We’re all in this together. All of us.
We’re all in this together. All of us.
A personal greeting to SDCN’s members from Professor Micael Dahlen, Stockholm School of Economics
Nobody enjoys watching a horror movie alone. It just makes you aware of exactly how alone (and vulnerable) you are. The very purpose of watching a horror movie is feeling togetherness (which is probably why generations of awkward teenagers have taken the genre to heart for dating). It seems pretty intuitive, when you think about it. But just to make sure, researchers have crunched the numbers and found that horror is the genre with the fewest single tickets sold by far at the box office, and they have conducted experiments where people report significantly higher perceived connectedness with other people in the room after watching clips from horror movies.
Before I get too carried away with movie trivia (us Swedes love watching and talking about movies. It’s one of our favorite ways of socializing, right up there with fika), here’s my point: Right now, it feels like we’re watching the scariest horror movie ever. A virus has taken over the world, threatening to kill us, kill the economy, kill all the plans we made. Watching it all on the screen – the newscasts, press conferences, speculations, projections, screaming headlines – creates a very scary feeling of being utterly alone and vulnerable.
But nobody’s alone in all this. We’re in it together. All of us.
Go outside and see for yourself. That’s actually a great thing about Sweden that we have taken for granted until now: There’s enough space in this country (even in ”crowded” Stockholm) for everyone to go outside and still keep the necessary physical distance to be safe. Now that the sun has finally arrived up here in the north, you’ll see people everywhere. And the cool thing is that just making eye contact with another person makes you feel less alone and increases your feeling of community. There’s ample research to prove it, two seconds’ eye contact is all it takes to feel a connection with someone (anyone!) and increase both parties’ well-being. Add a smile, and the effect is doubled. While Swedes might not be known for making eye-contact and smiling, the horror situation we’re in has created a sense of togetherness that make us more prone than ever before. Go outside and see for yourself!
Or go online. That’s another great thing that we have taken for granted until now: We live in a time where everyone can (and is starting to) connect online. In the past couple of months, I have made more new friends online than in the previous five years (or in my entire lifetime offline). A really cool thing is that I have received a few thousand friend requests on Facebook from people born in the 1930s, -40s and -50s, generations who were previously off the grid. In the midst of this horror, all generations are connecting for the first time ever. Amazingly, a simple word or two of kindness produces similar effects as making eye contact and smiling. I conducted an experiment where a few thousand people received a kind text from someone and, between them, they generated enough body heat energy in response to provide lighting for five average-sized Swedish houses. Content analyses in social media have found that when a person posts something kind, it increases the likelihood by 50 percent that any given friend will post something kind, too (and their friends, in turn, become 20 percent more likely to do the same). Go online and find out yourself! Take this opportunity to make a new friend (please feel free to add me on Facebook!), reconnect with someone you haven’t had the opportunity to talk to for ages, say or text the words you didn’t have time to tell someone before now.
And while you’re online. Take a class. There are new ones popping up daily, literally. Yet another thing we have taken for granted until now: We have the infrastructure to offer education to anyone, anywhere, unrestrained by time and space. Maybe you weren’t able to go to Stanford as an undergrad, but you can join their online class on machine learning or wellbeing together with a few million classmates around the world this very moment. Or take an online class on financial markets at Yale. Or maybe my class on creativity at Stockholm School of Economics (we’re creating digital parallels to all our classes right now). Not only is it a great way to feel better, happiness research shows that learning and progressing are fundamental to well-being, it’s also great timing. Almost everyone agrees that it’s important to continuously update and upgrade one’s learning and skills, but most people put it off because of the opportunity cost, they’re too busy going about their business as usual. Right now, that opportunity cost is basically zero. Take a class and be the wiser!
While you’re taking classes, sign up for yoga, too, the number of online yoga classes has skyrocketed lately. It’s a great way to feel better. I actually supervised a Master’s thesis last year which randomly assigned a couple of hundred students to do yoga and found that, on average, they felt a little happier, less stressed, and even more social, than their fellow students. Or learn how to do kettlebell snatches (a lot of people seem to be doing this now, online sales of kettlebells have more than doubled since the outbreak). Or train for a half-marathon (you don’t even need to go outside, the other week there was a news piece about a man running the distance in his two-bedroom apartment, though his ”sambo” wasn’t too excited about it…). Any kind of exercise is great for your well-being, the number of studies to prove it is staggering. There are even some studies that suggest it makes you smarter, too. And there’s no better time to do it, than now. Most people wish they’d exercise more (about 75 percent to be precise, I actually conducted a study on it), but they don’t because they don’t (believe to) have the time. Well, now there’s time, a better time than ever. Take a class online, run a few thousand laps in your apartment, go to an outdoor gym or just for a walk, and find out yourself how it makes you feel better and smarter.
