How to Be Real in a Fake World

When I was a kid, I loved Halloween—I mean who doesn’t love candy and dressing up for a night? It turns out, October 31 is not the only day we wear a disguise. Today, I’m talking about the masks we wear the other 364 days of the year. In this episode of Office Hours, I explore the psychology behind why we wear masks in our daily lives and the emotional cost of hiding our feelings. More importantly, I share three ways we can take off the mask and live more honestly, so that we can give and receive the love we need most. *** Are you interested in helping others through the science of happiness? I have a new three-day program—learn more here https://www.arthurbrooks.com/happiness-scale-certification. — Brought to you by: • LMNT http://drinklmnt.com/Arthur—A science-backed electrolyte drink mix that helps you feel and perform your best, without sugar, artificial ingredients, or gimmicks. Get a free sample pack at DrinkLMNT.com/Arthur http://drinklmnt.com/Arthur — Where to find Arthur Brooks: • Website: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://arthurbrooks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://arthurbrooks.com/ • In-person Retreats: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://retreats.arthurbrooks.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://retreats.arthurbrooks.com/ • Newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter • X: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://x.com/arthurbrooks⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://x.com/arthurbrooks • Instagram: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/arthurcbrooks/ • Facebook: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/ArthurBrooks/ • YouTube: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGuyFRjJQFGCKzfHTBvWM6A • LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthur-c-brooks/ • Email: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[email protected]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ mailto:[email protected] — Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (12:17) Activation vs. inhibition (14:22) When masking becomes a problem (25:10) Why honesty matters more than avoiding conflict (27:48) #1. Take a break from yourself (31:19) #2. Take your mask off around loved ones (34:07) #3. Make sure you like what’s behind the mask (37:29) Q&A: The difference between satisfaction and happiness (38:59) Q&A: Coping with disappointment (41:07) Q&A: Reconciling belief in God with suffering — Referenced: • The Meaning of Your Life: Finding Purpose in an Age of Emptiness:http://themeaningofyourlife.com/themeaningofyourlife.com http://themeaningofyourlife.com • Arthur’s newsletter:https://www.arthurbrooks.com/newsletter • The Happiness Scale:https://learn.arthurbrooks.com/the-happiness-scale • The Pursuit of Happiness with Arthur Brooks:https://www.thefp.com/s/the-pursuit-of-happiness-with-arthur • Maskenfreiheit: https://www.dwds.de/wb/Maskenfreiheit • Develop Authenticity: 20 Ways to Be a More Authentic Person: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/click-here-for-happiness/201904/develop-authenticity-20-ways-to-be-a-more-authentic-person • George F. Will: https://www.washingtonpost.com/people/george-f-will/ • Pan Am Smile: https://www.talkspace.com/blog/the-7-types-of-smiles-and-how-people-perceive-them/ • Not all smiles are created equal: the differences between enjoyment and nonenjoyment smiles: https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/humr.1993.6.1.9/html • Smiling with Your Eyes: What Exactly Is a Duchenne Smile?: https://www.healthline.com/health/duchenne-smile • Cultural differences in the production of emotional facial expressions: a review: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1699374/full • ... References continued at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.arthurbrooks.com/office-hours

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:30Arthur Brooks?

  This is a Halloween special episode, as a matter of fact. And I was thinking, what's the best thing to talk about with a Halloween theme? And the answer, as far as I'm concerned, is the masks that we wear in life. A lot of people are masking themselves from themselves a lot of the time because they just don't accept who they are. And so they change it in such a way. They don't accept what's going on. And the truth of the matter is, if there's something you don't like about yourself, looking honestly at that is critically important such that you can actually have a hope of changing it. I want to talk a little bit about kind of the more serious side of the ways that we put on masks in our lives. When we, when we guard our true identity, when we don't allow people to see what we, what we actually think about something, when we censor ourselves. Is that a bad thing?

• 1:15Arthur Brooks?

  Is that a normal thing? Is that a good thing? What about the masks that we wear that disguise who we truly are?

• 1:29Arthur Brooks?

  Hi, friends. Welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is a show about love and happiness, and that's my mission in life, to lift people up in bonds of love and happiness using science and ideas. I'm a behavioral scientist, a professor at Vanderbilt University, where I write, speak, and teach about the science of happiness and how everybody can use it. This is not just an academic concept. On the contrary, this is not academic at all, because that's the business of life itself. So how can you get happier? How can you have more love? I'm glad that you're watching this show, because that's a different facet of exactly that, that, that puzzle is what we look at every single week. I hope you find it useful. If you do, please do continue to share this show with your friends. It's spreading and we get a bigger audience.

• 2:13Arthur Brooks?

  And, and that's really the mission of what we're all about here, is to get to as many people as we possibly can. To that end, one of the things that we know on the show is that most people who see this show actually are not subscribers to it. So please do hit like and subscribe. That helps the algorithm so it will reach other people who are like you. And, and, and just as importantly, it's really convenient, the show will show up to you so you don't have to go looking for it. If you're finding it for the first time, I hope you do enjoy it and you'll come back. And I'm really grateful that you're spending a little bit of time with me here today. Questions, comments, criticisms, please put them in the comments below. We look at everything. We, we react to a lot of them. And we even have a section at the end of each episode where we are answering questions. I'm answering your questions at the end.

