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Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Dr. Emily Falk on How to Rewire Your Brain for Better Choices | EP 596
01:04:07
In epoisode 596 of Passion Struck, Dr. Emily Falk explores the neuroscience behind the choices we make, how values shape behavior, and how to build a more intentional, connected life.
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- [00:03]
John R. Miles
The last thing you want to do when you're sick is go to the pharmacy to pick up a prescription because then you're standing in a long line with a whole bunch of sick people and everyone is sick of being sick around other people who are sick. Amazon Pharmacy will deliver right to you fast so you can get meds without congregating amongst the contagious. Health care just got less painful. Amazon Pharmacy, the tax deadline is almost here and Taxact has live experts to.
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Dr. Emily Falk
Help answer any last minute questions you may have.
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John R. Miles
Questions like, can I claim my SUV is my home office? If I answer work emails in my car?
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Dr. Emily Falk
If I adopted 12 dogs this year.
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John R. Miles
Can I list them as dependents and.
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Dr. Emily Falk
Am I doing this right or am.
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John R. Miles
I doing this very, very wrong? Our experts have the answers to those.
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Dr. Emily Falk
Questions and many others.
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John R. Miles
Taxact. Let's get them over with.
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Dr. Emily Falk
Coming up next on Passion Struck.
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The importance of social connection to us as humans is baked into our biology. And so it makes sense that we have an alarm system that helps us tell when we're at risk of losing those connections, right? So we're sensitive to signals, a potential rejection, or actual rejection, because it then motivates a bunch of useful behaviors to help us reconnect either with the person if we've done something that causes harm, or with other people if we've been excluded or rejected.
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John R. Miles
Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles. And on the show we decipher the secrets, tips and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and and turn their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you. Our mission is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions on Fridays. We have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEOs, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, veterans, visionaries and athletes. Now let's go out there and become Passion Struck. Hey, Passion Struck fam. Welcome to episode 596. Whether you've been with us for a while or you're joining us for the first time, thank you so much for being here. You're now part of a global community of change makers committed to living with purpose, leading with intention, and igniting a life that truly matters. Let me ask you this. Why do we share the things we do? Why do some ideas spread like wildfire while others fall flat, no matter how important they are? And what if the key to lasting behavioral change isn't more willpower, but understanding how the brain assigns value. That's exactly what today's guest, Dr. Emily Falk, explores in her groundbreaking new book, what we the Neuroscience of Choice and Change. Emily is a pioneering neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the Vice Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication, Director of the Communication Neuroscience Lab, and leads the Climate Communication Division at the Annenberg Public Policy Center. Her work sits at the intersection of psychology, communication, and the science of change. In this fascinating conversation, we dive into the hidden processes that shape our decisions, how self relevance and social connection influence everything we share, and what it really takes to inspire change. From individual habits to global movements, Emily's insights are essential for anyone who wants to understand, influence, improve communication, and create messages that move people not just in theory, but in the real world. We also explore how small acts of sharing are foundational to human connection, how algorithms and culture shape our values and attention, what neuroscience teaches us about motivation, empathy, and identity and and how to align what we value with the change we want to create. But before we dive in, let's reflect on my episode earlier this week. On Tuesday, I was joined with Humble the Poet to unpack one of the most widespread and misunderstood emotional experiences of our time Anxiety. It's an unfiltered look at identity, self worth, and finding calm in a chaotic world. And if you're new here, don't forget to check out our curated episode starter packs@spirepassionstruck.com Starter packs? They're a great way to explore themes like neuroscience, purpose, emotional mastery, and more. Want to go even deeper? Subscribe to the Passionstruck YouTube channel to watch today's episode and sign up for my Live intentionally newsletter@passionstruck.com now let's dive into the fascinating conversation with Dr. Emily Falk. Thank you for choosing Passionstruck and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.
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Dr. Emily Falk
Now let that journey begin. I am absolutely honored and thrilled today to have Dr. Emily Falk on Passion Struck. Welcome Emily.
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Thanks for having me John.
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For those of you who are watching, I'm putting up Emily's brand new book which is a Next Big Idea Club must read for April. It's called what We Value the Neuroscience of Choice and Change. And this is your first book. How does it feel for this to be coming out into the world?
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Yeah, I feel excited. I feel like it's been a long journey and really excited for people to get to read it and to get to have Conversations about what resonates where people have questions, where people disagree. So, yeah, especially looking forward to conversation with you today.
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Yeah. I'm not sure if this book is like my books, but people say, I can't believe how quickly you turned out a book. And when I wrote Passion Struck, I'm like, that was a seven year journey to the time that thing came out. And then what I'm working on now, I've really been studying the subject matter of mattering now for over a decade. So I just feel I've achieved enough expertise in it. And I don't consider myself an expert, but I've achieved a certain level that I now feel like I can proclaim it to the world, so to speak. But it took time to get there for sure.
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It's been a whole career of thinking about how we can use neuroscience to help people be happier and healthier and more purposeful in their decision making. And so it's really fun to get to this point where I get to talk to so many people about it.
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Let's talk about what we value. And you open up with a story about your grandmother, whose name is Bev, asking you how you spend your time, basically. And this hits home for me because my parents are now in their mid-80s. My mom has just turned 80. And every time they come to visit, that's the fundamental thing that she's always saying is, we're here. You need to be focused and give us your presence. And she's right. But there's so many things today that are pulling us away from moments like that. How did that moment you shape your exploration of our daily decisions and honestly, what truly matters?
