- Good afternoon.
- [Audience Members] Good Afternoon.
- Let's just do this one more time, Good afternoon.
- [Audience Members] Good afternoon. You're Amherst College students, welcome. My name is Michael Elliot. I'm the president of Amherst College. We've met before, most of us. I'm thrilled to have welcome you here. I will remind you, I know it's warm, but we are still masking indoors here at Amherst. And so please, even if you have to take it off for a moment, now and then, please do keep your mask on during the course of the lecture. I am thrilled to be welcoming the members of the Class of 2026, our new transfer students, our exchange students and friends and community members who are joined us by livestream to the 17th annual DeMott Lecture. The DeMott Lecture for new students is named in honor of Benjamin DeMott, a beloved English professor at the college from 1951 to 1990. Professor DeMott came to his long career in academia through a winding path. After high school, he worked as a clerk and a journalist before serving in the US Infantry during World War II. He subsequently attended college on the GI bill, and earned a PhD in English at Harvard, which is an okay place, before joining the faculty at Amherst, which is a better place. Amherst, which is a better place. gain from his wide ranging life experience. A public intellectual and early practitioner of what is now called cultural studies, Professor DeMott taught and wrote about the representation of class, race, and gender in American culture. Throughout his career, he continued to write for popular publications, such as the Atlantic and Harpers, and he always encouraged his students to make connections between the classroom and the world, which in his honor is the mission of our DeMott reading and lecture. It is truly an honor to welcome this year's DeMott lecturer, Katherine A Sanderson, the Poler Family professor of psychology at Amherst. She's the author of this year's DeMott reading, "The Positive Shift, Mastering Mindset to Improve Happiness, Health and Longevity," which I hope you all read and benefited from. Professor Sanderson specializes in nothing less than the science of happiness, the power of emotional intelligence and the psychology of courage and inaction. And what I admire so much about all of her scholarship is she really thinks about what her discipline psychology in the lab and in the classroom can teach us about living a good life in the everyday sense of the term. Here at Amher, she teaches introductory courses in psychology and social psychology, and specialized courses on topics such as, the psychology of good and evil, health psychology and sports psychology. Her research has received funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. And she's the author of dozens of journal articles and book chapters, as well as educational textbooks and the introduction to psychology course for The Great Courses series. Her opinion papers frequently appear in national newspapers and her TEDx talk on the "Psychology of Inaction" has a wide following. She has been named one of the countries top 300 professors by the Princeton Review. Professor Sanderson holds a bachelor's degree in psychology, with a specialization in health and development from Stanford University and master's in doctoral degrees from psychology from Princeton University. You've all read the "Positive Shift," and I imagine you will have lot to talk about with professor Sanderson after her talk today. There will be a time for question, during which you will be able to take off your masks and ask questions free of them. But I also want to draw your attention to her most recent book, "Why We Act," which was published recently; draws on her research, pioneering research on campus norms and bystander intervention to explore how moral courage works and what each of us can do to increase our capacity, to be conscientious and ethical leaders in all facets of our lives, a topic that is truly evergreen. I encourage you all to read it and to take as many courses from Professor Sanderson, as you possibly can. Please join me in warmly, welcoming Katherine Sanderson to the podium.
- In the fall of 1986, my mom dropped me off at Newark Airport from my flight to San Francisco so that I could start college at Stanford. We didn't have so much money. So there was no way my mom was going to fly with me. So I got on the plane with my trunk and a suitcase and backpack, and I flew alone to start college. And I remember it still, even though it was like 35 years ago. I remember it still, as the plane was approaching the runway, going over the San Francisco Bay, that what I hoped for with all of my might was that the plane would crash so that I would die and never have to get off the plane because I was terrified. And I'm starting with that story to say, well, first of all, the plane didn't crash, hence I'm here, but also because starting college for many people is kind of scary. Raise your hand if you, or someone you know, find starting college a little bit scary. Raise your hand. So that's a lot of hands, and when I learned that I would have the honor of talking with you all today I thought about what I wished I'd known as I started as a college student, and that is going to be the focus of today's talk. So I'm going to give you five pieces of advice because basically five is about all the people can kind of keep in their minds. And I'm really hoping that this advice stays with you, even after my talk is done. I hope it stays with you for days and weeks and months and dare I say, years because this is advice from the field of psychology that can fundamentally change your happiness, your health, your longevity. Now, there's not going to be a quiz, but there is audience participation which is going to be good practice for your first class later this week. And so how this is going to go is I'm going to give you a piece of advice. I'm going to talk about it and at the end, we're all going to repeat the advice aloud. Now, initially it's going to be easy 'cause they'll just be one, but then there'll be a two and a three and a four, so basically, pay attention. And I want to say on a personal note, last week my husband and I drove our youngest child to start college for the first time and I decided that I would use the long drive, it's about six hours, I decided I would use the long drive to practice my talk 'cause she is after all an incoming college student, just like all of you, and unexpectedly towards the end of my talk I started to cry. So I'm also sharing with you all that I'm really hoping to not weep in front of all of you today, wish me luck. All right, so first of all, focus on effort. Let's say that aloud focus on effort.
- [Audience Members] Focus on effort.
