Pushkin.
I study mind reading for a living I study how we make inferences about each other's thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and mostly what I'm interested in is how we screw that up and misunderstand each other so often.
Nick Epley is a professor of social psychology at the University of Chicago. His research shows that we often avoid connecting with other people because we mistakenly believe they don't want to engage with us.
I remember thinking, man, if that's something we're all doing, If I'm consistently underestimating you know how things will go if I reach out to engage with somebody, I could have lots of moments that are and realizing this would be life changing.
On today's show, why the happiness we're after maybe hiding in the conversations we avoid. I'm Maya Schunker, a scientist who studies human behavior, and this is a slight change of plans, a show about who we are and who we become in the face of a big change. Cocktail parties give me the he begbis. The thought of standing in a room with a bunch of strangers is anxiety producing.
Maybe it's because small talk kind of sucks, or because I'm worried I'll intrude on someone else's great conversation, or because I'm just not sure what I'll have to say. Nick says we often avoid conversations and social settings because we're worried they'll go badly, but the research shows they actually go way better than we predict. Means we're missing out on a lot of really positive connections, whether it's in an elevator or in line at a coffee shop,
and those connections can enrich our lives. Nick found inspiration for this research on his way to work one morning.
This particular morning, I was writing a chapter from my first book where I was describing how we're uniquely social agents with brains that are equipped for connecting with the minds of others, made happier and healthier by connecting with other people. And I had sort of this Eureka moment where I looked around the train and I kind of noticed with fresh eyes that we were all sitting there hip to hip, not saying an absolute word to each other.
You could have heard a pin drop. I mean, all highly social animals happier and healthier connecting with other people. And then there we all were ignoring each other, and that just seemed weird. It struck me as bizarre. And you know, again, it's not like I hadn't noticed this thing before, but I noticed it with like a scientist lens that morning, and it seemed like a weird paradox. So that morning, a woman had sat down next to me. She was I would have guessed fifty ish years old.
I was probably about thirty five at the time. She was dressed for work very professionally, and she had just this killer red hat. And I decided I was going to try to I was just going to do something different this morning and just see how it went. So I kind of got up some courage because nobody was speaking, and I turned to her and I started with high I'm Nick and then I said I love your hat. I have one just like it, which is not a is not a killer opening line, like it is not
it is not you know, Hall of Fame material. But she she kind of lit up, like you know, you had I paid attention to somebody, she had been seen and somebody had taken interest in her. She just turned to me with a big smile and we kind of laughed with each other, and then things just kind of started flowing in the conversation. It was it was quite easy. I kind of imagined I wouldn't have a whole lot in common with her, but then once we started talking, we found all kinds of things we had in common.
And you know, it was not this's not an earth shattering conversation. But I remember very distinctly when I when I got up to leave, she stopped me and she said, thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me, And there was a level of sincerity. She like had her hand on my wrist as I was leaving, and I remember feeling not just that that was good, it was surprisingly good. And there was a gap between the way I had imagined that conversation would go and
how that conversation actually went. And I remember very distinctly getting off the train and thinking, Man, if that's something we're all doing, if I'm consistently underestimating, you know, how things will go. If I reach out to engage with somebody, I could have lots of moments that are better. And realizing this would would like be life changing. You know, as researchers, that's an anecdote, whatever it means nothing, it's
an anecdote. One day point, but it got me thinking we could do an experiment on this.
Okay, So to summarize, you left that interaction with a woman thinking, relative to my expectations, this conversation went so much better.
Yeah.
Then you had a secondary thought on the wisdom piece, which is, well, we could all recognize that there's this disparity between how we think these conversations will unfold and how they actually do unfold. We would all be better off given that we are inherently social creatures.
Yeah.
Tell me about the experiment that you did run and what you were hoping to validate from that.
Yeah. So, my collaborator, Juliana Schroeder and I she was a PhD student at the time, we went out into the field the test that's just on the trains. We just went right back to the train that I ride every day, and our first experiment, we recruited people and we randomly assigned them to try one of three things on the train that morning. We asked them to either keep to themselves in solitude, just focus on their dayhead, don't engage anybody in conversation. In the control condition, which
is just do whatever you normally do. They could talk, but overwhelmingly they do not. And then in the third condition, we asked people to try to have a conversation with a person who sits down next to them, try to connect with them, and we gave them a five dollars Starbucks gift card, which is the biggest incentive that you can possibly give somebody in the morning. They'll do anything for coffee in the morning. And then we gave them
an envelope with the survey inside it. They opened it up at the end of their commute and they told us how their commute went, how pleasant it was compared to no more, how happy they felt, how sad they felt, and also how productive they were on the commute that morning.
