The Long Game: A Conversation with Robert Waldinger (Episode #308)
What this covers
Sam Harris speaks with Robert Waldinger about the Harvard Study of Adult Development. They discuss the limitations of relying on self-report to assess a person’s well-being; Daniel Kahneman’s remembering and experiencing selves; why it can be hard to figure out what makes us happy; the effects of alcohol, smoking, and exercise; the connection between work and fulfillment; the primacy of relationships; the diminishing importance of wealth; status vs feeling valued; the connection between good relationships and physical health; having kids and marital satisfaction; introversion vs extroversion; mortality and loss; collecting experiences vs things; the benefits of walking; taking relationships for granted; quantity vs quality time; the self and self states; the guru-disciple relationship; and the possibility of enlightenment.
Robert Waldinger is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development at Massachusetts General Hospital, and cofounder of the Lifespan Research Foundation. Dr. Waldinger received his AB from Harvard College and his MD from Harvard Medical School. He is a practicing psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, and he directs a psychotherapy teaching program for Harvard psychiatry residents. He is also a Zen master (Roshi) and teaches meditation in New England and around the world. Robert is the co-author of the book The Good Life: Lessons From the World’s Longest Scientific Study on Happiness (Simon and Schuster; January 10, 2023).
January 11, 2023
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Source description (no synthesized summary yet).
Waldinger argues that well-being emerges from integrating moment-to-moment experience with meaningful narratives about one's life, and that meditation reveals how we unconsciously construct limiting stories in real time—suggesting a coherent understanding of human flourishing is possible despite Kahneman's pessimism.
- The remembering self and experiencing self are not irreconcilable; they are aspects of one continuous life whose quality depends on becoming a better observer of both dimensions
- Meditation shows us we tell ourselves limiting stories in the moment, not just in retrospect, and we can learn to reframe and curate our narratives
- Objective measures (spouse observations, behavioral coding) and self-report together reveal a ground truth about well-being that individuals can misrepresent to themselves
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The study's original focus, stated by its earliest directors, was intentionally focused on what goes right in human development rather than what goes wrong, which was radical for its time in 1938.
“there's a there's a famous quote of the earliest directors who said there's been so much time and energy spent on what goes wrong in human development we want to study what goes right”
The study has incorporated new scientific methods as they became available, including DNA and mRNA blood draws (which were inconceivable in 1938) and brain scans, making it a history of scientific methods for studying the human condition.
“we brought online new methods as as they came into being so for example we started drawing blood for DNA and for mRNA when that wasn't even conceived of in 1938 when the study was begun we've scanned the brains of many of our participants something that people would have thought was Pure Fantasy in 1938”
There are significant limitations to relying on self-report: people are blind to much about themselves, are unwilling to share certain things even with assurances of confidentiality, and tend to present themselves in certain flattering lights while avoiding unflattering presentations.
“of course there are tremendous limitations in what people tell us first of all and what they can tell us because we are blind to so much about ourselves but also what they're willing to tell us even though we assure them of confidentiality and many people have told us things they've never told anyone else we all tend to present ourselves in certain lights and avoid presenting ourselves in other ways”
The Harvard study of adult development is the longest study of adult life ever done, following the same people from their teenage years into old age, spanning from 1938 to the present.
“the Harvard study of adult development is as far as we know the longest study of adult life that's ever done and what's unique about it is it has followed the same people from the time they were teenagers all the way into old age”
Boston in 1938 was 97.4% white, so the study could not have included people of color due to the demographics of the era; waves of migration of people of color didn't occur until after World War II.
“Boston in 1938 the city was 97.4 percent white yeah the waves of migration of people of color didn't happen until after World War II”
Beyond literal self-report content, researchers can use natural language processing and AI to analyze tone of voice and word choice to infer aspects of mental state that subjects may not consciously articulate.
“one of the ways we can use self-report is to look for things that are not explicit and conscious so for example tone of voice now we can look for word choice natural language processing is now a way of using AI to look at the ways that people speak and infer from that certain things about their mental state”
People can be wrong about what their lives were actually like over a given period because they are unaware of factors like how much stress they were under or how difficult they were to be around, and this is why external observation (like from a spouse) can provide corrective information about actual well-being.
“so you know you can think you had a great vacation because you're remembering a few Salient moments but you can actually be wrong about that you you you're unaware of how much stress you were under and what and how awful you were to be with and you're and and this is why it's often good to ask the spouse because the spouse can tell you how insufferable you've been over the course of any period of time”
The second cohort began at Harvard Law School by Sheldon and Eleanor Gluck, studying juvenile delinquency in children from Boston's poorest families known to an average of five social service agencies for problems including domestic violence, severe mental illness, and severe physical illness; there were 456 inner city men, fewer than 40 still alive.
