March twentieth is the UN International Day of Happiness. To commemorate the day, News Medical speaks to Professor Bruce Hood, Professor of Developmental Psychology and Society on the University of Bristol, about his course The Science of Happiness and beyond. 

Please are you able to introduce yourself and tell us about your skilled background?

My name’s Bruce Hood, and I’m a Professor of Developmental Psychology and Society on the University of Bristol. My first degree was in psychology after I didn’t even know what psychology was. I became fascinated and fell in love with it, so I made a decision to coach as a psychologist.

As my undergraduate project, I’d done work on babies and was fascinated by the developing mind and the way children grow into adults. I used to be fortunate to get a position at Cambridge working with a team, taking a look at visual development. Their approach was from a physiological standpoint, which is the neuroscience aspect of my training. I studied the event of the attention movement system in very young babies.

What’s chemically happening in our brains after we discuss feeling “happiness”?

Happiness is not a single type of mental state. It covers various things, from bliss and ecstatic feelings to a way of contentment. Most individuals are accustomed to the concept of there being neurotransmitters which might be released. We discuss endogenous opioids, that are those neurotransmitters that generate feelings.

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One other neurotransmitter commonly discussed every time you hear about happiness is dopamine, a quite common neurotransmitter spread throughout the brain, nevertheless it’s taken on this role because the pleasure chemical. Dopamine is an element of the reward system. It’s actually involved in those positive experiences, however the research suggests it’s more to do with wanting than liking. You’ll be able to distinguish between those two forms of behavior.

You’ll be able to want something and never necessarily prefer it. Addiction is a classic example, where addicts will pursue or want something and never necessarily get the high they anticipate. So wanting and liking within the brain are different systems.

It is not the prevalence of a specific neurotransmitter or drug; quite, it’s how they operate on the several systems, which higher explains how pleasure and happiness work. Take opioids, for instance. There are centers deep within the brain that we all know that various recreational drugs act upon, but you simply should move a millimeter inside the brain, and the effect of that drug is totally different.

How does happiness impact our health, each mental and physical?

All of us experience happiness as a fluctuating day by day way of thinking. Some things make us unhappy, and a few things make us comfortable. Interestingly, the research indicates that these mental states impact our physical well-being. Now we have known that intuitively, we do not feel as much as our greatest physical self at times, which is usually linked to our mood.

However the really interesting work is the long-term effects of being unhappy. There’s now work coming out demonstrating that optimism impacts our longevity. A study published in 2019 checked out 70,000 people over roughly 40 years. Essentially the most optimistic lived longer, about 10 to fifteen%, in other words, eight to 10 years.

How do we alter psychologically as we grow up, and the way does it impact our happiness?

I feel that development is the important thing to happiness. The largest predictor of adult happiness is childhood happiness. It’s really interesting because, basically, children are happier than adults.

As a baby, you are blissfully unaware of lots of the problems on this planet, and you are the focus in most nurturing families. Most kids are raised in a really egocentric world where they’re the main target of attention. But with development, you get a development of identity and a development of self. So you’ve got to develop into less egocentric to get on with other people.

I call that a shift towards being allocentric, which suggests you may see other people’s perspectives. The issue is that while you begin to be warier of what other individuals are pondering, that makes you very self-conscious. Children develop into increasingly anxious about their status and the way they seem to others.

There may be a shift from the young child who’s been told they’re great by their parents. As they move into adolescence, they’re now comparing themselves to their peers. As they leave adolescents, they enter the world of maturity, where competition is admittedly vital.

Young children are fairly insulated from negativity and criticism. But as they develop into more independent, that exposes them to many more negative views and thoughts.

There is a network within the brain called the default mode network. That is the brain circuitry that kicks into motion while you’re not specializing in a task. When your mind wanders, the default mode network becomes overly lively and is related to negative rumination.

Could you tell me about your course “The Science of Happiness”?