And what we found was that people actually reported having a better commute in the connection condition than they did in the solitude condition, and the control was in the middle, and so people actually had the best commute when they were being social and having a conversation with somebody. And that's kind of puzzling because nobody doesn't, yeah, right. And so to test the other part of this potential equation, we recruited another sample of commuters from the Homewo train station,
and instead of actually having them do these things. We had them predict how they would feel if they did these things, and there people's expectations were precisely the opposite of what the actual experiences that we observed were. So they believed, they predicted they would have the most pleasant commute if they just kept to themselves in solitude or did whatever they normally did, and would had the least
pleasant commute if they connected with a stranger. And so you can kind of now make sense of a behavior on the train. Highly social creatures made happier and healthier by connecting to each other. Won't do it, will choose not to talk if they think it's going to be terrible. So people were following their expectations. It's just their expectations were wrong.
Yeah, My favorite findings in social psychology are, of course, those where they reveal that we mispredict things right. We think an experience is going to be a certain way, and turns out we tend to get it wrong. In your books, you write about several of the reasons why we don't always act in our social best interests. So to lay the groundwork here, it is highly evolutionarily advantageous
for us to engage socially with others. In many ways, our survival is a species required that we be very socially attuned to other people and their needs and our membership in those groups. When we don't know how someone will react, we tend to fill in that gap, that lack of knowledge with a range of pessimistic possibilities that are more pessimistic than what is likely to happen.
That's correct, And what that really highlights is overlooking a critical feature in social interaction, and that is reciprocity and responsiveness. If I smile at you, maya gonna likely smile back at me. I say hi to you, you say hi
back to me. But people's expectations don't really seem to appreciate the power of that reciprocity, So they imagine that like, anything is possible, right I could I could try to have this conversation with you, and you could you know, punch me in the face, or you know, throw me off the train. What they imagine this crazy very wide range anything is possible. But in a world where social interaction is reciprocal, the actual outcomes are constrained.
It's not as uncertain as we think.
No, no, it's not. In fact, mostly it turns out, when you reach out to another person in a positive way, it just dramatically increases the odds that they'll reach back to you in a positive way too. There's just there's much less range than people imagine because we don't appreciate the power of reciprocity to constrain the range of outcomes.
Yeah, another barrier you articulate concerns mismatched perspectives. So you say people tend to evaluate themselves based on a different and often harsher standard than we might judge others. Talking about how that comes into play here, I've.
Been interested in these mismatched perspectives for my entire career. It's right at the center of social cognition. How thinking people think about other thinking people is you got two minds, right, two minds with eyes and experiences and perspectives that can differ, And we don't always appreciate when our own perspective is unique. We tend to evaluate ourselves in terms of our competency. How capable are we? How effective are we? You sit down to a conversation, you think, what on earth am
I going to say? Can I right? Can I can I do this? What do we have in common to talk about anything I don't know, So we're focused on our competency. Other people, though, tend to be focused more on our warmth. Are you friendly? Are you kind? Are you trustworthy? Are you someone I can approach you know and be around? Or are you a scary person I should try to avoid? Yeah, And that's the thing other people first and foremost care about us is are we
decent people? But if I'm focused on my competency, I'm going to be able to carry on this conversation. I'm just likely to be judging myself more harshly, evaluating this interaction from a more pessimistic standard than is warranted, because you're just viewing it through through a different lens than I am.
We had Vanessa Bonds on the show. We talked about the likability gap, which refers to the idea that we routinely underestimate how likable we are in the eyes of others. And do you think this is partly responsible for that likability gap, that we're judging ourselves along the competency dimension versus the warmth one.
I think very much it could be. This has not been tested directly, but it would not surprise me that where they find. This liking gap is typically after an interaction. I just think you like me less afterwards than you actually do. You look back over the conversation, you.
Think, oh, dang, I got this said that awkward?
Yeah, but would I say that in such an insecure way?
