A Secret Source of Connection

Summary

Hidden Brain - "A Secret Source of Connection"

Host: Shankar Vedantam
Guests: Gary Knight, Amit Kumar, Gordon Flett
Date: June 15, 2026

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Overview

This episode explores the psychological roots of kindness, connection, and our deep need to matter. Host Shankar Vedantam weaves real-life stories, psychological research, and candid personal reflections to illuminate why we so often hesitate to offer or request kindness—even though both giving and receiving it can be transformative. The episode probes why feeling "seen" is vitally important, why the “prosociality paradox” holds us back from small but powerful gestures, and how we can break the cycle to create more meaningful human connections.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Power and Paradox of Kindness

• Kitty Genovese and the Bystander Effect

  • The murder of Kitty Genovese is described as a lens to view the bystander effect: when more people are present, each feels less individual responsibility to help. ([00:00]–[01:02])
  • Shankar notes recent reporting walked back details, but the story persists because it resonates with our observed hesitancy to help in daily life.

    "In everyday life, we all notice that we are not as helpful and brave as we would like to be… Even when the stakes are low for personal safety, we don't extend a hand to others who need help."
    – Shankar Vedantam [01:02]

• Gary Knight’s Accident and Acts of Kindness

  • Gary recounts a painful biking accident in remote Scotland. His friends unknowingly pass him by, and passing drivers look but do not stop. Eventually, three Polish motorcyclists—strangers—stop and render aid. ([04:13]–[12:42])

    “They were so incredibly generous… The only people who stopped for me in Scotland weren't people from Britain, my own people—they were foreigners… Just talking about it makes me very emotional.”
    – Gary Knight [10:58]

  • Gary reflects on being grateful and changed; hopes to reciprocate kindness in the future.

Why Do We Hesitate to Be Kind?

• The Prosociality Paradox

  • Psychologist Amit Kumar discusses what keeps us from extending kindness: not a lack of goodwill, but self-doubt and concern about awkwardness or not “doing it right.” ([14:56]–[30:36])

    "We often think that people who fail to act kindly are unkind people, but… there is a plentiful supply of kindness in the world… a quirk in our minds… keeps us from closing the loop and actually showing kindness."
    – Shankar Vedantam [21:27]

  • We overestimate how awkward, incompetent, or intrusive we might seem and underestimate the positive impact our gesture can have.

• Research on Giving and Receiving Kindness

  • Amit Kumar’s studies at a skating rink and park found that givers underestimated how much recipients appreciated small acts, like free hot cocoa or cupcakes.

    "Recipients of that act of kindness felt significantly better than performers of that act anticipated."
    – Amit Kumar [24:03]

  • The warmth of a small kindness is often valued more than the act's material worth.

• The Ripple of Kindness

  • Further research reveals acts of kindness are “contagious”: recipients go on to be more generous themselves. ([33:18]–[35:13])

Barriers to Offering and Asking for Help

• Empathy Gaps and Self-Doubt

  • We focus on our own discomfort, overlooking how meaningful even imperfect gestures can feel to others.

    “What we're kind of missing out on is this understanding of the additional warmth that comes from being on the receiving end of one of these acts…”
    – Amit Kumar [28:15]

  • Similarly, when asking for help (e.g., requesting a photo at a botanical garden), we assume we are imposing more than we actually are.

    “People think others will feel more inconvenienced than they actually feel… People are generally delighted to offer a helping hand… but we don’t always recognize that.”
    – Amit Kumar [31:02]

Overcoming Hesitation and Building Connection

• Practical Experiments in Kindness

  • Amit describes classroom gratitude exercises and real-life examples of expressing thanks or helping strangers in small but meaningful ways ([42:17]–[46:47]).

    “I've started expressing gratitude more often in my day to day life as a result of conducting this research… The research… suggests that people are more impacted by these expressions than we expect.”
    – Amit Kumar [45:51]

• A Listener’s Story: Being Seen During Hard Times

  • Listener Jessica recounts how the simple, persistent concern of her coworkers at a low point in her life saved her life.

    “We see you, we know that you're lying, we know that something's wrong—We see you… and for that I am very grateful… because of them, I’m still alive today.”
    – Jessica [50:50]

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The Need to Matter

What is "Mattering"?

• Psychological Need

  • Psychologist Gordon Flett defines “mattering” as feeling valued, seen, and cared about; its lack can lead to poor health, anxiety, depression, and loneliness. ([53:46]–[54:58])

    "Mattering is feeling valued by other people… that people would miss you if you were no longer around…"
    – Gordon Flett [53:51]

• Origins and Importance

  • Possibly an evolutionary adaptation for group survival, but also grounded in early caregiver attachment and daily relationships.

• Health and Wellbeing

  • Studies show mattering is linked to lower blood pressure, better health, and happiness. The absence of it increases health and mental health risks.

Mattering at Life's Crossroads

• End-of-Life and Vital Transitions

  • Listeners share stories of how the need to matter spikes in moments of illness, retirement, or major life transitions.

    "People are not so worried about dying but are more worried of whether their life mattered and whether their life had meaning."
    – Listener David, hospice chaplain [57:13]

• Finding Purpose After Feeling Invisible

  • Listener David, a retired firefighter coping with PTSD, describes falling into despair when shunned at work but finding renewed purpose in hosting peer recovery meetings for fellow first responders. ([62:19])

    "I actively seek to help and connect with them wherever I can in hopes to prevent whatever happened to me to ever happening to another first responder if I can do anything to help it."
    – David, firefighter [64:06]

Building and Cultivating Mattering

• In Relationships

  • Flett and callers discuss fostering mattering as a mindful practice: small acts of appreciation, active listening, thoughtful gestures, and making others feel noticed—not just told, but shown that they matter. ([71:42]–[75:51])

    “You just have to be straight with someone and tell them that you like them as a person but you’re not necessarily interested in them… try to do it in a way that will leave… some psychological cushions.”
    – Gordon Flett (on healthy boundaries in relationships) [86:45]

• As a Skill

  • Mattering can be learned and practiced. Micro-practices, like gratitude and attention, become daily reminders for others that they are valued.

• Internalizing Mattering

  • When external validation is absent, we must sometimes create an “internal witness” to our own lives, reminding ourselves of our inherent value.

    "Eventually learning to matter to yourself as well… at the end of the day, people need to matter to themselves and to reflect on what makes them unique and how they have contributed."
    – Gordon Flett [77:32]

Addressing the Dark Side

• Caregiver Burnout and Boundary Setting

  • Excessive demands for attention or mattering—whether from clients, patients, or friends—can lead to burnout. Self-care and setting limits are critical. ([88:45]–[91:20])

• The Risks of Chasing External Validation

  • Needing to matter can become unhealthy if based solely on outside approval, fame, or social status. Balance and healthy self-esteem are essential.

• Marginalized Groups and Mattering

  • Listeners and Flett note that people from marginalized groups (e.g., LGBTQ, disabled, women) report lower senses of mattering, amplifying vulnerability. ([80:16])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Failures of Kindness":

  “What I regret most in my life are failures of kindness.”
  – George Saunders (read by Gordon Flett) [21:21]

• On Gratitude Letters:

  “Senders significantly underestimated how surprised recipients would be… and didn't realize just how positive it would feel to be on the receiving end…”
  – Amit Kumar [43:30]

• On Being Seen:

  “We see you… and for that I am very grateful, and because of them, I’m still alive today.”
  – Jessica, listener [50:50]

• On Boundaries in Mattering:

  “At some point, you have to think about mattering to yourself and where is the line in terms of needing to focus on restoration of oneself and self-care.”
  – Gordon Flett [89:18]

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Important Timestamps (MM:SS)

• [00:00] – Kitty Genovese, the bystander effect, and introduction of the episode’s theme
• [04:13] – Gary Knight’s accident and kindness from strangers
• [14:56] – Amit Kumar’s story and psychological barriers to kindness
• [21:21] – George Saunders: “failures of kindness” and regret
• [24:03] – Research on the value of random acts of kindness
• [30:13] – The prosociality paradox: Why don’t we act, even when kindness benefits both parties?
• [33:18] – Kindness is contagious: “Pay it forward” effects
• [41:19] – The plant-watering story: How small unseen acts can loom large
• [42:17] – Gratitude letter experiment and its effects on students
• [50:50] – Listener Jessica’s story: “We see you”—the transformative power of being noticed
• [53:51] – Gordon Flett on “mattering” and its health effects
• [57:13] – Listener David on end-of-life and the need to matter
• [62:19] – Listener David, firefighter: the cost of feeling invisible at work
• [71:42] – Relationships, mindfulness, and making others matter
• [77:32] – The importance of an "internal witness" and mattering to oneself
• [80:16] – Marginalized identities and the challenge of mattering
• [88:45] – Boundaries, burnout, and the need to matter to oneself

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Conclusion

Key Takeaways:

• Simple acts of kindness are far more treasured and impactful than most of us realize; not offering them is often a result of misplaced fears rather than selfishness.
• The “prosociality paradox” means we hesitate to act, but both kindness and gratitude are easily cultivable habits with exponential effects.
• Mattering—feeling seen and valued—underpins both our emotional and physical wellbeing.
• We can foster mattering through intentional practices in relationships, workplaces, and especially for those who might feel excluded.
• Healthy boundaries and self-care are essential: to offer sustainable kindness to others, you must matter to yourself too.

