CM 268: David Robson on Overcoming Loneliness
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No matter what our personality is, no matter how shall we feel at the moment, we all have the capacity to build stronger relationships. And often IT just involves a bit of practice and a bit of bravery. But once we start pushing ourselves out of our comfort one, we can be really surprised by what we can achieve and how other people will respond to us.

Welcome to curious minds at work. I'm your host, gale Allen. Social connections are of the keys to a happy and healthy life. Yet few of us earn how to build.

If we're lucky, we are family and friends who model them, but even then, our biology equipped us with cognitive biases that can get in the way. Fortunately, a word winning science writer, David robson, is study the research. He shares what he's learned in his latest book, the laws of connection, the scientific secrets, building a strong social network.

In this conversation, he talks about the biases we hold and how we can overcome them. It's a terrific resource for rethinking your approach to social connection. Before we start one quick ask, if you like the podcast, please take a moment to live rating on itunes, or ever you subscribe your feedback.

Since a strong signal to people looking for their next podcast. And now here's my interview with David robson. David robson, welcome to the podcast.

Thanks so much for having me on again.

You explain that we feel more connected with others. We experience a shared reality, that this is a key component to the difference between spending time with other people and feeling connected versus feeling nearly as lonely as what we're alone. What is a shared reality and what role does IT play?

So I think the concept of the realities is really crucial for understanding the benefits of social connection and so we know that social connection can actually like improve your health significantly people who have a feeling of social support and understanding with the people around them and be less acceptable to all kinds of illnesses um you know ranging from the common cold to heart text, stroke and alzheimer disease and that's been known for a long time.

But what was less well understood was kind of what, you know, what are the components of a good close relationship? Because like you say, some people can be you surrounded by others, and they can be married, they can have big families. They could be a superstar like lisa, who posted on integram about how SHE feels very lonely, as if no one in the world understand that even though she's got millions of instagram followers.

So there's something special about our closest relationships. What that is is this shared reality, which is basically the feeling that another person experiences and feels the same way you about the world and about events. It's as if you almost occupying the same stream of consciousness.

So that can, you know, happen on many different levels. Just known that someone had the same kind of you background as you can be important for as a kind of baseline of shared reality. But what really seems to matters then is that you share intimate thoughts and feelings. So you could just be that you laugh at the same joke or you feel kind of shivers at the same part of a particular song IT could be that you're finishing each other sentences because you can already preempt what the other person is going to say.

All of these signs of a shirt reality and IT after manifest this this feeling that you are sharing that your minds emerged in some way um that your we would say that you're on the same wavings and there's actually a neurological basis but that metaphor, when you look at people who are connecting and clicking and forming that close connection, you can see that the brain activity is very similar, is almost like the brains of mirroring each other so that the kind of neurological basis of the shared reality and once we know we've got a red reality with someone, we become more altruistic c towards them. Um sometimes we feel that our identities have become closer together. That there are a part of us is the basis of social connection.

I thought I was interesting, as you were talking about the impact on our health, about how there are mechanisms in our body that actually push us to reach out to others if we're feeling lonely. Can you say more about this?

This was really fundamental in our revolution that we had some kind of signal to tell us when our social connections were under thread. T, and that's because as humans started to live in bigger and bigger groups, when we came to depend on each jobs for kind of shared puled resources of protection from predators, protection from other groups, our alliance is just became absolutely essential for survival. So you started to feel socially excluded.

That was putting you in immediate physical danger. So we evolved this kind of sense of social pain, and, you know, often feel like physical pain. And IT serves a similar purpose, where physical pain is warning you that you've got a physical injury that you need to tend and protect. Your social pain is telling you that you have to nurture your relationships of wise. They might become fractured.

Um now there's some research from other social animals such as rodents, who also do depend on kind of group living for the that we even have these kind of loneliness neurons you know they Operate in a similar way to neurons that might respond when we we're hungry for food, when we're not getting enough social connection, these neurons become more active. And once we've had our fair of conversation and connection, then they might temporarily kind of become less active as we can focus on other activities. But that's only temporary. We really, you know, our brains are prime to always be looking for more connection when we need IT.

