William Von Hippel - The Social Paradox of Connection and Autonomy and what this means for your happiness in life

Dr. William von Hippel is a renowned psychologist, author, and expert on human behavior. Bill spent over three decades as a psychology professor, both in the United States and Australia. Today, he writes books and conducts research for private companies. Bill has published over 150 academic articles and chapters across a range of psychological topics. His work has been cited over 15,000 times in academic literature and widely reported in the media, including the New York Times, 100 Ideas of the Year, The Economist, USA Today, El Mondo, Del Spiegel, and also The

Australian. I was visiting a friend of mine who's made a gazillion dollars.

Yes. And

I'm visiting his place in New York City, this beautiful apartment right off Central Park. And I was like, you know, your life is over the top, man. And he says... He says, yeah, but I'm not any happier. That's literally the first words out of his mouth. And I remember feeling kind of superior to him. I thought to myself, if I had all this stuff, I would be happier. You know, if you look at the hunter-gatherer lifestyle, and that's kind of what got me started on this, I'm just a zillionaire compared to them in the same way that this friend of mine is a zillionaire compared to me. But I'm not sure I'm any happier than these guys are. I'm not sure I fully appreciate the fact that I don't bury any of my children. They bury 40% of them. I have savings for tomorrow and they have none. I live in a climate controlled home and they live under a skin that's stretched out over twigs. You know, the list goes on and you're like, holy cow, by comparison to them, I'm a zillionaire too. But I'm not 100% sure I appreciate it. They actually look like they're probably happier than we are. And the only conclusion I could come to was that they're simply way more connected than we are. we evolved to do something that's called sharing reality that sounds weird reality is out there why do i have to share it

yeah

but but it's more than just sharing what happened it's sharing our emotional reaction to what happened you can see this in small children when they point out objects just to get their parents attention and to share that attention and you can see that as you get older when you start to tell stories and you want the person to react the way you did And this is why urban legends are so effective because we all react to them the same way. There's crazy stories that usually aren't even true, but that evoke the same emotion in all of us. And we really want that shared emotion about our life experiences. And dinner is one of the best ways to do that. Not dinner where the TV's on and we're all ignoring each other, but dinner where we're just talking about our days, mundane stuff, and we're sharing stories and we're reacting to those stories. Because then by the end of that experience, even though we spent our day apart, Now we come back and reshare the experience and we get back on the same page emotionally. And that's super important both for our mental development and our cognitive development, but also for our feelings of bonding to one another

as family. Welcome to the One True Measure podcast. I'm your host, Blake O'Connell.