Cultivating Positive Daily Social Habits

Social anxiety is something we really can help people with. Essentially, the strategy is very simple If you are afraid of talking with a stranger or having a deep conversation, the way to get over that is not to simulate it or to imagine. It's not like you get up and you give a pretend speech. That's what psychologists were doing for years. It doesn't work because it's still pretending. It has to be real. You send people out in the world and to do the thing for real. You're worried about getting rejected, Go out and start asking people for help And you'll learn that your fear is misplaced, that you get accepted more often than you might guess. expxposing people to that thing that they're anxious of, when the belief is misplaced And with social anxiety, it is usually wildly misplaced. That's what we find over and over again is a mistaken barrier to connecting with other people. That's how you ease that social anxiety and get rid of it. Not because you do dle your anxiety so much. It's because you change your beliefs about what other people are like you. elcome to the Hubberan Labark science and science based tools for everyday life. Hi I'm Andrew Hberan and I'm a profess of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Nick Eppley Dr. Nick Eppley is a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago and an expert researcher on the science of social connection. What's different about today's conversation in the context of social connection? is that it doesn't just center on improving relationships with friends or family or coworkers We do talk about that But we also talk about the smaller everyday conversations that we have with people that we don't know so well and the positive impact that that can have on mental and physical health Now I want to be clear, we're not talking about engaging in small talk for small talk's sake. We're talking about taking opportunities to connect with people once or several times per day and the tremendous benefits that can have for people's mental and physical health, including yours. We also talk a lot about the assumptions that we tend to make about other people, both in real life and online, and how those actually match up with reality. We also talk about Nick Eppley himself because his life strongly has informed his research. We talk about his biological and his adopted children, raising a child with additional needs, and the incredible joy and growth those choices have brought him and his family by virtue of the sorts of social connections that they brought. I must say today's conversation went a lot of places that I did not anticipate And it certainly inspired me to look differently at everyday interactions as far from trivial and in fact key to the fabric of social connection and our mental and physical health Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public In keeping with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Nick Eppley Dct. Nick Epley, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. We make a lot of assumptions about other people And in my case, because I have a new puppy about animals. we're always thinking that we know what other beings are thinking. But as you pointed out, and as a colleague of mine in neurosciences, Dr. Carl Diseroth has pointed out Most of the time we don't even know what we're thinking Yeah. Like there's stuff going on in there, but we're not that good at thinking, oh, that last thought was a complete sentence that means blank. That's not how the human mind works. Usually when we hear the word anthropomorphism We're talking about humans making assumptions about other animals. But humans are animals. We just happen to be the curators of the planet. So why and how Do we anthropomorphize about other people? And how does it hurt us and how does it help us? Yeah. So I think the way to think about anthropomorphism is that what we are doing is we're trying to understand what's going on within another agent, essentially. And so anything that acts independently, right? You've got a ball rolling across the table if something else bumps into it and it moves in perfect you know, the perfect deflection off of it. You don't need anything to explain why that ball moved as it did. But if this ball is coming across the table and another one hits it and it just keeps going or goes some other direction, well Then it seems like there's something going inside that thing that might be driving it, right? And that in that thing that's inside that ball might be a mine R might be a set of thoughts or beliefs or attitudes, some kind of psychology that's pushing it. At least that's the way we interpret what an independent agent might be doing. We do this when we think about other people, right? You're notd in your head now. I think you're thinking about something right. You moveved this way or that, you wanted to do this thing or that thing. We do that same kind of mind reading, right with non human agents, animals God sometimes, the planet, even ourselves, right? We reflect on ourselves. We have experience, at least with having certain mental states come to mind, and we use that experience as a guide to what's going on in other people too That kind of anthropomorphism, that kind of mind reading, right where we infer otherss thoughts or beliefs or attitudes, that's helpful to us for at least two reasons. One is it gives me some sense of Wh you're doing what you're doing now. It allows me to understand what you're doing right now. Are you trying to be kind? You're trying to be aggressive? Are you trying to be friendly? But it also is pretty good at allowing me to predict what you're likely to do next So if I think you feel hungry, well, you're going to go try to eat something think you don't like me very well, you're going to behave a particular way towards me So this kind of mental state inference, is kind of mind reading. sererves us pretty well for getting around in a social world. Um donon't always get it right In general, it's better than not doing it at all. as we make assumptions about others and their intentions and their past choices in some cases, right? Like if somebody hits somebody else, we make an assumption about certain things might have led up to this. Yes,. Are we mainly paying attention to behavior and or are we paying attention to They seem to be paying attention to. so called theory of mind. Yeah. So it depends a lot on what kind of environment we're in. We think about the minds of others in lots and lots of different contexts. My wife right now is back home in Illinois. I can think about what she might want for dinner, right or what she's feeling at any given time. We can think about people when they're not present. We can think about strangers, peopleople I know nothing about. I write a book I'm trying to think about how will people understand this book, right? These are all cases where there's not somebody in front of us at all, right? And when we're doing that, particularly with strangers, people we know nothing about, things we know nothing about, then the one thing we have at our disposal is ourselves. We can use our own minds, right? So if I walk into a classroom and I think it's kind of cold in here I can assume that other people think it's cold too. I'm using myself as a guide Once I know a little more maybe about you, right? I learn that you are, you know, you're a PhD from Stanford. I learn that You know, somebody is an athlete or whatever. I learned something about you. you're a doctor, or you're a lawyer Then I can use that information beliefs about groups of people as a guide, that's stereotyping And stereotypes contain a fair bit of accuracy to them. If I know that you're a Democrat or a Republican, I can make some reasonable inferences about other thoughts you might have, other beliefs you might have. Not perfect, but better than chance guessing. And then once I see you, like what we're doing right now, if I can see you, then I'm watching your behavior and then behavior dominant Behavior though is tricky. I'm watching you, right? You could have two people kissing. They seem you know, delightfully in love Right? They seem just so nice together. And can you can make one set of inferences when you see that happening based on that. You can infer what's going on behind that based on what you're seeing. And when we can see the behavior in front of us, that's then what we're paying. most attention to. But each of these different mechanisms, egocentricism stereotyping. and behavorism, you might think working backwards from your behavior They all gain give us some accuracy, but they also create some error Egocentrism creates egocentric biases. I assume that you think more like I do than you actually do stereotyping tends to create a different set of mistakes. I tend to think that groups are more distinct and different from each other than they actually are because stereotypes are about the defining features of groups, which tends to exaggerate the differences between groups And when it comes to behavior I tend to assume a simpler more simplistic mind behind that behavior then actually exists. Psychologists refer to this as the correspondence bias I tend to infer an intention or set of beliefs or attitudes corresponds with your behavior as I see it. So if I see you hit somebody I might assume you are an aggressive person That's how I interpret right away. Had I known it was in self defense, then I would interpret it very differently, right We tend to leap to mental states or intentions from behavior. Sometimes that can get us into trouble when the relationship between intentions or thoughts and behavior. is a little complicated. So each of those gets us some accuracy. But each of them also creates some error If you are willing, I'd like to return to the example you gave at the beginning of a ball rolling on a table and another ball striking or not you know, in the second example you gave, the ball simply takes off on a different trajectory and you said that we're going to make some assumption that the ball has something like a mind Yeah. somethinghing controlling its decisions What I'm about to say reflects a strong bias, which is that I've long been interested in the visual system Non human and human primates, because we are so visual And the eyes are two pieces of the brain. They're the only pieces of the brain in healthy individuals that are outside the cranial vault and they give us a lot of information. And I think people know that, but I don't think they appreciate just how much information they give us. notot just pupil size and whether or not our gaze is locked with theirs. all that's true too. But if I could just alter your experiment for a second, let's say that first ball had eyes And it's rolling forward, but then the eyes shift to the left and then the ball goes to the left. Now I have additional information. I have a window literally into the brain where I can say, what's over there that might have motivated that decision. And I think with humans, we do this for sure. R? Like if somebody's going down the street just swinging their arms wildly and hitting people, we think this person's out of control. They're crazy Whereas if they see somebody, then they orient their gaze toward them, now we start making all sorts of assumptions about the operations of that mind. And in my world view, no pun intended. The eyes are the best source of information about intent, about goals, et cetera. So limiting the conversation to conditions where we can see the other person and what they see us Are there any examples of our judgments about other people's thoughts and behavior and etcetera impproven by virtue of Oh of sure. Yeah.. I mean so the eyes do provide the eyes have a lot of valid information. abbsolutely. The voice also contains an awful lot. So that's the other thing we spend a lot of time studying. but We are the most socially sophisticated primate species on the planet. brain uniquely equipped for connecting with the minds of others, and that means that we are hypersensitive to certain things. The eyes are one of them There's this great paper in two thousand eight on the Cultural intelligence hypothesis. It's a science paper where they compared, you know, they try to assess what is it that makes humuman sort of unique on this planet And they compared a little over one hundred two year old toddlers. I imagined running this experiment, if you would. A little over one hundred two year old toddlers. This was done at the Maxblanck Institute in Germany, one of the Maxpllananks. overver one hundred chimpanzees. and then just for good measure, another thirty six orang ofans who apparently had nothing better to do. crazy. Yeah. It's crazy. exxhausting. Exactly. man, I can't yeah I would like to know the background of details of this, how it was actually done and how long it took. But what they did essentially is ran each of these groups through two different kinds of IQ tests, you might think of them as One was an IQ test involving physical objects, right? So things like you tracking where a reward was placed under a shell game or using a tool to solve some kind of problem. Jane Goodall once, you know, psychologists once believed, biologists once believed that tool use was up madeade humans unique until Jane Goodall watched the chimpanzees using twigs to get termites out of a termite mound, right? On the physical IQ test problems Han toddlers, the adult chimps and the orangutans performed equally well. There wasn't a difference. It's not reasoning about physical things in space that make us unique The other group of IQ problems were social problems, where it required reasoning about the mind of another person And this involved doing things like tracking where someone's eyes are looking in order to monitor what somebody is thinking, because we tend to look at things we're thinking about and think about things we're looking at. If I want to know what's on your mind, what's governing your attention, I want to be really good at tracking your eyes. And we are amazing at this as human beings, I can tell whether you're looking at me right now or looking at my right ear. fromr this far without any trouble, I can tell from fifty feet away, whether you're looking at me or looking at you know, ten feet above me, were're amazing super sensitive this. I couldn't calculate the angle on a roof if you gave me a month and an armload of protractors to do it, but I can detect the angle in your eyes in an instant. Also involve things like being able to understand somebody's intentions from their actions, right? So if I reach out for this glass a water and I miss it you can infer I'm thirsty and I want to drink. could oh, you could hand me the glass, Nick, right? if I wanted to drink. becausecause that's you couldn't read my mind, essentially. You could infer my thoughts. When they tested the two Europe toddlers, the chimps, and the orangutans in these social IQ tests That's where. The two year old toddlers were shining. That's where we were crushing Tition on those social IQ probles You can do this you know, in front of a chimpanzee all day long and they will do nothing for you, right? Nothing for you I do that in front of you and you can hand me the glass of water super easily. So yes, the eyes give us a lot and we are extremely sensitive to all of those social cues that convey might convey what's on the mind of another person because it allows me to anticipate what we're doing where you do it In today's financial landscape of constant market shifts and chaotic news, it's easy to feel uncertain about how to save and invest your money Wealthfront is the solution that helps you take control of your money while managing risk For nearly a decade, I've trusted Wellalthfront to navigate this volatility. With the Wellalthfront cash account, I can earn three point three percent annual percentage yield or APY on my cash from program banks. And I know my money is growing until I'm ready to spend it or invest it. One of the features I love about Wealthfront is that I have access to instant no fee withdrawals to eligible accounts twenty fourty seven. That means I can move my money where I need it without waiting. 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The base APY is as of january thirtieth, twenty twenty six and subject to change For more information, please see the episode description. Today's episode is also brought to us by Eight Sleep Eight sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure you get a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct And that's because in order to fall asleep and stay deeply asleep Your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees. and in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase by about one to three degrees. Eight sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. I've been sleeping on an eight sleep mattress cover for nearly five years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. 