Breaking the Small Talk Script

Support for the show comes from service now AI is moving fast across the enterprise But without visibility, it's just chaos. Different tools, different models, different teams using AI in completely different ways Service now turns that chaos into control. With the AI control tower, you see all your AI across the business in one place, what it's doing, what it's done, and what it's about to do. So you stay in control To put AI to work for people, visit serviceNow. com Support for the Greay area comes from Fetch Pet Insurance Do you have a pet? According to a study from a pet insurance company from a few years ago, every six seconds a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill over a thousand dollars, and it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where fetch pet insurance comes in According to consumer addocate. org, Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats You can get paid back up to ninety percent of vet bills. You can use any vet in the US and Canada. All vets are in network. Go to fetchpet dot com slash save right now to get your free quote. That's fetchpet dot com slash save There's a familiar drama that plays out all the time in ordinary life. You're sitting next to someone on a train or standing in line at a coffee shop or thinking about calling an old friend And for a second. There's an open You could say hello give the compliment could make that call Usually And not because you don't care or you're a bad person At least I hope you're not Normally, you're just unsure don't want to be awkward you don't want to bother Anone. So you say nothing You look at your phone You keep moving. Life is full of these moments. Many of them are trivial T be sure But some of them aren't And if over the course of our lives we choose to retreat More often than we choose to reach out What do we miss out on how different might our lives be if we reached out more I'm Seaan Iilly. in this It' the gray area. Today's guest is Nicholas Eppplleay, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago, and the author of A littleittle More Social How smallmall choices Create unexpected happappiness, Health, and Connection Eppley's argument is that we routinely misjudge other people We think conversations will go worse than they do. We think people want to be left alone We think honesty will be more painful than it is And because we expect connection to be risky, we avoid it. But then we never learned that we were probably wrong. This is the kind of stuff Eley explores. In the end, the book is about the power of small gestures that add up over time And it's about the peculiar fact that we are social animals who have built a world full of opportunities not to be social. Nicolas Eppley, welcome to the show. Thank you, Sean for having me. It's great to be here today Well, let's talk about being social or not being social as the case seems to be. U. You open the book with a scene, a very, I think familiar seene on a train with people packed together, doing what people do nowadays when they're packed together. So talk about that image and what it represents because it basically sets up the whole book and I think it'll do the same for this conversation. I work at the University of Chicago, so I take the train in every morning And I had kind of this eureka moment, this moment where I put on my scientist hat And the world just looked We weird in a way it hadn't before I was writing this chapter about how we are highly social creatures with brains uniquely equipped for connecting with the minds of other people, made happier and healthier by connecting with other people And yet here I was sitting there on the train with a car load of Southide neighbors who, many of whom have been riding together for years sitting hip to hip with another perfectly social human being And we were all goring each other. Like we were treating the person sitting next to us like a lampshade and It hit me likeike a lightning bolt that morning that That seems weird. And that morning I had a woman who sat down next to me. She was probably fifteen or so years older than I was, An African American woman dressed professionally for work. and wearing just this fabulous red hat that I'll just never forget it It was super cool And I thought instead of doom scrolling on my phone, I would I would try to have a conversation with her And I was keenly aware the second I thought about doing that. that There were all kinds of reasons why I shouldn't even consider that Clearly she's going to think you're a creep trying to hit on her somehow. If she wanted to talk to you, she already would. So it's going to be rude to do this. You probably don't have anything in common with her. You don't even have a way to start the conversation. No reason to even talk, which I sort of felt like I needed to have We run experiments for a living, so the experiment must go on. So I turned to her, I kind of worked at my courage and I turned to her and I said, Hi, I'm Nick. I love your hat just like it And, you know Look, if I had a hundred shots at starting that conversation, I'm not sure I would ever start it that way a second time It didn't really seem to matter much. Like once once we once we connected Things kind of started rolling. She turned to me with a smile, clearly recognizing just my friendly intent. We both laughed a little bit. And then, you know, we just started talking. She shared her name. we started talking about, you know, what are you going into Chicago for about her work, learned about her family. And the thirty minutes just sort of evaporated very quickly And I remember when I got up to leave, she stopped me for a second and she said Thank you so much for talking with me this morning And it was it was It wasn't like I was being intrusive or we were bothering each other. It was, you know, we just had a nice conversation What I remember from that, what really struck me wasn't just that it was a nice conversation It's that it was surprisingly nice that the gap between my expectations beforehand that were telling me just to keep to yourself And my actual experiences were which