TED Blog » happiness

A visual look at 7 things that make us feel good about work

Kate Torgovnick — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 19:28:33 +0000

Last week, Dan Ariely asked an interesting question in a TED Talk: “What makes us feel good about our work?” The TED Blog responded with the post “7 fascinating studies about what motivates us at work,” rounding up research — from both Ariely and other psychologists — that speaks to some of the surprising factors that influence how we feel about our jobs.

Social@Ogilvy, the blog from advertising and marketing firm Ogilvy & Mathers about trends and insights in social media, was very inspired by this blog post. And so they created this very cool graphic recap of it. Check it out above, complete with a rocketing office chair.

Read the post it’s based on »

Check out more at Social@Ogilvy »

What motivates us at work? 7 fascinating studies that give insights

Jessica Gross — Wed, 10 Apr 2013 16:00:06 +0000

“When we think about how people work, the naïve intuition we have is that people are like rats in a maze,” says behavioral economist Dan Ariely in today’s talk, given at TEDxRiodelaPlata. “We really have this incredibly simplistic view of why people work and what the labor market looks like.”

Dan Ariely: What makes us feel good about our work?When you look carefully at the way people work, he says, you find out there’s a lot more at play—and a lot more at stake—than money. In his talk, Ariely provides evidence that we are also driven by meaningful work, by others’ acknowledgement and by the amount of effort we’ve put in: the harder the task is, the prouder we are.

During the Industrial Revolution, Ariely points out, Adam Smith’s efficiency-oriented, assembly-line approach made sense. But it doesn’t work as well in today’s knowledge economy. Instead, Ariely upholds Karl Marx’s concept that we care much more about a product if we’ve participated from start to finish rather than producing a single part over and over. In other words, in the knowledge economy, efficiency is no longer more important than meaning.

“When we think about labor, we usually think about motivation and payment as the same thing, but the reality is that we should probably add all kinds of things to it: meaning, creation, challenges, ownership, identity, pride, etc.,” Ariely explains.

To hear more on Ariely’s thoughts about what makes people more productive – and happier – at work, watch this fascinating talk. Below, a look at some of Ariely’s studies, as well as a few from other researchers, with interesting implications for what makes us feel good about our work.