Six years ago, I made a decision I needed to do something about student well-being because they were more preoccupied with their marks than having fun with this era of life. By coincidence, a former student of mine who I had taught at Harvard, Laurie Santos, had put a course on on the time called Psychology within the Good Life, and it was all about positive psychology. Laurie and I collaborated to place together a course. The one I did is somewhat different from Laurie’s but very much based on her approach.

Science Of Happiness and The Good LifePlay

The course could be very broad and open to first-year students who can take open units. So far as I’m aware, my course is entirely unique because students earn credit on our course, but there are not any graded examinations. I did that since it felt hypocritical to lecture students in regards to the dangers of examination stress after which give them an examination.

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We have developed a course entirely based on engagement, so it isn’t just lectures. They should turn up often. They usually meet in small groups that we call happiness hubs, that are mentored by third-year students who we have trained to run small groups. In those groups, they do activities and things we recommend through the lectures. We also get them to do weekly journals and measure their happiness at the start and end of the course. That is how we have established that this course has a positive impact and advantages their very own mental well-being.

What’s the present state of student mental health?

I feel that we’re not preparing students for university. The best way that we educate could be very much in a competitive way. After they hit university, which could be very different from school since it’s far more self-directed learning, it’s far more independent. I feel the scholars are fighting that, the clash, and the transition to college. They need to do well, but they fail to understand that their efforts and perfectionism may be counterproductive.

It’s far more vital to coach the subsequent generations about the way to take care of adversity and develop resilience. The world is unpredictable, and while learning content is all thoroughly, it needs to be done in a way conducive to well-being. I feel that is missing in the meanwhile.

Were there any surprising findings from the course which might be easy for people to implement into day-to-day life to assist improve their happiness?

There’s nothing I’m saying that hasn’t been said before. But knowledge shouldn’t be enough. You’ll be able to watch as many TED Talks or read as many self-help books as possible. It won’t make a difference unless you actively engage in it. You’ve gotten to act. That is why our course relies on lively engagement.

Once we checked out the long-term advantages of our course, we found that, as a bunch, a lot of the students returned to their baseline measures again. So the advantages they’d subsided, except those students stuck with the activities. About half of them continued to do the gratitude letters,  meditations, and all these exercises.

It’s like physical exertion; if you happen to don’t sustain with this system, you will return to your baseline again. Like a muscle, you is not going to suddenly develop into strong picking up the heaviest weight. It takes time, and it takes continual effort.

How do you suspect we are able to create a happier and kinder world together?

I feel the styles of goals we set ourselves are somewhat misguided by industrial interest. We have got to grasp that to get a balanced society, it really works at the person and societal levels. Meaning changing the best way we take care of one another.

What’s next for you and your work?

I need to try to get Bristol to adopt other courses, which I feel will empower students with life skills they will take into the world of labor. For instance, financial literacy, presenting skills, etc. I’m working on structures and methods to get the university to make room within the curriculum for what I feel are generic skills that we could all do with.

Where can readers find more information? 

About Professor Bruce Hood

Bruce is Professor of Developmental Psychology in Society at Bristol University since 1999.  He undertook his Ph.D. in neuroscience at Cambridge followed by appointments at University College London, MIT and a school professor at Harvard. He researches child development, origins of superstition, self-identity and ownership. For the past 5 years he has been concentrating on the way to grow happier. Bruce is a Fellow of the American Psychological Society, the Royal Institution of Great Britain and the British Psychological Society. He gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures “Meet Your Brain” in 2011 broadcast on the BBC to over 4 million viewers. He also gave the Christmas Lectures on tours to Japan, China, Singapore, and South Korea. Bruce has written 4 popular science books published in 16 countries – SuperSense, The Self Illusion, The Domesticated Brain and Possessed. He has made quite a few media appearances on radio and TV and featured within the 2019 award-winning eco-movie, “Living within the Future’s Past” with Academy Award winner, Jeff Bridges. Bruce has received quite a few academic awards and honorary degrees for his services to popularizing science. He’s currently working on his next popular science book in regards to the science of happiness.