Why small talk is good for you | The Gray Area

Added: 2026-05-26

[00:00:00]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.

[00:00:11]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, [music] 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. When I have conversations with people, I don't say where do you work, I ask them what's your story?

[00:00:29]How'd you get here today?

[00:00:32]Something meaningful about them.

[00:00:39]>> [music] [music] [music] >> Nicholas Epley, welcome to the show.

[00:00:56]Thank you, Sean, for having me. It's great to be here today.

[00:00:59]Well, let's talk about being social um or not being social as the case seems to be.

[00:01:06]Uh-huh. Um you open the book with a scene, a very, I think, familiar scene on a train with 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 this moment where I put on my scientist hat and the world just looked weird in a way it hadn't before.

[00:01:38]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.

[00:01:49]And yet here I was sitting there on the train with a carload of South Side 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 ignoring each other. Like we were treating the person sitting next to us like a lampshade.

[00:02:09]And it hit me like 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 15 or so years older than I was, an African-American woman dressed professionally for work. Um and wearing just this fabulous red hat that I'll just never forget it. It was super cool.

[00:02:32]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. That, you know, 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. Uh 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 is sort of felt like I needed to have.

[00:03:01]But, you know, we run experiments for a living, so the experiment must go on.

[00:03:05]So, I turned to her, I kind of worked up my courage, and I turned to her, and I said, "Hi, I'm Nick."

[00:03:11]"I love your hat. I have one just like it."

[00:03:14]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, but it it didn't really seem to matter much. Like once once we once we connected, things kind of start 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. Uh she shared her name. We started talking about, you know, what what what are you going into Chicago for, and learned a little bit about her work, learned about her family, and and the 30 minutes just sort of evaporated very quickly. And I remember when I got up to leave, she she stopped me for a second and she said, "Thank you so much for talking with me this morning."

[00:03:59]And it was it was it wasn't like I was being intrusive or we were bothering each other. It was, you know, we we just had a nice conversation. But what I remember from that, what really struck me, wasn't just that it was a nice conversation.

[00:04:12]It's that it was surprisingly nice.

[00:04:15]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, right, choosing to avoid interactions that would be meaningful and rewarding, holding back too often, avoiding reaching out to other people mistakenly, then that would change how I live my life in lots of ways, little ways, big ways."

[00:04:47]And if we're all doing that on the train in the morning, right, if this is a this is a an error that we're we're making kind of consistently, then that would kind of change the way a lot of people live their lives.

[00:05:00]Well, that whole scene right there, I wanted to start there because it really does capture the central paradox of the book, which is that we, humans, are deeply social creatures who choose not to be social time and time again, even though it makes us less happy.

[00:05:20]Yep.

[00:05:21]What is that about? I- I- I- is that mostly is it fear driven, like you said?

[00:05:25]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, right? 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 and so it it can vary a little bit across the spectrum, but but what we find consistently is that reaching out to engage with other people on average turns out better than than we think. And where does that come from? It comes from a number of different places.

[00:06:26]Three I think are really most important.

[00:06:29]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?

[00:06:42]The other is our warmth, right? You sit down and start a conversation, you're thinking about what the 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.

[00:06:55]When I reach out with a smile and say hello to you, you're not thinking about my competency.

[00:07:00]You're thinking about, is this guy nice?

[00:07:03]Is is he trustworthy? Is this a friend or somebody I should be afraid of?

[00:07:07]You're evaluating my more warmth.

[00:07:09]And so in these behaviors, these social behaviors that connect us with other people, they are almost always inherently warm.

[00:07:17]I'm taking an interest in you to have a meaningful conversation. I'm trying 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 our experience is unfolds in a way that our expectations don't seem to capture.

[00:07:37]Our life is like a movie. It unfolds over time. An 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.

[00:07:58]And yet people's expectations are kind of simplified versions of those complicated experiences. They're a little more like a snapshot of a of an experience, like a picture. And pictures don't represent the dynamic uh uh reciprocal processes unfolding in conversation. And ten 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. They don't fully appreciate the reciprocal nature of this. And so, if 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.

[00:08:52]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, right?