- Very good, Now you'll have to remember that. So you probably remember the story I described in my book about Andrew, my very optimistic Spanish scholar, son. Nod if you know what I'm talking about. and that would be people who read the book. Alright, so I'm going to now update you on the rest of that story. So Andrew, as you may recall, felt really good about his impressive improvement From 50 to a 58 in his Spanish class. His teacher and the school didn't really see that in such a positive light. So my husband and I were called into a meeting with Andrew and the guidance counselor in which the school strongly suggested that he drop the Spanish and take something he could pass. And they suggested drumming, for example. and we said, "Yeah, that, that sounds good, drumming. Drumming would be good, and Andrew said, No, but I love Spanish. I love the teacher and I love the students and I love the class, you know, I really don't want to drop it." And I said, "Yeah, but you suck at it." And he said, "Yeah, Yeah, well, just gimme another chance." So he developed this plan and the plan was for him to get a tutor, for him to meet regularly with a Spanish teacher, for him to actually devote more time studying the Spanish, and the school said they would give him a one month probation period. So at the end of the month, he actually had improved his grade enough they allowed him to continue taking Spanish and he finished out his first year taking Spanish. In May, his Spanish teacher called me and she said, "I've just finished doing grades and Andrew's going to end up with an a for his final in my class, and in all of my years of teaching, I've never had anyone go from an F to an A minus." And then I said, "Is there a prize associated with that? Which turns out, there was not. but I'm starting with that story because it illustrates something really important in high school, in college, in life, effort matters. Now, you all are sitting in this room because you are smart enough. You are plenty smart, hence you are here today, but the key to success at Amherst, isn't how smart you are, it's how much you focus, how much you devote effort. Do you go to class? Do you do the reading? Do you go to office hours? Do you seek out the Writing Center? That in all different ways, what we in terms of success in college, it's not just how smart you are, it's how much effort you are expending and focusing on to really do well. Even at Amherst, some students devote a lot of effort and others, not so much. And that's in part because many of you have kind of learned effort isn't so necessary because you've been able to kind of get through high school by being smart enough. At Amherst, effort's going to matter. In all of the classes that I teach, I give students the option of turning in a draft for every paper I assign and I give them this option for a couple reasons. One, it encourages good time management skills. You can't turn in a draft of a paper if you start at the night before it's due. It also helps students understand that writing for all of us is a process. You get better at writing by getting advice and feedback on your writing. So I give that option to my students. And then third, finally turning in a draft is a pretty good strategy for improving your final grade. After all, I'm the person who's going to grade your final work. So turning in a draft from the person who's grading it so they can tell you how to make it better is a pretty good idea. Nod if that makes sense to you, yeah. So a few years ago I had a students on the football team and he came to tell me a story about his coach EJ Mills. So EJ Mills had apparently learned that I gave this draft option and he also learned, and this is true, that only about half of students ever take me up on turning in a draft, about half to about half don't, and EJ just couldn't believe that students would have the opportunity to get their paper read by the person grading their paper and would not turn it in. So apparently one day in the locker room, EJ said to the tea anyone who doesn't turn in a draft for professor Sanderson's class should be shot. Now, I'm sure he didn't mean like shot, but his point is well taken. Because why in the world would you not turn in a draft of your paper for the person who ultimately is grading your paper? Now in college, you're going to have a whole lot more freedom than you had in high school. You can sleep through class. You can not do the reading and hope you don't get called on. You can pull it all nighter and finish your paper overnight or study for your exam in the wee of the morning. But those are not strategies that are going to pay off in terms of success. Turn in a draft whenever it's an option, go to office hours, seek out your professors, seek out the Writing Center, seek out the Quantitative Skills Center, effort matters. So first piece of advice is what?
- [Audience Members] Focus on effort.
- Good, no, that was, of course, the easy one. 'cause that's just one. Two, take a chance. One of the things many students find appealing about Amherst is the open curriculum. Raise your hand if you know what I mean. Well, there you go. 'Cause what? What's so great about the open curriculum? You can never take something. Ah, never have to a language, never have to take math, never have to take lab science, never have to write, whatever it is. So the open curriculum is wonderful because it lets you avoid things. But here's what's really great about the open curriculum, the open curriculum also lets you explore all different things, things that you knew nothing about before arriving on this campus. So I was a psychology major at Stanford and, therefore, I took a lot of psychology classes. But when I think now about the classes that I remember most, many of them aren't in psychology. Every time I'm in a museum and I look at paintings, I think about an art history class that I had that changed how I look at art. Every time I read fiction, I think about a wonderful class I had in the English department, comparing Fitzgerald and Hemingway, and pretty frequently these days, I think back to a class I had my junior year of college called American Politics, which in the 1980s was like a much more uplifting and optimistic kind of a topic than it probably is today. So take advantage of the open curriculum to explore new fields and gain new skills. But the advice to take a chance is far broader than just taking a chance in the classroom. Take a chance in the extracurricular activities you pursue. Take a chance in the internships you apply for. and perhaps most importantly, take a chance in your personal lives. Many people go through life worried about taking a chance because taking a chance means you're risking failure, disappointment, rejection. As one of my good friends says with some regularity, rejection is never a party and that's true, but refusing to take a chance also means that you miss out on experiencing something potentially really great. So when I was in college, I had a really good friend. We studied together. We went to dinner together. We went to movies together. We hung out a lot. And in the fall of our senior year, I came to the realization that I liked him as like more than a friend. So I took my own advice and I told him, you know, how I felt and wondered if he felt the same way. And he was very nice about it. He said, "I think you're really nice. I think you're really smart, but no, I'm not attracted to you and sorry, but no that's not really going to happen." And I was like, "Okay, you know, that's fine." And I pick myself up and we continued to be friends. I lived, but we continued to hang out a lot. And by April of our senior year, I was really picking up on some strong mutual chemistry and connection. So like a glutton for punishment. I told him again and again, he was very nice. I like you as a friend. I think you're very smart. I think you're very nice, but no, you're not really picking up on this like correctly, you know, whatever. So again, I picked myself up. I was okay. We graduated. We both got jobs in the area. We continued to see each other and one night he came over to my apartment. We had plans to have dinner, and I opened the door and he took me in his arms. He gave me like a full on open mouth kiss. And I was like, what was that? And he goes, "I think I love you." And I said, "Yeah, like I've known that, like I've known that," and that's now my husband, yeah. And I particularly like sharing that story with our kids because I describe that story in some, as sort of when daddy finally pulled his head out of his ass that's like my like summary of it. But so that story had a happy ending, but the reality is sometimes you'll take a chance and it won't work out. And that's also, okay, so maybe you'll struggle with a class and you won't really get the grade that you hoped for. You'll apply for an internship and you'll get rejected. You'll audition for a play or a musical group and you won't get in, but all of that is also fine. When I took intro to psychology in the spring of my freshman year at Stanford, I got a B minus, and I have a PhD in psychology from Princeton and tenure at Amherst. It worked out okay. My book that many of you read the "Positive Shift" got rejected from numerous agents, numerous publishers. before I finally got a book contract. That in many cases, things may not work out or they may not work out initially and that also is okay. Taking a chance and risking disappointment and rejection and failure has honor and value in trying no matter the outcome. As Teddy Roosevelt famously said, "The credit belongs to those who are actually in the arena who strive valiantly, who know the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spin themselves in a worthy cause, who at best, know the triumph of high achievement and who at worst, if they fail, fail while daring greatly so that their place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." So now we've done two. Let's see how well you do. One.