Yeah, right, you're right, Like.
I don't actually have the same red hat. Does you know it was a joke?
That's right, that's right. Yeah. I mean every talk I've ever given, I go. But if I actually look at it, it's painful to do that. Right, You just think, oh my gosh, that is the worst. Look at all these lines I got wrong. Other people just don't care as much.
Yeah, yeah, just don't care as much, right, Yeah, I mean, I totally tracks of my experience. I almost exclusively evaluate people based on warmth when I'm out in the world. Like, I don't think I've ever thought this person lacks conversational competency. Therefore I'm going to be rude to them or ignore that. I mean, that just feels preposterous. But I'm extremely moved
by signals of warmth. Right if there's a big smile on their face, if you know they greet you with tenderness or kindness that goes such a long way.
Yeah, sometimes I struggle with this a little bit, Like I sometimes I want a little more competency judgment. Like when I ask my kids, how are your teachers? Inevitably they tell me if they're nice or not. They don't tell me, well, you know, do they get the algebra right?
Right?
Yes?
You know what's interesting is, even if we do think that people are indexing on our competency right, we should remind ourselves that, let's say we're not the perfect conversationalist.
Let's say we get a joke wrong.
If people can read our good intent, they will adjust and adapt and often jumped in.
To rescue you.
I was just this weekend at my sister's wedding, So I'm meeting the groom side of the family, and you just get so tired at a certain point of meeting new people, and so I was losing my bearings and I just had this incredibly awkward exchange in the elevator with Chris, my brother in law's aunt, right, because she's like, yeah, I'm part of that side of the family, and for some reason, Nick, I just like I couldn't remember what she was. I was like that side, mother's side, father.
So I just start I just start shooting darts in the dark. I was like, I don't know what she means extended side of the family, my side of the family. So I'm like gassing error. And then she jumps in, right, She's rescuing me. She's like and by that I meant Maya who is currently cognitively impaired from being socially over stimulated. I meant his mother's side of the family. And so it was just a nice reminder people will help you out a little bit when you're sinking.
Yes, When I was in graduate school, this was years ago at Cornell, one of the projects we worked on found that people fail to appreciate how much others can empathize with him when they do something somewhat embarrassing or they struggle. And this is very much what you're talking about.
People thought they were being judged more harshly when they did something embarrassing when they actually were because other people could recognize what it was like to be in that state and cut you some slack as a result.
And isn't there even additional research showing that showing a bit of that vulnerability is an excellent way to build trust and break down barriers and actually facilitated deeper connection. Like when I flugved and said something really silly or embarrassing or kind of put my foot in my mouth. I don't know, it breaks the ice and at least has led historically to a slightly more meaningful conversation because it's like, all right, well, we got to break through
the pleasantries now because I've already screwed up. Yeah, I've already screwed up the dynamic and all the you know, the formalities of this conversation.
I think that's one big thing that happens when we ask people to have deep and meaningful conversations with somebody else is that they they do open themselves up. They make themselves vulnerable in the sense that they're revealing something meaningful about themselves to somebody else and in so doing or trusting the other person. And when you signal that you trust somebody else, reciprocity yes, right, leads them to trust you a little more in return to.
Yeah, okay, So just to take a step back, you've shared with us so far that we had these mispredictions about how social interactions will unfold. They tend to be far better than our imaginations lead us to believe they will be. What are the costs to carrying around these misbeliefs? Why does it matter so much that we're getting this wrong?
I think the cost is we choose to avoid opportunities to connect with other people that would make our lives and the lives we might reach out to better better in two senses. One is in terms of our well being, our happiness. One thing that psychologists have learned, which I think is really really important, is that happiness is really a function of the frequency with which we experience positive
moments and events, not so much the intensity of them. Right, So you know that that amazing trip you took to the wedding to meet folks, Right, you come back on Monday and traffic is bad, and you're now back right that it's traffic sucks, and right back to where it's
raining and cold, Yes, and it doesn't linger right. And and so I like to think of happiness like a leaky time that you know, you've got to keep it pumped up, right, And and so moments really matter, And if we're overly pessimistic about how others will respond, we'll just miss moments to kind of keep our tire filled up.
How do we actually change our tendencies to mispredict, because like most things, the mere fact of just knowing that we mispredict isn't enough to correct the problem.
