Cassie Mogilner Holmes is an associate professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Much of Holmes’ work focuses on human happiness, especially time’s role as it applies to happiness. Her research on this topic has been published in top scientific journals, and her work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, The Economist, The New York Times and The Boston Globe.
1) Based on your current research, what are the tenets of a “vacation mindset,” and how can these tenets be applied to improve our mood?
We recently did an experiment where we simply told people leading into their weekend, “Treat the weekend like a vacation.” We told participants in the control condition, “Treat the weekend like a regular weekend.” That was it. That was our simple prompt. The people told to treat the weekend like a vacation could interpret that prompt however they wanted and spend their weekend however they wanted. We then connected with everyone after the weekend to see how happy they were, as well as to ask about their weekend. From that, we saw that people naturally associate being on vacation with being focused on the present moment — being in the here and now. You asked for central tenants, but that is the singular thing that seems to be driving the effect on happiness in this study, which I think is really interesting. We did see that there were some shifts in behavior as well: people seem to work a little less in the vacation condition. They seem to do less housework. They do tend to perform less childcare (which doesn’t necessarily mean spending less time with their kids, but probably doing fewer chores associated with childcare). However, notably, even though there were differences in these behaviors, these changes in behaviors were not what influenced people’s happiness when back at work on Monday. It was really having spent their two days off being in the here and now and focusing on the present moment.
2) My wife and I recently realized that we have a significant influence on whether our kids’ morning routine consists of drudgery or whimsy. Choosing to do our best to consistently set a stage for the latter has had an immediate positive impact on everyone in our family. I share this because I believe your findings have application beyond just our weekends. I was wondering, how do you see these principles potentially applied to improve other aspects of our life?
I think they can be applied to any time outside of work because, as you noted, there is a lot of value in simply reframing an experience or a period of time. It’s about carving out that time in your mind as being special — it’s a break from the day-to-day routine, and one may even say drudgery. You can apply this to a date night during the week or even those couple of hours at home after work with the family. In my MBA course on Applying the Science of Happiness to Life Design, a really impactful assignment that I have for my students is to do a digital detox. They have to get completely offline and off their phones for six hours straight at some point during the week, which apparently is very intense for them. Their primary take away from the experience, however, is its incredible value. Although they initially feel disconnected from all the people they think are trying to get ahold of them and are in their social media networks … they ultimately feel more fully connected with what they are actually doing and the people whom they’re actually with. Another example is a “tradition” I have on Thursday mornings. My 3-year-old daughter and I have a standing date of going to the coffee shop. She gets hot chocolate, and I get a coffee before I take her to school. Any time you acknowledge special time, it really draws you into the here and now. Acknowledging time as special makes you fully present. You appreciate what you’re doing and whom you’re doing it with.
3) Some believe that sending one on the pursuit of happiness is folly because, if happiness proves elusive, the seeker is sometimes left worse off. One of the things I like about your recent work is that the intervention is an intentional decision in the present. Based on your study of happiness, what are the important distinctions between creating a plan to be happy in contrast to interventions that are more immediate (such as treating your weekend like a vacation)?
A great question. There’s a really neat paper — Prioritizing Positivity: An Effective Approach to Pursuing Happiness? — that speaks directly to that point. The researchers find that pursuing happiness itself can actually backfire because what it does is it makes people super aware. You ask, “Am I happy now? Am I happy now?” And if you aren’t, then you feel really guilty and bad about it. In contrast, if you are aware of the thought processes and behaviors that actually are conducive to happiness and you try to implement them into your life, that’s where you are likely to get the boost. In my paper and in the class that I’m teaching my MBAs, it’s not like I say, “Go be happy.” Instead, it is, “Do these things.” Then, they can assess how they feel as a consequence.
4) If a friend came to you and said, “I just need to have more fun in my life,” what are one or two pieces of advice you would you give them (in addition to treating the weekend as a vacation)?
Pick the people that you like spending time with most, and set up fun experiences for you to share.
5) On the topic of happiness and fun, what are a few additional studies that you’ve recently come across that you find compelling?
Laura Aknin, Elizabeth Dunn, and Michael Norton have a body of research where they find that spending money on other people makes you happier than spending money on yourself. They show it correlationally — they have looked at the proportion of one’s income that people spend pro-socially versus on themselves and have found a relationship there. They also ran a fun experiment where they gave people 20 bucks. They either told them, “Go spend this money on yourself,” or, “Go spend this money on someone else.” Then, they followed up with the participants and measured how happy they were after spending the money. They found that those who spent money on someone else were happier.I think that’s pretty cool.
Another paper that I think is interesting is about the value of taking a break from things you really enjoy. When you restrict yourself from something you enjoy, your enjoyment of that something goes up. For instance, chocolate consumption … people who enjoy chocolate and take a break from eating chocolate for a week (compared to those who continue eating chocolate as usual), find chocolate more enjoyable after the break. Taking a break is a very simple thing, but it is helpful. The idea is to offset hedonic adaptation.
This one is not an intervention, but I think it’s really insightful. Hal Hershfield and Liz Dunn did a study where they looked to pull apart meaning and happiness. Are they the same thing? Are they different? What they found was that if you just say something is happy or meaningful, you actually capture the other one quite well — they aren’t really distinguishable. However, when you’re explicit about an experience that is happy but not meaningful, then you get that subset of things that are fun but not fulfilling: e.g., watching TV. And when you explicitly identify an experience that is meaningful but not happy, you get other activities. I find the study is quite insightful because there’s a lot of, “Is happiness this frivolous, silly thing?” And the answer to that with respect to their paper is, “No, it’s not silly and frivolous.” Actually, what people are associating as this heavier version of well-being — meaning — is actually right in line with happiness.
