Talk to strangers

Summary

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Podcast Summary — The Gray Area with Sean Illing

Episode: "Talk to strangers"

Date: May 25, 2026
Guest: Nicholas Epley (Behavioral Scientist, University of Chicago, author of A Little More: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection)
Host: Sean Illing

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Overview

This episode of The Gray Area explores the core social paradox of our times: we are deeply social creatures living in a world full of opportunities not to be social. Host Sean Illing and guest Nicholas Epley dig into the science and psychology behind why we habitually avoid interaction with strangers, routinely misjudge the outcomes of connecting with others, and leave meaningful gestures unmade. Drawing from Epley's research, they discuss how small acts of reaching out—starting a conversation, showing gratitude, or expressing honesty—can lead to unexpected happiness and connection, and why our expectations about these social acts are so often wrong.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

Why We Don’t Talk to Strangers (03:47–08:02)

• Epley’s Train Story: Epley describes a “eureka” moment on his morning train ride, realizing how everyone sits packed together yet ignores each other, even though humans are wired for social connection.
  • “I thought instead of doom scrolling on my phone I would try to have a conversation with her…The gap between my expectations beforehand that were telling me just to keep to yourself and my actual experiences were…and I thought if I'm doing this in other places in my life…that would change how I live my life in lots of ways.” — Nicholas Epley (07:10)
• Our avoidance isn’t necessarily indifference or dislike but often a protective strategy against awkwardness or misjudgment.

The Expectation Gap (08:02–14:04)

• We systematically underestimate how positively social interactions will unfold.
  • “The gap between our expectations and our experiences…is simply that we underestimate how well these are going to turn out.” — Nicholas Epley (08:36)
• Three main reasons:
  1. Self-vs-Other Evaluation: We worry about our competency but others judge our warmth.
  2. Static vs. Dynamic Perception: We imagine “snapshots,” not the reciprocating, unfolding nature of real conversations.
  3. Self-fulfilling Pessimism: If we predict discomfort, we never act and don't disconfirm our pessimism.

The Tragedy of Avoidance (12:25–15:45)

• Social anxiety and loneliness persist because our avoidance prevents us from correcting mistaken beliefs about connection.
  • “Our research suggests that those prison bars that hold us back from other people sometimes are actually wet pasta noodles.” — Nicholas Epley (13:30)
• It feels “safer” to retreat, but we overestimate the risks of reaching out and underestimate the rewards.

The Biology of Connection (15:27–17:59)

• Our brains are hardwired to find social connection rewarding—social isolation is processed as a threat, raising cortisol and harming health (loneliness = health risk on par with smoking).
  • “Loneliness turns out to be a risk factor for death…on par epidemiologists have found with smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.” — Nicholas Epley (16:44)
• Belonging is “as basic a need as eating or sleeping.”

Why Wisdom Doesn’t Equal Action (17:59–21:52)

• Knowing that connection is good isn't enough; vulnerability and the uncertainty of other minds complicate things.
  • “The unique part about social interaction is that it's a really really hard problem…because now I've got to figure out your brain.” — Nicholas Epley (19:41)
• Even after positive interactions, we forget and hesitate again the next time.

Modern Life and Frictionless Isolation (27:22–29:34)

• Technology and comfort let us avoid social friction—“you can choose on any day of your life to live it completely alone if you want.”
• Historical evidence (Milgram’s NY subway observations) suggests we’ve long avoided strangers, but it’s easier than ever now.

Social Courage and the Moment of Choice (29:34–32:41)

• The “approach-avoidance conflict”: As we get closer to a social act, avoidance motivations spike.
  • “Your construal shifts and now all the reasons to avoid it get stronger and stronger and stronger.” — Nicholas Epley (30:56)

How Predictions Become Reality (32:20–33:14)

• The brain often mistakes predictions for facts—“We confuse ‘this will be awkward’ with ‘this is awkward’…then it becomes reality.”

The Honesty Paradox (33:14–40:11)

• People desire honesty more than we think—being truly honest can signal warmth and trust, even if content seems harsh.
  • “Honesty also conveys warmth and trustworthiness…when I give you honest feedback that is negative, but with friendly intent, it can be interpreted more positively...” — Nicholas Epley (34:16)
• Experiments on radical honesty vs. kindness show days spent being fully honest felt just as good or better than days devoted to kindness.

The Role of White Lies (40:11–42:43)

• White lies are justified if the truth offers no constructive help and only causes pain—but often we miss chances to help/strengthen relationships because we avoid honest feedback.