- [Audience Members] Focus on effort
- Focus on effort, good, Two.
- [Audience Members] Take a chance. You guys are doing well. Three, ignore the crowd. About five years ago this week, my husband and I drove our oldest child to college for the first time. we went to Walmart and bought a mini fridge and rug. We hung posters in his dorm room. We went to the goodbye family lunch and hugged him goodbye and drove home to a slightly quieter and cleaner house. And we didn't hear much from Andrew for the first couple weeks of college. Occasionally, he'd text saying, how do you do laundry or can I have some more money? But we really didn't hear anything from him. And then about two weeks after he started his first year, he actually called me late one night, I answered the phone and his voice was breaking, and he said, "A student died in my dorm last night," and then he told me the story. The student had been drinking alcohol with friends and at around 9:00 PM, he fell and hit his head. And his friends watched over him for hours because they wanted him to be okay. So they did all the things that college students have been told you do to help someone who's in trouble. They strapped a backpack around his shoulders to keep him from rolling onto his back and vomiting and choking to death. They checked to make sure he was still breathing. but what they didn't do for nearly 19 hours was called 911. And when they finally did call, it was too late. Student was rushed to the hospital. The hospital kept him alive on life support and they waited for his family to fly in from out of town. So they could be with him when he ultimately died, but he died; 19 years old in his first two weeks of college. And when Andrew told me that story, I was just heartbroken. I was heartbroken for that kid, for his parents, for his younger brother, for his friends. And one of the things that's so tragic about that story is that we can imagine it having a different ending. If one of those kids had picked up the phone and gotten that student prompt, medical attention. So how do we explain their inaction and what research and psychology tells us is that inaction. in that type of situation is very normal. When an ambiguous event happens and we don't really know what's going on, we look to other people to try to figure out how to interpret the situation. So you think, is that student really in serious trouble or or is he just drunk? Is that harmless flirting is that kind of like a sexual assault? Is that joke funny or is it really kind of offensive? And so the challenge is when we're in an ambiguous situation, we look to other people around us to try to figure out how to respond, to interpret what's going on. But here's the challenge, if everyone is looking at everyone else and no one wants to feel stupid or embarrassed for overreacting, then no one may actually step up and get the person help or intervene when they know something is wrong. A very simple study in psychology done long ago, illustrates what happens in that type of an ambiguous situation. So in this study, they brought in college students, and they put them in a small room to fill out a survey. Now, half of the students came in and they filled out the survey in a small room alone. The other half of students came in and filled out a survey in a small room with two other students. But these two other students were confederates, accomplices of the researcher. And they had been told no matter what happens, just keep filling out the survey, do not react. So people come in, they're filling out the survey, some of them are alone. Some of them are with these two other confederates of the researcher. When all of a sudden smoke starts pouring into the room. Now, if you're alone in a room and it starts filling with smoke, guess what everybody does? What does everybody do? They get up? They're like smoke, fire, this is a problem. They immediately get up and they go and report it. But what happens when you're in a room and it's filling with smoke and that these two other people who aren't reacting. So what they did in this part of the study is they let the smoke continue to pour in for six minutes. And the smoke got thick enough that people had to like wave away the smoke to fill out the survey, wave away the smoke to even see it. But in that situation, 90% of people just stayed in that room while it filled with smoke because they looked at the other two students, friends of the experimenter and they just kept filling it out and waving it away, and filling it out and waving it away. So the researchers then into the study after six minutes, and they ask everyone, "Did you notice the smoke?" And everybody says, yes, yes I did. And then the researcher says, "well, what did you think it was?" And the people who hadn't stood up and done anything, overwhelmingly had all sorts of innocent explanations. I thought it was an air conditioning vent malfunctioning. I thought it was a steam pipe problem. Two students said they thought it was truth gas, that they were pumping into the room to get honest answers on the survey. So students who didn't act had all sorts of non-emergency explanations, why? Because they looked at the other students just kept filling out the survey. And so all of a sudden they imagined, well, I guess that must be no big deal. And this situation, in which we look to people's public behavior, to guide our own reaction, but we misperceive what's going on, what they're really thinking and feeling, it happens in all different kinds of settings. Let me give you simple example. Who here has ever been in a classroom in which the teacher says, do you have any questions? And you had a question, but you chose not to raise your hand. Raise your hand if you've ever been in that situation. All right, and that's virtually all the hands and here's, what's fascinating. You know exactly why you chose not to raise your hand in that situation. Why? You didn't want to look what? Dumb, stupid, you didn't want to feel embarrassed for asking stupid question. We've all been there, but here's, what's fascinating. When you sit there and decide, I'm not going to raise my hand 'cause I don't want to look stupid. You look around at all the other people also not raising their hands and you don't think, boy, I bet they don't want to look stupid. No, you think the other students are not asking question because they are what smart, they're smart. They actually don't have a question because they're smart. And so there's a case in which your behavior, not raising your hand, is exactly the same as everybody else's behavior, not raising their hands, but you interpret that their behavior is driven by something entirely driven different than your own. Their behavior is driven by their shared intelligence, your behavior is driven by a fear of looking stupid. And this is why in lots of different situations, people, in fact, don't get the help that they need. There's a gap between people's public behavior and what they're privately feeling. And this situation can lead us astray in all different kinds of daily life situations. It's why people don't speak up. when they hear a joke that's racist or sexist or homophobic. It's why people often believe they're not quite as smart or as popular as people around them. And it's also why a group of college students might wait 19 hours before calling 911. But here's the good news the good news is that understanding the very normal psychology of inaction can help all of us step up and do the right thing, even when other people are not. All right, let's see how you do, one.
