A Little More Social

Anita Brick:

Hi, this is Anita Brick and welcome to CareerCast at Chicago Booth. To help you advance in your career, today we're delighted. Oh my gosh, delighted is even a strong enough word. I am thrilled to be speaking with Nicholas Epley. He is the John Templeton Keller, the extinguished service professor of behavioral science and director of the Roman Family Center for Decision Research at Chicago Booth. He studies social cognition, how people who are thinking people, think about other thinking people, understand why smart people so routinely misunderstand each other. He teaches an ethics and wellbeing course to MBA students called Designing the Good Life. I have been a benefit of some of those gratitude letters that you have them right. His research has been featured by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN Wired, National Public Radio, among many others, and he is funded by the National Science Foundation and the Templeton Foundation.

He's been recognized with numerous awards, including the Theoretical Innovation Award from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology. Nick has been named Professor to Watch by The Financial Times, one of the world's best 40 under 40 business school professors by poets and quants, and one of the hundred most influential in business ethics by ethnosphere. He is the author of MindWise: How to Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want. And what we're going to talk about today, a little more social, how small choices create unexpected happiness, health, and connection. Could I start off with a memory of you? Would that be okay?

Nick Epley:

Of course. It's your podcast, Anita. You do whatever you want. Well,

Anita Brick:

But I want to be respectful of you. I remember, and you've told this story numerous times, left such a profound impression on me. You were talking about the return trip from picking up you and your wife, Jen, picking up your child in Africa, and thinking when all these people were coming out to the road from the villages thinking, "Wow, they must think that we are taking their future." And in the moment, and it was just so poignant the way you said it, I though, "What can I do?" And what you did was put the window down and smile and wave. And in that moment, they all started smiling and waving. And I think that is why all the work that you've done is so profound because while it took courage to do that, it took no money and smiles and waves can connect people who otherwise would be really disconnected.

Thank you for that. That remains a golden memory for me, as my friends would say.

Nick Epley:

A golden memory for me too, that one was out in rural Africa. We were going down a road that ostensibly was a road, but it was more of a reminder of why we needed a professional driver rather than driving ourselves. It was more like a donkey trail. And we're driving by all these people who are just staring at us almost dead-faced. And I have this realization that I'm looking at them the same way. And I decide that it seems kind of scary. I feel like we're invaders in a foreign land, but I'm looking at them like I'm invading a foreign land. And so instead I decided to change my demeanor and started waving and smiling. It's just like you flip the switch on everybody. They all started smiling and waving back. Kids started running out to the car and wave at us as we got closer or to give me a five while we were driving by slowly.

And I had this realization that just has stuck with me. I wrote it into MindWise, which is that nobody waves, but everybody waves back to you. What changed there wasn't the people I was around. It was how I was responding to the people who were around me. And when I reached out in a friendly way, they reached back in the same way. And that I hadn't recognized this upfront is I think what was the profound observation. One that I think guides a lot of our research that we talk about in a little more social as well, people not realizing the power that they have to lift other people up and connect with them by changing the way we approach other people.

Anita Brick:

I love that. Okay, so here's a barrier, and I saw it in Chicago walking from where I live to the Gleacher Center last week. There was someone who was not looking up from his screen. He was weaving in and out of traffic and people and all that. How do you break that so that someone who is so magnetized by their screen will actually be able to even see that connection that you make?

Nick Epley:

That's an interesting question. You don't have to, but one thing you can do is just say hello to the person and just see how they respond. With your head in a screen that's a little bit more complicated, an experience that I sometimes will have is we'll be seated next to somebody say on a plane or I describe a story of a good friend of mine, Tebow, who moved to Europe actually recently. He's in France now. But I got off the train one day and this guy sidled up next to me, he was kind of scary-looking and he was putting headphones in. That's the other signal that we get in modern life that other people might not want to talk to us, but it's an unclear signal. It doesn't necessarily mean that somebody doesn't want to talk to you, just means that they're putting their headphones in.

Maybe other people aren't talking to them. In those moments, you can say hello to somebody, try to engage them in conversation. And if they're interested, they'll pull their earbud out like Tebow did to me that morning on a walk into the office that started our friendship. And if they're not interested, they'll put it in and carry on. That's how you can potentially do it is just test them, try to engage with them, and maybe they'll reach back and maybe they won't. But if you don't try, they certainly won't reach back to you.

Anita Brick:

Okay. There's a boosty. I really do like connecting with people, but I can't seem to find the time. I'm in an MBA program. I travel a lot for work. I welcome your ideas because I do get lonely when I pause long enough to think about it.