So there's a phrase I try to keep in mind, which is to recognize easy opportunities routinely. And each of those pieces is important, I think.
Okay, recognize easy opportunities routinely. Okay, let's start with recognize.
So recognize, I think is really important because there are lots of opportunities for social interaction you don't even notice. Correct, You've just walked by somebody and you didn't smile at them. Yep, right, I just I just went from the door of my building up to my office on the fourth floor, and I didn't say hi to a soul, right because I just wasn't even thinking about them. And so I think recognizing when it is you are choosing, even not really
deliberately or consciously, you're choosing to avoid other people. You're making the choice to hold back. I think that's the first step. And you'll once you start taking an interest in other people, you'll start seeing a lot of opportunities
that you maybe hadn't even noticed before. One thing we that I kind of like to advise people in this regard is to do a choice audit, which is to to go back the day before and think about times where you made the choice to hold back and avoid interacting with somebody, where in this hour you could have
but you didn't reach out. You didn't say hi to the barista at the Starbucks, or you didn't talk to your uber driver just to see how they were doing, or you didn't call an old friend when you when you could.
This is start you feel personal. Okay, sorry, you're describing my yesterday.
I'm not. I'm not that kind of psychologist mile.
Okay I was with my post wedding stupor Okay.
All right, all right, but you might you might be inspired. You know what I think about, Maybe I could, you know, another day, try to do something, try to make those choices att different.
And I love the.
Choice on it because you're right, it does illuminate these moments that, like you said, it wasn't like we made. If let's say you're in a bad mood, right, yeah, totally fine to make the deliberate choice to not engage with people, But the moments you're pointing out are the ones in which the lack of awareness kind of the lack of consciousness is what led us to not engage,
not anything more deliberate than that. And it's helpful for us to notice those moments because those are the ones we can actually do something about it exactly would want to do something about, or.
Those moments where you avoided somebody because you thought this was going to go poorly. Yes, right, those are the ones that I would have red flags about that really stick in my mind. Is ah, that's probably one worth testing?
Yes, yes, yes, So that's.
The recognized part easy. If you want people to do stuff, you make it easy. And that's where I think, like, if you go over your choice audit for the day before, some of those conversations are going to be going to be hard for you to have. You're just not in the mood at the end of the day to have a conversation whenever you're exhausted. Fine, fine, talk on your morning commute or make a call. Then right, pick pick
the easy ones and start there. When it comes to things like acts of kindness, Right, there's some that are really hard. Those are gonna be challenging, but the easy ones go along ways too. Sometimes doing the thing that we might want to do to lift this up is
hard because we don't have stuff on hand. So, for instance, in my office at work, I've got a stack of thank you notes sitting right on the right on the file cabinet next to my dresser, so that when I have a moment of gratitude for somebody, I've got a letter right there boom, I can fill it out off a.
Ghost yeah, or or an another one that I was just thinking of that I would love to have easy to go to questions that aren't in the realm of platitudes and small talk, which is anathematic for me. Like that's one of the reasons I don't initiate the conversation with the stranger person because I hate small talk. It's so it's so not fun for me. But if we could jump in and talk about something who's super interesting right after that, I'd be much more game.
Can I change your life with one question?
Please?
So the one I love to lead with to get out of the small talk. I don't even need a second question. I just did the first thing. Oh dang it, I just asked people, can you tell me your story. I love that you sit down with somebody you ask them, you know, tell me what your story. Yeah, And people will tell you things you'd be you would just be stunned by.
Yeah.
One of the other big findings you talk about in your book is that people really crave deep conversation. They want to get past the superficial. Correct And what often happens when I ask my nieces or nephews how is your day?
How school going good? How are your teachers good? But I was.
Asking my nephew, Eddie, you could have any superpower, like, what would it be? And I said, do you believe in God? And He's like sometimes, And the reason it sometimes is if I were to ask God to throw ten thousand dollars on me right now at this wedding, it's not going to happen.
He's like, let me try it right now.
He's a true empiricist, you know, we ask right, no, no, no cash flowing from the ceiling. And so you do just get at someone's heart. Depending on you know the depth of the question you ask, you.
Can And that's also a place where you recognize opportunity you have in a conversation. Maya, you said you don't like small talk. Yeah, who's responsible for that?