were, this was pretty nice The gap between those was huge was huge. And I thought, if I'm doing this in other places in my life R, choosing to avoid interactions that would be meaningful and rewarding, holding back too often, avoiding reaching out to other people mistakenly That would change how I live my life in lots of ways, littleittle ways, big ways. And if we're all doing that on the train in the morning, right? If this is a This is an error that we're making kind of consistently then kind of chang the way a lot of people live their lives Well, that whole scene right there. I wanted to start there because that really does capture the central paradox of the book, which is that we, humans are deeply social creatures choose not to be social time and time again, even though it makes us less happy. What is that about Is that mostly is it fear driven, like you said? Most people have this expectation that if we engage with strangers, if we talk to strangers, it will make the experience worse. And yet that is so clearly not true. So what's going on there? The gap between our expectations and our experiences that we find over and over again is simply that We underestimate how well these are going to turn out Sometimes that that seems like fear R? Like maybe what you'd have in talking with a stranger or having a particularly deep conversation with someone, which we also find that people underestimate, sometimes it looks a little more like indifference Like if I reach out to express gratitude to you or to someone who's done something really meaningful for me It just won't matter that much or passing along a kind word or a compliment just won't make much of a difference And so it can vary a little bit across the spectrum, but what we find consistently is that Reaching out to engage with other people on average turns out better than we think. And where does that come from? It comes from a number of different places Three, I think are really most important One is that We evaluate ourselves differently than other people evaluate us Psychologists have found at least two dimensions that we evaluate each other on. One is competency, how capable and effective are we The other is our warmth, right? So you sit down and start a conversation, you're thinking about What heck am I going to say to this person? What are we going to talk about? Am I going to be able to carry this on? It's going to be difficult and effortful to do this? I'm thinking about my competency When I reach out with a smile and say hello to you, You're not thinking about my competency. You're thinking about Is this guy nice Is he trustworthy Is this a friend or something I should be afraid of? You're evaluating my war? And so in these behaviors, these social behaviors that connect us with other people, they are almost always inherently warm taking an interest in you to have a meaningful conversation tryrying to get to know the person next to me in a friendly way. I'm expressing gratitude, giving you a compliment, asking for help when I need it. The second thing is that Experience. is unfolds in a way that our expectations don't seem to capture Our life is like a movie It unfolds over time and interaction is like a movie. It's dynamic. It unfolds over time goes back and forth. I say hi to you, you say hi back to me, I smile at you, you smile back at me, I wave at you, you wave to me, right? I open up with something meaningful to share with you. You tend to open up back to me. And those responsive reciprocal features are what connect us with each other And yet people's expectations are kind of simplified versions of those complicated experiences. They're a little more like a snapshot of an experience, like a picture The pictures don't represent the dynamic reciprocal processes unfolding in conversation andnd instead they tend to represent simple things that you can represent kind of statically, like Who am I talking to? What am I talking about fully appreciate the reciprocal nature of this. And so if we're overlooking One of the key features of social interaction, namely reciprocity and responsiveness that connects us with other people, we're also going to underestimate how well these things are going to go. These interactions are going to go. And then the third thing is that Once you have something that seeds some pessimism in your mind That is likely to become self fulfilling After all Pessimism encourages avoidance. If I think talking to you is going to be unpleasant, I won't do it. I won't find out I might be wrong Optimism, on the other hand, gets corrected. because I approach you, I get the data I need to calibrate my beliefs with reality, but avoidance pessimism leads you to not get the data you would need, not have the conversation, not send the letter, not open up to somebody, not ask for help when you need it And therefore, you don't get the data you would need to correct an overly pessimistic belief. You might never find out you're raong This just seems such a particularly cruel like social fact that pessimism has a way of protecting itself from correction in a way that optimism doesn't, right? it's just It's just set up to induce pathological behavior and it's just kind of tragic. Tragic is a good way to put this, I think, in my mind to because I mean, it is one thing to avoid risks that are legitimate Night to be afraid of things or to be skeptical about things that you ought to be afraid of or skeptical about But it's completely another thing to be overly afraid or overly pessimistic about something that would In general, be quite rewarding for you and for other people in general, that would improve your life. It does feel like a tragedy Right? And in fact, this was one of the reasons why I really like I had to write this book In my own life, I kept noticing these kinds of tragedies People I was missing and didn't know who I could have, peopleople I could have helped but didn't reach out to, things I could have gotten help for, but didn't ask for it These things that just were mistaken opportunities And I saw it I look around and I see lots of other people doing this as well. Social anxiety, particularly excessive