• 2:55Arthur Brooks?

  If you have questions, please write them into [email protected], which is the website for the show. And, and if you want to go deeper on any of this, I recommend that you actually get my newsletter. That comes out every Friday completely free. Almost 300,000 people now are getting that newsletter with a very high open rate. And part of the reason is because, well, it's free, but also it has practical information that goes a little bit in a different direction than what you'll find here. Starts off with some dumb jokes and gets to some serious material in about 300 to 500 words. So you'll get that on Fridays. Good way to head into the weekend. No big commitment there for sure, but I hope you enjoy it. Well, this is a Halloween special episode, as a matter of fact. And I was thinking, what's the best thing to talk about with a Halloween theme?

• 3:37Arthur Brooks?

  And the answer, as far as I'm concerned, is the masks that we wear in life. Now, let's be literal about it right now. When I was a kid, I loved Halloween. Most heartbreaking Halloween of my life is when I was four years old and getting ready to go out trick or treating for the first time of my own with my seven-year-old brother. And we both got that chicken pox and we couldn't go because, you know, it was the irresponsible thing to do. We would infect somebody because that's so highly infectious. So my dad called around to all the neighbors in the neighborhood to find out who had already had chicken pox. We got to go there. I think I wound up with like, you know, three pieces of candy or something. Most of the time, however, it was the greatest day of the year because of all the sweets, which probably cultivated the horrible sweet tooth that I still have today.

• 4:21Arthur Brooks?

  But just as important as anything else, it was super fun to dress up in different costumes. We'd think, what are we going to be this year? And a lot of kids do as well. Now, like literally, my kids did that, and now my grandkids even. One of my sons, when his first son was an infant, he really looked forward to going to a Halloween party, wearing his old clothes that he had worn when he was a farmer. He was a farmer when he first got out of, out of high school for a year and a half, where he worked on a wheat farm in Idaho. He still had his old stuff and it was, I mean, it was authentic. And he dressed up his infant son as a chicken and carried him around the party the whole time. And they had a great time, I have to say. So that's fun for a lot of people, and that's an interesting psychological phenomenon, why we like to dress up like something, especially when we wear masks where people can't recognize us.

• 5:06Arthur Brooks?

  Now, that's actually more characteristic of Carnival, where right before Lent, in the Catholic calendar, you have Mardi Gras in New Orleans, or Carnival in Cologne in Germany, or in certainly in Rio de Janeiro. These are famous places where people go kind of nuts. They get all dressed up, but most importantly, they cover their faces. And this leads to fun and disinhibition and maybe doing things that they ordinarily wouldn't do, which is great fun. I asked somebody in New Orleans one time who's just going berserk on Mardi Gras, why are you getting into it so much? You know, doing things that ordinarily would find impermissible. And the guy said, well, look, I gotta have something to confess in Lent. And I thought to myself, my guess is you have plenty to confess already without doing actually more.

• 5:49Arthur Brooks?

  But that's a phenomenon, that disinhibition, that's that fun, that actually has a word for it, for exactly that phenomenon in German. The Germans have a word for everything, you know, one long word that means something kind of complex. And this is no exception. It's called mask and freiheit. That means the, the freedom to, that you find behind a mask. Mask freedom is what that really means. And it's both a literal thing in the case of the Carnival celebrations in Cologne, where people have a great time, but also it's a, it's a metaphorical thing. Mask and freiheit is something that people get when they're, when they're behind virtual masks. So you'll see that in, in some German philosophy, as a matter of fact, where people get kind of a rush from anonymity.

• 6:32Arthur Brooks?

  And this has probably been true in your life, where you're wearing a virtual mask by being someplace where people don't know you. You think of a mask as being in front of people who do know you, but they can't recognize you. But it's kind of the same thing. If you go someplace where, where, where you're not known so that you can act in a, maybe a different way than, than what you're, you're used to. One of the things that's really interesting is that, that people often say they get into deep conversations with strangers on planes. I've had strangers tell me unbelievable things that I'm pretty sure they haven't told their spouses or members of their own family about, you know, deep, dark secrets. They're not going to see me again, for example. I don't think I've done that, but, but who knows? But that's kind of liberating to a lot of people to confess to a stranger in a bar that you don't love your spouse or whatever.

• 7:17Arthur Brooks?

  I hope that's not the case for you. But there'll also be, there's sort of a thrill if you're, you know, you're, you're used to being around all the people in your life, that you, you travel solo and, and you're anonymous, and you can become kind of a different person. And a lot of people will actually tell me this. They'll go to some exotic location, they'll go by themselves, or, you know, just with a small group of friends, and they'll turn into a different person. It's funny because, you know, one of my kids went to camp one summer as a kid, and she changed her name. And, and she made all these friends and she used a different name the whole summer. And there are still people that I know whose kids were at camp with her that summer, who say, oh, how's, you know, using the name that she used that summer?

• 7:59Arthur Brooks?

  And I have to think about it like, who, who, oh, yeah, that's a mask. And that was super fun for her, actually. I mean, totally legit. There was nothing, you know, dishonest about that. It's who she wanted to be that summer. There's also the freedom, the mask and freiheit, that comes from what we, we would in English call kind of the hive mind, where you get an intensely pleasurable experience by, by, by blending into a crowd. That's one of the things that people get when they're in periods of religious ecstasy, as a matter of fact. They'll find that they'll lose their inhibition and kind of a divine state, or for that matter, a Rolling Stones concert. You know, people are just like so into it, and they lose themselves, that, that hive mind experience, which also, by the way, can be really dangerous, of course, but we're talking about it in a positive sense.