Seeing the fruits of our labor may make us more productive
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The Study: In a study conducted at Harvard University, Ariely asked participants to build characters from Lego’s Bionicles series. In both conditions, participants were paid decreasing amounts for each subsequent Bionicle: $3 for the first one, $2.70 for the next one, and so on. But while one group’s creations were stored under the table, to be disassembled at the end of the experiment, the other group’s Bionicles were disassembled as soon as they’d been built. “This was an endless cycle of them building and we destroying in front of their eyes,” Ariely says.
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The Results: The first group made 11 Bionicles, on average, while the second group made only seven before they quit.
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The Upshot: Even though there wasn’t huge meaning at stake, and even though the first group knew their work would be destroyed at the end of the experiment, seeing the results of their labor for even a short time was enough to dramatically improve performance.
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The less appreciated we feel our work is, the more money we want to do it
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The Study: Ariely gave study participants — students at MIT — a piece of paper filled with random letters, and asked them to find pairs of identical letters. Each round, they were offered less money than the previous round. People in the first group wrote their names on their sheets and handed them to the experimenter, who looked it over and said “Uh huh” before putting it in a pile. People in the second group didn’t write down their names, and the experimenter put their sheets in a pile without looking at them. People in the third group had their work shredded immediately upon completion.
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The Results: People whose work was shredded needed twice as much money as those whose work was acknowledged in order to keep doing the task. People in the second group, whose work was saved but ignored, needed almost as much money as people whose work was shredded.
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The Upshot: “Ignoring the performance of people is almost as bad as shredding their effort before their eyes,” Ariely says. “The good news is that adding motivation doesn’t seem to be so difficult. The bad news is that eliminating motivation seems to be incredibly easy, and if we don’t think about it carefully, we might overdo it.”
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The harder a project is, the prouder we feel of it
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The Study: In another study, Ariely gave origami novices paper and instructions to build a (pretty ugly) form. Those who did the origami project, as well as bystanders, were asked at the end how much they’d pay for the product. In a second trial, Ariely hid the instructions from some participants, resulting in a harder process — and an uglier product.
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The Results: In the first experiment, the builders paid five times as much as those who just evaluated the product. In the second experiment, the lack of instructions exaggerated this difference: builders valued the ugly-but-difficult products even more highly than the easier, prettier ones, while observers valued them even less.
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The Upshot: Our valuation of our own work is directly tied to the effort we’ve expended. (Plus, we erroneously think that other people will ascribe the same value to our own work as we do.)
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Knowing that our work helps others may increase our unconscious motivation
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The Study: As described in a recent New York Times Magazine profile, psychologist Adam Grant led a study at a University of Michigan fundraising call center in which student who had benefited from the center’s scholarship fundraising efforts spoke to the callers for 10 minutes.
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The Results: A month later, the callers were spending 142 percent more time on the phone than before, and revenues had increased by 171 percent, according to the Times. But the callers denied the scholarship students’ visit had impacted them.
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The Upshot: “It was almost as if the good feelings had bypassed the callers’ conscious cognitive processes and gone straight to a more subconscious source of motivation,” the Times reports. “They were more driven to succeed, even if they could not pinpoint the trigger for that drive.”
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The promise of helping others makes us more likely to follow rules
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The Study: Grant ran another study (also described in the Times profile) in which he put up signs at a hospital’s hand-washing stations, reading either “Hand hygiene prevents you from catching diseases” or “Hand hygiene prevents patients from catching diseases.”
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The Results: Doctors and nurses used 45 percent more soap or hand sanitizer in the stations with signs that mentioned patients.
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The Upshot: Helping others through what’s called “prosocial behavior” motivates us.
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Positive reinforcement about our abilities may increase performance
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The Study: Undergraduates at Harvard University gave speeches and did mock interviews with experimenters who were either nodding and smiling or shaking their heads, furrowing their eyebrows, and crossing their arms.
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The Results: The participants in the first group later answered a series of numerical questions more accurately than those in the second group.
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The Upshot: Stressful situations can be manageable—it all depends on how we feel. We find ourselves in a “challenge state” when we think we can handle the task (as the first group did); when we’re in a “threat state,” on the other hand, the difficulty of the task is overwhelming, and we become discouraged. We’re more motivated and perform better in a challenge state, when we have confidence in our abilities.
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Images that trigger positive emotions may actually help us focus
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The Study: Researchers at Hiroshima University had university students perform a dexterity task before and after looking at pictures of either baby or adult animals.
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The Results: Performance improved in both cases, but more so (10 percent improvement!) when participants looked at the cute pictures of puppies and kittens.
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The Upshot: The researchers suggest that “the cuteness-triggered positive emotion” helps us narrow our focus, upping our performance on a task that requires close attention. Yes, this study may just validate your baby panda obsession.

What have you noticed makes you work harder – and better?

Look on the bright side: A Q&A with TED ebook author Tali Sharot on our biological wiring for optimism

Jim Daly — Mon, 03 Dec 2012 19:00:36 +0000

The mad rush of the holidays can stress out the sunniest soul, and yet somehow, beneath it all, we remain cheerfully optimistic. We look ahead, make New Year’s resolutions and generally believe next year will be better than this one and the year before. Why? Tali Sharot, who spoke at TED2012, says we homo sapiens are genetically predisposed to look on the bright side. In her new TED ebook, The Science of Optimism: Why We’re Hard-Wired for Hope, Sharot explains why we’re biologically tuned to be positive.

In your book you note that people are genetically predisposed to be optimistic. What advantage does that provide?