Need you are to some expense?
Right?
You can?
Yeah?
We can all Instead of asking you know, what do you do? Yeah, we can ask why do you do that?
Yeah?
We think other people don't want to have these conversations. That's what we find is a big barrier that other people aren't going to care about this that much. They don't really want to do this. This is also why people are reluctant to talk to strangers. They think other people aren't interested, and we're just wrong about that. If you knew that other people wanted to have the same kind of meaningful conversations that you did, you would totally
feel empowered to ask someone what's your story? Maryah?
Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, right, tell me right, you know, tell me what's your dream job and are you know, are you in it now or do you have another one? Or you know, tell me about somebody you love? Right, Like, I don't feel I don't feel awkward anymore asking people those kinds of things, and then they'll ask me in return. And once you recognize that other people often not always, I mean, a question like this invites somebody into a conversation.
It doesn't demand it. Yeah, it invites them and if they are open, which I think you'll often find they are, you'll just have a lot better conversations and you can take you can take charge over that to some extent.
Okay, So that was we covered recognize and easy. What about opportunities?
Yep, when we think about what an event entails, we tend to think about it a little too narrowly. Psychologists sometimes refer to this as as affordances. Right, what an what an experience or what a what an activity affords? So Bradam wall and down to the faculty lounge to get a cup of coffee. That activity is for going to get coffee. But if I construe it too narrowly, I miss well, I could also say Hi, it's my colleague down the hall and take them with me for
a little conversation to get coffee too. I could expand that, yes, and see more opportunity, more affordances in an activity that I might than I might otherwise.
One thing that was so interesting to me in reading your book is, on the one hand, we're talking about this loneliness epidemic and that feelings of disconnection are say at an all time high as things like weekly church services and community gatherings and other sorts of social rituals
start to decline. On the other hand, we also have the means to be hyper connected, to be in constant conversation with our significant others, with our kids, with our best friends through texting, messaging, phone calls, FaceTime.
What have you.
And so how should I kind of reconcile these two truths about the world in terms of my view of where we stand right now as a society connectedness wise.
I think maybe the way to think about is that some interactions are like diet soda. They seem good, yeah right, it seems like that's the real thing, yep, But it's not really given us the real thing, okay, Right, So when my wife sends me a heart emojip, that feels nice, it's not a hug and a kiss, right right. When I see my neighbors on social media, that's good, but
it's not having cookies with them after church. And what's I think also interesting is that it seems like diet soda too, in the sense that people's expectations don't really fully appreciate the difference across these media how you interact turns out to have a meaningful effect on how connected you feel. But when we look at people's expectations, yeah, they tend to treat these different kinds of media, some that might be really high in terms of the connection
they create and some lower. They treat them as similarly and are wrong about that.
After the break, what to do when a conversation goes poorly? We'll be back in a moment with a slight change of plans. I'm putting myself in the shoes of a listener and I am one of these people. How do you rebound from a conversation that goes poorly so that
you don't over index on it. So let's say I'm like, okay, taking Nick Efley's advice, and I try to have a conversation tomorrow, say on the train, and someone gives me kind of like the you know, side eye, cold shoulder whatever, and I feel a sense of rejection, let's say, or just this person's like, why the hell are you talking to me?
Do this is super weird. I'm trying to do my thing.
How do we not let that be the thing that dictates all future non interactions or interactions?
Well, so I think there I think there are two things to say to this, both of which are somewhat encouraging.
Okay.
One is, so I cover the story of of jia Jiang in my book. He tried to make himself dull to rejection by getting rejected one hundred times in a row. Yeah, he was so. He he was just going to ask one hundred ludicrous requests of people over a period one hundred days to get rejected a one hundred times and develop all this thick skin. And what he found? What's that number? One? People actually didn't reject him all that much.
So over these hundred days he was actually we found when we analyzed the videos that he posted, we found that he was actually rejected less often than these ludicrous requests were accepted.
Interesting.
And second, even when he was rejected, it wasn't that bad. So people will let you down more easily than you might imagine. So there's that, okay, But then the other thing, imagine that they don't imagine that you do have this disaster, one that goes really poorly. I do think that could stick in your stick, could stick in your mind. I think the only way to think about that is to recognize that you're you think about yourself as an experimentalist. You're running an experiment.