Beyond Small Talk: How to Have Deeper Conversations (44:20–48:40)

• Most people dislike small talk; deeper, authentic conversations are far more satisfying and meaningful.
  • Epley’s experiment with MBA students: They dread “deep talk” prompts, but after, overwhelmingly report the conversation was much better and less awkward than predicted.
  • “If you're in a conversation you don't want to be having, you have the power to change it. Once you recognize that other people probably want to have a more meaningful conversation too.” — Nicholas Epley (48:36)

How Research Changed Epley’s Life (48:53–52:16)

• He became more present, generous, and less socially anxious, making a conscious effort to create moments of connection throughout his day.
  • “It's allowed me to think about my social life in terms of moments…so the key to having a good day is stringing along a bunch of good moments.” — Nicholas Epley (50:13)

Practical Social Experiment for Listeners (52:18–53:36)

• Epley suggests: Start with someone you've seen but never greeted before; simply say hello and introduce yourself.
  • For more challenge: Ask a stranger about their story, or what you’d need to know to be a good friend to them.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “We are social animals who have built a world full of opportunities not to be social.” — Sean Illing (03:29)
• “The gap between our expectations and our experiences is simply that we underestimate how well these are going to turn out.” — Nicholas Epley (08:36)
• “[Social] prison bars that hold us back…are actually wet pasta noodles. If you just test them…you might find that out.” — Nicholas Epley (13:30)
• “Loneliness…[is] on par…with smoking fifteen cigarettes a day.” — Nicholas Epley (16:44)
• “We confuse ‘this will be awkward’ with ‘this is awkward’ and that’s not the same thing. But believing it is makes it so.” — Interviewer/Co-host (32:32)
• “If you’re in a conversation you don’t want to be having, you have the power to change it.” — Nicholas Epley (48:36)
• “Hi, my name is…are the most powerful words you have in your social life.” — Nicholas Epley (52:35)

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Key Timestamps

• 03:47 — Epley’s story from the train: the central social paradox
• 08:36 — Explanation of why we expect social interactions to go badly
• 13:30 — The “wet pasta noodle” metaphor for social anxiety
• 15:45 — How the brain rewards social connection and the risks of loneliness
• 19:41 — Why mind-reading makes social acts uniquely hard
• 30:56 — Why approach motivation plummets at the moment of choice
• 34:16 — Honesty as a signal of warmth and trustworthiness
• 44:20 — The deep conversation experiment: breaking from small talk
• 48:36 — Taking responsibility for shaping deeper social connections
• 52:35 — Epley's practical social experiment/challenge

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Tone and Language

The conversation is candid, empathetic, and science-backed. Both host and guest use relatable stories and personal admissions alongside research evidence. The tone is conversational, accessible, and at times lightly humorous—never preachy, and often self-deprecating about the awkwardness of real-life social dilemmas.

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Summary Takeaway

We all harbor mistaken beliefs about the risks and rewards of reaching out to others—beliefs that lead us to miss out on meaningful moments and sustaining connections. Epley’s central message is optimistic and actionable: our fears of awkwardness and rejection are consistently overblown, and with small acts of social courage, we can enrich our lives and those of others in ways that are more profound—and less risky—than we imagine.

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Transcript

[Podcast Host (Choiceology Intro)]

this episode is brought to you by choiceology an original podcast from charles schwab hosted by katie milkman an award winning behavioral scientist and author of the best selling book how to change choiceology is a show about the psychology and economics behind people's decisions hear true stories from nobel laureates historians authors athletes and more about why people do the things they do and how to make better ones to help avoid costly mistakes listen to choiceology at schwab dot com podcast or wherever you listen

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

support for the show comes from servicenow ai is moving fast across the enterprise but without visibility it's just chaos different tools different models different teams using ai in completely different ways servicenow turns that chaos into control with the ai control tower you see all your ai across the business in one place what it's doing what it's done how and what it's about to do so you stay in control to put ai to work for people visit servicenow dot com there's a familiar drama that plays out all the time in ordinary life you're sitting next to someone on a train or standing in line at a coffee shop or thinking about calling an old friend and for a second there's an opening you could say hello you could give the compliment you could make that call but usually you don't not because you don't care or you're a bad person at least i hope you're not normally you're just unsure you don't want to be awkward you don't want to bother anyone so you say nothing you look at your phone you keep moving life is full of these moments many of them are trivial to be sure but some of them aren't and if over the course of our lives we choose to retreat more often

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

than we choose to reach out what

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

do we miss out on how different might our lives be if we reached

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

out more

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

i'm sean ellington and this

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

is the gray area

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

today's guest is nicholas epley a behavioral scientist at the university of chicago and the author of a little more how small choices create unexpected happiness health and connection epley's argument is that we routinely misjudge other people we think conversations will go worse than they do we think people want to be left alone we think honesty will be more painful than it is and because we expect connection to be risky we avoid it but then we never learned that we were probably wrong this is the kind of stuff epley explores in the end the book is about the power of small gestures that add up over time and it's about the peculiar fact that we are social animals who have built a world full of opportunities not to be social

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

foreign

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

nicholas epley welcome to the show thank you

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

sean for having me it's great to be here today well let's talk about

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

being social or not being social as the case seems to be huh you open the book with a scene a very i think familiar scene on a train with people packed together doing what people do nowadays when they're packed together so talk about that image and what it represents because it basically sets up the whole book and i think it'll do the same for this conversation i