Not every kind of social relationship, as you point out in your book, is healthy for us. In fact, you talk about three different kinds of social relationships, supportive, aversive and ambivalent. Tell us a little bit more about these relationships and in particular, tell us about ambivalent because that's a really tRicky one for us.

I think it's not just case of the more connections we have, the Better is also the quality of the connections. And so with the purely supportive connections, you we our sense of change, reality, the feeling that we kind of have this mutual understanding and mutual support that's quite stable is not really put put in a question very often and we can rely on those people.

And it's pretty clear to me and you comes out in the research that those people are excEllent for our health there, the people that we really want to nurture. Now you do sometimes get connections. So you can avoid seeing like IT could be a kind of pretty unpleasant relative or IT could be a colleague at work he just don't get on with and you find you pretty unpleasant to deal with.

Those are the purely aversive connections and you we kind of know to avoid them on possible and we can kind of discount their behavior a little bit of done because we don't you we don't have higher expectations of how they are gonna respond to us. So even though they are unpleasant in the moment, we don't necessarily find them very stressful in the long term unless we have to deal with them day after to have to and very involved lives. But the the ambivalent relationships, they kind of sit between the supportive and the aversive relationships.

They your kind of trend mies who might be your best friend one day and then they can lash out the next. Um you might go go to them hoping to get support or sympathy for a problem that you've got and instead they'll be um you know um they might criticize you, lay blame at your door um or just, you know refuse to to help you in the way that they might have promised in the past. Now what the research shows us is that those people, the ambivalent relationships, can be a serious source of stress.

There is bad, if not worse, than the purely aversive relationships because they keep us in the state of uncertainty. So we never quite sure we're always kind of sitting on a nike edge, not sure whether they're going to give us the validation that we crave or where they going to throat back in our face. Um and what the research shows is that you know if you have to go through a pretty difficult event and you know that the ambivalent friend is gonna be kind of nearby, you actually feel a lot worse for their presence.

You actually pushes up your blood pressure because they've just added another layer of uncertainty to that event, you know. So overall, the environment relationships can be pretty bad for our long term health IT seems. And that does raise a question of, you know, what should we do with them? Sometimes you might just think the bad that with the good and you want to know maybe downgrade them to that aversive relationship where you try to avoid them as much as possible.

But I think also just recognizing the nature of these relationships can be very useful. You can lower your expectations when you realize what they're are doing, when you realize that they create this sense for certainty. That stressful, just knowing that fact can help you to to not depend on them so much and that might just lower the kind of stress that they calls you.

But equally importantly, I think we do have to recognize that in some ways, we might be creating this sense of ambivalence in some of violent connections. We might not lash hout will be especially inactive, but parts we're not as reliable and consistent as we could be towards those people. Maybe we don't always, always let people know just how much they mean to us. Maybe we're sometimes neglectful and that can be very hurtful. And so what I really learned from learning about um the ambivalent connections is also to just watch my behavior and to try to make sure that that I am as consistently supportive to the people I can about this I can be ah .

I thought these were two really great lessons as I read that section in your book. The one was, how do I come across in my friendships and my connections to other people? And as you said, am I consistent in the ways that I want to be? And then the other was IT reinforced, something that I feel like i'm recognizing as I get older, and maybe this is something that other people recognize when they're Young ger. And I just missed the boat on IT, but recognizing that it's okay to have different levels and strength of relationships in your life, right, like that you can have certain things you do with people and they might not be the people that you would call of. Something really stressful happens, but you enjoy doing certain things with them or having certain conversations with them and just being OK with that rather than maybe being so judgemental, love IT and seeing IT as it's great to have all these different people in your life, but you don't necessarily have the closest ties with all of them because that would necessarily be realistic.

right? exactly. And I think sometimes, you know, in my life i've had these bivalent enemies, and I would put in a lot of effort, I felt like trying to really kind of gain the approval and like i'd be agonising, like what is them doing wrong less cause that's causing this kind of Jackson height behavior. And then it's not that, you know, having realized that they were. And bevin is not like I suddenly wanted to exclude them from my life completely, but I did realized I don't have to invest so much of my emotional energy and maintaining that relationship like there are other people in my life who may be, are neglected in favor of these trend mies, that are genuinely more supportive and kindness. So just shifting my attention to those people and, you know, seeing those friends mies, when, you know, when I was suitable, but not kind of building my sense of social confidence around them to have said.

you know, as I was reading about shared reality, IT was such an aha moment for me. IT really helped me put together why, when i'm with certain people, I feel so much more connected than I do with other people. And IT was just a really great concept and language that I know I can apply that helps me understand.

