幸福課第5堂：環境的力量(美國哈佛大學開放式課程)

I'd like to introduce a representative from uh uh Teach for America which is um an organization that has done and is

doing a lot of good uh promoting goodness in the world and uh I'd like to as in 1504 we've been supporting them for the last few years and we'd like to continue to do that so please

I hello can you hear me uh thank you so much for this uh I will take not 90 seconds my name is Josh Bieber I uh wow

hey now all right I feel positive um I was um I was a Teach for America Corp member and I now uh work for TFA I do new site development um so when I was a

senior I had like marginally considered this as an option uh and had it not been for a very pushy phone call uh from the very pushy TFA recruiter on the deadline

day I would not have applied uh but I hesitantly took like two hours filled out the essays and now owe her for or owe that phone call for the best two

years of my life and truly the happiest so if I have 60 seconds there are just two things I would want people to know about TFA I I think you know what we are

um one is that this country does not serve all kids in our schools uh fairly so low-income kids before they even leave Elementary School are years behind where they should be and nearly not even

half of them graduate high school which is like a terrible Injustice um a complete Injustice uh two like you can actually make a difference so I was as

skeptical as they come about TFA and my ability and all the rest um but like I know this to be true um if you walk into a class of fifth graders who on day one are years behind where they should be

and hate school and are kind of in cined to hate you because of it and 9 months later they leave on or above grade level like begging for summer work and wanting you to like hang out on the weekend you

kind of think anything is possible um and that's you know clearly I'm here now uh so for me Teach for America was an opportunity to actually align my actions with my thoughts and my hopes and be

part of the change we all you know we all talk about wanting to see um so I would encourage you all regardless of what you think uh you may do next year or where you may go beyond that to like really consider this it was the best

thing I could have done um the final deadline is tomorrow it's easy to do you don't need wrecks like just apply um and give yourself the chance to fall in love with it the way that I did um and I

would just end by saying you know if you're in this room right now like you probably have had the best education anyone your age anywhere could possibly have um and like our students and our

schools need you so uh please join us thank you very much for the tie and uh have a good class hi everyone quickly um if there are any extension students or undergraduate

students who were not able to make section this week we have an open section tonight at 7:30 um that'll be videotaped for the extension school so if you are available

and interested in attending that please come see me after class thanks now i' like to introduce

now um two um very dear friends and um supporters of positive psychology who are doing arguably more than anyone else

to to disseminate the ideas of positive psychology in a rigorous and fun way um and I'm I I've asked him to give a a

brief presentation about the masters of Applied positive psychology at upen the only master's degree de ree well the first master's degree in the world there

are a couple of others now and um they'll talk a little bit about just for 15 minutes about the Masters before we jump into um uh into into our material

today which hopefully will be exciting so James and Debbie please thank you very much tul it's great to be here with you guys um and what a delight

to be able to spend a few minutes with you in such a very special class where you're combining the science of positive psychology uh with its practice and of

course as you very quickly figured out tall is such a master teacher somebody who's able to take complex ideas and make them simple without making them

simplistic and also making um inspiring and uh making the presentation motivating so that we want to go out and apply the ideas that that we're studying I'm curious how many of you here um are

interested in applying the science of positive psychology in your own personal lives it's part of why you're here can I see your hand okay great how many of you are here

because you're also potentially interested in applying the science of positive psychology in your future career decisions like in your job eventually

okay great excellent I hope I hope you do just that and um for those of you who are interested in taking positive psychology the study of positive psychology deeper in a graduate level

program for your own um knowledge but then also to be able to take what you're learning into your profession uh we're delighted to be able to tell you a little bit about the master of Applied positive psychology program at the

University of Pennsylvania and to to talk a little bit about uh taking positive psychology from the classroom to the world now as you know positive

psychology is just about 10 years old it was started in 1998 when Marty Seligman was the president of the American Psychological Association and positive psychology was one of his presidential

initiatives about four years ago Marty Seligman started the positive psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania and the mission of the positive

psychology Center is to promote research training education and the dissemination of positive

psychology so in January of 2005 I joined the positive psychology Center as the Director of Education and Senior scholar the next month in February of

2005 Debbie swick came on board as the associate director of Education our task was to create a master's program and to have it up and running by the Fall so

again I got there in January Debbie came in February we got our brochure out and printed and published in March our application deadline was in

April kind of a compr kind of optimistic I suppose um and we didn't know if anybody would show up we didn't know if anybody would be interested uh but um we needn't have worried we got over a

hundred applications and we accepted 36 students into our program for that fall and things have just really been going uh well and and and hopping ever since

this is our current class uh on their first day of class uh in the fall of 2007 we have 41 students in our class um this year so I'd just like to tell you a

little bit more about the the students actually three of our graduates uh or current students are teaching fellows in this class so that's exciting um Debbie Cohen and Elizabeth Johnson where are

you if you guys would stand up and Elizabeth Peterson great so we have and if you if you look on the upper left corner Gabriel de

Coral was a student here in this class two years ago when we came and presented on the program and he is currently a student in the in the matap program so there's a lot of um Synergy uh going back and forth between this class and

our our Masters program our students range in age from 22 to 62 they come from all across the United States from Vermont to Florida to California they come from around the

world we've had students from the ukuk from Norway Switzerland India Malaysia

Japan Hong Kong um South Korea and New Zealand about 25 to 30% of our students are younger students who are just out of college and are looking to immerse

themselves in positive psychology before going on into their professional training the rest of our students are professionals who come from a wide variety of professions uh in our first

class we had the former Chief social worker uh Chief social work in Spector for the entire country of Scotland was in the class that was very interesting we've had a kidney transplant surgeon a

former vice president of JP Morgan we've had attorneys uh directors of development for nonprofits uh the executive director of a school Carl Brook Academy is in our class this year