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

work at the university of chicago so i take the train in every morning and i had kind of this eureka moment this moment where i put on my scientist hat and the world just looked weird in a way it hadn't before i was writing this chapter about how we are highly social creatures with brains uniquely equipped for connecting with the minds of other people made happier and healthier by connecting with other people and yet here i was sitting there on the train with a carload of southside neighbors who many of whom have been riding together for years sitting hip to hip with another perfectly social human being and we were all ignoring each other like we were treating the person sitting next to us like a lampshade and it hit me like a lightning bolt that morning that that seems weird and that morning i had a woman who sat down next to me she was probably fifteen or so years older than i was an african american woman dressed professionally for work and wearing just this fabulous red hat that i'll just never forget it it was super cool and i thought instead of doom scrolling on my phone i would try to have a conversation with her and i was keenly aware the second i thought about doing that that there were all kinds of reasons why i shouldn't even consider that that you know clearly she's gonna think you're a creep trying to hit on her somehow if she wanted to talk to you she already would so it's gonna be rude to do this you probably don't have anything in common with her you don't even have a way to start the conversation no reason to even talk which i sort of felt like i needed to have but you know we run experiments for a living so the experiment must go on so i turned to her i kind of worked at my courage and i turned to her and i said hi i'm nick i love your hat i have one just like it and you know look if i had a hundred shots at starting that conversation i'm not sure i would ever start it that way a second time but it didn't really seem to matter much like once we once we connected things kind of started rolling she turned to me with a smile clearly recognizing just my friendly intent we both laughed a little bit and then we just started talking she shared her name we started talking about what are you going into chicago for and learned a little bit about her work learned about her family and the thirty minutes just sort of evaporated very quickly and i remember when i got up to leave she stopped me for a second and she said thank you so much for talking with me this morning and it wasn't like i was being intrusive or we were bothering each other it was you know we just had a nice conversation but what i remember from that what really struck me wasn't just that it was a nice conversation it's that it was surprisingly nice that the gap between my expectations beforehand that were telling me just to keep to yourself and my actual experiences were which were this was pretty nice the gap between those was huge was huge and i thought if i'm doing this in other places in my life right choosing to avoid interactions that would be meaningful and rewarding holding back too often avoiding reaching out to other people mistakenly then that would change how i live my life in lots of ways little ways big ways and if we're all doing that on the train in the morning right if this is a this is a an error that we're we're making kind of consistently then that would kind of change the way a lot of people live their lives well that

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

whole scene right there i wanted to start there because that really does capture the central paradox of the book which is that we humans are deeply social creatures who choose not to be social time and time again even though it makes us less happy yep what is that about is that mostly is it

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

fear driven like you said most people have this expectation that if we engage

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

with strangers if we talk to strangers it will make the experience worse and

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

yet that is so clearly not true so what's going on there the gap

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

between our expectations and our experiences that we find over and over again is simply that we underestimate how well these are going to turn out sometimes that seems like fear like maybe what you'd have in talking with a stranger or having a particularly deep conversation with someone which we also find that people underestimate sometimes it looks a little more like indifference like if i reach out to express gratitude to you or to someone who's done something really meaningful for me it just won't matter that much or passing along a kind word or a compliment just won't make much of a difference and so it can vary a little bit across the spectrum but what we find consistently is that reaching out to engage with other people on average turns out better than we think and where does that come from it comes from a number of different places three i think are really most important one is that we evaluate ourselves differently than other people evaluate us psychologists have found at least two dimensions and that we evaluate each other on one is competency how capable and effective are we the other is our warmth right so you sit down to start a conversation you're thinking about what the heck am i going to say to this person what are we going to talk about am i going to be able to carry this on it's going to be difficult and effortful to do this i'm thinking about my competency when i reach out with a smile and say hello to you you are not thinking about my competency you're thinking about is this guy nice is he trustworthy is this a friend or somebody i should be afraid of you're evaluating my warmth and so in these behaviors these social behaviors that connect us with other people they are almost always inherently warm i'm taking an interest in you to have a meaningful conversation i'm trying to get to know the person next to me in a friendly way i'm expressing gratitude giving you a compliment asking for help when i need it the second thing is that our experience unfolds in a way that our expectations don't seem to capture our life is like a movie it unfolds over time and interaction is like a movie it's dynamic it unfolds over time goes back and forth i say hi to you you say hi back to me i smile at you you smile back at me i wave at you you wave to me right i open up with something meaningful to share with you you tend to open up back to me and those responsive reciprocal features are what connect us with each other and yet people's expectations are kind of simplified versions of those complicated experiences they're a little more like a snapshot of an experience like a picture and pictures don't represent the dynamic reciprocal processes unfolding in conversation instead they tend to represent simple things that you can represent kind of statically like who am i talking to what am i talking about they don't fully appreciate the reciprocal nature of this and so if if we're overlooking one of the key features of social interaction namely reciprocity and responsiveness that connects us with other people we're also going to underestimate how well these things are going to go these interactions are going to go and then the third thing is that once you have something that seeds some pessimism in your mind that is likely to become self fulfilling after all yeah pessimism encourages avoidance if i think talking to you is going to be unpleasant i won't do it i won't find out i might be wrong optimism on the other hand gets corrected because i approach you i get the data i need to calibrate my beliefs with reality but avoidance pessimism leads you to not get the data you would need not have the conversation not send the letter not open up to somebody not ask for help when you need it and therefore you don't get the data you would need to correct an overly pessimistic belief you might never find out you're wrong this just seems such