And of course, IT immediately made me think to myself, what are there ways that I can create a shared reality with people like, let's am doing work with groups of people for certain reasons, whether it's social, whether it's for work. Can I sort of inject some interactions that will build shared reality to make the experience one of people connecting maybe a greater level than they Normally would? And so one of the terms that I found really interesting in your book was collective of her lessons. Could you talk about that and how IT contributes to developing shared realities?

IT sure. So creative eba person, the term IT comes from the work of I made dog ham who ah had kind of noticed that lots of cultures have um these kind of rituals that involve synchronised movements in some way, or or they IT could be other kind of ceremonies that maybe a synchronizing people's emotional responses like I could be watching some kind of sacrifice ever or you know like watching people walking over hot coals where you're all kind of gasping and anticipation of what's going to happen to the person um you know taking this this a daring action um and what he suggested was that was the the kind of creation of that synchronized emotional physical response that would bond groups to make them stronger and that's really what has been proven with recent research on ways to create shared reality, like we can engineer shared reality.

So singing and dancing, which involve synchronised movements, are some of the best ways to go about this. And the idea here is that if shared reality comes from the kind of a coordination of our neural activity, actually performing the same actions together can help to promote that neural synchronization. And that's indeed what we observe.

When people in singing, dance together, they become more CoOperative, they become more altruistic to each other. They feel um in some sense that their identities have merged just as we would expect they were having a shared reality. But there are lots of other ways that we can create the show reality.

So if you watch like A A funny film together and you have both have a similar sense of humor, then the act of laughing together again, your laughter is quite synchronised. You're feeling the same things at the same time, physically and emotionally, that can increase the sense of shared reality. Or going to a sports game.

If you're both friends with the same team, you know that another way of creating a shared ality, and actually they you can often see in the stadium that people are experiencing this collective ever essence. So it's not just to share realy between two people, but between tens of thousands of people, which is quite astonishing. I also think you there are other ways that maybe seeing and dancing and you know, going to sports games aren't your thing, but you know, loads of shared experiences could could just promote this. I think walking together through the park and kind of just noticing, you know, all of the beautiful nature around you, that's a very gentle way of creating a shared reality. Anything that encourages you to kind of perform the same actions, look at the same things, notice the same things that can all be incredibly important, and just setting up, setting the stage but closeness to develop.

I'm curious if you came across anything that was more virtual because what I really personally enjoy about what you've been describing as all of those experience tend to be your face to face experiences. And i'm just curious, we have such a world now, which is more, you know, online.

And i'm just wondering, is there anything you came across where people are able to do some of this virtually? It's not as if we can together virtually laugh together virtually, of course. But the experience is you're describing seen strong because they're in person. What do you think of that?

Yeah I mean, you know, I do think some of these cities could translate kind of virtually no, I noticed this during the covered lock dots that actually there was something like very touching about, say, starting a film in the synchro with my friends. And then we have what's at about the film like while we were watching IT. And you know you do miss something from being physically present. But actually the sponsorship of those messages, I think, still underlined the shared reality was very effective at maintaining those bonds even when we couldn't you know be in the same room together, you know, conversation as well. You know, we shouldn't discount the possibility of conversation creating a shared reality.

That's actually interesting that you mention that a very good friend of mine and I, who were living very far part I decided to have, like maybe two times a week during covet, I would go for a walk SHE would be at home having maybe morning coffee, and we would just connect.