• 8:43Arthur Brooks?

  All that is well and good. And I hope you have an experience like that on Halloween, a very constructive, positive one.

• 8:50Arthur Brooks?

  But in your life that you can get those things. Matter of fact, I'm going to talk a little bit about how to induce those experiences. But I want to talk a little bit about kind of the, the more serious side of the ways that we put on masks in our lives. When we, when we guard our true identity, when we don't allow people to see what we, what we actually think about something. When we censor ourselves, which by the way, is happening all the time. We find that more than 60% of university students today in America say that they censor their own opinions because they believe that they will be canceled because of, you know, cancel culture on campuses. There's no, nothing new about the fact that that exists. And that's obviously happening in workplaces. And we got to ask, is that bad? Is that a bad thing?

• 9:35Arthur Brooks?

  Is that a normal thing? Is that a good thing? What about the masks that we wear that, that disguise who we truly are? There's a real, um, a kind of a remarkable trend in psychology today to talk about how mental health requires a sense of, of deep, deep authenticity, that whole authenticity thing. I'll, I'll put in the show notes, a article from Psychology Today, which is not an academic publication. It's a popular publication, but it's about how to develop authenticity. 20 ways to be a more authentic person. Do you want that? Is that a good thing to do? That's what I want to talk about. Why are you wearing a mask? I'm going to make the case that you are, and I want to ask why. And furthermore, I want to know, is it too much? Is it too little?

• 10:20Arthur Brooks?

  Is it a good thing? Should you rip it off? And, and, and if you are, and you're going to keep doing that, how can you do it in such a way that it actually doesn't hurt you, that you can actually be a happier person? Are you hiding certain things about yourself? Do you continue to? Why are you doing that? That's an interesting subject, as it turns out. And there are a lot of different ways I could take this. I've got all kinds of data on the secrets that people in different demographic groups keep. I've got data on the secrets that men my age keep. At some point, I'll talk about that. It's going to deeply disturb you, as a matter of fact, but that's not what my purpose is actually here today. Maybe it's not such a bad thing, by the way. If you're not completely authentic, despite the fact that there's so much of the zeitgeist about authenticity,

• 11:04Arthur Brooks?

  how you got to show your feelings, or they'll be repressed, that you'll become, you know, anxious, or, or you'll bottle them up and bad things will actually happen to you. There's a pretty interesting article. It's actually a lot written by the columnist, George Will. So many of you know George Will. He's a conservative columnist for the Washington Post, been writing for decades, as a matter of fact, a great writer. He says that one of the biggest problems that we have in modern life is that people are too authentic. It's like, repress yourself so that we all can live in a more civilized existence. But still today, I mean, there's a lot that I hear, because I teach at business schools, about the importance of bringing your whole self to work. I want to bring my whole self to work. Well, do you? Um, if you're an employer, do you want people to bring their whole selves to work?

• 11:48Arthur Brooks?

  Hmm. We have to understand whether that's not the case. If you don't want them to bring their whole selves to work, how do you feel about the fact that you're asking them to wear a mask? A virtual mask, as it might be. What about you? What's your view on this? I want to dig into that. And as I, I just mentioned, I want to, I want to talk about the costs and benefits of masking yourself and how to do so appropriately, and how to think about it in a maybe a different way. And I want to make you skeptical, both about the repress yourself idea, but also skeptical about the authenticity movement a little bit. This, like so many other things, is something that we can treat with prudential judgment and good ideas. And that's the point here.

• 12:30Arthur Brooks?

  Now, as a matter of, of just basic neuroscience, both sides are kind of right, that you should wear a mask and that you shouldn't wear a mask. Here's what I mean by that. The human brain has two systems for behavior. They're called BIS and BAS. Now, BIS is the behavioral inhibition system, and BAS is the behavioral activation system. And they're working in conflict with each other, but sort of in tandem as well. Here's how the prefrontal cortex of your brain assesses what you should do. The most important thing that it does, by the way, is it inhibits you from doing what your limbic system is saying when you're experiencing negative emotions or positive emotions. Freaking out, for example, getting violent, for example, running away when you shouldn't,

• 13:15Arthur Brooks?

  or crying when you don't feel like it's appropriate. Your behavioral inhibition system in the prefrontal cortex of your brain is going like, don't do that. Or, or you're like, get really mad at somebody and your limbic system says, go punch him in the face. And your behavioral inhibition system in the executive center, the C suite of your brain is like, yeah, don't do that. Don't do that. So all day long, your behavioral inhibition system is working going, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. Those are masks because your limbic system is saying, this is you. And your behavioral inhibition system says, pretend it's not. That's kind of going on. Now, after a certain point, you decide that it's okay to go forward. If it was all inhibition, you wouldn't do anything. You would never express yourself. You would never say what you think about absolutely anything.

• 13:59Arthur Brooks?