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

a particularly cruel like social fact that pessimism has a way of protecting itself from correction in a way that optimism doesn't right it's just set up to induce pathological behavior and it's just kind

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

of tragic tragic is a good way to put this i think in my mind two because i mean it is one thing to avoid risks that are legitimate right to be afraid of things or to be skeptical about things that you ought to be afraid of or skeptical about but it's completely another thing to be overly afraid or overly pessimistic about something that would in general be quite rewarding for you and for other people in general that would improve your life it does feel like a tragedy right and in fact this was one of the reasons why i really felt like i had to write this book in my own life i kept noticing these kinds of tragedies people i was missing and didn't know who i could have people i could have helped but didn't reach out to things i could have gotten help for but didn't ask for it right these things that just were mistaken opportunities and i thought i look around and i see lots of other people doing this as well social anxiety particularly excessive social anxiety and loneliness is especially cruel because it feeds on itself and our research suggests that those prison bars that hold us hold us back from other people sometimes are actually wet pasta noodles and if you just test them just push on them a little bit you might find that out

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

it's a very confusing learning environment and that's part of the problem right is no body wants to be awkward right and you because you can't it's just a truth of the world we don't

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

know what is in other people's minds

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

and we don't want to overstep we don't want to go first and and create an awkward interaction because that stings just as much as positive interactions feel good and that that was sort of the fear i was talking about right i think that is a very common experience i have it all the time i think everybody has it you just don't want to create awkwardness for no good reason and it's safer it's just a safer strategy to avoid

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

you think it's a safer strategy but i think

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

yeah right you know what i mean

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

you think it is right feel safer so that's our expectation exactly it feels safer however there's still plenty of opportunities where it's perfectly safe to engage with somebody else and still we're overly fearful right and that i think is the tragedy and if you start testing this you'll i think find out places in your own life where you are exaggerating how negative or how awkward reaching out to somebody will be and once you see those your world just kind of opens up well i should at least

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

ask you're a cognitive scientist i mean

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

when we do have a positive interaction what is going on in our brains

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

do we get some kind of like a blast of oxytocin or dopamine or something like that that positive feeling we get from a good social interaction what is happening at the level of the brain why does it feel so good

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

we have a neural reward system that sits right at the center of our brain that kind of encourages us to do things that historically at least for human beings have been good things for us to be doing and discourage us from doing things that historically have been not so good for us to be doing and the reason why connecting with someone feels good is because for most of human history being alone and isolated is a death sentence you couldn't live alone and so when you are alone when you're disconnected from other people or feeling disconnected from other people your brain and your body is under threat experiencing this as a threat and what you get are spikes in cortisol right so your body starts to tell you this is a problem you feel psychologically and physically stressed you get spikes of cortisol in your bloodstream cortisol is a stress hormone chronic levels of it are not good for you compromises your immune system functioning makes you more likely to catch things like the cold and pneumonia or covid and if it's chronic over time it also compromises things like your cardiovascular functioning and this is why loneliness turns out to be to be a risk factor for death and a shockingly large risk factor for death in fact on par epidemiologists have found on par with smoking fifteen cigarettes a day worse than not exercising worse than being overweight versus relatively thin it's a big problem for us and for most of psychology's history psychologists haven't really recognized the importance of social connection as a basic human need abe maslow created this hierarchy of needs which turns out to have never fit the data twenty years after it a paper was written describing this irony of this theory that everybody seems to believe but the data don't really support maslow put belonging right in the middle of the hierarchy of need as if it was more of a luxury good it's not a luxury good it is as basic a need as eating or sleeping and our brain and our physiological responses

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

reflect that i want to i want to sit with something a little bit longer because i you know i sometimes get asked a variation of this question like what is the difference between knowledge and wisdom my answer i think is pretty simple it is knowledge is knowing what to do and wisdom is having the capacity to do what you know you ought to do and this is a case where i think i understand the reasons why people choose avoidance we've we've already been over some of them but i think we all have this abstract knowledge that it is good for us to connect with people we all know that it is not a knowledge

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

problem nobody's ignorant about that and yet we still choose not to do it

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

and we've been over this a little bit but i want to press more because i'm trying to isolate what is it in particular about the nature of social interactions that makes this a thing that is so scary relative to lots of other things is it the vulnerability that comes because we're social creatures we are also more sensitive to being shunned and so is it about vulnerability on

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

some level so first i'm not entirely sure that it is a completely unique phenomena so exercise looks like it mimics some of these sorts of phenomena although more research needs to be done on this but i think we all have some experience of not wanting to exercise thinking it will be bad and then after we do it feeling better but the unique part about social interaction is that it's a really really hard problem in a way that lots of these other phenomena are not it's easier to learn i think that you will enjoy exercising than it is to learn that you will enjoy having a deep conversation with someone or that you will feel really great if you reach out and express gratitude to somebody and that's because why is that harder because there's another mind involved that's the challenge because it's not that people misunderstand that they understand themselves they know they'd be happier talking to someone rather than just sitting by themselves if the person was willing to talk to them and was friendly the problem is you can't be certain about other people if it was just yourself that's pretty easy but when you're interacting with somebody else it just exponentially increases the complexity because now i gotta figure out your brain and that's hard in fact we find that people after an interaction with someone after a conversation they think that having another conversation with that person a week from now is gonna be just pleasant as pleasant as the conversation they just had right talking with a stranger though they think might be less pleasant right because now it's another mind i don't know how you're gonna respond you don't learn about the conversation right when we then come back two weeks later people also then seem to have kind of forgotten everything they learned two weeks before and now they're not so sure that this person will want to talk to them right now like they did two weeks ago so it's that inherent complexity of the mind of another person which is the most complicated thing we ever think about creates needless uncertainty about how somebody's going to respond and i think that's really at the root of the misunderstanding

