Week Two- Post One - The Power of Social Connections

• Three Good Things
• List three positive things that happened in your day so far
• Do this 5-7 times a week; allot 10 minutes at night for it
• This is a good exercise because it helps ppl think about how many blessings they have, and stop focusing on all the negative things that happened
• This practice teaches you to notice, remember, and savor the better things in life
• Core truths about positive emotions
• They open us
• They change the boundaries of our minds
• They change our outlook on our environment
• Studies that test how positive emotions open the mind:
• Positive emotions widen the scope of what ppl are scanning for in the environment:
• if a participant is given a gift prior to looking at this photo, they will look around at all the babies. If they aren't given a gift, they will look only at the center baby.
  
  
• The Power of Social Connection
• One of the most basic and widely replicated findings from the science of happiness is that our connections with other people are instrumental to our happiness
• researchers Ed Diener and Martin Seligman, two pioneers of happiness science, write that good social relationships "might be a necessary condition for high happiness.
• Very happy people tend to have rich and satisfying relationships, and spend little time alone compared to ppl w avg. levels of happiness
• having more friends is a good predictor of subjective well being
• loneliness has all kinds of negative impacts on health and well being, measured both physiologically and also through questionnaires in survey methods
• social connections in childhood and adolescence set the stage for happiness in adult life
• being more socially connected as a child is more significant than academic success in predicting later happiness.
• families and schools need to nurture kids’ social skills, not just their academic ones
• Why are we wired to connect?
• Look at our ancestry and the evolution that has occurred
• Hunter-Gatherers
• Archeology
• Primate predecessors
• We gravitate to conditions of equality
• We are a forgiving species
• The Quality of family
• three dif. systems that really help us attach in families
• secure attachment style: warm, loving, trusting
• anxious attachment style: worried, intrusive, more likely to have experienced divorce, abuse, or death of a parent
• avoidant attachment style: cold, aloof, dismissive
• Biology of Connection
• there are dedicated systems for connecting with others in our brains and bodies
• caregiving circuitry in brain-oxytocin
• oxytocin is a neuropeptide; it's a sequence of nine amino acids
• moves not only through brain but throughout the body
• neurochemical enabler of trust, devotion, and kindness
• high levels of it tend to reduce stress in the body/mind, inhibits cardiovascular responses to stress, and lowers amygdala response to emotional stimuli
• vagus nerve, part of nervous system, motivates affiliation
• related to oxytocin network
• related to a stronger immune system
• regulates inflammation response to disease
• the more one feels compassion, the stronger the vagus nerve response, while pride makes it weaker
• empathy circuits in brain, they help us understand and be moved by ppl
• social connection could be our evolved "baseline"
• the human brain assumes that regular contact with others is the norm
•  the lack of others' company is a source of stress
• Science of Touch
• we are a touch-deprived culture in the West
• mechanism of social well being is touch-helps us survive
• The human voice
• non semantic units=little bursts of sound, not words
• half a second to a second
• important in showing care
• Happiness Practice #2
• carve out 15-30 mins to talk to a friend, lover, family member, etc
• while they talk: paraphrase what they say. reflect what you hear them saying
• Relationships, Marriage, Happiness - what makes for healthy romantic partnerships that bring us happiness
• There are core passions that get people into unions or partnerships of love and desire
• When someone shows signals of love, such as a warm smile, they release oxytocin
• When someone shows sexual gestures, oxytocin levels don't rise
• In general, there is a benefit to being in a loving relationship or marriage in terms of happiness
• however:
• selection effects: certain kinds of ppl enter relationships
• may be that more warm, happy ppl find it easier to find a partner or get married
• its the person, not the institution
• How do we find and cultivate these types of relationships/marriages?
• Demographic perspective
• gather cross-sectional data
• gather survey data from partners in a relationship or marriage
• look at what correlates w happiness in that relationship and how satisfied they are
• results: 
• the older u are when u get married, the happier u tend to be
• if ur from lower social class background ur less happy in ur marriage
• "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" experiment
• tracking young couples over time
• 92% divorce
• Four specific behaviors that happen early-on that can predict divorce:
• Contempt
• Criticism
• Stonewalling
• Defensiveness
• Keys to avoiding Relationship "Apocalypse"
• Humor
• Gratitude/Appreciation
• Forgiveness
• Disclosure