Nick Epley:

Even for super busy people, it's not like I have a whole lot of extra time. But one of the thing that's interesting, one of the things that really started the research that went into the book that we've been working on for the last 15 to 20 years is noticing all of these moments in life where people could connect, not taking a lot of time. It's not hard, it's easy, but instead they're choosing not to. Sitting on the train on the ride into the office and nobody's talking to anyone, even for a moment, even just for a split sec, maybe you got some work you got to do. Okay. Could at least say hello to the person that sits down next to you. Or most of the time people aren't actually getting work done. They're just doom scrolling on their phone

Anita Brick:

And

Nick Epley:

Missing that opportunity to connect or you're walking to your gate at the airport. You're not doing anything productive at that moment, but you're walking next to somebody else, you could say hi to them and find out where they're going and just be a little social in that moment that connects you in a positive way to humanity that makes that dull moment where you're not doing anything else a little bit brighter. And paying attention to those moments, they don't have to be big things. Paying attention to those moments really matter because it turns out that people's happiness and their wellbeing comes really from a summation of those moments. It's the frequency of positive experiences that we have that really matters for our wellbeing, not so much the intensity of them. So finding those moments where you could engage easily without necessarily going out of your way, without doing anything particularly hard, it might not turn into a long-lasting friendship, but it makes a moment better than it would've been otherwise.

Those are the keys to finding the times that even busy people have to connect with others. My bet is that you would find them if you started looking for those moments.

Anita Brick:

Okay. So fear of rejection comes in here too.

Nick Epley:

A little

Anita Brick:

Bit,

Nick Epley:

Yeah.

Anita Brick:

Yeah. I mean, how do you make it a habit? Not everyone is going to pay attention. They may completely ignore us.

Nick Epley:

Yep. They might. So in fact, it turns out that one of the reasons why people are reluctant to reach out is in fact believing that they will be rejected, believing that other people on the trains and the experiments that we ran in Chicago on the trains or in the buses and cabs, believing that a stranger doesn't want to talk to you or believing that you are more interested in having a deep conversation with someone than another person is in having that conversation with you. And implicit in those judgments is the fear that you're going to be rejected. Turns out though, we exaggerate that fear. We are rejected much less often than we think. We will be because when I say hello to you, what do you tend to do back to me? When I wave to you, you tend to wave back to me. We exaggerate the likelihood of being rejected, and we don't have great data on this, but I also think we overestimate how negative it will feel to be rejected by somebody else.

This research has changed the way I live my life. I do reach out to people a lot. I talk to people a lot. I fill dull moments with kind conversations or pass along compliments. Not everybody wants to talk to me, but if they don't, it's just not a big deal. Okay, we just carry on. They're busy. Fine. That's not a problem. And the way you find out what that feels like is to try it. And when you try it, you'll do what Ja Jiang, one of the guys I talk about in the book, in chapter the book, one of the things that he learned, he set out he was an aspiring entrepreneur, fearful of getting rejected, but he knew that he couldn't carry on as an entrepreneur if he was afraid of rejection. So he decided to embark on radical exposure therapy where he was going to expose himself to being rejected every day for a hundred days in a row.

Anita Brick:

Great story. Yeah. So

Nick Epley:

He went out, he's got a great book called Rejection Proof.

He went out and made what he thought was a ludicrous request that was sure going to get him rejected every day for a hundred days in a row. And he found two things. One was more often than not, people agreed to do the crazy thing. Realized that he was rejected much less often than he thought he would be. We actually codified it. We went through all the videos that he posted and found that people agreed to his outlandish request more often than he imagined they would walk into Krispy Kreme Donuts and ask the person standing behind the counter, "If you would make a display of donuts in the shape of Olympic rings, give me 15 minutes," Jackie Braun says, the manager on duty at the time, and makes it for him. And what's more, gives it to Jah for free.

Anita Brick:

Yeah, he did. Yeah. It's funny, sometimes when we ask for things, not to digress, but in the book, he goes up to this man and asks if he can plant a tree in his yard. And the man says basically, "Absolutely not, but my neighbor across the street I think would love it."

Nick Epley:

We

Anita Brick:

Never know, and we never know how far it's going to go. One of the questions was how do you make yourself rejection proof? Is it like what he did or is it experimenting and not expecting anything or very little?

Nick Epley:

So an important insight from Jah's experience and also from our work. So Jah went into this experience, and again, this is an anecdote, so I mean I want to - Yeah, yeah. No, I

Anita Brick:

Know.

