Why Connection Is a Competitive Advantage

I mean, happiness is like a leaky tire, right? You have a positive experience, and it makes you feel good. You know, right, connects you with somebody, but then it dissipates. And to keep the tire pumped up, you just gotta keep, you just gotta be pumping on it. Gotta do that thing over and over. And happiness is a habit, is what it is.

Hey family, our guest today is dedicated. He's career to one of the most important questions we can ask as human beings. How well do we actually understand each other? Further, what happens when we get it wrong? He's a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, one of the most cited social psychologists working today, and he's author of Mindwise, a book that will make you rethink everything you believe about your ability to read another person's mind. His newest book, A Little More Social, please enjoy my conversation with Dr. Nicholas Epley. Dr., there was a piece in the Atlantic recently called the Anti-Ssocial Century, and it shared your research in it. Now, I haven't been able to stop thinking about it because the writer makes a case that Americans are now spending more time alone, then at any point before, that we've been able to measure, and so the thing that's dropped me is that he's not even talking about loneliness. He's talking about choosing solitude. People typically opting out. Does that match what you're seeing in your research?

It certainly is matching what we see in our research in part because our choices to reach out and engage with other people or avoid them as driven in part by how we think any interaction will go. Let's true almost any choice. Our choices are predictions about what's likely to unfold in the future. And when it comes to a social interaction, if I think engaging with you will be pleasant and positive, then JBA shall talk to you. And if I think it will be unpleasant, that I won't try it. And what we find consistently across many, many different kinds of social interactions from talking to strangers, to having deeper conversations, to sharing a compliment, to expressing gratitude, to being honest, we find that people are overly pessimistic about how these interactions will turn out. And what that means is that people then are likely to choose to avoid others more often than they might be good for them.

Now, let's think about it though, when we say these choices people are making lean toward the more isolated or separated or not lonely, but just choosing to be in solitude, is that really different than people have always been or is it that we're able to measure it now. And so we are seeing it as maybe a circumstance versus a phenomena.

Yeah. So I think there are parts of it that are meaningfully different. Although, whenever you ask any researcher or scientist about change over time to be clear what we had to have done is measure things over a long period of history. And for many of these things, like how interested is this person in talking to me or how much will enjoy a conversation we haven't been getting these kinds of measures across decades. That said, there are some notable changes in our environments that do make it possible for you to choose to be alone now in ways that you never have been before. And if you look at the amount of time that people are spending alone these days, compare to historically. There are notable differences in the amount of time that people are spending alone, which presumably comes from the ability to be alone in ways that haven't historically been true. It is now possible today. You can do this any day, JB, if you could get up alone on your own, in your house, all by yourself, order what you needed for breakfast lunch and dinner, entertain yourself with your TV. Type to people who you'd want to talk to and never ever see another life human being for most of human history That was not possible to do.

Yeah, it kind of taught people even though we heard a lot of conversation about the negative impacts of being Isolated or alone during COVID, which is more recent for us that we can measure a lot of people really did develop just in my own circle. I know habits that are very different now than they had before that lean toward what you're saying. The part that troubled me though in this guy's argument doctor is that we're not even unhappy about it. That people are choosing their couches and their screens as you just said, they order their food, they, you know, use fair devices and they get busy with people virtually. Well, your work suggests that choice is costing us something we can't see. So what is it we're actually giving up when we make that trade over and over day after day?

Yeah, so you noted that people aren't feeling that it's a problem, aren't feeling bad about these choices. That may be kind of true, spending time alone is typically sort of a neutral experience. But what you don't know is what you're missing by engaging with other people in those moments, so you can sit down and watch a football game in the fall, for instance, by yourself. And you wouldn't know how much better it might be if you invited a friend over to watch the game with you. You might be able to order, you know, your McDonald's on a screen in the airport, which I saw the other day when I was flying back home from San Diego to Chicago. Be able to order your meal on a screen without seeing another person without recognizing, you know, the slight uplift you might have felt if somebody had passed along a compliment to you interaction with somebody. So the opportunity costs that we're missing often goes undetected. And this is especially true when a lot of technology is pushing for efficiency. Human interaction is inefficient. It just is. If I'm going to ask, if I'm going to try to learn something from talking with you, that's going to be not quite as efficient as typing it on my phone. So to the extent We will squeeze out social interaction because it's not always so efficient. But what we're missing then is the uplift we get when we actually connect with other people from relatively minor offlifts to more major ones. And because you're missing interactions, you don't know what you're missing.

So let's think about how we're having this conversation around the individual state. And I've learned from you that loneliness isn't actually the best description of it because you can be alone and not be lonely as well. When we think about this, again, I ask you if it's phenomenal or if it's more a condition that we're more recently able to measure, I asked that from a place if we take ourselves back to our childhood, right? Many adults, most adults today, had some form of a device when they were children to play with. I don't remember the old toys when they did it like this and it was You know that mechanical, uh, I think, right, more mechanical tech, but they grew up and it kept them quiet while the family get whatever they needed to do other than run behind them on a track. Do you think the way we've introduced the efficiencies, as you say, as well as the entertainment, has had a negative impact to what we're saying or has it offered some positive value because everybody's questioning now. Think about this doctor. I have two grandchildren. One will be two years old in April and the other will be two years old. in July. Each of my adult kids in their spouses have ideas about how they want their kids to interact. Up to an including whether they get to watch Ms. Rachel. Okay. I don't know if you're familiar with Ms. Rachel. But for any of our family who are not familiar with Ms. Rachel, I personally think she's an incredible lady who gives wonderful learning experiences that are As long as adults are engaged with the kids as they watch it, but back to my question, do you think that the use of devices while they may have impacted some of the negative state of where people are? And I'm putting negative in quote, do you think they also have had some positive impact on how we are alone when we choose it?

This technology is a tool and, like any tool, depends how you use it, that's absolutely true. The data on kids and well-being, for instance, suggests that it's not so much the presence of a screen that's necessarily problematic. It depends what you're doing with the thing. So if you're spending time on social media, which involves a lot of social comparison, which involves a lot of selection for folks who are hostile and hard to get along with, that's who tends to show up on social media, that's gonna be bad for you. The mental health data on that, I think are pretty clear, that's not a positive way to use it. But to the extent that you're, call in mom occasionally on the phone or call in your kids, right, to the extent that you're using your voice to actually create connection It allows you to maintain connections that you might not otherwise so so yes, and you know, and when it comes to say television This again, too, depends on how you use it. There are some analyses that economists have done that look at what happens to test scores with the introduction of television. And the answer is it depends a little bit on where it's introduced, too. In places where the environment was not that enriched in the home, television so my my daughter my daughter is ten years old she uses fair bit of sign language and we watch a different Rachel who does signing time and those those television programs are fabulous for her

And so if you're a little grandson, does signing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's teaching, she's teaching words and music and sign, all they've graded in a very play.