Final Word:

“We underestimate the value of being kind and the power of making others feel seen—yet these small gestures can be the secret source of deep connection that both we and others need.”
– Shankar Vedantam (paraphrased)

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For those who haven’t heard the episode, this summary offers practical insights and real stories on why kindness and being seen fuel our sense of belonging and how, with just a little courage and mindfulness, anyone can make a profound difference—sometimes with just a cupcake, a note of thanks, or a moment of genuine attention.

Transcript

[Shankar Vedantam]

this is hidden brain i'm shankar vedantam early one morning in march nineteen sixty four a woman named kitty genovese was on her way home from the bar where she worked she parked her car and was walking toward her apartment building when a man attacked and killed her over the years kitty genovese's murder has been the focus of countless books movies and psychology research papers it drew attention not only because it was a grisly crime but because it supposedly explained a deep flaw in human nature the new york times published an article that said dozens of people saw the murder or heard kitty genovese screaming for help but no one intervened when someone did call the police it was too late

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

in

[Shankar Vedantam]

the decades that followed the case came to symbolize a psychological phenomenon known as the bystander effect when lots of people see something is wrong the theory goes each person wrongly assumes someone else will step up to help the net effect is is that as the number of potential helpers increases the number of people who actually help decreases in recent years psychologists and journalists have reexamined the facts of the kitty genovese story and walked back some of the claims the times has said that its initial reporting was flawed and exaggerated i think the power of the kitty genovese story and lies in the fact that in everyday life we all notice that we are not as helpful and brave as we would like to be we look away from people who are suffering we cross the street to avoid an altercation even when the stakes are low for personal safety we don't extend a hand to others who need help this week on hidden brain the curious psychology behind a phenomenon that is all around us and how understanding a quirk inside our minds can help us become the kind of people we admire support for hidden brain comes from lily on this show it's fascinating to discuss the unseen forces shaping the human brain consider conditions like alzheimer's disease where changes in the brain may develop up to twenty years before noticing symptoms talk to your doctor to understand your potential risk factors for dementia due to alzheimer's disease and ask for a cognitive assessment visit brainhealthmatters dot com for more information and resources support for hidden brain comes from pacific life insurance you make promises throughout your life for nearly one hundred sixty years pacific life has been helping you keep them by protecting those who matter most pacific life the power of a promise ask a financial professional how pacific life can help you create a more confident financial future pacific life insurance company omaha nebraska and in new york pacific life and annuity phoenix arizona support for hidden brain comes from the great ache presented by brookdale senior living what should you want to find in a good senior living community no matter how old you are relationships hobbies and a sense of belonging are important hosts mb and susie unpack the process of choosing a senior living community with someone who's lived it hear about mary's journey to senior living on episode twenty three of the great take wherever you listen to podcasts

[Gary Knight]

my name's gary knight i'm the ceo of the seven foundation which is a media nonprof i'm also a very keen amateur cyclist i first met

[Shankar Vedantam]

gary in two thousand nine at a journalism fellowship program a big man with a gregarious personality he filled every room he entered gary was a photographer and had covered conflicts around the world including in the balkans the arab world and southeast asia he was a member of the iconic photo agency called seven i hadn't been in touch with gary for some years but recently met up with him he seemed to be moving his shoulder gingerly and i asked him what happened the story he told me made me think about some surprising research into the nature of kindness we'll get to that in a moment gary told me that each year he plans a biking adventure with friends the thing that we're

[Gary Knight]

looking for the most are really steep climbs incredible views and sort of mythological

[Shankar Vedantam]

rides on his most recent trip before our meeting gary and his friends decided to go biking in the west of

[Gary Knight]

scotland we got up very early drove for an hour to this climb called balaknabar which is an old cattle road that goes over a mountain it's one of the steepest roads in the british isles reaches about twenty percent on a bike and it's a single track road so that means that there's really only room for one car and a bicycle or perhaps a motorcycle my friends usually climb on their bikes a lot faster than i do because i'm a lot heavier than they are but i descend much faster because i'm a lot heavier than they are and i have a lot of confidence on the bike so on this after this tortuous climb which i think took about an hour and a half we descended down into this little town where we had a coffee and something to eat and i remember passing this sort of group of motorcyclists on the way down this road they waved at us we waved at them they were pretty much doing the same trip we were except on bikes soon

[Shankar Vedantam]

it was time for the next section

[Gary Knight]

we set off again up a gentle climb and then another really steep descent and i was quite far ahead of my friends i remember i was doing fifty five kilometers an hour which i think is about thirty two thirty four miles per hour going down this road and i could see quite far ahead there was a bend in the road and a bridge on the bend and there were two volkswagen camper vans coming quite fast in the opposite direction and as we got closer to each other i lost sight of the white camper van it was so close to the black one but when i came round this corner it appeared and it was on my side of the road and traveling at that speed i had well i had nowhere to go there was no room on the road i had to come off the road i went over a concrete ledge and then went airborne and hit a huge lump of granite with my shoulder and my head and i saw it coming towards me and it was inevitable what was going to happen i had the impact and it was incredibly painful and the bike sort of skidded off ahead of me and i came to a real halt but the van both vans drove off up the mountain but i have no doubt that both drivers would have seen me that it's impossible unless they were on their phones that they wouldn't

[Shankar Vedantam]

gary landed at the bottom of a ditch he didn't black out but he felt fuzzy headed the one thing he was grateful for was that his friends were coming down the mountain behind him they would come to the same bend and stop to help but my friends who

[Gary Knight]

were riding behind me who'd lost sight of me rode straight by i could hear them riding by i was quite distraught i called out i think to them a little bit but feebly and they'd gone and they left and so i picked up my phone to call them to ask them to come back but i had no reception so i couldn't reach them

[Shankar Vedantam]

gary knew he was in trouble he guessed his friends would eventually figure out he was not in front of them and turn back but how long would that be twenty minutes an hour and once they turned back how would they know to come to this particular spot i was in really

[Gary Knight]

the middle of nowhere i lifted up my bike tried to get back on the bike but realized i couldn't move my shoulder

[Shankar Vedantam]

slowly painfully gary pulled himself and his bike back to the edge

[Gary Knight]

of the road at that point i was standing on the side of the road you know with a ripped shirt and clearly not quite right and a number of vehicles passed me and nobody stopped people looked but nobody stopped

[Shankar Vedantam]

would you have stopped you're driving on a remote mountain road in the west of scotland and you see a man with a ripped shirt by the side of the road but after some time someone

[Gary Knight]

did stop three motorcycles came down the road and these were the motorcyclists that i passed earlier in the day and we'd been waving to each other the first two sort of looked at me and went by and started to slow down put his thumb up and down at me as if and he was asking me the question are you okay

[Shankar Vedantam]

gary indicated he needed help and so

[Gary Knight]

he stopped his motorbike and he asked me what had happened and then said look you know sit down and we're gonna you know check you out and he explains his name's martin he explained that he and his friends max and anita were all poles they're polish they lived and worked in the united kingdom and they were all trained paramedics and they just the week before finished all of their training and so they checked me out checked my head did all the tests to see if i had concussion they then took out bandages strapped me up immobilized my arm i mean i couldn't have wished for more one

[Shankar Vedantam]

of them went and found gary's friends while another called emergency services all three waited with him for almost an hour until the medics arrived they were so

[Gary Knight]

incredibly generous they spent a lot of time with me whilst they were on vacation and the only people who stopped for me in scotland weren't people from britain my own my own people they were in fact foreigners which is sort of ironic at a time of brexit when britain is you know rejecting the idea of allowing foreigners in so easily i'm hugely hugely grateful for them and you know just talking about it makes me very emotional

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

sorry

[Gary Knight]

it's ironic because i've had a very dramatic and violent career you know i photographed wars for twenty years and closest i ever came to dying was on my bike

[Amit Kumar]

and

[Gary Knight]

you know i felt very alone when i came off the bike and having three strangers you know stop at the side of the road and take care of me was a remarkable itching an incredible act of kindness i hope i have the opportunity to do the same thing for somebody else one day