Overall, optimism is a good thing. We now know that underestimating the obstacles life has in store lowers stress and anxiety, leading to better health and well being — this is one reason why optimists recover faster from illnesses and live longer. For example, a study of cancer patients revealed that pessimistic patients under the age of 60 were more likely to die within eight months than non-pessimistic patients of the same initial health, status, and age. Optimists are also more likely to take actions that promote health. Researchers studying heart attack patients have found that optimists were more likely than non-optimistic patients to take vitamins, eat low fat diets and exercise, thereby reducing their overall coronary risk. Also, believing that a goal is attainable motivates us to execute actions that will help us get closer to our dreams. Optimism increases explorative behavior and innovation, which is why so many entrepreneurs are on the optimistic side.

Why do people maintain this rosy bias even when information challenging our upbeat forecasts is so readily available?

Our brain tends to engage more in positive thoughts of the future than negative. This is the result of an interaction between deep structures in our brain that process emotion and motivation (such as the amygdala and striatum) and parts of our frontal lobes that modulate them (frontal lobes). Most importantly, when people learn what the future may hold, our neurons efficiently encode unexpectedly good information, but fail to incorporate information that is unexpectedly bad — rendering us more optimistic.

Are there disadvantages to being optimistic?

Yes, making assumptions that are too positive can lead to disastrous miscalculations.

If we underestimate our risks we might be less likely to take precautionary actions; less likely to get health checkups, apply sunscreen or open a saving account. Optimism can also results in bad planning — we tend to think projects will take less time to complete and cost less than they end up. Think house renovation or planning a wedding.

Can this form of inherent optimism help breed success?

Optimism pushes us to take chances — attempt a new job, a new relationship. It also acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy, as believing a goal is attainable makes it more likely to be. This is why optimism has been related to success in many domains including sports, academia, business, politics. However, there are pitfalls — for example, the optimism bias is thought to be a leading cause for the 2008 global economic collapse.

Are we more optimistic at a certain age? Or if we live in a certain area of the world?

Older people seem to be more optimistic and happier than college students and middle age adults — this surprised me. You would think that with more life experience we become more realistic — better able to see the future clearly. Turns out that’s not true. I expand on this counterintuitive result in the book. There is no evidence as of yet that people are more optimistic in certain parts of the world — that is something we should test.

Are you an optimist?

We are not so good at assessing our own optimism. Many times people arrive in my lab and say “I am a realist” or even “I am a pessimist”, but when you test them — compare their expectations to outcomes — you find they are as optimistic as the next guy. That is how the optimism bias works — we think our expectations are realistic, but they tend to be slightly on the optimistic side. So the only way to measure optimism accurately is to use the empirical tests we and others have developed. The problem is that I know these tests inside out, so there is no point testing myself. My guess is that I am as optimistic as the average reader, which means I hold mild optimism. That being said, I expect 2013 to be a great year! Happy holidays.

The Science of Optimism: Why We’re Hard-Wired for Hope is part of the TED Books series. It is available for the Kindle and Nook, as well as through the iBookstore. Or download the TED Books app for your iPad or iPhone.

New TED Book: The Science of Optimism

Kate Torgovnick — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 22:55:39 +0000

The world may be a tough and tenuous place, but we humans tend to think that the future will be better than the past. Why? In the new TED ebook, The Science of Optimism: Why We’re Hard-Wired for Hope, author Tali Sharot expands on her earlier research into the optimism bias, and explores the many reasons why we are biologically predisposed to believe the best is yet to come. We imagine our kids will be a success or we’ll find true love and that great job — not because we are naturally positive creatures, but because of the way our frontal cortex communicates with subcortical regions deep in our brain. Not the stuff that pop songs are made of, but fascinating nonetheless. There’s another advantage to walking on the sunny side of the street. Optimism not only makes our lives easier and more pleasant, but can also breed success. “Optimism,” Tarot notes, “increases explorative behavior and innovation, which is why so many entrepreneurs are on the optimistic side.”

The Science of Optimism is available for the Kindle and Nook, as well as through the iBookstore. Or download the TED Books app for your iPad or iPhone..

The power of daydreams: 4 studies on the surprising science of mind-wandering

Kate Torgovnick — Mon, 05 Nov 2012 17:21:58 +0000

What makes us happy? It’s one of the most complicated puzzles of human existence — and one that, so far, 87 speakers have explored in TEDTalks.