social anxiety And loneliness is especially cruel because it feeds on itself And our research suggests that those prison bars that us hold us back from other people sometimes are actually pasta noodles And if you just test them, just push on them a little bit you might find that out. It's a very confusing learning environment, and that's part of the problem, right is Nobody wants to be awkward Right? And because you can't, it's just a truth of the world. We don't know what is in other people's minds and We don't want to overstep. We don't want to go first and create an awkward interaction because that stings just as much as positive interactions feel good And that was sort of the fear I was talking about, right? I think that is a very common experience. I have it all the time. I think everybody has it. You just don't want to create awkwardness For no good reason. and safer. It's just a safer strategy to avoid You think it's a safer strategy, but I think reach it Yeah right? You know what you think it is, right? It feels safer expectations. Exactly. It feels safer. However There's still plenty of opportunities where it's perfectly safe to engage with somebody else and still we're overly fearful And that I think is the tragedy and if you start testing this Y'all I think find out places in your own life where you are exaggerating how negative or how awkward reaching out to somebody will be And once you see those Your world just kind of opens up Well I should at least ask you're a cognitive scientist, you mean what When we do have a positive interaction, what is going on in our brains? Do we get some kind of like a blast of oxytocin or dopamine or something like that? That positive feeling we get from a good social interaction, what is happening at the level of the brain? Why does it feel so good? We have a neural reward system that sits right at the center of our brain that kind of encourages us to do things that historically, at least for human beings, have been good things for us to be doing and discourage us from doing things that historically have been not so good for us to be doing. And the reason why ing with someone feels good is because most for most of human history Being alone and isolated is a death sentence couldn't live alone And so when you are alone, when you're disconnected from other people or feeling disconnected from other people. your brain and your body is under threat experiencing this as a threat And what you get are spikes in cortisol, right? So your body starts to tell you this is a problem. You feel psychologically and physically stressed. You get spikes of cortisol in your bloodstream. Cortisol is a stress hormone Chronic levels of it are not good for you compromises your immune system functioning, makes you more likely to catch things like the cold and pneumonia or COVID and If it's chronic, Over time It also compromises things like your cardiovascular functioning And this is why loneliness turns out to be a risk factor for death And shockingly large risk factor for death. In fact, on par, epidemiologists have found, on par was smoking fifteen cigarettes a day, worse than not exercising, worse than being overweight versus relatively thin It's a big problem for us. And for most of psychology's history, Psychologists haven't really recognized the importance of social connection as a basic human need, Abe Maslow. created this hierarchy of needs, which turns out to have never fit the data. twenty years after it a paper was written describing this irony of this theory that everybody seems to believe, but the data don't really support Maslow put belelonging right in the middle of the hierarchy had need as if it was more of a luxury good It's not a luxury girt. It is as basic a need as eating or sleeping and our brain and our physiological responses reflect that I wanted I want going to sit with something a little bit longer because, you know I sometimes get asked a variation of this question Like what is the difference between knowledge and wisdom? And my answer, I think is pretty simple. It is Knowledge is knowing what to do and wisdom is having the capacity to do what you know you ought to do And This is a case where I think I understand the reasons why people choose avoidance. we've already been over some of them But I think we all have this abstract knowledge. that it is good for us connect with people. We all know that. It is not a knowledge problem. Nobody iss ignorant about that. And yet we still choose not to do it ve been over this a little bit, but I want to press more because I'm trying to isolate what is it particularular about the nature of social interactions that makes this a thing that is so scary relative to lots of other things. Is it the vulnerability that comes? Because we're social creatures, we are also more sensitive to being shunned And so is it about vulnerability in some on some level So So irst, I'm not entirely sure that it is a completely unique phenomenon So exercise looks like it mimics some of these sorts of phenomena, although ough more research needs to be done on this, but I think we all have some experience of of you not wanting to exercise, thinking it will be bad, and then after we do it, feeling better. But the unique part about social interaction is that it's a really, really hard problem in a way that lots of these other phenomena are not. It's easier to learn, I think, that you will enjoy exercising than it is to learn that you will enjoy having a deep conversation with someone. or that you will feel really great if you reach out and express gratitude to somebody. And that's because why is that harder? Because there's another mind involved That's the challenge Because it's not that people misunderstand that they understand themselves. They know they'd be happier talking to someone rather than just sitting by themselves if the person was willing to talk to them and was friendly. The problem is You can't be certain about other people. If it was just yourself That's pretty easy But when you're interacting with somebody else, it just exponentially increases the complexity because now I got to figure out your brain And that's