[00:08:57]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 wrong. 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? I mean, it's just it's just set up to induce pathological behavior. Um and it's just kind of tragic. Tragic is a good way to put this, I think, in my mind. Two, because I mean, it is one thing to avoid risks that are legitimate. Right? To be afraid of things or to be skeptical about things that you ought to be afraid of or skeptical about.

[00:09:59]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.

[00:10:13]Right? And in fact, this was one of the reasons why I really felt like I had to write this book. In my own life, I I kept noticing these kinds of tragedies.

[00:10:25]People I was missing and didn't know who I could have. People I could have helped, but didn't reach out to. Things I could have gotten help for, but didn't ask for it. Right? These things that just were mistaken opportunities.

[00:10:37]And I thought, I look around and I see lots of other people doing this as well.

[00:10:41]Social anxiety, particularly excessive social anxiety, and loneliness is especially cruel because it feeds on itself.

[00:10:49]And our research suggests that those prison bars that hold us hold us back from other people sometimes are actually wet pasta noodles.

[00:10:59]And if you just test them, just push on them a little bit you might find that out.

[00:11:03]>> very confusing learning environment, and that's part of the the problem, right?

[00:11:07]Is nobody wants to be awkward.

[00:11:12]Right? And you because you can't it's just a a truth of the world. We don't know what is in other people's minds.

[00:11:19]And we don't want to overstep.

[00:11:23]We don't want to go first and and create an awkward interaction because that stings just as much as positive interactions feel good.

[00:11:30]And that that's 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 it's safer. It's just a safer strategy to avoid.

[00:11:46]It You think it's a safer strategy, but if >> Sorry, yeah. Right? You know what I mean. That you think it is, right? So those are expecta- 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 we're overly fearful.

[00:12:04]Right? And and that I think is the tragedy. And if you start testing this, you'll I think find out places in your own life where you are uh 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 I should at least ask it. You're a a cognitive scientist. I mean, what when we do have have a positive interaction, what is going on in our brains? Do we get some kind of uh like a blast of oxytocin or or dopamine or something like that? That that positive feeling we get from a a good social interaction, what is happening at the level of the brain? Why does it feel so good? We have a neural neural reward system that sits right at the center of our brain that uh that kind of encourages us to do things that that historically, at least for human beings, have been good things for us to be doing.

[00:12:57]Um and discourages from doing things that historically have been not so good for us to be doing. And the reason why, you know, connecting with someone feels good is because for the most for most of human history, being alone and isolated is a death sentence. Like you you you 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 that your 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.

[00:13:44]Compromises your immune system functioning. Makes you more likely to catch things like the cold and pneumonia or COVID. Um and if it's chronic, over time, it also compromises things like your cardiovascular functioning. Uh and this is why loneliness turns out to be a risk factor for death. An a shockingly large risk factor for death, in fact. On par, epidemiologists have found, on par with smoking 15 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. 20 years after it, a paper was written describing this this irony of this theory that everybody seems to believe, but the data don't really support. Maslow put belonging right in the middle of the hierarchy of need, as if it was more of a luxury good.

[00:14:50]It's not a luxury good. It is as basic a need as eating and sleeping. And our brain and our physiological responses reflect that.

[00:14:59]I wanted I want to sit with something a a little bit longer because I you know I sometimes get asked a variation of this question.

[00:15:09]Like what is the difference between knowledge and wisdom?

[00:15:13]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.

[00:15:23]Um this is a case where I think I understand the reasons why people choose avoidance. We've We've already been over some of them.

[00:15:32]But I think we all have this abstract knowledge that it is good for us to connect with people. We all know that. It is not a knowledge problem.

[00:15:41]Nobody's ignorant about that.

[00:15:44]And yet we still choose not to do it.

[00:15:46]And we've been over this a little bit, but I I want to press more because I'm trying to isolate what is it in particular 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 is is it about vulnerability in some on some level?

[00:16:11]So so first I'm not I'm not entirely sure that is a that it is a a completely unique phenomenon.

[00:16:20]So exercise looks like it mimics some of these sorts of phenomena, although although more research needs to be done on this, but I think we all have some experience of of, you know, not wanting to exercise, thinking it will be bad, and then after we do it, feeling better.