  You wouldn't be able to put one foot in front of the other. That's where the behavioral activation system kicks in, where you say, okay, now, okay, now. So you have a feeling, you inhibit the action related to it until you think that the coast is clear and is appropriate, and then you act. So that's how the system is working all day long. And what that means is sometime masks are good for certain periods of time, and sometimes it's good to take them off. So this is just good sense, but it's also scientific truth about the way that we actually act. The idea of unbridled authenticity is to refute the idea that the human brain is working the way it's supposed to. That the prefrontal cortex shouldn't inhibit anything.

• 14:43Arthur Brooks?

  And I think that that's ridiculous. And, and my guess is that you agree with that. The question is, how much is too much? And, and how do we know? Okay, now, here's where masking, where behavioral inhibition, this is virtual masking. I'm not talking about, you know, putting someone on your, literally underface, where it becomes a problem with respect to our quality of life, our mental health, our happiness, contentedness, satisfaction, enjoyment of life. It's a problem when it has two characteristics. It's involuntary and it's consistent. In other words, you're masking yourself when you don't want to, and you're doing it all the time. There are people who are kind of living like that, who are living in a kind of a permanently repressed state.

• 15:26Arthur Brooks?

  You might say it's completely voluntary if they're doing it, but it might be because you believe that if you say anything that you think that, that something will change in your life that's so dramatic that you just can't face it, and there's nothing that you can actually do about it. There, and there are some sort of hilarious cases of this. Um, I heard of a guy who, uh, he, when he was in ninth or 10th grade, he transferred from one school to another halfway across the country. And on his first day of school in the new school, for whatever reason, you know, like, he, he pretended that he had a British accent. Okay, he's an American guy, and he pretends he has a British accent. I'm sure it was terrible. But what do the ninth graders know? And, and he had to keep doing that for the rest of the year, having to beg his parents

• 16:10Arthur Brooks?

  to let him transfer schools at the end of the year so he could, you know, take off that mask. For him, it felt involuntary, and it had to be completely consistent or constant, or, or he would have looked like he was insane, which actually he might have been. There are other cases where we see this as well. That's not just, you know, a dumb thing that somebody does as an adolescent. Uh, for example, in the workplace, there are cases in which it's actually obligatory. Some of you have ever, have heard of something called a Pan Am Smile. This is the classic mask. Pan Am for, you know, you, you youngsters is an airline that ceased to exist. But, um, but in my childhood, Pan Am was with TWA. Those are the two big American airlines.

• 16:54Arthur Brooks?

  And, and, and Pan Am was the most professional of them all, it was a luxury airline. And back in the old days, people would get dressed up, you know, wear a suit to go get on the plane because it was kind of unusual. I certainly didn't fly at all until I was, you know, probably 14 or 15 years old. And, uh, on the other hand, my kids had passports that they got as soon as they got their social security number when they were six weeks old. So, you know, things change. It's been democratized. But anyway, Pan Am had this ultra, ultra professional crew of flight attendants. And, and what they were instructed to do was to be just unfailingly pleasant because travel was a big deal. Now, I get it, they're supposed to be today too. I mean, fly the friendly skies. Yeah. And, um, but in this case, they were instructed on how to do so.

• 17:38Arthur Brooks?

  They had to smile at passengers, no matter what they were feeling. I mean, this is literally the instruction that they got. Um, you can read about this in, um, an interesting journal called Humor, International Journal of Humor Research. An 1993 article called, this is an old article, but it still is really good. Not all smiles are created equal. The differences between enjoyment and non-enjoyment smiles, where it talks about the Pan Am Smile. And you know perfectly that when somebody smiles at you and they're not feeling it, what it looks like. It's like this. If I smile at my wife and I'm not actually happy, like, I'm in a world of hurt, man. I mean, she's a Spaniard, so she's not putting up with any, you know, inauthentic emotional nonsense from her husband. Mrs. B, she's hardcore. So I'm like, yeah, no.

• 18:23Arthur Brooks?

  And she's like, what's wrong? And so, okay. But, but that's kind of how everybody understands when people are smiling inauthentically. You don't believe it? Well, there's a lot of research on the different kinds of human smiles. And 18 out of 19 identified human smiles are masks. Interesting, isn't it? I mean, there's only one that was identified by the French physiologist Duchenne for authentic human happiness. He, he named it after himself. I've mentioned it on the show once, maybe twice, actually, about the Duchenne smile. Now, what is the Duchenne smile? That's one that's authentically happy. And how do we know when somebody's authentically happy? We don't actually look at the shape of the mouth so much. We, we actually see in the face, which is just full of these tiny little muscles,

• 19:06Arthur Brooks?

  the inadvertent or the involuntary activity of the zygomaticus major and orbicularis oculi muscles, which is in the top of the cheeks, pulling up the corners of the mouth, and the, and around the eyes, which will actually create crow's feet when you scrunch up your eyes. This is involuntary. It's when you're happy, this happens, when you have this. The limbic system gets this little ventral tegmental area tapped, and you feel joy, you're like.

• 19:32Arthur Brooks?

  Somebody says, I love you. Or for that matter, by the way, if you take a big bump of cocaine, which I hope you're not doing, your thrifty brain will send the signal through and you'll be like, and you'll, you'll, you'll react in this particular way. Well, every other human on the planet, without knowing any facial anatomy, knows the zygomaticus major and orbicularis oculi muscles, not by name, but they know when they see a happy smile and when they don't. And when they see the Pan Am smile, welcome aboard. When somebody's having a bad day, that actually affects them. Tons of interesting research on that. In Frontiers in Psychology, Apex Journal in Psychology, an interesting article in 2026, new one, called Cultural Differences in the Production of Emotional Facial Expressions, a review talks about a little bit about this.