hard In fact, we find that people after an interaction, with someone after a conversation They think that having another conversation with that person a week from now is going to be justleasant as pleasant as the conversation they just had Talking with a stranger though they think might be less pleasant,? Because now it's another min. I don't know how you're going to respond. You don't learn about the conversation, right? Would we then come back? two weeks later peopleople also then seem to have kind of forgotten everything they learned two weeks before. and now now they're not so sure that this person will want to talk to them right now like they did twowo weeks ago So it's that inherent complexity of the mind of another person, which is the most complicated thing we ever think about that creates needless uncertainty. about how somebody's going to respond. And I think that's really at the root of the misunderstanding Support for the grreay area comes from Mint Mobile When you hear a deal that's too good to be true, you usually wonder, what's the catch But sometimes the catch is that there is no catch Like MitMobile offering preremium wireless for just fifteen dollars a month. That's it. No catch, justust a good deal, plain and simple. Catches be gone. MitMobile took what's wrong with wireless and made it right with preremium wireless for fifteen bucks a month. You can even bring your current phone and your number. It's incredibly easy to get started. You can sign up online and get three months of premium wireless service for just fifteen bucks a month To get your new wireless plan for just fifteen bucks a month, go to mintMobile d. com slash gray area. That's mintMobile. com slash gray area. Cut your wireless bill to fifteen bucks a month at mintMobile d. com slash gray area That's it, there's no catch. forty five dollars upfront payment required equivalent to fifteen dollars a month. New customers on first three month plan only speed slower above forty gigabytes on unlimited plan. Additional taxes, fees, and restrictions apply, See MintMobile for details upport for the show comes from Bombas The springtime Thaw is finally here. Flowers are blooming, the days are longer, and I'm gonna assume you're doing more things outside as you should. It's the perfect time to upgrade your everyday go to clothes and accessories with Bombus Bomba sport socks are super comfortable and designed with sports specific tech for running, cycling, hiking, whatever floats, your boat. They also make great basics. Bombus underwear and t shirts are soft, high quality, and breathable As you know I've been wearing my bamba socks for the most part to go running on the beach because that's what I do and that's where I live. But As you might also know, I've got a new kid, which means I'm going to be doing a lot of Long distance walking with a small tiny human on my person And guess what I'm going to wear for those walks. My Baba socks. You can go to bombas dot com slash gray area and use code gray arerea for twenty percent off your first purchase. That's BoM bas dot com slash gray area, code gray arerea at check out Sort for the show comes from Bombus The springtime Thaall is finally here. Flowers are blooming, the days are longer, and I'm gonna assume you're doing more things outside as you should. It's the perfect time to upgrade your everyday go to clothes and accessories with Bombas Bomba sport socks are super comfortable and designed with sports specific tech for running, cycling, hiking, whatever floats, your boat. They also make great basics. Bobbas underwear and t shirts are soft, high quality, and breathable As you know I even wear my babba socks for the most part to go running on the beach because that's what I do and that's where I live But As you might also know, I've got a new kid, which means I'm going to be doing a lot of long distance walking with a small, tiny human on my person Guess what I'm gonna wear for those walks? My Bamba socks. You can go to bomets dot com slash gray area and use code gray area for twenty percent off your first purchase. That's BoM baF dot com slash gray area, code gray area at check out I' be honest,ough When I'm on a plane For instance And You know, put in my my air pods And when the guy next to me starts talking to me I kind of get irritated I don't really wantan to talk. want to I want to listen to the music I'm listening to or read the book I'm reading. And I kind of get annoyed. And reading your book made me think, o A I the asshole? Am I the asshle on? I don't know because I'm that guy. I mean, not always, but often when someone is trying to reach out, I'm just, I'm in my bubble Yeah look and I kind of feel bad about it now U ye yeah, I don't mean to make you feel bad about it. Look, we all have things we got to do in life, right? We all have things that we have to do and maybe you got, you know, you got music you want to listen to or you just need some time to relax. You know, I certainly I'm on flights where I need to get work done and I can't engage with another person However, I do think that recognizing that other people are often more interesting than you might imagine might cause you to do the cost benefit calculation just a little bit differently Like you don't know what's inside the head of another person. But it's possible that it's way more interesting than whatever else you might be doing. It's possible. Um And it doesn't hurt to test it sometimes if you want. But look, if you're tired, you got to sleep. I mean, I've many times on planes I've said, you know,, you know, we chat for a little bit while we're on the ground, get to know them a little bit, kind of melt some of that awkward ice. that you might have if you're sitting hip to hip with another person But then once, you know, we're up in the air, you know, I'm so sorry but I got to get some work done or I'm really tired. I'm really into this book. and everybody understands that too Everybody doess. Our data don't suggest that you should talk to everybody who talks to you, right?s That's probably not true In fact, the people who approach you are consistently are probably different from the