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Yeah, Bev is one of my very favorite people. She's just a phenom. So right now she's 100 years old. Or if you ask her, she'll tell you she's 100 and a half. She'll be 101 on July 4th, so there's always fireworks for her birthday. And so it's pretty special that I still get to have her in my life and that she lives in Philadelphia, where I also live. And so the story that I tell at the beginning of the book is about how great it is that she can come over and spend time at my house. And often my kids will be jumping on the couch and shoving Legos in her face and trying to play their latest musical tunes on the guitar or the piano for her. And it's lively, chaotic, depending on whose perspective you're taking. And I often will try to get her Outside for a little walk around the block, just to get a little bit of time. And on one of these occasions when we were outside, she said, when I come over to your house, we're not really spending time together. And when she said that to me, it just hit me like a ton of bricks. I was like, yes, we are. Like, you're here, and we're in the same space. We're in the same room. But what she was really saying was, we're not really spending quality time together. Right. Like, when she's there and we're in the same room, but we're not actually telling each other stories or connecting about the things that matter most to us. That feels different than when I make the time to go to her house, which is across town. And I was thinking about that in terms of why would I make that choice. I know that our time together is finite, and I know that it's a really special thing that I have this person in my life who I love so much. But as I started to unpack that, I realized this is a special case of the kind of thing that my lab has been studying for a really long time, like, how do we make decisions? How do we make decisions that are aligned with our bigger picture goals and values with who we really want to be? And so that allowed me to unpack it in a different way.
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I'm a huge fan of Katie Milkman's work, and her book how you change, I think is one of the best out there on the topic of how to use behavior science principles to help you change. But if I were talking to her right now, I would say you and Emily are like the perfect tag team to come in and cover this from a neuroscience perspective, a behavioral science perspective, a connection perspective. It's really incredible how much the two books complement each other. And one thing your book really gets into is the concept of the brain's value calculation. What surprised you the most through your research about how the brain weighs our choices, especially when those choices go up against what we know is good for us?
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Well, I think that idea of what we know is good for us is an interesting choice of words, because although when we take a step back and we think about things in a more planful, deliberative way, we might have one set of goals in the moment. The way that our brain calculates value prioritizes immediate rewards, typically. So when we think about the different things that might go into our value calculations, we have this system in the brain that takes all of these different inputs from emotional processing systems and rational processing systems from our self relevance system that helps us understand what's me or not me, our social relevance system that helps us understand what other people are thinking and feeling. And it integrates all of that information to come up with this common currency so that we can compare apples and oranges. Or would I rather go for a walk around the block with my grandmother right now or be a little bit more prompt in responding to work emails or get dinner on the table for my kids? And as we think about these different kinds of choices, often they're not inherently comparable. And yet we can still make those choices relatively seamlessly. And in the moment, as we're doing that, a lot of the time, we don't have the attention, we don't have the resources to necessarily weigh those things as carefully as we might want. And so then the things that are shouting the loudest or most salient in the calculation get more weight. And going back to that example with my grandmother, the next day after she brought up that idea of maybe I could come to her house more often, I started thinking about what was getting in the way for me there. And there were a lot of things. Like, one of the things is that getting to her house is pain. There's no good transit that goes there, and there's often a lot of traffic, and it's hard to park. And on the other hand, I'm directing Penn's Communication Neuroscience Lab, and I'm directing the Climate Communication division of the Annenberg Public Policy Center. I'm the vice dean of the school here. And so there are a lot of people who I want to serve here at work and who give me immediate, positive feedback when I respond to them quickly and when we're exploring new and exciting ideas. And that's really important for my identity, right, to be the kind of mentor and boss and scientist that serves other people in those ways. And when she said that one little thing to me, it threatened all kinds of, like, defenses about the kind of family member, the kind of granddaughter I want to be. And so the next day, when I finally got to think about it a little bit more and take a step back and think, like, why am I being so defensive about this? What is it that I actually care about? I realized, like, I need to figure out a way to make spending time with Bev feel good and feel like the right decision. Because when I really take a minute to think about my sort of big V values, like, certainly she would be high on that list. And so one of the things that kind of tipped the scales for me was this episode of a podcast that I was listening to called how to Save a Planet, where they try to unpack different kinds of ways that everyday citizens can make traction in the climate mitigation arena. And there was this delightful episode about people biking. And what I loved about the episode was that they really didn't focus on moralizing or about, like, how it's going to stave off cancer 20 years in the future, but really about the joy that people were feeling biking in the moment. And that just clicked for me that there's this other option that I hadn't considered. So when we think about how the value system works, there are these phases where first we identify what are the options that we're choosing from in the first place. And initially, I didn't think of myself as somebody who was, like, biking in the crazy Philly traffic. I'll tell you, I did that last night to go to Center City, and it's wild. But it just hadn't even occurred to me until this podcast put that on my radar. And then the next thing the podcast did was it said, you know what? That could be joyful in the short term. Like, you could get a benefit right away if you did it. Like, you could be having fun, like the people on this podcast. And the more I thought about it, the more I was like, yeah, I could try this out. And I tried biking to Bevs, and it was great. And so sometimes it's these little things that can tip that calculation from something that feels hard and effortful. And I never regret it once I do it. But just the getting there, it felt like so much. And then the second part of that value calculation is like putting a weight onto all the different options. Should I go visit Bev right now? Should I spend time with my kids? Should I do work? And so on. Then we choose. So in that situation, choosing to go visit Bev and biking over there, there's what's called reward prediction error, which is basically, was this better than I thought it would be or worse than I thought it would be? And when things are better than our brains anticipate that they're going to be, we get a positive prediction error, which makes it more likely that our value system will upweight those choices in the future. On the other hand, if something is worse than I thought it would be, like, I don't know if you've ever gotten really excited about, say, like, a cake that you saw at the supermarket and you bought it, and, like, you have all these positive associations from childhood, going to birthday parties. Oh, that cake is going to be so fun and delicious and joyful. And then, like, you eat that supermarket sheet cake and like, sometimes it's just gross. Right. And so you might get a negative prediction error of, oh, man, I thought that cake was going to be great because of my childhood memories. And it turns out this particular one is, like, not that great. Maybe it's dry and mealy or whatever. And so then the next time you're at the supermarket, that negative prediction error has updated your value calculation so that maybe you're a little less likely to make that impulse purchase. Yeah. In terms of the value calculation, I think it's really incredible and amazing that we have this system in our brain which can take all of this complicated information about the world around us and take into account our past experiences, our current context, what's going on around us, who's there, and what are the potential pros and cons, and then our future goals. And it can help us bridge where we are and where we want to be.
