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The Simple Habit for a Happier Social Life | Nicholas Epley | TED
The Simple Habit for a Happier Social Life | Nicholas Epley | TED
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0:04
There's a fundamental paradox right at the core of human life.
0:07
On the one hand, decades of research have shown
0:10
that we are highly social creatures
0:12
who are made happier and healthier by reaching out
0:14
and connecting with other people in the moments, the days, the weeks,
0:18
the months and the years of our lives.
0:21
And yet, on the other hand, just look around a little bit.
0:25
It's not clear that all of us have gotten this memo.
0:28
Every day there are opportunities, big and small, to reach out
0:31
and connect with other people that we choose not to take.
0:34
We avoid talking to strangers.
0:37
We lean back and type to each other
0:38
rather than leaning in and talking to each other.
0:41
Once talking, we stick to shallow talk, to small talk, rather than going deeper.
0:45
We feel grateful but don’t express it.
0:47
[We] want to reach out to offer support to someone in need but hold back.
0:51
We’d like to be open and honest in our relationships,
0:53
but all too often keep our true selves to ourselves.
0:57
If being socially connected is so darn good for us,
1:00
then why do we so often seem to be so darn unsocial?
1:04
This paradox hit me like a freight train one morning
1:07
while I was on an actual train,
1:09
commuting into my office at the University of Chicago,
1:12
where I work as a professor of behavioral science.
1:14
That morning on the train began like every other I'd been on
1:18
for years beforehand --
1:19
all filing onto the train,
1:20
everybody in a desperate search for their own little acreage of solitude
1:24
right along the window.
1:25
I think we'd have sat outside the train if that was possible.
1:28
(Laughter)
1:29
Heaven forbid you’d sit next to somebody and start a chitchat --
1:32
of course, you creep.
1:33
Or worse yet, somebody would come and sit down next to you --
1:36
surely some kind of weirdo.
1:38
But then there we all were.
1:39
Highly social creatures,
1:41
made happier and healthier by connecting with other people,
1:44
now sitting hip-to-hip
1:45
with another perfectly reasonable human being.
1:48
And what did we do for the next 30 to 45 minutes with each other?
1:53
(Laughter)
1:55
We chose to ignore each other.
1:57
You could have heard a pin drop that morning.
2:00
That morning, a woman,
2:01
who was about 15 to 20 years older than I was at the time,
2:04
sat down next to me,
2:05
dressed professionally for work
2:07
and wearing just this fabulous, killer, stylish red hat.
2:10
I'm never going to forget this red hat.
2:14
I put other people in experiments for a living,
2:16
but this morning I decided to put myself in an experiment
2:19
and pay close attention to what happened.
2:21
Instead of keeping to myself
2:22
and doomscrolling on my phone or checking my email,
2:24
I'd try to have a conversation with her,
2:26
try to help us get to know each other a little bit.
2:29
Turn this 30-minute dull ride into something a little more interesting.
2:32
Turn a stranger into a momentary acquaintance.
2:35
The second I had that thought about that experiment,
2:38
my brain started screaming at me all the reasons
2:40
why this was a really, really bad idea.
2:43
"Clearly, she doesn't want to talk to you,
2:45
otherwise she'd already be talking to you.
2:47
She's going to think you're some kind of creep.
2:49
You probably don't even have anything in common with her,
2:52
and you’ve got nothing to even start with, smarty pants.”
2:54
Nevertheless, I decided the experiment must continue,
2:57
so I ignored that part of my brain.
2:59
I turned to her and I said,
3:01
"Hi, my name is Nick.
3:03
I love your hat.
3:05
I have one just like it."
3:06
(Laughter)
3:08
Yeah huh?
3:09
(Laughter)
3:11
Now look, I know that’s not going to make its way
3:13
into the conversation-starter Hall of Fame,
3:15
but it didn't seem to matter.
3:17
She turned to me, a big smile,
3:18
her face all lit up --
3:20
she looked like a different person.
3:22
And from there, the conversation just flowed really easily.
3:25
[We] found things that we had in common,
3:27
we talked about our families, our work, our hope for the future.
3:30
30-minute train ride just went like that.
3:32
I was done, and I got up to leave, and she stopped me and she said,
3:35
"Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with me this morning."
3:40
I've forgotten a lot of details
3:42
about how that conversation actually went,
3:44
but I've never forgotten how that conversation made me feel.
3:47
Not just good, but surprisingly good.
3:50
The contrast between my beliefs about how that would go
3:53
and how it actually went was pretty sizable.
3:57
And there ... in that gap
3:59
was a potential resolution to this paradox.
4:03
Social connection, after all, isn't something that just happens to us.
4:06
It's a choice we make.
4:07
It's a choice we make at times
4:09
to reach out and approach other people, to engage with them,
4:12
or to hold back and avoid them.
4:13
It might, in fact, arguably be the choice we make,
4:16
the most important choice we make,
4:18
because how we make that choice
4:19
over and over and over again in our lives so routinely
4:22
determines so much about our happiness,
4:24
our health and our success in life.
