physical activity.
"There's a lot less work hours so people can go home and hang out with their family. There's a huge culture of clubs in Denmark, where people go off and do sporting things," Dr Santos explains.
Huberman, whose stepmother is Danish, confirms this observation while adding that Danes are remarkably effective during work hours. "The level of proficiency and the level of focus when they are working is immensely high. So they're not just kicking back all day," he says.
Dr Santos elaborates that Danish workplace culture maintains clearer boundaries between work and personal life. "There's a time for work, but you don't let your work leak into other things," she says, describing how Danish managers might actually question employees who stay late rather than celebrating overwork.
Beyond work-life balance, Scandinavian cultures also cultivate mindfulness and appreciation for small pleasures through concepts like "hygge"—finding joy in simple moments like the warmth of coffee or the glow of candles despite cold, dark surroundings.
This contrasts with Huberman's experience growing up in the United States, where he internalized messages about "figuring out who you are and going to do big things." For many Americans, he suggests, the challenge lies in learning to appreciate everyday moments rather than focusing exclusively on major achievements.
The American "Anything is Possible" Narrative vs. Danish "Jante's Law"
The contrasts between countries like Denmark and the United States reveal cultural differences in how societies view success and ambition.
Huberman points out that in America, we celebrate stories of meteoric rises—people who go from nothing to tremendous heights financially or in reputation, sometimes seemingly overnight.
Two recent examples stood out to Huberman: the SpaceX rocket being captured by the "chopsticks" (an undeniably impressive engineering feat that expanded our sense of what's possible) and the "Hoktua girl" who went from an unknown person in a spontaneous street interview to having one of the highest-ranked new podcasts of the year with a staff and thriving business.
"This is a very American thing," Huberman notes. The United States cherishes these rags-to-riches narratives—whether they're overnight successes or people who climbed gradually, fell, and came back. These stories frame the young American mind with the belief that "anything is possible," though often at significant personal cost.
Dr Santos agrees and contrasts this with Denmark, where the concept of "Jante's Law" discourages people from thinking they're better than others or showing off. While Americans celebrate standing out and rising above, Danish culture views such behavior as inappropriate. This cultural difference fundamentally shapes how people approach success and happiness.
The Arrival Fallacy and the Importance of a "Journey Mindset"
The problem with American-style success stories, Dr Santos explains, is that they focus on destination rather than journey. We fixate on end goals—$50 million, a promotion, admission to an elite college—assuming these achievements will bring lasting happiness.
Researchers call this the "arrival fallacy"—the belief that "I'll be happy when..." or seeking a "happily ever after" through achievement.
Hedonic adaptation quickly undermines this fantasy. Even gold medalists experience the letdown after their moment of triumph, immediately wondering "what's next?" or feeling that everything else is downhill. We chase after goals without recognizing that the satisfaction they bring is fleeting.
"We arrive at the best possible place we could have fantasized and instantly it's like I just have to start chasing the next carrot," Dr Santos observes.
Instead, Dr Santos advocates for a "journey mindset"—finding happiness in the process rather than fixating solely on outcomes. For example, if you're training for a 5K, what can you enjoy about those training runs? This approach helps break free from the arrival fallacy and provides satisfaction even when goals aren't achieved.
Huberman acknowledges this requires a "serious frame shift," and Dr Santos agrees it's not culturally accepted in the United States. This mismatch causes unhappiness in two ways: sometimes we don't reach our lofty goals, and even when we do, the happiness doesn't last. Additionally, without a journey mindset, we miss the meaningful experiences along the way.
Dr Santos shares an example from her podcast featuring Olympic medalist Michelle Kwan, who didn't focus on medal counts but instead cherished moments like first putting her skates on and seeing the Olympic rings in the ice. "That's the journey mindset," Dr Santos explains. "You're not looking at the thing at the end. You're paying enough attention to the stuff along the way... that you kind of get some joy on the ride."
Effective Practices for Happiness
Effortless Rewards vs. Deep Satisfaction
Dr Santos highlighted a paradox in modern life: we have created easy substitutes for genuine rewards that ultimately fail to satisfy our deeper needs.
She used processed food as an example—while we might crave nutritional value, we often choose the frictionless option of fast food over cooking a vegetable-filled meal. The same principle applies to social connection.