[Shankar Vedantam]

i feel so grateful that those three polish paramedics stopped to help my friend but there is another way to look at this sure it's no fun to take an hour out of your vacation to help a stranger but really it's just an hour and surely knowing you helped another person in desperate need has to make you feel great about yourself so why are stories of good samaritans so rare in daily life why don't we extend help to others more often are people just selfish actually new psychological research reveals a quirk in our mental makeup that may be to blame you're listening to hidden brain i'm shankar vedanta support for hidden brain comes from lily on this show it's fascinating to discuss the unseen forces shaping the human brain consider conditions like alzheimer's disease where changes in the brain may develop up to twenty years before noticing symptoms talk to your doctor to understand your potential risk factors for dementia due to alzheimer's disease and ask for a cognitive assessment visit brainhealthmatters dot com for more information and resources support for hidden brain comes from principle the perpetual pen tapper the arbitrary fridge reorganizer the holiday party planner that starts in may principal knows your star employees have their work quirks principal also knows how much those employees mean to your business you need them they need benefits work with principal so they can help you help your team with a retirement and benefits plan that's right for them principal life insurance company des moines iowa this is hidden brain i'm shankar vedantam when psychologist amit kumar was in graduate school he became close friends with another student we're going to call her jen

[Amit Kumar]

we used to spend a lot of time together and you know those late night conversations sometimes they're about work sometimes they're about life when you're a social psychologist those conversations kind of blend together i also knew her partner quite well you know the graduate school was at cornell in ithaca new york which is a pretty small college town and so you end up running into the same people when you go to restaurants there you see each other a lot and so at this stage in our lives we were quite close indeed

[Shankar Vedantam]

toward the end of grad school jen and her partner got married it was a small wedding just close friends and family i

[Amit Kumar]

mean i think the thing that's amazing about weddings in particular is that you have all of these people from these different parts of your life come together and it's just so nice to see how much everybody cares for each other and how happy they are that these two people found each other and decided to try to make this work and so it is a thrilling experience i think to be a part of those festivities

[Shankar Vedantam]

amit finished his dissertation grad school ended the long late night conversations between friends turned into busy careers and family demands amit began working as a professor in texas over time he and jen lost touch on and off amit would hear news about his friend via mutual acquaintances and via social media the news he heard was not happy i had

[Amit Kumar]

learned that she had recently gotten separated from her partner she was about to go through divorce they'd actually recently had a child as well so i didn't know that they were having any trouble with their relationship i learned this through a mutual friend and so it was one of those situations where i kind of was a third party that knew what was going on in her life but hadn't heard it from her myself

[Shankar Vedantam]

and i guess at this point you're someone who this is a friend you were close to in grad school you obviously went to the wedding you felt happy to be there you felt happy for the couple you've heard about this unfortunate news about the relationship not working out but you've also sort of fallen out of touch i'm imagining it must have been difficult to pick up the phone at that point and just call her right because it's not like you were friends anymore well when i found

[Amit Kumar]

out was actually particularly interesting i think this was actually during a period of the pandemic maybe other people have experienced this i felt that it had been a little too long since i had seen my family i wasn't yet comfortable getting on an airplane though and so i cautiously decided that it would be worth it to drive from texas to where i grew up where my parents are in new jersey in order to see them but this travel did have me passing through several cities that i might not otherwise visit and in fact i was aware of the fact that this old friend of mine from grad school jen happened to be living in one such city that was near the route that i was on amit considered

[Shankar Vedantam]

stopping to pay jen a visit but then he asked himself what he would

[Amit Kumar]

say i hadn't talked to her myself in years she didn't know that i would be driving through i didn't give her advance notice i thought maybe you know that's not very courteous to just show up and tell someone you're around i also thought about of course you know she might wonder how i knew what was going on in her life even though we hadn't been in touch with each other and so maybe she'd wonder how i even knew about her relationship troubles how uncomfortable might that be

[Shankar Vedantam]

amit did what many of us might do in such a situation he drove through jen's town and didn't reach out as a psychologist the incident got him thinking someone who didn't know him well might have concluded he was callous in not reaching out to a friend going through tough times but amit didn't feel callous he wanted to reach out to jain but didn't know how she would react amit didn't lack for kindness he lacked for confidence how often he asked himself now wearing his psychologist hat does this happen in everyday life where people fail to extend help not because they are unable or unwilling to help but because they feel they might not be able to do the right thing in time the question bloomed into a full blown research project amit quickly came by lots of examples of other people who found themselves in similar situations the author george saunders describes an incident that took place when he was in the seventh grade a new kid had just arrived

[Gordon Flett]

at a school ellen was small shy she wore these blue cat's eye glasses

[Amit Kumar]

that at the time only old ladies

[Shankar Vedantam]

wore when nervous which is pretty much

[Gordon Flett]

always she had a habit of taking a strand of hair into her mouth and chewing on it which didn't help

[Shankar Vedantam]

her popularity at all at a commencement address at syracuse university george saunders described how most kids ignored ellen when they did pay attention to her it was often to mock her your hair tastes

[Amit Kumar]

good that sort of thing i could

[Shankar Vedantam]

see this hurt her i still remember

[Gordon Flett]

the way she'd look after such an

[Shankar Vedantam]

insult eyes cast down a little gut

[Gordon Flett]

kicked as if having just been reminded of her place in things she was trying as much as possible to disappear

[Shankar Vedantam]

george saunders didn't bully ellen himself he also didn't try to stop the bullies and then they moved one day she

[Gordon Flett]

was there next day she wasn't end

[Shankar Vedantam]

of story now why do i regret

[Gordon Flett]

that why forty two years later am i still thinking about her relative to

[Shankar Vedantam]

most of the kids i was actually

[Gordon Flett]

pretty nice to her i never said an unkind word to her in fact i sometimes even mildly defended her but still it bothers me so here's something

[Amit Kumar]

i know to be true although it's

[Gordon Flett]

a little corny and i don't quite

[Shankar Vedantam]

know what to do with it what

[Gordon Flett]

i regret most in my life are

[Amit Kumar]

failures of kindness

[Shankar Vedantam]

failures of kindness we often think that people who fail to act kindly are unkind people but the more amit studied the phenomenon the more he saw the truth was much sadder than that there is in fact a plentiful supply of kindness in the world and there is lots of demand for that kindness but there is a quirk in our minds that keeps us from closing the loop and actually showing kindness

[Amit Kumar]

when it's needed i think the language that economists use can actually be somewhat helpful here even though we're talking about these everyday interactions where one could be kind to another person economists talk about things like expected utility that they'll tell you that wise decisions are guided by an accurate assessment of the expected value of a given action and so what we're often thinking about is are expectations and we've got expectations of both costs and benefits there's potential costs that come with any interaction it could be awkward it could be uncomfortable it could seem weird you could be rejected that's a risk of any potential interaction with another person but of course there's potential benefits to interacting with other people as well in terms of the support that you're providing and in terms of both how you and they feel think about the

[Shankar Vedantam]

thoughts that went through amit's head as he drove through the town of his old friend he worried that reaching out unexpectedly might seem rude he worried that he wouldn't know exactly what to say he worried that she would ask him how he had found out she was going through a divorce and he wouldn't know how to respond notice that none of these motivators involve amit not wanting to help his friend one way that

[Amit Kumar]

psychologists will sometimes talk about these costs as sort of an inordinate concern with how competent we seem are we doing just the right thing at just the right time if it seems like we're not then we might not act in the direction of kindness as george saunders put it these other oriented interactions in

[Shankar Vedantam]

a series of experiments amit has shown that givers and recipients of kindness use completely different lenses to evaluate a kind deed givers worry a lot about whether they are being competent recipients care much more about something else in one experiment amit and his colleagues approached strangers at a skating rink and asked them to give away hot cocoa to someone nearby

[Amit Kumar]

we essentially had participants perform a random act of kindness for just a stranger who happened to be nearby so we had these participants at a skating rink in a public park at chicago they were giving away hot chocolate on a cold winter's day to someone else in the area you're giving to another person this delicious hot chocolate you're expecting nothing in return and after performing this act what we did is we had these participants kind of report their own feelings and predict their recipients experience and we then got ratings we asked the recipients of this act of kindness to tell us how they actually felt and when we followed up with these recipients what became clear is that performers tend to underestimate the value of their kindness so as it turns out both performers and recipients were in significantly better moods than normal after this exchange after giving a hot chocolate to a stranger and in fact recipients of that act of kindness felt significantly better than performers of that act anticipated

[Shankar Vedantam]

the people who gave away the hot chocolate obviously expected that recipients would appreciate the beverage but they underestimated just how much recipients would appreciate it givers focused mostly on the worth of a hot chocolate on a cold winter's day recipients loved not only the hot chocolate but the idea that a stranger had suddenly done something nice for them of course in this initial experiment it was hard to disentangle people's enjoyment of the hot chocolate from their appreciation of an act of kindness so amit ran a follow up study

[Amit Kumar]

we returned to the same public park contrary to popular belief it eventually gets warm in in chicago and so the skating rink had melted because the seasons had changed so we had participants giving cupcakes away to a stranger but we had these cupcakes given to participants in our study in a couple of different ways so in one case participants again sort of gave a cupcake away to somebody else as as an act of kindness but in another case we had what you might think of as a control condition in which no act of kindness was performed but people still received a cupcake in this other case recipients are simply getting a cupcake for participating in the experiment rather than from another person as a random act of kindness one of these cases includes the warmth associated with a kind exchange the other also has somebody receiving a cupcake but without getting it from somebody else and so what we do again is we compare expected versus actual experiences in these two cases and what we found was that people again underestimated how positive recipients would feel after this act of kindness when they had given the cupcake to somebody else