[00:16:35]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.

[00:17:03]That's the challenge. Because it's not that people misunderstand that they understand themselves. They know they'd be happier talking to 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.

[00:17:23]But when you're interacting with somebody else, it just exponentially increases the complexity because now I got to figure out your brain.

[00:17:32]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 just pleasant as pleasant as the conversation they just had, right?

[00:17:47]Talking with a stranger, though, they think might be less pleasant, right? Cuz now it's another mind. I don't know how you're going to respond. You don't learn about the conversation, right?

[00:17:55]When we then come back 2 weeks later, people also then seem to have kind of forgotten everything they learned 2 weeks before. And now now they're not so sure that this person will want to talk to them right now like they did 2 weeks ago.

[00:18:11]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.

[00:18:22]And I think that's really at the root of the misunderstanding.

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[00:19:31]I'll be honest though, like when I'm on a plane for instance, um you know, I'll put in my my AirPods and when the guy next to me starts talking to me, I kind of get irritated. I I I don't I don't really want to talk. I I want to I want to listen to the the music I'm listening to or or or read the book I'm reading. And I kind of get annoyed. And you reading your book made me think, "Oh, am I the Am I the on the plane?" [laughter] I don't cuz I cuz I I'm that guy. I mean, not always, but but often when someone is trying to reach out, I'm just I'm in my bubble. Um and I yeah, I kind of feel bad about it now.

[00:20:10]Uh yeah, yeah, I don't mean to make you feel bad about it. Look, we got we all have things we got to do in life, right?

[00:20:16]We all have things that that that we have to do and maybe you got it, you know, you got music you want to listen to or you just need some time to relax, you know, I certainly am on flights where I need to get work done and I can't engage with another person.

[00:20:29]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 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.

[00:21:08]Um 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, right?

[00:21:17]Everybody does.

[00:21:19]Our data don't suggest that you should talk to everybody who talks to you, right? That's That's probably not true.

[00:21:25]Um 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.

[00:21:38]Our data just suggests that we get the odds that it'll turn out well wrong. And that our gambles that we make on what to do next in our life, all of life is a series of gambles, suggest that we just get some of the odds odds wrong in those gambles.

[00:21:54]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 it's just like 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 fraught? So, it's a little bit of both. So, if you look over the course of human over the course of human history, um many of our social interactions were not things we we chose as much. We 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 other people.

[00:22:44]Stanley Milgram was a famous social psychologist who later in his career moved to New York City um and got interested in in understanding urban life and what living around lots of people do to you, and he went down into the subway of New York City in the early 1970s, long before Stevo Steve Jobs came along with his iPhone and he wrote 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.

[00:23:12]Right? 1973.

[00:23:14]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 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. And you can get up and have your breakfast delivered to you at your door without ever touching another person. Get your groceries in the afternoon. Work from home on your computer and never see another human being. Get your entertainment, you know, on on TV at night. Never leave your house.

[00:23:55]And I think that's what really changes now. What's really different now.

[00:23:59]We we just have more opportunity to choose to live on our own. And independence is great. It's plenty of great things, but it comes at the cost of social connection and that is an increasing problem for us.

[00:24:12]Well, speaking of choice, right? The the moment before. I think you actually do call the choice, right? And that's this is that this is that split-second decision right before you decide or choose to to say hello or make that call or write that note or whatever.

[00:24:29]Social courage, for whatever reason, tends to collapse like right before the act.

[00:24:35]Psychologically, what is that about? You you described it earlier as a kind of curse or a tragedy, right? And these the tragedy just kind of keeps compounding, doesn't it? The choice to reach out and engage with somebody or hold back is a is a is a choice that's not unique in social life.

[00:24:51]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 encourage us us to reach out and do something, to 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 to avoid doing whatever it is you have an have an opportunity to do. And those two systems operate somewhat independently and they operate on different trajectories.

[00:25:26]At a distance, the approach motivation is really high. Uh typically. And so if it's a desirable thing like talking to somebody, sure, I'll do that. Have a deep conversation, no problem. That's easy. That'd be a great thing to do.