Depersonalize it as much as you can, right, the personal Yeah, at least in the beginning.
Exactly right. And you know, researchers find you know that we're we're pretty good at rationalizing stuff. So I think you'll be able to do this. Right. Oh, that guy was just a jerk. She you know, she was just having a bad day. But recognize that that was that was a one swing and a miss.
Yeah.
Try again, Yeah, and try again and try again. Right, just do it ten times and see how it goes most of the time. I go, well, and that's how you overcome those those losses. Is you pick up some you keep trying to pick up some gains too.
Okay, second question I have is how does this advice intersect with personality type like introversion extraversion? And are there some people for whom those interactions just aren't worth the negative cloud of whatever that comes along with it.
So look, I want to be a little careful with this because the because the realm of individual differences and variability is huge. Yes, right, so not everybody can carry on a conversation as easily as others, and that all is.
Very crul and people will enjoy it to varying degrees.
They they will, although there's they will and depending on the moment that you're in. It indexes though extraversion and introversion more weakly than you might imagine that it does. And I think this has been really surprising the psychologists, and it's really been a kind of an evolution I think in the way psychologists have thought have come to think about personality, at least when it comes to extraversion
and introversion, over the last fifty years. And really what you find is that extraversion and introversion really describes more about the choices you tend to make than how you experience choices once you have made them. I see, so extroverts and introverts in conversation, like in a dietic conversation, tend to enjoy it pretty similarly. There are not big differences between them, but there are big differences in how they think they'll enjoy them.
Okay, So one thing that's notable in your research is you find that it's already a pretty high magnitude gap between how much a person expects to like something and how much they actually do. What you're saying is the introvert might experience an even greater gap.
That's correct. Okay, that's correct. So, if anything, that's what we tend to find. And so I think the best way to think about extraversion and introversion is it's a habit that's true of all personality. Yeah, right, and you can think of it like extra size. Right. So you know, there's nothing wrong if you're not jogging daily or whatever,
that's fine, right, you got other things to do. But if you'd like to make yourself in better shape and you're not exercising now, well, the way you do that is you change your habits and you try to get a little more exercise. The same thing is true about well being. If you're kind of feeling in a funk and you know, you just you just would like a little more, you know, uplifting moments in your day, regardless
of whether you're an extrovert or an introvert. The way to do that is by reaching out and connecting with other people a little bit more often. Yeah, spending more time in the presence of other people. And that's that's a way to do it. To improve your social fitness.
Yeah, I know that.
I've had experiences where I thought something was going to be overall miserable, and then it wasn't. So, for example, my husband is much more extroverted than I am. I'm I'm extrovert presenting, but I'm actually much more introverted. I'm talking cocktail party, wedding environment.
Yep, yep, I'm with you.
So I I just struggle, I really struggle. And it is interesting. In a wedding environment, let's say, or a cocktail party, there is the expectation of chatter, and so I'm not actually worried that someone's going to receive me poorly. I don't think that's where the misprediction happens. It's more it just feels so effortful. Yeah, and I'm often tired, so I'm like, I don't want to put in the work.
This is hard. It feels like a hard thing, right.
It's a hard thing to build rapport with another human being who you've never met. It'll be easier with some people and harder with other people, but you don't know what you're getting into at the outset. So the psychic costs are great. And yet there have been many times where I've come home and thought, Wow, that was so much more fun than I thought, right, or I had a much better time than I thought, or it was worth the activation energy that was required. Why is it
that these memories don't stick? Like, why is it that the next time my husband wants to drag me to some social event, the memory of the positive things has, you know, disappeared, but the negative experiences I had with another person, those memories loom large. Yeah, So what kids, dude, help me out, help assistance.
This is a this is a nut we're trying to crack right now for ourselves in my lab. Okay, So there are some ways of connecting with other people that are really good, like what we're doing now, dialogue, Yes, it's really good. Cocktail parties crappy, totally totally crappy.
Oh great, Okay, so you're with me on that. What makes them suck.
Because you can't actually have a conversation with somebody.
Yes, And people are coming in and out, and there's an expectation you're supposed to move around the room, and I'm like, I just want to be in the corner with one person for a dedicated minimum twenty minutes for me to enjoy myself. See my face, I'm even anticipating being at the cockpit party and I'm driving it. Get me out of here.