In today’s talk, Matt Killingsworth (who studied under Dan Gilbert at Harvard) shares a novel approach to the study of happiness — an app, Track Your Happiness, which allows people to chart their feelings on a moment-by-moment basis. As they go about their day, app users get random pings, asking them to share their current activity and note their mood. When Killingsworth gave this talk at TEDxCambridge in 2011, the app had collected data from more than 15,000 people in 80 countries, representing a wide range of ages, education levels and occupations. In this talk, Killingsworth reveals a very surprising finding: that mind-wandering appears to factor heavily into this happiness equation.

“As human beings, we have this unique ability to have our minds stray,” says Killingsworth on the TEDx stage. “This ability to focus our attention on something other than the present is amazing — it allows us to learn and plan and reason.”

While most people think of mind-wandering as a lifting escape from daily drudgery, the Track Your Happiness data shows that this may not the case. In fact, mind-wandering appears to be correlated with unhappiness. When people were mind-wandering, they reported feeling happy only 56% of the time. Meanwhile, when they were focused on the present moment, they reported feeling happy 66% of the time. This effect was true regardless of the activity the person was doing — be it waiting in a traffic jam or eating a delicious dinner. (Read Killingsworth’s study, published in the journal Science in 2010, to see a breakdown of mind-wandering rates by activity.)

According to Killingsworth’s data, people mind-wander most when in the shower and least when they are having sex. But, still, mind-wandering is a constant. Overall, people mind-wander 47% of the time. Perhaps not such a good thing if it relates to unhappiness,

To hear more about mind-wandering — and about the importance of studying happiness in general — watch Killingsworth’s talk. And after the jump, read several more fascinating studies on the psychology of mind-wandering — some of which will make you feel better about your daydreaming.

A relationship to working memory
Mind-wandering might make us feel less content, but it could also have a functional purpose. A recent study published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that mind-wandering might be a sign of a high capacity working memory — in other words, the ability to think about multiple things at once. Researchers asked study participants to press a button and, as they went, checked in to see if their minds were wandering. After the task was complete, researchers gave participants a measure of their working memory. Interestingly, those who were found to be frequent mind-wanderers during the first task showed a greater capacity of working memory. Researcher Jonathan Smallwood of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science explains, “Our results suggest that the sorts of planning that people do quite often in daily life — when they’re on the bus, when they’re cycling to work, when they’re in the shower — are probably supported by working memory. Their brains are trying to allocate resources to the most pressing problems.”

A key to memory formation
Mind-wandering might also play a vital function in helping us form memories. New York University neuroscientist Arielle Tambini looked at memory consolidation in this study published in the journal Neuron in 2010. Participants in the study were asked to look at pairs of images and, in between, were instructed to take a break to think about anything they wanted. Using fMRI, the researchers looked at the activity in the hippocampus cortical regions while they did both. The study showed that these two areas of the brain appear to work together — and that the greater the levels of brain activity in both areas, the stronger the subjects’ recall of the image pairing was. Explains Lila Davichi, who oversaw the study, “Your brain is working for you when you’re resting, so rest is important for memory and cognitive function. This is something we don’t appreciate much, especially when today’s information technologies keep us working round-the-clock … Taking a coffee break after class can actually help you retain that information you just learned.”

A creative boost
As the cliché goes, the best ideas usually come when you are least expecting them. A recent study published in the journal Psychological Science gives a clue as to why. A research team led by Benjamin Baird and Jonathan Schooler of the University of California at Santa Barbara asked participants to take “unusual uses” tests — brainstorming alternate ways to use an everyday object like a toothpick for two minutes. Study participants did two of these sessions, and then were given a 12-minute break, during which they were asked to rest, perform a demanding memory exercise or do a reaction time activity designed to maximize their mind-wandering. After the break, they did four more unusual uses tests — two of them repeats. While all of the groups performed comparably on the two new unusual uses lists, the group that had performed the mind-wandering tasks performed 41% better then the other groups on the unusual uses lists they were repeating. “The implication is that mind-wandering was only helpful for problems that were already being mentally chewed on. It didn’t seem to lead to a general increase in creative problem-solving ability,” says Baird.