[Shankar Vedantam]

givers tend to focus on the specific help they are giving whether that's a phone call to someone in need or a cupcake to a stranger in a park they evaluate the success of their acts of kindness using a lens of competence this is why they ask themselves am i doing the right thing am i saying the right thing recipients focus less on whether the gift is perfect they care more about the warmth that comes with an act of kindness think about what gary knight said about the three polish travelers who stopped to help him yes he was grateful they had some medical expertise but in a moment when he felt all alone the fact other human beings had stopped to help him meant the world to him

[Amit Kumar]

what we're kind of missing out on is this understanding of the additional warmth that comes from being on the receiving end of one of these acts we get that people like cupcakes but it turns out that getting a cupcake as a result of an act of kindness can be surprisingly good amit it turns out that

[Shankar Vedantam]

we make something of the same error when it comes to people in our own lives not just as strangers there was a study led by zita oravecks and chelsea muth at penn state some years ago that asked people what made them feel most loved what did they

[Amit Kumar]

find amit yeah what they found was that these sort of daily acts of kindness these expressions of appreciation even simple compliments those are the types of things that people say make them feel most loved by those that are closest to them in their lives i think what's interesting about that research though is that it focuses on the recipient's perspective so if you're asking people about what really matters to them what makes them feel positive in these ways they'll tell you that it's these expressions of warmth that happen on a day to day basis and the types of interactions we could have all the time and yet i think if you were to ask the people that love those participants the potential compliment givers or gratitude expressers or performers of acts of kindness they might think that they're doing something relatively inconsequential as opposed to one of the most important things that they could do for another person

[Shankar Vedantam]

amit says the different lenses employed by gift givers and gift recipients to evaluate the value of an act of kindness leads to what he calls the pro sociality paradox i think the paradox

[Amit Kumar]

is really that these are actions that that tend to feel good for both the people doing them and the people on the receiving end and yet even though it feels good it's seen as good it's perceived to be good we are reluctant to behave in these ways that in everyday life will leave us feeling happier

[Shankar Vedantam]

the prosociality paradox doesn't just lead kind people to withhold their kindness it also keeps people from asking for kindness in a study by nick epley and xuan zhao visitors at a botanical garden were encouraged to ask others to take a photo of them the visitors were then asked to guess whether the strangers being asked to take the photos would feel happy or inconvenienced by the

[Amit Kumar]

request so there's a beautiful scene in this conservatory essentially with these lush plants this lush foliage around and so when you ask people how inconvenienced would somebody feel if you ask them to take a picture for you how positive would they feel as a result of offering this help for you they think that people are going to feel more inconvenienced than they actually feel and in fact they don't realize how positive the other person will feel as a result of sort of helping you out people are generally they tend to be delighted to offer a helping hand it doesn't take very much effort it's an easy opportunity to do something nice for somebody else and people are happy to do this but we don't always recognize that

[Gordon Flett]

and

[Shankar Vedantam]

in some ways isn't this partly connected to the idea that we find it really difficult to put ourselves in other people's shoes so we're seeing the world so often through our own perspective that we fail to see that somebody else

[Amit Kumar]

could see it quite differently yeah we have these egocentric biases this is sort of the scientific term for these perspective based asymmetries where we're thinking about things from our perspective but in these contexts these are interpersonal exchanges they involve other people and so it really matters what's going on in the mind of another person what their perspective is i'm not the first person to suggest that being kind to other people improves well being and yet we have tons of opportunities to be kind to other people that we don't take advantage of and i think it's interesting to think about why we don't act in ways that are likely to make us feel better and one of the explanations for why we sometimes choose not to do those things that are going to make both us and someone else feel better is that we don't fully understand the magnitude of the impact that we're having on another person recipients feel they say things like a little good goes a long way what we find in our research is that it actually goes even further than people expect that it will we underestimate how much value these acts will have on the people that we're kind to

[Shankar Vedantam]

there is one last dimension to the prosociality paradox it's not only the case that we underestimate how much people will appreciate our acts of kindness is not only that we underestimate how willing others are to help us we fail to foresee the downstream effects of being kind today and the tampa bay times both report a woman at the drive thru paid for her coffee at the starbucks on tyrone boulevard around seven am yesterday she also paid for the driver behind her who in turn paid for the next customer and so on and so on in all three hundred seventy eight people decided to pay it forward employees say the three hundred seventy ninth person who broke the chain was confused about how it all worked amit and his team have run experiments to test if kindness is really contagious they've brought people into a lab and given them a small gift like a chocolate bar or a box of gourmet tea we had

[Amit Kumar]

recipients of that act of kindness kind of play one of these economic games that are used to explore what are sometimes called pay it forward effects participants are assigned the role they're told that they're the decider they're asked to allocate some money between themselves and another person this is someone that they'd never meet everybody that received an item in this case again it was either from the experimenter for their participation or as a result of their act of kindness they're assigned to be this decider there's real money on the line these are consequential choices and what we found was that those who had just been on the receiving end of an act of kindness gave substantially more to sort of this anonymous person in this subsequent game so this other person was now being kind to someone else basically because someone had been kind to them before the downstream

[Shankar Vedantam]

effects in some ways of being kind

[Amit Kumar]

of yeah you can think of this as a potential virtuous cycle of sort of giving to other people but we don't always realize that we have the capacity to create cycles like that

[Shankar Vedantam]

our actions can have surprising ripple effects on the world but first we have to work up the courage to overcome our own feelings of awkwardness for his part amit eventually did reach out to jen his grad school friend it was a lot less awkward than he had feared

[Amit Kumar]

i wish the story was i reflected on how i had behaved and i changed my behavior right away and called her up on the phone but we ended up you know there was some shared memory essentially that that led to us having a little bit of a text exchange we ended up talking to each other as a result of that and from that conversation i knew that of course it would have been great if we had talked to each other when you're close to someone those feelings of closeness come back pretty quickly in reality but sometimes it's hard to realize that when you're thinking about the prospect of reconnecting with somebody else

[Shankar Vedantam]

we all have moments in our lives when we see an opportunity to step in but don't maybe an elderly stranger needs some help at the grocery store or a friend in trouble could benefit from a phone call rather than doing something even if it's small many of us hold back we worry we will be awkward or that our kindness will be misconstrued yet when we are on the receiving end of small kindnesses we are often moved to tears this paradox plays out every day robbing us of opportunities to offer kindness and opportunities to receive it when we come back how to fight the prosociality paradox you're listening to hidden brain i'm shankar vedant support for hidden brain comes from defender even the boldest journey starts small with a single decision to go somewhere new the defender one hundred ten is a vehicle built for those moments for drivers capable of great things whether they're headed toward uncharted territory or just a weekend away the defender one hundred ten combines on road presence with off road capability it looks tough because it is with an exterior engineered for durability inside capability meets comfort with seating for five and the option for seven plus refined finishes and thoughtful design it's also packed with intuitive tech like three d surround cameras with clearside ground view to help you navigate rough terrain and the next generation pivi pro infotainment system designed to keep you informed connected and in control no matter the path the defender one hundred and ten is naturally capable expedition ready and built for those ready to move forward explore the defender one hundred ten at landroverusa dot

[Gary Knight]

com

[Shankar Vedantam]

support for hidden brin comes from lowe's son's out and so is dad this father's day find what'll make his summer with lowe's father's day deals get two free dewalt power tools when you buy a select five amp hour battery kit plus get a free blackstone six piece stainless steel griddle kit when you buy a select blackstone griddle shop lowe's father's day deals in store or online valid through june twenty fourth while supplies last selection varies by location this is hidden brain i'm shankar vedantam like many people psychologist amit kumar had trepidations about returning to the office after spending months away during the COVID pandemic i think

[Amit Kumar]

all of us can probably that have had this experience can remember how strange it is to go back to a place when you haven't been there in many months and so there was already some anxiety around going back to the office i was nervous about doing that i basically didn't go to the office at all for many months during the height of the pandemic and when i eventually did come back to campus i was expecting to kind of find a half eaten sandwich from a past life and a bunch of dead plants in my office much to my surprise though the plants in my office were not only alive they were miraculously thriving to the point of looking way healthier than they looked when i was coming in regularly and trying to tend to them and it turned out so there's a person on our administrative staff here who does all sorts of seemingly small things that kind of really loom large i think in the minds of those that are receiving her help but of course it turned out that it was her who had kind of made this miracle happen she had been coming into the office at least with a little bit of frequency and this was again something she didn't have to do nobody asked her to do this in fact when i talked to her about this is another kind of real life experience of what we're measuring in these experiments because when i talked to her about it she basically framed it as this super concrete simple act it's just pouring water out of a container every once in a while is kind of how she described what she was doing but to me when you're already anxious about returning to the office you think that your plants have died this was somebody that was thinking about me somebody that cared about me somebody that was doing something nice for me and so all of those positive feelings i think really came to mind in that instance even though she of course thought of it as some small thing that she was doing to kind of pass the time