I think we're talking about the same Rachel. I think we're talking about the same Rachel, yes. And if you're substituting something that's educational and rewarding, then that can be as good as school for some kids. But again, it depends on what the alternative is. I think the challenge is that in theory, TV and screens can operate this way. What social scientists in behavioral scientists want to know is what does it actually do just in practice?

Mm-hmm, right?

And in practice, when kids get a phone, these days at least they tend to go to social media if they can. That's not likely to be good for them. When my daughter sits down in front of television, she wants to watch more and more and more because the television programs are highly attuned these days to be maximally engaging. Yeah, and rewarding for people, it's a little like, you know, if you souped up Tylenol to be an addictive substance, you would, you know, take this thing that In theory could be helpful for you to, you know, to deal with pain and turn it into something like fentanyl, which, you know, has its uses too, but can also be hugely problematic. And I think that the challenge that we're facing with alternate technology is that it is moving to a way in a direction that's becoming both not a very positive experience in the long run collectively and also an addictive substance.

Yeah, and and just staying along this this train of thought for a minute doctor, you know, my business is about escorting people in their job and career searches and we've noticed that soft skills are what are most sought after now by. employers and that's pretty dramatic from when I first started in the business where it was the hard skills and the learning assets that you brought to the interview that would determine whether you got the job. With companies asking people to move more and more now toward in office then even hybrid where you work a few days at home in a few days at the office and um, companies are finding that people don't want to interact. So we're seeing it in the workplace, not just in the home space that you're referring to. One of your findings is that even after someone has a genuinely good conversation with the stranger, they're not updating their expectations about the next stranger. And, um, that suggests that we are seeing when to resist the any lesson

Yeah, so we have this this is a puzzle for us in our research if connecting with other people is generally a surprisingly positive experience that is having a conversation with a stranger on trains or buses or cabs in Chicago or in London or in China. as we found or having a deeper conversation than you might normally have is more positive than you expect. Why do our expectations remain overly pessimistic? You might have a nice day at the office, but tomorrow you don't want to go back because you don't think you'll replicate it. Why? Let's just stick to the simple conversation, simple conversation space, first rather than the more complicated workspace. Just take a simple conversation, talking to strangers turns out to be more positive than you expect. Why don't people? So one thing is that in daily life, the data that we get is often biased. We're really, really, really good as human beings at learning things when we get great feedback about something. So let's say we lined up 100 people in front of me and I had a conversation with every one of them Some I think I might like something I might not like I would learn what it's like talking to people in general When I was able to when I got all of that feedback when I when I got all that data daily life though isn't a kind learning environment like that. It's more often a confusing learning environment because your beliefs or your expectations guide your choices. So I would choose out of those hundred people who I wanted to talk to, who I thought would be interesting to talk to, and I would avoid talking to people who I didn't think were interesting to talk to, and that then means that our beliefs are self-fulfilling, essentially. I don't learn from the experiences I don't have. And in any domain like that, where you've got imperfect feedback, you're going to have potentially biased beliefs. But even when people do, we find, even when people do get direct experience, you have a conversation with a stranger. It goes better than you expect. People do learn just immediately, though. So right after that conversation, you might imagine that a conversation, another week from now is gonna be more positive. But we find that after that week passes, what you learned a week ago kind of disappears. And you're back where you were in your expectations a week before you actually had that conversation. So people do learn. It's like, it's like when you go to exercise, right?

And what's what I was gonna ask you? That's really good, as you were talking, I was thinking, Doctor, this has some time, I don't know if it has a knowledge to it or a relationship of any kind to it, but it's kind of like exercise where you know the result you get from it.

as a as a ritual or a regular way yeah yeah so it's a sim we think I mean there's similar patterns I don't know if it's exactly the same mechanism or not the difference between conversation and say exercise. is that conversation or social interaction involves other people, and it's my beliefs about you that drive a lot of my interest in engaging or connecting or reaching out to you with exercises just you, right? And so there may be different mechanisms going on, but the pattern seems somewhat similar. that after exercise, you feel a little better sometimes, maybe with a little delay, exercise could also be exhausting and sucky, painful at the time, but the patterns look somewhat similar. Before exercise and before a conversation, people underestimate how positive the experience is likely to be. We've never compared these directly to each other, but if you look across experiments, there's similar patterns. And then when you're about to do it again, you seem to have forgotten what you learned before on your back where you were. A couple of things seem to be explaining this. At least when it comes to social interaction, I can't speak to research on exercise. But at least when it comes to social interaction, what we find is that when people look back on a conversation they had, Actually, remember it being a little less positive than they reported it actually being afterwards. So there's a little bit of memory decay that makes it hard to learn from that. But then the other gaps that don't explain for a small amount of that decay and the rest of it, we don't understand yet.

Let me ask you this. Could it, could there be any connection from, even though I enjoy the conversation, so how has it changed my life? Do you think people, people are, waying the value of a conversation beyond the enjoyment of the moment and pushing it toward and has it changed my life.

Yeah, so that might be, that might be the case. We don't, we don't know whether people are thinking that way. We are only asking people very simply about the moment itself. In part because those moments really matter for your happiness, for your well-being and life, and also for the quality of your relationships, people tend to think about happiness as being about the big things. All right, you know, you get the nice house, you get the great job, you get the big thing this or that, and that's going to drive happiness, but actually happiness, well being looks to be better predicted by the frequency of positive events, rather than by their intensity. A small thing, somebody gives you a nice compliment, right? And, ooh, you feel great, right? You have a nice lunch with somebody where you really connect deeply with somebody. That feels great in that moment, and it's the frequency of those positive events that predicts better how happy you report your week to be, or your day to be, then the intensity of an event because everything, everything returns back to baseline, everything.

So I'm a Southern girl, Southern born, Southern raised, and thank you notes and compliments were and a regular part. I had to, I had to unlearn doctor some of the practice of thank yous and compliments and you know there's an art I believe to complimenting especially when you're in new relationships because you've got to learn other people's acceptance and culture around it. But the idea that we dramatically underestimate how much a kind gesture that speaks kind of close to my heart. Why are people so afraid to express appreciation? Is it just awkwardness or is there something deeper going on that you've been able to find?