Human Resources directors Consultants executive coaches even a professional musician and a professional comedian so it's a quite a a a a Crosscut of of

students in the class just in a couple of minutes I want to give you a little bit more of a sense of what the educational design is and just a brief overview of the of the

coursework so this um map program is uh a onee one calendar year of full-time study students begin in this in September and they end in August there the educational design is a

hybrid model so once a month students are on class for INT on site at at pen for intensive on-site classes and then in intervening periods there are distance learning modules that the

students complete this is a professional master's degree and it focuses on the theory and application of positive psychology in

various professional domains so at this point there's not a separate licensing or credentialing in positive psychology itself students come from education business law medicine Etc bringing their

own own credentials with them so this design of um having students on on campus once a month for intensive classes allows students to continue working full-time now I just

said that the program was full-time and you may be wondering well how can students work full-time and study full-time keep in mind this is a professional degree um and an Executive Education model that's intended uh to be

it's designed for people who are themselves working full-time and still taking classes full-time so most of our students continue in the work they've been doing continue to work full-time while they while they come to our class

another advantage of this model is that students aren't required to live in or near Philadelphia students can Comm can commute in from across the United States and um what has been a surprise and a

pleasure to us students have decided to commute in from as far away as Europe and Asia so I don't know what your commute today was like to come to class but some of our students come from as

far away as South Korea and New Zealand every month to be a part of the positive psychology classes so you can imagine that that adds a real excitement and energy to the class um and puts a little bit of pressure on the professors to

make sure that we have something worth coming halfway around the world for um this enhances the educational experience obviously by increasing student diversity we have students who are um living abroad and coming in for the

classes and also we're allowed to tap we're able to tap into the expertise of professors not just at the University of Pennsylvania but also at at other schools as well so that we can bring in

the very top leading researchers and practitioners of positive psychology a brief overview of the the schedule of on-site classes in the fall of 2008 you can see there that there are five

different intensive on-site weekends in the spring as well with distance learning in the intervening times so just very briefly the courses each

student takes four courses in the fall four courses in the spring and ends with a Capstone course in the fall the courses focus on the foundational theory

of positive psychology Marty Seligman teaches the introduction to positive psychology course um Angela Duckworth teaches a course on research methods and evaluation it's very important for our

students to have a a real good grasp of the the the science of positive psychology understanding uh the research methods behind the the results I teach a course on the foundations of positive

interventions and then our fourth course is approaches to the good life where we have different leading researchers come in and talk about their research in the spring our courses Focus not so much on

the theory but now move to the application of positive psychology since it is a master of Applied positive psychology I don't know if you've studied yet the uh character strength

and virtues um the values and action classification spearheaded by Chris Peterson if you haven't done that yet you I'm sure you shortly will he himself comes in and teaches a course on the work that he has uh that he has done I

teach a course on applied positive interventions and we have a service learning component as a part of of that class Karen rivich and Judy zberg levik

teach a course on positive psychology and individuals so this is how to use positive psychology relationally um with with other people whether it's in a work environment or with friends or or family

and then finally uh I don't know if you're familiar with appreciative inquiry again I expect if you're not tall we'll be introducing it to you during the course of the semester David Cooper riter is the leader of this uh of

this field of inquiry which basically takes positive psychology approaches into organizations and seeks to change at the level not just of individuals but at the level of the

whole the final course that students take then is the Capstone project which happens over the summer uh and this is an independent project where students are able to um integrate what they've

learned in their classes and take it a step forward in the direction in which they want to go in their own professional application of this so we've had students do uh research quantitative research or qualitative

research uh we've had students uh do literature reviews in a particular area of interest book proposals for books they want to write um or Workshop proposals and uh and those kinds of things so that's just a brief overview

of the courses Debbie's just going to take a couple of minutes to show you some pictures there's been a lot of text in the last few minutes uh Debbie will show you some pictures and tell you more about the classes Debbie

thanks thanks good thank you you heard about the courses from James and I'm going to tell you a little bit about how they're set up and and what they are and and this um

is a picture from immersion week immersion week is when the very first time students meet together they come for 5 days to pin and we have class from 8 to 5:00 and I know that sounds kind of

crazy but we have a lot of fun as you can tell and um and they stay engaged because we bring faculty in from all over the place and this world-class faculty they really have a chance to

interact with these the class is 41 students they take all their courses together and it's more a seminar than a lecture so they really get to interact

quite a bit and then during breaks and during lunchtime Etc they get to um see these people that just have come in from various places another form of interaction that

you get in the map program is with cohorts every um everyone is put in a cohort of about three to five people and you'll do different projects with these people you'll do a lot of things via in

distance learning you'll communicate a lot with these people and and it just is another um depth that get when you get to work with people from all different places and and all different

demographics and one of the things that we really try to use the Capstone project for is a stepping stone into what you're going to do with your application and many people have taken

this and they have created workshops that they're doing one person actually um took the primer in positive psychology and she translated it into Japanese and she's getting it published

and that was quite a project for her and um other people have published um in scholarly journals their Capstone work and people get to give presentations and this is um a photo of of someone giving

a presentation of the positive psychology Summit and so there's a lot of different things that students do as we bring them through the program as we give them a solid foundation and then we help them to start applying this and

move towards that but one of the biggest questions that we get when we have applicants call in is what can I do with a map degree and I'm going to tell you just a

quick snapshot Sasha Lewis Hines is the first person there and she is now in the PHD program of development psychology at Columbia University so she came to the