- [Audience Members] Focus on effort.
- Two
- [Audience Members] Take a chance
- Three.
- [Audience Members] Ignore the crowd. Excellent, very good, four, get enough sleep. Now, this is probably the simplest strategy. Get enough sleep, and yet it's one that many college students struggle with. Raise your hand if you make a point of exercising regularly, raise your hand. Okay, that's a fair number of hands, put your hands down. Raise your hand, if you make a point of getting enough sleep. So that would be fewer hands. And here's the irony, sleeping, it's actually easier than exercising, like a lot easier than exercising. But here's what research and psychology tells us about the hazards of not getting enough sleep and it's basically bad news on all fronts. As you hopefully remember from my book, people who don't get enough sleep are more likely to develop all sorts of different health problems, why? Because sleep deprivation weakens the immune system and that seems like a particularly concerning issue in today's world of coronavirus and now monkeypox. Sleep deprivation leads people to be more irritable, which is why married couples are more likely to have a fight the day after one or both partners are sleep deprived. People who are sleep deprived have trouble concentrating. They have trouble learning new information. They have trouble recalling previously learned material. And this is why college students who pull in all nighter to study for an exam or write a paper are really not making a good choice. We also know that sleep deprivation leads college athletes to perform worse. Researchers at Stanford conducted a fascinating study of players on the men's basketball team. First, they measured players' performance on a variety of tasks. So how quickly they could run a sprint and their shooting percentage. Then they told all of the players to make a point of getting a lot of sleep over the next few weeks, as much as nine or 10 hours a night. And then they retested the players on all of the same different athletic tasks that they had done before. And what they found, players ran significantly faster after getting more sleep. They also shot better, about 9% better for both free throws and field goals. They also reported having more energy, during practices and games. So sleep is really important and yet it's very clear that college students often fail to prioritize getting good sleep. So what can you do? Three quick strategies, one try not to eat or drink so much right before you're going to bed. Two, exercise, but not late at night, and three, don't nap, why? Because when you nap your brain and your body are not actually getting the high quality REM sleep, the best kind of sleep that you get you sleep for longer periods of time, seven or eight or hours or so. Now, what's so good about REM sleep? I don't have enough time to get into it. You'll have to take intro to psychology to figure that out, but it's a really important finding. Alright, we got four now. So let's see how well you do, one.
- [Audience Members] Focus on effort.
- Two.
- [Audience Members] Take a chance.
- Three.
- [Audience Members] Ignore the crowd.
- And four.
- [Audience Members] Get enough sleep.
- Very good, very good. All right, so now the fifth and final piece of advice, you only got one more and I'm doing this one last because it's really the most important, build connections. For everyone sitting in this room, the last few years have been really, really challenging. And I imagine you've heard about a growing mental health crisis across the United States and around the world and you might even heard about a mental health crisis among college students. Data from a national survey conducted by the National College Health Association last fall revealed that nearly 75% of college students report moderate to severe psychological distress. And these findings from nationwide data, they're in line with anecdotal reports that we hear on campus from faculty and staff and students. Although many different factors contribute to mental health problems, empirical research from psychology shows that one of the very best ways of improving mental health is developing meaningful social connections. People who are more socially connected to their community are happier, physically healthier and report fewer mental health problems. So my most important advice to you all build connections across this community, build connections in your dorm with your roommates and hall mates and RCs. I met my very best friend on my first day of college. At Stanford orientation involves lots of beach volleyball, and I am like super non-athletic, and so volleyball is like my worst possible nightmare. So during orientation, I sat on the sidelines feeling really depressed, really hoping I was never going to have to go in and play and really wishing I'd chosen to go to Yale. And there was another person sitting on the sidelines, looking exactly how I felt also wishing she'd gone to Yale and that person was the maid of honor in my wedding. Build connections throughout the campus. I met that guy who ended up marrying because I had a terrible room drawn number my freshman year and I got assigned to a terrible dorm and a terrible room my sophomore year. But then I met this guy on the hall who later became a great friend and now my spouse. Build connections with faculty and staff, go to office hours. You don't have to have a question about course material. You can literally go and just say hello and if you don't know what to say, and that feels awkward, Here are two things you can do, number one, ask faculty how did you end up at Amherst? And two, ask them, what are you researching now? And they can talk about both of those topics for like hours, so you're totally good. Build connections with the broader community. Write for the newspaper, audition for a musical group, Join an intramural team, volunteer, participate in student government, get involved in something, and ideally more than one thing. You may not find your community the first day or the first week, but the connections you make on this campus with people sitting right here in this room, are what will make your Amherst experience. These connections will have a greater impact on your college experience than your major, than your grades, then your teams win loss records. And these connections are what will stick with you for the rest of your life. Right now, I literally couldn't tell you anything that I learned in the intro to chemistry class, I took my first semester of college, and that's not just because I did really poorly and got like a C. What I remember from college are the friends I made and the professors who inspired the career that I have today. And yeah, that guy I met in the hall my sophomore year. All right, So let's see how well you do, one.
