For a happier life, we must balance two old psychological needs

Personal autonomy is abundant in the modern world. As a result, many of us get what we want but not what we need

Most of us know people who struggle to be happy despite having it all. I remember visiting my friend Steve after he struck it rich, and being blown away by his cushy existence. As I wandered through his extraordinary home, I told him that his life was over the top. Steve admitted that it seemed that way but then explained to me – with a straight face – that it really wasn’t. While I nibbled on his caviar and brie, I learned that the cook didn’t get along with the maid, he and his wife couldn’t agree on where to go on their next vacation, his daughter was waitlisted at the fancy kindergarten, and the list went on. By the time he finished, I felt so sorry for him that I offered to trade places, if only to sort out this vexing cook/maid problem.

At the time, I marvelled at Steve’s inability to see his own good fortune but, later, as I was reading Frank Marlowe’s wonderful book The Hadza: Hunter-Gatherers of Tanzania (2010), it occurred to me that I’m just like Steve. And so are you. Anthropological data suggest that we’re no happier (and possibly a lot less happy) than the remaining hunter-gatherers, who eke out a living much like our distant ancestors did. The comforts, safety and ease of modern existence make most of us the equivalent of multimillionaires by comparison with them, but our hunter-gatherer ancestors were probably happier than we are. How could that be?

There’s more than one answer to this question, but an important part of the story lies deep in our history. Based on evolutionary theory and psychological research, I have come to believe that human evolution has led to a pair of competing psychological needs that must be balanced in order for individuals to experience lasting happiness. These needs reflect two key goals our distant ancestors had to achieve: to bond with others for their mutual protection, and to develop personal skills to make them valuable to their group and potential mates. In service of these goals, our ancestors evolved two corresponding needs that still drive us today: from childhood through to old age, humans have a need for connection and a need for autonomy.

In developments that I recount in my book The Social Leap (2018), after local climate events forced our ancestors out of the trees 6 million years ago, they eventually banded together on the savannah for safety. Their increased cooperation and sociality placed us on a new evolutionary trajectory, which ensured that our most fundamental psychological need was for connection. By connection, I mean cooperating, forming social bonds, establishing long-term romantic relationships, and attaching oneself to a group.

When we bask in the camaraderie of old friends, we’re feeling the product of 6 million years of evolution

The need for connection played a central role in human evolution, as it enabled us to cooperate to solve problems that we were too small, weak or ignorant to solve on our own. Hunter-gatherers who couldn’t see the need for connection soon became lion chow. As a result, their tendency to go it alone was largely removed from the gene pool, and their remains served as a vivid reminder to the folks back home that survival requires connection. Genes pushed our ancestors to connect, their cultural rules demanded connection, parental socialisation reinforced the message, and daily life reminded them that they couldn’t live without it.

Connection was a matter of life or death then, and it remains critical now. Some forms of connection are new (social media), others are as old as the species itself (having a meal with friends), but whether you’re an introvert or extravert, connection is fundamental to life satisfaction. When we work together, offer or seek advice, attend a party, sit side by side with a friend while studying or watching a movie, or even smile when we meet the eye of a stranger, we feel the imperative of connection. When we bask in the comfort and camaraderie of old friends, we’re feeling the product of 6 million years of evolution.

At the same time, the need for connection was supplemented by a need for autonomy. By autonomy I mean self-governance, choosing a path based on your own needs, preferences or skills, and making independent decisions. Connection makes humans effective in their struggles against predators and a harsh environment, but autonomy allows a person to increase their usefulness to others. How does autonomy serve this role? By motivating us to pursue domains in which we have the best prospects.

Humans are unique in the extent of our capacity to envision the future. One of the most important tasks our large brain allows us to do is to imagine what might happen later today, tomorrow or next year, and then prepare for it. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of our preparations is when we change ourselves – when one decides what sort of person one needs to be in the imagined future and then sets about becoming that person.

The capacity to transform one’s actual self into an aspirational self is a large part of the reason we evolved a need for autonomy. From early childhood, a person’s sense of self becomes focused on personal attributes that seem to have the best chance of leading to success. Domains in which one stands out in a positive way often become central aspects of one’s self-definition. When these abilities become central to someone’s self-concept, they start to occupy the person’s mind, they become more fun and interesting, and one is likely to exercise them whenever possible. It is this dedication to one’s craft, born of autonomy and the desire to shape one’s own destiny, that motivates people to put in the hard work necessary to develop their talents.