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Yeah. So I'm just going to comment on your cake comment because when I was around seven years old, I used to love space and wanted to be an astronaut. And my mom made me this homemade rocket cake that was in the shape of a rocket. And to this day, I can't ever get it out of my head. But shortly after that year, my parents both went to the University of Michigan and we started going to the Michigan Alumni Camp. So every week we would go, yes, yeah, up off Walloon Lake. And we would always go during my birthday week. And so the cakes up there weren't very good. So I always remember the rocket cake because nothing else as a child ever lived up to it.
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Yeah, it is pretty cool to be in a place where the food just appears at meal times. I will say, when they're producing in bulk for all the campers, I totally can see where you'd feel that way.
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One thing I wanted to ask you about, you were just talking about how the value system integrates our current attention, our past experiences, future dreams. And one of the things I get asked about a lot is how do you go from where you are to where you want to be? And I always try to use self discrepancy theory to talk about this because there's your current self, the self you think you should be in, the self that you could be. And I remember having a discussion with Hal Hirschfeld. I love him and his work. We were talking about the future self and how do you become that ideal self you've always wanted to be. But I think what you're talking about here with this value system is incredibly important because it really gets into things that about self and how we can reshape them. And I was hoping you could give your perspective on that.
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There's so much to say about that. And one thing related to Hal's work is that the kind of self that's here in the moment is treated differently than the future self. And so he's done lots of really fantastic work in that domain. The other thing is that there's been a lot of behavioral science work that I'm sure you're familiar with, and that folks watching might also be familiar with, Related to the ways that self relevance and value are integrated in our brains. And so our self relevance system helps us understand what's me and not me, make judgments about whether things are self relevant or not. And that substantially overlaps with the brain's value system. And so when we're making value calculations, self relevance is a key input. Whether I think that this is me or not me, whether this is identity congruent or not is going to weigh into whether I think it's good or bad, Whether I think that an option is a good option for me or not. And on the other hand, when I think that things are self relevant, Then I tend to evaluate them more positively. Behavioral scientists looked at this a long time ago and termed the idea that we tend to value things that are mine more highly than things that are not mine, the endowment effect. And so the endowment effect has been demonstrated in lots of different areas. For example, when college students in a classroom are randomly assigned to either be gifted a mug, so now the mug is mine, or the person sitting next to me wasn't gifted that mug. Now I'm asked, how much would I price the mug to sell it? How much would I be willing to accept in monetary terms in order to give the mug to the person sitting next to me? The person sitting next to me is asked, how much would they be willing to pay for it? And there's a gap between those two numbers on average. So people who think of things as theirs value them more highly than people who are looking at it maybe more objectively. This would all be well and good if it were limited to silly objects in behavioral science studies. But there's just such a wide range of things where what we think of as mine objects, but also ideas, behaviors, we hold on to those things tightly, and we have a hard time sometimes with the idea that the Thing that I was doing in the past might not be optimal. So we get defensive. We come up with reasons why, well, maybe it would be good for other people to get more physical activity, or maybe it would be good for other people to take this feedback from their supervisor. When I'm in my own mind and body, like, I know all the reasons why I did the thing, right? And there are a number of different kinds of techniques that we can use to let go of some of that kind of defensiveness. And one of them is to zoom out and really get in touch with our bigger picture goals and values, the things that we really care the most about. So values affirmation is a really simple technique that psychologists use to help reduce some of that defensiveness. So if you let somebody first identify values that matter a lot to them, which for many of us is stuff like friends and family, or for some people, it's their spirituality or their creativity, really what are their core values, passions. And let them write about that for five minutes. Like, these very brief interventions then allow people to zoom out enough to see that the particular thing that you're asking them to change or that we want to potentially change about ourselves, what defines us, it's not. It doesn't make me a bad person because I haven't been getting enough physical activity or following my blood pressure medication regimen, or because I have thought about some political question in a way that now that I have new information, I might think about differently. Right? And so after people have that chance to zoom out and really reflect on their core values, they're more open to new information that could be helpful for them, to coaching, to behavior change interventions. And in the brain, what we see is that when we do this kind of values affirmation exercise first. So half of the participants in this kind of study would be randomly assigned to reflect on values that matter the most to them. The other half are randomly assigned to reflect on values that don't matter that much to them. And then they all get the same exact coaching. And what I like about this paradigm is that it's literally the same words and pictures, like exactly the same coaching materials that everybody's seeing. And so you might expect that their brains should all respond similarly. And instead what we see is that mindset that they're coming in with. Whether they've been affirmed or not, had that chance to affirm their values, changes the receptivity in the value and self relevance system. So we see more activation in those systems when people come in primed with these values, affirmations so that's one tool. I don't know if you want to talk about more. I know there's a lot of things that we have as, as mutual interests to talk about.