- [Audience Members] Focus on effort.
- Two.
- [Audience Members] Take a chance.
- Three.
- [Audience Members] Ignore the crowd.
- Four.
- [Audience Members] Get enough sleep.
- And five.
- [Audience Members] Build connections.
- Build connections, so I look forward to seeing you all over the next few weeks and months and years. Please stop by my office hours, introduce yourself, say, hello. One of your connections can be with me, thank you so much. And now we are going to do questions, and remember, one of these was, you know, take a chance. There are no stupid questions. If you have a question, other people ask of a question and there are going to be microphones. There's a microphone set up in the balcony. There's another microphone set up here. You can approach the microphone and when it is your turn to ask a question, you can take off your mask, and ask the question and the Q&A is my favorite part, 'cause again, I'm a professor. So I really look forward to hearing, any and all questions from you; could be questions about the book, could be questions about my talk, could be questions about time at Amherst, you know, et cetera, anything is good. And I'll give you a minute to think of your question. and I look forward to hearing what you have to say. And I guess I'm going to call on people; I'm going to call on people. I'm going to try to alternate one, two, and then balcony. So we will start with you and so let's take off your mask, and why don't you just say your name so that we can try to start putting names with faces together, okay, great.
- I'm Fran, where are your office hours located?
- Oh, good question. So I am in the Science Center. Raise your hand if you've been in the Science Center; excellent, isn't in a beautiful building? Literally, we moved in and like eight months later we moved out 'cause of COVID. So it's delightful to be back and let's see, I really should know this, but I'm in, I'm on the third floor, on the third floor, and I think my room is like D17. I think that's what it is. I don't really totally know. But here's what I will tell you- Raise your hand if you are moderately, even like a little bit interested in psychology, really everybody is 'cause you're a person. But anyway, so we are having a reception for all first year students this Friday from 1:30 to 2:30 in the psychology wing, I will be there. Many of my colleagues will be there and my office is there. Also, I will post my office hours on my door and on Sundays I bring one of my dogs. There, thank you, great question. All right?
- Hi, my name is Adrian, and I really liked your book, first of all, but you just gave us this big lecture about taking a chance. How long did it take you to start taking these big chances?
- Well, I mean, I just in described how I embarrassed myself repeatedly telling somebody I like them when he didn't like me repeatedly. So I guess that, you know, in some level I was predisposed to do that, but I will say, and I'm sure that president Elliott can speak to this as well, being an academic involves a lot of rejection. I mean, being an academic really does involve a lot of rejection. So my bio sounds, you know, very nice, books and articles, et cetera, but being an academic means you applied to lots of jobs, you didn't get. You submit papers to journals that don't get accepted. You try to get a book contract and you don't. So I would say being an academic really kind of hardens you to that in that way. But I think that I will also say that I think that rejection for me has gotten easier with age and when you kind of say, this is not such a big deal. Yeah, good question, thank you. All right, and now I'm going to the balcony. I'm going to try to like rotate like that, yes?
- Hi, my name is Suea. You talked about like taking a chance, but what if there are like too many chances in front of you and like what if there's like, if you have gone through any doubts about your choices before, I want to hear about that.
- Yeah, that's that's a great question. So what I say often to students when they come in and they're like, should I do this or should I do that? Sometimes it's like, what major should I take? Or what classes should I take? What I say is declaring a major, it's not like getting a tattoo. You can declare a major and then you can actually undeclare that major, that's true. You can add a second major, et cetera. And so I think part of it is taking a chance in seeing, does this feel good? I strongly encourage all of my advisees, go to a bunch of classes, it's free, and I mean the first week or two. So you can kind of get a sense of what might interest you, that you haven't had a chance to take yet. And, and by doing that, you'll have a sense of, well, that feels really good or boy, that sounded good in the catalog, but it's not really a good fit for me. So I think exploring and the next four years are a wonderful time in your life in which to explore lots of different things, great question, thank you. All right, and I'm going to go back here. I'm going to just circle. Yes?
- Hi, my name is Claire. So in your book you discuss the benefits of religion on longevity and happiness. So do you feel that those benefits are irreplaceable or do you feel that there are other things that can be used as a substitute to earn those benefits besides religion? Yeah, that's a great question, and we have a wonderful religion professor in our midst today. Bria, just raise your hand, there you go. So, we should actually talk about the answered to that question in terms of the benefits. So I would say that the debate in psychology about religion is one of the most interesting, because really what it says is that to on some level, religion gives people a positive mindset, thinking about the world. God's not going to gimme more to handle than I can handle. I'm going to see my loved ones in an afterlife. And so it's very much about sort of a positive mindset, which you don't need to have religious beliefs to have. You could also have everything happens for a reason or that sort of a thought. But the other thing, which I think is very clear and it actually relates to the fifth point I made, the fifth point I made was what? Oh, my God, it was like five minutes ago. Yeah, so let's try that again. The fifth point was what?
- [Audience Members] build connections.
- Yeah, build connections. Religion is a wonderful way of building connections because people who have religion/spiritual beliefs they join churches and synagogues and Bible study groups and they go to temple and whatever. And so I think religion is really a proxy for connections. So can you replace it in other ways? You can, yeah, great question.
- Thank you. Hi, I'm Adella. I want to preface this by saying I'm on about page 180. So maybe my question is answered later in the book, but I wanted to ask if you could elaborate a bit on your positive framing of traumatic events, like I'm I found it interesting, but I'm also of the opinion that processing trauma involves like allowing negative and hard feelings to exist. So I was wondering your opinion on that.