And over time, we realized, pretty quickly, wouldn't be fun if we connected over a book that we were reading together and IT felt like we wear in each other's homes, having tea, coffee together in the morning, having that conversation. And you're right, we weren't walking together. We worn together. But I felt very much in sick and IT reinforced that shared reality.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, I kind of joined the books club during the kobe looked dance and I still remember now and yeah talking about the book, knowing that we're both you know, that the group heard kind of responded in the same way to the same scenes you know, hearing and even you know points of difference and understanding the origins of those points of difference. You know, I think I was a really powerful bonding experience. So there are there are lots of voices of doing this. I would say when we are having conversation, one thing that we can really do, reinforced to share reality, is that if we have the same, if someone describes an experience that is very close to what we're experiencing, just being a bit more vocal about that fact, like really emphasize that fact rather than just kind of letting IT go, being a bit to reserve to kind of disclose your own feelings, just kind of affirming that yeah, you know what you were feeling. I was feeling that's that's a really good way of of creating that sense that you both on the same way in .

this interview, David robson and explains, would prevent us from building social connections if you'd like to learn more about the science of connection, check out episode one seven nine with marisa king, where we talk about her block, social chemistry, decoding the patterns of human connection. In IT, we discuss the ins and outs of social networks.

If you think about your relationships, for many people, those are the things they are most precious in their life. And propose ously to modifying that, are trying to be intitial about that often times creates a lot of moral disease.

Now let's get back to my interview with David robson. You talking your book about something called the concept of the expanded itself and its impact on social connection. Can you tell us what that is and what he does for social connection?

This says very important, I think, in forming, but also maintaining good relationships. And IT comes from ara and a lane iron, who had also done a lot of things as work on the highly sensitive persons. So you know how people kind of respond to different levels of stimulation, but in this case, they were just looking at kind of, what is the origin of love with that plutonic love, all romantic love.

And they realized that when people first enter a relationship, you can often feel like yourself is literally expanding, because suddenly this of a person is helping you to discover all these new things about you. You know, theyve observed things that they're telling you, things that you might not have ever appreciated about yourself and vice's ser and you you might start doing new things together like, you know, on your dates you might be they might be introducing you to experiences you've never done before. And so they call this phenomenon the expanded self self expansion.

You know, a multiple experiments, decades over decades have shown it's really essential to maintain that sense of self expansion in order to keep and relationships alive. Because what can often happen is you know, you once you've kind of affirmed your bond of someone and you've kind of grow you to each other and you you may be just kind of repeat the same activities again and again, so they lose their kind of noble ty. What can happen is that you you lose that sense of self expansion yourself, almost starts to shrinking again.

And that seems to be when kind of board m sets in and we we fall out of level of the person. And so the best ray around that is actually to just make sure that we are constantly doing new things together, kind of we encouraging each other to move out of the out of our respective comfort zone, sometimes doing that together, but also, you know, helping your partner to kind of to achieve their ambitions and being the support that they that they need to kind of to do those things they really want to do with their life. That's all really essential and it's not something to be taken for granted because I think in some relationships actually, they can be a kind of sense of danger or weariness about a partner who is kind of trying to change their life in some way.

We worried that they gona move, move away from us, that maybe they'll get bored of us if they're kind of discovering new things and going on new adventures. Actually, by being too self defensive. In that way, what we're really doing is self septage ing the relationship. We are actually pushing them away by preventing them from achieving their dreams. Their dreams were really leading them to feel suffocated by the relationship, when actually the relationship should be filled with this sense of a freedom and adventure.

T. V, do you think we talk about this particular concept enough? I mean, I felt when I was reading a book that one of the reasons I again, I had an a hut moment, I thought how fortunate I am in my relationship with my partner, which is very much one to expand itself.

And it's been a very for both of us, I think. Just a natural part of what we do together. But very now, again, I have language for IT, but I don't know that we talk about IT enough. If you had said to me, what do you think makes for such a successful relationship between you and your are a happy relationship and meaningful relationship um I don't know that I could have stated this and yet when I read IT, I was like that's IT like that's what's been the key thing for us and I don't know that we talk about IT enough.

What do you think? Yeah I don't think we do I because I think often like people, when they are frustrated in their relationships, they'll say i'm just so bored with my partner but actually you're not necessarily bored with your partner.