• 20:15Arthur Brooks?

  So the bottom line is that the Pan Am smile was probably a pretty bad policy. Now, I'm not saying that if a flight attendant is having a crummy day, you know, you get on, you say, good morning, she says, screw you. I don't, I don't think that that's a good policy either. The point is that the mask itself was probably ineffective. And, and, and it was also hard on the flight attendants. So it didn't help the passengers and it was actually bad for the, for the flight attendants themselves. And this gets us back to whether or not masks are good things, whether or not a little bit more authenticity would have been a good thing. There's a lot of data on the extent to which you put on an emotional mask like that, how it can, it can actually affect you, uh, it can affect you negatively. A 2010 study in which psychologists asked participants,

• 21:00Arthur Brooks?

  this was a, this was an experiment, experimental conditions, to take customer service complaints at a railroad call center. Is there a railroad call center? I mean, it's like, uh, yeah, I'm in a Santa Fe railway. I'm gonna go, I'm gonna call them up and ream them out for bad service. I don't know, but anyway, that's what the experiment was. Of, of a customer call center, um, to take complaints for railroad, you know, issues. Anyway, and the, the people in the experiment, they, they were obviously volunteers for this. So this was a fake call center, but they were getting real calls as, as part of the, as part of the protocol. And they were told to either defend themselves when people were rude to them, or remain polite and super friendly, no matter what. In other words, give in, be polite and be friendly.

• 21:45Arthur Brooks?

  And again, this was an experiment. So it's not like they were training real people at a call center to defend themselves, to tell off somebody who's doing this. This was for experimental conditions. Chris, what they wanted to know was when you were emotionally inauthentic, and that was the rule, you were ordered to do so, what it actually did to your mental health and your physical health. And, and it was actually pretty interesting what happened, pretty profound what happened. The group of people who were told to be polite and friendly, no matter how abusive the people in the line were, they experienced considerably higher blood pressure than people who were authentic and higher cardiac stress than those who weren't, um, than people who expressed themselves during conversation, which is obviously not going to be good for your levels of anxiety and anger,

• 22:30Arthur Brooks?

  AKA your levels of negative affect. That paper, by the way, if you're wondering where they got all that, you know, railroad stuff, that's in the Anxiety, Stress and Coping, academic journal, um, from 2011. Once again, as always, it'll be in the show notes. Why? The answer is that it created these deleterious impacts because that mask of being nice when somebody's abusing you and you don't like it, creates what researchers call emotional labor. Now, I know I don't like that term either. That just sounds so campus-y, right? Emotional labor. Why do I have to do all this emotional labor, man? I got it. But that's the term of art that the psychologists have used. And they found that when they exert this emotional labor,

• 23:13Arthur Brooks?

  it, it, it, um, breaks down their willpower over time and it creates stress and anxiety inside the person vis a vis these physiological impacts. If you're like me, you gotta be drinking when you're in the gym and you have to be drinking something clean without any calories that will actually give you your electrolytes and all the good stuff. For me, that's Element, L-M-N-T. You probably knew that already. It's a great product that helps you stay hydrated without sugar and a bunch of dodgy ingredients that are found in a lot of popular electrolyte drinks and sports drinks. No sugar, no junk, just electrolytes that actually work. Give it a try. I like it. It's science-backed and made for athletes, fasting, keto, or happiness scientists like me. Anyone who sweats.

• 23:58Arthur Brooks?

  So how do I use it? I use it in the morning, 4:45 in the morning. I don't like to drink anything with caffeine or anything. It peps me up because I like to be real clear and I drink my caffeine later. Element is just the ticket that I need. Give it a try yourself. Right now, you can get a free sample pack with any purchase at drink element. That's drink, just like it sounds, L-M-N-T.com/Arthur. Try it risk-free. If you don't like it, they'll refund your order. No questions asked, but you're gonna like it. So what do we think about this? Well, to begin with, you probably can relate to this. If you've had a job where you've got to do the Pan Am smile or you have to be customer-facing or something like that,

• 24:39Arthur Brooks?

  and, and, and the boss just can't afford for you to, you know, like, no, I'm not putting up with this today. But it's much worse when you have a relationship or that's the case. And I know a lot of people who are in relationships where there's a ton of emotional labor because the emotional mask in which they're not actually allowed to bring even sometimes their authentic emotional selves, where that authentic self has negative affect. Okay, there's a whole string of things that I said in there, but if you're a listener to this show, you know exactly what I'm talking about. I'm bummed I can't express it to my life partner, the person on whom I'm supposed to be looking as I take my dying breath. And that's just not good for you and it's really bad for relationships. And in fact, that can ruin your marriage if that's actually happening.

• 25:23Arthur Brooks?

  This is physically and emotionally exhausting. I know people who do this, who feel like if they actually express themselves, if they have a fight, that it'll be the end. And it's interesting because there, you know, couples who do this mutually, who have this, you know, enforced peace all the time. Bryce Fessler, who, who is my research director, um, and I are fielding a survey soon about the quality of relationships where we, where we measure, um, two things to predict the health of a relationship, conflict and honesty, conflict and honesty. And, and where everybody wants to be is high honesty and low conflict. And gosh, it would be great if you were married to somebody like that. I don't have that kind of marriage. I have a, I have a pretty high conflict marriage.