people that you would randomly approach. Nor does it say we should be reaching out and connecting every time all the time or that it always turns out well Our data just suggests that we get the odds that'll turn out well wrong And that are gambles that we make on what to do next in our life, All of life is a series of gambles suuggest that we just get some of the odds, odds wrong in those gambles. Sometimes that would encourage you to engage with somebody, but sometimes it wouldn't be enough. How much of this for you is just something that is just fundamentally and deeply wired into our psychology, always has been. And how much of this do you think is about modern life? The fact that we have built a very frictionless world where we don't really have to engage with people Really at all if we don't want to, and that lack of engagement makes actual engagement all the more fraud So it's a little bit of both. So if you look over the course of human over the course of human history manyany of our social interactions were not things We chose as much. We were just around other people. Social interaction was just a fact of life. You couldn't get along by yourself, right? Nevertheless You still find plenty of anxiety about engaging with other people. Stanley Milgram was a famous social psychologist who later in his career moved to New York City. I got interested in understanding urban life and what living around lots of people do to you. And he went down into the subway in New York City in the early nineteen seventies long beforeve Steve Jobs came along with his iPhone. and he that he observed two norms of subway behavior. One is that seats are taken on a first come first serve basis, and the other is that Nobody talks to each other nineteen seventy three Back then, it was newspapers and books and things like that. So there's always been some Anxiety about engaging with other people due to some of the uncertainty, I think. But what differs now is that The choice, the choice to reach out and engage with other people or not is something that we can make more and more often. You can choose on any day of your life to live it completely alone if you want. when you can get up and have your breakfast delivered to you at your door without ever touching another person, getet your groceries in the afternoon, Wk from home on your computer and never see another human being, get your entertainment, you know on TV at night, never leave your house And I think that's what really changes now. what's really different now We just have more ity to choose to live on her own. And independence is great. plenty of great things, but it comes at the cost of social connection and that is an increasing problem for us Well, speaking of choice, right? the moment before. I think you actually do call it the choice, right? And that' this is that This is that split second decision right before you decide or choose to say hello or make that call or write that note or whatever Social courage for whatever reason tends to collapse like right before the act. Psychologically, what is that about You described it earlier as a kind of curse or a tragedy, right? And these the tragedy just kind of keeps com down, doesn't it The choice to reach out and engage with somebody or hold back is a choice that's Not unique in social life. It shows up in lots of places where we've got this kind of approach avoidance conflict and or these two systems. And in fact, these are kind of two somewhat independent systems in our brain, the factors that encourages us to reach out and do something, to make a choice to go ahead with something, whether it's social or something else, like to exercise is different from the system that encourages us to avoid it, to not exercise, to not reach out to somebody to avoid doing whatever it is you have an opportunity to do And those two systems operate somewhat independently, and they operate on different trajectories At a distance, the approach motivation is really high typically. And so if it's a desirable thing like talking to somebody, sure, I'll do that. haveave a deep conversation. No problem. That's easy. That'd be a great thing to do. exercise every day a week, get ready to run the Ironman triathlon. No problem. I'm on it. When you get closer and closer to an event, yourour construal of it, your interpretation shifts. And now all the reasons to avoid it get stronger and stronger and stronger. So as people in experiments, for instance, approach having to take a test. They become less confident that they'll do well on that test before it And the same thing shows up with social interaction that you might you know you might think, oh, on my plane flight today, I'll try to get to know somebody. They got an interesting story to tell me. I'll find out what it is That sounds great when, you know, you're miles away and it's an hour from now. But when the You're then right there and the stranger' sitting next to you on the plane or the person's right there in front of you at the office, or you're sitting down to write that gratitude letter uh, you know, you need to write or to have that hard conversation with your spouse that you really need to have That's when the avoidance motivation spikes and all the reasons not to become immediate. And that's why confidence tanks and we get we get cold feet, right? So even things that we kind of know at a distance are good for us in the moment, Yeah I'd rather not Yeah. Well, I mean, like you say in the book, you know I the brain seems to At least in this On this front, it treats predictions like information R? It confuses this will be awkward with this is awkward And that's not the same thing. It is not Butving it believing it is makes it so Yes, exactly. And look It's not the same thing, but if I want to know what you're going to do in your life, if I want to understand Sean, how you live your life I don't want to understand how you experience how you would experience all kinds of things in life. I want to know how you think you're going to experience them If you think you'll like chocolate ice cream, you'llat it. If you think you'll hate it, you won't, you'llat something