Hacking Happiness (28 page)

There was no pressure with this request for a donation. We just provided the opportunity to give. We measured happiness at all stages of this experiment and found a really big boost came from people giving money away. They got way happier, in fact, than the people who didn’t give any money away. In fact, the happiness gain for people who were alone in the experiment was just as great as [it was] for people doing it in public view. It’s not about what you get, it’s about what you give. The biggest favor you can do for someone is give them the opportunity to do something generous.
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It’s amazing that people gave away some of their winnings whether or not they were being observed, but also that their happiness measurably increased with the act. As they were alone, one would assume giving money away was a selfless act without the opportunity for selfish gain. And they still got happier as a result.

The Happy Hero

Heroes make a career out of being generous. Altruism is part of the job description. We’ve all wanted to be heroes, and altruism gives us the gift of leveraging these hidden intentions.

Dana Klisanin is a psychologist specializing in the use of arts and media to promote altruism and compassion. She contributes regularly to the Digital Altruism blog she maintains for
Psychology Today
. In her article “The Cyber-Bully vs. the Cyber-Hero,” she outlines the importance of giving children positive role models in contrast to the cyberbullies that have received so much press. That’s why she’s created an award-winning interactive game called the Cyberhero League. As Klisanin describes, the game helps children counter cyberbullying by providing them a digital and real-world format to engage in positive, altruistic behavior. I interviewed Dana to better understand how kids could use technology for empowerment:

I’ve read from a few of your interviews that you’re concerned kids are suffering from a lack of empowerment in the modern world. Can you explain what you mean by that?

Kids today are saturated with media. They have access to more information than ever before and through it they are learning about complex global challenges, especially human-caused climate change and social inequality. Unfortunately, they have limited power to affect the world. I am concerned that this lack of empowerment may lead to feelings of helplessness, apathy, and depression that may continue into adulthood.

Can you define cyber-altruism?

Digital altruism, or cyber-altruism, is altruism mediated by the Internet or mobile technologies. It requires the willingness to help another, access to a computer or smartphone, and a bit of our time, depending upon what the action involves. For example, clicking a link to donate food, water, or medicine doesn’t take as much time as playing a computer game like Foldit, in which you contribute to scientific research by helping scientists learn more about folding proteins.

How can kids/people experience the benefits of altruism without being face-to-face in real life with someone else?

We don’t need to be face-to-face with people in the real world to experience benefits—we can Skype with a friend overseas and enjoy it. We can play a massive multiplayer online game with a stranger in another country and find it enjoyable. Likewise, when we engage in digital altruism—when we take an online action that benefits someone else—we benefit as well. Altruistic action creates a ripple effect—goodness online impacts real people in the real world just as much as hateful actions do. As a society we’ve focused a lot of our energy on cyberbullying, for example, without teaching our children that there are alternate positive behaviors.

Do you see the Cyberhero League increasing compassion as well as altruism? Are they different?

Yes, the Cyberhero League is designed to promote a number of character strengths and virtues, including compassion. The cyberhero is a new incarnation of the hero archetype arising from the fusion of moral action and interactive technologies. The Cyberhero League is designed to promote this new archetype. To support our goal of increasing character strengths and virtues we have partnered with VIA Institute on Character, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing both the science and the practice of character.

What’s the dream for the game?

The Cyberhero League is designed to support collaborative heroism. My dream is that the Cyberhero League will become a powerful force for tackling global challenges through extending the heroic journey across cyberspace. As a meta-level game it is a venue through which people of all ages can use interactive technologies act to act on behalf of other people, animals, and the environment. I dream that one day there will be a “cyberhero feature” in all interactive media—that the Cyberhero League icon will be
integrated into interactive media and become as ubiquitous as those of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest—facilitating a worldwide renaissance of human values and promoting the emergence of planetary consciousness.
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It’s not enough to encourage kids to act heroically. We need to provide them models that show them how to do it. And without methodologies like the Cyberhero League, the benefits of altruism can’t be introduced into the digital arena where kids can see its value to practice in the real world.

Compassion for Couples

Giving kids an opportunity to be heroic is a huge gift. A gaming environment gives them permission to be compassionate and see how others will react. For adults, it’s also beneficial to empathize with others as a way to increase compassion. In a sense, we can gamify our experiences by pretending we’re someone else to see how they experience life. A good example of this idea comes in Gary Chapman’s Five Love Languages methodology. Chapman’s idea is that people have five primary ways they feel most loved. If we know our partner’s “language,” we have a much better chance of being compassionate and communicating well. The languages include:

• Words of affirmation
  
• Acts of service
  
• Receiving gifts
  
• Quality time
  
• Physical touch
  

It’s amazing how vividly you get to experience your character when involved in a deep relationship. Even when trying to be
compassionate, missing signals from a loved one means you’ll likely end up frustrated in many conversations. In my case, my wife and I learned about the Love Languages concept and it’s helped us a great deal. I tend to be a “quality time” type, where Stacy is big on “acts of service.” So when I was about to whine about watching a movie together a number of years ago, I decided to clean the kitchen instead. Then I vacuumed without being held at gunpoint. I didn’t announce I was doing these things, but wanted to see if my acts would help our relationship. Guess what—in the moment, it sucked. It’s housework. Nobody likes doing it. And then, of course, it hit me:

It’s housework.
Nobody
likes doing it. Including Stacy.