I think you you might just be bored with the way your life is shaping up and then you're kind of projecting that onto your partner because because you remember like how when you first got together, you had that like this great sense of momentum and then suddenly that's kind of fixed out. But I don't think we're very good articulating, you know why that is all telling our partners and what how they might be able to supporters and kind of regaining that sense of energy that we once had. So I totally agree with you.

I think it's is not something that we've been very good at articulating. And we often place too much blame on you know, the other person potentially when we might not realize that actually is a self expansion as a mutual process that we can do together. And just being a bit more strategic about how we go about that, I think could really save a lot of relationships.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. I hope that as part of your book launch, you'll be writing a lot of articles on that topic.

We may believe that it's only people with a certain type of personality that we can network and collaborate with. Well, but you point out that's not the case. That is easier to make a good first impression than we think. Tell us about some of that research. And what we know about IT .

IT was one of the things that first attracted me to the whole topic of social connection, was this phenomenon called the liking gap and essentia. Lot of research has shown that, you know, before talking to strangers, we tend to be very pessimistic the way the conversations are gona pan out. Um we just think it's gonna really award. We are gna run out of things to say that the other person might reject us, just we think it's going to be exercise.

So so I have to pause for me, and I have to ask you a question, how do you feel before you go to do a podcast interview? Do you have those .

feelings I used to when I first started with the intelligence strap? I was very nervous a because I just didn't have confidence that i'd be able to articulate myself very well. But that has improved with practice. And you know, funny enough, that is the conclusion of a lot of this research.

So people go into these conversations with these negative expectations and then they come out of the conversations and they often feel really pleasantly surprised of how smooth the conversation went and how how much they liked the other person. And you know, it's absolutely what I fill with podcast. You know, whenever I was none beforehand, I couldn't believe how kind of kind and generous the host are afterwards. But here's the thing, as positivist we might feel after one of these conversations, we still tend to be quite self critical. So we tend to feel that we liked the other person a lot more than the other person like us.

So let's let's talk about this because the research on this is fascinating. On the one hand, this liking gap that you're talking about, IT starts very early in our lives. And on the other hand, when we experience IT, IT takes a long time to go away. Talk to us about those two things.

Yeah so I mean, you know people start experiencing the liking gap a to about the age of five, six. It's almost like as soon as we understand that other people might be faking like their feelings for kind of you know, because of the social norm of policy, we start wearing well, like did they really feel the way I thought they did him? You so I think it's very hard breaking actually to to think of these six year old kids already, you know feeling that kind of social anxiety. And like you said, there's research that looked kind of students at university who were kind of living together us they were seeing each other very regularly and they still felt the liking gap for each other you know, about seven months into the requisition ship and is .

said what they argue that that's like a an evolutionary like an evolutionary biological reason behind that. That is sort of a survival thing for us in terms of going way back that we haven't evolved out of or not, really?

Yeah, I would I would love to see more research on that. I think I think there are good arguments that could be made for why it's beneficial to be a little bit kind of conservative in our judgments of how much other people like us because is a motivation to try harder or and to not take people for granted. But I think the problem is that we're just too pessimistic here. We could be a lot more calibrated. And I think actually, you know, in the modern world, I guess in the modern world were all so we are meeting more people than we would have done, evolution, you know, having many more interactions.

And so I think actually, you know, that might be a reason IT feels so common now because we're not we're not just interacting with the people in our group who we've known for two years and years like you know, we're meeting new people, unlikely podcast and to use so you know professional meetings like you know week after week and often we just one have those few months are kind of get over IT. So I think like you know, a lot of us could just benefit from being Better calibrated from being a bit braver because what I think the liking gap does is IT stops us from a from kind of building on the incident report because we don't want to seem needed or to put someone in that awkward position of when we're suggesting that we meet up again and they didn't like us. So they have to kind of reject us gently.

Um so we just avoid you know making contact the game because we we're too pessimistic. And I think knowing about the liking gap, we can just correct that we we should still be respectful to offer people and take rejection with good Grace. But the research suggests actually, if we do you know try to reach, if we do try to build on that, that instant connection that we felt, you know likely to be pleasantly surprised.