Matt program before getting her PhD so she has that foundation and that's what she wants to use and focus on as she goes through and gets her PhD the second person up there is senya mman who has

worked with hedge funds but she found in her spare time um she found some time to create the positive psychology News Daily website which is articles about

the research and application of positive psychology written by map alumni who are out there actually doing that and another thing that she's been able to do along with a lot of other map alumni has

been involved in trainings and been involved in projects that have come through the positive psychology Center as we get different projects um to train people in the UK to put positive

psychology in their schools the people that we draw on are map alumni because because they have the education and the foundation that is needed to be able to

put through these projects so we hope to continue to put together alumni with various um opportunities that come along to us Caroline Miller is the third

person there and she is an author and she's getting ready to publish her second book and she's also um a speaker and a coach and she has had the

opportunity since map to actually teach a lot of courses and she's very FOC fed on goal setting and she's very focused on sports psychology so this has really expanded what she's been able to do and

not all of our students are Harvard graduates but these three actually happen to be the Harvard graduates so it's very interesting to see um that little snapshot and we hope that we have

many more Harvard graduates coming to our program so James you want to finish up here thank you very much Debbie so uh our presentation is entitled from the

classroom to the world and certainly the map program is one way of taking positive psychology from the classroom to the world just wanted to mention very briefly another opportunity we have just

started the international positive psychology Association and this is an intern it's going to be a major international organization to help facilitate communication and collaboration among researchers and

practitioners of positive psychology here is a picture that was taken at the first board of directors meeting that happened in October uh not pictured here as tall who is a member of the board board of directors um as are a number of

other leading positive psychologists from the United States and around the world uh there is a special student membership so encourage you to check out the international positive psychology

Association at www.an network.org and join to stay AB

www.an network.org and join to stay AB breast of the latest developments in the field of positive psychology I wish we had time for your questions but I know tall has a lot of great stuff for you today so we'll U

Move Along just want to let you know that um there will be an information session this afternoon noon from 3: to 4:30 in Harvard hall room 103 so we'd love to see any of those of you uh who

are interested to stop by and talk with us um and we'll be able to talk in in more detail about the specific questions that you might have at that point we'll also be here for a few minutes uh after

class we have some brochures with us uh we'd love you to to to take a brochure if you're interested um there's always more information can be found on our website at penp positiv site.org or you

can email us at the address listed so we hope to see um a lot of you um at the map program sooner or later um and in the meantime wish you a very successful

semester as you dig into the science of positive psychology and uh put it into practice in your own lives and think about how to take positive psychology from the classroom to the world

okay know it's such a privilege to be a part of map because what you have there in in a year is all the top people from the field so many of the the people that

we'll talk about whether it's Barbara Frederickson whom we'll talk about in a few minutes uh whether it's David cooperider whom we'll talk about whether it's Marty Seligman of course will come

there and present to you and um we'll be spending quality time in small groups with them real privilege so what I want to do today is

um finish up I want to finish up on the um the basic premises second on the final

premise no we're not going to watch that again no or that here we go the final and fifth

premise is an important one it's a philosophical one but one that I wanted to introduce at the beginning of the course so that you understand where I'm coming from where this course is coming

from because many people say okay so happiness is important you know we seek it we have you know know declarations National declarations

individual Declarations of how important it is for us but that doesn't mean that it is important or the is the fact that is important doesn't mean that we ought

to do it my argument here is that not only is it important it also ought to be important so first about the is

happiness whether we like it or not whether it's consciously subconsciously whether it's explicit or implicit for most people not all but for most people it is the highest

end and again we have constitutions safeguarding our Pursuit of Happiness we spend a lot of effort lot of time thinking about it for ourselves

as well as for others Aristotle over 2,000 years ago happiness is the meaning and purpose of life the whole aim and end of human

existence William James in 1890 or in the varieties of religious experiences writes if we were to ask the question what is human life's

Chief concern one of the answers we should receive would be it is happiness how to gain how to keep how to recover happiness is in fact the most for most

men at all times the secret motive of all they do and of all that are willing to endure now you may have heard of William James he's named after a building here

and he talked about this over 100 years ago Aristotle over 2,000 years ago and it's not just peculiar to the West the Dal Lama whether One Believes In religion or not whether One Believes In

this religion or that religion the very purpose of our life is happiness the very motion of our life is towards happiness so it is important for people again whether it's conscious

subconscious explicit or implicit the question though is the fact that it is important should it be important what about the moral dimension

of Happiness there are so many other things happening so many important things to do in the world why should we have happiness as our our highest end as

our chief concern as that which determines the motion of our life in other words what's good about well-being what's good about positive emotions and there's a lot of research

to our answer this question but before the research it feels good to feel good think about it internalize it you know this is