• 26:08Arthur Brooks?

  I mean, it's not like abusive or problematic, you know, it's not like screaming. But, you know, we argue, we, we argue. We're both very high affect people is how this works, but super honest. And it turns out that in real life, there aren't that many low conflict, high honesty marriages. There just aren't out there. The happiest ones that go on and on and on and on and on, they tend to be moderate to high conflict, but very, very high honesty. The worst ones, they tend to be low conflict and low honesty. Actually, the worst ones of all, the ones that don't last even for a minute, are high conflict and low honesty. So it's like you're screaming at each other and you're going behind each other's backs. That's no good, obviously. But marriages that have persisted for a while, that are unhealthiest,

• 26:51Arthur Brooks?

  they tend to be low conflict, but low honesty. And the reason they're low conflict is because they're low honesty, because the people are wearing the masks. You know, I was, I had a, you know, one colleague, um, for years, who told me about his first marriage and I didn't even know he had a first marriage. And yeah, you were married for five years, five years. By the way, it, new interesting research shows that there's a five-year itch in marriages. That's when the likelihood of divorce peaks after five years. Um, I'll do an episode on that if you want. So put it in the show notes if you want me to do, you know, what, when the danger zones of a marriage actually are. And, and I said, well, what happened in that marriage? And he said, you know, we never had a single fight and we realized that this just wasn't working.

• 27:36Arthur Brooks?

  And I thought about it later, you know, given the tools and this survey that, that Bryce and I have fielded, turning it into an instrument that you'll be able to use soon, um, that what they were was in the quadrant of low conflict and low honesty. And what they needed to be was higher honesty, even if it meant higher conflict. And who knows, maybe they still be married today. But that's what the data say, because those are happier relationships. In other words, you gotta be able to take off your mask, is what it comes down to. So let me sum up where we are. And then what I want to do is, what I always want to do, is talk to you about when you should be more or less authentic and, and, and how you can use these ideas to construct a life where you're not, we, the behavioral inhibition system is still working, but where you can activate that system as well.

• 28:21Arthur Brooks?

  So summary, in a world which everybody was expressing themselves completely freely, would be completely unimaginable and probably uninhabitable, I for one would surely have been fired, uh, many times, uh, if it had not been for my masks. But we can mask and unmask at appropriate times and in healthier ways if we understand how our brains and our hearts work. Let me give you three things to be thinking about. If any of the things I've talked about here has been operative in your life or you're worried that somebody that you love, um, might be struggling with anything along these lines. Number one. You need to take a break from yourself a lot of the time.

• 29:03Arthur Brooks?

  In other words, a good thing for you to actually do is that you are, if you're getting along in society, not showing everything about yourself and being a particular person that you want other people to see. You probably will very usefully take a vacation from that from time to time. I recommend that almost everybody take a break from their own personality and become more authentic in a positive way that you can. I'm not talking about doing anything stupid or rash from time to time. You know, maybe the responsibility of wearing your mask all the time is something you need to take some time away from. For most people, I've found it actually is. I recommend, you know, engaging in hive-like activities from time to time where you can really become disinhibited.

• 29:45Arthur Brooks?

  For example, if you're somebody who doesn't really like to show your emotions very much, but you have a turbulent inner life, going back to my earlier episodes. If you're a mad scientist, but you actually are an introvert, that probably means that you're experiencing high levels of affect, but you're showing low levels of negative affect because your personality and your affect profile are not in sync. And there's a lot of people like that. That's largely a genetic phenomenon. If that's the case, then hive-like activities or a vacation from your mask. You're taking off your mask someplace. That means a concert. That means a religious activity, whatever it happens to be where you can actually be your uninhibited self and not feel bad about it, or go away and be a different person like my daughter.

• 30:30Arthur Brooks?

  Change your name at camp. I mean, that's not going to work so well for somebody like me, but you get my point. Maybe there's something that you can actually do, you know, I'm going to go away and even though I'm a really kind of a buttoned up person, I'm going to go have a crazy weird adventure on my own vacation. And furthermore, I'm going to go where I know no one. By the way, I was talking to somebody, an actor, a really famous actor some months ago. And he told me that he does this regularly where he goes to parts of the world where nobody recognizes him at all. And he says he really becomes a different person and it's a source of resuscitation for him. So now, how did, one other story, actually, that I don't have to guard the anonymity of the people.

• 31:13Arthur Brooks?

  Malcolm Forbes, who, you know, the billionaire, father of Steve Forbes, who's run for president several times. He realized that he needed to do this every weekend. He has really buttoned up all, he was like a finance guy and he was every, all week, he was just, you know, proper and good. And he figured out that on the weekends he needed to be a different guy. So he basically joined a motorcycle gang when he was 50 years old. People didn't know for a long time. Then when they found out, they thought it was really, really funny. That was taking off his mask and you need to do a version of that too. Maybe, probably. Number two, you have to be able to take your mask off around the people who love you and you love.

• 31:54Arthur Brooks?