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And I'd be curious to know A, if that's true, what else it conveys and Also how much prior exposure to voice matters. Today is the first time I've met you. I don't know what your voice normally sounds like in this context. So I'm just operating off what I've got. Yeah. So what's in voice, what's not in voice? And what are we aware of? What are we not aware of? Yeah, so there are lots of things contained in the voice because it is very closely connected to your mind. You notice that your eyes are Right? Y yourour eyes are closed, but your voice is also very closely connected to your online conscious experience. You are speaking while you are thinking And as you're having thoughts, your voice can reflect authentically what's going on in your mind So when I speed up, you can tell I'm kind of excited about something. When my voice varies in pitch, you can tell if I'm enthusiastic or not or kind of sad about something. You can pick up a lot about what's actually going on in the mind by listening to a person's voice. And there are a couple of things that we've studied in our research. One is voice just contains a lot of information that allows us to understand other people better. if compare tyyping to somebody versus talking to them, the voice allows you to determine things like intentionality, to differentiate when you're telling a joke or being sarcastic than when you're not, right? Well type this ema. This is so funny, right? We think when we're sending off an email to somebody, it seems funny to us because we know this is meant to be a joke. person on the other end doesn't realize the comment about this person's aunt or brother or whatever was meant to be a joke and they're all offended, right? But if you say this in your voice, sarcasm is crystal clear interestnterestingly, what we find and this is because of egocentrism in part We're not always so sensitive how our own communication is interpreted by another person. becausecause we know what we're thinking when we're conveying something We tend to think we'll be understood equally well whether we're typing or talking, but of course, on the receiving end, it varies a lot So voice contains a lot of information that allows us to understand what somebody's saying better. But what we also find, which I think is, at least from my perspective, also interesting is that the voice also conveys the presence of mind. I don't have access to your thinking, to your reasoning to what's going on between your ears. I can only watch from the outside, right? I get cues. I can see your visual gaze, but I can also hear you The voice contains a lot of cues to the presence of mind When you're really thinking hard about something, Your voice slows down And you deliberate And that variability in the pace of your voice, It kind of tells me that your mind is alive, just like I can tell that you're biologically alive because you're moving Your voice also moves And it tells me you got lively mind It conveys the presence of emotion It can convey the presence of thinking So when we have partisans, for instance We did this. This was Julianna Schrodder, who was one of my amazing PhD students from years ago. She's now on the faculty at Berkeley at Has. We had people this was on the eve of the twenty sixteen election between onald Trump and Hillary Clint We had people who were voting for Trump or Clinton say why they were voting for the candidate they were voting for. And they gave a verbal pitch. And we could get a few different cues from this. We could get an audio recorded clip so we could see and hear the person. We could just get their voice. and we could also strip out their voice and just see the content of their text, right to see the words they were saying. They also wrote a pitch about an explanation for why they were voting for this particular candidate, What we then did is we had people Watch and listen, listen Read the transcript or read the the written explanation and say Essentially how mindful is this person? How thoughtful are they How thoughtful, how intelligent, how rational capable of experiencing emotions are they? Essentially, they're asking Are you a mindful, intelligent person? or are you kind of just like a mindless idiot Are you human like or are you kind of not human like like a more like a rock? And what we found was that when people could hear what the person had to say, either while also seeing them or just with their voice They rated the person, particularly when they disagreed with them, when there was a person on the other side as more thoughtful. moreore intelligent, more rational, this tendency to dehumanize the other side, to think of them as mindless idiots. was dramatically reduced when you actually heard what the other person has to say. So I think the voice, along with the eyes, along with eyes eye gaze, but the voice allows us, gives us a lot of information allows us to understand What's on somebody's mind, and it also allows us something deeper. It allows me to tell you that you've got a mind to have one Very interesting. The vision piece I'm familiar with for reasons I stated before, the physical behavior piece makes a lot of sense. The voice piece as a reflection of an active mind is something I really haven't considered You know, we'll hear sometimes that The content of people's words is less informative than you the timbre of their voice or something like that. I don't know that I completely believe that. I think that I think that's a nineties that's like an eighties, nineties pop psyology is Absolutely. That is a highly stylized experimental result All right, so you will sometimes hear in this pop psych world that eighty percent of what's communicated is communicated through paralinguistic That obviously is not true. You're not going I'm not going be able to tell you about my book Just by using the tone of my voice. Right. So that is that wor words matter. The words certainly do matter Aove and beyond that There are other things that matter in a person's voice that at least we find people aren't so sensitive to. So when we ask, for instance When we ask our MBA students Give an elevator pitch as Juliana and I did in one of our experiments. Give an elevator pitch for their desired job, the job they want most, right? Why should this company hire you? can give it with their voice. so we do the audio and visual. We do just the audio pull out the transcript, just get the words, or they type their pitch. We then have people watch and listen, listen or read these pictes and say, how intelligent does this person seem to be hirable does this person seem to be? And we've done this both with people who imagine working for companies and also with Fortune five hundred recruiters too A person seems more intelligent, more rational, more thoughtful, more hirable when you hear what they have to say And yet The NBA students themselves think they'll be judged equally on those two. They're not And when we asked aate separate group of people, if you wanted to communicate with somebody in a way that would make you seem most intelligent Overwhelmingly people say I'd rather write And the thinking behind that, I think, is that people think they can edit and such. But what they're missing is that the sound of your voice conveys a lot more, conveys the fact that you have a mind becauseuse I can't see it and I can't read it in your dead text, right? Your dead text has none of the paralinguistic ues or features, really talented writers, novelists can do this Mostly your text is dead. It Do doesnn't have intonation It doesn't change its pitch doesn't show me thinking while it's actually happening. And people don't seem to realize that. What does this reveal to us about AI because Pe are spending more and more time with AI on AI. and What comes back is text. I mean there are versions of it and soon I imagine there will be elaborated versions of it with avatars or even video for sure A you generally enthusiastic about what that could bring in terms of better understanding other humans. because I could imagine a world where, you know, I can't reach you, but I could go on AI and say, Hey, Nick I would just do it directly. Yeah. Hey, Nick, I'm really curious I'm going to the Midwest, where you're from and I'm super interested in Culturally, what's the best way that I could connect with someone around this, this and this given the content on the interternet. The LLM should be able to have a video of you. deliver to me what you would say, We're pretty close to it. Is that that can be better than a bullet point list It will, Yeahah. So people will find it more believable, I think. rightight? But a lot of the things that people turn to AI for now are for facts, right for actual information for text. But do think increasingly It's going to be used for social stuff Yeah. People feel lonely, disconnected, they need a friend. I'm friends with Liz Dunne, who's a fabulous psychologist at the University of British Columbia And she told me that they're starting to do research about allowing people to practice having conversations with AI before they actually have a conversation with another person, like a conflict. I can see ways in which AI could be used to do lots of things. I can also see obvious problems with it if I'm connecting with the AI and I'm not connecting with other humans, I can see problems with it. But I think in terms of the presence versus absence of voice Um I do think voice will allow us to the extent that it's good and perfect, right? It sounds like a human voice. ict my prediction would be that you can trust it more when you hear what it has to say, as long as it mimics really well a human voice becausecause you'd anthropomorphize it just like you do another person. I don't want to spend too much time on politics, but I can't help but ask this next question way back when Bush was president, secondcond one. I recall there was a lot of discussion around people who voted for him saying, Hey he's the kind of guy you'd want to have a beer with. Yeah, right Yeah. which I interpret it as There's something about his style of speech whichich was very everyday. Yes and We don't have to talk about current candidates and politicians, notot to avoid it. I don't tap answer on anything these days. But I think that nowadays we have a lot of access to people talking on video. They you know, when you and I were growing up, I think we're more or less the same age, you know there would be presidential address or there'd be a campaign and you' he from people, but it was very limited. You didn't get so much exposure to people.. So now we have more and more information about voice, about behavior, about decision making depending on the resolution, where their eyes are going, do you think that we're getting better at assessing public figures, or are we getting worse at assessing public figure question? I think that'll take me too far out on a limb. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I mean, there's so much information that we have now U The other thing too is that The way we evaluate other people and this is this is central to a lot of our research, Other people are ambiguous,? They're not crystal clear That same An that I say to you that I mean to be a joke can sound really hostile or violent to another person, can sound really awful and be taken as offensive. So I think that that's what makes my work as a psychologist so interesting In the early nineteen hundreds, psychologists, you know, when social psychology, my field and cognitive psychology started. It came out of you basically biology and vision sciences and basic sensory perception, thinking that we could understand human thinking and measure it, measure our judgments about each other in the same way that we measure how people evaluate hot and cold and stuff like that. But it turns out that other people are very ambiguous. It's not always so crystal clear And so two people with a different set of beliefs or attitudes or perspectives on this situation can look at the very same stimulus and see totally different things, right? A lot of our judgment is not happening out there to us. It's happening in here interpreting what we're seeing And in the world of politics Everyone who's listening to this podcast knows just how ambiguous things are. Somebody says something and the right will, you know think interpret it this way. The left will interpret it that way. It's known as my side bias. Even the very same stimulus So there is this sense that if we get more and more and more information then we'll understand people better, better, better That's not necessarily true. If we come into these perceptions, into these viewing these things with very different starting points or very different perspectives to begin with You've worked a lot on this notion of under socialization If I may, I'd like to invert it for today's conversation. talk a little bit less through the lens of how bad it is if we're under socialized and explore instead how good it is if we do socialize. Not because I have to make things positive, but because ultimately I think actions to socialize more are going to be useful. I'm tempted to set this up as an experiment So as with the example of the balls you gave before in the most deprived condition A human is in total isolation Okay, so Another condition is they can let's just say text with somebody else but they can't see them. they've never seen them. And we can ratch that up. right? They've seen them before, they can make a phone call, they can do video chat. they're in person. I can see a million excellent arguments for why in person interaction is good. But what is the evidence that the other forms of social interaction are good also? We hear so much about how they're bad But we also hear about the isolation crisis. And so we've sort of I lumped. the more deprived versions O socialization, in with isolation. And I'm not sure that I accept that. I'm not trying to counter your work. I don't know enough about to do it and I'm not qualified to anyway. Is texting with a friend healthy? Yes. As opposed to spending time alone? For sure. Okay. for sure. in person time clearly being the best. It's a little better. although goingoing from no contact to some contact is the bigly. Tell me more. So beinging isolated. so spending a day alone pretty is pretty miserable. So when psychologists look at this, this comes from a from a famous paper by Danny Connman and Angus Deaton, both Nobel Prize winners in economics, and neither of them economists that looked at the gallop Daily well being Paul Right? And call they call people up every day and they ask them how you're feeling today in a number of different ways. they actually ask you about the day before, yesterday, did you enjoy yesterday? Did you feel enjoyment yesterday? or did you smile yesterday? Did you experience sadness yesterday? right? Did you experience stress yesterday And they they so they ask about these different measures of well beinging They also ask about all kinds of other things, like how much money you're making, Are you religious or not? They know how much insurance you have, or whether you're surveyed on a weekend or a weekday. They also ask you, did you spend yesterday entirely alone or not? And when they do that, you can compare the effects of things like social isolation, know being alone versus not against these other things. turns out the difference between spending yesterday alone versus somebody else, the difference in your well being on these other measures is about seven times bigger than being relatively high or low on their income measure, which is about a sixty thousand dollars difference between these two groups. that being alone is bad. That's a bad day And having connections with other people improves it pretty dramatically. abbove and beyond that You know, it does matter. It can bes it's it is better those interactions, but now you're you're You're adding good things to what was already somewhat a good thing class, we also need to We need to unpack a little bit what these different media do. They're good for different things. And we don't always use them in the ways that are right. But I think know, in many ways we do. Like if I send you a text or I send my wife a text, right? She's back in Illinois today. We've been married for nearly thirty years it'd be thirty years in August this year We know a ton about each other. I can send her You know, a heart when I'm feeling love and a bun of centered, let her know that and she's going to feel that's going lift her up a little bit. That's going feel good. We already have a relationship. That's establishing just some context Txting is great for that. It can allow us to stay in contact with somebody It is not good for building a relationship necessarily over time. L if we're going to spend a half hour typing to each other, iss not a good way to spend that half hour. I'd be much better at picking the phone and talking to you to help establish that relationship But absolutely, the ability to reach out and connect with other people Frequently as texting is used out in the world can allow us stay connected. Now if that's the only thing we're doing for not actually spending time developing more meaningful relationships with people That's not going to be as good as it could be But you started this by asking about sociality more generally. and why is being social good for us. The fact of the matter is, even with our imperfections in thinking about the minds of others, we are highly social. just the ability to think in the level of sophistication that we do about the minds of other people shows how important sociality is for us. And you see the importance of sociality just almost everywhere you look, the way our brain is organized, right? So our neocortex is massive, relative to the rest of our brain, compared to our nearest primate relates to the chimpanzees, a lot of that stuff is good for social stuff, right For theory of mind use, for keeping track of who knows what, and who you should trust and who you should avoid, liivving in large social groups is complicated Right And the size of our brain reflects a complication. If you look across primate species, the size of the neocortex relative to the rest of the brain is correlated with this this is This is work on the social brain hypothesis, right? The size of the neocortex world of the rest of the brain is correlated with the social complexity of the group the primate species lives in Our brains are built to be social Also, for most of human history, being alone and isolated is a death sentence can't live on you. we depend on each other for survival. That also means that we have a neural architecture that is desperately trying to keep us connected to with other people. And so when you spend a day alone, the reason why it feels like crap As my late colleague and friend John Casioppo, who was at the University of Chicago studied loneliness, really is the world was the world's expert on loneliness? Noted that your neural architecture is screaming at you when when you are alone to reach out and connect with other people. That's why loneliness feels bad, right? And that's why the opposite of loneliness feels so good, like getting a hug that feels good. Your brain is trying to tell you, get out there and connect with other people. So when you're lonely, you get spikes and cortisol in your bloodstream that compromises your cardiovascular functioning that compromises Your immune system That's why being lonely can make you sick and why it can shorten your L, right You also see that the opposite of loneliness, connecting with other people just feels darn good, right? That's your brain telling you. That's your body telling you, Yeah, do this a little more often. This is really good Right? So when you have that little conversation with with a stranger, like I did coming, you know, coming in, I had this amazing conversation was actually very deep H conversation with my Uber driver who is Iranian I'd lost a son in a protest. shhot the neck years ago in Iran. Yeah, very painful. but also Very meaningful, connected us to each other. felt a very strong bond with each other in the moment. That's your brain telling you, that's the kind of thing that were're built for Right? Because Living alone for most of human history was a bad, bad thing So we are hyper social agents interested in connecting with other people. It doesn't always mean we know exactly how to do it or that we get it right. But going from nothing to something is a huge leap us and texting can sometimes help us do that One comment one question. Sometimes I like a day alone. Yeah. I everyverybody it. Yeah that That's because I don't spend time around lots of people, but I spend a lot of time around certain set of people. I adore them. But you know, sometimes it's nice to get that space. But one thing that I've noticed because when I was a graduate student, I'd run these experiments often during the holidays because I worked on developmental neurobiology, I didn't have a choice. If that, you know, if My experimental subjects were a certain postnatal age. I was working. Y that day it was after all. Yes. And there's this kind of interesting idea that I'm not sure I subscribe to, but Well that I do subscribe to, forgive me There's something about us as humans that we really like to at a distance, you know, And I don't know if there's a sex difference here, but I think it's like, you know, young boys like create like a rocket,'s a remote controled car, you know, young bo you know or see something happen over there that you controlled in a