Learning Cooperation – How Cooperation Makes You Happier

Hey, it’s Paul Krismer, your happiness expert, and I’m coming to you from the Napa Valley River. We’re just in a beautiful spot in the world. It’s been great. Yeah, we’re drinking a little wine and eating good food, and I’m out kayaking today. I’m kayaking on a tandem kayak, so that’s a two-person kayak. It just fundamentally requires a lot of cooperation. My cameraman, who also happens to be my son and he’s traveling here with me, we’ve had to learn to work together, to cooperate, to accomplish what we want to accomplish, and that is moving downriver and through the wind and managing the curves just right. Okay, the truth is, kayaking is pretty easy, but still, we’re better at it when we’re cooperating. There’s lots of science about how it is that people can cooperate better. Just this morning, we were speaking to a business audience of salespeople who are concerned about how their teams work together to accomplish big high-end sales as a team. So this video is all about how to cooperate and be happy. Stay tuned.

As a coach, public speaker, and best-selling author, I teach topics just like this one all around the world. So stay tuned, and I’ll give you practical tools that you can use to make both yourself and those around you both happier and more successful. There’s been a number of experiments to see how it is that we get people to work well together. Most of the experiments have something to do with where, if in an undisclosed way, people can take advantage of the others, how will people volunteer themselves? In these contests or these setup games and research things, people can be selfish and try to get what they can for themselves, and yet there’s bigger rewards that built into the game if the people who are participating cooperate together. When there’s no talking, and people can’t see what the others are doing, there tends to be more selfishness. Then when there’s signaling from other people by the way the game is playing out showing some people are being very cooperative, we tend to see the cooperation of other players go up as well.

But even more clearly is when there is the allowance for conversation. Some researchers now are really quite clear, and I’ll put a link to the article below, researchers are really quite clear that certain behaviors show up much more readily when certain kinds of conversations are taking place. Warmth and humor would be one thing. People are just more willing to give of themselves when the conversation has warmth and humor. But also explicitness of intent. If people say something kind of cagey like, “Well, if other people cooperate, I’d be willing to cooperate too,” which puts our antenna up and we’re reluctant to cooperate. But if people say straight up, “Hey, the way I’m going to play this game is I’m going to give maximally to the group,” then other people will hear that explicit commitment and they’re much more likely to cooperate themselves.

And if there’s dialogue that’s about working as a group. You know, somebody says, “Hey, we’re all in this together.” There’s a sense of belonging, we’re now becoming a team. And then finally, if people say in an explicit way, “Look, I’m going to give my very best because we’re all in this together. What are you willing to do as well?” And ask explicitly, in no uncertain terms, what other people are going to contribute, that very question brings people’s most virtuous, volunteering nature forward, and they’ll cooperate more. So I think on the way back here, I’m going to say, “Hey Paul, we can’t get here without each of us getting in the boat together. I’m going to put in my best effort as we go through the wind on the way back. And what are you willing to do?” And my hunch is, in fact, I know what he’s going to say, “I want a workout,” and he’s going to be working much harder than I am. But that’s the nature of cooperation, straightforward, simple science.

And so much of positive psychology has these kinds of basic, very intuitive, sort of Sunday schoolish maxims about how to feel good, how to be cooperative, do the right thing, help each other out, be friendly, warm, kind. We get benefits in our own lives, and I think the science just demonstrates it over and over and over again. Hey, if you like this kind of content, click the like button, share with your friends and family, and your HR director. And from the Napa Valley, I know it looks like I’m not working very hard at all, I’m your happiness expert. We’ll see you next week. Bye for now.