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

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[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

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[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

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[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

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[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

i'll

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

be honest though like when i'm on

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

a plane for instance

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

you know i'll put in my my airpods and when

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

the guy next to me starts talking

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

to me i kind of get irritated i i don't really want to talk i want to i want to listen to the music i'm listening to or or read the book i'm reading yeah and i kind of get annoyed and reading your you think oh am i

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

the asshole am i the asshole on

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

the plane because i'm that guy i mean not always but but often when someone is trying to reach out i'm just i'm in my bubble look and i i kind of feel bad about

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

it now yeah yeah i don't mean to make you feel bad about it look we got we all have things we got to do in life right we all have things that that that we have to do and maybe you got you know you got music you want to listen to or you just need some time to relax you know i certainly am on flights where get work done and i can't engage with another person however i do think that recognizing that other people are often more interesting than you might imagine might cause you to do the cost benefit calculation just a little bit differently like you don't know what's inside the head of another person but it's possible that it's way more interesting than whatever else you might be doing it's possible and it doesn't hurt to test it sometimes if you want but look if you're tired you gotta sleep i mean i've many times on planes i've said you know we chat for a little bit while we're on the ground get to know them a little bit kind of melt some of that awkward ice that you might have if you're sitting hip to hip with another person but then once you know we're up in the air you know i'm so sorry but i got to get some work done or i'm really tired i'm really into this book and everybody understands that too right everybody does our data don't suggest that you should talk to everybody who talks to you right that's that's probably not true in fact the people who approach you are consistently are probably different from the people that you would randomly approach nor does it say we should be reaching out and connecting every time all the time or that it always turns out well our data just suggests that we get the odds that'll turn out well wrong and that our gambles that we make on what to do next in our life all of life is a series of gambles suggest that we just get some of the odds wrong in those gambles sometimes that would encourage you to engage with somebody but sometimes it wouldn't be enough how much of

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

this for you is just something that is just like fundamentally and deeply wired into our psychology always has been and how much of this do you think is about modern life the fact that we have built a very frictionless world where we don't really have to engage with people really at all if we don't want to and that lack of engagement makes actual engagement all the more

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

fraught so it's a little bit of both so if you look over the course of human over the course of human history many of our social interactions were not things we chose as much we were just around other people social interaction was just a fact of life you couldn't get along by yourself right nevertheless you still find plenty of anxiety about engaging with other people stanley milgram was a famous social psychologist who later in his career moved to new york city and got interested in understanding urban life and what living around lots of people do to you and he went down into the subway in new york city in the early nineteen seventies long before steve jobs came along with his iphone and he wrote that he observed two norms of subway behavior one is that seats are taken on a first come first serve basis and the other is that nobody talks to each other right nineteen seventy three back then it was newspapers and books and things like that so there's always been some anxiety about engaging with other people due to some of the uncertainty i think but what differs now is that the choice the choice to reach out and engage with other people or not is something that we can make more and more often you can choose on any day of your life to live it completely alone if you want when you can get up and have your breakfast delivered to you at your door without ever touching another person get your groceries in the afternoon work from home on your computer and never see another human being get your entertainment you know on on tv at night never leave your house and i think that's what really changes now what's really different now we we just have more opportunity to choose to live on our own and independence is great it's plenty of great things but it comes at the cost of social connection and that is an increasing problem

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

for us well speaking of choice right the moment before i think you actually do call it the choice right and this is that split second decision right before you decide or choose to say hello or make that call or write that note or whatever social courage for whatever reason tends to collapse like right before the act psychologically what is that

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

about you described it earlier as a kind of curse or a tragedy right and the tragedy just kind of keeps compounding doesn't it the choice to reach out and engage with somebody or hold back is a choice that's not unique in social life it shows up in lots of places where we've got this kind of approach avoidance conflict or these two systems and in fact these are kind of two somewhat independent systems in our brain the factors that encourages us to reach out and do something to to make a choice to go ahead with something whether it's social or something else like to exercise is different from the system that encourages us to avoid it to not exercise to not reach out to somebody to avoid doing whatever it is you have an opportunity to do and those two systems operate somewhat independently and they operate on different trajectories at a distance the approach motivation is really high typically and so if it's a desirable thing like talking to somebody sure i'll do that have a deep conversation no problem that's easy that'd be a great thing to do exercise every day a week get ready to run the ironman triathlon no problem i'm on it but when you get closer and closer to an event your construal of it your interpretation shifts and now all the reasons to avoid it get stronger and stronger and stronger so as people in experiments for instance approach having to take a test they become less confident that they'll do well on that test right before it right and the same thing shows up with social interaction that you might think oh on my plane flight today i'll try to get to know somebody they got an interesting story to tell me i'll find out what it is and that sounds great when you're miles away and it's an hour from now but when you're then right there and the stranger's sitting next to you on the plane or the person's right there in front of you at the office or you're sitting down to write that gratitude letter you know you need to write or to have that hard conversation with your spouse that you really need to have that's when the avoidance motivation spikes and all the reasons not to become immediate and that's why confidence tanks and we get cold feet right so even things that we kind of know at a distance are good for us in the moment i'd rather