[00:25:38]Exercise every day a week, get ready to run the Ironman triathlon, no problem.

[00:25:43]I'm on it. But when you get closer and closer to an event, your 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 con- confident that they'll do well on that test right before it, right? 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.

[00:26:18]And 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, 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 and all the reasons not to become immediate and that's why confidence tanks and we 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, uh I'd rather not.

[00:26:58]Yeah, well, I mean, like you say in the book, you know, the brain seems to at least in this on this front, it treats predictions like information.

[00:27:09]Right? It confuses this will be awkward with this is awkward.

[00:27:13]And that's not the same thing. It is not the same thing.

[00:27:16]>> it believing it is makes it so.

[00:27:18]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, Shawn, how you live your life, I don't want to understand how you experience or how you would experience all kinds of things in life, I want to know how you think you're going to experience them.

[00:27:37]If you think you're like chocolate ice cream, you'll eat it. If you think you'll hate it, you won't. You'll eat something else. And if you never try it, you might not know. And so, it's it's people's expectations that really matter. So, even if it's not reality, we confuse it for it, and then it becomes reality, as you say.

[00:27:51]I have to ask you about honesty, at least for for a bit here, because I I I think, like uncertainty, I think this is a huge challenge for communication. Now, as you know, people will say they want honesty.

[00:28:07]Is that actually true? Do you think people actually want that? I think they want it more than we think they do. And that's that's, I think, what we find in our data is that when we think about being completely honest with somebody, giving perfectly honest feedback to an employee who's struggling in some way, telling our partner how thing 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.

[00:28:40]And tracking its effects on other people because of those two different things is is is is then especially hard because we tend to focus on one and not the other.

[00:28:49]What we focus on when we're being honest is often the content of what we're conveying.

[00:28:54]And it can be honest, right? I I can think, you know, that was the that was the best speech I've ever seen you give, Shawn. And really believe it. And so, it's honest and positive.

[00:29:05]But sometimes honesty has negative content or that seems negative for another person and then you've got a conflict between the two.

[00:29:15]And 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.

[00:29:26]Honesty also conveys warmth That is 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 helpful, friendly intent, it can be interpreted more positively, as kinder than we think it will.

[00:29:49]And I think that 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.

[00:30:02]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 and thank you, this is great, and you said, "Shawn, you know, I really appreciated the the effort you put into this. I felt like you you really read the book, but I thought the questions were a little gaseous and and ill-phrased. And I was a little disappointed. Um but I'm only telling you that so that you can become a better interviewer." Yeah. [laughter] Yeah.

[00:30:29]Yeah. If you said that, I'd go, "Okay, gee, thanks, Nick." I'd be pissed off.

[00:30:34]>> [snorts] >> I'd be pissed It would hurt. It would hurt. It wouldn't register as you conveying kindness or warmth. It would just It would insult my ego and and piss me off.

[00:30:44]So, I'm not throwing stones here, right?

[00:30:45]I'm as guilty as anyone, you know? But how how would you do that? I So, I would do it exactly as you said, but but meaning is, you know, look, can I can I help you Look, I I I would love you to be the best interview you possibly can.

[00:30:56]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.

[00:31:02]And when you're saying this to somebody, right? It 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.

[00:31:15]And that can, in the long run, also feel good, too. Can be something that you appreciate, right?

[00:31:21]Who are the people who are truly honest with us?

[00:31:24]Right? It's the people who really love us, the people who are really friends with us. So, when my 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."

[00:31:41]Right?

[00:31:42]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.

[00:31:49]And next time I'll be a better better husband. That can feel good, too. So, when we when we bring married couples, partners, or roommates into into the lab to fight for science, right? To to think about that thing that's bothering them in in their relationship. And we we all have those things, right? If you live with somebody long enough, you spend time with somebody long enough, you're going to have something you got to talk with them about. The 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 to to lead to better conversations than they would expect. The person can sometimes realize it, right? So, Shawn, you might have you might have recognized and this is often the way it unfolds in real life.

[00:32:41]You might have recognized that that wasn't maybe the best interview you'd given if I actually feel that way.