meaningful way. and it doesn't have to be violent, right? We did rockets and guns, but it could could be something else. This is somewhat philosophical more than it's scientific, but could it be that if we spend toooo much time alone Weve got all this stuff in our mind. and It's very hard to create some sort of reverberation or action at a distance that we know reflects us. And I wonder if our unconscious mind actually gets to the question like, do I even exist? Now of course, we know we exist. We can touch our limbs but the social isolation fear You know, if I've got id full of food, and I've got music and I've got audioobooks. That's all income. But at some point you do get a little I know because I've spent days upon days doing experiments back when by myself, you get a little weird. Y thoughts get a little distorted and it's almost like You know there's stuff out there, but if you spend enough time away from it It kind of messes with your head a little bit. Yeah. And then of course, we think of like the had Kazinsky types and these extremes of people who had gone in isolation. There's that movie about the true story that guy that goes into the wilderness Oh yeah, Right. Yeah, Ed E Veder wrote soundtr to that movie. Right And I into the wild. That's right. And McKennis, right? Mc McKennis? Yeah. Yeah. And I think he wrote at the end, you know, the connection with people is the thing. You know, he had this romantic view of going out into the wilderness by himself where we think of, you know, Walden poond and you know, we romanticize this thing about being alone for long extended amounts of time But I think it raises real questions about whether or not we're E there, it's sort of the most existential version of like, if a tree falls in the woods you know, no one's there, did it make a sound? It's sort of like if we have thoughts and emotions and experiences and there's no one else around to reflect those for them to have impact on like, do we even exist? Yeah. And this might be some hardwiring. H here, I'm getting like almost freudian and so forgive me, I'm not a psychologist.. But I'm curious what your thoughts are about the relationship between the fear of isolation, our need for our thoughts and desires and behaviors to have some sort of reverberation out there, some responsiveness to us some confirmation that we're actually here. I think the closest research to this to the extent that there is research on this is what happens to people, prisoners who are put in cons solitary confinement is not good for their mental health. It' not good for their sense of selves, for who they are. They do lose a sense of themselves. There's not great research on this because you can't randomly assign people to be isolated for long periods of time, right. Yes than goodness. Yes, that's why we have IRBs, right. But that experience, I think is very real. When you were talking about this, it made me think of U Research in their early nineteen hundreds theories from sociologists that the way we understand ourselves is through other people. The way I know Wh I am, what I'm like as a person, who Nick is is from talking with you, Andrew. And when we are in conversation, that's when I'm learning about myself. You're telling me about myself, I'm having thoughts that I'm sharing with you. And that's what gives me a sense of self, this looking glass self. And our sense of self esteem, in fact, is highly tied. Am I a valuable person is highly tied to how well we're getting along with other people. psychologist believe that it is a monitor, in fact, for how well you're getting along with people. your very sense of self worth. And so when there is nobody out there, I think you're absolutely right. That's that you can lose your sense of who you are. And people who go out the woods, I remember when when I was a kid I actually wrote this I won an early career award from APA, which is a great honor for me. but in the bio that they ask you to write, I wrote in that that about my childhood dream. My childhood before I was nine years old I believed I was going to be a mountain man. Like I grew up in the woods in Iowa, hunting and fishing, being outdoors, all my extended family were farmers, watching Grizzly Adams on TV. Like I thought that was a legit job Like you could I could actually go do this, right? And I was about nine years old when I don't remember quite how this happened, but I learned that this was not a real job Like this was not a legit thing that I could do, right? But yes, I had romanticized it as well that this is going to be a wonderful thing to be able to do. But when people actually go out and do that, They mostly insane. That is very, you know, wow As many of you know, I've been taking AG one for nearly fifteen years now I discovered it way back in twenty twelve, long before I had a podcast and I've been taking it every day since. AG one is to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market It combines vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and adaptogens into a single scoop that's easy to drink and tastes great. 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For a limited time, AG onene is giving away a weak supply of AGZ, which is their sleep supplement and a free bottle of vitamin D three K two with your subscription. AGZ is something that I help design. It tastes great, and it's the only sleep supplement I take. It has a collection of different things in it that has dramatically improved my sleep, bothoth my slow wave deep sleep and my rapid eye movement sleep. And I absolutely love it. Again, that's drinkagG one. com slash Hubberman to get a weak supply of AG Z and a bottle of D three K two with your subscription Social media, which I spend a decent amount of time on because I teach there and I learn there You know, we know has healthy aspects and unhealthy aspects. a bunch of variables their age, what people are looking at, et cetera. How much time going on. Yeah. But social media offered people this opportunity to get out of aloneness through a different form of connection. And so if we just kind of hypothesize that having Our words or our thoughts have an a visible a known impact on somebody else's words or thoughts provide some sort of confirmation that we're there, it kind of explains why, you know, taking the most aggressive or outrageous thought and putting a comment and then somebody responds or other people dogpile or they respond. And then you're like, I'm having an effect out there. alsoso safely behind a wall, right? There's no. I think we're critical of that safely behind a wall piece. You know the stereotype that you hear online is like, you know you know Apple seven, six, eight nine in his mom's basement, like, you know, trolling people, you know, But that we forget. that person's alone in their basement. Why are they doing it? Like why is it so satisfying to them? I don't actually believe that most of these people are evil. Some of them might be, but probably they want to see their words and thoughts have an effect. And the best way to do that is to poke or to say something outrageous I'm hoping that whoever runs these platforms will try to create incentives for more positive interactions. Because I think ultimately most people want is the interaction to feel that their thoughts and their feelings matter out there So if we can go to something even a little more concrete, if we just think about conversation the back and forth. Why is the conversation is often such a pleasant thing It is because there is back and forth responsiveness in the conversation that allows me to detect that you're paying attention to me. rightight now you're looking at me, right? And you're nodding at me as I'm speaking, and you'll give a or a right or a ye as I'm going along. and that allows me to recognize my thoughts are having an effect on you in a way that's having a positive effect in return on me. And so I think very much that Aion at a distance as you put it. Psychologists talk about that as responsiveness or being in synchrony with another person is part of what makes conversation feel so good I have some friends who are recording artists and the only reason they still tour It's not for the money, believing the money' in some cases is good, but it's not as good as money they can make doing other things. It's a huge hassle. takes them away from families, there's security issues, there's all this stuff, but they get to experience the apex of collective human action at a distance based on their they are doing their inflections, their things you mentioned Eddie Vedter, right? There's and then their stories of or to whatever you like scale the At some concert already he scaled up and like grab the microphone g up above And then he actually actually watched it. it was pretty dangerous. And then and then he actually propelled down on the microphone Oh. Yeah, this was all spontaneous. So he's doing these things. I don't know how much he's conscious of the fact that he's you know, exciting people. and you know, But recording artists love to do this. They don't just love to sing, they love to see the response of the people they sing to. And people go to concerts I believe because whether they understand it or not, they're having an impact on what's happening up on stage. They understand that reciprocity. So I think we're just driven to do this. I have to believe that this is part of our core wiring. When we're kids and we round up in preschool, like al, everyone round up and everyone tries to sit still and the girls generally can and the boys generally can't for a little until a later age. There's a lot of learning to let others speak to kind of like hold things in. So as a human psychologist if were to play primatologist for a moment and were human old world primates. what are the sort of core components that social connection are built on. We talked about dialogue, we talked about vision, we talked about sharing. is it you know, but We don't get a whole lot of training in this if you really think about it. We just kind of go through school, we learn to sit, we learned to listen. You're not supposed to hit people, You're not supposed to yell at people. you know you run around at recess and so on. and you do what other people do What is the socialization in human primates? What are the core features that make somebody able to function really well socially or not. I think the thing to keep in mind, at least is the reason why we think social connection matters so much, why it's so important is that it allows us to coordinate with other people. And if I can coordinate with you then you and I are better able to survive and to exist and pass along our genes than if we can't coordinate with each other and that groups that are able to coordinate with each other collectively cooperate with each other in ways that are that are good for the common good, those groups outperform groups where people are just at each other's throat, nobody's cooperating, right? This is why corporations effive You get a collection of individuals all operating as a single unit, all oriented towards one common goal. and you can get a collection of people of individuals then doing things that are way more advanced and way bigger than any individual would do on their own. This is why the East Indian trrading Company was able to send ships all around the world because they had resources tied up in corporations so that they could send ships out into the world. And if it one went down, you wouldn't lose all of your resources. You wouldn't lose all your riches as an investor. So all of social connection at least evolutionarily speaking, this is the idea is pushing us toward cooperation and coordination, particularly with Non Kin. That's what makes us truly social on this planet is our ability to cooperate and to care for non kin. You don't need cooordination with family members You know, you don't need any special evolutionary mechanism to get coordination with family members. They have your wired. They have your genes, right? They have your gene. So that makes perfect sense. You're leaving genetic offspring But you need something else to explain why I'm so friendly with you And why We coordinate so well out there in the world. We drive on the right side of the road, where we befriend people who we're not related to. And that's where I think all of this that's what social connection is ultimately trying to serve is that coordination function Do you think there are hardwired mechanisms that set us up for cooperation with our genetic offspring. and siblings and so forth, more so than with non genetic I know you have adopted kids. We have adopted kids in our family as well. and it's sort of weird to say this because it's kind of a dub, but for people that don't have adopted family members, like the notion that they're not really part of your family is insane. Like you know for privacy reasons, I don't want to disclose who these people are, but I can tell you that I have a younger family member who is adopted. Never, ever, ever think for a moment. that she's not part of our family.? I laay down and traffic for her the same way I would for or any other member of my family. And I wasn't the one that raised her. Do you think there's something hardwired about genetic offspring and the other stuff fortunately develops adopted children, close friends, community members I don't know the answer to that exactly. That's not what I study per se. What I can tell you though as a social psychologist is that what we study is the power of context and roles to drive behavior and the thing that you are speaking to and the thing that we have experienced as parents, we have three adopted children. really matters is the role you play, right? And that is magical. When we adopted our first two Chren Um from Ethiopia We made a decision do this And when you adopt, there's a point where you move from this being hypothetical to being this being real And the way this work for us was that we were shown Pictures of children who we could adopt. And of course,ce you once you're in on it, like you're all in. You're not really making a choice. I'm not sure. They said You know, we called we called up the agency. We said, we were ready to go. and And they said, How about Th And they put a picture up for us When we first making this decision, it was hypothetical Pictures look different to us s come from our kids have come from very, very hard places in life. You don't end up in an orphanage, another part of the world unless you've come through hard places They come through very hard places. They were in the second and third percentile in the WHO tighten weight charts They were in tough shape As soon as Jen and I said Yeah, we can do this. I so vividly remember this They just looked They just they look more you just felt more they looked different. The second we decided, yes, this is it. Here we go. we have committed. And then Once you bring people into your family, anybody who's done this knows The huge effect is Y dad. or your mom And that's what matters. We will sometimes I don't know if your family has done this, but I will sometimes very gently to people they will sometimes talk to me as another father of my kids and not my kids, right As if the biological and adopted childildren are different and I very try to gently say they are all our children You don't feel differently. So I think what's interesting, not as if is there any subtle difference that's left is how almost completely imperceptible or completely imperceptible it actually is. That's what makes us remarkable as human beings that we can do that. There is no other species we know of that does that kind of thing that loves beyond their kin in the way that we can. In fact, it's led to a total reshaping in many ways of the field of economics even Economists believe that humans are fundamentally self interested. They only care about themselves. The only rub is when you actually look at the data People are just a lot nicer to each other. than standard models of economics would predict. We give money away to charity We give away kidneies to random strangers We care. likeike if I give you ten dollars in an experiment and tell you you can divide it with another person however you want. You can keep all of it give you know, give none of it, or give it all away The standard prediction from economic theories you'll be purely self interested. You won't care anything about this person you know nothing about. You'll give them nothing That's not what real people do They give something. percent, fifty percent typically depending on the context that you're in. And that's the thing that I think is remarkable in this particular case. Not is there any An bit left of the biological hard wiring, but how much of it is about the role that you play. How much our love for another, our ability to connect with another person is a function of the role that we play in their lives inccredible example that the moment you made this decision, you and your wife made the decision that these were the children you were going to adopt, that they your visual perception of them changed. differentiffere Yeah. It's almost like two circuits merged in that moment and I I can attest from a parallel experience although I'm not the parent of this family member that you never there's it's it's an instant and you never go back No There's never a reconsideration that No, you know, And I think some people assume that like, well, in especially hard times, you know, it's actually it kind of just leaves The room the question is room. It's a fascinating and reassuring aspect of of our brain wire. Other people might imagine that you think this it just doesn't, you just dude You're just parent. That's it Wild and very cool. It is very cool. and and I think an underappreciated aspect of our sociality is how much and we often we kind of take it for granted. You know, people are mean to each other and' like, yeah, yeah, people can be mean to each other. but we also love each other Way beyond what we should in some way based on just pure know kinship relationships and biological offspring would predict we would. And that's because highly social got to cooperate with each other in order to get along. successfully in life. And so we've got these really hard, hardwired kind of circuitry to care and love and connect with with each other when we try. What I'm about to describe might be different now. but good portion of my family is in South America, and I'll never forget when I was in my really like late teens, early twenties, I went down there and I went out with my cousins. to a bar. It was like a club, right And it was so interesting because They spoke to their friends. We met up with their friends there People danced, people drank, did all the things that we were also doing back in California. But there was no communication with other people at this club or this bar that they didn't already know. No This may have changed. then and there The culture was one where you go out with the people you already know and you have a really good time, but people weren't exchanging numbers, hitting on people, looking at other people cross. there were these little pockets across the room. So it wasn't this idea that, oh, when you go out in public, you go to a club or you