So awkwardness is a big thing, but that describes the phenomena without really explaining it. Why do we think that writing a gratitude letter like this, which I've put in the mind the other day was lovely after class. I got another one here too, very lovely. Why do we think that expressing gratitude is gonna be awkward or somewhat odd or weird? Why do we underestimate it? To do that, we have to understand something deeper about where our perceptions come from, right? what's guiding my beliefs and what's guiding the recipients experience. Psychologists have identified that there are kind of two, at least two, probably more like three, at least, but at least two big dimensions that we evaluate each other on. One is on our worth. how honest, trustworthy, kind, caring, friendly is someone, right? That's your southern girl sort of experience, right? And the other is on our competency, right? How capable, agentic, effective, knowledgeable, are we? Okay? Now, The importance of those two things varies a little bit across context. So competency becomes a little more important when we're evaluating other people in the work world than it is in other places. But one thing that psychologists find, which is I think somewhat surprising, and really important, is that of those two dimensions, warmth usually dominates people's impressions of somebody else, particularly when you're first meeting. So I would, I would, I think go back to relearning some of your Southern mannerisms to try to, it's your warmth that people are reacting to right away, first and foremost, and your competency that they're reacting to second a little bit after they know you well. But there's a big difference a self-other difference here, which is important. We tend to evaluate ourselves in terms of our competency. we're agents after all. What's top of mind for us is what we're doing and how we're doing it. Am I being effective? You're about to start a conversation with somebody. What you're thinking about is what am I going to say? What are we going to talk about? Am I going to be able to carry this on? You sit down to write a gratitude letter to somebody. You're thinking about, well, how am I going to express this to somebody else, right? You're thinking about your competency. When other people read it, are they parsing your grammar? Probably not, right? Probably not. They're thinking about how nice it was to receive that. They're evaluating you in terms of your warmth. And I think that difference in perspective. How we evaluate ourselves and how other people of value us can explain at least some of these gaps. Because when you reach out to do something that actually creates a connects people with each other. right, that creates a stronger relationship with another person. Those are inherently warm acts, right? I'm trying to have a conversation with you, a nice conversation with you. I'm trying to have a deep meaningful conversation with you. I'm calling you up on the full phone to talk to you with my voice rather than talking to you. I'm being honest with you, which is a sign of respect and that I trust you and that I care about you. Those acts are inherently warm and if I'm focused on my competency instead, for a warm act, I'm going to tend to underestimate how positive it's going to, how positively it's going to affect you.

Well, let's think about this because that first of all, just absorbing that is tremendous for us. I think especially where we live today, where more often now, the people we meet aren't people, we would have grown up with or had a personal or cultural relationship too. And I know growing up, I heard it often, put yourself in their shoes and most of us have heard some form of that. Now, you found that this advice taken literally often doesn't And can actually make us worse than understanding someone. That's pretty bold. Are you leaning in around the idea of appropriation when you say it doesn't work or Well, bottom line is just walk me through via.

Yeah, so let me, let me just describe our, the research we've done on this. Um, so psychologists for decades have studied this really unique bit of mental gymnastics that we can do. So I can jabeate put myself in your shoes and imagine what it's like to be you as best I can. I can I can imagine myself as another person at a different time. I can imagine myself on the on the Lewis and Clark expedition. ages ago. I can do that, right? And doing that, psychologists have learned, has a lot of effects on people. It makes people feel more similar to someone else when I put yourself in their shoes. It makes me feel like I'm more connected to you in some way. It makes me feel like I understand you better, right? And implicit in a lot of this is also the assumption that I can then understand you actually better. Like I could, if I put myself in your shoes right now, I could predict your thoughts and your beliefs and your attitudes better because I have imagined things from your point of view. But psychologists hadn't actually tested that part. That is so commonly believe. It kind of counts as common sense that when I put myself in your shoes, I'll understand you better. But this hadn't actually been empirically tested. And so we tested it. In fact, when we started testing this, when we started doing this, we expected, we predicted that we would see increases in accuracy. being able to predict somebody else's thoughts or beliefs better after I did this engage in perspective taking that one I didn't. And we just didn't find that. We didn't find it in simple things like I show you somebody's facial expression, put yourself in their shoes and tell me what they're feeling. We weren't any more accurate guessing what was on their thoughts or with spouses, right? So we brought in married couples and we had one person fill out a survey Like kind of big preference questions like I would rather spend a night at a party Got to go to a party then spend a quiet night at home or I would rather spend a weekend in London than in Paris Or I often feel that our families too heavily in debt these days Okay, and for each of these questions people indicated the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with them on a scale And then what we had them do has had their their spouse or romantic partner predict how their partner would answer those very same questions. And then we just look at how well they can do it.

And it turned out No, it didn't show. Like the old game.

Exactly. Exactly. It's like the newlywed game for science. That's what it is. Okay, and we had we had three conditions here in these experiments. One condition I just predicted what my spouse believed. Another condition I put myself on my spouse's shoes imagined what their day was like today recognizing that their perspective might be different from or on the standard thing that psychologists do to encourage perspective taking. And we found that doing that didn't actually increase people's accuracy. If anything, that got a little worse. We ran 25 experiments on this. 25 testing this in every possible way that we could. And the negative effect wasn't reliable in every single experiment. But across the 25, if anything, people were a little less accurate. But they were also a little more confident. that is they believed they had done a little better when they engaged in perspective taking then when they hadn't but just were wrong about that part of it is I mean think about what's happening in your in your brain in order to truly understand you better, I need to acquire some new information. And perspective taking isn't necessarily acquiring new information that I didn't have before. It's just kind of moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic, like it's not this sorting stuff that's in my brain already. It's not the case that engaging in perspective doesn't overcome some initial thoughts, but as far as we can tell, once you're already thinking about it, engaging in perspective taking isn't making you better.

Well, I guess it is proven that we're all individuals, though, in a time when we start to think, maybe we just want to follow each other, you know, or me style. Dr. You teach MBA students at one of the top business schools in the world, and you have a course called Designing a Good Life. What does that mean to you when we consider this is the conversation we're having inside of a business school? what's telling you that students are actually hungry for?

Well, let me answer the second question first, and then I'll answer the first question second. So why are students hungry for it? To be clear, my course is an ethics course. It's a course, designing a good life. The emphasis is on good there. Good in terms of three senses of the term. I guess I'm actually answering the first question first. And then, I could question today. So designing a good life, good in three senses of the term, it means, doing good at work, like being successful at work, good in that sense. That's one sense in which I think our MBA students want to live a good life. They want to be successful at work. Second, is they'd like to be proud of what they did. They'd like to feel like they're doing something that's ethical. People tend not to feel good when they're doing things that they think are on ethical or were pad that hurt other people for their own personal gain.