[00:32:47]And have some sense about that. And then then you might appreciate the honesty there. Rather than the the lack of genuineness that if you could detect that, right? I think 15 or 20 minutes later I might appreciate it.

[00:32:58]Yeah, that might be true. That might be true.

[00:33:00]>> moment it probably stings and that's just that's just ego, you know, acting on me. But [laughter] But But shortly thereafter I think I would appreciate that.

[00:33:09]>> 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 a fabulous uh behavioral scientist at the University of of Chicago, uh has people with Taya 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, somebody ask you, "How's your day going?" If it's crappy, you say, "Look, it's just really crappy."

[00:33:46]Right? Instead of saying, "It's Oh, it's great. I'm doing fine."

[00:33:49]You're really honest with them 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 That's the control condition.

[00:34:04]And what Emma finds is that people think that spending a day being clea- completely honest will not be a great day.

[00:34:13]It will be a worse day than being completely kind, right? And that it will hurt their relationships compared to being completely kind. Okay?

[00:34:22]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 else, right?

[00:34:43]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 look, I'm just trying to grease the social tracks here so that we can all have a pleasant interaction.

[00:35:08]In general, do you think it's it's it's a much better strategy even even in those moments where it is you know it is going to create awkwardness.

[00:35:16]Do you think it's still more often than not, way more often than not, a better strategy to just be honest rather than tell that that innocent-seeming white lie?

[00:35:26]So, Emma provides some real nuance on this um because remember the 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.

[00:35:44]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'm trying to help you with this. That's why I am It It It's It's friendliness.

[00:36:01]It's authenticity. It's being It's trying to help another person.

[00:36:06]That's when misunderstanding that 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 or or the other thing, right? You're 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.

[00:36:47]Right? So, there, the truth, the honesty that you're sharing is also ultimately kind. It's meant to be constructive.

[00:36:55]But, when 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 are are justifiable there.

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[00:38:18]>> [music] >> I've always hated small talk, it's not because of social awkwardness. It is more about the banality and and the the phoniness of a lot of those sorts of interactions.

[00:38:34]Much like the just casually saying Yes, it's it is it is people running the same social script they always run and have probably already run 15 times that evening.

[00:38:45]What do you do? What do you do? Where are you from?

[00:38:47]And I I find the inauthenticity of that nauseating almost to the point where like I just there are a lot of cocktail parties I I 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? Like with with do you break from those social scripts and and actually go deep or say something real?

[00:39:10]And when you do that, what is the reaction you tend to get from people who are recognizing well, wait a minute, this they're diverging from the script here. Now what?

[00:39:17]>> 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.

[00:39:25]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 in our research and 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. I 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 with in a room, have a conversation about. Questions like um If I was going to become a good friend of yours, what would be most important for me to know about you?

[00:40:07]What are you most grateful for in your life? Can you tell me about it?

[00:40:11]Can you tell me about one of the last times you cried in front of another person?

[00:40:17]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.

[00:40:24]There's just like this pall cast over the room. Everybody Sometimes people even swear audibly in front of me, uh regretting that they had showed up to the session.

[00:40:35]I send them to a survey online where they tell me how they think they'll feel at the end of this conversation and they say, "Uh, it's going 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."

[00:40:51]They then go off and have the conversation.

[00:40:54]And at that point, the problem I have is getting them back.

[00:40:58]Right? All of these people who also claimed to hate small talk find somebody else who also, like all the rest of us, don't like small talk either.

[00:41:08]And when they come back and tell me how the conversation actually went, they overwhelmingly, these are massive effects, say the conversation went better than they thought it did beforehand.

[00:41:18]Far less awkward than they thought it would be, formed a much stronger bond, liked 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.

[00:41:30]Um, I don't I don't spend time in small talk if I don't want to.

[00:41:35]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 I I just like to get to know you a little bit. I I I'm interested in you, in learning about you.

[00:41:51]Uh, it leads them to open up back to you in return. Uh, and you you can just you can have so much better conversations. At the end of our deep talk 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 ask them, "How deep do you wish your conversations were in daily life?"