Aristotle's law of identity a is a it feels good to feel good and that in and of itself is justification why not feel good if we can feel

good so the burden of proof for why happiness is not important maybe on the people who would argue otherwise and we'll talk about that argument later but

the first key issue is that it's a good in and of itself almost needs no justification however Beyond just feeling good happiness also contributes

to our life to our relationships it contributes to other people this is research done by barara Frederickson one of the faculty members who teaches at

vupen you saw a picture of her up there what barara fredericksen said says is that pos positive emotions have an evolutionary

reason that they have a purpose Beyond just making us feel good for example they help us think beyond what we're thinking right now broaden our thinking

they help us build relationships they help us build capacities remember one of the key Concepts in this course is that positive emotions positive psychology as

a field as a whole is about building capacities and the two analogies that we use was strengthening our immune system or a stronger quote unquote

psychological engine that has the capacity to endure more not just from the negative to the zero but also from the zero to the positive so this is barara fredericksen

and let me quote extensively from her article which I believe you're reading for this week we should work to cultivate positive emotions in ourselves and in

those around us not just as end States in themselves but also as a means to achieving psychological growth and improved psychological and physical

health over time I call this the broaden and Bild theory of positive emotions because positive emotions appear to broaden people's momentary thought action repertoir and build their

enduring personal resources through experiences of positive emotions people transform themselves becoming more

creative knowledgeable res resilient socially integrated and healthy individuals numerous benefits to just experiencing positive emotions it's a

win-win it feels good and it's good for us and it's good for society as a whole as I'll argue momentarily so what she's talking about here for example is that positive

emotions help us overcome negative emotions what happens when we experience negative emotions is that our Consciousness our thinking Narrows and

constricts we focus just on one thing so for example and and that can be a good thing you know a lion comes to me and charges me I don't want to start thinking about my map application I don't want to start thinking about what

my roommate say I want to focus on the lion so my Consciousness Narrows and constricts and I'm in the fight or flight

mode now that's a good thing when a line charges me but it's not a very good thing if my Consciousness continues to

narrow and constrict Beyond the threat or beyond the hardship and what we know is that very often we enter a

downward spiral a vicious cycle when we go into this neuro and constrict mod so for example just for example a random example my girlfriend leaves me all

right and I narrow and constrict in terms of my thinking and all I'm thinking about is just that and then what happens as a

result I experience sadness because that's what I'm thinking about and sadness a painful emotion not a positive emotion leads to further narrowing and

constrict and that can can potentially not always but potentially can go on and on and on and that's when it can become

depression that's when I have difficulty getting out of this downward vicious cycle positive em emotions do the the

opposite they broaden and build broaden and build leads to positive emotions and positive emotions then

further broaden and build so that's a virtuous cycle and I look broadly I look to other people I look to other things to what can I do now where can I go where can I spend my time and very often

what that does a positive emotion can take us out of this downward spiral and create an upward spiral a positive

motion can come in the form of watching a humorous film it can come in the form of a few deep breaths and we'll talk about deep breathing when we talk about Mind

Body a positive emotion can for come in the form of an interaction with a friend a pleasant one and it's the positive emotion that can take us out from this

downward spiral to this upward spiral and again it doesn't always take a very long time and the and the challenge is to

combine it with a permission to be human to experience the emotion to go through the motion and yet not to enter the downward spiral where you know 6 months later

after a small incident I'm still in that rut and we'll talk about what is the right time and how do you find the right time and how do you find the balance between thinking about painful emotions

and when does it slide to rumination which is not always helpful so it helps overcome negative emotions also creativity we think broadly we're able to make more

connections see connections that we hadn't seen before perhaps there's a lot of um talk about the depressive Creator you know if you

want high levels of creativity it's a must you have to be depressed well it turns out that's not the case very often manic depressives are highly

creative but that's usually during their manic phases in the depressed phase our thinking is narrow we don't think outside the box usually of course there

are many exceptions but as a whole in fact there is research for example this was done with um internists doctors who were giving a very difficult

very difficult question connected to a liver problem that in individual patient had and they divided them randomly into three groups the first group was a

control group they just had to solve that problem the second group was was given a statement about the humanistic value of medicine why it's so important

to be a medical doctor and the third group was um shown uh was was given candy and just put in a funny playful good

mood the third group group that was given the candy was put in a positive playful mood outperformed the other two groups significantly they thought about more

options and they actually came up with better solutions to that problem and this is one of many many studies in this area another example children you know

one group of children was the control group the second group was told to think back to an experience that made them laugh or smile

and that group did much better on a learning task than the control group because they were put in a positive mood again it's a

win-win it's defined in many ways the no pain no gain Paradigm whether it's of Education of doctors or in school as

well as generally in the workplace because you see also motivation and energy you don't need research for that you know that when you're feeling good you have more motivation you have more

energy and of course there is a lot of research to back that up and ultimately success they look it in the professional world people who are able to manage

their emotions better and lead to more positive emotions get out of this narrow and constrict to the broaden and build are in the long term more successful

again it's not the people who don't have Painful emotions remember they're all dead it's the people who experience pain painful emotions but are Al at the same time able to shift themselves their

Consciousness their thinking their experience to the positive more readily and happier people are more successful because they have more energy and work

harder it's because they're pursuing something rather than running away from something what's called approach rather than avoidance goals we'll talk about

that during the week on goals also because they form better relationships they're more open and generous and they're more creative all these components ultimately lead to

higher levels of success positive Emotions Don't only contribute to Our Success they don't just contribute to our feeling good they also contribute to our well-being

optimistic people and again not polanish detached optimism but grounded optimists on average live significantly

longer bless you their immune system is stronger so it also helps in terms of physical health but now the question

is the moral question what about other people how can

I talk about or act in my life pursuing my happiness isn't that selfish and and the answer is yes it is

selfish when I talk to myself when I say to myself I want to be happier I say to myself that I want to be happier that's a selfish thing so is that bad is that

immoral well in our culture selfishness and immorality has essent have essentially become synonymous and that's a problem and here

is why because this is the number one equating the two selfishness and immorality is the number one cause

subconsciously mostly but not only number one cause of unhappiness because people feel guilty about pursuing their