[Shankar Vedantam]

it's those different lenses again amit focused on the warmth of the act of kindness his colleague focused on how much effort it took her to water the plants

[Amit Kumar]

so this goes back to sort of this asymmetry in terms of what are people focusing on what are people paying attention to in these interactions so when we're a potential performer of an act of kindness our perspective just tends to focus less on warmth than targets do when we're considering our own behavior it seems like a plant watering a plant to a performer but it's actually somebody doing something nice for me when you're a recipient

[Shankar Vedantam]

in recent years amit and his colleagues have started to ask how they can help people overcome the prosociality paradox one experiment conducted with nick epley at the university of chicago points in a useful direction so it turns out

[Amit Kumar]

that these acts are pretty easy they don't necessarily involve lots of effort they're the types of things that you can do in just a matter of minutes folks have been making the case for about two decades now that expressing gratitude improves well being and yet again we don't you know necessarily walk around in our daily lives giving thanks to people all that often and you know that makes a scientist curious as to well why don't we and so one of the ways that we investigated this was by having participants write a gratitude letter to somebody else who had impacted them in some way we again had those participants make predictions about how their recipient would feel as a result of their letter and what we found when recipients told us how they really felt and we kind of compare those responses to expectations was that senders significantly underestimated how surprised recipients would be about why they were grateful they overestimated how awkward or uncomfortable recipients would feel and they didn't realize just how positive it would feel to be on the receiving end of one of these letters i understand that

[Shankar Vedantam]

you use a similar exercise when you teach what do you ask your students

[Amit Kumar]

to do yeah so it's essentially participating in this experiment so they write a letter to somebody else they make a prediction about how that person will feel we contact their recipients we find out how they really feel and i kind of show the data to the students in my class i think what's powerful for the students is that they learn that they exhibit the same effects that have been found in published research so we've replicated these results kind of time and time again i suspect that it's useful or this research might be more meaningful it might potentially have a bigger impact on one's own life if you kind of participate directly if you experience it yourself rather than just kind of hearing about the results from experiments you

[Shankar Vedantam]

didn't participate in professors at other universities have adopted amit's letter writing exercise he sometimes hears stories about how it's impacted students one story stands out to him an international student studying at a canadian university decided to write a letter to

[Amit Kumar]

his mother thanked her for everything that she had done for him and at the end of his letter he wrote the words i love you and he realized that he had never said that to his mom before and his mother's response started with four words back i love you too imagine sort of hearing that from your mom after the first time that you told her that that's a a particularly powerful example of course but it's actually not an unusual reaction so we've done this with lots and lots of participants at this point and i've had participants in our studies and in my class kind of write to me telling me that they were ecstatic that they were bubbling over with joy after receiving a letter of appreciation that's not the usual type of comment that a researcher gets in the open ended feedback when they're asking someone to complete a questionnaire

[Shankar Vedantam]

so after studying this phenomenon for many years amit i understand that there are things that you have done in your own life to make it easier and more automatic for you to reach out a helping hand tell me about those things what do you do

[Amit Kumar]

i'd say that i probably have started expressing gratitude more often in my day to day life as a result of conducting this research all of this work is just an attempt to get a better understanding of our everyday lives and how they might be improved what makes us more likely to express gratitude well we know that people are more likely to do something if it's top of mind if we can think about a clear way to get it done one thing that i do is i just have cards on hand it's an easy reminder to me more than like the stationary itself it's just oh yeah i could express gratitude to somebody else why not go ahead and do it the research of course suggests that people are more impacted by these expressions than we expect

[Shankar Vedantam]

some time ago amit found himself at an airport with an opportunity to practice the ideas that he preaches so

[Amit Kumar]

i was waiting at the gate i happened to be sitting next to a woman who was clearly getting frustrated with something on her phone she tried asking a couple folks nearby for help in spanish without much luck and so in doing so i kind of learned that she didn't really speak english i guess an aside mind you the last time i took a spanish class was in eleventh grade so i'm probably always listeners can't see gray in my beard on a podcast but that was a while ago i'm probably always speaking in the present tense not really communicating effectively and so this is a case where i think concerns about competence really loomed large here i have very little confidence in my ability to effectively communicate in spanish but nevertheless in knowing my own research i thought i'd just try to help her as best i could and so in my broken spanish i kind of pieced together that she was traveling to the us for the first time she was trying to get in touch with her brother to pick her up when she landed and she needed to connect to the wi fi in order to sort of talk to him on whatsapp she had an international phone connecting to the free airport wi fi required kind of filling out one of those standard forms with like your email address and your zip code code things that some people are very accustomed to doing but others might not be i guess i'll mention that i have no clue how to say zip code in any other language besides english and so after a few failed attempts at explaining sort of what she needed to do she just kind of handed me her phone i ended up filling out the form with my own sort of personal contact information to get her connected and it was a kind of broken conversation but i pieced together she was kind of telling me how nervous she was traveling she made it clear how appreciative she was of my help kind of allowing her to interact with her brother i don't know if i would have done that if i wasn't studying topics like these in my research it's kind of easy to stay reserved maybe someone else will help i don't want to get involved those are the thoughts that sometimes enter our minds but this is something that obviously left her feeling positive and it actually made me feel really good too and so those i think are exactly the kinds of actions that perhaps all of us should be engaging in a bit more often

[Shankar Vedantam]

think about the last time a stranger showed you a small kindness maybe someone brought you your wallet after you left it on a coffee shop counter or perhaps fellow travelers let you cut ahead of them in line when you were late for a flight how do these gestures make you feel as we heard in today's episode small acts of kindness often have an outsized impact on us that's partly because they show that another person has seen us a listener named jessica recently called in with a story about one such act of kindness about a decade ago jessica was struggling with loneliness and depression she felt like she was lost in an abyss i remember just thinking the people who i am around they're just constantly disappointed by me they're constantly telling me all the things that i just can't get right and it had been building up so much that the burden was much too heavy one day a group of co workers gathered around her i just remember them saying like what's going on with you what's going on with you like something's really wrong now and i just remember being like nothing everything's okay what are you talking about and then it was about six of them that just stood around me and said what's wrong with you we see that something's going on don't lie and we see you and i remember thinking like what do you mean you see me and they're like yeah we see you we know that you're lying we know that something's wrong we see you jessica had felt dismissed by her friends and family but now these co workers were sending her a different message and for that i am very grateful and because of them i'm still alive today and for the rest of my eternity here on earth will be grateful to those individuals for doing that to me

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

there

[Shankar Vedantam]

are some things we all need in life food water shelter we also have a need that's harder to define but is vital to our survival we need to feel like we matter when we come back stories about the importance of feeling seen and heard you're listening to hidden brain i'm shankar vedanta support for hidden brain comes from tiktok on tiktok people are breaking down physics exploring geology and explaining why the world works the way it does you'll see impressive experiments explanations that finally make sense and connections you didn't expect it's like having a lab a lecture hall and a science museum in your pocket tiktok is where wonder is shared where curiosity turns into discovery and where millions learn something new every day support for hidden brain comes from linkedin running a small business means every hire matters a bad hire can cost you time money and momentum a good hire they can help grow your business linkedin's new hiring pro screens candidates for you so instead of sorting through applicants you spend time talking to only the right ones get started by posting your job for free at linkedin dot com hb terms and conditions apply this is hidden brain i'm shankar vedanta humans are social creatures we want to feel like we belong but we also crave something even deeper we want to feel like we matter the psychologist gordon flett is the author of the psychology of understanding the human need to be significant he recently joined us for an episode titled do you feel invisible today he responds to your questions and comments about the importance of feeling seen gordon flett welcome back to hidden brain oh thanks

[Gordon Flett]

for having me shankar i appreciate it

[Shankar Vedantam]

gord you study what you call mattering what do you mean by that term

[Gordon Flett]

mattering is feeling valued by other people so you feel that you are seen and heard and valued and and really cared about so that people would miss you if you were no longer around and that is a feeling that can be one that really sticks with you and influences other positive feelings what have

[Shankar Vedantam]

you found about the effects of mattering on our physical and emotional health the

[Gordon Flett]

physical side is important to underscore because there are now about ten studies indicating that mattering is associated with better health both in terms of subjective self reports but also in terms of some objective indicators such as blood pressure heart functioning body chemicals and so on but also it's related to our positive feelings it predicts happiness and engagement and enjoyment and at extreme levels pure and unadulterated joy but the flip side of that of course is when we don't feel that sense then we prone to anxiety and depression loneliness and other negative mental health

[Shankar Vedantam]

states what do you think explains the physical effects of mattering i mean the emotional effects of mattering seem more straightforward and intuitive why do you think it's having an effect on our physical well