  That's critically important. Don't be my friend who just wandered away from his relationship because he was in the wrong quadrant of honesty and conflict. Low conflict because low honesty. That's unsustainable if you truly, if you truly love somebody. Many years ago, when my, one of my grown kids, not my daughter, this is my son Carlos. He was at preschool, three years old, four, and he was at a rainbow room. And I went to pick him up and I, you know, I got a glimpse of him playing at the end of school. He didn't see me and he's having a great time. I mean, he's just goofing around. He's laughing and running back and forth. And suddenly he turned around and he saw me from across the room.

• 32:36Arthur Brooks?

  As soon as he saw me, his face went from a smile into like this curled up. And, you know, you can tell when a kid is, when the waterworks are about to start, usually because the left side of their face starts to kind of twitch a little bit. The reason for that is because the negative emotions are more dominant in the right hemisphere of the brain, which controls the left side of the face. And that started to happen and he burst into tears. And he comes running over to me and starts telling me about all the awful things that happened that day. That mask came off as soon as he saw me and I was kind of alarmed by that. So I went to his teacher, who was just wonderful. And I said, what gives? You know, he's having a great time and he sees me, starts crying. What's wrong? Is there something wrong? Is there something wrong with me? And she starts laughing. She says, it's almost the same.

• 33:21Arthur Brooks?

  She said, they were effectively wearing a mask all day. I mean, even at four years old, they have a personality and they have to live up to certain standards. And, and, and they say, for they say for their most important relationships, their true selves, even when they're little. Now, a lot of this, a little of this can go a long way, friends. Don't only save up your bad feelings for your loved ones. Yeah, that's going to be hard on them too. And I've done this with Mrs. B, you know, where it's like I'm, because I'm super public and I'm giving speeches and I'm not going to get in front of my classes and be grumpy or in front of an audience. And so I'll be, something's really on my mind, but I'm just, you know, giving it the old, putting a brave face on it, brave mask on it. And I'll come home and I'll just complain and complain and complain.

• 34:06Arthur Brooks?

  And finally, you know, Esther's like, you know, sorry, I need a little of the good stuff too. So a little of this can go a long way, but you need somebody for whom when they pick you up, you could burst into tears. That's really, really important. I'll put a couple of interesting articles about that. One from 2001, unconditional self-acceptance and psychological health from the Journal of Rational Emotive and Cognitive Hate Roll Therapy. So that's one thing that you really need is be able to take off your mask around people you love the most. And last but not least is, consider this, are you actually masking so you won't see yourself? And I know that sounds kind of elliptical, but make sure you like what's actually behind your own mask and you're actually okay with that.

• 34:53Arthur Brooks?

  A lot of people are masking themselves from themselves a lot of the time because they just don't accept who they are. And so they change it in such a way. They don't accept what's going on. And the truth of the matter is if there's something you don't like about yourself, looking honestly at that is critically important such that you can actually have a hope of changing it. But so many people are running away from themselves all the time. And sometimes metaphorically, but sometimes even literally. I know people who just travel and travel and travel and travel and travel because they don't like to be at home with themselves. Effectively, that's happening with most people who abuse drugs and alcohol. They don't like to be at home with themselves. The trouble is that when you travel to escape yourself, the first thing that jumps out of your suitcase is generally you.

• 35:34Arthur Brooks?

  So you're back on the road again and it's worth being comfortable with what's behind your own mask, even if it's appropriate that you're, that you're wearing a mask a lot of the time. So is that true? Is there something you need to deal with? Is there something about you that you're hiding from you?

• 35:53Arthur Brooks?

  One last note, there's a literary thing that I was, I always really liked on this subject. In 1836, good long time ago now, almost 200 years ago. By the way, 1836 was the 200th anniversary of the founding of Harvard University. How about that? And, and somebody who lived right there in Massachusetts was Nathaniel Hawthorne, the great American writer. And he published a short story called The Minister's Black Veil. It's such a weird one. I mean, this is sort of the Edgar Allan Poe school of American literature, which is surreal and not violent, but kind of scary, kind of spooky. And this chronicles the life of a small town parson, a minister in New England, who suddenly decides to start wearing a veil over his face.

• 36:38Arthur Brooks?

  He won't tell anybody why. He gives nobody a reason and he refuses it to remove it at any time, even when the woman he's in love with and engaged to marry asks him to. Well, obviously this becomes a problem because he won't take off his veil or his mask, I guess. And she breaks off their engagement. People start avoiding him. Even dying sinners, because he's the parson, he's the town parson. He would go to people who are dying and, and give them their last blessing. And he's, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, wonderful writer. "They shuddered at the veiled face so near to their own as they took their dying breaths." In other words, they got the creeps, but he wears the veil for the rest of his life and dies sad and alone.

• 37:21Arthur Brooks?

  Now, what is that? That is obviously a metaphor for what we're talking about here. The story forces readers to consider their own black veil and the cost that they pay in life of actually not coming face to face with who they are as people. Another quote, "All through life, that piece of crepe has separated him from the cheerful brotherhood and woman's love. The mask trapped the minister in that saddest of all prisons, his own heart."

• 37:50Arthur Brooks?

  It was a barrier between him and, and other people. What mask are you wearing?

• 37:56Arthur Brooks?