else. And if you never try it, you might not know And so it's people's expectations that really matter. So even if it's not reality, we canuse it for it. and then it becomes reality, as you say I have to ask you about honesty. att least for a bit here because I think, like uncertainty, I think this is a huge challenge for communication Now As you know, people will say They want honesty Is that actually true? Do you think? peopleople actually want that I think they want it more than we think they do And that's, I think, what we find in our data. is that When we thinkink about being completely honest with somebody, giving perfectly honest feedback to an employee who's struggling in some way. telling our partner how we're actually feeling about this relationship and what would need to change in order for us to really be connected There are two elements to being honest And Tracking its effects on other people because of those two different things is then especially hard because we tend to focus on one and not the other. What we focus on when we're being honest is often the content of what we're conveying And it can be honest, right? I can think You know, that was the that was the best speech I've ever seen you give Sean. and really believe it. And so it's honest and positive. But sometimes honesty has neegative content That seems negative for another person. And then you've got a conflict between the two people tend to think that the other person's going to respond primarily to the content of what's being conveyed, but what we miss is the other thing that honesty conveys. Honesty also conveys warmth Trustworthiness. that is the fundamental dimension of warmth And so when I give you that honest feedback That is negative in some way But with clearly for friendly intent It can be interpreted more positively, as kinder then we think it will And I think that the data suggests, at least that that holds us back a little a little too often from being completely honest with other people in ways that they would appreciate surprisingly well. Well what does that look like in practice? right? So if we got to the end of this taping, Nick And turn the cameras off and thank you. this is great. And you said John, you know I really appreciated the effort you put into this. It felt like you really read the book, but I thought The questions were a little gaseious. and ill phrased. And I was a little disappointed. But I'm only telling you that so that you can become a better interviewer. Yeah.. If you said that, I'd go, okay, Gee, thanks to. I'd be pissed off I'd be pissed. It would hurt It would hurt They wouldn't register as you conveying kindindness or warmth, it would just it would insult my ego and piss me off. So I'm not throwing stones here, right? I'm as guilty as anyone, you know, But how would you do that So I would do it exactly as you said, but meaning, you know, look, can I help you look, I would love you to be the best interviewer you possibly can. And here's maybe a way you could have phrased this instead or a question that maybe you could have picked up on and then we could have talked it through. And When you're saying this to somebody, right? It is negative and it can hurt a little bit, right? But there's also this other part which is Well, this person was trying to help me. And that can, in the long run, also feel good too, can be something that you appreciate, right Who are the people who are truly honest with us Right? It's the people who really love us, the people who are really friends with us. So when my wife, for instance, tells me Look, Nick. Being social is great, but sometimes when we are out You're a little too social with other people, and I'd kind of like you to pay attention to me too Right That hurts me a little bit to hear because I've made some mistake But she's also told me how to be a better husband nextext time, I'll be a better better husband. that can feel good So when when we bring married couples partners or roommates into the lab to fight for science, right to think about that thing that's bothering them in their relationship. And we all have those things, right? If you live with somebody L enough. you spend time with somebody long enough You're going to have somethingomet you got to talk with him about. you know, a hard conversation you got to have in order to improve the relationship. And we find that in our data that when we bring couples together and have them talk about the thing they've been putting off Those conversations tend to be better received by the person they're giving feedback to tend to lead to better conversations than they would expect The person can sometimes realize it, right? So Seaan, might you might have recognized. and this is often the way it unfolds in real life You might have recognized that that wasn't maybe the best interview you'd given if I actually feel that way And have some sense about that and then you might appreciate the honesty there rather than the lack of genuineness if you could detect that, right? I think fifteen or twenty minutes later, I might appreciate you. That might be true. That might be true. In the moment it probably stings ands just that's just bullshit ego, you know, acting on me. But shortly thereafter, I think I would We should be fair To be fair, the data we have are people in conversations, right? having hard conversations with somebody else, being honest in their conversation with somebody. And that unfolds over the course of a conversation. so there's some time involved there. Or like my colleague Emma Levine Um Fabulous behavioral scientists at the University of Chicago Has people with Tya Cohen, who's at Carnegie Mellon University, has people spend a day in their life? being either completely honest with other people So this means things like You know, if somebody askks you, how's your day going? If it's crappy, you say, lookook, it's just really crappy R instead of saying it's Oh, it's great. I'm doing fine You're really honest with him about that So either they spend the day being completely honest in all of their relationships, spend their day being completely kind, as kind as they can be in all