Oh, oh, oh, so Dr. we have a saying in my community we can do well and do good at the same time. Are we leaning into this idea now?

Very much leaning into this idea. That's the first half of my first lecture is what the business case for ethics is. it's long run sustainability and you know this at any business person knows this right you can cheat and deceive and lie and hurt people and get ahead for a little while in the short run but in the long run that just doesn't work like you can't you can't lie to you can't lie to people all the time and expect to get to head or even occasionally. and expect to get to head. It doesn't work well for the long run. You know that anybody who's been involved in business for more than six months knows that, okay? So yeah, so that's the, those are two senses of, of, of good. And the third one is that I presume our MBA students want to feel good. They'd like to be happy. And so the question that kind of governs this whole course is, do these three senses of good? Are they aligned with each other? Does doing good lead to doing well in business? The answer, I think, from the data is yes and the long run. And from, I think, any business person's long-term experience, yes and the long run. And then, as doing good, feel good, that gets to a lot of the work that we've done in our work about, and many others in psychology as well about the effects of being on your own well-being. Strengthening your relationships, doing the thing that connect you with positive positive people is what makes us feel good. And then the bulk of the course is really about then how do you design organizations? that help people be better than they might be otherwise. Thinking about ethics, not as something about people's beliefs, but rather something about the design of a context that they're in. And how do I know that there's demand or interest in this? My classes sell out. There's a cap on them, and the classes tend to be full. I don't know how many, more sections I could provide than this, but at least when I teach, I can get 195. out of our probably 800 and some students to sign up.

Well, that's incredible, and certainly I'd love to audit one of your classes. You know Dr. Nick and my work building a company I've hired so many people over 40 years and one of the things that I've learned is that ethical failure usually isn't about bad people though It's about bad circumstances or bad occasions. Now you've written about at the excessive design problem. Will you talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah, so by design, we mean exactly the kind of thing that you are talking about. People tend to think about ethics in terms of traits of a person. They're kind of good folks in their bad folks. And there are some true things to that. But I refer in my class to this as a myth about morality. People's traits or trait measures are less predictive of people's behavior than you might imagine. There's a lot more variability across context and situations and the context you're in tends to have a bigger effect on how you behave than people expect that it will. So I think the constructive way to think about ethics is not as a person problem, which is the way we typically think about it. We've got to get the good people and not not recruit the psychopaths or the folks who are prone to unethical behavior. We don't want to have those folks in the organization. But I think a more important thing, or at least an Folks aren't black and white in the sense of all good or all bad. We're all kind of gray people. We have capabilities, right? So each one of us somewhat intuitively knows that about ourselves, that at our worst, we can, in certain moments, be bad people, right? We know we have that capability. At the other times, when we're in our best, we can do amazing things. And so treating ethics as a design problem, rather as a booty for a person problem, means thinking about what is the context in which people are working or living. And how can we design that context, that environment, that organization in such a way that it makes people or helps people to be as good as they could possibly be?

So then let's take that further, because I work with a lot of high pressure companies who are looking for top talent. think about this when we dehumanize people and by that I mean we stop seeing the mind behind the face of the heart but meet the head. What kind of conditions are creating that and is a high power performing team or a high pressure company actually fertile ground for dehumanization?

Oh that's interesting. I don't know that we have focused on that in our trying to think about research that touches on that really well. I mean, did some extent that people are focusing on efficiency and outcomes, as opposed to the person underlying them, that's kind of a classic way in which we can overlook the mind of another person. Their experience, think about them as a commodity, a more of an object than as an actual human being. So I think there certainly is some truth to that. What we find in our work is that your mind is not something that I can see. I can't experience your thoughts or your beliefs or your attitudes. I have to infer that from what I do see. And the context that we interact with people through can make it easier or harder to see the mind of another person. So one of the big cues, for instance, that we have that can access to the mind of another person. is the presence of their voice. Or if you speak sign language, actually you're signing, mimics many of the same features parallel with the cues that call it a person's voice, interestingly, a person's voice actually contains mind in it we find. It contains things like it conveys how thoughtful you are. It conveys that you are thinking or reasoning about a problem. I speed up and I slow down, right? It contains information about how enthusiastic I'm feeling about something through my intonation. That's variability in the picture, the tone of my voice, right? That's a strong work.

That is one of the reasons why songs work right they hit you a little bit right they make you feel a little bit of emotion that's part of it like if I asked that from the from the business case of let's say around remember the song we are the world. I think it was like the third song of this nature to really bring different people together and create voices that. compelled people to give money toward a cause and an outcome. So it really was a quick business that had a very fast and a vast success. That's what I'm asking you when you talk about voice. Can a song, kind of, you know, a person's voice, can, you know, you hear people talk about when the, what did they call them? The movies, the first talkies, when the first movies with sound came out and how people who've been very successful in one, then you a platform, didn't make it in another because of voice, is any of that part of where you're going with how voice can, can convey mine, but also can compel response.

Yeah. So we haven't studied song in our experiments per se, in part because song is kind of a fixed structure. What we study is just natural voice. So we ask questions like, if you're a job candidate, you're applying for a job. You're giving somebody an elevator pitch. Would you rather talk to the person or type to the person? Ah, the sound, more intelligent, more capable, more effective, more high-ribal. When we do that, about 80% of people typically say, how do I rather type to the person then talk? People are focused on their competency. They think they're going to get their words right. What they miss is what else the voice contains beyond the specific words we're using. When we actually have our MBA students here, at the University of Chicago talk to people who are imagining being recruiters or we present their elevator pitch to Fortune 500 folks working in HR offices who are doing hiring for living and we ask them to rate how high-ribal is this person and also kind of how much mine do they have? How intelligent? how rational, how reasonable, how capable of experience in motion are they? People actually are evaluated more positively when you hear what the person has to say. Then when you read exactly the same content, or when you read an elevator pitch that they have typed to the minimum. And so I think the important insight there is that our voice contains social cues. And mindful cues, cues about the presence of our thoughts and our beliefs and the fact that we can have thoughts and beliefs, it conveys that we are alive, essentially on the inside, because our voice moves, moves up and down, it speeds up just like I tell that you're alive physically, right, that you're biologically alive, you're not in your head at me right now, right? I can tell that you are alive because you are moving. your voice contains those cues to mental life as well. So people see more thoughtful, more intelligent, more rational. When you hear what they have to say, then when you read the same thing, and that people that we don't seem to appreciate, the power of those additional cues, suggests that we sometimes are going to make decisions about how to communicate with somebody unwisely. We're going to choose the type off the email, rather than catching them on the phone,

That's really amazing, and I remember when we were considering if we were losing any value in a relationship or communication by doing it on the phone versus doing it in person. So these different levels, I think, are just amazing to witness in today's environment. Dr. Nick, you've invested so many years studying why humans see minds and things that don't cars and storms for instance, now millions of people are having deeply personal conversations with AI and are working with them as team members on jobs and assignments. Based on everything you know or that you've learned over this process, what do you believe is actually happening with and to these people?