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

not yeah well i mean like you say in the book you know the brain seems to at least in this on this front it treats predictions like information right it confuses this will be awkward with this is awkward and that's not the same thing it is not the same but believing it is makes

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

it so yes exactly and look it's not the same thing but if i want to know what you're going to do in your life if i want to understand sean how you live your life i don't want to understand how you experience how you would experience all kinds of things in life i want to know how you think you're going to experience them if you think you'll like chocolate ice cream you'll eat it if you think you'll hate it you won't you'll eat something else and if you never try it you might not know and so it's people's expectations that really matter so even if it's not reality we confuse it for it and then it becomes reality as you say

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

i have to ask you about honesty

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

at least for for a bit here because i think like uncertainty i think this is a huge challenge for communication now as you know people will say they want honesty is that actually true do you think people actually want that

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

i think they want it more than we think they do and that's that's i think what we find in our data is that that when we think about being completely honest with somebody giving perfectly honest feedback to an employee who's struggling in some way telling our partner how we're actually feeling about this relationship and what would need to change in order for us to really be connected there are two elements to being honest and tracking its effects on other people because of those two different things is then especially hard because we tend to focus on one and not the other what we focus on when we're being honest is often the content of what we're conveying and it can be honest right i can think you know that was the best speech i've ever seen you give sean and really believe it and so it's honest and positive but sometimes honesty has negative content or that seems negative for another person and then you've got a conflict between the two and people tend to think that the other person's going to respond primarily to the content of what's being conveyed but what we miss is the other thing that honesty conveys honesty also conveys warmth and trustworthiness that is the fundamental dimension of warmth and so when i give you that honest feedback that is negative in some way but with clearly helpful friendly intent it can be interpreted more positively as kinder than we think it will and i think that the data suggests at least that that holds us back a little too often from being completely honest with other people in ways that they would appreciate surprisingly well what

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

does that look like in practice right so if we got to the end of this taping nick and turn the cameras off and thank you this is great and you said john i really appreciated the effort you put into this it felt like you really read the book but i thought the questions were a little gaseous and ill phrased and i was a little disappointed but i'm only telling you that so that you can become a better interviewer if you said that i'd go okay gee thanks nick i'd be pissed off i'd be pissed it would hurt it would hurt it wouldn't register as you conveying kindness or warmth it would insult my ego and piss me off so i'm not throwing stones here i'm as guilty as anyone you know but how would you

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

do that i so i would do it exactly as you said but but meaning you know look can i can i help you look i would love you to be the best interviewer you possibly can and here's maybe a way you could have phrased this instead or a question that maybe you could have picked up on and then we could have talked it through and when you're saying this to somebody right it is negative and it can hurt a little bit right but there's also this other part which is well this person was trying to help me and that can in the long run also feel good too can be something that you appreciate right who are the people who are truly honest with us right it's the people who really love us the people who are really friends with us so when my wife for instance tells me look nick being social is great but sometimes when we are out you're a little too social with other people and i'd kind of like you to pay attention to me too right that hurts me a little bit to hear because i've made some mistake but she's also told me how to be a better husband and next time i'll be a better husband that can feel good too so when we bring married couples partners or roommates into the lab to fight for science right to think about that thing that's bothering them in their relationship and we all have those things right if you live with somebody long enough you spend time with somebody long enough you're gonna have something you gotta talk with them about you know a hard conversation you gotta have in order to improve the relationship we find that in our data that when we bring couples together and have them talk about the thing they've been putting off those conversations tend to be better received by the person they're giving feedback to tend to lead to better conversations than they would expect the person can sometimes realize it right so sean you might have you might have recognized and this is often the way it unfolds in real life you might have recognized that that wasn't maybe the best interview you'd given if i actually feel that way and have some sense about that and then you might appreciate the honesty there rather than the lack of genuineness if you could detect that right i think fifteen or

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

twenty minutes later i might appreciate that

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

might be true that might be true

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

in the moment it probably stings and that's just bullshit ego you know acting on me shortly thereafter i think i