[Gordon Flett]

being people who are health psychologists talk about things that get under the skin i think that mattering gets under the skin in terms of just providing first of all a sense of calmness and lack of stress that people who are high in mattering are more able to cope and are resilient and adaptable so i think that's part of it but also there's a sense of security and safety that comes from knowing that people care about you and would miss you if you're gone and are looking out for you and at the bottom of that is the sense of identity that you see yourself as someone who actually is cared about and is connected to other people so i think there's multiple things that are going on beneath the skin but also there's just a basic feeling of calmness and the capacity of knowing that when trouble ensues and stress is coming your way that you'll be able to get through it perhaps by calling on some of the people who have given you that sense of mattering in the first place a listener named

[Shankar Vedantam]

bill wrote in with a hypothesis about where the human need to matter comes from he writes the need to matter is important because of the need for individuals to be a member of a group in good standing group membership was important for survival when humans lived in small tribal or family groups it has become more of a problem in modern times since our groups have become much larger and more complex what do you think of bill's hypothesis gord could our drive to feel like we matter have an evolutionary origin i believe there is

[Gordon Flett]

some component to that in terms of our basic need to connect with others but we want to make sure that we're connecting with others in the way that gives us that sense of safety and security i also think though that beyond the group connection is that one to one connection mattering is tied into our sense of attachment and when you look at what fosters good attachment many of the same mechanisms are involved in terms of getting the attention and the care and the responsiveness of the caregivers early on in life so there's a hardwired component that's built in very early perhaps there's an evolutionary sense as bill has suggested but also that that deep sense of security that comes from having those connections with caring providers who you know one's mother one's father grandfather grandmother whoever it is and you know i've been looking at the work of john bowlby recently the famous attachment theorist and he doesn't talk about mattering per se but he talks about the care that comes with attachments because he warned us that attachments can also be bad attachments to people who are not optimal parents and when you're a more optimal parent and responsive caregiver you're focused on meeting the emotional needs in addition to the

[Shankar Vedantam]

physical needs gord we heard from many listeners with personal stories about mattering david is eighty one years old and has worked for a while as a hospice chaplain being there with patients and loved ones walking with them during the end of life i saw my impact and i learned that at end of life people are not so worried about dying but are more worried of whether their life mattered and whether their life had meaning i once told a paralyzed parkinson patient who could not speak or swallow that he was giving a gift to his family by his not being able to care for himself his family had to stop their normal life and look at what was important to them and the importance of showing their love to him by caring for him i thanked him for his gift that he was giving and then tears rolled down his cheeks he had seen that he did matter and that his life even paralyzed still had meaning that's a remarkably moving story gord i'm wondering do you find that our need to matter is greatest in moments like these when we received a serious health diagnosis and we feel

[Gordon Flett]

very vulnerable yes that certainly is the case and i thank david for sharing that with us it's so important to underscore these important concepts and needs when people are at that stage in life i know in our original discussion i talked about this in terms of my experiences in the hospital with a nurse who remarkably showed me the caring that i needed after a very close call and i think that these are the things that people think about when they're worried about their longevity and the possibility of not being with us anymore i've seen and heard some remarkable stories from nurses about people in such circumstances very much in line with what david said and i can share that my mother in law was in a home in terms of long term care and had one of the best nurses in the world and this person was so sensitive to the fact that people needed to know that they were cared about right to the end and when my mother in law passed unfortunately this person was off that day and she came in the next day because we were then tasked with having to immediately clear out my mother in law's room and she was actually crying and saying you know i wanted to be here for your day when you needed me the most and it just meant so much to us and i'm sure that my mother in law had a much better time in that facility because of having the experiences with this person who would just light up when she came into the room when she saw her or the family members

[Shankar Vedantam]

you know listening to david's story it seems clear that his work as a hospice chaplain also gives him of feeling that he matters i think many of us assume that jobs like david's are impossibly difficult but in fact many people who do hospice work find it to be incredibly meaningful can you speak to the power of bearing witness as a source of mattering gord yes

[Gordon Flett]

i think there's a power to the bearing witness but there's also the power of directly impacting people and knowing that you have done something for them in one of their greatest times of need the originator of the hospice concept said that essentially you matter to the end of your days and it's the slogan that is embraced at hospices around the world and the value is clearly there in terms of people recognizing it staff members one thing that happened when my mother in law had passed and they were taking her out in terms of the hearse is waiting there is that they staff lines up on both sides and they clap for the person and they cheer as the final goodbye to their experience with that person and of course we went around and we thanked everybody we could right there on the spot so that they would get that direct feeling of knowing that what they did for us really mattered and would continue to matter to us until you know the end of time really it

[Shankar Vedantam]

can be very moving to hear stories of someone who feels seen by another person but it can be equally painful to hear stories of people who've experienced the opposite here's a message we received from a listener who also happens to

[Gary Knight]

be named david for nearly thirty years i was a firefighter paramedic early on in my career i was diagnosed with job related ptsd this diagnosis went unacknowledged and was completely ignored by my administration and chief officers within the agency in twenty nineteen i attempted suicide as a direct result of my job related ptsd i went away to residential treatment and came back and upon my return to work i was never acknowledged by any member of administration or by any chief officer oftentimes many of the guys that i had worked with for decades would get up and leave the room when i came in i lasted for about two weeks before i went off on permanent sick leave where i stayed for about a year before retiring during that time nobody reached out to me and i never felt more alone and more invisible in my whole life and i had become suicidal again during that time it's been almost five years since i've retired and in that time i've been able to form strong connections with the first responder community at least once a week over zoom through the firefighters union i host recovery meetings and i actively seek to help and connect with them wherever i can in hopes to prevent whatever happened to me to ever happening to another first responder if i can do anything to help it thank you

[Shankar Vedantam]

gord what strikes me about david's experience is that his feeling of not being seen when he came back to work how powerfully this shaped his ability to stay in the workplace it's also striking that david found significance in interacting with people who have gone through a similar life experience in his retirement are we more likely to find mattering with others who we sense are like us yes

[Gordon Flett]

definitely there's something to be said for identifying people who seem to have been through the same thing that we have been through and then doing something to help them so that you get that sense of feeling through being valued in terms of in the case of david hosting recovery meetings and doing things for his colleagues and his peers who he could identify with i just wanted to thank david for sharing that story in terms of getting a sense of openness of what kind of pain can be involved and other people out there will know that they're not alone because they may have been through something very similar i actually have just finished a paper that's about to come out where i talk about when that sense of not mattering becomes escalated to the point of experiencing what i've termed unbearable insignificance and it's a sad story that when people aren't attuned to the fact that somebody might be feeling this way some of at times i think it's because people think well they're stoic they've learned to handle these things but everybody is human and in that paper i talk about there seems to be critical moments when people have got to the point where they say i really need somebody to respond and validate how i'm feeling and see how i'm feeling or checking in on me but far too often as we found out with david there that they don't and then just a little bit of appreciation or thoughtfulness can go an incredibly long way i heard another story recently of a family member who returned to a job after being off and on leave for a bit of time and the workplace had lost track of him and forgot that he actually was coming back that day and he was there on two days online for his online work and it was like he was a total ghost and all it takes is a little bit of thoughtfulness where people are thinking at the top and management level who's where and who's coming back and for those who are wondering well do we have time for this well you have to think about the time that you would need to find somebody to replace these people because inevitably that hurt feeling can translate into health and mental health issues that result in needing to find someone else for these roles so you know there's a lot to unpack there in terms of what david told us but the key takeaway i like people to focus on is that he got back to a more hopeful approach by doing things that could make a difference for others and from a perspective that others could relate to and we do have to remember that people who are in these vital roles in society can find ways through not getting the kinds of interaction or the acknowledgement or the recognition they deserve to end up feeling like they don't matter at all and then thinking some very dark thoughts you've said that

[Shankar Vedantam]

we need to be especially sensitive to feelings of mattering when we or others are going through significant life transitions such as retirement talk about this idea gord why is it these transitions affect us

[Gordon Flett]

so deeply when we have a transition we get very uncertain about ourselves some of these transitions include being away from those people who we're close to who usually provide us our daily sense of mattering but i've found that if people are able to develop a sense of what i call the deep mattering where it's not conditional on anything it's just you being you and you matter to people that that will carry forward and help you in these situations some of it is when you're in a new situation you're faced with all kinds of different feelings and senses of arousal and the people with a feeling of mattering have a capacity to manage their emotions and to calm down and to keep faith in themselves and in their surroundings and in their extended social network that they'll be able to get through and be able to deal with most of the transitions unfortunately of course there are the transitions where we actually have lost someone so there's a loss of mattering and that of course is more of a challenge but still i find that once somebody has made you feel that you're important you tend to carry that around and once you get past the grief you're more able to be able to remember that positive connection and why that person felt that way about you in the first place and that will help carry you forward