Another way that you talk about sort of a strategy for connecting that's very genuine is to express appreciation. Yet we are a bit cynical about IT.

Why is that? This seems like the most obvious thing that you could do would be to just tell people how much you admire them, or to express gratitude when we've done something so good for you. But we don't do IT nearly enough.

We actually bite back a lot of these compliments. And that seems to be because we, again, we worry about the awkwardness of the interaction. We we might feel that we're gonna be a bit clumsy in the way that we say IT, that we might seem integration ating.

We worried that people will mistake IT for flattery or manipulation, and or we just assume that the other person knows how wonderful they are and that we don't need to tell them, you know, none of these really reflect reality. The truth is, know, in these studies where they've kind of tested what people predict of those interactions on what actually happens is that people appreciate receiving our compliments or our nights of gratitude much more than we expect. And you, they don't really perceive the cluster ss that we fear at all.

So it's really something that we should be doing a lot more of, and you can do IT frequently. Now there's a study that got people to compliment the same person day after day for a week. And a lots of people kind of assumed that the the compliments would were a bit thin after a while, like they just thought that people get bored of hearing how wonderful they were. But you know, they didn't like they love that every single day they felt a new kind of sense of joy at hearing that they were appreciated.

You had mentioned gratitude. We hear a lot about gratitude journals, but you share that there are actually more powerful ways to engage with gratitude. Tell us about recognition.

gratitude, consciously, even privately to ourselves like that is beneficial because I think IT IT stops as from having that negativity bias where we we might tend to focus on the bad things in our life are not really appreciating the good things and I like so i'm not necessarily kind of dissing gratitude journals as a useful tool, but what the research suggest is that actually you're onna feel much Better of when you feel gratitude towards a person if you just express IT to them rather than keeping in private.

And I I think like maybe it's our social reserve and all of those anxious I spoke about that have LED us to prefer the private gratitude journals actually just sending a note, an email or saying face to face to someone that we're really grateful for them. But but you the research is very clear that actually that's going to it's gonna do them a lot of good and improve. They are well bing and it's gonna prove our well being as well.

And IT has a physiological effect on our on our stress levels, which I love. There was a study that kind of limit the the show shark tank or in the U K. Called dragon and stand, but where these parts of students had to kind of create the idea of a project then pitched to um a judging panel for a Price.

And the researchers just asked one person in each pair to to express gratitude to the other person, but their contribution. And what they found was that that changed this stress levels of both parties to the person giving on the person receiving gratitude during quite stressful project. So, you know, measuring their cargo vessel activity, they still seemed energized.

It's not like they were totally chilled out, but they they weren't tipping over into that kind of fighter flight response. They were they had a more kind of optimum level of psychological razzle that would help them to perform their best. And I think that really speaks to the importance of social connection because, you know, when they had expressed gratitude, when one person had expressed gratitude and the other person had received IT, they felt stronger as a team. So they kind of knew they could go into this presentation together much stronger than the past who have have that. Small, grateful exchange.

What about the people we run into who tend to shrug off our appreciation or our gratitude for what they do? You know, people who maybe have a little bit lower self self, a steam they don't take IT in. Are there Better ways to approach them so that maybe they will hear what we have to say be impacted by IT in a positive way?

Yeah, totally. So I mean, this was one of the kind of fact that surprised me the most, but is also a little bit heartbreaking. And that's the paint that someone has really low self, a steam.

They they don't really trust, compliments very much. And actually hearing a compliment from someone else can chAllenge their sense of shared reality, because IT just doesn't fit with the way there perceiving the world. And so I can actually cause them to feel less close to the person expressing the compliment.

And if the person says something critical, like I feel really sorry for them. And you been probably in similar situations in the past myself, where you, you you just can't believe that people could feel good things about you. And so it's a beautiful for barrier for the person who wants to express that compliment, kind of overcome this. But I think you know what the research suggests really helps. It's first for to be very specific.