“The Pursuit of Happiness” — listen now to TED Radio Hour Episode 2

Emily McManus — Fri, 04 May 2012 14:46:21 +0000

Now live online: The new episode of TED Radio Hour, a program from NPR and TED. “The Pursuit of Happiness” is available online now on NPR.com — and will air online on many US NPR member stations; check your local listings.

In Episode 2, “The Pursuit of Happiness,” host Alison Stewart talks with Barry Schwartz and Kathryn Schulz — and we meet Howard Moskowitz, the hero of Malcolm Gladwell’s classic TEDTalk on the perfect spaghetti sauce.

You can find the full hour-long episode, as well as each individual segment (yes, they’re each 18 minutes long), related TEDTalks and more in-depth content on n.pr/TEDradiohour and on NPR’s mobile apps.

Subscribe to the iTunes podcast to get TED Radio Hour Episode 2: “The Pursuit of Happiness” >>

“Balloons of Bhutan”: Bringing Gross National Happiness from the Himalayas

Thu-Huong Ha — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:26:10 +0000

In his latest project, “Balloons of Bhutan,” artist, computer scientist and storyteller Jonathan Harris explores how the Kingdom of Bhutan measures quality of life — not through Gross National Product, but through Gross National Happiness. In 2007 Harris spent two weeks talking to 117 people — students, farmers, road workers, monks, even a firewood seller, ranging from ages eight to 81 — about how they would rate their happiness. He then asked each person what one thing they would wish for and wrote their wish on a balloon of his or her favorite color. These balloons were strung up on display in Dochula, a sacred mountain pass, alongside thousands of brightly colored Buddhist prayer flags.

“Balloons of Bhutan” is now online as an interactive story. Find out about this portrait of happiness >>

Watch Jonathan Harris talk about making sense of the emotional world of the web or unconventional story telling >>

Watch Chip Conley talk about how the Bhutanese create a “habitat for happiness” >>

Life lessons from an ad man: Rory Sutherland on TED.com

Shanna Carpenter — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 10:40:43 +0000

Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value — and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life. (Recorded at TEDGlobal, July 2009, Oxford, UK. Duration: 16:39)

Twitter URL: http://on.ted.com/40

Watch Rory Sutherland’s talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 500+ TEDTalks.

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Choosing and buying happiness

Emily McManus — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 19:00:00 +0000

There’s a fascinating conversation going on right now around Dan Gilbert’s latest TEDTalk, “Exploring the frontiers of happiness,” posted yesterday. In the talk, Gilbert goes into detail on his research into choice, satisfaction and happiness. Several commenters are suggesting the headline is inaccurate, because the talk isn’t about happiness, per se, as much as about decisions. TED.com member Eliezer Israel calls it “a cogent exploration of rational decision-making.” What do you think — how are choice and happiness connected?

If you’d like to think further on this, check out today’s talk, about the absurd endgame of humanity’s search for happiness at any cost: Benjamin Wallace’s “Does happiness have a price tag?” In the name of pure research, Wallace looks for the most expensive things in the world and tries them out. I think his small questions — Does he really look sexier in $800 jeans? Would you let your dog sleep on a $40,000 mattress? — lead to the same big questions that Dan Gilbert asks.

Does happiness have a price tag? Benjamin Wallace on TED.com

tedstaff — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 08:45:00 +0000

From Taste3 2008: Can happiness be bought? To find out, author Benjamin Wallace sampled the world’s most expensive products, including a bottle of 1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc, 8 ounces of Kobe beef and the notorious Kopi Luwak coffee. His critique may surprise you. (Recorded July 2008 in Napa, California. Duration: 14:40.)

Watch Benjamin Wallace’s talk from Taste3 on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 350+ TEDTalks — including more talks about happiness.

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