4:27
But highly social creatures like us might avoid reaching out
4:30
and engaging with other people mistakenly
4:33
if we underestimate just how positively our attempts to connect might turn out.
4:39
That morning changed both my career and my character.
4:44
In my career,
4:46
my wonderful collaborators and I
4:48
have now conducted well over 100 experiments
4:51
with over 30,000 people of all ages and nationalities,
4:55
and found that my tendency to be overly pessimistic
4:57
is not unique to me.
4:59
It's something we see over and over again in varying shades and magnitudes
5:03
across different contexts that vary a little bit across people --
5:06
but that consistent signal is there.
5:08
In one of our very first experiments,
5:10
we went back to a train station
5:11
on the line that I ride into work every day,
5:13
and we recruited a group of commuters,
5:15
and we asked them to predict
5:17
how they would feel on the train that morning
5:19
if they kept to themselves in solitude,
5:21
or if they turned to the person who sat next to them that morning
5:24
and tried to have a conversation, tried to connect.
5:27
The results here were crystal clear:
5:28
people thought talking to a stranger was a really bad idea.
5:31
They thought they would have a more pleasant experience
5:34
that left them feeling happier if they kept to themselves in solitude,
5:37
than if they turned to the stranger to connect with them on the train.
5:41
But when we recruited another sample of people
5:43
and actually randomly assigned them in an experiment
5:45
to either keep to themselves in solitude
5:48
or to try to connect with a person sitting next to them --
5:51
rather than just imagine it, to actually do it --
5:53
we found exactly the opposite results.
5:56
The people we had instructed randomly
5:58
to keep to themselves that morning
6:00
reported having a less pleasant and happy commute
6:03
than those we asked to connect with the person sitting next to them.
6:06
People’s beliefs about social interaction here weren’t just wrong --
6:09
they were precisely backward.
6:11
But notice that if you believe that talking with a stranger would suck,
6:14
you wouldn't try it,
6:15
and then you'd never find out that you might be wrong about that.
6:19
Pessimistic beliefs in that way are self-fulfilling.
6:24
This little experiment was just the tip of a very large iceberg
6:28
that came into view for us in many ensuing years.
6:30
We've now seen this tendency to be overly pessimistic
6:33
over and over and over again.
6:35
We’ve now had more than 4,500 people
6:38
not just have conversations with a stranger,
6:40
but to have deep conversations with a stranger and
6:43
talk about things like,
6:44
"Can you tell me what you're most grateful for in your life?"
6:47
Or "Can you tell me about one of the last times
6:49
you cried in front of another person?"
6:52
So when I show people these questions in these experiments,
6:55
I can feel a sense of dread spreading over the room
6:57
when I put these questions up on the board,
6:59
people start eyeing the exits --
7:01
wishing they hadn't come to this session today.
7:03
But then when I actually put them into the experiments,
7:06
in the conversation,
7:08
the trouble I have is getting them to come back.
7:10
These conversations go much better than people expect that they will.
7:15
This is also true when we have people
7:17
who disagree about the most divisive political issues that divide us today
7:20
talk about those political disagreements --
7:22
even those political disagreements,
7:26
go better than people expect them to.
7:29
We find in our research that we have tremendous power
7:33
to create meaningful social connection every day of our lives.
7:36
But if we underestimate how positively our efforts to reach out
7:40
and connect with someone will go,
7:41
we won't use that power that we have.
7:46
We see this tendency for misplaced pessimism
7:48
also showing up beyond conversation.
7:51
When we ask people to think of a compliment
7:53
they could give to their friend
7:55
and then actually deliver that compliment to their friend,
7:58
they leave their friend feeling more uplifted
8:00
than the complimenters imagined they would.
8:02
When we ask people to express their gratitude to someone they love,
8:05
they leave their recipients feeling even better
8:07
than the expressers predict they would.
8:11
Performing random acts of kindness, reaching out and asking for help,
8:14
expressing support to someone in need,
8:17
being open and honest in our relationships
8:19
all tend to be received, on average,
8:21
more favorably, more positively by the people we're reaching out to
8:25
than the people who are reaching out expected to.
8:30
How much more time
8:31
would you spend reaching out to lift somebody up
8:33
if you knew just how much good in that moment you could actually do?
8:40
No research I've ever been involved with
8:43
has changed the way I live my life more than this.
8:46
My train rides are almost never silent anymore.
8:49
I met amazing people on planes and in cabs.
8:51
Even just walking around town is more pleasant for me,
8:54
whether I’m on campus or [at] work or in a grocery store,
8:57
because I’ve made a habit of walking around with my head up
8:59
smiling and saying hello to other people,
9:01
and I get, in return, a lot more smiles and hellos
9:04
when I'm walking around.
9:05
When I feel grateful, I write a note and send it off.
9:07
When I need help, I’m less reluctant to ask for it.
9:10
When I know someone needs some support,
9:12
I’m not as embarrassed to reach out and offer it --
9:14
even if there's nothing I can do in that moment.