So the more specific you can be about the kind of exact qualities that the person shows that you admire, the more believable IT feels to them, and also make IT clear that you, this is not just some kind of fleeting, momentary sensation, but you, that you've noticed these things for a while so that they know that you're not just mistaken, you are not or you're not just kind of being kind of kind of one moment, but there is something that's long lasting. And the research suggests that that's the way to kind of break through when someone does feel low. Self team.

building a shared world with others in order to connect IT means being authentic about hardships, open about successes. Yet you point out in your book, we live in a world today where we've got a lot of what's called humble bragging versus consolacion. Can you talk about the differences between the two and why they matter?

A lot of us been time to think that no, no one likes to show off. So we should always be modest. So one way that we do that is just to kind of hide our successes. We just don't mention them to other people, you know even when we're feeling really proud of an achievement, we avoid talking about that.

The research shows that is actually quite alienating for the other person because when they find out about your good news, like if you've got a promotion or a bonus or you know even if you've just like being achievement like a personal best at the gym that have made you really happy, but you just didn't mention that he feels like you don't trust them or that you're kind of managing their feelings, making them you know you are assuming that they they can't control their envy, which is quite insulting. So hiding success in general is very alienating. And then humble bragging, you know, just makes this so much worse.

So you know, humble brags. So when we kind of try to a boast in a complaint, so that could be something like him, i'm just so exhausted, always being mistaken for a model or so sick of being asked to take these management positions. And you know, they're just not charming like I think when we say them because it's quite common in a lots of people use humble brags, it's really not charming and actually a kind of screams of intensity because it's really clear to a Brown listening that you you want to boast and but you don't want to face the risk of other people's envy.

So you're kind of you know trying to pull the world over people's eyes in some way by pretending that your your complaining or being sold deprecating what the research show that people judge you very badly but that because of the perceived in the sanity, so someone who says i'm so sick of being mistaken for a model is judged a lot worse than someone who just know both like very openly. I'm often mistaken for being the model like just saying that you know plainly, bluntly, like that is far Better seems far more authentic than trying to kind of hide behind this valid complaint when IT comes to convictions ity, I think that's the real moral of, you know, all of this research conference. Sy is but some place, it's just the joy that people can experience at another person's happiness.

So it's kind of like the of chardon provider, where you kind of feel happiness at another person's misfortune. And the research really suggest that we just we discount, we underestimate how much people will feel conflict ity. And if we realize that we we wouldn't be so shy about boasting. You don't have to teach your hole too loudly or too often like a fight that think we can all agree that would become very wearing if someone was always showing ough. But if you genuinely feel very proud of some achievement, people long going to judge you badly for sharing that they gonna feel pretty happy for you as well.

I thought I was interesting. You said that, you know, a key thing for folks to be supportive of us in our success is to the research shows us that we should be accurate and also not compare ourselves to others.

Does that not correct? I mean, accuracy is so important because to kind of maintain the shared reality with people like honesty is essential because you know, even if you if people detect that you're lying, you know on some kind of fairly minor points, they can not kind of start questioning everything else she's at. Map shatters the shared reality.

So self for grandad's man doesn't work if you're being dishonest. But the other, the fact that we shouldn't a engaging social comparison that comes from this idea called the hubris hypothesis and this research just shows that you know, people are very, you know, forgiving. Quite happy for you to kind of celebrate your achievements, but just don't drag others down in the process. So say, you know, if you've got A A bonus at work, just say that I was so surprised and excited that received an amazing bonus today. You don't have to say like I achieved a bigger bonus than all of my colleagues, you know, IT just because when you do that kind of social comparison, IT shows that you're quite a judge mental person.

You're always kind of considering the hierarchy with other people and you that makes the listener wonder, well, like how is he judging me? Like is he, you know, what is this person thinking about me and my agee's, if the kind of downplaying of achievements in this break? But yeah, if you stick to these two rules, be accurate and don't engage in social comparison. I am a boasts, you know, very generally very well received.

