The Science of a Happy Mind, Part 2 | Nat Geo Live

Richard Davidson: There are very simple ways of cultivating positive outlook. When you do those simple kinds of practices we've shown that both behavior and the brain changes and it doesn't take much. (Applause) There are four constituents of well-being that have been seriously neuroscientifically investigated. And one of the interesting things about each of these four is we understand something about the brain circuits that are associated with them, and each of these circuits exhibits plasticity.

The first is resilience. We define resilience as the rapidity with which you recover from adversity. And it turns out that people who recover quickly from adversity do much better. They clearly have higher levels of well-being, and we understand something about the brain mechanisms that underlie this and we can measure this in particular neural systems.

The amygdala is a region of the brain which is critical for emotion, in particular for threat. And we can measure the time course of activation in the amygdala and it turns out that after a certain period of doing simple forms of mindfulness meditation you begin to show a more resilient profile.

The second is positive outlook. Positive outlook is being able to see the innate basic goodness in each other. And being able to savor positive experiences. So that when we have a warm-hearted interaction with a loved one, say in the morning, how long does that glow last? Does it permeate most of your day? Or does it dissipate very quickly?

There are very simple ways of cultivating positive outlook. There is a whole group of simple, contemplative practices that focus on generating loving-kindness and compassion for individuals who are loved ones, who may be suffering as well as for individuals who may be strangers—people you don't really know very well—and then even individuals who push your buttons, who are difficult people. And envisioning them in a genuine way and cultivating the strong aspiration that they too be relieved of suffering and are happy and enjoy well-being. When you do those simple kinds of practices, we've shown that both behavior and the brain changes, and it doesn't take much.

We published a study just a couple of years ago where we did this training online. This is just a very simple form of compassion training. And we see that after two weeks of training where people are practicing for 30 minutes a day, people behave in a more pro-social way on tasks that are designed to measure altruistic behavior. And these changes in behavior were highly correlated with changes in the brain. And these are regions that are important for positive outlook and they show systematic changes after just two weeks of modest training.

The third constituent of well-being is something that you might not typically regard as important for well-being. But to paraphrase a subtitle of a recent, important scientific paper, "A wandering mind is an unhappy mind." Recent evidence suggests—and this... this was collected using smartphones and probing people with text, simple text messages as they go about their day. And they ask people three questions. One is, "What are you doing right now?" And they had to just click off on a list and indicate what they are doing.

The second question is, "Where is your mind right now?" Is it focused on what you're doing or is it focused elsewhere? And the third question is, "Right now—how happy or unhappy are you, right at this moment?" Those are the three questions. The findings from that study revealed that the average American adult spends 47 percent of her/his waking life not paying attention to what they are doing. (Audience laughter) Forty-seven percent of the time! I would like to invite us to consider the possibility that we can do better! (Audience laughter) And just imagine, the cost in human suffering in economic terms of that kind of distractibility. It is staggering!

If there's one body of evidence that we really have confidence in, it's that attention indeed can be learned. And one of the ways to think about this—one of the most commonly taught forms of mindfulness meditation—involves becoming aware of your breathing, where you focus your awareness on the abdomen as it's rising and falling when you're breathing or the sensations at the tip of your nostril. I mean this is not the most interesting compelling stimulus in the world. But, if you can pay attention to your breath, you can pay attention to almost anything else.

And so, this is really a very effective form of training. And, when you notice your mind has wandered, which it will, you simply gently bring it back to the object of focus. It really is about the simplest kind of practice imaginable, yet it has these profound effects on the brain and on behavior. The fourth is Generosity. There is overwhelming scientific evidence now showing that acts of generosity promote well-being. They activate specific brain networks, and it's the single easiest way to get these networks activated.

One of the things that we've been doing is exploring the nurturing of generosity early in life. And we've developed a curriculum for pre-school children that we call the "kindness curriculum." This is a curriculum that includes both mindfulness and kindness. Now, why did we choose pre-school kids? There are three major periods of increased plasticity in the brain in the early years of life. One is right around birth. The second is around the onset of schooling between the ages of five and seven years. And the third is around adolescence. These are periods when the brain is radically reorganized and are opportunities for intervention.

So, that's one reason why we chose the pre-school period. The second reason is that there are robust data showing that a child's ability at four and five years of age to regulate his or her own behavior is a strong predictor of major life outcomes when they are in their early 30s. In fact, it's a better predictor than IQ, than grade point average, and standardized test scores all put together. And what it predicts in the early 30s are major life outcomes. It predicts physical health. It predicts the likelihood of substance abuse. It predicts the likelihood of court-verified criminal convictions in large longitudinal research, and it also predicts financial success with very careful controls for the socio-economic status of the families of origin.

So, we have a moral obligation, I think in this culture to do everything we can to facilitate kids starting out on a positive trajectory. And one of the things that we did to assess the impact of this curriculum is we needed to develop novel measures of kindness and pro-social behavior in these young kids. And so, we developed what we call the "Self-Other Sharing" task.

So, what is this? We chose a currency that is valued very highly among pre-school children. (Audience laughter) Stickers. And what we did is something incredibly simple. We gave the kids two envelopes. One envelope we had a picture of themselves, which is not on here. And another envelope we had pictures of different kinds of kids.

And we did socio-metric ratings in each classroom and we found out who each child's best friend was, and we found out who each child's least favorite person was. And then we also had a picture of an obviously sick-looking child, which is shown here, and we also had a picture of a child that we call the stranger child who the child had never seen before. And then we gave them a bunch of stickers each time and we said, "Please place the stickers in the envelopes according to who you'd like to give them to. You can keep as many for yourself or you can give them to others."

What we found is the kids who were randomly assigned to the kindness curriculum showed more pro-social behavior, more kindness on this task than the kids who were receiving the standard curriculum. And actually the sad fact is that at least in the classrooms that we studied over the course of the preschool year, kids who get the standard curriculum become increasingly selfish as the year goes along.

We also gave them other metrics that measure self-regulation. And one of those metrics is something that many of you have probably heard about before, which is a measure of the delay of gratification. And it turns out that a child's ability to delay gratification at four and five years of age is one of the strongest predictors of these adult life outcomes. And I'd like to just show you a little video clip that illustrates these original experiments for how it was originally done.

Okay, so here's the deal. Here's a marshmallow. You can either wait and I'll bring you back another one, so you can have two. Or you can eat it now. So, you can eat it now or you can wait and I'll bring you back two, okay? Okay, I'll be back. (Instrumental jazz music) (Instrumental jazz music) -Careful. -Miss? Oh, what happened? Oh, okay. (Instrumental jazz music) Oh, how good! You waited. You get two! Woman: Good job! (Clapping) You can eat it. You can eat it now. (Audience laughter)

Okay, very important skill, and it turns out that although kids differ dramatically, as you can see in their behavior, this can be changed and this can be learned. Thank you very much. (Applause)