own happiness people feel guilty at times feeling good about themselves how can I how dare I feel good about myself how can I pursue my own happiness when

there is so much suffering in the world and there is a lot of suffering in the world so how do we respond to that first of all

happiness is a positive sum game it's not a zero sum game neither it is is it a negative sum game it's not that my happiness takes

away from other people's happiness which would be a negative sum game if I have more you necessarily have less it is not even a

zero or rather if I have less you have less that's a negative sum game or a zero sum game if I have more you have less it's a fixed pie it's not that it's a positive sum game why because

happiness is contagious if I'm happier I'm more likely to contribute to other people's happiness and well-being being

happy in other words is also a moral state in the sense of actually contributing to other people's well-being the Buddha talked about it thousands of years ago thousands of

candles can be lighted from a single candle and the life of the candle will not be shortened happiness never decreases by being shared it's like passing on

light and if you're happy and work on your own happiness you're contributing in directly to other people's happiness just like the the baby who laughed last

time made you laugh it's contagious generally people who work work on their happiness again not people who experience a constant high that

would have real difficulty having relationships since they're dead but generally people those of us who are alive who work on our happiness who

experience the vicissitudes of Life the ups and downs but overall work on our happiness and become happier and happier have better relationships more generous more

accepting of other people more tolerant of other people as well as of themselves there's a lot of research to show that helping ourselves in other

words working on our happiness contributing to our well-being leads us to also be more generous and benevolent toward others this is researched by one of the leading

researchers one of the first researchers in the area of positive emotions Ellis Eisen and she showed time and again how feeling good is good for us and good for others

and it works the other way as well this is the wonderful thing about happiness it works the other way as well because helping others also helps

ourselves remember your task for this week those of you have already read it it's to commit above and beyond what you usually commit five extra acts of

kindness during one day five extra acts of kindness this is research done by Sonia liri I mentioned her book on the first class the how of happiness she's done fantastic work

showing how people who help whether it's helping you know five extra acts during the week it can be more doesn't have to be restricted to five or people who help

five extra acts during one day it actually contributes to their well-being so helping others is also helping ourselves you know one of the things that I say and only half in

justest is that I know of no more selfish act than a benevolent act and again only half inest because the two are

interconnected and there is a self-reinforcing loop between the two we helping others help ourselves helps ourselves and helping ourselves in turn

helps others and rather than looking it as selfish and some people may feel disease with it rather though as looking it as selfish I equal

immoral we should look at it as something that is so wonderful about our nature a part of our nature that we should celebrate the fact that our happiness is tied to others the fact

that we're tied to others in a web of empathy that's a wonderful thing about human nature a thing that we need to celebrate much more than we are doing already because remember if we don't

celebrate it if we don't appreciate that part of our nature that part of our nature will depreciate to appreciate has two meanings as we

talked about one is to say thank you for something and two is to grow if we appreciate the good in our nature in our inclinations if we appreciate that part

of our nature it will appreciate and we will have more of it if we look down on it and say no it's a terrible thing that I just derived benefit from helping other people then

that part of our nature will deep re appreciate over time for your readings you're reading one of the meditations in my book where I talk about it a little bit more in length and also give it the

philosophical Foundation because in many ways this goes against um Canan thinking that has been so dominant in our in our

20th and 21st century thinking about morality it feels good to feel good it also contributes to others to feel

good I want to end this premise the idea by talking a little bit about a person for

whom one of the chief purposes in life was to spread happiness Mahatma Gandhi there's a story about

him there was a woman like many people came to ask for advice from Gandhi and she came from

very far away and she brought her son along and she sat in front she got the audience with Mahatma and she sat in

front of him and she said to him I came from afar because I have a problem with my son my

son eats way too much sugar and I'd like you to tell him to to stop it because it's hurting his health his

teeth and he will listen to you he admires you Gandhi looked at her and said Madam

can you please come back in a month she didn't know why but she took but she listened to him after all he was

Gandhi she left went far away came all the way back a month later and once again rece got an audience with with Gandhi she sat in front of him and she

said I was here a month ago and she said said yes yes I remember and she said could you please tell my son to stop eating sug so much sugar so Gandhi looks

at the child intensely and says son stop eating too much

sugar and that's it the woman is obviously perplexed and musters up her courage and says

Mahatma thank you very much I'm sure he will stop eating too much sugar but why couldn't you tell him this a month ago

when I came all the way here and he said well Madam because a month ago I was eating too much sugar yeah I know it's a very

sophisticated joke it t takes a while but but I'm glad I'm glad you got it one of the things that Gandhi said

that he talked about and this is in his from his um wonderful autobiography my experiments with truth be the change you

want to see in the world be the change you want to see in the world this is how you bring about change I want to do a quick exercise with you

this is a exercise especially for for guys but please bear with me so if you don't feel comfortable doing it don't do it what I'd like you to do now is the

following take your thumb and your middle finger and create as much as possible a 90° angle may hurt a little bit but try as much as possible to create a