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So I wanted to actually ask you a follow up question on social relevance because it just popped in my head as you were talking. And before we came on, I was telling you about Professor Gordon Flett who wrote the book the Science of Mattering. And he wrote a article for the New York Times this past year on, on the topic of anti mattering, which is really the experience of not mattering. But what my question is this concept of anti mattering simply a misfire in the brain social relevance system or does it reflect something deeper and more systemic from a societal standpoint?
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Is anti mattering a concept that is internally generated or it's something that we perceive that other people don't think we matter?
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It's both. It starts with self and then becomes a reciprocal loop.
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So many things are like that, right? Like the self relevance and social relevance systems in our brains overlap in some ways. And as we develop in childhood, through adolescence, we often use what we think other people think about us to shape our sense of self. And our social connections are some of the most powerful and important things that happen in our lives. Right? So loneliness is terrible for our health, for our well being. That sense that other people that were connected to other people in meaningful ways is so crucial for our well being. And one of the things that my lab has been interested in and studied some of the work led by Yuna Kang is a sense of purpose. We know that sense of purpose varies between people. So people who have a stronger sense of purpose tend to live longer, they have healthier lives. Their mental and emotional function is sharper than people who have lower sense of purpose. But I think the thing that's really hopeful there is that wherever our kind of baseline is as individuals, we fluctuate around it. So we all have days where we feel more purposeful or less purposeful. And in neuroimaging studies that we've run, we've seen that sort of people who tend to feel more purposeful as they're being exposed to those coaching messages, for example, show less activation in brain regions that track conflict. So maybe they're having an easier time making certain kinds of decisions. We don't have the data to fill out this full causal chain. But I think it's possible that's could be part of why they're making more of these kind of healthier choices to adhere to their medications and to take care of their bodies in particular ways. And so when you're bringing up an idea about the kind of pernicious feeling of not mattering, it strikes me as being really related to those days when we feel less purposeful. And I think there are a lot of inroads that we can consider there. There are techniques like I was mentioning, around reflecting on our core values, like taking a step back, writing, journaling, that sort of. But I know that's not for everybody. And so one thing that I also think is useful that we've seen on our team and other people have found is that since that sense of purpose, that sense of mattering, that sense of self clarity is related to taking care of our physical bodies as well, we can approach it from other angles. Like getting a good night's sleep helps us feel more connected to other people and more purposeful, or like getting better physical activity boosts our mood and helps us with these sorts of things. And I really think about it in terms of kind of a web of wellness where there are all of these different potential inroads. So if you're somebody who isn't looking to do a couch to 5K, but it does feel possible to you to start leaving your phone in another room and like doing a bedtime wind down routine where instead of doom scrolling, you're like reading a novel, do the thing that works for you and is going to be rewarding in the short term rather than something that feels really effortful and painful and it's going to be hard to convert from that decision into a habit.
- [27:31]
Thank you for sharing that. And today I am talking to Emily Falk and we're talking about her brand new book, what We Value, which I'm holding up here again and I'm going to jump back into this in chapter one. One of the most vivid stories I thought in your book was about Jenny Radcliffe, the people hacker. And something you don't know about me, Emily is I when I came out of the Naval Academy, I worked for the NSA while I was in the service. And then when I got in the private sector, I worked for Accenture and I ran the cyber security practice.
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Oh great.
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From one of their major areas. So I'm very familiar. I was also the chief information security officer of a couple Fortune five hundreds. But what Jenny did is she bypassed the bank's fingerprint scanner just by triggering a guard's discomfort. And I wanted to ask what does the story reveal about how quickly and unconsciously our brain value system can be hijacked in the moment.
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Yeah. One of the things that I loved about that story is on the podcast where I originally heard at Darknet Diaries, which is a really fun podcast, Jenny talked about the way that she doesn't necessarily need to be an incredible computer hacker in order to get into a system that there's always a person who she can get access to. And then once she has access to the human, that there are so many sort of ways that. That she can do her job of testing a bank's security system. And so in this particular story, she did a really planful job of getting ready to make herself somebody who a guard might let in. So she bandaged up one of her hands, and she brought a big box full of papers as a prop. And she's in Germany, where people value order very highly. And she goes up to the guard in order to be able to penetrate the bank, to get into the bank, where she's got to find a particular computer, and she's supposed to insert a USB drive. And the guard, of course, doesn't let her in right away. And so she puts her finger on the fingerprint scanner, and she's posing as a bank employee and acting as if she is entitled to be let in. And the guard was saying, well, try again. And she. She drops the box of papers and she starts swearing really loudly and making a scene. And in chapter one, I talk a little bit about, we might be tempted to judge the guard who decided to wave her through and let her in, because we know as a reader that she's a penetration tester who's testing the bank's security system. But of course, in reality, the past experience that the guard probably had is most people who are asking to be let into the bank in that situation are employees. And most of the time, that would be a helpful thing to do. And when we're weighing being a helpful, kind person and versus having a scene go down in the lobby where everybody else is in an orderly fashion, it actually makes a lot of sense that as a human, you might make that choice. And so we can take a step back and ask, well, what are the things that the bank might do in order to help put future security guards in a different position? Like maybe the bank could create a situation where the guards know the employees in a little bit more personal way and get that kind of social reward of a little bit of interaction from knowing one another or lots of other things that. That could be helpful in that kind of situation. But you were asking me about, what does this tell us about the speed of our decisions. And what I think Jenny really highlighted when she told the story was about the ways that the people trying to be helpful can be exploited for these other kinds of means. And as we think about our own experiences as individuals, like think about interacting on the Internet. Most people in the world are kind and good, and often when you read news, it's by journalists who are very dedicated to hunting down the truth. But our tendencies, our natural tendencies can also be exploited to sell us false information or to have us fall prey to bots or other folks who don't have our best interests at heart. Right. I will also say in terms of your past experience that you were describing, I'm married to a cryptographer and. Well, there you go about privacy and data security are salient in my mind as well.