[Shankar Vedantam]

when we come back how to find ways to matter you're listening to hidden brain i'm shankar vedantam support for hidden brain comes from apple creator studio being a creator today means you wear a million hats you're the director the audio engineer the graphic designer and so much more bouncing between a dozen different expensive software tools can completely kill your momentum apple creator studio completely changes the game you get the best creative apps from apple together in one subscription you can craft your stories with video in final cut pro reimagine images in pixelmator pro produce your best music in logic pro it even supercharges your productivity apps like keynote pages numbers and freeform with intelligent features all of that and more for only twelve dollars ninety nine cents a month plus you can share the subscription with up to five other people with apple creator studio it's all yours for the making try apple creator studio free at apple dot com apple creator dash studio support for hidden brain comes from quince summer always changes how you get dressed you want pieces that feel lighter and more breathable things that are easy but still put together that's where quince comes in they focus on high quality essentials that feel and look amazing think breathable linen and soft organic cotton and quince goes way beyond clothing they have custom upholstered sofas ceramic cookware premium bedding and more for your home it's the kind of brand you end up recommending to everyone for everything and the best part they work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen so you're paying for quality not brand markup elevate your summer wardrobe go to quince dot com brain for free shipping on your order and three hundred sixty five day returns now available in canada too that's q dash u i dash n dash c dash e dot com brain for free shipping and three hundred and sixty five day returns quinns dot com brain this is hidden brain i'm shankar vedantam feeling seen is an important driver of human flourishing feeling lonely or insignificant by contrast can lead to depression anxiety even violence psychologist gordon flett studies the implications of what he calls mattering gord let's talk about how mattering affects and is affected by our relationships here is listener anne really good

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

happy long term relationships seem to depend on maintaining a sense of equal mattering in order to successfully continue i've been married for more than thirty five years and i confess that after the glow of feeling in love wore off it turns out that my husband and i have completely different ways of communicating how we matter to each other but i'm wondering if it's possible that making another person feel that they matter to you is a skill that can be learned and that requires mindfulness and maybe some work in order to improve so a

[Shankar Vedantam]

two part question here gord how can we foster more mattering in our relationships and how can we develop the ability to make other people feel like they matter how can we develop this as

[Gordon Flett]

a skill sure i think the first important thing to say here is that we need to be mindful of mattering and ann referred to that in terms of mindfulness but i think we need to be mindful of mattering and not take people for granted or let them feel like they're being taken for granted by not just telling them that they matter but showing them in terms of unexpected considerations thoughtful gestures because people no matter how long they've been together need a reminder that they're still cared about and things might be different in many respects but that core sense of being somebody who's cared about is still there i saw a recent analysis of long term marital adjustment and showed that in divorced couples the main thing that seemed to predict it was that they still said they were in love with their former partner but they had developed a sense of dissatisfaction and i think the dissatisfaction is something that comes from not getting daily reminders or weekly reminders through whatever means that there can be sometimes just showing appreciation for people i know that things go better at home for us when i acknowledge the things the many things that my wife does because she tends to show her caring and mattering of me and her family members through the things that she does rather than emotional expressions necessarily but expressing appreciation and recognizing that what somebody is doing is making a difference is critical in this because people will think okay well i am now just being taken for granted as for anne's comment about question about could you be trained to do this there are certain things i think first of all just becoming aware of mattering and having it as a lens to look at relationships is a very positive thing but you can just get into micro practices that you can do on a regular basis that will enhance somebody's sense of being seen and heard and respected learning how to listen to somebody as opposed to looking at your phone and something that's called fubbing where you're not really engaged with somebody you're sort of half listening because that will foster antimattering rather than a chance to give that deep listening and responsive listening that can give a sense of positive mattering another key thing in terms of relationships that go beyond couples and partners is to having some time for people one of the things that consistently comes out in the research that's been done on this is that when somebody spends their time with you they're giving up their time that they could be used for something else and even doing something like composing a note to somebody or dropping them a quick call is showing that you've been thinking about them and you're taking the time to do it rather than oh i'll get around to it or why haven't i heard from somebody when i thought i would hear from them so there's things you can do and then i think just fostering an environment where you make it a much more salient thing in terms of mattering is a good thing as well not only for relationships but for organization

[Shankar Vedantam]

now the feeling of mattering would intuitively seem to be inherently relational we experience a sense of significance by mattering to other people but several listeners called in to make the point that this might not always be a positive here is suzanne who is a therapist and an

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

ordained minister over the past three years i've experienced what i would call a period of invisibility after dismantling a twenty year psychotherapy practice and leaving my home clients and community to relocate and build a new ministry with my former husband the partnership collapsed almost immediately he left to serve elsewhere and i found myself in a new city professionally and socially unanchored rebuilding from the ground up in midlife what sustained me during that time was something i would call developing an internal witness even when there wasn't visible affirmation or external validation i consciously connected to the knowledge that i mattered to my son to my granddaughter even to my dog that sense of being held in love even if imagined at times stabilized me over time i realized that while it's essential to gather with others and to have people who believe in the value of our journey there are seasons when that external witnessing isn't readily available in those seasons cultivating an internalized sense of being seen becomes a psychological lifeline

[Shankar Vedantam]

gaurd what do you make of suzanne's strategy of creating an internal witness to her own life yeah i think

[Gordon Flett]

it's a brilliant strategy and a fabulous concept because that's exactly what people need to do especially during those times when they relied on external validation they are in a spot where they're alone or isolated and they may not have these people such as when people are in a transition like moving to a new town or where they don't have the usual set of people in their environment to call on right away the internal witness part is critical though and i think it's related to the notion of eventually learning to matter to yourself as well people do need to remind themselves of the ways that they have mattered and they continue to matter to various people and this can be family members other people in the community but it can also be to pets and to the community in general when i talk about mindful mattering this is what i mean in terms of reminding yourself at times and just reflecting on the ways that you still matter and have mattered and know that you still have the capacity to matter and that you can perhaps build up some more relationships so that you can have the external witnesses as well at the end of the day mattering is something that's very subjective it's inside of us people are often incorrect where they feel that they matter less than they actually do or they have got an inflated sense of mattering that doesn't tap into how they're actually regarded by other people but at the end of the day people need to matter to themselves and to reflect on what makes them unique and how they have contributed and when somebody's in a situation maybe through illness or injury where they're feeling that they've lost the opportunity to matter it does have some comfort for them to remind themselves that they have made a difference and i also believe that they will find a way to show that they matter going forward and as an illustration of this you can look at people in the disability community including essentially the mother of the disability movement judy heumann in the united states who was instrumental and fundamental in getting the rights for disabled community she started out and had polio as a kid and ended up actually being barred from going to school initially because she was told that her and her wheelchair were fire hazards but she was able to convince herself through the support of her initial family that she still had a role to play and i'm sure there were times when she was thinking well i'm up against this in terms of an anti mattering society who treats people with disabilities as if they're invisible or discardable but she was able to remind herself of the ways that she could indeed make a difference

[Shankar Vedantam]

we heard from a listener named elizabeth who wrote in to say that between being a woman being disabled and being gay she feels invisible and it makes me think gord especially in light of what you just said that while a sense of not mattering can affect any of us people in some groups may be especially

[Gordon Flett]

vulnerable yes although we talk about levels of mattering overall in terms of who matters and who doesn't in terms of has the feeling of mattering and i'd like to point out to listeners that about seventy seventy five percent of people have some sense of a feeling of mattering but when we talk about people from marginalized groups or stigmatized groups the level of feeling of not mattering the anti mattering escalates and as one illustration of this in terms of research done in the us in terms of community feeling of mattering among adolescents and young adults it's about fifty fifty in terms of the feeling of mattering in the community that's a very sad number when you think about it and a lot of well being would come along from making more people have a chance to feel like they matter in the community but when we look at people from the lgbtq community we find that the levels of mattering in the community plummet down to about one out of three in some of the studies that have been done so when people are needing to be thoughtful about others and reaching out and sending the message that everybody counts it's important to think about people who might feel like they're targets for not mattering and to be extra engaged in terms of trying to address their needs

[Shankar Vedantam]

when we come back how to show another person that they matter while also maintaining healthy boundaries you're listening to hidden brain i'm shankar vedantam support for hidden brain comes from liquid iv when you're on the go staying hydrated is key to enjoying all that extra sunshine and right now you can get twenty percent off your first order with code brain at checkout it's powered by liv hydrocycles an optimized ratio of electrolytes essential vitamins and clinically tested nutrients that turn ordinary water into extraordinary hydration liquid iv is always non gmo vegan gluten free dairy free and soy free explore the delicious sugar free options like white peach strawberry watermelon and more stay hydrated while you're on the go this summer with liquid iv tear pour live more go to liquidiv dot com and get twenty percent off your first purchase with code brain at checkout that's twenty percent off your first purchase with code brain at liquidiv dot com support for hidden brain comes from betterhelp summer can be a mix of things for some it's about travel adventure and making memories for others juggling everything can feel overwhelming kids at home packed schedules shifting routines it's easy to slip into survival mode and wonder where the days are going taking time for yourself can make a difference and therapy can support that helping you feel more confident setting boundaries and making space to recharge so that summer feels more balanced and enjoyable with betterhelp you can connect with a licensed therapist online you'll be matched based on your needs and click can switch anytime if it's not the right fit with over thirty thousand therapists and millions of clients worldwide people are finding the support they need with betterhelp you don't have to say yes to everything this summer find guidance in therapy visit betterhelp dot com hidden to get started that's betterhelp dot com hidden this is hidden brain i'm shankar vedantam gordon flett is a psychologist at york university in canada he's the author of the psychology of understanding the human need to be significant as we've discussed gord it's important for us as individuals to feel like we matter but some listeners want to know how to place limits on another person's need to feel seen here's listener alison last night my daughter