drink or something, you might meet somebody else. Yeahing. There wasn't a fear of other people. That wasn't the reason you go out. You go out to see your friends. Yeah. And the interesting thing also was that Many of these friendships had been lifelong friendships. Oh yeah So in some sense, I wonder is this one version of how humans evolved. because we always think about this village of like a hundred people, you know, you know, Bob Sapolski talks about this and you know we evolved in these culture of one hundred or two hundred folks. and you knew everyone and everyone's in each other's business. and that's how our species evolved. At the same time We have different examples of sociology. And that strangers weren't around as much That was the idea. Yeah. Yeah, it's hard to say, I don't know. Certainly today, if you look around the world There is and always has been some anxiety about connecting with strangers. and it can vary depending on where you There's some places where there's more sociability than in others, but there's always been some anxiety about the other the one you don't know, right? Be you don't know necessarily if I can trust you or not in this moment. whether that comes from our evolutionary heritage or not or just unfamiliar with anything right? So if you know, if you give me something to drink here and I don't know what's in it, I'm going to be a little ervous I want to find out before I drink it. If if I trust you I'll drink. but if I don't, know, I'm not so sureing I want to see what's in there first. There's always some anxiety about the unknown or uncertainty and it could be a lot of stuff about strangers, a reluctance to connect with other people desire to keep with the folks we already know come simply from that Right? whichich also would apply to non human interactions too or nonhan objects as well. We just like what's familiar because we know it and we trust it and we're comfortable with it as a result. Everything else, by comparison is a little bit riskier I can't say I'm particularly outgoing or not, but I was taught manners. that had me ask how people's day was going. Like if I'm checking out the grocery stores like, how's your day going? And I'm interested Like it's not just an ice breaker or something like, how's your day going? you hold the door for people. you say, please and thank you. I think a lot of people assume that manners equates to small talk equates to superficial And then it's all a bunch of fluff that it's not about deep connection. But when I'm moving through the, you know, the checkout line at Whole Foods I don't have a lot of options. Yep. If I say nothing Okay, Th these days no one would notice. Yeah. They could be on their phone. one no one would call that abnormal. If I say, how's your day going? and they go pretty good. If I say What did you do before you got here? That's getting a little bit further down the line, right. If I say like, what's the hardest thing that ever happened to you? They're going to look at me like I'm crazy, right? What I wonder is When we talk about manners and etiqute, which I believe there's been a real kind of erosion of at the level of kind of what is standard, right for whatever reason. We just don't have an etiquette everyone follows. It used to be all men wore jackets and ties or at least ties to work. I mean now you show up and whatever.. I do think that as manners have become less common Common manners have become less common the opportunities for casual low level exchange have evaporated Yeah. And so there's less of a stepping stone to deeper exchange. Yeah. So I would think about manners kind of as habits, right? That's kind of what they are. and some sensibilities about other people being kind and decent to other people But understanding how those manners might be affecting day to day behavior is a little bit tricky. So one of the things, for instance, we find Like in a lot of public spaces, people are reluctant to engage with other people because they don't want to interrupt. They don't want to be impolite There's a version of that that is about manatterers, right? And we have Sometimes we're getting signals of that tech gives us signals that somebody doesn't want to be bothered perhaps, like we put ear buds in or we look at our phone, right? And so some of that could be coming from what you might think of as manners. In the UK, for instance, one of the reasons we find well, just this's true in the US too, but even a little more so in the UK, there's this norm of politeness that it's not okay for me to get into your business. In Japan, it's even stronger R? I don't want to and that's seen as being Pite. And right? in those context. I amm with you though, that This general norm of saying hello or hi to people has gotten diminished a little bit in part because people I think are getting out of the habit because you've got these You've got these phones on you all the time. But think I think it's a little trickier It's a little harder to say maybe that manners have eroded because they're complicated out in the world Stuff that looks like could be a lack of manners in one context could in people's own minds, be, no, I'm being polite to you by not interrupting tricky Yeah, I mean, I hear from a lot of podcast listeners that the challenges with, you know, finding a romantic partner nowadays is center largely around People not wanting to be seen as creepy, but also people not wanting strangers to talk to themight. So there's a poss a little bit of an impasse right now. I also hear from people who wonder why guys aren't asking them out just kind of randomly or're asking them for a coffee or for a number or something like that. Yeah. I think there's a lot of fear right now,'s what I hear.. that fear is probably well, it certainly is on both sides. Yeah. You know, you said you had an in depth conversation with your Uber driver on the way over here. Amazing. I mean, it used to be that I would get into deep conversations on airplanes. It just seems like we're stuck in this absolutely I youright coming up. The only downside being sometimes if your neck is turned to one side, you couldn't get off that plane with a stiff neck. But in all seriousness, so are you one to just open up conversation with people abute random. Yeah. in part because we got we could go back a long way to start I'll start at the beginning of our research, but I'll keep this simple. I've interpreted Reaching out and connecting with other people differently, we find in our work that people underestimate how interested others are in engaging with them So you're sitting next to somebody on a plane or on a train and people if you're not already talking, you assume This person doesn't want to talk to you, but that person is more likely to say they're interested in talking to you than you would guess But if you've got two people that aren't Talking to each other. this gets back to our earlier conversation, how I can use somebody's behavior as a guide to their thoughts. in this case, making a mistake I can infer you're not interested in talking to me If you're not And you could be thinking, well Nick's not talking to me. He's not interested in it either. We can both then sit there. Both be interested in talking to each other, but nobody's saying a word because we misunderstand But silence is life or we assume that people don't want to have meaningful conversations. when in fact, most people say that's actually what they want So I've adopted a different way to think about manners here in a way that I think attends more to both my own well being and the person who I'm connecting with I think about social connection as an opportunity or an invitation to connect with somebody. And to your point about fear We find over and over again people are overly pessimistic, overly afraid. about how positively other people will respond to them when you reach out to them in a positive way. So like with the Uber driver on the way here today. I just he was Iranian I asked him, how do you feel about the war? Can you tell me about it? And it was clear that I was notot wanting some superficial Respond, I cared. I was taking an interest in him And he recognized I was taking an interest in him. And he responded by taking an interest then in me and feeling comfortable sharing and and he shared that his son died in a protest in Iran and that he had been imprisoned in Iran. I mean, we were crying, but together at the end of that at the end of that ride, it's twenty three minutes to get here. The fact that you're able to connect for a short while I'm assuming you didn't exchange numbers. You're not going to be able to No no Yeah. So the point is not to create a lasting relationship. The point is to connect to make that moment better. Yeah. I mean, I think actually this is a really important way to rethink How you think about wellbeing Wellbeing is not just about the intense, you know, the really impactful moments in your life Happiness and wellbeing is a little more like a leaky tire. like you just got to keep pumping it up because you adapt to things, right? You go on this amazing trip, you know out into the beautiful Sonoran desert or something, right? And that's great. You come back the next day and then you got traffic coming to work and that sucks, right? You're right back to where you were before. It doesn't last. I mean, nothing really lasts for that one. Obviously relationships can last But moments come and go, right? And what that means, I think, for our well being, is that we want to start paying attention to creating good moments,? positive moments that can lift us up and the people around us as well. And you can take I could have gone twenty three minutes here. to talk with you today and had a perfectly boring ride Or I could have heard one of the most amazing stories about somebody's life where he opens his heart up to me in this car ride in twenty three minutes and made that twenty three minutes way better and connect with another human being more deeply than might imagine would be possible in that short time and make that moment better. My day is better becausecause that moment was better. And if you start thinking about happainess and connection in terms of moments rather than some sort of illusion of some lasting long term impact. Well, then you start seeing opportunities that connect all over the place, right O my plane flight in last night did that, right? In the grocery store store chec out. you got an opportunity. you know, I now keep an eye out. I just pay attention. I take an interest in other people The research that I've done here on social connections has fundamentally changed the way that I live my life. I take an interest in other people. so I notice stuff that I didn't use to notice. I'll throw out compliments Any kind thought I will share with somebody I just don't have anxiety about that. keep moving on. if I'm passing, I'll shout out like this morning I got breakfast at the hotel I was at Guyss wearing a killer hat R I'm walking by. Hey, man, I love your hat. That's awesome I and walk my I says, I love it too, right? And I just kept going. But that moment was a little brighter, right And what's a good day, if not to string along a few good moments And what's a good week? if not to string along a few days that have some good moments in them? And what's a good month, a good year A good life. It's about those moments We got lots of those moments And if we start thinking about them in terms of opportunities to connect, to be decent to another person in a way that'll really use the skill we have to connect with other people instead of being held back I misplace fear Changes the way you live your life I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Function. Function provides over one hundred and sixty advanced lab tests to give you a clear snapshot of your bodily health This snapshot gives you insights into your heart health, your hormone health, autoimmune function, nutrient levels, and much more They've also recently added access to advanced MRI and CT scans. Function not only provides testing of over one hundred and sixty biomarkers key to your physical and mental health It also analyzes these results and provides recommendations for improving your health from top doctors. For example, in a recent test with function, I learned that some of my blood lipids were slightly out of range. As a result, I decided to start supplementing with natokinase, which can naturally help reduce LDL cholesterol And it did. In a follow up test, I could confirm that this strategy worked. My blood lipids are now back exactly where I want Comprehensive lab testing of the sort that fununction offers is just so important for health. I mean, how else are you going to know what's going on under the hood And while I've been doing bloodwork for years, it used to be time consuming, complicated, and expensive. In fact, I used to spend thousands of dollars per year trying to get this kind of data. and the data, frankly, we were not all that good But now with function, it's extremely easy and affordable A function membership is only a dollar a day, three hundred and sixty five dollars a year. And if you think about the information it provides and the health challenges it helps you avoid and the proactive things that it can do for you to enhance your health, I truly look at it as a savings. To learn more, visit functionhealth dot com slash hubberman and use the code Hubberman for aty dollar credit towards your membership Again, that's functionhealth d. com slash Hubberan Yeah, I'm listening to you and I'm thinking All Some of the best moments of my life and I've had many, many are reallyally at this kind of level of in passing You know you mentioned in my mind I was sayining like, never underestimate the good feeling that comes from like a good fist bump with someone that you exchange no words with. You b. And I live in a very crowded area. and so I don't go out much. but when I do, occasionally you just pass someone on the sidewalk, you just like put out a fist and like and you feel a kinship. Yeah. The other day also I have a very niche, but very relationship to a certain genre of music. So was like walking down the boardwalk and someone goes, someone's like shouted out. I was wearing minor Threat, Sure. I'm a bigigy Mai fan minor threat for Gazi. And someone goes, minor threat and I go minor threat. I don't even know where they were. you know, And so like and like they I mean, you know, it's you know, I'm dating myself here by saying that but still amazing band, right? No matter how old you are, check it out Um, but u You know, you feel a kinship to other members of your species that way. I don't know who these people are.. It's interesting. It's a whole other level of human connection that I hadn't thought of. And as with manners and etiquette and that kind of superficial small talk piece, I kind of assumed that this stuff didn't matter that it was kind of like, ah, well, okay, that's like small, That's not nourishment.. That's not a nice like elk steak or beautiful vegetable spread. Thats that's like a cracker. Yeah. you know, But the comparison isn't fair because ultimately, like you said, our life is a series of moments. and the feeling that our species has a kinship that isn't based on anything else. There was no exchange of money or opportunities or any of that is pretty sense that we're connected. We're in this together in some way Yeah. There's a there's a hypothesis that many of my PhD students in postdocs over the years have suggested and we've talked about, but we've never figured out a way to actually Test it But some sense that when you interact with stranger, a member of a group of some kind M strranger is a good example. It doesn't just make you feel connected to that person It kind of changes your sense of connection to like the entire group. Like you just feel a little better about humanity when you see that moment L you deliver a compliment to somebody who's walking down the sidewalk just a little bit ago On my way to the train, there was a woman standing next to a car She just had these awesome red glasses on. They just look fabulous And I said to her or going by I love those glasses. You are killing it today Tk him off Almost didn't she wasn't going to cry, but she stopped and she said, Thank you so much for telling me that. I really needed that today. Right? I had met her in a moment where she had a bad day. And my sense is she just felt uplifted just like by people in general, by the world, just had a more favorable view of what the world was like, a different view of what human nature was like in that moment than you otherwise would have had yesterday train ride into the University of Chicago before I got on a flight to come here to see you Sit down next to a young man on the train. He's got his earbuds in looking at his phone, you know, easy stereotypeed young man disconnected from the world. down And I said I sit right next to him said said, Hi, I reached out I'm Nick, to shake a hand. He came back with a fist bump rather than a handhake But then he took out his right ear bud And I started talking to him. I said, you know, what are you up to today? What are you going to town for? And He said, Well, I'm going to this culinary program. Downtown And what was so crystal clear right away was how proud he was that he was doing this. He'd come from LA, actually. And he was just start getting into this training program, this trade school to get him into this culinary union where he' was going to work as a chef for maybe for a hotel or a big restaurant. He pulled out his book, his little three ring binder that had his lessons for it. I actually took a picture of it I have a son who's entering a trade program right now. I've never seen him happier in his life than when he's doing this. And he was flipping through, showing me what they were doing today. He was just so proud of what he was doing. so ready to talk with me about this. His name was Gustavo Delightful young man. And I remember leaving that conversation just like feeling better about my kids. Kids in general Like here's a kid who' really trying to make it and that felt good, not just about This young man Gustavo, who I felt fortunate to spend thirty minutes that made that thirty minutes much better kind of uplifting about the entire category that he was And what's interesting is how easy it is to your point about manners, say to avoid that How of fear. He doesn't want to talk to me not that interested in Having a meaningful conversation mate doesn't want to go there, right? But in fact, that's the thing we're all dying for. It's super interesting. I never thought about this aspect of social dynamics. Yes, manners Both my parents are very polite. They taught to be polite. My girfriend com from the south so she's like very polite. Like manners like a big thing and she's a genuinely kind person. That's why I think people hear like manners and kindness and they think, o like it's fake, but it's not. It's a real it's part of the social fabric. Yeah right. Not that I'm the data point that matters, but I assure anyone who aspires to be a public facing person, the thing you give up when you're a public facing person is this Oh, really? Yeah, it's interesting. And and for somebody like me, you know, it's compensated