People.
I am with you, I hear you. The other thing that happens is you get into you become a broadcast yeah rather than right, rather than in a dialogue. So it's like four or five people.
You're trying to like pull people in yeah.
Yeah, right, And now you're not talking about the last time you cried in front of another person or your hopes and dreams right now you're.
Talking about in front of them in the moment, because it's something like it.
Yes, right, exactly, And that is exhausting. Managing all of that is hard, and that's not high quality social interaction. It can be fun. You're around all the other people you love, and so it certainly can be fun. But anyway that that's one thing to just okay. So there's that, But there is the part about why don't we learn right? So my explanation that I gave to you earlier was that we missed the opportunities to learn right that you know, if I think it's going to be unpleasant, you know,
I won't do it again. But but then there are experiences like yours, which I've had two yes, and and it predicts that if you gave people the experiences, they would learn, and we find that they do learn.
Okay, So what.
We find so when this this is a new paper that stav A. Tear and I. She's a professor at the University Wisconsin Madison, a paper we just published where we thought, well, aha, look if we have people have the conversation, then they will learn. They'll update slowly because it's just one conversation. You know, you've had a thousand and these just one. But we did we found something we did not really expect. Immediately after having a conversation.
We asked people to predict how much will you enjoy having another conversation like with this this with the stranger two weeks from now? Right, Like, so, so your husband saying we just went to this party, Hey we got another one two weeks from now. Do you want to go? At that moment, you're likely to say, yeah, that'll be great. So after right after a conversation, what is right on your mind? Right? People think they they learn completely. You think the next one is going to be as good
as this last one? Yeah, sign me up. When are we not bringing you back? Two weeks later, it's as if the former conversation never happened, like.
And so we were backed baseline.
Exactly, you revert back to this baseline pessimism, just like as if you'd never had the conversation.
And fascinating.
And I have to say that this is a puzzle we don't have self. We have a little bit of a bit of it, I think figured out. When we ask people to look back and recall their conversation from two weeks ago, they recall it being a little less positive two weeks out than it was at the time. Interesting, So there's a little bit of memory decay, right, that was good. If it gets a little fuzzy, it's likely to deflate just towards some more modern estimate, and it
deflates a little bit. But even with that, people still think the next conversation is going to be worse than they recalled the last conversation being. And I do not have an explanation for that yet.
Okay, so after a really fun social experience for me, that's when my husband she should go home ready for the kill.
Like exactly, yeah, okay.
I got this contract for you, maya. Yeah, here's the d.
We're going to go to a wedding in June for my old friend from high school. Okay, I'm just gonna have to say yes to all of them.
I'm buying the tickets right now, exactly. That's what I'm going to do. Not fundable, exactly, that's it.
Okay.
Well, I'm glad to know that my experience is more universal of the for sure, this negativity around it not lasting.
Sure. So to really put this into practice, we have to feel these effects. You can't think your way into feeling different. You've got to go out and try the thing and feel it, and then you'll start to think differently about it. Yeah.
There's a quote in your book where you say, fearing the worst in others means never giving yourself the chance to learn what others are like at their best, which
I think is so beautifully said. One of the concepts that I've explored a lot actually in my book, the other side of change is moral beauty, and how moments in which we allow in other people's extraordinary actions or behaviors, whether it's their kindness or courage, or self sacrifice or resilience or fortitude, can crack open our imagination about what humans are capable of and what we're capable of, and
it just lifts your spirits to witness that. I mean, it's my favorite form of awe is all in the form of other people's behaviors. And I can think of many instances in which engaging with the stranger gave me that boost, that moral elevation, that warmth in my chest, fuzzy feeling, even just in the last six months, and it's sometimes as small as you know, we had a flight delay and the flight attendant started singing a song like don't Worry Happy or something like that.
It was so sweet.
We were all just like together as a group, kind of fanning together in this moment of light stress, or someone just being really kind to you, or like the barista knowing your coffee order and caring about you and not needing to be asked. Like in a world where we're doom scrolling and then we're turning on the TV and it's just every piece of news that gets through
the filter is more or less negative. It is really wonderful to ground yourself in everyday interactions that remind you that humans can be very good.