So I think what is happening is people are genuinely thinking about AIs in largely the same way that they think about other people. And I think the connections that they are forming are as real as the kinds of connections that you could form with another person. Psychologists and computer scientists going back decades to Clifford Nass, who was a computer scientist at Stanford proposed that, you know, our mental structures are psychology isn't as sensitive to whether somebody is actually a human being or not in how we treat them. It's driven a lot by the extent to which they act and look and behave in ways that are similar to a human. Human behavior will be treated as human and you will get all of the same kinds of psychological consequences from that This is why, you know, you can watch a movie and feel very emotionally moved feel very connected to somebody at some level You know, it's not real. You know, the person is is is is faking it is just acting and yet at another level you don't. At another level you really think that this person, Russell Crowe, is really a tough guy, even as being asked to just play that role in a movie, whereas somebody like Tom Hanks is just really thoughtful and caring even again though he's being asked to play that in a movie. So, I think what's happening with AI is that we're developing systems that mimic human intelligence and human behavior, particularly now that it's able to speak, that that approximates human behavior in a way that people are not going to distinguish human from AI very much.

Years ago, when I visited Sweden, I attended a conference and one of the things that I left was such an impact that I couldn't define how I felt about it. They had done a study and it's my understanding. It was a vast and legitimate study across young adults who identified as male. I forget that exact ages, but I think it kept at age 35. And one of the questions they asked them that the one I'm referencing now hum with me even to today, it still is with me, was if they preferred to have an AI designed mate over a human mate. I forget the number, but it was in the 80 percentile one at the AI mate. And I discredited part of it is just, they were going to be, you know, prankster in the answer because they're young and, you know, at that age, I don't care. I got later in life to get a human, but it still was a big number, doctor. and it stayed with me. And I share that with you to ask you, is there any version of future connection with AI that may worry you or conversely, that doesn't worry, maybe excite you. So it's, I don't want it tipping into the you and not your study, I understand I'm not going to be personal in this answer, as step away from the study a little bit.

So I worry about humanity a lot more than I worry about individuals. And by that I mean that at the individual level, AI can be designed to be an amazing human being. In fact, optimize better. In fact, than a typical human being, it won't argue with you, it will always be nice to you. It will be funny to you. It can be purely hedonistic. That is, in a way that makes you feel as good as you can possibly feel. And so, you know, and there can always be somebody you can talk to, to reveal your deeper secrets to and stuff. It will not pick you up off the floor when you have a heart attack at one in the morning. It will not give you a shoulder to cry, but you know, you can talk to it and it can do that. We'll not have a child with you. It will not do the things that bring a lot of meaning in our lives, so I think ultimately it's a little like taking drugs to feel good. Drugs can be hacked in ways that make us feel fabulous in the short run. I think AI could be done to do that. And even to mitigate things like grief, I have seen and talked with people who have created AI agents out of their dead spouses. And I resonate with, I feel that 100% my wife and I, Janet, I've been married 30 years as of this year. If she were to pass unexpectedly, I could totally see myself recreating her to handle that grief. 100% I could see that. uh... uh... that depends who you ask folks at open AI and uh... anthropic some of these AI companies think that they do feel consciousness um... i'm gonna hunt on that one uh... i'm glad you can't because i was gonna follow you up with your answer was yes what would be well then gen AI

What Janae would she, would it be you may, would it be a not a few managed to leave her breathing when you pass unless you agent it yourself? Yes, right.

That doesn't have to, yes, those are the thought experiments people have. I was a philosophy undergrad major, but I am not. as deeply in sconce than to consider that to have consciousness. I think, and the easy out of that is to say, is that consciousness comes from a biological brain? It does not have it, therefore, it is not conscious, right? But that's the easy out. But for society, I'm not sure how we function when none of us are actually interacting with each other. is you need to cooperate and work with each other in order to build things, to create things. You have to be able to learn how to handle conflict. If you're going to interact with real human beings, so unless all of us go off and live and our own little isolated bubbles with our computer screens, this is a bad thing for our society. I think.

Well, when stuff is hurting outside or not quite going the way you wanted it to outside or just too fast for you, that little screen sometimes gives you a feeling not just a comfort, but a power because you get to control where you're going, what you're or do you? I don't know. Yeah. Your book, a little more social, lands right in the middle of what many people are calling a loneliness epidemic along, you know, with you. that just those small daily choices to connect or what actually moves the needle and how we live humanely and with enjoyment, what's one thing somebody listening to day in our family could do tomorrow that your research says will genuinely matter.

Talk to a stranger.

beautiful.

That's one thing. Another one, another one, is give somebody a compliment. And that's probably the easiest thing to act on. Interestingly, we find that a lot of people don't actually have opportunities to talk to strangers. But we almost all have a chance on any given day to keep an eye out for something we appreciate about somebody else and tell them about.

Well, you know, when you say, give them a compliment, talk to a stranger. If you aggregate that into an experience, my husband shared with me someone who worked for him once had and she'd come in the office that day and with people who she admired and worked alongside, she was complimented because she looked so good, she'd gone out you know that in her handbook. She really looked great and then he said she walked out for lunch and she brought left out of the office with the little legs of pep in her step and came back completely deflated and he asked her was anything bothering her head and I think occurred he needed to know about and just quickly to share with you she became so downhearted Because the lady who was pushing the basket, we used to call them back people who lived on the street, you know, the unhoused. And she was an early-day form of that in Los Angeles, California. She had cursed the lady out who worked for my husband and told she'd ask for money, the lady didn't give it to her. And she told us she looked rotten and, you know, that dress you wearing is awful for you. She wasn't so disturbed about the presence of the lady's energy in how she talked about that. She had, I mean, it was about her outfit because she got so much compliment about it earlier. And so I think we need to take to heart deeply when you say give someone a compliment that it's not self-serving. It's not a false phrase, sometimes it's an uplifting, it's a very humane thing to do and I'm grateful to you for sharing that.