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Oh, it also made me think of how does our perception of others value, especially in not only the environment you talked about on the web, but in social media environments, distort the choices that we make about who we are and how we show up.
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I think so much evidence that what we think other people's preferences and behaviors are shape ours. So our social relevance system helps us understand what other people are thinking and feeling. And what other people are thinking and feeling influences our value calculation. So there have been a number of brain imaging studies that have looked at, for example, when people look at photographs of other people's faces, we might think that we have our own unique tastes and preferences. Like, for example, that when we fall in love, it's really unique. But scientists have shown that when people are given information about who other people think are more or less attractive, that shapes the value calculations of the people looking at the photographs. So our judgments of beauty are shaped by other people's preferences, even when those preferences are secretly, randomly assigned by a computer and have nothing to do with any objective traits that might infer attractiveness. Likewise, our judgments of foods, like how tasty different foods are, how much we want to eat them, are shaped by by norms like that, other people's preferences, our judgments about how much electricity is reasonable to use. In California, some researchers did this incredible research where they looked at people's energy use at their houses and what people thought was influencing that. So people reported to the researchers what they thought was actually influencing their energy use. And they did not say anything about norms or about what their neighbors were doing. But in reality, their neighbors energy use was relevant. And when the researchers gave different houses different persuasive messages, one of the most effective ones was highlighting the efficiency of neighbors. So there's just a really wide range of situations. I could go on and on because there are so many of these studies.
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So, Emily, this has been a great year for books from your field. And I've had Adam Galinsky on the show, I've had Shige Owishi. But another one of your peers I had on the show was Alison Wood Brooks, who came out with a great book called Talk, and she teaches communication skills at Harvard. In our conversation, we were discussing this idea of active listening and how active listening is really a social mirror of us reflecting ourselves and the person we're talking to. And I wanted to explore this because in chapter three, you write, our brains care a lot about what other people think about us and that even subtle social cues like peer approval can deeply shape how we calculate value. Why is that social feedback loop so sticky? And how can we tell when it's guiding us versus the other side, when it's hijacking us?
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There's a lot in what you're asking, John.
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I don't ask the simple questions here on Passion Struck, we go after the big ones.
- [35:10]
Great. Love it. So why is it so sticky? I think part of that is probably because we need other people for our survival. So our social relevance systems help us understand what other people are thinking and feeling, which is very useful if we want to predict what they're going to do next. So my friend and colleague Diana Tamir has done a ton of beautiful work about the ways that people's thoughts and feelings predict their actions and how well our brains can make those links. If I know that you're feeling hungry right now, I might predict that you might next feel grumpy if we don't get you a snack and that you might do things to try to find some food if you're feeling hungry or if you're feeling happy, that you might behave in a totally different way. Right. Understanding how other people are thinking and feeling is really useful for coordinating and collaborating, like those sort of positive generative things. It's also useful for trying to compete with other people. And connecting with other people is totally essential for the survival of human babies and children. And then as we grow, really fundamental to our well being as well. So I think that's probably one of the most common explanations for why we care so much is that evolutionarily speaking, and also in terms of our model modern world, our effectiveness as people in surviving and now in the society that we live in now, and collaborating and competing is really essential. And then the second part of your Question was, how do we know when that sort of susceptibility to other people's thoughts, feelings, preferences is guiding us versus what was the sort of.
- [37:02]
I use the word hijacking.
- [37:04]
Hijacking. And I think those are not really scientific terms. Right. Those are value judgments about one person's guiding might be another person's hijacking. And it depends what our goals are and on some other assumptions that we make about what's good and bad. Right. But I would say that being aware of how attuned we are to other people and to what they're doing can help us tune in to our susceptibility to those kinds of things. So as we're scrolling through social media, thinking about, is this really what I want to be exposing myself to right now? And then maybe more deliberately, who are the people in my life who I really respect and admire? Because we know that we're going to soak up the behaviors and habits and preferences of the people that we're close to, and our kids are going to do the same thing. Right? So our peers matter a lot. If I want to get to be a better runner, hanging out with people who are good runners is more likely to get me there than hanging out with people who are excellent at something else. But really, couch potatoes, on the other hand, thinking about when we're hiring for our teams, like choosing the people that we work with to have high levels of integrity, to have high levels of kindness or collaborative traits, because we know that it's not just in the local interactions that those things are going to have an influence, but also that they spread. So there's a really lovely study where people interacted with peers who tended to collaborate or to compete. And so that was the first part of the study. And then when people were in new contexts, they brought those norms with them. So the norms that develop in one place can spill over to other places. Is that answering the question that you were asking?
- [39:02]
It is. And I had another question from this chapter. You had this great passage where you wrote, negative social feedback or rejection activates a kind of social pain that works like an alarm system pushing us to repair our social ties. And I liked it because I think so many people can relate to that, how even something small like you're with a group of friends and you tell a joke and it falls flat or you give a weird look can spiral into shame or self doubt. Why is that loop so sticky?