  Time to take it off? Do some questions, then we'll be done. This is an anonymous question that came in from one of our live events. How do you define long-term satisfaction compared to other types of happiness? This gets back to the, one of the earliest episodes where we defined happiness itself. Happiness has three parts. To begin with, it's not a feeling. Feelings are evidence of happiness. Happiness itself is a measurable, definable phenomenon. It has three basic macronutrients. Think of it as a meal. Happiness is a meal. And to be properly nutritious, you need to get in balance and abundance. Three macronutrients in happiness. They are enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. Most of what we're talking about in this show is dealing with one or more of those macronutrients. You asked about satisfaction.

• 38:41Arthur Brooks?

  Satisfaction is the joy of an accomplishment with struggle. And that's what we're really looking at. The trouble with satisfaction is it tends to wear off because we're under the illusion that if we get the thing that we actually want with struggle, that we'll stay, we'll keep that feeling of satisfaction permanently. But of course, we don't. That's the arrival fallacy. If I get it, it'll be so great. If I get the Porsche, I'm gonna enjoy it. And it turns out that the new car smell wears off pretty darn quick. And so the result of that is that long-term satisfaction requires that we understand it as the things that we have divided by the things that we want. And we don't need to maximize the numerator to get greater satisfaction, have more. We need to manage the denominator. We need to want less.

• 39:26Arthur Brooks?

  There's a lot in that, but I hope that's helpful. Cecilia L. writes into the website, [email protected]. What's the relationship between happiness and disappointment? It seems that disappointment is universal and most happy people have somehow processed their disappointment so that they don't become a bag of bricks to drag around. Disappointment is absolutely universal and completely ubiquitous. Why? Because it is unrealized desire. That's what disappointment is, literally. You have a desire and that desire is not realized. Okay, now, there are two ways to deal with disappointment, to be a happy person. Not to say, I'm never gonna be disappointed. What you need to do systematically is number one, you can change the realization.

• 40:07Arthur Brooks?

  You could try harder to get that thing, change realization, or you can change your desires. And it's funny because, you know, in the, in the subject of marriage, which I talk about constantly on this show, I can't remember who it was. I think it was Warren Buffett, who said, "The secret to a happy marriage is low expectations." And that's kind of what that's all about, is having, you know, desires that are, that are more modest along, along the way, or desires that are actually changing. It's not stupid. I'm not talking about having lower expectations, but I am talking about desires that are, that are more reasonable to what we can face in life. And that's one of the reasons that people tend to have fewer disappointments as they get older than they did when they were younger, because they're able to see whether their desires are reasonable or disordered a little bit better.

• 40:51Arthur Brooks?

  It's not that you don't get any, but things do get better. Trust me, I promise. For example, one of the biggest reasons that couples divorce is not betrayal, or money, or, you know, disagreement, or abuse, God forbid. It's actually disappointment, that people are disappointed with each other. That's that five-year peak in, in divorce, is because she's disappointed with him, or he's disappointed in her, or both. And the number one reason that disappointment tends to occur is the misapprehension, the disordered desire, that my happiness depends on you. And so therefore, if I'm not happy, it means you're not doing your job. And I'm disappointed in the marriage. Okay.

• 41:35Arthur Brooks?

  Anonymous writes in, once again, subsequent to a live event. How can I rationalize a God that permits suffering, illness, disasters, misfortunes, while appreciating the gifts of life? Yeah, that's a mystery. I have a, an unsatisfying answer to that, which is, the book of Job, first chapter, 21st verse, I'm gonna quote by memory, so you can write into the comments, I'm getting it wrong. "The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away, and blessed be the name of the Lord." That was Job, after bad stuff happened to him in the book of Job, where he's lost his children, he lost his flock, he lost his fortune, he lost his reputation, he lost everything.

• 42:16Arthur Brooks?

  The book of Job, by the way, is a psychological thriller about the mystery of pain and suffering, while remaining faithful as a religious person. It's basically an exegesis on, you can't understand. In the 38th chapter, Job is actually talking directly to God, saying, "Why? Why? I was your man. I didn't do anything wrong, and all these things happened to me." And then God is really sort of sarcastic in the 38th chapter. It's actually wonderful, it's hilarious. And God says, you know, "Yeah, good. Fair, fair question. But since you're so smart, and you think that you can understand the complexities of the universe, you tell me why I created the heaven and the earth, the stars in the sky,

• 43:01Arthur Brooks?

  the fishes in the ocean. You tell me, because, you know, you're so smart, you must know." "No, you don't? Ooh. Well, maybe you can't understand this either. Suffering is a mystery. But to embrace that mystery, it turns out, the 'I don't understand' is the way that we can, that we can actually be free. This is what people who are deeply religious and who suffer, is the source of their freedom, is the embrace of the mystery per se, of the, of the complexity of this, the, the fact that this is something that can't be resolved, because life is messy itself, and we're limited in our understanding. I don't understand. Some point I will, maybe, but I can't now.

• 43:46Arthur Brooks?

  Blessed be the name of the Lord." And that's my last word. I hope you've enjoyed the episode. Please let me know your thoughts at [email protected]. Like and subscribe on Spotify, YouTube, Apple. Leave a comment, critical, positive, negative. It's all good. I really appreciate the feedback a lot. Please follow me on the social media platforms, Instagram, LinkedIn, other platforms, where I have content that actually isn't just this, a lot of other stuff as well. And don't forget to order The Meaning of Your Life, my latest book, if you haven't ordered it already. And I will see you next week.