90° angle okay watch me just like this okay 90° Angle now take these two fingers the middle finger and the sum and as much as

possible from that 90° angle create a circle again this is more difficult for men than for women less flexible create a circle so that it looks like you know

like the um a rabbit if you would have on the uh on the show middle finger exactly middle finger and your thumb all right just watch me

like this as much as possible it's not perfectly around but as much as possible now take that Circle that you have just

created can you see that Circle take that Circle and put it on your cheek your other cheek

cheek all right this could also take a while but most people from what I see put it on their chin now I said it very clearly cheek but you see here is the

thing people mostly do what you do rather than what you say oh so remember that

because I don't think there is anyone in this room who would tell me now my goal in life my objective is to make people miserable I

really want to do that you know I want everyone to be miserable in the world there's not one person here who would actually say that I

hope so most of us here whatever we do in our lives now and in the future are idealists we want to do good in the world we want to spread happiness but remember people do what you do not what

you say so you may want to spread happiness through your words but ultimately the best way the optimal way of spreading happiness is to work your own happiness

because then you're leading by example that applies to leadership the most important thing about leadership is not what you say it's what you do the most important thing about parenting is

not how much you tell your child honesty is important but rather how honest you are if you want to spread happiness be the change you want to see in the world by

example so these are the five basic premises that we talked about they form

the foundation of the course and what we're going to do over the next couple of months is expand on

these most importantly see how we can take the research the rigor and apply it to our lives so let me move on now to

the next next to the next lecture which is beliefs as self-fulfilling prophecies this I must

say this topic ignited my imagination when I was a kid when I thought about when I was an athlete and that's when I understood the

power of the mind and that what piqued my interest in psychology and I want to start with a story a specific story

that in many ways I can say the first story psychological story that I heard or the story that I heard that brought home to me the message of how important psychology is to

well-being and to success and success as a 14-year-old squash player was the most important thing in my life and the story

is of Roger banister just so I get a show of hands how many people have heard of Roger banister okay a handful so those of you

have can hear it again Roger Bannister was a runner he ran the mile and until

1954 running the mile in under four minutes was considered impossible in fact doctors proved that 4 minutes for the mile was the limit of

human ability physiologists ran tests showing proving scientifically that the limit of human ability was running the

mile in 4 minutes you could not go below that and Runners proved the doctors and the scientists proved that they were right

and ran the mile in 4 minutes and 2 seconds 4 minutes and 1 second but no no Runner could run the mile in under 4 minutes ever since the mile was actually timed or they started to time runs it

was impossible doctor scientist showed Runners athletes the top ones in the world proved that the doctors were

right and then came along Roger banister Roger banister said it is possible to run the four minutes and in

fact I'm going to do it now when he said it he was a medical doctor at Oxford University he was a good runner top Runner but nowhere near the 4-minute

mark his best time was 4 minutes and 12 seconds and of course no one took him seriously but Roger Bannister continued to train and work hard not harder than the rest of the runners but as hard as

the top runners in the world and he did get better in fact he broke the 4 minutes and 10 seconds Mark 4 minutes

and 5 Seconds Mark and then he got to 4 minute and 2 seconds and stopped like everyone else could not go

below the 4 minutes and 2 seconds so he wasn't even the best runner in the world but among the best but he continued to say it is possible there is no human

limitation on that we can run the mile in under 4 minutes and he continued to say it continue to train to no avail for

years until 1954 on the 6th of May 1954 on his home turf at Oxford

University Roger Bannister ran the mile in 3 minutes and 59

seconds sensation front page news all over the world science

defied doctors def fed the impossible made possible it became known as the dream mile now listen to

this for decades ever since the mile was timed no one broke the 4minute barrier it was considered impossible and then on the

6th of May Roger banister does it six weeks later John Landy an Australian Runner runs the mile in 3 minutes

57.9 seconds the following year

1955 37 runners run the mile in under 4 minutes 1956 over 300 Runners break the 4-minute

barrier now what happened was it that they suddenly started to train harder of course not was it new technologies new shoes it

wasn't it was the Mind look how powerful the mind is it wasn't the fact that they were running that time and they said oops we're over the speed limit let's slow down a little bit not at all they

were trying their hardest their utmost and yet the subconscious mind limited them prevented them from breaking that barrier that happened to be not a

physical barrier as the doctors and physiologists and scientists had claimed it was a mental barrier and what Roger banister did was break down the fort the

mental psychological Fort beliefs are self-fulfilling prophecies very often they

determine how we perform how well or how poorly we perform they often determine how good or not so good our relationships are they're the number one

predictor of Life success as well as wellbe being as we'll talk about so what we're going to talk about today and next time is how beliefs shape

reality how it works what is the mechanism the science behind the power of the mind because in many ways this sounds like

mysticism and part of it is Mystical still not understandable but we're going to talk about as much as we know why it works and how it works this unfort forun a lot of

misunderstanding about optimism because the self-help movement in many ways is about identif is about telling us how it's all about the power of the

Mind talk about sink and Grow Rich the book we'll talk about the secret which is about creating our reality through our thoughts and there's some truth to these

but only some truth we're going to bridge Ivory Tower in Main in Main Street and show the science and also the danger behind that

belief most importantly how do we apply it how do we enhance the belief we have in ourselves if there is such high correlation and there is very high correlation and predictive power to a

sense of hope to a sense of optimism to beliefs if they so much determine our outcome on the athletic field in the workplace in a relationship

if it matters so much then how can we raise our beliefs and we'll talk about work by um bendur on self-efficacy work by Nathaniel Brandon on

self-esteem how we can make a dream into reality whether it's a political dream we'll talk about Martin Luther King's dream and approach and how how he did

and what he did or a personal dream where we'll talk about the work of Herbert Benson as well as bendur once again the Buddha we are what

we think all that we are arises with our thoughts with our thoughts we make our world again this was a claim was made thousands of years ago and what I want

to do now is focus on the scientific Foundation of this claim and I'll start by talking about pigmon in the

classroom the source of the word palian is ancient Greece palian was a sculptor and what he did was when he

came of age was looking for his ideal woman he wanted to get married so he went and looked around Athens where he lived he looked around the hall of