their relationships, or they spend their day just being mindful. That's the control condition and Emma finds is that people think that Spending a day being completely honest will not be a great day. It will be a worst day than being completely kind and that it will hurt their relationships compared to being completely conf But what Emma actually finds when people At the end of the day, report how the day went is that People actually report a day spent being completely honest. was just as good a day that left their relationships feeling just as strong, just as good As a day being completely kind with somebody And in many ways, the participants in those experiments felt a little better about themselves because they were authentic What is your position on white lies then, in that case, Are they ever justified? I think for most people When they tell white lies the excuse in their mind is I'm just trying to grease the social tracks here so that we can all have a pleasant interaction in general, do you think it's it's a much better strategy. even, even in those moments where it is you know it is going to create awkwardness Do you think it's still? more often than not, way more often than not better strategy to just be honest rather than tell that that innocent seeming white lie So Emma provides some real nuance on this because Remember the problem here, the challenge here is misunderstanding that sometimes or misunderstanding that honesty is a warmth trait that people care about and that is positive. And so When the thing you are sharing with somebody That seems kind of negative could still be helpful to them. So it kind of aligns with your honest intent, I am trying to with this. That's why I am it's friendliness, it's authenticity. It's being it's trying to help another person That's when misunderstanding Honesty can be seen as kind is particularly problematic. So That's when a white lie is really not helpful because you are not giving the people the feedback that would actually be constructive or useful in their lives, or you're not giving being honest about yourself in a way that would really help this relationship. So when you tell your partner, for instance, that you know the meal they cooked was really great when you know they could become a better cook if they did this thing or the other thing Right. you're missing an opportunity to make your relationship better. That might actually make your partner feel better too if they came to be better cooks, say Right? So there truth, the honesty that you're sharing is also ultimately kind. it's meant to be constructive W the honesty is cruel or can't be helpful at all to the other person Right? doesn't have any constructive intent That's at least those are the times when Emma thinks that, you know, the white lies probably are justifiable there. Support for the Greay arerea comes from Fetch Pet inssurance. Pets add so much to our lives, really too much to say in words. We've got a cat and a dog here at house Iilling, and they are the best However, we have been slammed a few times out of nowhere with really, really big vet bills. And every single time it happens It stings, but What are you going to do You gott to do what you gott to do. It's your pet, right Here's what surprises a lot of pet owners. According to a study from a pet insurance company from a few years ago, every six seconds a pet owner in the US gets hit with a vet bill over one thousand dollars Emergency vet bills can run into the thousands easily, and they always seem to land on a Sunday night, right Be prepared for the unexpected with Fetch Pet inssurance According to consumerdvocate dot org, fetch is the most complete coverage for dogs and cats. You get paid back up to ninety percent of vet bills for accidents, illnesses, diagnostics, and more. Every vet in the US. and Canada is in network. So you can keep the vet you already trust Plus with Fetch, you can build a plan that fits your budget And once approved, your claims are paid back in as little as two days. That's about as easy as it gets, people Don't wait until your pet has a health problem. Go to fetchpet dot com slash save and get your free custom quote. It takes about two minutes. That's fetchpet dot com slash save. Fetch. Lve longer Support for this show comes from Shopify Whenever you're taking on something new, it's easy to focus on what could go wrong. That's especially true when you're starting a business where so much feels uncertain. But there's another possibility worth considering. What if it works? What if your idea really connects with people and grows into something real Shopif I can help you take that chance They're the commerce platform powering millions of businesses worldwide and nearly ten percent of all e commerce in the US from established brands like All Birds and Converse to entrepreneurs just getting started Their design tools make it easy to build the exact online presence you're imagining with hundreds of ready to use templates to choose from built in marketing features, you can create full email and social campaigns in just a few clicks. So you can reach your customers wherever they are It's time to turn those what if into with Shopify today You can sign up for your one dollar per month trial period at shopify dot com slash boox. You can go to shopify dot com slash boox. that's shopify dot com slash boox When I got a new car, I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account If betweenween won the lottery I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bnd But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampine broke pad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just big babies. But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to sayve some hard earned cash. It feels good to Geico I've always hated small talk and it's not because of social awkwardness It is more about the banality and the phoniness of a lot of those sorts of interactions Much like theing.. Yes, it is people running the same social script. they always run and have probably already run fifteen times that evening.. What do you do? What do you do? Where are you from? Yeah Yeah And I