"I think we have too many outlets for things that kind of feel social but don't give us social nutrition," Dr Santos explained. When feeling lonely, people often reach for their phones to scroll through Instagram rather than making the effort to connect meaningfully with others.
Dr Santos even suggested that podcasts themselves provide a frictionless way to feel part of an interesting conversation without the effort of genuine social interaction.
The discussion touched on how these easy substitutes create a problematic cycle. While checking social media requires less effort than calling a friend or meeting in person, it doesn't provide the same rewards. Dr Santos compared this to addiction mechanisms, noting that things we strongly crave don't always lead to true well-being or evolutionary advantages.
Huberman built on this with a powerful perspective: "Everyone should beware any dopamine that is not preceded by effort in order to achieve it." He explained that fast, effortless dopamine hits inevitably lead to diminishing returns, creating deeper troughs of dissatisfaction over time. The only remedy is either abstinence or reintroducing effort before receiving the reward.
He offered another insightful contrast: "I like to think of addiction as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. And happiness or enlightenment seems like a progressive broadening of the things that bring you pleasure."
High-friction activities like making the effort to connect socially in person might require more work—dealing with traffic, scheduling challenges, and the unpredictability of human interaction—but the potential rewards are incomparable.
A truly great social interaction, as Huberman noted, can elevate one's emotional state for days or even weeks.
Cultivating Purpose
Research on character strengths demonstrates how people can infuse meaning into even mundane activities by aligning them with personal values.
Dr Santos describes the work of Amy Wrzesniewski, who studies "job crafting" – finding ways to incorporate one's signature strengths into any job, regardless of its apparent limitations. Remarkably, her research shows that even hospital janitorial staff can find deep purpose in their work when they consciously integrate their personal strengths, whether it's humor, creativity, or social intelligence.
"No matter what your job is, there's probably some room to build in some more purpose if you take some time to think about what are the strengths, what are the things that get you going," Dr Santos concludes. "Probably whatever you do there's some window where you can build that in."
The Importance of Negative Emotions
Dr Santos pushes back against the common misconception about her happiness research at Yale, clarifying that she doesn't advocate for what she calls "toxic positivity"—the "good vibes only" mentality pervasive in modern culture. This approach, which treats any negative emotion as something to be eliminated, is potentially harmful.
"If you're experiencing negative emotions, if you feel sad or you feel a little lonely or you feel a little upset at politics, whatever it is, that something's wrong or you got to take a pill or you got to do something to fix it," Dr Santos explains. "I think that's a really dangerous idea because it's getting rid of this signal that we've been built to experience evolutionarily."
Dr Santos compares negative emotions to warning lights on a car dashboard—uncomfortable but providing crucial information. Loneliness signals a need for social connection; feeling overwhelmed indicates the need to reduce commitments; sadness often points to something important that's missing. Suppressing these emotions means ignoring valuable evolutionary information that could guide corrective action.
Imagining Obstacles Beats "Manifesting" for Goals
Dr Santos highlights how "toxic positivity" can manifest in self-improvement approaches, particularly in the popular concept of "manifesting." While many believe that vividly imagining desired outcomes—like being fit or having more friends—will help achieve those goals, research suggests otherwise.
According to studies from Gabrielle Oettingen's lab at NYU, deep visualization of rewards can actually decrease motivation. When people imagine themselves successfully running a 5K or achieving weight loss goals, their brains experience reward sensations prematurely, reducing their drive to actually put on running shoes and train.
A more effective technique, Dr Santos explains, is to imagine the obstacles instead of the rewards. Rather than visualizing crossing a finish line, consider what might prevent you from getting there: the warm bed you'll need to leave on cold mornings, or the discomfort of running in unfavorable weather.
Oettingen's research demonstrates that by anticipating these challenges, people naturally develop solutions—like setting out running clothes the night before or getting appropriate gear for cold weather—making the habit more achievable.
Huberman adds perspective from a cardiologist friend who warns about prematurely sharing ambitious goals. When people announce plans to write a book or start a podcast, supportive friends often provide immediate praise and validation. This premature reward can actually decrease the likelihood of follow-through.