for by the other things you gain, right. But that disappears, right? Not with everyone, right. But it disappears. And so as you're saying this, I actually realize I like have a little bit of nostalgia about like just being able to go out and interact with people and sometimes it happens, but a lot of times Things revert back to the podcast or things like that, which I really love. I love it when people roll up and have questions and everyone knows me that like I'll give a podcast right there. If someone has a question, I'm gonna give answer. Sit down for two hours. Well mean, I'm genuinely interested in them. I'll be like, whereere are you from? What's your name? I'm genuinely interested. I'm not asking it like to deflect. I'm really interested But the The anonymous brief Exchange that reinforces Our and they're understanding It's not like a belief. It's like an understanding. It's a feeling that like we're part of the same species. And like you know, that is an incredibly powerful and reinforcing thing. I think, I mean, especially for me, I'm very affiliative. I can imagine and I'll just table this possibility that there are some people who are not as affiliative You know, I know one or two people whose names I won't mention who don't really It's not that they dislike people, but unless it's their family. They're not really interested in other people. Yeah. They're just not. And I can't say that they're unhappy. They like their family, they like their books, they like their movies. and we could say that they would be better off if they you know, uh were different, but they don't seem to really other people. They don't dislike them, but they've got their people and then there's everyone else Yeah. And the idea that like they would interact with these other people except in you know, professional circumstances, I think to them is kind of foreign But I'm making a lot of assumptions here too. So you can find situations where everybody seems to act that way, right? Like on my train coming into Chicago every morning where nobody's talking with T. It looks like nobody cares about other people. They don't have any interest in talking to other people. In those kinds of situations, when you ask people too connect with somebody else Everybody kind of gets lifted up If you look across, say introversion and extroversion Comm common hypothesis is that extroverts get their energy and their enjoyment from connecting with other people, whereas folks who are more introverted get their energy and enjoyment from keeping to themselves, right? That's what they want The data just don't support that So this we've known for a long time So extraversion is correlated with well being happappiness Going back to nineteen eighty, one of the very first papers that ever One of the very first studies I' ever tested, is personality related to wellbe An easy hypothesis is no, it's not. It can't be because right peopleople get what they want out of their lives, right? And everybody's equally happy because you extroverts connect with other people, they reach out, they care about other people. intntroverts don't care as much about other people or they have other preferences to keep to themselves or have deeper, meaningful conversations,? But everybody's getting what they want So theoretically, there should be no correlation at all between personality and well beinging And that just isn't true Correlation between happiness, positive affect day to day. And extra version is zero point five. That's huge. That is big. That's like the correlation between the heights of fathers and sons. That is a big correlation. right? It's a little weaker with things like satisfaction with life. It's a little more likeo point three. But that correlation is big and it shows up around the world But nineteen ninety six Ed Diner, one of the founding figures in the science of happiness or wellbeing, stated, you know the foundational result in personality science is that Extroversion is correlated with well beinging or happiness. The more outgoing an extrovertion you are, the more you connect with others Beere you are Lots of reasons why that could be. There's a third variable. Maybe extroverts are just happier than introverts to begin with, say. But it raises a question. Maybe it's something about how they're The choices they're making habits they're developing, how they're actually behaving. And so that makes an easy prediction that well, What happens if we just ask people? to reach out and connect more with other people to act a little more extroverted Does it affect their well beinging? Could this be like a wellbeing intervention, and it turns out it is Will Fleeeson, a psychologist at Wake Forest University was one of the very first people to do this. Half ourour lab study asked people to act more extroverted or more introverted. When people acted more extroverted, they reported feeling more positive in that experiment When you ask people to act more introverted, they felt less positive, regardless of where they fell on this personality scale to begin with O the course of a person's day, extroverts and introverts report feeling better, alike when they're spending time with other people than when they're alone. You ask both to spend more time connecting with other people being extroverted over the course of a day, a week or more. Sonya Lubrirsky, psychology professor at UC Riverside, has done us has done some of the best research on this overver the course of two weeks. You shift the the positive affect meter up across the entire extraversion scale when people are connecting with others compared to when they're acting introvertly I think what differs here between the folks you're describing who don't seem to get along well with others or like other people, or don't seem to care as much about other people and folks who do arere the habits that they have developed a little like exercise, I think is the way to think about it. Some of us choose to exercise a lot. You choose to exercise a lot clearly. I don't like play football and you wrestle. compometitively basketball. basketball and football. Yeahah No, I avoid wrestling ' because I wanted my ears to keep looking good. It' really good. Yeah ye Yeah, but you know, I struggle to find the time for it. So I don't choose to exercise as much as I should now, right? But we all would feel better if we exercised a little more regardless of what our habits are. So what the data on this suggests is that people open themselves up a little bit more to other people, try to reach out and connect in positive ways with other people. The porcupines in our lives are not making themselves happier by keeping their quills out and keeping to themselves not living quite as good a life they as they could live if they chose to live a little differently. Now whether they choose or not, right? Whether you exercise or not is not like necessarily a moral virtue. someomebody doesn't exercise can't say you have to exercise. If you wanted to lift your life up a little bit reach out and engage a little more often as what the data suggests regardless of where you are on that spectrum I realize It's not your specific area of work, but what about for people with social anxiety? Yeah. I mean, my first impulse is to say as long as you have the resources and the time, Get a dog. Yeah I'm not a big fan of dog parks for all sorts of health reasons. but when I lived in San Diego, like I would take my bulldog mastive puppy to the dog park. I made lots of friends. He made friends. a dog is better than bumbing a cigarette, which nobody does anymore, right? Tons of people that way. So what's interesting about that is that that creates like an excuse to have a conversation. Right. Like the well, no one I'm not suggesting anyone do this but in the old days like you would You would ask for a cigarette And you would then smoke then you would smoke side by side with somebody and you'd talk. And sometimes there was a romantic interest, sometimes it was just a friendly interest. but you shared a brief experience got some nicotine in your system, which no doubt. they gave something to you. Right? So they share resrust with you. and so there's trust that's. That was a very common mode of exchange Yeah until about will really stop doing that kind of in their mid nineties when smoking really dropped off. So what's interesting about that I think those tokens, the dog or the cigarette are serving to work our way around our anxiety a little bit that we have about connecting with other people, I don't think they're necessary They're not necessary, but they do help to get around that anxiety. But to people who have social anxiety It's a painful thing, of course, and it's hard. We have it to some extent are nervous about reaching out and engaging with other people in varying degrees. someome of that just being a function of how often we do it When I was in graduate school, for instance, I was terrified of public speaking. before my first fore my first job interview, which is my fourth year graduate school at Prineton, I got super lucky to get this job interview I was terrified terrified my job I seems so facciile with it now. Now I am. Yeah. Now I am, right? This is twenty five years of practice and experience and exposure And if you have social anxiety disorder and you want to take care of that, this is something psychologists, clinicians can really take care of. There are lots of things that a psychologist we can't really deal with behaviorally. Social anxiety is something we really can help people with for for this book a little more social that I just wrote I had a conversation with the guy who is responsible for really developing exposure therapy to treat anxiety disorder. Stefan Hoffman is his name and Essentially the strategy is very simple If you are afraid of talking with a stranger or having a deep conversation, the way to get over that is not to simulate it or to imagine. It's not like you get up and you give a pretend speech. That's what psychologists were doing for years. It doesn't work because it's still pretending. you're not a real audience. It has to be real. And that was Stefan Hoffman's real uh innovation is you send people out in the world and to do the thing for real You're worried about getting rejected. Go out and start asking people for help. And you'll learn that your fear is misplaced, that you get accepted more often than you might guess. expxposing people to that thing that they're anxious of When the belief is misplaced and with social anxiety, it is usually wildly misplaced. That's what we find over and over again is a mistaken barrier to connecting with other people then that's how you ease that social anxiety and get rid of it. Now, exposure therapy doesn't work for everything If you're afraid of bullets,? You're afraid of getting shot by bullets. Right Repeated exposure to being shot by bullets is not going make you less afraid of that. That's going to be one trial learning and that's going to be the end of it. But when your fears are misplaced like it is with social stuff exposure is what. takes care of it. N not because you dole your anxiety so much. It's because you change your beliefs about what other people are like. You learn Oh wait Other people are nicer than I think. When I say hi to somebody, They tend to say hi back When I take an interest in somebody, they tend to take an interest in me. When I ask somebody for a cigarette And they have one. they tend to give me one when I ask for it. and it makes this nice conversation. changes your beliefs. That's why exposure therapy works That's really interesting. and bit surprising, I completely believe it as you say it, but that exposure therapy doesn't reduce your anxiety per se. It changes your beliefs about how other people are going to react Yeah, which indirectly feeds back and changes how you feel. Let me give you a story about somebody who I got connected to a little bit while I was writing this book, Jia Jang is his name And Gia He lives up in the Bay Area. Well, at least he did at the time. I think that's still where he is. He was an aspiring entrepreneur. You can find him at rejectiontherraapy. com which' his website where he put this together. He's got all these videos. They're amazing. He decided he was an aspiring entrepreneur. and But he was afraid of rejection And He decided he was going to cure himself. of this fear of rejection. by subjecting himself to exposure therapy. And he heard of this, that you do this for a month, right this Stehan Hoffman work,' he's going to try to make some outlandish request every day for a month and get rejected every day, But because his anxiety was so bad, he needed more than a month. He needed a hundred days So it was a hundred days in a row He's going to ask somebody some ludicrous request so that he would get rejected. And then he was going to develop thick skin, right? He was going to become immune to rejection. He was going to toughen himself up. He was going to desensitize himself, okay first day he goes up to a security guard and videotapes all these, so you can find these online. They're beautif All right He goes up to somebody at a bank like a security guard outside a bank. And he asked him Can I borrow a hundred dollars from you the security guard says that's not how this works, buddy. And so GI walks away, Ah success. I got rejected. But then he says But it actually wasn't that bad, right? He thought the rejection was going to be harsh, right? Middle fingers blazing, swear words coming. someomebody punch him in the face, whatever. He thought it was going to be harsh It wasn't that bad By the third day He starts to fail He goes into a Krispy Kreme donoughnut store in Atlanta goes every there Desk A woman named Jackie Braun is kind of managing the shift there that day. She comes up and he comes to the counter and he says Can I get Krispy Kreme Donuts in the shape of the Olympic rings Sape and call it them And he's thinking, o, they're going to say, we don't do that here. U and instead Jackie sits down, gets in her thinker pose and starts drawing on a piece of paper, what the Olympic rings are, what colors are they? We don't know. They're trying to figure this out. She just wait a minute.es Jia goes and sits down. fifteen minutes later, she comes out with a box of donnuts a little sheepishly because she thought she could have done better And there are these Olympic rings that are amazing. The voice overver on his video is something to the effect of, and this is why humanity is worth saving Over the course of his hundred days, he doubles up a few days. He ends up with like one hundred and six requests. We, Don Lyons, who was my lab manager at the time, went through and evaluated all of those requests that he posted. And we just asked, how often was he actually rejected walks up to a house in Texas and ask the guy at the house You take a picture of me playing soccer in your backyard Yes is the answer. There he's playing soccer. He walks up to a Southwest Airlines gate. He's getting on a plane. and He says, C I do the security briefing at the beginning? He says, Well, you can't do that. But you can address the entire plane if you want. So there he is standing in front of the entire plane addressing this plane, right? He goes to another airport, a private airport, never flown on a plane in his life. And I co pilot a plane ? Can I do that? Yeah, he does. He gets it done, right? Walks up to a woman's house. He's got a potted rose, pink rose. Can I plant this in your front yard Oh, I love Roses. You bet put it right there He actually is rejected less often than he is accepted. And we coded the videos for how negative they are. Mostly not neg at all Only about seven out of those one hundred times. Is there any negativity whatsoever? And if anything, it's just slight. Sometimes people can't do it Right? So so he's he's he's accepted fifty one if I remember right and rejected forty eight times, and then there are a few of that are ambiguous where he can't do the thing he ased for, but they do something else. Um But out of all those, only a few times is there any negativity when I was talking to him about this? He said, I went into this thinking I was going to develop thicker skin. I lost my fear of rejection But it was because I changed How I think about other people? Other people are way kinder than I expect And he talked about this now, this belief he has as being a kind of superpower because he realizes that If you ask people for help They are much more interested in trying to help you than you'd imagine. That's why exposure to mistaken beliefs like our social anxiety works because you learn that your beliefs are wrong But if you never test them, You never find out you'd be wrong persistent was he? For instance, if he asked a question and the person said listen, you can't come in a backyard and play soccer But maybe the front yard, wouldould he say backyard, please Or if they said no outright, you know, he would he push He wasn't that persistent in these things. And this Gia's experience is very consistent with what we find in the research literature as well. There's a phenomena. Frank Flynn and Vanessa Bones, Frank's is a Stanford, Vanessa is a Cornell, both fabulous researchers documented this phenomenon known as the underestimation of compliance effect, which is you ask people to predict percentage of people are how many people will agree to some request and the very robust tendency is that they overestimate how many people they'll have to ask in order to get some number to agree to request. People are just much more likely to agree than you think. We find in our research that not only are they more willing to agree to the request, they also feel much better when they agree to help you than you would guess. You ask somebody to take a picture of you down along the boardwalk in L.A, right? You think you're you're pestering somebody, right? You're being a burden to them They're usually happier have helped you because we are happier when we are being kind to other people. So Jia's result is consistent with all of this work In his videos, he was not that persistent, but he would often accept other alternatives. So he goes into Costco one time goes up to the manager and says, I love Costco. It's just my favorite store Can I go on the intercom and tell the entire store How much I love Costco and how fabulous I think you all are And the manager says, well, I can't let you do that, but can go get lunch over here at, you know, at the pizza shop that's in Costco and we can spend some time talking And so he compoms him a lunch, and then he gets a free lunch out of him and that's what he does. So there were few and like on the Southwest Airlines thing he couldn he couldn't do the security briefing but he could justust address the whole plane flight which is what he did, right? So he would accept those those and those were the few cases where it wasn't outright accepted. But if you got to know He said, thank you, and that was it. I don't want to give anyone social anxiety because you just provided a wonderful or I don't want to discourage anyone from from doing what you just described because it's it's a really Both entertaining and beautiful example of the goodness of humanity really being a fundamental feature of M surprisingly funy. So