“the other study was also started at Harvard at Harvard Law School by a professor named Sheldon Gluck and his wife a social worker named Eleanor Gluck they were interested in juvenile delinquency and why some children from really difficult backgrounds managed to stay on good developmental paths”
The Adult Attachment Interview uses the technique of asking for descriptors and then requesting examples to detect incoherence in responses, where insecurely attached people often give examples that contradict their stated descriptors without awareness of this contradiction.
“the adult attachment interview has a very particular structure where it starts out you're you're talking about your romantic partner and it says that the interviewer asks give me five words to describe your relationship and then someone will list the five words and they might be you know loving challenging unhappy it could be anything and then the interviewer asks give me two examples that illustrate each of these words”
The peak-end rule causes people to disproportionately weight intense peaks and endings in their memory of experiences; a vacation that was mostly pleasant might be remembered negatively if it had one bad incident or poor ending, even though moment-to-moment experience was predominantly positive.
“in any experience what's going to be most Salient for someone when they're remembering it is the the peak right of the experience in terms of its intensity and how it ended right so you can if you imagine you're going on a vacation and um you know it was a wonderful vacation you if we were sampling your experience minute by minute we would find a very high state of pleasure but there was one really bad or embarrassing or awkward or awful thing that happened that you'll never forget”
Much of the Harvard study's data is derived from self-report, with most years requiring about an hour to 90 minutes to complete lengthy questionnaires every two years, plus periodic interviews that last four hours, medical records review, and increasingly lab visits with videotaping and stress testing.
“most years it was just a questionnaire and actually it was every two years okay the questionnaire was often 20 pages long with some open-ended questions where you'd be asked to write a sentence or two in longhand as a response and some checklists and some rating scales so usually those questionnaires would take an hour 90 minutes to complete”
George Valiant, the third director of the study before Waldinger, combined the Harvard men and inner city men cohorts into one study to examine contrasting groups, and Waldinger expanded the study 20 years ago by including wives of the original men and reaching out to their children, more than half of whom are women.
“my predecessor George Valiant who was the third director of the study put both of these studies together and started studying the Harvard men and the inner city men as kind of contrasting groups and then when I came on 20 years ago I brought in the wives of the original men and then reached out to the second generation more than half of whom are women”
The original Harvard College cohort consisted of 268 men from the classes of 1939 to 1942, all white, selected to study 'normal' young adult development; fewer than 10 are still alive.
“the first group was a group of Harvard College undergrads from the classes of 1939 to 1942 were there only men at Harvard at that point there were only men at Harvard and only white men”
Kahneman's distinction between the experiencing self (moment-to-moment subjective states) and the remembering self (retrospective global narrative) reveals that people are systematically bad at predicting what will make them happy because these two selves often reach different conclusions.
“we do know from a series of experiments that we are bad at anticipating what's going to make us more happy and what's going to make us less happy so we do end up chasing a lot of chimeras”
The consequences of having good versus bad stories to tell about oneself matter greatly because these narratives shape thought patterns at moments like 4 AM when waking with worry, affecting future decisions and the overall quality of one's life.
“the consequences of having good stories to tell also are doled out to you in other moments I mean it matters what kind of story you have to tell about yourself and the kinds of thoughts you think in at four in the morning when you wake up and are brooding about your life”
Sam Harris argues that there is only one life unfolding moment-to-moment, and both the experiencing self and the remembering self are aspects of it; the quality of that life depends on learning to be a better observer of both dimensions simultaneously.
“you really only have one life right and so there really is just oh yeah the the life that's being doled out to you Moment by moment and some of those moments are moments in which you tell yourself a story or asked to tell someone else a story that has more Global characteristics”
The Harvard study was funded by WT Grant, a department store magnate, who was interested in determining which young men would make good department store managers, but the physicians who founded the study were genuinely interested in the concept of human flourishing.
“the Harvard study was funded by WT Grant the department store magnate and he was interested in funding a study to determine which young men would make really good department store managers so that's why he was interested in a study of what he thought were the best and the brightest but the Physicians who founded the study were really interested in this whole concept of human flourishing”
Waldinger noticed that other high-achieving people at Harvard were similarly trapped in the worry about mattering and achievement, suggesting this is a widespread psychological pattern among ambitious people.
“I was thinking about this as a teenager because I was a high achieving teenager and... surely there's no one at Harvard who's thinking about those things no nobody else except me right so right so this idea of you know why why is this preoccupation with mattering with being so important”
Waldinger was preoccupied as a teenager with questions about why he cared so much about achievement and status when, from the perspective of death and being forgotten, none of it would matter.
“had always been preoccupied by my own mind and and all the stupid stuff that I worried about that really didn't amount to anything and and I realized that most other people I knew were also worried about these things like was I achieving enough right or was I important enough all these things that when we think about being dead you know 100 years from now and no one remembering us what difference does all this make”
Meditation shows us that we tell ourselves limiting stories not just in retrospect, but in the present moment, continuously constructing narratives about experience as it unfolds.
