Week 1 Video 6: Overview of 1st deadly happiness sin: Devaluing happiness

[MUSIC]

>> Hello.

Hola.

Nihow.

Namaste and aloha.

Of all these greetings from all around the world,

can you tell me which one is my favorite?

So you know why aloha is my favorite greeting?

Because it stands for A Life Of Happiness And Fulfillment.

Get it?

Aloha's the acronym for this course, that's why it's my favorite.

This course, of course is all about what it takes to lead a happy and

fulfilling life.

And as I mentioned in the last video, the reason we aren't as happy and

fulfilled as we could or

should be is because of the seven deadly happiness sins that we commit.

In this video, I'm going to introduce to you the first of these seven deadly sins,

which is devaluing happiness.

Devaluing happiness means not giving happiness much priority in our lives.

It means sacrificing happiness for the sake of other things.

Now, you might find it strange that people would be willing

to sacrifice happiness for the sake of other things.

Findings from several surveys show that happiness is one of our

most important goals.

One survey found that happiness was rated the highest among 12 possible goals,

including goals like success, knowledge and material wealth.

In a survey that I conducted with my coauthors,

we two found very similar results.

We gave the respondents a list of 16 important life goals,

like being rich spiritual group, finding a purpose in life,

being happy, et cetera and we asked them to rank these codes.

We found that happiness was the second most important goal after fulfilling

relationships.

The difference between happiness and

fulfilling relationships was actually statistically non-significant.

Meaning that for all practical purposes, happiness emerged

as the joint top goal along with fulfilling relationships.

Given how important happiness is you would think that people would not

sacrifice it for other goals, but as we are soon going to see, they routinely do.

I got my first hint that people sacrificed happiness for

other groups to something that I call the genie question,

which many of you answered in the precourse survey that we sent out to you.

The genie question goes like this.

Imagine that a genie similar to the one in Aladdin's story appears in

front of you and offers you three wishes.

What wishes would you make?

If happiness is a very important goal, people should be asking the genie for

happiness.

But as it turns out, they often don't.

In fact, very few people, only about 6% ask for happiness.

As it turns out, the top three items on people's genie wish

list are money, fame and success and relationships.

The items on the genie wish list hinted the kinds of things for

which people routinely sacrificed happiness.

Notice that the top two items are extrinsic things money and status.

This suggests that people routinely sacrifice happiness for

the sake of money and status.

We are now at Bajaj Hall,

one of the many dining areas of the Indian School of Business and I've brought you

here to show you how we often sacrifice happiness for the sake of value for money.

[SOUND] Imagine that you are salad bar similar to this one here and you could

load your plate with whatever you wanted to eat and pay by the pound out there.

So for example, you could load your plate with.

>> Cucumber, carrot, beet, turnip, cabbage, radish and capsicum.

>> Yummy.

Makes me want to stop the lecture and start eating immediately.

So as you can see, I've loaded my plate with some items and

now I'm going to pay by the pound.

How much is it ma'am?

>> 1 million rupees!

[SOUND] >> [LAUGH]

>> Now imagine,

as I said a little while back that you're at a salad bar similar to this one,

behind me.

The salad bar has multiple items, including chickpeas and grilled chicken.

Imagine that you love chickpeas, which, by the way,

we call Chana in India a And that you don't like grilled chicken.

But at the same time, you recognize that pound for

pound, the grilled chicken costs much more than chickpeas.

What would you do?

Would you pick option A, which is load your plate with chickpeas and

avoid the grilled chicken, because that's what you enjoy more.

Or would you pick option B, which is take at least a little bit of grilled chicken,

even though you don't like it, just so that you can get some value for money.

This is exactly the situation in which my cousin found himself

when I took him to a salad bar in Austin, as soon as he had landed from India.

Salad bar had chickpeas and grilled chicken and

it turns out that my cousin loves chickpeas and he hates grilled chicken.

What do you think my cousin did?

That's right.

My cousin sacrificed enjoyment of his salad for the sake of value for money.

In other words, my cousin sacrificed happiness for the sake of value for money.

I say that he sacrificed happiness for value for money, because it turned out

that he didn't even finish eating the chicken, even though he had paid for it.

I've use my cousin's experience in some studies.

In the studies, we describe a scenario very similar to the salad

bar scenario that I just told you about.

Participants first read the following passage.

Imagine that you are at the salad bar as a restaurant that charges you by the pound,

you fill your plate with whatever you want and you pay $5.99 a pound.

There are many things that you can add to your salad and

you know that certain things.

For example, grilled chicken are more expensive than certain other things.

For example, chick peas.

Imagine that you enjoy the less expensive items more than you enjoy the more

expensive items.

For example, you find chickpeas to be tastier than grilled chicken.

Then we asked one set of participants,

what should a person who wishes to maximize happiness do?

And ask them to choose one of the following two options.

Option A, add some grilled chicken to the salad, so that you get your money's worth.

Option B, add chickpeas and avoid the grilled chicken altogether, so

that they derive greater enjoyment.

When we do this, 98% of the participants.

In other words,

almost everybody agrees that that option B is the best way to maximize happiness.

This makes sense, of course.

Both the chicken and the chickpeas are more or less equally healthy.

So what's the point of eating something that you don't enjoy much?

And yet, when we asked another set of participants to indicate which

option they would pick of the two, if they were at a salad bar,

we found that many of them attempted to prioritize value for money over happiness.

Specifically of the two options that you see on the screen, only 78% said that

they would load their plate with chickpeas and completely avoid the grilled chicken.

So think about it.

98% say that the happiness maximizing option is option B.

And yet, only 78% picked this option.

This suggests that about 20% or

1 in 5 of us sacrificed happiness for value for money.

Now you might think that the salad bar scenario is a one-off situation,

but let me assure you that it isn't.

There are many other such situations in life in

which people sacrifice happiness for the sake of other goods.

To tell you about another situations in which people sacrifice their happiness,

let me take you to the swimming pool at ISB.

We are now at the swimming pool at the beautiful campus of the Indian School of

Business and I brought you here to tell you how sometimes,

we sacrifice happiness for the sake of being right.

Imagine that you're in a very satisfying romantic relationship with

a wonderful boyfriend.

However, there is one area in which you want him to improve.

You want him to lose weight.

You've given him good advice on how to lose weight, which includes eating

healthy food and swimming, but he never follows your advice.

This continues for several months.

Then one day, he comes home very excited and

tells you that he's met somebody else and

a good looking person he has met who has motivated him to adopt a new lifestyle.

A lifestyle that will enable him to lose weight.

As he tells you about this new lifestyle, you recognize that it is actually very

similar to the one that you've been recommending to him all along,

including eating healthy food and swimming.

Your partner appears to have been convinced by another person to make

the very changes that you have been asking him to make.

What would you do?

Option A,

point out angrily to him that the other person hasn't told you anything new.

Or option B, congratulate him for having figured out how to achieve his goal.

In our studies, 86% picked option B as the happiness maximizing option.

People realize that in a relationship, you can often either be right or

you can be happy, you can't be both.

And yet, only 72% pick option B when they're asked what

they would do if they were in that situation.

So, around 14% or 1 in 7 seem willing to sacrifice happiness for

the sake of being right.

In this video, I describe two scenarios in which people sacrifice happiness.

You may wonder, whether these scenarios are all that commonplace or

even that important.

So in the next video, I'm going to discuss how we sacrifice happiness in one of

the most common and most important scenarios in our lives.

Job selection scenario.

See you in a bit.

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