Question: What has been the most influential piece of research you have either conducted it taken part in and why?

Stephen Baillargeon answered on 15 Jun 2018:

The most influential piece of research I’ve done has been on self-compassion and motivation. I analyzed all the studies that had collected data on both to see how the two things relate and the results were somewhat unexpected. Since self-compassion is basically the tendency to accept yourself and treat yourself with kindness no matter what, a lot of people would expect that it would make you less motivated to improve yourself, but basically all the research done on the topic concludes the opposite. This was great news to me, since I had previously believed that self-compassion would lead to happiness and laziness and high self esteem would lead to happiness and narcissism. It would be pretty rough to have to chose between narcissism and laziness. This means that you should always be kind to yourself, even when you fail. People are worth something no matter what.

The piece of research that’s influenced me the most has probably been a series of studies that looked at something called the Hedonic Treadmill. Basically, when something makes us happy, like a new job, a new car, or even winning the lottery, people do tend to be happier, but usually just for about three months. It made it seem like no matter how well your life goes, you’re still not going to be much happier than you are now. Before I read these studies, I was trying to get a good job, and even though I wasn’t always all that happy, I always felt like I’d be happy once whatever the next good thing is. Graduation, getting a job, getting married, whatever. It completely made me rethink the way I was living my life, and I started working toward things that would actually lead me to live a happy life. I’ll post a link to a video I made that explains all the things I’ve read since then, trying to figure out what you can do to actually be happy. This stuff has really motivated me to help other people as well. My family and friends are still working toward things they think will make them happy, and I want to help them figure out what will actually do that.