And when you’re done, eat broccoli. You might not like it (most people don’t, at first taste, there are surprisingly many studies validating the claim), but it’s good for you (which is why there are so many studies on it). But after about 14 tries your taste buds become habituated to it (yup, clinically tested and confirmed). The same goes for virtually anything you want to become habituated to. If you just do it frequently enough, it doesn’t have to take more than a week or two to get there. Eating better, just like exercising, is something most people want, but don’t take the time to do. Now is the perfect time. The pandemic has highlighted another thing most of us have taken for granted: all our daily routines. Going to school or work, commuting, going out for lunch, shopping and hundreds of other things that suddenly just faded away and left us in a void. We need routines. Research on isolation, for example on astronauts, inmates and round-the-world solo sailors, shows that, to get by, they start inventing routines, any routines to stay busy and sane. Take this opportunity to create the routines you always wanted, instead of the ones you had.
And every once in a while, skip the broccoli and have a skumtomte instead. If you don’t know what a skumtomte is, then you have something to look forward to (which, incidentally, is a well-documented trick to feel a bit happier – look forward to something!) this Christmas. A skumtomte is a Santa-shaped marshmallow which virtually all Swedes, by tradition, eat during the holidays (it’s the best-selling candy by far). Personally, I prefer eating them year-round, which is so strange to most Swedes that I’m infamous for it (ask around and you’ll see…) Eating a skumtomte outside of Christmas is bad behavior, I’m constantly told, it ruins Christmas. Which makes me enjoy eating them even more (last year I ate them with a knife and fork at Midsummer’s dinner while everyone else was having the traditional herring, oh the joy!) While I do hope you’ll give the skumtomte a try, it doesn’t really matter what you eat or do, as long as it’s an indulgence that makes you happy. Because indulging just a bit in ”bad behavior” every now and then does make you a little happier, on average, according to studies. It gives you a tiny feeling of control and freedom, which I believe is needed now more than ever when we’re all prisoners of the virus. Be kind to yourself, there’s no use regretting that you cannot be a ”good girl/boy/person” and go about with all the plans you made and live up to all your and others’ expectations, when it’s not up to you right now. Have a skumtomte and give yourself a break.
If, by any chance, there’s any downtime between the eye contacts, smiling, reconnecting, learning, exercising, habituating and indulging, allow yourself to look forward to the ”new normal” everybody’s talking about. It won’t be the same normal as before the virus, it will be a new normal, a better normal. You will be a better version of yourself, obviously, with all the new friends you made, the machine learning and creativity classes you have taken, the broccoli you have eaten, and so forth. But I firmly believe that the world will be a better version of itself, too. We will take the great things we have – each other and the capabilities to connect, our health and welfare – less for granted. We will learn from this massive natural experiment and take better care of our planet, now that we have proof that the climate can actually be greatly improved in short time with radical intervention. I even believe that the horrific blow to the economy will turn out to be a good thing in the long run; with less-business-as-usual to go back to comes more opportunity to start new businesses, take in new people, try out new forms of freelancing and craft a multitude of new pathways in society.
The world may seem like a very scary horror movie right now, but you’re not watching it alone. We’re all in it together. And I’ve seen enough movies in my teens to feel safe that there will eventually be a happy ending to the horror.
Image credit: https://micaeldahlen.com/
About Micael Dahlen
Micael Dahlen is professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. In his academic career, he rose rapidly to take up a leading position in the field of consumer behavior, creativity, and marketing. Dahlen has been ranked number 10 in the world among researchers in his field and was nominated for the Business Professor of the Year Award by The Economist’s Intelligence Unit. Professor Dahlen has written books on diverse topics such as marketing, happiness, serial killers (it’s true), sex, and social media. His books are published in Europe, in Asia and in the United States.