- [39:34]
Again, I think the importance of social connection to us as humans is baked into our biology. And so it makes Sense that we have an alarm system that helps us tell when we're at risk of. Of losing those connections. Right. So we're sensitive to signals of potential rejection or actual rejection, because it then motivates a bunch of useful behaviors to help us reconnect, either with the person if we've done something that causes harm, or with other people if we've been excluded or rejected. So there are a lot of behavioral science studies, in addition to neuroimaging studies about what happens when people are rejected or excluded. So, for example, a lot of studies have looked at a game called cyberball, where people are playing catch in a little video game environment. So there's you, and there are two other players. And your little hand can throw the ball to this person or throw the ball to that person. And in the cyberball game, during the first round, everybody plays the game the way you'd expect. But what the participants don't know is that those other players are not actually other players. They're controlled by. By a preset computer. Then the second round of the game starts off just like the first round, but then the other two players just throw to each other and you never get the ball back. And that might not sound like that big of a deal, but for many of us, even that kind of small exclusion feels bad. And in the brain, the activation in these systems that detect conflict and which some neuroscientists call social pain, like Naomi Eisenberger has done a lot of work on this idea of social pain. And the value you said, why is that so sticky? I think part of it is that it motivates us to do other things that are really useful, reconnect with other people, and it signals like maybe we should do things differently in the future. So we talked at the beginning of this conversation about the idea of reward prediction error, where we learn from what happened in the past. And so if I say something to you and it lands differently than I thought it would, and so you give me that negative feedback either by walking away or making a face or directly telling me like that hurt my feelings, then that's going to register for me and maybe shape what I do next time. Or it might trigger defensiveness where I could have a whole other range of less helpful reactions. And all of these things that we're talking about in the conversation today are interrelated.
- [42:10]
They absolutely are. And I'm going to go back to something we talked about earlier, just to use it as a bridge, because we were talking about, when we were talking about Hal Hirschfeld Going from where we are and where we want to be and what it actually takes to get there. And I'm going to jump into chapter four of your book because you describe how people's brains often treat their future cells almost like a stranger, which leads us to prioritize the immediate rewards that we were talking about. Why does it become so difficult for our brains to care about future me? And if you're someone here who's listening to this and maybe they're stuck in a hard moment, like a rejection or failure, how do you begin to reframe things when it just feels like an emotional loss to you right now?
- [43:03]
Yeah, well, first of all, for people feeling that way, like, that's such a common thing to feel, right? And so we're certainly not alone when we feel that way. And one of the tools that I think is really helpful is what scientists call reappraisal, where we can change the way that we're thinking about a particular situation or scenario by focusing on different aspects of that situation or scenario or by taking a step back. There are a number of different ways that we can reappraise, but we can think about the situation in a different way and that changes how we feel about it. So scientists sometimes study this by showing people photos that are scary or disgusting or elicit negative feelings, and then teach people how to think about the situation in a different way. For example, if. If I show you a picture of a very scary looking spider and you're scared of spiders, I might teach you how to think about, well, it's a fake spider that's on a movie set, or the spider actually is not venomous and so it's cute and fuzzy rather than being large and scary. My relationship to spiders has changed a lot. There's a research coordinator in my lab named Anthony who loves spider spiders and just thinks they're so cute. And Anthony's sort of positive feelings about spiders rub off in reframing all of these things because Anthony's constantly sharing interesting facts and like, almost humanizing them in this really interesting way. But back to the situation of if you've gone through something that that's tough to deal with. For example, there are small things like the apartment that you're trying to rent gets rented to somebody else first. And in that situation, maybe when you got excited about it, you were focused on the beautiful bay window and, you know, the view of the park across the street. But when you lose out on it, maybe you want to dampen down those positive feelings and dial up your negative Feelings about the apartment like it was next to a really loud trolley line. And the landlord is notoriously known in this neighborhood for being unresponsive. And so by focusing on different aspects of the situation, we can make ourselves feel better about the situation or worse about a particular thing. And both of those things can be valuable. So, like in the example I just gave, I think sometimes people don't always think of dialing up their negative feelings as a superpower. But if you're about to enter a job negotiation, like not going in totally over the top, I'll take anything right away. First offer. Right. Might be good for you thinking about the value of other options as well. So that idea of reappraisal, I think can be really powerful for people to shift where their focus is in the decision making process and in the process change how they're feeling.
- [45:57]
Okay, and I'm going to just grab something here because I use this book all the time. One of the things you talk about in the book is self transcendent values. And I love SBK Scott Barry Kaufman's work on transcendence. But you write that these self trending values are a key to change. How do these values help shift our brain's value calculation, especially when we're talking about these stuck periods and habits or self doubt?
- [46:28]
Well, we talked a little bit about values affirmation earlier. And in a study that Yuna Kong led in our lab where we did that kind of values affirmation with people, she went a next layer deep and looked at which values people chose. And so when people were thinking about what their top values were, the self transcendent values are things that go beyond our self. Our sort of individual selfish view of things and compassion and kindness, connecting with friends and family, spirituality, like these things that sort of expand who we are and what those possibilities are. We call self transcendent values because they transcend our immediate and bounded sense of self. Whereas values like that are more focused on our individual power or fame or things like that are more self focused values. And when people tended to choose those more self transcendent values and ranked those more highly, then it dampened certain like negative emotional systems in their brain. Like they tended to have less of these threat kind of responses when they were exposed to messages that people who maybe had less of that self transcendent values experienced. And in that chapter, I talk a little bit about two different approaches to reducing defensiveness. So one is to take a step back and think about what's actually at our core, like what really matters. To us, which I think values affirmation partly helps us do. And then the other is to let go of that really bounded notion of who we are in the first place, to recognize that our brain's self relevant system isn't just painting like a totally objective photograph of who, who we are that's fixed and that is objectively true, but rather this kind of biased social media profile version of who we are. And when we can let go of that fixed notion of our identity and expand it to be connected to other people, to be in relationship with other people, in community with other people, then there's much less there to defend. And so then that can open us up to all kinds of new possibilities of what we could be and how we can be in the world.