- Yeah, that's a really great question And I don't answer that, but keep reading 'cause the last chapter is my favorite, but anyway, so I'm going to tell you a story. So, for along time at Amherst, I have been the faculty advisor to a cancer support group on campus. So these are students whose lives have been touched by cancer in some way, some of them are in remission from cancer. Some of them have lost a parent or a sibling to cancer or have a parent in hospice. And before the pandemic, we met once a month in my living room, and we met in my living room because sometimes students cried. So after we went to Zoom in March of 2020, I emailed the kids and I said, Hey, do you want to, you know, set up a Zoom meeting? And they did, and so for the first time that we met on Zoom, I was struck by these kids were actually doing really well. And they were doing really well because a global pandemic was not actually the worst thing that had ever happened to them. The worst thing that had ever happened to them had already happened. And so while I had other students who were devastated about the lacrosse season is canceled or I can't go to Myrtle Beach for spring break or whatever, these kids were like, yeah, this is not the worst thing that's ever happened. So I think the issue in terms of post traumatic stress, it doesn't mean that trauma doesn't influence us and shape us and change us in fundamental ways and always will, But I think the challenge is that having some experience with adversity gives people a chance to practice coping and developing those skills and some people in this room know exactly what I'm talking about. It's a really important question, thank you for asking that. All right, now I'm back here.
- Hi, I'm Teddy, and in your book, you talked a lot about the mindset effects on aging and how it impacts how people age. What is a good way to start, I guess, working on changing your own mindset and the mindsets of maybe family members and others about misconceptions about aging?
- Yeah, that's such a great question and that's also something that, is so different for people in different cultures; that in many cultures we think about aging is full of people full of wisdom and experience and et cetera And so I think one of the keys is recognizing that the ageism stereotypes that we have are just that, they're stereotypes, and so trying to say, what is really the evidence for those? I also try to banish things like senior moments, or things that really are pejorative in terms of thinking about it. So focusing instead on people who've accomplished great things. A few years ago to Amherst, it must have been right before the pandemic, we have the amazing honor of having RBG come to campus, literally came to campus, spoke in the gym, it was like incredible. And so she's somebody who was in her mid-eighties and was just sharp as a tack. And so I think focusing on who've achieved great things regardless of their age and all that can come with with age as opposed to sort of the more common and prevalent negative stereotypes about aging, great question.
- Hi, I'm Ryan, in your book, you mentioned the multiplier effect of having a positive person in your network. And I wanted to ask, when we do face a peer who is going through struggles or negativity, how do we respond without evoking toxic positivity in the sense that we either trivialize their experiences or we might accidentally make the face of happiness, like a face of privilege in which we're kind of bragging about our own experiences. So I don't know, like maybe the psychological aspect of responding to that one peer in our network.
- Yeah, that's a very thoughtful question, and I'll say two things about that, one: there's a wonderful quick video by Brene Brown that some of you might have seen, but it talks about the difference between empathy and sympathy. Raise your hand if you know what I'm talking about. If you don't know what I'm talking about, Google it 'cause it's great. So part of it, I think is that, so if someone is going something bad, not by saying like, well, at least, you can have children or whatever, at least you got married. And so I think part of it is really trying to be a place of empathy, as opposed to a place of fixing it. There's something that we talk about a lot in psychology; that's the difference between emotion focus coping, and problem focus coping. And so being able to call the right coping strategy to bear is really, really important. So if somebody's struggling with something that you can't fix, acknowledging that, and being with them is really about building that connection. Where people often go with that question, which you did not, but where people often go with that question is, yeah, 'cause my sister is so depressing, and then they're like how do I solve it? And so I think one of the key things is really being with somebody and making connections is also about being with people in times of sadness and grief and loss, yeah.
- All right, thank you. Hi, my name is Mara. So going to ask a question about like what is enough sleep? You talked about it. I'm a person who like really wish there's nothing called sleep in life because sometimes I feel these seven or eight hours that's recommended by doctors or every profession that thinks sleep is like really important. I wish that seven or eight hours were for me to actually achieve something instead of just like shutting off my body. And have made a lot of research about like REM sleep, everything about sleep, but till this second, like my sleep schedule in the summer 13 hours, for example And when I'm like in school, it's like two hours, four hours.
- Oh.
- And sometimes I feel like these two hours and four hours are like the good sleep for me and these 13 like I still feel lazy, but what's recommended is seven or to eight. So how much is enough sleep?
- Yeah, so first of all, typically seven or eight really is, about the recommended, if you're a college student, so that's number one. Number two, there are a couple of ways that you can tell if you're getting enough sleep. So one, if you wake up spontaneously, so without an alarm who here wakes up spontaneously without an alarm? All right, so then you're probably getting enough sleep, that's a key one. Another key factor is if I'm going to ask it a different way, Who here, when your head hits the pillow, are like I'm out, like immediately. You are sleep deprived, if that's the case because what your body is saying is like, I got to get right into the rim because I don't get enough of it. So those are like the two sort of classic markers. And so again, There's some people who feel like they need less sleep; there are some people who feel they need less sleep, that's actually a true thing. But the key is, if you immediately, when you put your head down or immediately asleep, your body is desperate for it, like starving for it and if you need an alarm, and especially if you like hit the alarm, and hit the alarm, and hit the alarm, pretty classic illustration of sleep deprivation, sorry. Maybe that's not what you wanted to hear.
- Hi, my name's Isaius. Earlier, you mentioned that we should start taking more chances, but at the core of that is rejection and why do you think we fear rejection?