Let me unpack that just a little bit so when I say give a compliment or express gratitude the things that psychologists find that lift us up personally and lift somebody else up are the authentic things. So you mentioned earlier being raised as a southern girl, lots of compliments but a lot They're not necessarily genuine, right? When we ask people, what percentage of the time would you say you have, you keep compliments to yourself, where you have kind thoughts that you don't share with others? People say about 40% of the time. Right? That's a, that's a pretty big number. It will keep you to themselves, right? And we're not talking about inauthentic praise that people, we're talking about authentic kind thoughts that people could share with others and they're not, those are the thoughts that you want to be sharing, right? Those authentic kind thoughts, express, if authentic expressions are gratitude or honesty or interest or concern, those are the things that matter, those are things that pick them up. But at the same time, the opposite, the criticism, the opposite of compliments, right? The insults, those also cut us really badly, right? And so that social praise and criticism is what matters a lot, but that means that you can lift other people up more than you might imagine by sharing a kind thought when you have it. A genuine kind thought.

I love that so much, and I love that science, your science. is supporting that. I think you said that you care so much about humanity, the individual, you're, I, I shouldn't worry that way, that your focus was on humanity. I just think that's, I'm so grateful to you for that. Before we go for for, I, I, one more question if you'll indulge me that. Dr. Nick, has your own research changed you? I mean, is there something you now do differently in your own life or in your relationships with your family as well as strangers because of what science has taught you?

So how long do we have?

So there's nothing.

There's no research I've ever been involved with. That's changed how I live my life more than this work that we have. And what we refer to as under-sociality people, not being social enough for our own good and large part about the power we have to lift people up or optimistic enough about how well social interactions will go when we actually reach out to engage with another person. I've done change my life in lots of ways from things that are little to things that are much bigger. So little things, for instance, I talk to people. I don't have anxiety about engaging with people anymore. I can talk to anyone anywhere at any time about anything when the topic comes up. When the opportunity arises, I don't ask questions about what they're doing or what is happening in their life often ask questions about why. Why are you working? Why are you doing this rather than something else, right? So if you ask why questions you get deeper and you start asking people about their thoughts and their beliefs and their emotions and their hopes and their dreams, I get to those quickly. Even very small things like when I walk into my office here. at the University of Chicago. So I'm up on the fourth floor of the business school building. I've got about a 200 yard walk from the door to my office. I have taken on that walk as a kind of a hollow walk. So when I get to the office, I get to my head down, I get to my office, I get here to start working. And I realized at some point that I was missing opportunities to connect with people that wouldn't take any extra time. that wouldn't take any extra energy. I'd still get up here at the same time. But I just walk by and say, hello to people. I've basically, you get to know everybody in the building when you start doing that. And I've had colleagues who, you know, Virginia's down the hall for me, Eric's down the hall for me. Jane is down the hall for me. My faculty colleagues who I feel more connected to, and we'll pop by my office more routinely because they're here in the morning, and I say, hi, do I? right? That's a little thing, right? But it matters. But, you know, even really big things like we've adopted three children over the years, and most recently our youngest daughter, Lindsay, That decision to adopt was really driven in a meaningful way, at least for me, by what I think of his day to driven courage, that this was going to turn out better than we might that I might have feared at would. We lost the baby with Down syndrome on July 11, 2016. We had already named her Sophie By then, that decision was, that experience was brutal. The worst thing that's ever happened to my wife and I. Three months before that, when we got the Down syndrome diagnosis, we had to grapple with that, right, to be clear. My wife grappled with that in a way that was different from the way I did, and I was there. to support my wife what she wanted to do, but I was really struggling with how having the child with an intellectual ability would affect their lives and her family and could I handle this and would it ruin my life essentially? We started calling up other families who were raising kids with Down syndrome because I know that taking perspective doesn't work very well that if I want to understand what's on them, you know, what I'd be like in a different situation, I want to get perspective from somebody who's actually there. And these families were almost to a person, felt like they were reading off a script. They were describing their kids who had down syndrome as a blessing in their lives. An unexpected blessing and a change the way they view the world in lots of ways. So we were ready to go when we lost our daughter. And we mourned that loss for many months. And we were still in just this kind of awful moment of grief. And I went, went into my wife one morning, she was sitting in our sunroom. We have a lot of two leather chairs there. We'll sit and have coffee together in the morning. And I remember walking in one morning and I told her, we were ready to have another child. We were ready to go. We could do this again if you wanted to. And she said, as usual, my wife was five steps ahead of me as she often is, she'd already actually made a call to an adoption agency in Washington, D.C., who she said would allow us to adopt a child with an intellectual disability, with Down syndrome from China. And I have to say that's not where my mind was at the moment. I was not imagining that that was something that we could do. And so then I was at that moment was struck again by the fears that you sometimes have anything about reaching out to another person. Except this was ratcheted up a hundred times. This wasn't, you know, if I try to talk to you on the train or an abuser cab with this stranger is just going to go, well, this was What happens when I reach out to pull this child into our lives? Hmm, I will let go for it. So this is just magnified, wonderful, but I could feel, I could see, I could think about all the same. fears that I was seeing, you know, in 10,000 data points at that point, that people were getting wrong, just not optimistic enough about how this would turn out, and they kept hearing the voices of folks we had called who said, oh, blessed they were to have this child in their lives. And so, um, That was a moment where I felt comfortable going ahead. I had data driven courage here. And it's going to sound weird. If you're not a researcher, if you're not a scientist, it's going to sound maybe weird to think that watching what happens in my experiments and my research is going to impact the decision like this that I would make in my personal life. But I believe our data, I believe our results. And I believe them at that moment, these fears that I had about reaching out were overblown and that this is going to work out better than I might imagine and that gave me courage to go ahead with my wife and this and Lindsay is now here's a got a picture of her right here. That's my wife. That's my wife and our Lindsay. She has just as every parent told us in ways that I kind of imagined in some ways, but in lots of ways that I didn't, she's phenomenal. So yes, this work has changed, I live my life, in ways that are both small, day-to-day moment to moment, but also really, really big things too.

Dr. Nick, well, thank you for sharing that. I think it's so teaching, it's beyond illuminating, and my question was for you. has your research changed your life. I think your research has changed mine in some ways too. Thank you very much.

And welcome.

Let me read for a moment before we go to the book. Oh, my God. I know that's it.