it's the case that everybody's always like, of course not. But it tends to go he thought he'd be rejected a hundred days in a row. He wasn't You have data, I just have an anecdote. So the fact that I'm going to tell you that A piece of that anecdote comes from a neurologist does not mean it has any more validity than And maybe even less. That was a joke against my neurology. I have great jokes about neurologists, by the way. I could do an entire podcast about the jokes against the different divisions of medicine. Maybe I'll do that sometime. We should do that, Rob. So I had a postdoc advisor, unfortunately, he passed, but that's not the point here. He was a neurologist. and He was an extremely friendly person It was Benbarrass. He used to walk down the hall. He'd say Hide are the janitors. He'd say He was always very good about bringing things to the admins up frront. E I both know they are underpaid at all universities. They are true. People always say all the administrators like, we got high level administrators, I'm not going to comment on what they make. I don't know. But all the administrators at the level of like the front office, et cetera, they're underpaid, they're overworked Be it' just an extremely kind person. He was very outgoing but he was a neurologist in addition to being a scientist. And he pointed something out, which was that there would be some people who would that he would interact with on campus And we were adjacent to the hospital. so this plays in whoo you'd be friendly to like, Hey, how's it going? And they say, Hey, what do you do here? And you'd say oh, well we work on neuroglial interactions, activity dependent development of myelination. And they go, Oh, cool, like what's that? And you'd have a little exchange and then move on healthy, they're learning, they realize academics aren't just trying to, you hide their information no matter how busy they are. Somebody is just taking time out of their busy pace to stop and have an interaction with you. This is something that I grew up observing in my mom and it's something that I just naturally do and enjoy. So it's a lot of what you described before But I'll never forget Ben once telling me, he said See this guy coming down the hall He's sticky And I said, What's sticky? And he said, That's neurologist speak for the person that takes that and a casual exchange. and makes the assumption that you're a lot closer than you actually are And as somebody with a sister, you know, you groww up hearing stories of like you know, you hear through the wall, you know, like, oh, some like You know, good looking guy asked for a number excited about that. but some other guy, like he was pretty persistent and like he wouldn't go away. I'm not talking about full staler situation.' this too.. So I think a lot of Social, Anxiety comes from Some people just don't know where the line is between normal, healthy, casual social exchange and being too sticky Yeah. And this takes us back to the eyes. I'll never forget freshman year of college. Forgive me for weaving in a second aneiddote. I had a roommate, we were triple room, but I had a roommate And feeedback from people around us they're like, what's wrong with your roommate? I'm like what you mean?'s like a perfect nice guy. Like he's super nice and they're like, No, he stares at people. And I thought Oh And he was very tall, you know, and I'm reasonably tall. but he was like really, really tall. And so I started noticing when we would stand in groups, he would just like beam people. And so I pulled him aside and I said, Hey, listen Dave, He can't stare at people He goes I'm just looking at them. and I'm like, I know, but you can't stare at. You're creeping people out. and he goes Okay, where should I look? Now he might have been a little bit on the spectrum. I don't know. We didn't have that language or understanding about that spectrum back then. But I explained to him, I was like, just keep your gaze moving and stopp. And we all loved him. And he became part of our social circle. But in those first weeks, you, he was a little bit. He was giving people an uneasy feeling So I think for a lot of people who have social anxiety Their concern is that they're going to be perceived as kind of creepy or sticky. and no one wants to be that person.. And so it is an art.. It is a learning to understand that like a fist bump is one thing. But just because you see that person again the next day, you remember their name, you're not best friends. Yes. and you're not even really friend friends, you're being a friend Lee. Right. And I'm not trying to contaminate the the positive waters here. Yeah. But I think A lot of people don't know how to develop this skill as a honed skill. and they're really afraid. And I think it's not about like you know someone calling the police because someone iss being too sticky. But yeah, like if somebody doesn't call you back, like they probably don't want you to ping them a third time. R. Right or text you again. And I think a lot of it always seems to sort of immediately deflect to like men doing this to women I can tell you a lot of women do this too. it's independent of sex, right. If somebody doesn't respond a third time and it was a first time meeting regardless of what the exchange was translation, they don't want to continue the exchange for whatever reason. And so how do you reconcile that in when giving advice for people to be more outgoing? How do you keep people from being sticky? I guess there's another way to think about too is that a lot of sensitivity or concern about social anxiety is about running into sticky people And there I think there probably is a gender difference, a sex difference, that women are likely to be more nervous about men misinterpreting something in a way that might become problematic or threaten' a physical danger. Exactly. So I'm super sensitive to that. And our data don't suggest that you should be ignoring risks or your senses about what's risky, but our data suggests that your sense about risk is off a little bit. and there are times where you might want to test some of those beliefs and you might find some places where you're mistaken. I think the important thing from my perspective on this is that If you're really pessimistic about other people, it never gets corrected. You never get to find the great people to have a conversation with, right? But it does also mean that you will sometimes run into the people who aren't so great to have a conversation with and you need to learn how to move on from those people, right? We're not friends with everybody. Certainly that is true The other thing that you mentioned was the importance of this being a skill. It is something that you learn to do as you practice. I have become a better conversationalist I become a better public speaker. I become better at doing this because I do it for a living And I choose to try to do it and try to become better. And I try to be when I'm interacting with other people to be sensitive to them as well. Our data don't suggest that you should be reaching out to other people in order to make yourself feel good. Our data suggests that what feels good is when you take an interest in other people and you open them up to you in a way that you would have avoided or missed before, and you'll just have a lot more positive experiences that way. But it does mean being sensitive to how they respond. and you do learn to do this over time with practice, just like anything. you get better with practice, right? And so For folks who are concerned about starting or trying My suggestion is just like which is like when you're starting anything that you're nervous about or hard you never exercise. Pcription as always to start small. Tick a little thing that's easy and safe. You know that person in the office who you've seen for years, but you don't know their name Just go and say hi to them. I just see how that goes And then try that with somebody else. Those are easy, Th are safe, right? That's not that That's not that difficult U and you get better at this over time, including figuring out how to do things like end conversations with somebody who's too sticky or to move along or like your advisor to recognize the person that's sticky. and then you can manage that a little bit differently. Those are skills you develop by approaching You don't develop them by avoiding and you miss a lot of people who are wonderful. Uber driver The young man Gustavo on my train ride Yesterday morning. Brian on my flight here to speak with you today on my plane last night. You miss a lot of great people too. and that's what we find in our research that I think is perhaps the bigger cost And just like Gia found, he missed opportunities to get help from other people. And even to allow people to feel better for helping him because he was too afraid to ask I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Eleen Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium all in the correct ratios, but no sugar Proper hydration is critical for brain and body function Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells drinking element makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. My days tend to start really fast, meaning I have to jump right into work or right into exercise. So to make sure that I'm hydrated and I have sufficient electrolytes, when I first wake up in the morning, I drink sixteen to thirty two ounces of water with an element packet dissolved in it I also drink element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing Especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. Element has a bunch of great tasting flavors. In fact, I love them all. the watermelon, the raspberry, the citrus, and I really love the lemonade flavor. So if you'd like to try element, you can go to drink element. com slash Hubberman to claim a free element sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drink element. com slash Hubberman to claim a free sample pack. A lot of people are on their phones texting with people they already know. They have an established relationship. presumably they're continuing to maintain if not build those relationships by doing that. And I think that going back to this eye gaze thing from earlier, eyes down into a little box it's thick shell to break through.ight? Like I don't think any of us really feel comfortable interrupting somebody texting or on a call I mean, I wouldn't do that. You would think of it as bad manners, impolite. Yeah, they're clearly in a conversation with somebody else. the same way. I wouldn't just walk up and interrupt.. Actually yesterday I was a social gathering. there was like three people talking. these guys all knew each other stranger in the group and like you sort of learn like how like what is this you have to quickly assess like what is this conversation? So I said, sorry, I don't know if I'm interrupting something critical, but if so, I'm going to stand right here. No, I just said if I'm interrupting like, you know, and they're like, no, no, no, like like you have to be able to know how to break into a conversation. It's very hard when people are on their phones. It can be. The way I think of it is you're giving people an invitation I got off the train one morning. was this guy. behind me. I remember this very distinctly He's a little taller than I was. so I'm I'm about six foot. He was probably six foot three Looks like an Orthodox monk, right? He's got this big long beard graying beard, long hair. looks like you the last thing he would want to do is talk to another person, a very stern kind of dead off to work face. and I saw him come up sidle up next to me He'd already put his left earbud in and he was putting his right earbud in at the same time, right It would have been easy for me to infer that he didn't want to talk to me. But of course, nobody was talking to him either Nobody sucked. And so that signal was a little ambiguous. What does it mean Does he want to talk to me? It's not clear. He could be putting his ear bud in because nobody's talking to him, he doesn't think other people want to talk to him. So he's just gonna get off to work, right? Get away from all these jerks turned over and said, Hi, I'm Nick powerful words you have in your life. whoever you are I'm nick He took out his earbud. He turned to me and he just like came alive, like I was flipping a switch on his back Huge smile. Hi, I'm Tibo He turns out he' French, very strong French accent. We became friends over the years, right? We walk down to four blocks to my office there. And so sometimes these cues can be ambiguous. And you don't know what the queue means until you test it So the way I think about reaching out to connect with other people to test our fears, right, our anxiety, our interpretations of other people, knowing that we can make mistakes with each other is to think of it as an invitation I turned a Gustavo yesterday, Brian last night, my cab dri my Uber driver this morning. I wasn't demanding anything I was offering up an opportunity an invitation to connect if they wanted to Didn't have to pull their earbuduh? Den Brian last night had a little video game Oh. player in front of him, right? I thought maybe you wanted to play video games. No, he was happy to talk, right. I kind of went in and out I had a manuscript review I had to do But if you start thinking of these opportunities as potential places where you might be misunderstanding somebody, and don't take your beliefs about another person For granted treat them as betets that might be wrong thenen you start to see places where maybe you've made a mistake and you give people an opportunity to show you no Tibo would have been happy to talk to me and became friends over years, just because I was willing to test that initial belief I had which was mistaken that he didn't want to talk to me And the problem that at least we find over and over again in our social lives is all too often We infer immediately we have overly pessimistic expectations about how other people will respond to us when we try. And we just miss opportunities to connect with other people that we could have across the moments of our days, weeks, months, years of our lives that would just enrich our lives in lots of ways if we were willing to test those barriers that were keeping us from connecting with other people to see if are they made out of steel Or is it a pasta noodle? Sometimes're pasta noodles The data I've seen suggests that more and more people are going to church, they're attending other religious gatherings. you know, It seems that just recently ye, it's really on the upswing. And my guess is there are a number of reasons for that. People want to meet people with a certain set of values. Maybe they are drinking less, who knows, you know, I think a component of those types of gatherings O that people generally are pretty friendly. Yes. It's pretty inviting. Absolutely.ol. I mean, people still go to festivals too. like I didn't go but Cachello was recently. peopleople tend to be in a good mood festivals. Yes. I was at TedD last week. So it was a very very example. Yeah. So I'm just you know we could pepper with different examples and I think it is important to do so. I didn't want to imply it was just churches, these kind commommon gatherings where people are there for their own reasons, but also to interact with others, including strangers. Absolutely. And I think this, in my mind can be pretty well explained by the fact that people were endorsed during the pandemic a lot of people were anyway, and everyone's on their phones more and devices. So attending venues where there's clelearly an impulse towards interacting with strangers. Aually sauna gatherings are really big in major cities.. You know, peopleeople not just sitting in a sauna facing out like bleach on bleachers, but in around and doing breath workork. So and on and on. So it's interesting, I think people really crave this Earlier, you talked a little bit about your family and adoption. And I've heard you say in a previous podcast that You have a child or children who are particularly outgoing And and youngest. Yeah. so if you're willing, I don't would you share a little bit about that? It's a very interesting and I think important example into on differeiffnces among humans and sometimes we think of differences as good bad. In this case, it was clearly an example of how someome people by virtue of being more outgoing, having less fear. actually afford themselves and others a uniquely wonderful experience of life. Y. Yeah So our youngest daughter, Lindseay has Down S syndrome And Lindsey is adopted from we adopted Lindseay from China The research that I've been doing over the last fifteen or so years with my collaborators where we're finding over and over again, how overly pessimistic we are about how other people respond to us when we reach out to connect with them has just really changed the way I live my life It is sometimes hard to take behavioral science research and apply it to individual lives. but in my own life, I've seen ways to do this over and over again by testing some of these barriers and just being more open to reaching out and connect, realizing it's going to be more positive than I might imagine Um, About ten years ago My wife, this is how this all got us to Lindseay in the end and it came right through our research. I remember this so vividly My wife We were three months into pregnancy We had already, we had named our daughter Sophie at that point. We had four kids by that time. We were open to to more life and Jen was open Th months into the pregnancy, we learned our daughter had downown syndr And my response to that was to be very pessimistic It was uncertain. I didn't know how this I never this was not where my mind was. I didn't think I wasn't thinking that we'd be raising a child in our forties with Down syyndrome. Um This was This was going to be hard. I know though how easy it is to misunderstand how you'd respond in a situation you're not in. And so my wife and I, and I'm not speaking for my wife's thoughts, my wife Jen is an angel. She's an amazing human being. As my college football coach said when he learned that I was going to ask her to marry me when I was a junior in college, she said, Nick, he said, Nick, you're marrying up And he was absolutely right about that, marrying up For me, I was nervous about this. We started calling families who were raising kids with D Sno Everyone of those families trying to get their perspective to learn what it would be like to be in the situation we weren't in person Those families refer to their children with Down syyndrome as a blessing. almost like they were reading off of a script. It was amazing to hear their stories about how their children who not have much social anxiety. just're very open and loving and create were like magnets in their family that everybody flocked around. They just brought joy and love and a broader view of what humanity could do with each other than they'd ever imagined before, J enriched their lives, broadened their worldview in ways they couldn' have anticipated was a blessing Six months into our pregnancy Uh, Sophie died. So children with Down syndrome face a much higher risk of miscarriage or still birth, six months a still birth july eleventh, twenty