Greece he looked around the Greek Empire he looked beyond the Greek Empire looking for his ideal woman a woman whom

he could marry and he couldn't find her no matter where he looked I mean it's understandable this was before 1879 which is when Ratcliffe was

founded and long before Harvard became co-ed so he couldn't find his ideal woman and he went back to Essence and that said to himself well

instead of finding that ideal woman I will create a sculpture as he was a sculptor I will create a sculpture In Her Image and he created that sculpture

and when he looked at her he was so overwhelmed with emotion and sadness that he couldn't find her that he began to

cry and then Zeus aena and especially Aphrodite looking down on him had mer took

mercy and brought the statue to life and of course they lived happily ever after so this is the source of the word

pigmalion pigmon was then taken by George Bernard Shaw who created a play based on a similar idea which was later

made into a musical My Fair Lady and the idea here is how Higgins doctor of linguistics took a flower girl and

molded her in a sense into being royalty what of course happened throughout the story was that she molded him more in transform form Med him fascinating story and a very important story at the time

because it challenged the whole class system that people are born into a certain place and cannot and should not be moved so a very important play at

that time as well as today about pican and how people can be changed can be transformed in the 1960s Robert rosenal who was the head of

our department for many years his now at UC Riverside took this idea of pigmalion and applied it in the classroom here is what he did rosenal went into a group of random schools and

what he did there was went to the students had them take a test and then go to their teachers after and tell the teachers your students just took a new

test that was devised a new academic test which is called the fast SPS test what that means is that we identified students who are going to take a big

leap intellectual Leap Forward in this coming year spurt forward in this coming year in other words what he was saying it identifies the students with the highest

potential and what he found then was when he told these students uh the teachers or what he told these teachers was that you know this is just an FYI you cannot tell the students this

we don't want any discrimination in your school but just so you know these are your fast Spurs it's a new Test new to Divine just so you know unbeknownst to the

teacher the actual test that was given those students was regular off-the-shelf IQ test also unbeknown to the teachers was

that these students names who were deemed fast spiritual Highest Potential students were literally randomly picked

out of a hat so these were regular students like all other students students but the teachers thought they were fast

Spurs Robert Rosena leaves the school comes back in at the end of the year and here is what he finds he looks at their English scores the fast sperss improved

significantly more than any of the other students he looked at their math scores because English is not really objective and you know maybe it was the teachers who thought they were better than they

were really so he looked at their MTH objective scores these students sign improved significantly more than any of the other

students but here is the Clincher Robert Rosenfeld administered once again an IQ test for all the students and what he found was that the

students who were labeled randomly so but who were labeled fast spers their IQ increased significantly

over the year and maintained that increase in a longitudinal study now this is mind bogging I mean IQ is supposed to be your intelligent quotient that you're born with it's immutable it

doesn't change from the day you were born to the day you die or so they thought it changed significantly just

based on the belief that the teacher had in her or his students beliefs as self-fulfilling prophecies

what happened in this study was it that the teachers were fooled and suddenly were made to see illud an illus they saw an illusion

no it was that they were eluded before there was an illusion before and the illusion was that they didn't see what was right in front of their very eyes which is the potential inherent in

every single student and then Robert Rosenthal comes and fools them in a sense but fools them into seeing what has been there all

along before rosenal came they didn't see the children on the bus so to speak after that they suddenly in some children saw that potential that was there all

along and they appreciated that potential and that potential appreciated they watered it they shed light on it and the seed germinated and grew this is

exactly what Marvel Collins does day in and day out in school she sees the potential that is there she's not inventing something she's not detached from reality it's rather that people who

don't see the potential in other people as well as in themselves as we'll discussed they're not seeing the full reality they're only seeing part of it

they're completely missing the children on the bus and we know how easy it is to miss parts of reality even though they're right in front of our very eyes

all it often takes is a question that takes us on a quest and we miss what we have seen before whether it was research with atrisk population whether it was

the geometrical shapes whether it's asking only negative questions about our relationship or about ourselves or whether it's not seeing the

potential that exists in just about all kids if only if only we see it and if we see it

appreciate it we water it we shed light on it and it appreciates it grows so what Rosenthal did was simply shift their attention to something that was

there all along same in the workplace replicated hundreds and thousands of times the palian effect was replicated in the workplace

where leaders were told or managers were told these are your top high Highest Potential employees and these employees again randomly picked actually became The Highest

Potential employees and they succeeded much more retention went up for them performance went up they were more likely to advance in the organization

and stay in the organization just as a result of expectation this also works the other way Jameson back in 1987 this did this

fascinating study study where what she said was let's see if it works the other way so she went to two classes that were taught by the same

teacher and before the class started told just one of the classes that this teacher was ranked extremely highly by other um students before that they as

professional psychologists rated that teacher as extremely high and then they left them what happened by the end of the year first of all the teacher was

rated higher by the intervention group than by the control group but also the students putting actually more time into

into the class and they outperformed the control group because they believed they were made to believe that the teacher was better than supposedly he or she

were in other words they saw the potential in the teacher they performed not not even the te the teacher did perform better but the students actually

performed better when they had higher expectations when they believed in their teachers so if you want to do well in 1504 you know what you need to do

right it works beliefs a self-fulfilling prophecy we create our reality girtha treat a man as he is and he will remain as he is treat a man as

he can and should be and he shall become as he can and should be I want to move on now to a related topic one that is very important for

psychologist but also for you to apply in your life and that is the importance of the situation we create or that is created for us in many ways psychology

social psychology for sure was spawned by a series of re research that was done on the power of the situation but it was mostly the negative power of the

situation so those of you whove taken psych one those of you who haven't may have heard of the ash Conformity experiments where people conformed to

the idea of the group or many of you probably heard of milgram's obedience to Authority experiment if you haven't heard about it I'm not going to go into depth here read about it just Google it some of the most important and

fascinating studies in the field of psychology where a person off the street was told by an experiment to shock another person even to the point where

the other person is screaming to stop and because the experimentor was saying the experiment must go on and very often had a white cloak like a doctors or an experiment

was cloak around them because they said the experiment must go on very often people went most people Americans went on and shocked that person even to the point of the

other person whimpering and begging to be led out simply because of the word the experiment must go on the power of the situation obedience to