Right right. I think that's I think that's very profound. We have not studied that in our research, but almost every collaborator I have ever had has wanted to study that in some sort of way, because you definitely feel it. You have an interaction with a single person that goes really well, that's really powerful, which just kind of it's uplifting in a bigger sense, in the kind of you know, awe sense the Dack or Keltner.
Exactly like wonder vastness.
Yeah, yeah, And we don't just have to be on the receiving end of moral beauty. We can be moral beauty for someone else.
We can be that.
So many of us are feeling helpless, like how can we contribute in this dark world and during these dark times? And one way to do that is to exhibit the kinds of behaviors that can inspire someone else and can leave that lingering, lasting effect on them.
And one thing that I think is really interesting about this is we consistently find that when it comes to things like random acts of kindness for somebody, or sending somebody a compliment, or expressing gratitude, or being honest and helpful to somebody else, people underestimate the positive impact they
have on somebody else. This thing that seems small to you can be really really big to somebody else, because people tend to expect that another person's response to something you do for them will be commensurate with kind of the amount that you put into it. So if I do a little thing for you, right, I just compliment you on that. Yeah, it's just you know, it's a little thing, So there'll be a little response. Right, It'll give you a nice compliment on something. Right, it just
be a little thing. But people's response to those pro social acts tends to be highly insensitive to the magnitude of the act. And so what that means is that, like you're going to think about this in economist terms, the biggest turn on your investments are the small things. Keeping the eye out for the little things you can do for other people routinely. That just spreads a lot more joy than you might think you would. And that's something you can do a lot. You just got a
lot more power than you think you do. Yeah.
I love focusing on the outsized, disproportionate impact of these small behaviors.
And there's one other follow up question.
Because I have now got a social psychology expert with me, I want to ask you one question, wasn't there some study showing that our view of broader groups is always less positive than the immediate group in which we work. So, for example, let's say I work in a large organization.
I'll give favorable ratings for my team in terms of our culture and whatnot, But when it comes to the organization at large, I kind of other that and I say, oh, well, the group at large, you know, there's lots of dysfunction, and there's no culture, et cetera.
There is some complexity to this, but when you have a negative view of the group, have significantly more positive views of all of the individuals.
Within within it.
Okay, Because I was thinking, when it comes to our view of humanity, right, and how that moral elevation experience has such an outsized, awe inspiring impact on us, it's because, well, when I think about my smaller community, I'm like, oh, it's filled with great people, right, great loving people. But when I think about humanity at large, I'm like, oh gosh, there's so much negativity. There's so much darkness in that space.
When I meet the stranger in the coffee shop or on the train, or when I'm walking down the Street. In many ways, they're a stand in for humanity. They help me construct a more verritical representation of what all the other humans are like. That are just to blur in my brain, because I don't actually have any discrete examples of who they are what they might be like.
Maya, we should have kept you in academia, That's what we should have done. We should have kept you on the faculty somewhere, because this is can we think about ideas that we could test? We have not tested this particular thing. Do you generalize from the stranger to broader humanity or your view of larger groups more readily than you do from say, somebody that you know. Yeah, that strikes me as a terrific hypothesis and something that feels likely to be true as well.
Let me know what you find.
Yeah, terrible at the details. That's why I loved academia, sir.
Well, have you any acknowledgments for sure? Yes? Absolutely?
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If you liked this conversation, check out my interview with Vanessa Vaughn's on social influence and how to wield it. Wisely, we'll leave a link to the episode along with link to Nick's new book in the show notes, and don't forget to share this episode with a friend who might enjoy it. We'll be back in a week with another episode of A Slight Change of Plans.
I'll see you then. A Slight Change of Plans.
Is created, written, and executive produced by me Maya Schunker. The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Alexander Garatin, our editor Daphne Chen, our lead producer Megan Lubin, our associate producer Sonia Gerwitt, and our sound engineer Erica Huang. Luis Scara wrote our delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals. A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industries, So big thanks to everyone there, and of course a very special thanks to Jimmy Lee.
But the other thing is that conversation interaction reaching out really is a skill, and it really is something you can learn to do better. I feel like I have gotten a lot better at it.
Yeah, I mean you're a liability, Nick to your wife poor. I feel for her. You go out there, you get invited to Thanksgiving dinners by other random people, and she's like, Nick, what have you gotten us?
Into chill out. There is chill out man.
That is, I have to say, an occupational hazard.