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

would appreciate that to be fair the data we have are people in conversations right having hard conversations with somebody else being honest in their conversation with somebody and that unfolds over the course of a conversation so there's some time involved there or like my colleague emma levine fabulous behavioral scientist at the university of chicago has people with taya cohen who's at carnegie mellon university has people spend a day in their life being either completely honest with other people so this means things like you know somebody asks you how's your day going if it's crappy you say look it's just really crappy right instead of saying it's oh it's great i'm doing fine you're really honest with them about that so either they spend the day being completely honest in all of their relationships spend their day being completely kind as kind as they can be in all their relationships or they spend their day just being being mindful that that's the control condition and what emma finds is that people think that spending a day being completely honest will not be a great day it will be a worse day than being completely kind right and that it will hurt their relationships compared to being completely kind okay but what emma actually finds when people at the end of the day report how the day went is that people actually report a day spent being completely honest was just as good a day that left their relationships feeling just as strong just as good as a day being completely kind with somebody else right and in many ways the participants in those experiments felt a little better about themselves because they were

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

authentic what is your position on white

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

lies then in that case are they

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

ever justified i think for most people when they tell white lies the excuse in their mind is look i'm just trying to grease the social tracks here so that we can all have a pleasant interaction in general do you think it's it's it's a much better strategy even even in those moments where it is you know it is going to create awkwardness do you think it's still more often than not way more often than not a better strategy to just be honest rather than tell that that

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

innocent seeming white lie so emma provides some real nuance on this because remember the the problem here the challenge here is misunderstanding that sometimes or misunderstanding that honesty is a warmth trait that people care about and that is positive and so when the thing you are sharing with somebody that seems kind of negative could still be helpful to them so it kind of aligns with your honest intent i'm trying to help you with this that's why i am it's friendliness it's authenticity it's being it's trying to help another person that's when misunderstanding that honesty can be seen as kind is particularly problematic so that's when a white lie is really not helpful because you are not giving the people the feedback that would actually be constructive or useful in their lives or you're not giving being honest about yourself in a way that would really help this relationship so when you tell your partner for instance that the meal they cooked was really great when you know they could become a better cook if they did this thing or the other thing right you're missing an opportunity to make your relationship better that might actually make your partner feel better too if they came to be better cooks say right so there the truth the honesty that you're sharing is also ultimately kind it's meant to be constructive but when the honesty is cruel or can't be helpful at all to the other person right doesn't have any constructive intent that's at least those are the times when emma thinks that you know the white lies probably are justifiable there

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[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

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[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

i've always hated small talk and it's not because of social awkwardness it is more about the banality and the phoniness of a lot of those sorts of interactions much like the casually saying yes it is people running the same social script they always run and have probably already run fifteen times that evening where do you do what do you do where are you from yeah yeah and i find the inauthenticity of that nauseating almost to the point where like i just there are a lot of cocktail parties i decline to go to because i don't want to be in those interactions and i know a lot of people feel the same way do you approach those sorts of interactions differently like with with the like do you break from those social scripts and actually go deep or say something real and when you do that what is the reaction you tend to get from people who are recognizing whoa wait a minute they're diverging from

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

the script here now what you're not the only one who puts the word hate in close proximity to the word small talk lots of people say that small talk can often be a gateway to a more meaningful conversation but yes if it's this banal boring inauthentic script it's terrible okay so in our research and in public talks that i give now all of our incoming mba students at the university of chicago now do this on their second day of orientation with me for instance i put them through an experiment where instead of doing small talk with somebody they do really deep and meaningful talk i'll put these questions up on the board that they're gonna in just a few minutes with another person i pair them up randomly within a room have a conversation about questions like if i was going to become a good friend of yours what would be most important for me to know about you what are you most grateful for in your life can you tell me about it can you tell me about one of the last times you cried in front of another person when i put these questions up on the screen you know it's like somebody just pulls all the air out of the room there's just like this pall cast over the room everybody sometimes people even swear audibly in front of me regretting that they had showed up to this session i send them to a survey online where they tell me how they think they'll feel at the end of this conversation and they say ugh it's going to be awkward quite awkward it's not going to be that great i'm not really going to like this person that much i'm probably not going to have that much in common with them they then go off and have the conversation and at that point the problem i have is getting them back right all of these people who also claim to hate small talk find somebody else who also like all the rest of us don't like small talk either and when they come back and tell me how the conversation actually went they overwhelmingly these are massive effects say the conversation went better than they thought it did beforehand far less awkward than they thought it would be formed a much stronger bond liked the person more enjoyed the conversation more had more in common with the other person than they expected beforehand so i do this out in the world too i don't spend time in small talk if i don't want to in part because i recognize that other people often want those same kinds of conversations and when you open yourself up when you signal to somebody that look i just like to get to know you a little bit i'm interested in you in learning about you it leads them to open up back to you in return and you can have so much better conversations at the end of our deep talk conversation demonstration people say the conversation they just had was way deeper than they normally have right which is not very deep but then when i ask them how deep do you wish your conversations were in daily life they don't say as deep as talking about the last time you cried in front of another person maybe that was a little too far but they say way deeper than the conversations i'm typically having now who's responsible for that i am you are we are if you're in a conversation you don't want to be having you have the power to change it once you recognize that other people probably want to have a more meaningful conversation too

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

i think you

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

say at the beginning of the book that this research changed you personally more than any other you've ever been involved in or with you seem like a very gregarious outgoing person i don't know is is were you not like that

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

before i mean when you say it

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

changed your life more than anything else or any other research you've ever done what do you mean one of the