- [48:56]
I think I just had a interview yesterday with Yonge Mengur Rinpoche, who's one of the probably top experts in mindfulness in the world today. And we were having this exact discussion about love, kindness and compassion. And it really did relate from his practice into this value creation system that we're talking about today. It's really interesting to hear it come from a spiritual standpoint. Now hear you talk about it from a scientific one.
- [49:27]
Neuroscientists have looked at what happens in the brains of monks who meditate extensively for many years and found that they show different patterns of activity within the brain, self relevance and value systems than people who don't, who aren't those serious meditation practitioners. And some related work that I really love is from another friend and colleague, Molly Crockett, who has studied these kinds of transformative experiences that people have. So Molly and their team have gone to festivals like Burning man and places where people often have these transformative experiences that sometimes involve drugs, sometimes involve other ways of letting go of that bounded notion of who we could be and connecting with other people or the rest of humanity in these deeper ways. And what you were just saying, Molly is serious meditator and student of Buddhism and really brings together those parts in a really wonderful, fruitful way, scientifically and spiritually. I think so. I really admire that a lot.
- [50:35]
That reminds me of the work of a neuroscientist. You might know, David Yaden, because He got his PhD at Penn, but that's what he's doing at Johns Hopkins now as well, is he's in their lab where they're looking at psilocybin and other types of drugs primarily to how do they help with transcendent types of experiences and what do those experiences trigger inside of us and how do we get to them without the use of drugs in everyday life? So it's, to me, it's really fascinating, the work that they're doing and it's link to our spiritual self. So your book is divided into three sections and we've been talking about the first two so far. And I want to ask you a couple questions from part three, which is on connection. And in chapter seven, you write that when people are more in sync physically, emotionally, even neurologically, they tend to understand each other better. What are the simplest, most powerful things we can do to create that sense of brain to brain synchrony in daily life?
- [51:39]
Great question. So there are a lot of things like when people move together with the same physical movements, like a drum circle or some of those sorts of things can elicit that type of brain synchrony. When people watch the same media, then our brains synchronize. For example, when people watch little silly videos of an astronaut in space or a comedic video. Carolyn Parkinson's research has shown that friends tend to show more of that similarity than strangers. And Yuri Hassan's lab has shown that even strangers tend to show relatively synchronized responses. When directors and artists capture our minds and our imaginations in these common ways through film, let's say. But I think it's also important to recognize that we're not always in sync, right? A long time ago, like early in this research program, Ralph Schmaltze had a paper where strong political speeches tended to capture people's imaginations in common ways and bring their brains into sync with one another. And I think in the current moment you might think, well, what counts as a strong political speech, like for one person, what counts as a strong political speech might be abhorrent to somebody else, right? And that media environment segregation that we experience now, where people tend to watch Fox News or cnn, let's say, brings our brains into sync with people who share our prior assumptions. And so just taking it out of the political sphere for a minute, there's a really great study where they brought people into the lab and they randomly assigned half the people to hear one backstory for a fictional story, a J.D. salinger story, and the other half to hear a different backstory. So people have different assumptions going in to the brain scan, and then they all hear the exact same narrative. So they're hearing the same words and sentences and paragraphs, but they're making different meaning of it. And so the people who were given the same backstory as one another, their brains are in sync and they're out of sync. With the people who heard the other backstory now bringing it back to our current political moment. Like when we look at the brains of American Democrats and Republicans watching the exact same news clip, there's often more synchrony with people's in groups than with their out groups. And you might think, well, okay, we're doomed. If we are watching the same news and our brains are out of sync with one another, how can we possibly get on the same page? And I think that there's hope in the idea that like surfacing some of those background assumptions. There's a lot of behavioral science that shows that at least right now in the US people's assumptions about what the other side thinks of me are more negative than what the other side actually thinks. So we probably have more in common and dislike and dehumanize each other less than people tend to assume. And in other research where people actually get in the room and have cross party conversations, they enjoy them more than they think they're going to. And starting with these small things of like things that help us build common ground, like boring small talk about the weather and about our kids soccer game and about the things that are immediately in common can help us build up the synchrony that then can make it maybe more possible for us to explore. And also just an openness and curiosity to why do you think what you're thinking? What are the assumptions that are behind that idea rather than that immediate defensiveness or judgment.
- [55:32]
So I wanted to hit on two things there. First is something Emily just said is really important. We as people underestimate the power of tiny acts that we could do every single day to build connection. And if we could be more intentional about using them, it could so strengthen so many of the relationships that we want to strengthen. I think that's at the core of what you were just talking about. And then I just wanted to pay tribute to Emile Bruno because I wish now more than ever he was still around because his work on dehumanization and seeing the other side differently is needed so much in the world. I just interviewed Kurt Gray as well and I really think both of their work that they were doing on morality etc is so needed right now.
- [56:20]
Yeah, I miss Emile so much, man. I miss Emile so much. He came to Penn and I was so thrilled when we were able to hire him here. And then as you maybe know, he set up his own lab after he was technically a postdoc in my lab. But he always had a vision for what he wanted to do in terms of bringing Science and putting science to work for peace. And he really was fantastic at bringing other people together. And maybe you also read Jamil Zaki's beautiful recent book, Hope for Cynics. That really does a beautiful job paying tribute to Emile. But Emile had such an openness and a curiosity about other humans and about why we think the way that we think and what our brains are doing that makes it easier for us to connect or harder for us to connect and then how we could scale that in interventions. And two of Emile's students, postdocs, Samantha Mohrberg and Boaz Mary, are now both faculty running their own labs, like the Peace and Conflict Neuroscience Lab. And I actually just got a message from Samantha earlier today that she's going to be doing a big public talk at the University of Utah honoring a bunch of that work on meta perceptions and dehumanization. And yeah, thank you for honoring Emil in that way. He was such a special person.