“the element of not knowing so we tell ourselves stories in retrospect looking back on our experience but we also tell ourselves stories in the moment and one of the things that meditation does is it shows us”
Waldinger tried vipassana practice at a vipassana center in Cambridge but found it unsuitable because the tradition does not provide regular contact with teachers; one can attend Dharma talks but doesn't meet with teachers regularly, and he found himself getting lost and hopeless without personal guidance.
“I tried for a while there's a vipassana center in Cambridge Mass near where my office was but I found that the vapassana tradition doesn't have much contact with teachers you can listen to teachers give Dharma talks but you don't meet with them regularly and I would get lost I'd get like tired and kind of hopeless about my messy mind”
Well-being in the broad sense encompasses the body, the mind, and social connections, rather than being limited to momentary happiness or a single dimension of human functioning.
“really when we think about well-being when we think about human thriving that encompasses our bodies Our Minds our social connections all of that”
In response to Harris's question about the sample composition, Waldinger acknowledges that the study has constantly had to explain to the NIH why they continue to fund research on such a politically incorrect sample of only white men and women.
“it's the most politically incorrect sample you could possibly have now and we're constantly having to explain to NIH why they still want to fund us right”
Sam Harris, being a meditator and philosopher, was skeptical that a 1938 academic department would have focused on human flourishing and well-being given the historical context of the Great Depression and World War II, expecting more practical concerns to dominate the era's research priorities.
“I don't know why I would have been skeptical about that framing being sort of historically likely at that period but it's just 1938 does not seem like the year or even decade where where I would imagine an academic Department would have decided okay we're going to think about human flourishing eudaimonia right well-being uh you know we're on the cusp of World War II the the Great Depression is not even a distant memory right you would think we have more practical problems to worry about so it's it's interesting that that was what was uh birthed in that year”
Waldinger's book The Good Life: Lessons from the World's Longest Scientific Study of Happiness was co-authored with Mark Schultz and was in the process of being published at the time of this podcast interview.
“he also has a new book out based on this study called The Good Life lessons from the world's longest scientific study of happiness which he wrote along with his co-author Mark Schultz”
Waldinger is a practicing psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and psychotherapist who conducts psychotherapy as part of his daily work in addition to his research and teaching responsibilities.
“I am a psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst by clinical training and my specialty is psychotherapy so each day I do Psychotherapy as part of my work”
Robert Waldinger has given one of the most-watched TED talks of all time, based on a subject related to the Harvard study that he is now discussing in his book The Good Life.
“you have famously given one of the most uh well watched TED talks of all time that was on a subject that we're going to get into here and about which you have just published a new book”
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Waldinger was born in 1951 in Des Moines, Iowa, which was a quiet and conservative place where the 1960s counterculture largely passed by.
“I was born in 1951... I grew up in Des Moines Iowa and the 60s sort of passed Des Moines by and that it was a very quiet conservative place”
Sam Harris and Robert Waldinger have passed each other at a TED conference in the past, indicating shared participation in the TED speaking circuit.
“so we have many overlapping interests here we were just talking offline about having passed one another at a Ted conference”
Waldinger was initially enthusiastic about the Vietnam War while growing up in Des Moines, but his views changed when he went to Harvard as an undergraduate.
“I was pretty enthusiastic about the Vietnam War when I was growing up in Des Moines Iowa that all changed when I went to college”
Waldinger has spent his entire adult career at Harvard, since his undergraduate years.
“you went to Harvard as an undergraduate I did and then you're and you're still at Harvard that's right I've been there my whole adult life”
In his 30s, Waldinger read John Kabat-Zinn's 'Wherever You Go, There You Are' about Buddhist philosophy, which helped him begin to make sense of his existential preoccupations.
“it wasn't really until my 30s when somebody gave me a book about Buddhist philosophy that I thought oh this begins to make some sense... it was Wherever you go there you are the John cabinson book”
Waldinger's Zen teacher is James Ford, whose own teacher is John Tarrant, who is still living and teaching in the west.
“I started sitting with James Ford my zen teacher... James Ford's teacher was John Tarrant who is still living and still teaching out west”
Waldinger has studied hundreds of koans over his time in Zen practice and finds koan practice to be a helpful way into what Zen calls 'waking up'.
“Zen has two main streams of practice now at least in the west that one is the Soto practice which is just sitting and so the core of our practice that that I'm involved in is a lot of sitting but also the rinzai school which is a co-owned practice school and so I teach cons I've studied hundreds of colons in my time and find that also a really helpful way into this thing we call waking up”
Sam Harris has spoken with Danny Kahneman about Kahneman's distinction between the experiencing and remembering selves, and has also discussed this concept with other guests on his podcast.
“I mean it's just a concept that will be familiar to my audience I've spoken to Danny Kahneman before and and spoken about his distinction between the remember the remembering and and experience themselves both with him and and with others on this podcast”