So as I was reading this, that made a lot of sense to me in daily interactions with friends, with colleagues, know Operating in this way is just a smart way to go. And IT makes a lot of sense that IT works well. But I help them. But think about how a lot of politicians will trade in in the opposite of these things, and you would be very successful. And I think in the united states, we've had a recent experience of that with a recent president where we could see how worked out were essentially they were both inaccurate or dishonest and also put others down along the way, and we know made IT IT to office. And i'm curious if that strikes you as sort of working against what some of these things says, is politics a little bit different as IT because of a status thing is there's something they are missing and I reading IT wrong.

Yeah I mean, I think there's a case study that is fascinating and I don't really have the answer for like why in some cases people can flout these rules so badly? Yeah yeah. I made me wonder if .

it's if there's something about status, if there's something about perceived wealth or real wealth, if if it's sort of like you, I say this in air quotes above the law in a way in social interactions yeah I mean.

I think that's definitely a possibility. I think could be that this kind of Operates like other forms of misinformation. So actually, if you repeat claims enough, people start to believe that. And me and you know I think also the way the kind of media landscape has evolved. I think like when some of these claims are being fact checked, I think that is is perfectly possible that people just I still inclined to believe the individual on mere side of the political argument and there they'll believe that like it's nip picking if if someone kind of fact takes one of these claims and then that's where .

shared reality could kick in because I have a shared reality with this individual and you don't in therefore we're seeing things .

at odds yeah that's why that that would be my head office really but I mean, this also just possible. I think like some people, but they you know whatever they're officering to their supporters IT might they might be successful despite breaking some of these social norms. They could be that the breaking their social norms is not working in their favor but it's just you whatever their APP is IT can you can function even when they're kind of acting in a way that doesn't really fit a Normal conduct. interesting.

David. Two questions I like to wrap the interview up with. One is focused on the theme of the podcast, which is curiosity. What are you most curious about today?

Good question. I'm writing a piece at the moment about the midlife, about the kind of brain in midlife, and how a lot of the of the lifetime le choices we make in midlife have a kind of really pronounced impact on how we age later in life, more so than our actions when we Younger.

So things like physical ectivity, having a good diet, quitting smoking, drinking less, you know, they once we reach forty, all of those good lifestyle factors become especially important that we want to age health link. So i'm i'm researching that topic and i'm finding IT percinet because i'm thirty at the nine minute. So two years up of this new life stage, and I think IT will you is inspired me actually kind of change a lot of my regime.

David, where will we be able to find that article? If we look out for IT h.

that will be in new scientist mica in a couple of months time.

There is so much in this book, so much that I couldn't get you so much I want to ask you. I can see all my questions popping up on me, uh, right in front of me all the time, and I can't get to them. We don't have enough time. What do you want to leave your listeners with that we haven't been able to talk about. What have I not asked you that you want to be able to speak to?

I mean, I think you know you have asked brilliant questions. I think it's given a good flavor of the book. I think I just like to emphasize the fact that what you know all of these laws of connection showers is that actually in general, with overly pessimistic about our own social potential, no matter what our personality is, no matter how shall we feel at the moment, we all have the capacity to build stronger relationships. And often IT just involves a bit of practice and a bit of bravery. But once we start pushing ourselves out of our comfort zone, we can be really surprised by what we can achieve and how other people will respond to us.

Why can't they give you enough? IT has been such a pleasure to have you back on. All of your books, to me, are just real treasures.

I learned so much from each one of them. And you know, i'm looking forward to the article that you'll have coming out and hopefully bring you on for your next book. Not that, not that. I want to put any pressure on. You need to break.

Thank you. Well, I do have an idea that i'm kind of mulling over, say, yeah, I hope in free, free years time maybe we can have another chat.

Wonderful, David. Thank you so much.

Thank you. It's been a real pleasure.

Curious minds at work is made possible through a partnership with the innovator circle, an executive coaching firm for innovative readers. Special thank you to produce er an editor rob mac belly for leading the amazing behind the scenes team makes IT all happen. Each episode would give a shout out to something that's feeding or curiosity this week it's two books, the searcher and the hunter by irish novellas.

Ten, a french. French has this incredible way of making me care about a small cast of characters in ireland. I wanted know how they think and why they do what they do. And ultimately, I want to know who done IT.