- Yeah, it's a great question. So people are fundamentally wired to be a part of the group. It's actually why that question, is really why people don't raise their hand in class and don't call 911 when there's a kid who's having an emergency because we fear not being part of the social group. And so that's why we fear, well, if I speak up, then maybe they're not going to like me. Then maybe I'm not going to have friends and then maybe people are going to think I'm stupid. And so that's really fundamental human nature. Research has shown that experiencing social rejection activates the exact same part of the brain that is activated when you spill hot coffee on your arm or twist your ankle. And so what that means is that at a fundamental level, we fear social pain, exactly the same as physical pain, it's processed the exact same way in the brain. So that's why we fear rejection. We fear not being a part of it. So it's very normal, it's very normative. The challenge is we often overestimate the likelihood of rejection, and we also overestimate the consequences of that, that it's, oh, if I tell this person I like them and they don't like me back, I'm forever going to be lonely and sad and I'll never get over it. We overestimate the duration of those effects, great question.
- And now let me just say, you ask a professor talk. I can keep going forever. So when I've overstay, my welcome, I'm assuming that somebody will let me know, yeah.
- All right, Hi, Dr. Sanderson, I'm Sam and I just have a small question in regards to the way that your material has been presented so far and the angle in which these devices kind of originate from. So as much as the five advices which I think are presented in the form of university discourse, offer great solution and insight to the practical problems we might encounter in our everyday life. The questions these advices are aimed at addressing is kind of already, I think, implicitly present in them, mainly all these examples that you have brought up, let it be the Spanish class or not calling 911 are viewed as individual responsibilities, which through self-improvement and self regulations can be resolved. But this is perhaps ignoring that these issues cannot be attributed to a psychological or an individual perspective and I think what we need now is less of an expert's advice on how solve problems in our everyday life, but also a thinker who asks questions, who questions why these problems exist at the first place and because the form of the question already presupposes a response. So I think instead of saying what we can do in these situations, we should instead question why these situations occur at the first place? What kind of institution for example, is the cost of the culture of drinking. Instead of saying, we should put a effort into doing something as why societal structure required this effort in the first place. And I think this a aspect seems to be a little bit obfuscated in both in your talk and text, and would like to know how you would like to address these concerns, thank you.
- So the wonderful thing about the field of psychology is that the field of psychology inherently looks at both the individual and the group. So there are lots of factors that can, in fact, be things that are changed at a societal level. So I had the opportunity to sit down with our new president a few weeks ago and I talked about my hope for changing this institution in particular ways, to foster greater connection, because I think you are exactly right, that there are fundamental ways in which we can change our systems of how we do life at Amherst and even more broadly. So I wrote my latest book, "Why We Act" specifically hoping that it would spark societal change. I've had the wonderful experience over the summer of working with five Amherst undergraduates on a study examining police culture in America. And, as you can imagine, that's not about individual police officers, it's about the culture of policing and how the culture of policing can be different and can be shifted using principal in psychology. So principles of psychology can be used to focus on the individual, get more sleep, take a chance, et cetera, but principals in psychology can and often are and should be used to change big broad institutions, college campuses, high schools, police departments, great question, thank you. Hi, Professor Sanderson, my name is Ramma I really enjoyed your lecture and your book. I was just really curious because in your book you mentioned that you did not consider yourself innately positive person in comparison to say maybe your husband or your son. And I was wondering as you employ the strategies that you talked about throughout your book, how did you notice that you were actually developing a habit of maybe thinking in a more positive way like what changes that you saw in your life after?
- Yeah, that's a great question, and I think I actually couldn't have written the book if I was a naturally happy person. 'Cause if I was a naturally happy person and just be like, yeah that's like breathing, like you just go through life like that. So one of things that I loved about writing the book was really immersing myself in this literature. Again, I'm a professor. I'm nerdy. but I will say that one of the things that I love about talking about the book and talking about the field of positive psychology is it's frankly a reminder and a mantra to me of like, oh yeah, these are things that I do. So for me, and again, as I say at the end, happiness is very individual, so it's not one size fits all. What works for one person may not work for the other person. But for me I know, that exercise is real big one. So I make a point, I get up in the morning and I exercise the first thing 'cause I know that I will feel better the rest of the day, if I do that. I am very intentional making plans with friends and that was one of the hardest things about COVID was, having to entertain outside, socially distance with masks and et cetera, not go to restaurants. And so I'm very intentional about that, and the other thing I'm very intentional about is travel. I am always thinking about where do I want to go? So for me, knowing what the research says has really sort of fundamentally changed how I structure my life, yeah.
- [Ramma] Thank you,
- Hi, I was wondering whether there were any characteristics or qualities unique to those who persevered through the bystander effect versus those who felt victim to it.
- Yeah, so my most recent book is, was described in my introduction is called "Why We Act" and there's the ninth chapter actually talks about something called moral rebels and moral rebels are basically people who stand up and defy the group. And what we know from studying these people is that they really are sort of fundamentally different. One, they don't really get embarrassed the same way as most people. So getting embarrassed doesn't really matter to them. It doesn't seem to hurt them in the same way, so that's one. Two, they seem to be very high in empathy. So they're very good at putting themselves in somebody else's shoes and imagining the world through that person's perspective and then the third characteristic is they also have gotten pretty good at arguing with their parents. So as the mom of a pretty argumentative teenage daughter, I like to think there will really be a payoff, that you get good at sort of practicing having these arguments. And if you're interested in that topic, I did a piece a couple years ago that was published that actually examined moral rebels. And it specifically looked at what we were seeing politically. So I use the example of what you're seeing in terms of the Republican Party, and certain people, you know, Liz, Chaney, whatever, standing up to what is clearly a very strong kind of public pressure So what we see about moral rebels is they are fundamentally different in some particular ways, great question.
- [Student] Thank you. Hi, professor, My name is Colin. So through out this entire book there is the idea of mindset and you use it in each one of your main section titles. Why is the idea of mindset so important to this book and the field of positive psychology at large? And how does mind set fit into psychology as a whole?