find the inauthenticity of that nauseating almost to the point where like I just there are a lot of cocktail parties. I decline to go to because I don't want to be in those interactions. And I know a lot of people feel the same way. Do you approach those sorts of interactions differently? L with do you break from those social scripts and actually go deep or say something real And when you do that, what is a reaction you tend to get from people who are recognizing, Well wait a minute, they're diverging from the script here. now what? Yeah. You're not the only one who puts the word hate in close proximity to the word small talk Lots of people say that. Small talk can often be a gateway to a more meaningful conversation, but yes, if it's this banal, boring, inauthentic, script It's terrible. okay? So in our research And in public talks that I give now. All of our incoming MBA students at the University of Chicago now do this on their second day of orientation with me, for instance put them through an experiment. where instead of doing small talk with somebody, they do really deep and meaningful talk I'll put these questions up on the board that they're going to in just a few minutes with another person, I pair them up randomly within room, have a conversation about. Qestions like Um, If I was going to become a good friend of yours, what would be most important for me to know about you What are you most grateful for in your life? Can you tell me about Can you tell me about one of the last times you cried in front of another person When I put these questions up on the screen You know, it's like somebody just, you know, pulls all the air out of the room. There's just like this paul cast over the room, everybody Sometimes people even swear audibly in front of me, regretting that they had showed up to this session I send him to a survey online where they tell me how they think they'll feel at the end of this conversation and they say, U, it's gonna to be awkward Quite awkward It's not going to be that great. I'm not really going to like this person that much. I'm probably not going to have that much in common with them. They then go off and have the conversation point the problem I have is getting them back All of these people who also claimed us hate small talk findind somebody else who also, like all the rest of us, don't like small talk either And when they come back and tell me how the conversation actually went Overwhelmingly, these are massive effects sayay the conversation went better than they thought it did beforehand far less awkward than they thought it would be, formed a much stronger bond like the person more, enjoyed the conversation or had more in common with the other person than they expected beforehand. So I do this out in the world too Um I don't I don't spend time in small talk if I don't want to in part because I recognize that other people often want those same kinds of conversations. And when you open yourself up, when you signal to somebody that look, I'd just like to get to know you a little bit. I'm interested in you in learning about you It leads them to open up back to you in return Uh, and you can just You can have so much better conversations. At the end of our deep talkalk conversation demonstration, people say the conversation they just had was way deeper than they normally have, right? which is not very deep But then when I asked them, how deep If you wish your conversations were in day Laya, They don't say as deep as, you know talking about the last time you cried in front of another person. Maybe that was a little too far They say way deeper than the conversations I typically have Now Who's responsible for that? You are, we are If you're in a conversation you don't want to be having You have the power to change it onnce you recognize that Other people probably want to have a more meaningful conversation too But you I think you say at the beginning of the book that this research changed you personally more than any other you've ever been involved in or with. U Do you seem like a very gregarious outgoing person? I don't know is were you not like that before? I mean, when you say it changed your life more than anything else or any other research you've ever done? What do you mean One of the things that people most commonly say to me is that I'm extroverted when I'm doing this, but usually I'm an introvert What that means is that, you know, they get they get tired talking to people and there are times when they choose to spend alone, even if they're not doing right this at this moment. U And I think all of us have those those capability, those those those capabilities and those tendencies I certainly had it over the course of my life. I was It's not that I've ever been a horribly shy person But I have long, I was long a very insecure person. partarticularly in academic settings. and you know would avoid people in all the same kinds of ways that we all do. Keep to myself, you know, not share thoughts, not be as honest as I could be, not ask for help when I needed it in particular, not think about or take an interest in other people in the way that I do now And this research, this research has done two big things for me One is it's allowing me to think about my social life in terms of moments And that's really critical for happiness and well beinging. Psychologists have made it crystal clear that our happiness or positive mood overver the course of a day, for instance, isn't determined by the intensity of positive experiences we have, but by the frequency of them Right? A kind word can lift you up and leave you feeling great for a while in the same way that some really positive experience can. And so the key to having a good day is stringing along a bunch of good moments. And there are lots of dead spaces in our day. that you could make better where you're kind of doing nothing at all and Connecting with other people is a great way to do it. So I've thought about my days a lot more in terms of moments, right? When I go down to get a coffee, I'll invite a colleague to come with me. When I walk into my office, I'll smile and say hello. I keep thank you cards