While forming social bonds with others satisfies the need for connection, it can also constrain a person’s choices by requiring them to consider the consequences of their actions for others. If those constraints are strict, they threaten autonomy. In contrast, prioritising one’s own goals and preferences without any regard for the needs and desires of others would maximise autonomy, but make one unpalatable as a relationship partner or group member.

Connection used to be more of a necessity, and autonomy more of a luxury

So, while connection and autonomy both make us happy, they must be balanced against each other. Many of us today have shifted to lifestyles that emphasise autonomy and downplay social obligations and, in doing so, we have unwittingly sacrificed the connections that keep our life in balance. Examples of this can be seen in the growing tendency of Americans to live alone, and in reports of people having fewer close friends. Autonomy without sufficient connection – the dynamic that characterises modern society – creates what I call sad success stories: people whose achievements feel hollow and unsatisfying because they don’t have a tight network of friends to share them with.

Why this modern emphasis on autonomy? Connection used to be more of a necessity, and autonomy more of a luxury. In principle, individuals had an opportunity for autonomy every time the group made a decision they didn’t like but, in reality, people couldn’t just do their own thing. When it came time to break camp, if everyone else wanted to go north and you wanted to go south, you would have almost always gone north because it was too dangerous to strike out on your own. Life for our hunter-gatherer ancestors was necessarily filled with compromise.

In our modern world, opportunities for autonomy are like fat, salt and sugar – we evolved to crave them when they were rare but now they’re ubiquitous. Increasing wealth, urbanisation and education, along with dramatic increases in the types of occupations and entertainment a person can choose from, mean that people today not only have choices that our ancestors couldn’t dream of, we also no longer depend on close connections for survival the way we once did. As a result, I argue, the evolved tendency to seek autonomy when one has the chance has become a form of miswanting that has seriously disrupted the balance between these two needs.

Where once people were physically fit and highly connected because they spent their lives hungry and threatened, now many of us are out of shape and highly autonomous because we live in comfort and safety. Just because the modern world allows us to live a certain way doesn’t mean it makes us happy. We may get what we want when we prioritise autonomy, but not what we need.

How do we rebalance? The key is to incorporate connection into our lives in ways that induce the least friction. I started doing this myself with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s been easy to maintain, because my new protocol is no harder than my old one and a lot more fun. I simply looked at all my activities and, for each one that was conducted alone, I asked myself how I might make it more social. By way of example, my sister and I both like to do the New York Times crossword puzzles, so we started doing them together even though she lives halfway around the globe. She calls once she’s made her morning coffee, Thursday through Sunday, I put in my earbuds, and we chitchat as we do the puzzle together. I love my sister dearly, but we used to talk only a few times a month because she lives so far away and we’re both so busy. The beauty of our joint-puzzle party is that it doesn’t require any additional time; we do something together that we used to do alone.

A change like this might be easy to make, but that doesn’t mean it will endure. So you have to make your new routine habitual. If you need to plan every time you want to socialise, you’ll find that you only occasionally spend your free time with others. But if you make connecting a habit, it takes no more effort than brushing your teeth. The best way to establish new habits is to form implementation intentions. By this I mean creating plans that are contingent on something else happening, such as: ‘When my morning coffee is ready, I’ll call my brother to do the crossword.’ Or: ‘When I’m finished eating dinner, I’ll call my old high-school friend so we can chat on the phone as we both clean up the dishes.’

Of course, there are many ways to solve the aloneness problem. For example, most of us have lifestyle goals we’re struggling to achieve. They might be exercise goals like going for a twice-weekly run, they might be tidiness goals like picking up the toddler’s toys every afternoon, or they might be self-improvement goals like taking an online course or learning to play an instrument. These are ideal activities to do with others, in person or while chatting on the phone, because friends with the same interests help encourage you to stick with it when you might otherwise give up. By blending your connection goals with your lifestyle goals, you can increase the chance that you’ll achieve both – fulfilling autonomy and connection needs at the same time.

These fixes might not seem like much, but that’s the whole point. They’re small changes in your daily existence that ramp up connections with virtually no added effort or burden. Those are the changes that stick.