Yeah, I know that can be a little heavy. It was, um, yeah, she's amazing. Let me tell you, let me tell you what it's also uplifting. Can I tell you one quick story about, um, I really see it. So we do all this research about, about how folks are anxious or nervous about reaching out and engaging with others and part because they're worried about how other people will respond. Our Lindsay doesn't really have that. So Lindsay has a lot of first thoughts, she's very social, but she doesn't have the second thought fears. And that can be so fabulous like in her classroom, so we've been very pleased most of the time. Her teachers really believe and including her in the classroom, and she is really, They were in her class. She's in third grade. They were having a Presentation so all the kids were having to come up and talk about their favorite animal. They created a poster of their favorite animal Lindsey loves Peppa Pig and so Peppa Pig was her favorite animal and All of the kids you know they're third grade. So they're now thinking about what others think of them And so now public presentations are nerve-racking for them. And they get anxious, and they get nervous. Lindsay felt none of that. She was just so excited. She's so excited to get up and talk about her pep a pig, her pig poster that she had made. And so when they would spin the wheel, come up on a person's name, to come up. Lindsay was so excited. She just changed the tender. of that class and so made these other kids instead of fearful and nervous much more excited about going up. They interpreted it more as a challenge rather than as a threat and I see your do that kind of thing. All of she's the most fun person ever to go grocery shopping with because she has no filter on her hello.

There's so much that you've given me, and I'm sure the family listening in this conversation, Dr. Nick. I'll tell you one thing. No, I'll tell you two things that I'm going to leave here with right now immediate and loud. that is data-driven courage will be a part of my conversation with my teams as soon as this afternoon as you're talking in the morning and the other thing that I will live with is live like Lindsay. I'm going to lose that that that that second. That's a good one. That's a good one.

I need to make a t-shirt.

Live like Lindsay baby, lose that second down. Go, lose that second down process. Should we go 4 to 4?

You bet. You bet.

Okay. So don't you think I'm going to ask you four questions and there no wrong answer. You'll give me. you're for answers to each. And the first question is, you're going to host the dinner. You're going to have anyone present at that dinner you like, past your present, since we are living in that age, let's not make them agente, though. Let's be human and who's at your table?

Well, I have to tell you, given how hard I thought about this, I think there were wrong answers because I was imagining something that were wrong. So, all right, so here are my four. First of all, Jesus Christ, I was raised in the Lutheran Church, I got questions. Second, Socrates, because who do you want to do to entertain a little bit? Somebody who asked really good questions, he is like, You know, historically good at asking questions, so I thought Socrates, you want somebody who's really good thinker, how's the philosophy of majors and undergrad, so I'm inviting a manual comp as well. He's a good, good reasoner, and then finally, you need somebody to keep the piece a little bit, folks who have been through hard times and brought people together, so I'm going to have Nelson Mandela there as well, so that's my four. Wow, I know what I'd serve him for dinner, but that's my four.

Hey, you know what, so that you can have a woman at the table, I'll serve dinner and I'll do it with great and pleasure. I'm on a thank you. Fantastic. Thank you. That's a great dinner list. That's one of the best dinner lists ever. So Nathan is helping to host us to this podcast. And we don't see him right now thought to make, but you did meet him before we start with the conversation. Yeah. I'll tell you right now. He's probably jumping up and down with joy. Not only around your dinner list because it's so cool that I know we're going to have a conversation about it after, but also because you shared so much because he's a new father. And right before you came out of the waiting room, he took his maybe Alice away from the screen. He was sharing with me and there somewhere in Brazil enjoying life right now. So that's fantastic. Show me the two for four. Okay, what for pieces of music are you listening to right now that you can share with the audience and why.

All right. So I'm going to tell you legit here what's what's going through my, uh, through my card. So that's mostly when I listen to music. Sometimes I'm working, but listen, I'm listening to music. So Ben Rector is one. So he's a folk singer. I like him. Luke Holmes is a country music singer.

My kids are going to be embarrassed to have me say that that's okay Mine won't be embarrassed by me because they had no longer embarrassed nor shot by anything I do or say and I'm right with you there And he's he sings a lot about fatherhood

You know, as a father of five resonates with me a lot, and I also, I spent a lot of time outdoors in the country, and so that that I'm with you the the third is Prince and that's might be an unusual except Lindsay loves Prince.

I can hardly wait to tell my sister Trish because Brits is her number one.

Lindsay is all about when Duff's cry and crying and yeah, she's delirious, she's a big fan of.

She's seen any video. or has she only heard the music?

Only heard the music, so we play Shope Shope last from music. When we're in the music.

It starts to watch video, and you show her some of this video to his songs, and you'll have a lot of choices, so you'll have to be discreet in how you... Yeah, that's right. But the color and the... that the way the visuals follow the instrumentation, I think she's going to enjoy and you'll be giving her a full experience. Well, the first of so good in proud of it.

The first thing I'd watch is is a Super Bowl halftime show of this.

There's nothing more iconic than it would have been in the rain. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

That's what I was thinking about when I said that. Yeah.

Yeah. In fact, we have one car. So we've got a little, this we refer to this sometimes as our midlife crisis car. It's a little mini convertible, a Cooper mini convertible that we bought, which we keep as kind of a spare. And she actually refers to that as the crazy car because it's got a CD in it. We have an old CD player. And we always play Princess Song Let's Go Crazy. in a minute. So she calls it the crazy card. So that's her.

I love my goodness. I am a Lindsey fan. I'm going to get that T-shirt. I don't know if you follow me on my socials. But let me tell you within the next two weeks, you'll see me with a live like Lindsey Fisher on my socials. Alright, I love it.

Her laugh, the last one, is also thanks to Lindsey. Is the wicked soundtrack? I traded in my old truck for a used Rivian, which is an amazing EV pickup truck and it's got an amazing speaker system. and you have never heard music sound as good as defined gravity in my truck. So, and we will blast it, she'll be back there screaming away at it. That's super fun. Anybody who walks by us has to think we're going crazy inside it, but... Oh, we went to your family, bless your family.

Oh, I love the energy, I love it, I love it. Dr. Nick, what about four books you recommend to our family? Who are listening right now?

Yeah, four books. So two from my field that have been very influential to me, one is from my PhD advisor Tom Gilovich book how we know what isn't so The book is a little older 1991 92 in that area how we know what isn't so it describes how Our psychological processes can sometimes lead us astray. Second is Dan Gilbert's book, Dan was a colleague of mine when I was a junior faculty member at Harvard called Stumbling on Happiness, describing the ways in which our efforts to seek or find happiness aren't always aligned with real happiness. Third is Judy Kettler's book, what I lied to you, the amazing power of being honest in a world that lies, which I think is really eye-opening, psychologists that learn and Judy describes this work extremely well. Psychologists have learned that honesty is really under-appreciated. honesty is a signal of warmth. It's a signal that I trust you enough with the truth. It's a signal of authenticity that people value. And you know this. How many times you have to lie to people before they come to think that you're a liar?

