Could the key to a happier life be found with our most ancient ancestors and the way they depended on community over autonomy? In a modern world built to encourage independence, how do we find the right balance between connectedness and autonomy?

William Von Hippel is a retired professor of psychology from the University of Queensland and the author of The Social Paradox: Autonomy, Connection, and Why We Need Both to Find Happiness. His research, also found in his first book The Social Leap and countless articles, focuses on the evolutionary science behind happiness.

William and Greg chat about how evolutionary science can offer guidance on living a happier, more fulfilled life, the psychological and physiological impacts of social connections, the historical context of human relationships, and the role of modern technology and societal changes in our well-being.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Why loneliness hurts more than we realize

28:38: Loneliness is really hard on your health. We know that it kills you at rates higher than cigarettes once you get older, and you're more vulnerable. And so the feeling of loneliness doesn't guarantee you don't have people around, but it does mean that you don't feel part of it.

You feel somewhat excluded. And of course, feeling excluded should hurt because our ancestors who couldn't see that they're about to be excluded are the ancestors who kept misbehaving and therefore got excluded. When you look at hunter-gatherer societies, they all follow the same pattern of exclusion, whereby before they actually give you the heave-ho, first they kind of tease you. And if you don't respond to this teasing, well, already, you're a little bit too thick-skinned, because that's meant to bring you back in line. If teasing doesn't work, then they start acting like you're not even there. They talk around you and not responding to you. Almost everybody, when they get to that point, starts to feel terrible. It feels like physical pain because our ancestors, our potential ancestors who weren't bothered by that, took the next step and woke up one morning either dead or all alone. So, the system makes perfect sense that it really hurts.

Happiness is one of evolution's best tools

04:06: Happiness is one of evolution's best tools. It motivates us to do things that are in our genes' best interest, not necessarily ours as human beings, who may or may not want to do those things, but it motivates us to do what's in our genes' best interest—typically by making us happy when we do those things.

The tradeoff between autonomy and connection

06:34: We enter relationships which are super important to us and our happiness; we're a gregarious species. When we enter those relationships, we have to sacrifice some degree of autonomy to do what our friends want some of the time, or at least at the time they want, et cetera. And when we decide to pursue our autonomy, usually in pursuit of skills and self-development, we have to sacrifice our relationships to some degree, because that means we're spending time honing our own skills and not socializing or helping others.

Why wealth doesn’t guarantee happiness

19:47: The things that made us happy, as far as the social connections, were also the things that made us reproductively successful. And they, in some ways, they very much still are. So if I'm famous or rich, I'm high in status, and then I'm attractive to members of the opposite sex or whoever I prefer. And I'm attractive to people who I want to be in my coalition. I have the sort of social accolades that actually make me feel good. And I think that's actually the basis of the Eastland Paradox—this notion that as societies get wealthier, people don't get happier. But richer people are happier than poorer people.

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