sixteen. our daughter died. It was the worst, it was horrible. It was the worst experience in our marriage we had ever P. We mourned that loss for a good long stretch. It's about a year O morning. I went into the sun room. My wife was sitting there. We had two chairs there She was sitting in this chair. where she always sits and I said You know, honey, we were We were ready to have another baby. We could do this again. There are children out there who need parents. We've adopted you before. We know how this goes. We can do this again. We were ready. We were in the starting blocks We were ready to go. And she turned to me and she said Would you be open to adopting a child with Down syndrome not even occurred to me that that was something we could do. I hadn't thought about it. My head was not there. All over again. I was back where I was threeree months before, thinking I don't know that we can do this, right? This is going to be super hard And then You know, if you're a researcher, you do think about your data all the time. I started thinking again about,, where we were three months ago calling all these families who talked about their kids as blessings. All this data, thousands and thousands of data points byy this point, as I'm talking to you now, we've run over thirty thousand people in over one hundred twenty experiments, people reaching out to others documenting ways in which they're underestimating how positively others will respond They're making the choice hold back too often rather than reaching out and engaging and connecting with other people too much. And here we had this choice right in front of us My wife was offering it, Do we reach out and bring this child into our lives? The stranger? or not And I was full of doubt here, all the same kind of doubt How would she respond to us Our data though gave me some courage here, like data driven courage. like Nick, you are in the same position that all of your participants are in over and over again And it gave me courage. to go where my wife was and to say, yeah, we can do this. honey, you and I can do this together. Now Jen and I are in position that's different from lots of other families. We have resources. She's a fabulous human being, we have a strong marriage We could raising a child with intellectual disability is Challenging We could do this. and my data Really? made me feel comfortable that it wouldn't just be good. it would be surprisingly good. about a year after that Jen and I to flight with our four other kids. We're like a traveling circus show on our way to China. U Folks had not seen a family like ours to adopt Lindsey She's two years old. She was abandoned in China My woman who we will never meet whose thoughts we can't, you know about how hard this might have been or how little support she had to raise a child like Lindseay, we don't know. Yeah Lindsay, beautiful brown eyes, relelentless smile Despite a really, really hard start in life And That was how that started and she has been amazing She has been flat out amazing not without difficulty. Raising a child with an intellectual disability is really, really, really hard t the same time She has been what every other family has said that raising child with Down' syndrome would be like a blessing to us in so many ways. And to watch her go around world. I mean, she gets frustrated and she's stubborn and she gets angry at people, but she also lives without the same kind of social anxiety that many of us has, she has no filter on her hello. Taking her grocery shopping is Super fun She goes up and down the aisles. She says to hello to everybody everybody And it's like just like with my with my friend Tibo, who I flipped a switch on his back and he gives this big hello to me. She flips the switch on so many people's backs. The faces light up when she says hello to them. And she walks around the world this way Open. hello to everybody. It's amazing It's amazing And I think about how close We could have been. I could have been saying, I don't think I can do this becausecause we failed to appreciate just how well things would go when we reach out to love someone, bring them into our lives when we could and she's amazing. What an incredible story If don't mind me asking, what is the relationship between your youngest daughter and the other children in your family? Because you know, you described a beautiful set of examples with people outside your family, and obviously you and your wife have an incredible connection to her. But what is her relationship to the other? She is the magnet in the family. mean She is the baby. Everybody just, you know, if you are in a family with a you know a youngest sibling You all glom around that youngest one. she is like that too for the siblings too. Now it's also hard. They need some time alone, but they when you come home and Lindsey is there I get a high dad that's of a volume that every dad should hear when they come home. It is wonderful. The sisters and the brothers all get that too It's great It's great. She is very connected to everybody in a way that I think even the other siblings aren't potential. They get older, they go their own ways Everybody loves Lindsey Is it the case that Children with down are given up for adoption more I mean, you described it a very What I assume is a somewhat unique situation in China. someomebody you said abandoned her she was given to an orphanage. Y. I don't know anything about this. right? I had a colleague that was like studied gaba transansmission in the brain of you know, and down and like you know but like I've zero minus knowledge of this. You can adopt a child with Down' syndrome today in the United States and there's a waiting list for these kids in most spac The other thing that happens though is what could have happened to us at three months. And I think this is more common now as genetic testing allows you to tell whether your child has any number of different kind of genetic you know, differences, diversity on that dimension. And look, there's some There's some conditions they're just very, very hard to manage or that aren't conducive to life Down syndrome is just not one of those. But many families at that three month period because They're skeptical or pessimistic about how well they can handle this They don't know the supports that are available. They don't realize the strength that they oe that they that they have or the amount of love that they will feel for this child once it becomes yours. hardardships notwithstanding, it is harder. no doubt about it. will end those pregnancies when like us might have found it to be a massive blessing in their lives. I don't know what to tell people to do with that other than telling our own story. I think people have strength that they might not realize. and there are lots of very challenging conditions Down syndrome is one that is not as challenging as you might imagine. These kids are amazing You know, our kids are our kids and you know, even even like, you know, across As we were talking earlier, whether your kids have come into however kids have come into your life, onnce they're your kids I mean, the fact that she has Down' syndrome is something that is always kind of on our minds because it governs lots of things we do, but it also fades very quickly. Lindsy's just Lindsy Right? She's got she's got her own personality. She does her own things, like the intellectual disability is just is kind of a It becomes almost like a background thing. It is not what defines her. She loves playing with dolls and Disney characters. She loves listening to stories. She loves reading books with you. She loves, loves, loves, playing on the trampoline and playing in our outdoor kitchen. She loves playing with the neighbor kids, Demi and Delilah, they are her closest friends. She loves all those things. She has a huge personality. and that's what defines her in our lives day to day, not the diagnosis I've only known you a short while and I'm in no position to psychoanalyze you, but I have to assume that something very powerful about you and I'm Also assuming about your wife, Jen. Yes that your very clear complete lack of shame about the fact that she has down is has to be a positive Um, force here in this. I'm not trying to take anything away from who she Lindsey is as an individual. but I don't know if I want to darken the conversation with a contrast story, but I will, I will. I won't reveal who this person is, but there's a very, very famous neuroscientist Um to It was pretty well known that he had a son who had epileptic seizures. Yeah. I mean, what's the shame in that? Yeah, right? But he was ashamed of his son. He wouldn't bring him to events, he wouldn't bring him to things. I'm actually aware of several high level scientists. and I have to be careful because I don't want tona pain a neg view of scientist. I could tell you a thousand stories about wonderful scientists doing wonderful things for every bad story. but I remember hearing this and thinking like This is crazy. Someone who worked in his lab said, yeah, you know, he's got a Nobel prize, but he's incredibly ashamed of his son. I thought like, that's nuts. I have a good friend in the positive side, my good friend Edie Chang, who's the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF. and he works on epilepsy. And like you can treat various forms of epilepsy. this wasn't intractable epilepsy. So I think when parents have a shame about a child's Cndition. Yes. That has to impact the way that the child in the world. I think it's really awesome that there is like zero minus infinity shame detected.ar I hear only I hear only glowing things and pride. and I also don't detect any hints of like, we're doing this really hard thing and therefore we're amazing. But like you said, she's just our daughter And we have this relationship. We're her parents, she's our daughter and We're just living life, whichich I think is awesome. I think it's a real testament to who you are. and I think it's a real end your wife and Lindseayy. And I think it's a testament to like what's possible when we out of like what do people think? Yeah. It just seems like every all goodness just emerges. to be clear, I mean, it's been a struggle for me too. I don't want to certainly pay myself as not having concerns about this or being worried what person will think about us or you know, even our other kids when they're going through difficult stretches in their lives, they're not doing the kinds of things that maybe I did, right have to makeake myself okay with that and come to accept that. And when I do that. So I have another son who we just love absolute love dearly who college just wasn't for him. You know, I'm a I'm a third generation PhD. One I'm on my mom's side and my dad has a PhD as well. and college is just the root, right? I' been in academic life for whole college was just the root, but it just wasn't for him. And it just wasn't engaging with it and And I mean this is I'm saying this with some shame myself right now that We kind of kept him in this path thinking this is the right way to go. and it was would have been clearear to outsideer that this isn't what he wants to be doing. He finally came to us very clear and they said that, you know, dad, this is just not what I want to keep doing. And when we finally let go of that and just let him do what he wanted to do, which is now he's in a trade school. I've never seen him happier We're just so proud of him. Like Gustabo, who I met on the train yesterday morning, taking this culinary class. He's so proud of what he's doing. Just made me feel so good about him and also about my son to have let go of those things and just to love him for who he is. Every parent struggles with that everyvery parent struggles with loving their kids for who they are. and that takes some practice too and also some deliberate careful thought and attention, and it's worth challenging yourself to do because of course, it makes world of difference for them We all struggled to do that somewhat. With Lindsy, she's a rey of sunshine. We refer to her sometimes as a unicorn because there aren't too many out there. and we learned A little while ago, I don't know true this is. I don't know who comes up with these things. But it turns out collection of unicorns, Do you know what it is ostensibly called blessing Really, really That's awesome. Who do to guess? Look, I I don't yeah I won't put that to some sort of factual test. That is what they apparently called as a blessing and that certainly has been what she's been for us A lot of lessons in there and a lot of things for people to think about in terms of who they are and how they relate to people. If you don't mind, I just would like to peel back another layer on relationships with I'll use the example of children, but it could be with family other family member where That person is not typical of the average population. And you describe Lindseay in this beautiful way. I almost feel like she's like a bit in the room, right? You know the way you describe her I think when I'm out and about and I see parent or parents. with a kid who has an mean I don't know what diagnoses are, right? How could I an intellectual or some sort of Aypical behavior. The way you describe her is very delightful Sometimes the behavior of children with these challenges are disruptive It's hard to not feel the shame of the parent You know, like if a kid is being really loud or throwing a tantrum and this isn't a small child, for instance, or saying things that clearly don't make sense. And I don't expect you to be you know, the ambassador for all these people. I think We as sentient well meaning people around, we don't quite know how to react to that. you want to say, gosh, I'm so sorry? No, of course not. like that's their life, you know, who are you? You also don't want to perhaps ignore them, but you also don't want people to feel like you're calling attention to them. Yeah. Do you have any ideas? like or suggestions? I mean, I mean, it's like It must be it must be an odd experience to move through life that way U, and I'm so glad they don't isolate their kid. Yeah I think we've all been in this circumstance, we don't quite know how to react. Yeah. So I think a good analog to this is with stuttering. And I think we all know how to deal with stuttering. somebody who has a stutter is you wait patiently you know, you don't call attention to it. You just wait patiently for them to express what they want to express and then you carry on, right? And maybe sometime if you get to know somebody, you can ask more specifically about, you know, how would you like me to to help in this particular case, Is there anything I can do to be of assistance? How would you like me to respond? We can ask people that directly, right often often somebody a caretaker will be able to tell you that Patience is, I think the way to deal with it, just to wait until whatever they're trying to do becomes clear. And I think we can all do that with stuttering. I think that's kind of understood and maybe that's the way I would think about it. But yes, some, you know, some differences are harder. and others for sure. Yeah, haaving grown up in a town Pal Alalta, where there are many, many professors and high achieving parents and I could list off a dozen or more examples of where the kids either didn't follow the traditional track. Yes. You could say, oh, they didn't follow the traditional track, but they became like az pulitzer winning writer, you know or something like that. I'm not talking about that.. right? I think it's so cool, by the way, that your son is in trades. Guy friends From all walks of life and fulfillment is I've never seen our son happier. Yeah. we're two academics. you know, My dad's an academic and I can say that I actually think I would' have been happy doing any number of things. At one point I wanted to join the fire service. abolutely My dad every once in a while, sorry, dad, he'll say like, o, you know, I don't think that would have been fulfilling. I think it would have been awesome. L workout the dog. like I love serving others getet out, you know and do things and I'm friends with the local fire department when they come through like I certainly don't know what it is to do that profession. be like, I think fulfillment can be found in a number ofays. Fulfillment' about engagement, right Yeah. And people like firefighters. Be being a cop is a little tricky because some people like you and some people who hate you and the job is much more fromom moment to moment is a lot less predictable. I think one thing that we can do, and I haven't always been great at this in my family I told you, it took me a while with my son to encourage him more down that path and I am just now realizing that's what I need to be doing is you know, I think kids will often will feel like they are not following the right path and won't feel good about the path they're going down. and that's where parents can really be helpful. We have right outside my office window is the University of Chicago Laboratory School, which is a very elite private Um school and it goes all the way through you know down to preschool as well. And the kids come out of there with a very clear expectation about what the right path is for them. And a lot of kids struggle with that. I just had a faculty member in my office yesterday before I left to get on a flight with you describing Um how their children are struggling, I think, with expectations for what they ought to be doing that just don't fit with who they are. And I think that's where parents can be really helpful. kids is loving them for who they are and helping them find what's going to make them beest in town the making sure the kids know that any path is okay. You want to be a carpenter great. That job won't be AIed, at least, right? Or you know you want to get a PhD fabulous or whatever field, go for it, right? Trying to encourage kids with their passions and encouraging them to feel like it's okay That's important You have another side of you that most people aren't aware of that we somehow land on here like somewhat randomly, which is you enjoy a lot of as much time as possible in the out ofdoors. You're a hunter and a fisherman. an outdoorsman. So you wanted to be grizzly Adams. Yeah. when I was a kid. Yeah. In some sense, you play him from time to time but not out on your own. So you and and your sons and daughters go get out into the waters. Yeah. I grew up in rural Iowa in the country. My dad and I went hunting and fishing all the time when I was a kid. I was four years old, the first time I went deer hunting with my dad. And I love that timef yeah. I walked along because we wereorter than the r. Oh yeah. No, I remember years where the snow would feel like I was up to my hips, hunting deer in Iowa in early December. And I wouldn't carry a gun until I was twelve or a bow. I started bow hunting when I was twelve. But before then you would you would push the deer. You'd walk through the woods with other guys with my dad or with the friends that we'd have. It was a real community of people. I mean, the social connection there was great. We used to go hunting with the guy when I was kid Lane McDowell, who was friends with my dad. He was a football player for the University of Iowa and