Yeah.

One's. And so Judy and I've used That work and her book a lot even when talking to students about how they, you know, how they treat employers like in interviews. Being honest has more positive impact than you than you than you might imagine that it would. Also, there's another book I'll add a bonus in here. Leslie John, Leslie as an HBS, Harvard Business Go Facts. They remember she just released a book called Revealing, which also describes the surprising power of opening up and sharing with other people. Okay, then the last one. is a friend of mine who I've made here at the University of Chicago. His name is Rubin Jonathan Miller and Rubin is actually a sociologist. He's in the Crown School of Social Work here at the University of Chicago and his book is called halfway home race punishment in the afterlife of mass incarceration. Rubin is a MacArthur Genius Award winner for good reason. He also was a minister, and he grew up on the South Side of Chicago and has been touched by incarceration from family members, and so have I. I have extended family members who have been incarcerated, and his book was revelatory. Wow. in understanding my relative's experience, coming out of a period of incarceration and the challenges that he is facing in the system that he is part of to coming out of that and changed a lot how I think about the consequences of incarceration, mass incarceration in particular and also more locally about my relative's life and how I approach him.

That's incredible, Listen. Thank you so much. It's perfect as it is. I'm gonna go beyond perfect and add one more book to it. And that's a little more social. I got to Nicholas that way. I'm adding that to the list. Thank you. So let's go for for for Dr. Nick and this is about advice you've shared so much with us in wisdom and I'm sure we curated advice from that distinctly what four pieces of advice do you offer our family listening right now and why and if it happens to be advice from someone who other than yourself would you please pay homage to the law?

Yeah, okay. So I will, the advice that I have is aggregated from research as best I can, I can ask your team, but I'll highlight some folks who are key in and documenting this. So, first is when it comes to happiness, it's the frequency that counts. Happiness and well-being is, I'm happiness is like a leaky tire, right? You have a positive experience and it makes you feel good, right? Connects you with somebody, but then it dissipates. And to keep the tire pumped up, you just gotta keep, you just gotta be pumpin' on. Gotta do that thing over and over. And happiness is a habit is what it is. It's a habit that produces outcomes that keep us kind of uplifted. And it's not the big things are response to positive events, sort of insensitive to them as not so sensitive in the magnitude of them, it's sensitive to the frequency. And I consider Adina, who was kind of, who was the person in psychology who told us it was okay to study happiness and well-being.

He's responsible for that, with the delayed Adina.

Great, man. Second. When it comes to social interaction, warmth is primary and competence is secondary. And that upcredits Susan Fisk, who's a psychologist at Princeton University, she's the one who's really, I think, responsible for, not always documenting that, but certainly bringing it to a psychologist's attention, that you lead with warmth and you follow with competence as a way to be often think about ourselves, the opposite way. We're focused a lot on our competence kindness and honesty and decency that matters upfront. And people don't forget, you know, negative things you do. So Susan, for that one, third, I'm not sure I have one for this, maybe I do. When it comes to your relationships, I suggest being home for dinner and going to bed with your spouse. I didn't think you would have a spouse. This I guess also follows in line with the frequency, not the intensity of things. I'm in book launch mode, so I am not doing this as well as I would like to. But I try as hard as I can when I possibly can to be home for dinner every day. So, 42, I got to go out the door because I got to catch the train home because I'm going to be home for dinner.

Yeah.

That's the time when we talk to each other. That's the time we hug. That's the time we spend time you know reflecting on the course of the day or at meaningful conversations. And if you get misaligned in those moments to connect with your spouse, you know, that's how you can drift apart. And so. regularity. Even if I'm not tired, I will sometimes go and we'll go to bed with Jen and then we'll get up and do something else. If I'm not ready to go to bed yet, I try to do those best. I can't just maintain that regularity.

Dr. I'll tell you something. While I didn't have scientific research behind me, it was just habit and example from my parents. and have it from my husband and me, my husband passed during COVID, not of COVID, we enjoyed 40 plus years together. And while there was so much sadness and grief that I necessarily experienced, having done just that. Every time we were in the same city, we were in the same bed at night. Yeah. And we were having the same meal together. And while it takes design and plan, it didn't, it never felt like effort. It felt like anticipation joy. He loved learning. He one of the things I liked most about him was his continuous learner. how do I say that in the context of your third piece of advice? It's this. I know what you said works. You talked about data-driven courage. There's some data-driven evidence. Well, because if we are sitting right now, happens to be our Los Angeles home and I enjoy these walls And you're waiting for me to say, yes, just wrap, right? Maybe sometimes he does, though, in his presence. And when you say go to bed with your wife, I go to bed at night. And I hug the same pillows and I'm praying they'll last as long as I do. You know, because I'd hate to have to change them. And I guess the message I'm so clumsily getting to while both of you are alive, it's so, so deeply personal and wonderful when one of us isn't alive.

Yeah, I think anybody who has been, Mary for a while certainly in my life, I have experienced this that, When things are going, when I'm not feeling great, about where things are, or when things aren't going very well, it's usually because I've kind of forgotten the thing that I need to pay close as attention to, which is my relationship with my spouse. Yes. When I'm focused on when I keep attention on that, I make sure that's okay. We've got frequent check-ins during the day, and I've been feel like we're connected, we're on the same page. I can kind of handle anything else.

Yeah.

But if I lose side of that, and I'm a little endangered, this right now is a pep talk for me at this moment with a book coming out. You pull the nalots of different directions. I have to remember to keep my focus on that as best I can to keep everything else going on.

We have a lot of humans really well.

Yes, we do. Relationships are the thing. Psychologists, you see well. And then the last one, there was one more. And that's one that has really come from all the research that we have done about a way as a way to live, I think, which I try to keep in mind a lot. And that is when in doubt, reach out. That our data don't suggest that you should be connecting more of other people all the time. It should be having deep conversation all the time that you'd be passing along every compliment you have, It's that our beliefs about how these experiences are going to unfold are not quite optimistic enough. But when you're on the fence, right? You'd like to engage with this person, but you're a little nervous how it's going to go when you're in doubt. That's when that avoids voice is likely leading you astray, and that's probably when you ought to go ahead.

You? Let me drop the mic for you. Drop your own mic, Dr. Nick. Drop your mic. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You have truly truly blessed us and from my heart to your home. God bless you.

Thank you. This was a very fun conversation. There's a lot more personal than I thought it would be, which is nice.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you.