[Podcast Producer/Announcer]

nearly sixteen year old came home and was complaining about a boy who kept sending her text messages and she's learned that this boy has a crush on her and she is nice to him at school and he's trying to learn italian and she speaks italian and so he checks in with her on that and sends her his duolingo results but she's frustrated because he keeps texting and she's not responding and she was frustrated in a way i remember being frustrated as a young woman maybe until i was married and that is that you really do want to respond to kindness you want these young men to feel seen by you but every time you respond in a way that is kind that you make eye contact that you say great job on your duolingo it's read in a sexual way and my daughter was struggling with how to make it clear to him that she wasn't interested in him but also to be kind she felt like she was going to be forced into either the sort of ghosting right not responding not making eye contact or ultimately having to say i don't like you the the effects of that of course most boys take that well but some boys don't take that well and i think we have this sort of growth of this kind of i guess incel is a a kind of sloppy way to describe this culture of of boys who feel entitled to to women's attention and then very angry when they aren't seen by them

[Shankar Vedantam]

so gord alison understands that everyone needs to feel seen but she also wonders how we can balance the needs of the seer with those of the seen

[Gordon Flett]

what do you think yeah it's a very difficult situation because it is the case that some people have an excessive need to matter and the more they get the more they need it seems and that seems to be the case here and you know hits home as well for me because my daughter's name is allison and i know that she had an experience that was not very different from this one when she started high school i think the only thing you can do is you just have to be straight with someone and tell them that you like them as a person but you're not necessarily interested in them in the way that they might like but this is not going to necessarily land well no matter how politely you put it but at least you're being upfront with someone and showing that you care enough about them to be straight with them rather than telling them something that could be too extreme in terms of harshness or too encouraging it's very unfortunate when people are at odds with this type of situation i once was coming home from san francisco airport and the fellow who dropped me off at the airport said to me i just picked you up are you coming from a psychology conference are you a psychologist i said well i'm not a clinical psychologist but you know i am in psychology and he says so then he proceeds to tell me that you know he's got a partner who's an older woman and she wants to get married but he has told her repeatedly he's not interested in this and what can he do to try and make her realize that it's not a long term situation that they're in and i told him that you just have to be right up front with her and hope that she'll understand but try to do it in a way that will leave some people some psychological cushions to say that you know it's not that they're not a nice person or they're not attractive to other people it's just that that's not how you see them and how you would like to interact with them and you just need to find a way to do it in a way that will not humiliate somebody

[Shankar Vedantam]

yeah i think alison's point is well taken though which is that i think there are some and perhaps young women have to experience this in particular but it's not limited to young women it's also people who play certain roles if you're a psychotherapist if you're a doctor i think people expect you to constantly be able to give them attention to show that you care and i have a friend who's actually a therapist who's often exhausted by the end of the day you know actually practicing it almost feels like you know he doesn't have more mattering to give if you will

[Gordon Flett]

to other people yes yeah that's an important point because there is a link between burnout and mattering but most people are thinking about it in terms of you know well i wasn't doing something that was effective i wasn't making a difference but you can make too much of a difference and this is something that was talked about in work by nancy schlossberg who's talked about mattering and retirement and the need to feel appreciated and of the people that she surveyed she found that caregivers were the only ones who said that hey you know there's a problem when mattering goes too far because i feel like i'm being used up and it's never enough and the more i give the more that is needed and people have to be good to themselves at this point i think that regarding your friend there and others that at some point you have to think about mattering to yourself and where is the line in terms of needing to focus on restoration of oneself and self care because it's so easy to get the reinforcement of having that impact on people and just let it keep escalating until it gets out of control and it's funny that one person who actually had this happen was herbert freudenberger who invented the clinical concept of burnout and freudenberger was working to excess himself so this is how he got many of his insights about burnout he would be working eighteen to twenty hours a day so that he got totally burned out and depleted to the extent that in one account that he talks about in his book it was the case that the family was ready to go on a vacation the kids were ready to go and he literally was so physically depleted by giving so much of himself to others that he couldn't get out of bed and the family vacation had to be canceled or postponed at that point and the moral of the story is that you need to retain some of this for yourself that you need to matter to yourself and to engage in self care to know that there is a point at which it's just too much to keep giving and giving without giving something to yourself as well

[Shankar Vedantam]

we heard from some listeners who wondered if placing so much importance on mattering can be naive listener andrew has practiced medicine for more than thirty years all over the world including nearly a decade as a doctor in california prisons here he is i've seen this pattern over and over people chase importance

[Gordon Flett]

the way they may chase a drug

[Shankar Vedantam]

praise status attention it feels good briefly but it's fragile purpose can disappear with one mistake one lost job one broken

[Gary Knight]

relationship what i've come to believe is that pinning your sense of meaning on feeling important or having some guaranteed purpose is a recipe for heartbreak so gord

[Shankar Vedantam]

andrew's comment makes me wonder how he distinguished between needing to matter versus needing to feel important or have high social

[Gordon Flett]

status yes i think there's almost an artificial form of mattering in terms of what andrew was referring to where you're pinning your entire sense of self on mattering to others we're recently doing work on that need to matter and we do find that there are people with an outsized need to matter and that they will probably be seeking any form of getting that sense of mattering including through social media and all the likes and the attention that they can get there as opposed to developing the caring relationships with people who really truly know you and care about you so i would say that mattering is vitally important i think everybody needs it to some degree but it needs to be in a balanced way and along with other positive sources of the self that in terms of will build self esteem and address the other needs when people talk about psychological needs they talk about three main ones the need to feel autonomous and self determined the need to feel connected to others and the need to feel competent and i would say that mattering is a vital fourth need that needs to be there but we can't neglect the other three needs as well and having a more balanced approach to life and it is sad that some people's need to matter as andrew says becomes all consuming and all important and you know it's going to need that constant reassurance of being someone who is mattering because it's really geared and driven by a deep sense of insecurity that the lasting feeling of mattering hasn't been established earlier in life we've talked on

[Shankar Vedantam]

the show in the past about awe and how beneficial it can be to gaze up at a sky full of stars and contemplate the vastness of the universe listener aditi flagged the tension between the idea that we're a tiny speck in the universe and the idea that we all matter i've been thinking about some spiritual and philosophical teachings about the idea that in the grand sweep of human history and world history and just life that each of us is just a blip and at the same time we're told that our lives deeply matter how should we navigate this tension is there something grounding or even liberating maybe healthy about accepting that we might not actually matter as much as we think we do what do you think gord

[Gordon Flett]

there's a lot to unpack there as well i think that it's a wonderful point in terms of making the connection between mattering not just in terms of relationships with other people but mattering in terms of the big picture and here i go back to the work of fromm who talked about how we can feel very insignificant and small in society with billions of people in the world that indeed we are just one very small piece of the puzzle i think it's important to accept that but then also to accept that you don't have to matter in terms of the big picture you just need to matter in terms of the people in your life or the people who could be in your life so that you can offset that sense of the feeling of not mattering not being hugely significant in society through establishing the connections and the relationships with people fromm was interesting because he really introduced the concept of reactivity to not mattering and said that you know once we feel small in society we can do things that are very deleterious and add to our sense of estrangement and isolation or we can find adaptive proactive ways of getting a better sense of significance through what we do in terms of our daily activities and at the end of the day you know there will be times when people are struck by that sense of wow i don't really matter in this gigantic picture you know that's when we really need the support of people who do care about us

[Shankar Vedantam]

gordon flett is a psychologist at york university in canada he's the author of the psychology of understanding the human need to be significant gord thank you so much for joining me today

[Gordon Flett]

on hidden brain oh thank you shankar it was a pleasure once again

[Shankar Vedantam]

we also heard today from gary knight a photographer and the executive director of the seven foundation as well as amit kumar amit is a psychologist at the university of delaware hidden brain is produced by hidden brain media our audio production team includes annie murphy paul kristin wong laura kwerel ryan katz autumn barnes andrew chadwick and nick woodbury tara boyle is our executive producer i'm hidden brain's executive editor i'm shankar vedantam see you soon

[Gary Knight]

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[Shankar Vedantam]

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you learned in history class was only half the story i'm doctor harini bhatt host of hidden history every monday i go where history gets mysterious vanished civilizations doomsday prophecies paranormal phenomena and events that science still can't fully explain on hidden history i treat these moments like open case files not myths not superstition just incomplete explanations waiting for a closer look listen to and follow hidden history available now wherever you get your podcasts