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

things that people most commonly say to me is that i'm extroverted when i'm doing this but usually i'm an introvert and what that means is that you know they get they get tired talking to people and there are times when they choose to spend alone even if they're not doing right at this at this moment and i think all of us have those capabilities and those tendencies i certainly had it over the course of my life it's not that i've ever been a horribly shy person but i was long a very insecure person particularly in academic settings and would avoid people in all the same kinds of ways that we all do keep to myself not share thoughts not be as honest as i could be not ask for help when i needed it in particular not think about or take an interest in other people in the way that i do now and this research has done two big things for me one is it's allowed me to think about my social life in terms of moments and that's really critical for happiness and well being psychologists have made it crystal clear that our happiness our positive mood over the course of a day for instance isn't determined by the intensity of positive experiences we have but by the frequency of them them right a kind word can lift you up and leave you feeling great for a while in the same way that some really positive experience can and so the key to having a good day is stringing along a bunch of good moments and there are lots of dead spaces in our day that you could make better where you're kind of doing nothing at all and connecting with other people is a great way to do it so i've thought about my days a lot more in terms of moments right when i go down to get a coffee i'll invite a colleague to come with me when i walk into my office i'll smile and say hello i keep thank you cards on my desk right next to me in the office so that when i have a kind thought i can share it quickly right when i have conversations with people i don't say where do you work i ask them what's your story how'd you get here today something meaningful about them and so that's one big thing it's just made a lot of differences in the choices that i make in the moments right the other thing is that it has highlighted to me that i have a lot more power to shape my social interactions than i might have thought i did in ways that are better and i can make my interactions better for you too based on how i choose so if you and i are having a conversation that's shallow that i don't you know i'm not really enjoying i suspect you aren't either i can invite you into a deeper conversation you know i don't demand it of you you sit down next to me on the plane and you got your headphones in i don't force you into conversation but i say you know hi hi my name's my name's nick you heading home or leaving home and if you're interested you'll keep talking and we'll go somewhere and if you're not you put your headphones back in and we'll just just will go through the fight and that's okay i've lost a lot of the fear and social anxiety that i that i very much used to have and it's it's liberating it is liberating it changes you kind of from top

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

to bottom do you have a simple

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

social experiment you would you would propose

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

to people like something they can try in their own life whether it's you

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

know talk to three people three strangers

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

a day or whatever something like that just as a kind of starting point to test some of these ideas concretely

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

let me give just one let me just let me get one very simple one my bet is that you probably know somebody who who you've seen around you know maybe it's a neighbor somebody in town maybe somebody at work somebody you've seen quite a bit over over time but you just have never introduced yourself to them for whatever reason you just haven't haven't said hi to them just try it just welcome and say hi you know my my name's my name's nick that those are the most powerful words you have in your in your social life hi my name is and you know look i've seen you around a lot but i haven't haven't said hello to you before be nice to just say hi and then just see where that goes if you really want to challenge yourself take a moment with a stranger if you have a chance on a plane or you know in a cab or you know at work and try to find what their interesting story is ask him if i was going to become a good friend of yours what would i really want me to know about you or what's your story how'd you get here today

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

i'm going to leave it right there

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

nick i actually enjoyed the book and i actually enjoyed this conversation that is easy to say because it happens to be true yes me too there it

[Nicholas Epley (Guest, Behavioral Scientist)]

is me too me too this is really fun sean thank you so much for taking time to talk with me

[Interviewer / Co-host (possibly Vox staff)]

thanks for coming on

[Sean Ellington (Host of The Gray Area)]

all right we've reached the end of another wonderful episode i loved it i hope you did too as always we want to know what you think so drop us a line at the gray area at box dot com or leave us a message on our voicemail line at one eight hundred two one four five seven four nine please also rate review subscribe to the podcast it helps us grow our show this episode was produced by thor neue writer and beth morrissey who also runs the show engineered by shannon mahoney fact checked by melissa hirsch and alex overington wrote our theme music our executive producer is miranda kennedy the gray area comes out on mondays and fridays find it wherever you listen to podcasts if you watch podcasts while you listen listen you can do that too go to youtube dot com vox for video versions of the gray area the show is part of vox support vox's journalism by joining our membership program today go to vox dot com members to sign up and if you decide to sign up because of this show let us know support for the show comes from quints is your day to day wear usually determined by comfort or style well wouldn't it be nice to have both pieces that feel easy comfortable and still put together that's what quince wants to give you quints has all the wardrobe staples for spring one hundred percent european linen shorts and shirts from dollar thirty four lightweight breathable and comfortable but still look put together and clean one hundred percent pima cotton tees with a softness that has to be felt i've tried some quints myself at this point i feel like i've purchased basically every piece of clothing they offer but in the end i keep coming back to their t shirts i got them originally to just wear to the gym and you know wear out for walks and that kind of thing because they're super light and comfortable but i just kind of wear them everywhere now because i don't know i like wearing them they look nice and they're super durable you can refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use head to quints dot com grayarea for free shipping on your order and three hundred sixty five day returns now available in canada too that's q dash u dash i dash n dash c dash e dot com greyarea for free shipping and three hundred sixty five day returns quince dot com grayarea