Last updated 2020/05/28
A personal greeting to SDCN’s members from Professor Micael Dahlen, Stockholm School of Economics
Nobody enjoys watching a horror movie alone. It just makes you aware of exactly how alone (and vulnerable) you are. The very purpose of watching a horror movie is feeling togetherness (which is probably why generations of awkward teenagers have taken the genre to heart for dating). It seems pretty intuitive, when you think about it. But just to make sure, researchers have crunched the numbers and found that horror is the genre with the fewest single tickets sold by far at the box office, and they have conducted experiments where people report significantly higher perceived connectedness with other people in the room after watching clips from horror movies.
Before I get too carried away with movie trivia (us Swedes love watching and talking about movies. It’s one of our favorite ways of socializing, right up there with fika), here’s my point: Right now, it feels like we’re watching the scariest horror movie ever. A virus has taken over the world, threatening to kill us, kill the economy, kill all the plans we made. Watching it all on the screen – the newscasts, press conferences, speculations, projections, screaming headlines – creates a very scary feeling of being utterly alone and vulnerable.
But nobody’s alone in all this. We’re in it together. All of us.
Go outside and see for yourself. That’s actually a great thing about Sweden that we have taken for granted until now: There’s enough space in this country (even in ”crowded” Stockholm) for everyone to go outside and still keep the necessary physical distance to be safe. Now that the sun has finally arrived up here in the north, you’ll see people everywhere. And the cool thing is that just making eye contact with another person makes you feel less alone and increases your feeling of community. There’s ample research to prove it, two seconds’ eye contact is all it takes to feel a connection with someone (anyone!) and increase both parties’ well-being. Add a smile, and the effect is doubled. While Swedes might not be known for making eye-contact and smiling, the horror situation we’re in has created a sense of togetherness that make us more prone than ever before. Go outside and see for yourself!
Or go online. That’s another great thing that we have taken for granted until now: We live in a time where everyone can (and is starting to) connect online. In the past couple of months, I have made more new friends online than in the previous five years (or in my entire lifetime offline). A really cool thing is that I have received a few thousand friend requests on Facebook from people born in the 1930s, -40s and -50s, generations who were previously off the grid. In the midst of this horror, all generations are connecting for the first time ever. Amazingly, a simple word or two of kindness produces similar effects as making eye contact and smiling. I conducted an experiment where a few thousand people received a kind text from someone and, between them, they generated enough body heat energy in response to provide lighting for five average-sized Swedish houses. Content analyses in social media have found that when a person posts something kind, it increases the likelihood by 50 percent that any given friend will post something kind, too (and their friends, in turn, become 20 percent more likely to do the same). Go online and find out yourself! Take this opportunity to make a new friend (please feel free to add me on Facebook!), reconnect with someone you haven’t had the opportunity to talk to for ages, say or text the words you didn’t have time to tell someone before now.
And while you’re online. Take a class. There are new ones popping up daily, literally. Yet another thing we have taken for granted until now: We have the infrastructure to offer education to anyone, anywhere, unrestrained by time and space. Maybe you weren’t able to go to Stanford as an undergrad, but you can join their online class on machine learning or wellbeing together with a few million classmates around the world this very moment. Or take an online class on financial markets at Yale. Or maybe my class on creativity at Stockholm School of Economics (we’re creating digital parallels to all our classes right now). Not only is it a great way to feel better, happiness research shows that learning and progressing are fundamental to well-being, it’s also great timing. Almost everyone agrees that it’s important to continuously update and upgrade one’s learning and skills, but most people put it off because of the opportunity cost, they’re too busy going about their business as usual. Right now, that opportunity cost is basically zero. Take a class and be the wiser!
While you’re taking classes, sign up for yoga, too, the number of online yoga classes has skyrocketed lately. It’s a great way to feel better. I actually supervised a Master’s thesis last year which randomly assigned a couple of hundred students to do yoga and found that, on average, they felt a little happier, less stressed, and even more social, than their fellow students. Or learn how to do kettlebell snatches (a lot of people seem to be doing this now, online sales of kettlebells have more than doubled since the outbreak). Or train for a half-marathon (you don’t even need to go outside, the other week there was a news piece about a man running the distance in his two-bedroom apartment, though his ”sambo” wasn’t too excited about it…). Any kind of exercise is great for your well-being, the number of studies to prove it is staggering. There are even some studies that suggest it makes you smarter, too. And there’s no better time to do it, than now. Most people wish they’d exercise more (about 75 percent to be precise, I actually conducted a study on it), but they don’t because they don’t (believe to) have the time. Well, now there’s time, a better time than ever. Take a class online, run a few thousand laps in your apartment, go to an outdoor gym or just for a walk, and find out yourself how it makes you feel better and smarter.