I had always helped around the house before, but empathizing with my wife while doing the chores made me realize that I was being a big schmuck by asking her to spend quality time with me if it meant there was still housework to do afterward and I wasn’t doing my part.

Curiosity can lead to compassion. Empathizing with someone else’s interests is a great way to engage in altruistic behavior without it seeming like a chore.

Compassion Is Contagious

Research in 2008 from a study involving over 4,700 people who were followed over twenty years found that people who are happy increase the chances that someone they know will also become happy. Even more remarkable is the discovery that happiness can span a second degree of separation, increasing the mood of the second person’s husband, wife, or close connection.
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The study
⁹
was conducted by James H. Fowler and Nicholas A. Christakis and was based on detailed records originally collected for the Framingham Heart Study, conducted over twenty years, that studied a number of health issues, including smoking and obesity.

The study also documents how the influence of a social network
could impact policy change as well as health improvements. In the article, for instance, Fowler notes that “whether a friend’s friend is happy has more influence than a five thousand dollar raise” with regard to increased well-being for participants, positing a focus on happiness would be a better gauge of national health than the GDP.
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In terms of virtual currency, this flow of goodwill may constitute a new part of the happiness economy that’s already been created with metrics like Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index. Where people’s upbeat moods can increase well-being two degrees away, social networks could literally be paying their appreciation for people’s actions.

“Happiness
is
contagious.” Nataly Kogan is the chief happiness officer and cofounder of Happier, a company whose app encourages people to take photographs of things that inspire them to share with friends. I interviewed her and asked her how acts of happiness can inspire compassion.

It’s pretty simple. Happiness comes from taking note of small positive things and sharing them. It’s about things like smiling more, or saying hi to strangers. When I first started doing this stuff, I thought it would be a farce or have to be complicated. It turned out to be the opposite. Once I started keeping a gratitude journal and studying the science of happiness, I learned that people who are more positive are healthier and less depressed. People tend to chase the wrong things and end up missing what could already bring fulfillment in their lives.
¹¹

The Currency of Kindness

It’s going to be more difficult to avoid being compassionate in our connected future. People may record you walking by a homeless
person without a second glance. On the highway, cars connected with M2M (machine-to-machine) technology may register when you cut someone off. Actions that have been ignored in the past will now be recorded. While the threat of accountability-based influence may not be the best incentive to inspire altruism, it’s a start. And once you begin experiencing the happiness associated with compassion, you won’t want to stop.

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THE VALUE OF A HAPPINESS ECONOMY

You know what’s truly weird about any financial crisis? WE MADE IT UP. Currency, money, finance, they’re all social inventions. When the sun comes up in the morning it’s shining on the same physical landscape, all the atoms are in place.
¹

BRUCE STERLING

T
HE IDEA OF THE
economy as a concept has always been elusive to me. It always seemed boring. Much of economics is based on statistics, and I was never great with numbers. Analyzing data about global populations has always mystified me, and I’ve avoided thinking about economics because it seemed so foreign to my interests.

I’ve changed my perspective.

When you measure something, you analyze one specific data point—you step on a scale to determine your weight, for instance. But measurement also involves
intent
. Why are you weighing yourself? For an annual physical, where your weight could determine follow-up care, or to see if you’ll fit into a bikini? You use the same scale for both procedures, but for very different ends.

Currency was invented by humans. Squirrels don’t use nuts to
buy dental floss. As noted in Chapter Ten, a monarch from days gone by minted coins with his image and mandated they be used as a form of exchange. This forced citizens to provide food and clothes to soldiers, and eventually they adopted the coins as being a symbolic representation of stuff.

I found a great definition and description of economics on a website called Investopedia:

DEFINITION OF “ECONOMICS”

A social science that studies how individuals, governments, firms, and nations make choices on allocating scarce resources to satisfy their unlimited wants.

INVESTOPEDIA EXPLAINS “ECONOMICS”

Classical economists believe that markets function very well, will quickly react to any changes in equilibrium, and that a “laissez-faire” government policy works best. On the other hand, Keynesian economists believe that markets react very slowly to changes in equilibrium (especial[ly] to changes in prices) and that active government intervention is sometimes the best method to get the economy back into equilibrium.
²

Economics may be based on statistics, but the analysis
is based on the interpretation of economists. Economists have intent and bias when they report on the present and future state of the world.

My bias
is that you should own your data, as it exists now and in the future. This is key to your future happiness. My intent is to demonstrate that the exchange of data in our current Internet economy is an occluded and confusing process. It favors data collectors over data producers (you) in an unfair value exchange.

Here are some equations to reiterate my point:

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Our current Internet economy:

We use computers a lot +

Companies track our behavior while we’re on computers +

This tracking is interpreted as data that represents a form of our identities +

Most of us don’t understand how much we’re exchanging for “free” services +

Data brokers are not legally mandated to reveal the data they’ve collected about us