Everything is better together

I just read one of my all-time favorite psychology papers, Everything Is Better Together,* by Dunigan Folk and Elizabeth Dunn, who are both at the University of British Columbia. The study method was ingenious. The authors mined the data from four years of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey (ATUS), which measures how people divide their time among life’s various activities, such as paid work, childcare, volunteering, and socializing. The ATUS method is to select households to try to reflect America’s diverse range of demographic characteristics. One person aged 15 or older in each household is then asked to describe their previous day in episodic fashion, similar to Daniel Kahneman’s Day Reconstruction Method.

 

In the years studied by Folk and Dunn (2010, 2012, 2013, and 2021), the ATUS included questions about (1) how happy the interviewee felt during three of the episodes they described, and (2) whether they were interacting with anyone while engaged in those episodes. ATUS coders then placed each episode into one of over 400 pre-specified activity categories, such as eating and drinking, doing laundry, playing games, walking, attending movies, etc. Folk and Dunn then mined that data to “examine[] the relationship between socializing and happiness across more than 80 daily activities by analyzing 105,766 activity episodes from 41,094 participants.” Incredibly, Folk and Dunn found that “participants consistently rated every common daily activity as more enjoyable when interacting with someone else.” They concluded that “whether we are eating, reading, or even cleaning up around the house, happiness thrives in the company of others.” And, while literally “everything is better together,” we here at UaKS are especially happy to note that the largest effect, by far, was for eating and drinking together.

 

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* Folk, D., & Dunn, E. (2025). Everything Is Better Together: Analyzing the Relationship Between Socializing and Happiness in the American Time Use Survey. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506251364333

 

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Return of the porch pirates: all hail the king

It's been almost five years since the last porch pirate episode (#326). Fortunately, my buddy Ed, who made his first appearance in episode #2, continues to deliver the highest quality piratical news. And here, dear readers, is the crowning achievement in porch piracy. You have to see this one for yourself: "'Porch pirate' steals package from delivery man." Crown that man king of the porch pirates!

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Put that in your book

As you'll no doubt remember from episode #351, 😆 one of my favorite psychological biases is naive realism, which one of my favorite behavioral scientists/social psychologists Nick Epley defined in his excellent book Mindwise (2014) as "the intuitive sense that we see the world out there as it actually is, rather than as it appears from our own perspective." This leads to frequent misunderstandings with colleagues and loved ones, who suffer from the same bias in seeing things from their own perspectives. 

 

I was thrilled to discover an entire episode of the Choiceology behavioral economics podcast — "The Reality Trap" — on naive realism. In that episode, the host, Katy Milkman, a Wharton professor and former president of the International Society for Judgment and Decision Making, interviewed Julia Minson, a public policy professor at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Minson offered her own definition of naive realism: "the belief that most of us walk around with most of the time that our perceptions of the world and our reactions to the things we observe are reasonable and objective and basically unbiased. I see the world as it really is." When Milkman asked Minson what her research on naive realism has led her to do differently in her work or in her life, the following is what Minson offered as professional and marital advice, and I BEG YOU to actually play the clip, which is only 30 seconds long, so I can't be accused of having made this up:

  

Now that you've heard it for yourself, I'll repeat what Minson said, because I cannot understate my joy at conveying this nugget of wisdom:

When you disagree with a smart person, you are wrong 50% of the time. That's just a very good heuristic to remember. Half the time you are the one who's wrong. You would do well to remember that, especially in ... marital arguments. 

I know everyone won't believe this, but it makes my heart sing anyway.

 

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The dream realized

Bodo's # 1

 

Picking up bagels for the family brunch on Brad's 25th birthday

 

 

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Episode # 483: Food of love

Remember back in the day when Emeril Live was on every evening at 8:00 on the Food Network? Back then, there weren't many other options available for cooking shows, so I watched fairly regularly. He had all sorts of catchphrases — "Bam!" being the most famous — but I always liked when he said something was so good you could put it on a bumper and it would taste good.

 

Another thing that stuck with me was Emeril referring to something as a "food of love thing." I think most of the time he was talking about some kind of comfort food, like Uncle Clint's Mac & Cheese from episode #1 of UaKS, which was posted exactly 10 years ago today, and the Baked Ziti "welcome food" from episode #57 that I make every time one of you shows up here for dinner after a long trip, just like Grandma Pina used to make for our family. 

 

But I think it can also refer to any food, simple to fancy and everything in between, that you make with love and attention and the intention of nourishing the family and/or friends you're serving it to, hopefully accompanied by lively, interesting conversation. Like Emeril said, "Anything made with love, bam! – it's a beautiful meal."

 

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Cookies as endurance fuel?

Skratch Labs is one of the many players vying for a piece of the endurance food (fuel, hydration, and recovery) market. SL's selling point is "simple, real ingredients that fuel big efforts, go down easy, and help you bust your butt, not your gut." I can attest that the energy bars have a good texture and are very tasty and full of righteous carbs.

 

After trying the energy bars, I tooled around SL's website looking for some recipes. I happily discovered this post with the Skratch Labs Cookie Mix Recipe. It turns out SL used to sell a Cookie Mix, but when they retired it, they went ahead and shared the recipe on their website. Why did an endurance food company sell a cookie mix? They explain that:

During the 2014 Tour of California, Skratch Labs was on Human Support duty for riders and staff. After getting served cookies for dessert one night, riders started asking for cookies during the race. That unlikely request sparked an idea: could a cookie actually be legitimate fuel?

Turns out, yes. The Cookie Mix was born.

Misophonia revisited

I first discovered there is a scientific explanation for the irritation I feel when I hear certain sounds back in 2017 when Cassie sent me a Science News article entitled "If chewing sounds irk you, blame your brain." This came up again in a very good science fiction novel I just finished, Beautyland by Marie-Helene Bertino. 

 

The protagonist, Adina, is an alien life form sent to Earth to "take notes" on human beings (which, in a nice touch, she sends home using a fax machine) to see if her species can move here from their dying planet. Like me, Adina has a problem with various sounds. For example, she doesn't like going to the movies because the sound of all that popcorn chewing is cacophonous to her. She thinks it has to do with being an alien, until, after about 40 years on Earth, she visits a doctor to have her hearing checked. The doctor tells Adina

there’s a word for her aversion to sound. Misophonia. That the condition had been maligned for many years but has recently become slightly less maligned. “People report feeling rage when their loved ones clear their throats or eat. The clicking of a pen can launch them into fits of impassioned yelling. Some have berated strangers.”

Throat clearing, eating, pen clicking.

 

Check, check, and check on my list.

 

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