It's a delicate balance—encouragement is important, but excessive praise might undermine motivation, while too much discouragement could prevent someone from trying at all.
This dynamic plays into our cultural fascination with stories of people who succeeded despite being told they couldn't, Huberman notes.
He references David Goggins, whose difficult childhood and internalized negative messages became fuel for extraordinary achievements. Goggins uses the internal voice saying "you can't do it" as motivation—a stark contrast to simply manifesting success.
Dr Santos clarifies an important nuance: negative voices shouldn't convince you something is impossible. Believing a goal is difficult but achievable is crucial for motivation. She illustrates this with Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile barrier.
Before Bannister's achievement, many considered it physiologically impossible. Once he proved it could be done, others quickly replicated the feat, demonstrating what Dr Santos calls the "Bannister effect"—knowing something is possible makes it more achievable.
The ideal approach combines believing something is possible while realistically anticipating obstacles. This balanced mindset—optimistic enough to believe in success but practical enough to plan for challenges—creates the strongest foundation for behavior change and goal achievement.
Counteracting Negativity: The Power of "Delight Practice"
To counteract our innate negativity bias, Dr Santos recommends practices that harness attention toward positive experiences. She describes a "delight practice" (her alternative to the sometimes "cheesy" concept of gratitude) where people deliberately notice and document positive moments in their day.
"Put in your notes app on your phone, list of delights," Dr Santos suggests. "Or even better, pick a friend where you can just text them 'delight.'" This practice trains the brain to actively seek out positive experiences.
"If you scribble down three to five things you're grateful for or three to five delights in as little as two weeks, you significantly improve your overall satisfaction with life," Dr Santos explains.
Huberman finds the concept of "delight" particularly powerful, noting it feels more natural than gratitude. "Delight is such a powerful, unselfish word," he reflects. "It's not taking anything from anybody." Where gratitude might feel like something requiring effort, delight seems to flow naturally from being present and observant.
The accessibility of delight stands out to Huberman—it operates on a "fast time scale," requiring only that we notice small pleasures, from a morning espresso to seeing a cute dog. These moments create immediate positive feelings without requiring extensive effort, though they still deliver significant happiness benefits.
Dr Santos emphasizes that delights are often sensory experiences that bring us into the present moment. She references Ross Gay's "Book of Delights," where the author documented daily delights from purple flowers to 80s music. These simple observations create ripples of positive emotion and help retrain attention patterns away from our evolutionary negativity bias.
By deliberately practicing delight, we can counteract our natural tendency toward negativity, appreciate the present moment, and significantly enhance our happiness—all through the simple act of noticing the good things already present in our lives.
The Power of Positive Emotions for Action
Huberman shares a cultural observation from his father, who grew up in Argentina attending British schools, where displaying too much happiness could lead to being perceived as unintelligent.
He notes how different cultures approach emotional expression differently, with Americans perhaps more openly celebrating expressions of happiness, but often in specific contexts like wealth and celebrity.
This creates a confusing message: society tells us to pursue happiness while simultaneously suggesting that being happy means being ignorant of the world's problems. "There's a lot of judgment written into this thing around happiness," Huberman observes.
Dr Santos addresses the concern that happiness might lead to complacency about world problems. She cites research by Konstantin Kushlev from Georgetown that examined whether happier people are less likely to address social issues like climate change.
Contrary to intuition, the research found that while people with climate anxiety tend to experience fewer positive emotions, those actually taking action on climate issues reported more positive emotions.
"If you're happier, if you're experiencing lots of delights and positive emotions, you kind of have the bandwidth to do stuff," Dr Santos explains. "You can go to that protest where if you're super depressed, you're just going to lie in bed with your duvet."
This research challenges the assumption that happiness leads to ignoring problems, suggesting instead that positive emotions may provide the emotional resources needed for constructive action. As Dr Santos concludes, "We can take care of ourselves and it's okay. It doesn't mean we're going to stop doing good stuff in the world."
Wrapping Up
By understanding the science behind concepts like hedonic adaptation, the true power of social connection, and the subtle but significant difference between being happy with our lives versus in our lives, we gain practical tools.
The journey to a happier, more contented life begins not with grand, abstract ideals, but with intentional, scientifically-informed practices.