Authority this was done in order to show how something like the Holocaust could only happen in Germany how people there are more likely to be obedient to Authority and what

they found globally worldwide people have the tendency to be obedient to Authority whether it was in the United States or in Germany around the world same replicated

the power of the situation Philip zimbardo's Prison Experiment this was done at Stanford where what they did was taking again read about it if you haven't I'm

not going to go into depth here where they took people off the street and have them play the role of either the prison Warden the guard or the prisoner and the

experiment was supposed to go on for two weeks to show what entering a role does and what they found was that after a week the experiment had to be stopped

because the wardens people of the street randomly divided were becoming so oppressive they humiliated the prisoners who got into

their position of being humiliated just like prisoners often feel this explains Abu grab you know

current phenomenon what happened in in the Iraqi prisons of how people off the street enter the role they entered the role so much that zimbardo had to stop the experiment after one week go on

YouTube and watch the video about this mindboggling stuff so this is all important good to know important to know but not enough because if the situation is so powerful why just the

emphasis on the negative why not think about creating positive situations that will help

us lead happier more moral lives and this has just like a lot of the positive psychological approaches has been ignored with a ratio of 21 to1 so let me

share with you just a couple of studies in this area both of them done by our very own Ellen Langer this by the way the study that I'm going to share now is going to be the backbone of a movie

coming out about Professor Langer um person who's going to play alen Langer she's the first uh female 10e professor in the psychology department um the

person who's going to play Langer is um Jennifer Aniston and the movie is coming out hopefully uh in a year but it's about this experiment that I'm going to share

with you now so this was done in 1979 here is what Langer did what she did was take men who were

above 75 years old and send them to a retreat which was a 1959 retreat meaning even though this was

1979 the music was from 1959 the magazines that they read that they were all around were 1959 the daily newspapers were

1959 everything was 1959 even they had to go into the role just like in zimbardo they had to play the role of

1959 as if they were 20 years younger now of course it was a psychological experiment they had all these different measures taken before

after and here is what they found one week retreat at the end of the week at the end of the

week both mental and biological age decreased for example they became more flexible in tests they became stronger

their grasp their legs their body became stronger longer their memory improved significantly so their intelligence

level have taken by tests before and after compared to a control group improved significantly after a single week she measured the

distance between the bones in the fingers because when we get older we be they the space become smaller they become tighter the length after a week

increased in their fingers they became happier they became more self um self-sufficient less dependent on other

people as rated by themselves and as rated by their family members they became healthier their eyesight and hearing

improved significantly in as little as a week just because they entered a

powerful positive situation which goes against a lot of the stereotypes and the prejudices that they encounter in the outside

world so just by quote unquote acting a certain role they became that role just like zimbardo's prisoners became their

role in as little as a week another study that she done she did and this was uh this is reporting in her

book mindfulness which I highly recommend she took in and tested people's eyesight and she gave them a a normal eyesight chart

measured them wrote down their performance and then she took the exact same people this time put them in Pilot's

overalls and at the same time put them in a flight simulator and showed them the exact same ey chart same distance same ey chart the

only difference being they're sitting in a flight simulator and they're wearing Pilots overalls they were sitting

there looking at the at the eye chart and again she ran the eye test 40% of participants eyesight improved

significantly as a result of just changing the situation same distance same chart same everything different

situation the question is how do we create a positive situation how can we create a situation

that improves us with the role and I want to share with you a couple of studies I'll share one study and then another later about the environment

first of all the work of baj priming is when we have subconscious or conscious priming for example you're looking at a screen you're looking at a screen and

for just a few milliseconds a word appears and that word primes you and there's a lot of research on how it can prime you negatively with stereotypes for example with prejudices or

positively but not enough on positively so here is a study done by barge where he primed people with words associated with old

so for example word such as old word such as um

stick word such a you know like a old person stick words such as Florida really that's one of the words he primed people with so he primed

people with quote unquote old words and then he had them take compar to a control group an intelligence test and a memory test the memory of the people who

were primed with quote unquote old words they performed worse than the control group

second he to he looked at these people and measured how fast they walked from where the experiment was to the

elevator and also had blind evaluat people who didn't know which condition they were in evaluate how they were walking so the people who were primed

with old actually walked more stooped than the other people and they walked significantly slower toward the elevator not knowing that they were

primed with old words they walked slower toward the elevator then the people who were not primed with these old

words subconscious completely and then he did the same thing priming people with words related to achievement the people who were primed subconsciously with words

related to achievement did better on test than control group their memory improved and they persisted more on difficult tasks and the question is and the thing that

I'll talk about next time is how can we create consciously and subconsciously a positive environment where we actually can take out the most

moral most successful self to appreciate that self to help the environment bring out the best in us next time