- Great question, So, and what I'd love about that question in particular is that when I took intro to psychology in 1987, nobody was talking about mindset, like that was not something we were talking about. So, I think for many people there's this assumption that happiness is something that happens to you. You win the lottery. You're genetically lucky. You have a life full of good fortune, et cetera. And what I love about the the topic of mindset is that mindset is something we control, that we can actually shift our mindset. We can think about things in a new way, and that is real power of psychology, so the power of psychology is you can learn to think about things in a new way. And I think that has all sorts of ramifications, including when we think about what goes on in the classroom, it's not, you're naturally good at this, or you're naturally good at that, it's really about effort, effort is about mindset in that way. So for me, that's what's so very appealing because it's something it's not just like, oh, too bad, you're not going to be happy. Oh, good news, you are. It's something that we control. We can do something about.
- [Colin] Thank you
- Great question, thank you.
- Hi, my name is Noah. So I was really interested in your third tip, as somebody who isn't necessarily, I wouldn't consider myself a moral rebel. Do you think that there's any friction or tension between putting yourself in that position and trying to become more of a moral rebel and happiness, like on an individual level?
- Ooh, what an interesting question. I'm trying to think about the combination of those two. So that's a really interesting question. I actually don't know the research on that, but stop by my office sometime 'cause you could like do a thesis on that, for example, integrating those, not like this year, but eventually. But so here's what my gut would say. Moral rebels feel really bad when they don't do the right thing. So there is very interesting research, this is research done by Abigail Marsh at Georgetown and what she has shown is that people who engage in a tremendously altruistic act, donating a kidney to a stranger. So tremendously altruistic act, that those people seem to have brains that are fundamentally different from other people, in that they actually feel other people's pain exactly in the same way that they feel their own pain. And so they are highly motivated to do this act because otherwise, it feels literally bad to them to not do it. So my gut is in terms of integrating that is that moral rebels would feel terrible if they didn't speak up, it would eat at them. It would bother them. It would make them less happy; that's my gut. But again, I think that is an understudied topic.
- [Noah] Thank you.
- Thank you. All right, I think there is no one else up top, but you have a question. I'm going to keep going until they stop me.
- Hi, my name's Kiara. So in your book you talk a lot about studying or like measuring happiness. And I was wondering how does people rating their own happiness affect the accuracy of some studies?
- Yeah, so that's a great question and it's actually one that's very controversial in the literature because basically the field of positive psychology, they're two schools of people who are doing research on this topic. One are psychologists and one are actually behavioral economists, and behavioral economist are psychologists, but wealthier. And so if you look at those two disciplines, there's actually great disagreement. And let me just give you a quick example: if you ask women who stay at home with their little kids, how happy do you feel about being a mom? If you ask them that question, they say, I am really happy. It's really meaningful, I love being a mom, et cetera, et cetera. If you do something called an experience sampling method, which is right now, when you're sitting changing a diaper, stepping on a Lego on the kitchen floor or whatever, how happy do you feel like right now? They're like, I hate my life, this is terrible and they like literally wish they were like doing laundry, like they're literally like this is a bummer. and so that's an example of how you get really different answers to this question depending on how you ask it. So there's a big debate in the literature about whether you should ask people about contentment and wellbeing and life satisfaction, or if you should ask about moment to momentary joy and that is a heated debate.
- Great question, thank you. All right, and is this our final question? So make it really good, no pressure. No, I'm just kidding, go ahead.
- Hi there, my name is Charlie. I enjoyed your talk, I liked the way it was presented with the five points. As you're explaining the first tip to focus on effort, it kind of prompted like a tangential question, I guess, for me. I know in my experience in just anecdotally talking to a lot of friends, especially in the context of like academic effort, sometimes that can turn into like a competitiveness of like who's working the hardest or feeling pressured to be putting in more effort than your peers. And so I guess my question was, I was wondering what advice you had to approaching effort in a way where it's, I guess specifically in the context of a academics, where you're approaching it in a way that, that it's healthy and it doesn't become competitive or lead to being overworked or things like burnout or detracting from the effort that you put into other parts of your life. And so I was wondering any advice for, I guess, figuring out like how much effort is enough effort before you're kind of causing problems.
- Yeah, that's a great question. So as you probably remember from my book, one of the chapters is called Comparison is the Thief of Joy. And one of the challenges of the college environment is, gosh, there's comparison at every moment. What are your grades? And how much are you studying? And how much are you exercising? And how many friends do you have? And, you know, whatever. And so one of the keys is really focusing inward and I think that it's also the case where you can never tell how much effort other people are doing. So people might be saying like, I was in the library for four hours and you're like, were you, were you really? Or what were you doing there? You know, my son, this Spanish scholar certainly felt like he was devoting a lot of effort to Spanish, but it was not actually effort. It was like sitting in the library with a Spanish book open, texting people. And so, one of the keys I think is that focusing inwardly is very, very important. And also recognizing that there are individual differences, but I think there's a challenge and it's often called like the idea of the duck, moving very smoothly on the water and then really frantically paddling in underneath. I think in many cases at Amherst, I hear reports from students that say, well, no one else is really working hard at all and they're lying to you. They're actually working very, very hard. They just aren't talking about it. So they're going like, yeah, I barely studied for that. And they're like, oh, okay, good. I can slack off and they're lying. And so I think that one of the keys is saying the amount of effort that it takes you to do something may, in fact, be different than it is for other people. But the key is focusing inwardly. What feels good to you? What feels right to you, and not focusing on the comparison, because again, like the ignore the crowd pieces of advice, you don't really know how much effort anyone is doing on anything because people lie and we see different things. People talk about things they're doing that are in line with social norms and they don't talk about other things. Great question, thank you so much and I do look forward to meeting you.
- Thank you everyone. Have a great night. Another big round of applause for Dr. Sanderson for everybody who stood up, took a chance and asked a question tonight.
- That's right, that's right.