- [57:45]
Well, I did a whole episode, a solo episode on it, and I ran it by Jamil before I put it out just to make sure I was getting it right. But I'll send it to you, and if you can get it to them, that would be fantastic because I really wanted to honor his work. Well, Emily, you write that the choices we make together create the world we live in. This polarized time that you were just mentioning. What kind of choices would create a world where people feel seen and valued?
- [58:11]
John, you really do go for those big questions. That question makes me think about some work that my grad student, Torian Butler, has been doing with Dartmouth business professor Adam Kleinbaum and with me. And in it, Taurean is trying to systematically think about in our organizations, like our workplaces, for example, what are the things that give us a sense of belonging? What are the things that make us feel like we're part of that whole, that we're included? And he has really broken it down into three ingredients that I think are really useful and that I think about a lot in my day to day leadership roles. One is value, like the sense that we are valued by the people that we work with, by the organization. The other is a sense of reciprocity, so that we get out of things what we put in, in our relationships, in the work that we're doing, and so on. And then the third thing is fit, that we belong, that we fit, and that there are other people who we can go to who might have shared experiences or similar roles. And what's really useful about the way that Taurean conceptualizes this, I think, is that he distinguishes between inclusion as like, the practices that an organization puts in place, the structures that are set up that have everything to do with, like, from how we do our hiring and our onboarding to what happens day to day in, in our workplace environments. And then that individual feeling or experience of belonging that results. And so as individuals, as we gain more power in the organizations that we're part of, like, that could be a workplace, it could also be within our communities, keeping those things in mind, like, what are the systems that we are contributing to or putting in place that are going to make other people feel valued, that they're going to make. They're gonna make people feel like they're getting out of it, what they put into it, that are gonna make them feel like they fit and like they really belong. I think Taurean's framework is really powerful in that way. And then more broadly, remembering to take other people's perspectives and to gather information from people who are like us and as importantly, or more importantly, people who are not like us. Right. So we know that diversity in our teams leads to more innovation. Like when we have different perspectives, different ways of thinking about things, different experiences that people bring to the table. That makes better science. It makes, you know, more innovative products, like people who bridge different groups that don't know each other in their organizations get paid more and promoted faster because they're coming up with these ideas. And so how can we audit what's coming into our own calculations? Whose voices do we have access to? And how can we approach a wider range of perspectives with curiosity to allow us to really serve our communities in the world in the ways that we want to? I think there are so many layers to what you're asking about, and I'm really glad you're asking that question because I think just asking it and asking it of ourselves is so important in being deliberate about the choices that we're making related to it.
- [61:18]
Absolutely. And thank you for answering it in such depth. So, Emily, I have one final question for you. If you could whisper one insight about what we value and choice into everyone's mind, what would it be?
- [61:33]
I think it would be to have a little bit more compassion for ourselves and others. Because I think once we understand the way that those value calculations are unfolding, it's wild, right? There's so much that's going into those calculations that can feel so seamless in the moment. And then later we look back and we have different information or maybe we'd weigh things differently and So I hope that after people read the book, after they read what we value, that it gives them an appreciation of the complexity and of the places where there might be more possibility to make choices that give ourselves a little bit more room or that make a little bit more space for other people to do things in a different way. So I think that's what I would whisper.
- [62:20]
Fantastic. Well, Emily, it was such an honor to have you today and thank you for all the work that you've been doing to bring this science into people's hands and help people live lives that are better and choices that are going to take them in life to where they want to go. It's such an honor to have you on the show.
- [62:39]
Thank you so much for having me. And back to you of thanks for doing the work, of bringing this work to so many people.
- [62:45]
To me, it doesn't feel like work. It just feels like I get to constantly learn and practice neuroplasticity every single day. Thank you so much.
- [62:54]
Great.
- [62:54]
John R. Miles
And that's a wrap. What an Incredible conversation with Dr. Emily Falk. Her research sheds light on something we all feel rarely examined, why we care about what we care about, from how we build connections to how we decide what's worth our time, energy and voice. Emily's work is a masterclass and understanding human behavior through the lens of value. As we reflect on today's episode, here are a few questions to take with you. What do you share most often and what does it say about what you value? How might you use the science of self relevance to drive change in your own life? What ideas or causes are you ready to amplify? Not just because they matter, but because they reflect who you are. If you found this episode meaningful, please take a moment to share a five star rating and review. It helps us grow the show and bring these insights to more people around the world. You'll find all the resources we discussed today, including Emily's phenomenal book what We Value in the show notes@passionstruck.com and if you want to watch the full conversation, head over to johnrmiles.com YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button. Coming up next On Passion Struck, Dr. Gordon Flett joins me to explore the science of mattering. Why feeling like you matter is essential as belonging and how it shapes our mental health, motivation and resilience. If you've ever felt invisible or questioned your worth, this is the episode you don't want to miss.
- [64:11]
Dr. Emily Falk
I'd say just as a quick snapshot, if you feel like you're not just a non essential worker. You're a non essential person now. Everybody's essential, everybody matters. And you have the potential to make a difference in people's lives. But if you're walking around feeling like that, you've probably got this sense of anti mattering. And the other thing that we've been studying lately as an adult, extension of that is the fear of not mattering. So that you feel like you matter now, but you anticipate maybe you won't matter down the road.
- [64:40]
John R. Miles
Thanks for being part of the Passion Struck movement. Your pursuit of growth, meaning and impact is what makes the community so powerful. And remember, the fee for this show is simple. If something resonated with you, share it with someone who needs it. Until next time, Live life. Passion Struck.
- [64:57]
Dr. Emily Falk
Sa.