Defining Happiness: Affect and Life Satisfaction

Why do we keep chasing happiness in ways that don't actually work?

Dr. Laurie Santos is a cognitive scientist and professor of psychology at Yale, where she created the most popular course in the university's 300-year history, the Science of Well-Being. Since then, that course has reached millions of people around the world, and her podcast, The Happiness Lab, has become one of the most trusted resources on the science of living well. In this conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais, Laurie pulls back the curtain on why our minds so reliably get happiness wrong, and what we can do about it.

The conversation starts with a sobering look at the student mental health crisis: more than 40% of college students report being too depressed to function, more than 60% report overwhelming anxiety. Laurie saw it firsthand at Yale, and it launched her on a mission to translate happiness research into practical tools that actually work.

She explains why the things we predict will make us happy – more money, more success, more achievement – don't deliver the boost we expect, or the lasting satisfaction we hope for. She digs into the science of social comparison, why our brains default to the comparisons that make us feel worse, and why even the most high-performing people can feel inexplicably stuck. And she outlines the evidence-based habits, social connection, mindset shifts, emotional awareness, that actually move the needle.

In this conversation, we explore:

• Why our minds are wired to predict happiness incorrectly
• How social comparison shapes our experience of achievement, and rarely in our favor
• What the research actually says about money, status, and wellbeing
• Why social connection is the most underrated predictor of happiness
• How to work with your emotions rather than suppress or spiral into them
• What leaders and organizations can do to build genuinely happier, higher-performing teams

Everyone wants to live a good life. This is one of those rare conversations that might genuinely help you do it.

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