9:16
It's made me a more open, friendlier person and as a result,
9:19
changed all of my relationships.
9:21
I've turned countless strangers into friends
9:24
or into acquaintances at least --
9:25
even if just for a moment.
9:27
My friendships are better.
9:29
I think my marriage is stronger.
9:32
I think I'm a better father.
9:35
These changes didn't happen to me overnight.
9:37
They happened, of course, slowly, over time.
9:39
Just like you move a mountain --
9:40
not by pushing it all at once, but one shovelful at a time.
9:43
The way you change how you approach other people happens slowly, over time.
9:47
One choice after another.
9:49
One small choice,
9:50
as you learn where your mistaken beliefs about other people
9:53
might be holding you back needlessly.
9:55
And then you develop habits that then become part of your character
9:58
and part of who you are.
10:01
Overcoming my misplaced pessimism, though,
10:04
has also affected how I've made some big choices
10:07
that I have been a part of in my life,
10:09
including when pain struck my family.
10:14
So 10 years ago,
10:16
my wife Jen was three months into her pregnancy
10:21
when we learned that our daughter, who we had already named Sophie,
10:24
had Down syndrome.
10:25
And three months after that,
10:26
we learned that our daughter had died
10:28
before she could be born.
10:31
Losing our daughter was horrible.
10:33
It was absolutely horrible.
10:35
And we mourned that loss for many months,
10:38
until one morning Jen and I were talking
10:41
and she asked whether we could,
10:43
whether we should, whether we might
10:46
consider adopting a child with Down syndrome.
10:49
And there it was, the choice.
10:52
Do you reach out and connect with someone?
10:54
Do you engage with them, do you approach,
10:56
or do you hold back and avoid it?
11:00
Jen and I had already adopted two children into our family,
11:03
and so we had some sense of how this might go.
11:05
Nevertheless, this choice caught me off guard.
11:08
I wasn't there at that moment.
11:09
My mind wasn't there yet.
11:11
And so I had all the pessimistic fears that you might have
11:13
when you think about connecting with a stranger,
11:16
or having a deep conversation with someone,
11:18
except multiplied by 100 or 1,000.
11:20
How well would this go?
11:22
Would we be able to handle this?
11:24
Would we be able to connect, to love,
11:26
to parent the stranger we were bringing into our lives
11:29
with all of these challenges
11:30
that seemed to me at the time very hard and difficult.
11:33
How would this child respond to us?
11:37
My first thought was,
11:39
I don't think we can do this.
11:41
I'm not sure I can do this.
11:43
But my second thought then started turning to my data,
11:46
as researchers will tell you, can happen.
11:49
And I started thinking about thousands and thousands of data points,
11:54
of people underestimating the joys they would experience
11:56
when they reach out to engage with, to connect with,
11:59
to pull someone else close to them.
12:02
And it gave me data-driven courage
12:05
that, yeah, we can do this together.
12:07
I happened to marry a superhero, too.
12:10
We can do this together.
12:12
And it won't just be good.
12:14
I bet it'll be surprisingly good.
12:17
And so about a year after that,
12:19
Jen and I boarded a flight to China
12:22
with our four other children,
12:24
where we were going to meet Lindsey,
12:27
two years old, born to a woman we will never meet,
12:31
with big dark eyes and just a relentless smile,
12:35
despite a really, really hard start in her life.
12:39
We reached out to Lindsey
12:41
and Lindsey reached back to us.
12:44
She's been bringing love and smiles like that into our lives for years since.
12:49
Now I want to be clear,
12:51
raising a child with an intellectual disability is hard.
12:55
It's really hard.
12:56
Lindsey is not just one handful.
12:57
She is both arms completely full.
12:59
(Laughter)
13:01
But she's also enriched and blessed our lives
13:03
so far beyond what my pessimistic expectations beforehand
13:07
ever possibly could have imagined.
13:12
Connecting with other people is one of the most consistently enjoyable,
13:16
enlightening and enriching experiences we'll ever have.
13:18
And yet, all too often, our choice to reach out
13:21
and connect with somebody is thwarted by overly pessimistic fears
13:24
about how other people might respond.
13:26
Being overly pessimistic doesn't mean
13:27
we should reach out all the time, or that it always turns out well;
13:31
of course not.
13:32
It means we tend to underestimate the likelihood
13:34
that it will turn out well, and as a result,
13:36
we tend to hold ourselves back a little too often.
13:38
I've found in my life and in my research
13:40
that testing some of those beliefs that hold us back
13:43
can reveal places where we're making mistakes about other people
13:46
and show us how to reach out,
13:48
empower us to reach out a little bit more often than we might otherwise,
13:52
to make both our own lives and those we reach out to a little bit better.
13:57
You want to change your life for the better?
14:00
I suggest keeping some data-driven courage in mind.
14:04
And when in doubt,
14:05
reach out.
14:07
Thank you so much.
14:08
(Applause)