And when you’re done, eat broccoli. You might not like it (most people don’t, at first taste, there are surprisingly many studies validating the claim), but it’s good for you (which is why there are so many studies on it). But after about 14 tries your taste buds become habituated to it (yup, clinically tested and confirmed). The same goes for virtually anything you want to become habituated to. If you just do it frequently enough, it doesn’t have to take more than a week or two to get there. Eating better, just like exercising, is something most people want, but don’t take the time to do. Now is the perfect time. The pandemic has highlighted another thing most of us have taken for granted: all our daily routines. Going to school or work, commuting, going out for lunch, shopping and hundreds of other things that suddenly just faded away and left us in a void. We need routines. Research on isolation, for example on astronauts, inmates and round-the-world solo sailors, shows that, to get by, they start inventing routines, any routines to stay busy and sane. Take this opportunity to create the routines you always wanted, instead of the ones you had.
And every once in a while, skip the broccoli and have a skumtomte instead. If you don’t know what a skumtomte is, then you have something to look forward to (which, incidentally, is a well-documented trick to feel a bit happier – look forward to something!) this Christmas. A skumtomte is a Santa-shaped marshmallow which virtually all Swedes, by tradition, eat during the holidays (it’s the best-selling candy by far). Personally, I prefer eating them year-round, which is so strange to most Swedes that I’m infamous for it (ask around and you’ll see…) Eating a skumtomte outside of Christmas is bad behavior, I’m constantly told, it ruins Christmas. Which makes me enjoy eating them even more (last year I ate them with a knife and fork at Midsummer’s dinner while everyone else was having the traditional herring, oh the joy!) While I do hope you’ll give the skumtomte a try, it doesn’t really matter what you eat or do, as long as it’s an indulgence that makes you happy. Because indulging just a bit in ”bad behavior” every now and then does make you a little happier, on average, according to studies. It gives you a tiny feeling of control and freedom, which I believe is needed now more than ever when we’re all prisoners of the virus. Be kind to yourself, there’s no use regretting that you cannot be a ”good girl/boy/person” and go about with all the plans you made and live up to all your and others’ expectations, when it’s not up to you right now. Have a skumtomte and give yourself a break.
If, by any chance, there’s any downtime between the eye contacts, smiling, reconnecting, learning, exercising, habituating and indulging, allow yourself to look forward to the ”new normal” everybody’s talking about. It won’t be the same normal as before the virus, it will be a new normal, a better normal. You will be a better version of yourself, obviously, with all the new friends you made, the machine learning and creativity classes you have taken, the broccoli you have eaten, and so forth. But I firmly believe that the world will be a better version of itself, too. We will take the great things we have – each other and the capabilities to connect, our health and welfare – less for granted. We will learn from this massive natural experiment and take better care of our planet, now that we have proof that the climate can actually be greatly improved in short time with radical intervention. I even believe that the horrific blow to the economy will turn out to be a good thing in the long run; with less-business-as-usual to go back to comes more opportunity to start new businesses, take in new people, try out new forms of freelancing and craft a multitude of new pathways in society.
The world may seem like a very scary horror movie right now, but you’re not watching it alone. We’re all in it together. And I’ve seen enough movies in my teens to feel safe that there will eventually be a happy ending to the horror.
Image credit: https://micaeldahlen.com/
About Micael Dahlen
Micael Dahlen is professor at the Stockholm School of Economics. In his academic career, he rose rapidly to take up a leading position in the field of consumer behavior, creativity, and marketing. Dahlen has been ranked number 10 in the world among researchers in his field and was nominated for the Business Professor of the Year Award by The Economist’s Intelligence Unit. Professor Dahlen has written books on diverse topics such as marketing, happiness, serial killers (it’s true), sex, and social media. His books are published in Europe, in Asia and in the United States.
Last updated 2020/05/28