he played for the Detroit Lions. It' this big monster of a man. fabulous guy and his son Thad would go Who is also of my same age, We played football together against each other in high school. But yeah, I grew up doing that. And then, you know, as I've gotten older, I've stayed connected to the outdoors. I love being in the woods. I love doing conservation kind of work. There's kind of an element of caring for other people that also extends to caring for the for the woodlands that are out there, I do a lot of invasive species removal. I' enrolled forty acres in the consonservation Reserve prorogram planted nine thousand trees on it And I see a lot of opportunities to connect with people in places that other people wouldn't, like I see the outdoors, hunting and fishing, you almost never do that truly alone. Right? I always have somebody with me when I'm fishing. I always have you know, go out with the kids when I have turkey hunting or hunting deers. and it's that social element That is really so important And there was an element of this that came just felt like it came right out of my research. That happened last fall in Oregon. My son, my oldest son Ben is a third year PhD student at Oregon State, pursuing a PhD there um and Bless his heart Last spring, he asked his dad to do the thing that made me just the happiest he could have done. He said, Dad, would you like to come out here and go ellk cunning with me Like you know, I grew up in rural Ile where the idea we'd be out in the mountains actually doing this just never was something that occurred to me that that we could do. but he asked if we could do it. And I was so excited. We would get a week together out in the remote wilderness of Oregon, just the two of us sitting around trees, looking for al. It doesn't matter if you get one or not or whatever. that's what it's about. It's about being out there and seeing what what you see and being together, and it was going to be fabulous And I'm so excited So last fall, this was October, November. I can't quite remember the exact date We went into northeast Oregon and we went out into the out in the woods. We're miles away from the Est Road. We hike in. It's really hard. It's cold, there' snow in the ground. We got We're not really prepared for this. first time we've ever done this. We don't have any chairs with us or anything. We got backpacking tents freezing our buttts off And the first day we go out to scout. we don't know what we're doing here at all. We're just going to say, I don't know, where are the elk? How do we do this? We go down into this valley And we're not there for more than twenty minutes, maybe. when our time alone suddenly becomes a little more social than it would have been otherwise. We look behind us, like three quarters of a mile up the valley. We've got this group of guys. coming in camo down the way. and My son, Ben I a little nervous about this, right? A little anxiety about reaching out and connecting with other people, right? A little like you'd have somebody sit down next to a train mayaybe I'll just keep to myself or on a plan, just keep to myself. Here we're out in the wilderness. we got this group of hunters. It's like a gang of men coming down the valley towards us all in camo And so Benz, know, let's move on, Dad. let's get going. And I said, no, let let'say in talk with these guys and They wait they come down And We start talking. It turns out these guys have been hunting in this valley in this area for years for decades. The older guy Dennis had been going with another older guy. I think they gotten connected through their church. The other older guy had passed away recently. But they now they have another guy, Coreory who who'd gotten connected to them and the kids are all with them, Eric Um, and there were I think they were there were five at the time And we started talking and then they start telling us how to do this and where we could go and how we could coordinate with each other to make sure we weren't, you know, we both had the best time that we could. and they told us, well there's a blind up here where you could hunt and you could go down there and hunt in this other spot. And we just started working together and they were delightful. like Like just like it is when you reach out to connect with other people, they reach back to you. They invited us to their tent for dinner Just neverget they got this huge amazing wall tent. They've got a camp stove. They've got a spring where they get fresh water. They've got a bathroom where they are. We walk into their tent. It's heated. We're freezing our tuck us off in the snow. We walk into their tent. The first thing they say to us, would you like red or white? They got wine in their're cabin miles from it These guys were fabulous and it turned an event that was great for Ben and I into an even better event because we connected with these men who now just yesterday, Corey sent me a text message saying it's time to apply for your Elk tags. This is one we're going to go and this we're going to come out in case you want to do this with us again. in fact Cy Cy got an elk the first day, right? He filled his btag And we were coming back from hunting, Ben and I had seen one weren't able to get a shot at it' still amazing to see one. And we're walking back and the young kids, Eric is leading this group. He says Get on down there and show Coreory how to bone out that that out, I've boned out many, many deer. So it's the only red meat we eat of the venison that that I get and so I know how to butcher these animals and prepare them to eat. And they had just been hauling out these big quarters of animals, like a hundred pound rib cage, right? There's a lot of bones that you don't even hna. So I got to go down and help Corey and show him how to bone out the backstrap and the loins and all the meat that you actually eat and leave the bones that are there for the, you know and stuff to get later. And it was fabulous, right? And that the courage that I had to talk with them, to connect with them out there, again, I felt just came straight from our research. how easy it is to underestimate how positively other people will respond when you reach out to them and here it would have been easy for us to be competitive or Avoid this and it was such a blessing connected with them and we've stayed connected since and I hope I hope we see him again in the fall out there in the woods. It would be fabulous. Wonderful men. That's awesome. and thanks for putting in a a strong clear ethical picture of hunters. I think a lot of people have a picture of hunters that is very different than what you just described. My friend Cam Haynes is serious about preserving wildlands and he's a very, very serious bow hunter. and I mean, there are really shining examples. There arere bad apples out there too, but I think people often have certain stereotype of hunters you know, and yet Most of those people also buy store bought meat from factory farms. And so you know, not to guilt anybody, but there's a lot more to explore there. So I appreciate not just the description of the beautiful social interaction and what grew from it, but also the context. There's a level of caring. I mean, I care about the woodlands and I try to protect it as best I can that the deer are kind of a threat. a lot of ecological damage that they that they cause in the woodlands in the Midwest because there' just a lot of them of harvesting responsibly and respectfully. I only helpnt with a crossbow now, for instance, because I can be much more accurate with it. And so I can take an animal ethically and humanely and quickly. and that's why I do that. So most of the hunters that I've ever met are that way. They care about being outdoors. They like being with each other. Getting an animal different is part of it, but is not the main thing. and yeah, Im and I Folks who don't hnt, I think don't appreciate that care people have outdoors and have for the outdoors What a great lesson for your son. He's lucky to have you as a dad. I can say wonderful. It's awesome. I was reflecting on a couple of things which leads me to probably what is the final question in a minute or two, but I was just sort of chuckling inside at one moment because you're describing that I'm thinking o, so my dad was a theoretical physicist, right. So bringing me to work was a little different. I mean, we did a great, many things together, but he realized and he's qu quite smart. and he realized that' showing me a bunch of equations on a whiteboard wasn't wasn't going to cut it. it's all there never forget. He started off as an experimentalist. And so my first like to go to work with Dad day was he took me to the lab and they had all these fruit and a big tank of liquid nitrogen and we spent the day dipping bananas. Oh my into liquid nitrogen and smashing my w, which for like a six year old kid wasure Awesome. I went back to school telling all my friends that I could shatter bananas and all this stuff. So it wasn't quite what you described, but I fishermen on my mom's side and my girlfriend's family, she's got a long long line of hunters and farmers. so think they're going to put me to the test soon. but well, here's the parents doing great things with their kids. Well, and that's the the question I was going to ask, you know, not to In fact, to do the opposite of trivialize older generations teaching younger generations about proper social interactions are. The other thing I was thinking during your story is that you know this is how social, Dynamics and Learning occurs in our species. Like if that series that was on Netflix, the chimp emmpire series, did Oh actually you' not seing that. Oh, wow. fascinating because it's about social dynamics and chimps. Everything from covert ge and and they're brutal to each other. they ostracize it's very int ar. And there's also a lot of beauty, but it's just a bunch of, you know, like happy chimps. it's intensees warring between troops and so forth. But it makes you think about our species, right? And I'm raising a puppy right now and I was telling my girlfriend because she's not raised a puppy before.'s better at than I am already, of course. And And I explained to her, I said, you know, the fastest way to train strummer, a little bulldog mastiff would be to get an older dog becausecause here we are like teaching at these human cues and trying to, but we really need to get into the mindset of a dog and only a dog can really do that. Like they're so nose led They're great at sensing literally the autonomic tone of people around them. They're sensitive to space. Here we are saying, sit and stay and do it like ye. they hear it, but like we're bringing them It'll be like us's trying to learn how to use our noses to navigate. It is a fact that within every species The older members of that species teach the younger members of that species how to socialize And I could ratle off lots of examples for my own life, but I won't where I observed my mom and dad doing certain things in certain situations. And so while on the one hand, until now, I feel like we've been talking to kind of like the young listeners and stuff parents of kids or the to be parents of kids or the siblings or the older or people who don't even have kids, like modeling really good social interactions I've firmly believe based on everything we've talked about today, that is every bit as critical as the person getting out there and pushing themselves past their anxiety to do the right things. We need to model better everyday social interactions And so It's clear you did that in this example in another example. So any ideas off the top of your head as to the let's just call it like the forty and up crowd. it's kind of on us to model really good social interactions because that's how just like Strummer would learn better from a dog Learning from the internet is great, but a lot of kids don't have. Maybe they have a single parent or they're away from their parents or the ship passed or maybe mayaybe mom or dad was kind of a nasty person, unhappy person. or overly outgoing and it got them hurt. What do you recommend people do to model really good social interactions? So pay attention to your habits That's the most important thing. It's those little moments. And you know, where I screw up, I'm prone to a quick temper and where I've made I still have a I still have the college football player inside me. You like to har things with your head? Well I want to fix something, right? And so if something's not going my way, I'll try to fix it in some way. And so I still have that inside me from time to time and I have to actively try to create habits do that. So you know get out of a situation if I'm getting frustrated rather than try to respond and correct it in that moment. But those little habits That's where it shows up. People are watching peopleeople are watching you in those moments. those little things that you think aren't that important are what folks are paying attention to. In our research, when I think about how you apply the stuff we're learning in our experiments about people being overly pessimistic about how others will respond to them. The way you apply that in your own life isn't that you learn how to behave differently from learning this, is that you take that and you try to develop a little habit that then makes that something you do routinely over and over again. So for instance, one little thing that I have started doing with this routine little habit in mind is I've madeade a habit when I get into my office and it's now expanded kind of beyond that. but I started at the office. I was realizing one day that when I get to the office where where the door is to get into the building, I've got maybe, I don't know, one hundred fifty yard walk through the atrium in the middle of the building, to the elevators, up to the fourth floor, down my halls, to my office. And I was usually making that walk with my head down, focused on getting to work as quickly you know as I could. And I was passing all these people by saying hello or hi or whatever. I was missing all these opportunities just to brighten my mood a little bit there And so I started you know doing a little happiness walk, a little hello walk when I'd go from the door to my office where I now when I walk in, I keep my head up And I smile and say hello to almost everybody I pass if I can. right? So this last quarter, Nigel's been sitting right here to my right when I walk in at the table and Keith, who's got the biggest smile in the building, one of our custodial staff is delightful. Mario is usually somewhere around the second floor. I can give him a shout out on the way in Zia is often around the elevator when I walk in Eric Virginia, Jane, Emma Joe, my colleagues when I walk in, I give them a shout out hello when I walk by their offices. And that whole thing that just makes me a little brighter when I get to my office and it's also created a habit that I now just do without thinking and those little moments that become part of who you are, that's what people see. And I think as a parent, if you can think about how can you cultivate those habits to do these things routinely because your kids are watching all the time That's what's going to m I had a colleague one time, I thought this was very wise. He realized that he was sometimes swearing in class. and I sometimes I'm guilty of that dude. That's my college football player. come out. I gotta be careful. I try not to do that. But I had one colleague who was adamant and this is really what got me started thinking about this years ago, just you never slip up in class because when you do that there people see that and they think that's who you are and what's appropriate in that context and that's just the way you want to be. so he's made a habit. N never doing that anywhere in any part of his life that he also doesn't do it in class I like the notion of classroom rules. It's actually one of the only ways I've survived social media is I don't get into exchanges that I wouldn't get into in a classroom. I also don't honor the presence of comments. People can say what they want about me to a point. but when they start attacking each other, you know, I always think if we were back in an undergraduate or graduate or medical school classroom, I would never let this new change occur in. And this is my website. so Right. You know, and people think, Oh, you're blocking things, you're deling. It's like it's not tovoid criticism. It's like we're trying to keep a tone of education and respect. Yeah, Right. And it can be heated. But so I fully appreciate what you just said. And I think the key to that is that it's not a huge thing. It's a small thing that you do routinely and over and over again Th those small habits are important to keep in mind. I've been told by some of the people that are regular kind of commenters and things that they feel safe to comment there, which tells me they feel unsafe to comment elsehere other pl. And a safe unsafe thing. I'm not trying to like use like snowflake language, I think like who wants to go online just for people to like be nasty, right? So there's a lot of goodness to be had by keeping classroom rules, I guess as we correct Well, Nick, thank you so much for coming here today and sharing. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule and also really appreciate the work you do. Also thank you for writing a book A little more social, how small choices create unexpected happiness, health, and connection, which comes out very soon excited to read it. And I have to say of all the guests we've ever had on this podcast I think You represent a kind of extreme example of somebody whose work has informed their life and life has informed their work. And that's somewhat straightforward to do. when it always makes for kind of the easier, better obvious choice. likeike, oh, I did research discovered you know this style of cardiovascular exercise is better than that one. I'm going to do that one. But as you pointed out, it's brought many, many rewards than it has challenges. But in your case, your sensitivity to the theme of your work which is that there's goodness and untapped beauty to be had in the spaces that we don't reflexively step into and that maybe even we initially are a little averse to. Yeah, that that's where the real magic often lies you applied in your life in the realest of ways, and you benefit too Yes. And that's the whole point. Yes. So thank you for being both a scholar and a shining example of what you've taught us today. Thank you so much, Andrew. It's been wonderful being here. I really appreciate it. I willcome back again. Thank you. I would love to. Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Nick Eppley to learn more about his work and to find a link to his new book entitled A littleittle More Social How smallall choices Cate unexpected happappiness, health, and Cnection. Please see the links in the show notote captions. If you're learning from and or enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel That's a terrific zero cost way to support us. In addition, please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple. And on both Spotify and Apple, you can leave us up to a five star review. 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