[00:42:12]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. But, they say way deeper than the conversations I'm typically having.

[00:42:22]Now, who's responsible for that?

[00:42:26]I am. You are. We are.

[00:42:29]If you're in a conversation you don't want to be having, you have the power to change it once you recognize that other people probably want to have a more meaningful conversation, too.

[00:42:40]Well, 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.

[00:42:48]>> Yeah. Um you seem like a very gregarious, outgoing person. I don't know is 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.

[00:42:59]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.

[00:43:08]And 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 at this at this moment.

[00:43:16]Um and I think all of us have those those capabi- 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 I have long I was long uh a very insecure person.

[00:43:33]Particularly in academic settings. And, you know, would uh would avoid people in all the same kinds of ways that that we all do. Keep to myself. Uh 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.

[00:43:52]And this research This research has done two big things for me.

[00:43:56]One is it's allowed me to think about my social life in terms of moments.

[00:44:03]And that's really critical for happiness and well-being. Psychologists have made it crystal clear that our happiness, our positive mood over 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.

[00:44:38]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 on my desk uh right next to me in the office so that when I have a kind thought, I can share it quickly, right?

[00:44:58]When I have conversations with people, I don't say, "Where do you work?" I ask them, "What's your story?

[00:45:05]How'd you get here today?"

[00:45:07]Something meaningful about them.

[00:45:10]And so, that's one big thing. It's It's just made a lot of uh of differences in in the in the choices that I make in the moments, right? The other thing is that it is highlighted to me that I have a lot more power to shape my social interactions than I might have thought I did in ways that are better. And I can make my interactions better for you, too, based on how I choose. So, if you and I are having a conversation that's shallow, that I don't, you know, I'm not really enjoying, I suspect you weren't either.

[00:45:43]I can invite you into a deeper conversation.

[00:45:46]I you know, I I don't demand it of you.

[00:45:47]You sit down next to me on the plane and you got your headphones in. I don't force you into conversation, but I say, you know, "Hi. Hi, my name's My name's Nick. Uh you You You heading home or or leaving home?" And if you're interested, you'll keep talking and we'll you know, we'll go somewhere. And if you're not, you know, you put your headphones back in and and and we'll we'll just we'll go through the flight and that's okay.

[00:46:07]I've lost a lot of the fear and social anxiety that I that I very much used to have.

[00:46:12]Um and it's it's liberating. It is liberating. It changes you kind of from top to bottom. Do you have a simple social experiment you would you would propose to people? Like something they can try in their own life, whether it's, you know, talk to three people three strangers a day or or or whatever, something like that, just as a kind of starting point to test some of these ideas concretely. Let me give you just one. Let me just let me give you one very simple one. My bet is that you probably know somebody who who you've seen around, you know, maybe it's a neighbor, somebody in town, maybe somebody at work, somebody you've seen quite a bit um over over time, but you just have never introduced yourself to them for whatever reason. You just have haven't said hi to them.

[00:46:53]Just try it. Just walk up and say, "Hi.

[00:46:56]You know, my my name's my name's Nick.

[00:46:57]My That Those are the most powerful words you have in your in your social life. Hi, my name is and you know, look, I I've seen you around a lot, but I haven't haven't said hello to you uh before.

[00:47:07]Uh be nice to just say hi. And then just see where that goes. If you really want to challenge yourself, take a moment um with a stranger, if you have a chance, on a plane or, you know, in a cab or uh you know, at work and try to find what their interesting story is.

[00:47:28]Ask them.

[00:47:30]If I was going to become a good friend of yours, what what what would I really want need to know about you?

[00:47:34]Or what's your story? How'd you get here today? I'm going to leave it right there. Um Nick, I I actually enjoyed the book and I and I actually enjoyed this conversation. That is easy to say because it happens to be true.

[00:47:47]Yes, me too. There it is. Me too. Me too. This was really fun, Sean. Thank you so much for taking time to talk with me.

[00:47:54]Thanks for coming on.

[00:47:56]Thanks for watching. Every week we bring honest and nuanced conversations about what's happening in culture, tech, and the world of ideas to your video and audio feeds.

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[00:48:35]Thanks again.