Nick Epley:

It's an anecdote, it's memorable, but we have data behind this as well. Jah set out to develop thick skin by being rejected a lot. He's going to desensitize himself to rejection. It turns out he lost his fear of rejection, but not because he got desensitized, but because he got calibrated. He learned that people are actually friendlier and kinder and more willing to help than you would ever imagine them to be than you would often imagine them to be. He calibrated his beliefs, and that's what changed his mindset and his behavior. The way you do this, I think, is through experience, repeated experience. You test the barriers, the beliefs that are keeping you from reaching out to connect with others and just test them instead of taking them as given, taking them for granted, and not even trying. What happens when you try to talk with a stranger on a plane or try to have a deep conversation with someone you've never met before?

Try to have an honest conversation in a relationship that you know that you have to have, but that you're avoiding. Just test those beliefs that are keeping you from reaching out and engaging with other people and see if they're right or not. And do that routinely. Run a little experiment on yourself and you'll learn where you're being held back by mistaken beliefs. And that's the key, I think, to changing your social life.

Anita Brick:

Agree. So Bussies are always coming up with different ideas and solutions. So here's an alum, I thought this was interesting, and he's looking for affirmation, I think. He said, "I feel like I'm in the approach avoidance conflict a lot of the time when I'm socializing. I think I might've found a more comfortable middle ground and would like to get your thoughts on this. I have a friend who's also more introverted than extroverted. What if the two of us go to social activities and introduce each other? Is that a clever booth idea or are we cheating?

Nick Epley:

Certainly not cheating. I'm not giving him a grade. And if I were, that sounds quite innovative. That works in some ways that would get you to the behavior, but it wouldn't necessarily change their beliefs.

Anita Brick:

Oh, good point.

Nick Epley:

It would maintain the mistaken belief. So it's not bad to try something like that, but it's also worth just testing. Is that belief that other people don't want to talk with you right if you actually try it?

Anita Brick:

Here's another side, and I think it's very limited, but I want to find out a little bit more. You talk about it in the book a bit. Someone said, "Sometimes the reason I don't reach out is I live in a big urban area. Sometimes it is scary. What are some signs that I should stay away? And I know you can't probably tell me that, but how do I know it's safe enough to even smile and wave like you did?

Nick Epley:

Our fear of other people I think is a little bit like our fear of sharks, which is not totally non-existent. And certainly for some women have more to fear likely with regards to physical or sexual violence than men do for sure. And so I would never want to dismiss fears or risks. However, to the extent that they create avoidance, they also can then become exaggerated. People start to worry about sharks on land, for instance. I think one thing that you would want to pay attention to is are you actually in some kind of danger? Are you alone? Obviously you want to be careful with that. Is it dark outside? You want to be careful with that if you're in a big city. But in fact, reaching out, saying hello to somebody, you can even just choose to reach out to somebody of the same gender if that would make you feel more comfortable and less fearful.

But even just if you did that, you'd probably reach out a lot more often than you already are. In fact, reaching out to connect with people is in many ways a way to be safer.

Anita Brick:

Oh, good point.

Nick Epley:

Because now you've got a friend. You're not alone in the train now that you and I are talking to each other, whereas before you were. I guess I would just assess realistically, are you actually in some kind of danger if you're alone with somebody in a cab? That is a riskier situation than if you are sitting next to somebody on a crowded train.

Anita Brick:

True. That's very true.

Nick Epley:

And then test some of the cases where you feel more comfortable, start small, test there. And even that would likely improve your life if you just took more of the opportunities where you didn't feel nervous about it and just tried it.

Anita Brick:

Well, I think those students during break, they may not know everyone in the class. It's a pretty safe environment to say hello or comment on the question they asked during class. Most people feel under-recognized and being able to do that, it seems to make sense. But here's one that I thought was interesting from an MBA student. He said, "I'm rather good at connecting except in one area, and that is networking. These coffee chats that we have at Booth, especially around advancing our careers, feel anything but connected. Any help appreciated."

Nick Epley:

The effect there is that those conversations then really aren't about connecting, they're about something else. So you can approach those in other ways, but you can't do both. I don't think you can both in those situations network and connect. You need to prioritize one of the two. If you want to feel more connected in those networking events, take an interest, I would suggest, in the person that you are talking to. Try to really get to understand him or her. Why do they love their job? Why are they interested in what they're doing? What do they hope they'd be doing in five to 10 years? Set the networking aside for a minute and really try to connect with the person that you are engaging with. That might actually help your networking in the long run because you're going to make people like you more and you might enjoy it more.

So for a student like that who goes to those events and feels like it's kind of soul-sucking, I'm imagining that's how I feel when I go to events like that where I'm talking with people, but I know they're not really interested in me. They're

Interested in something else. Change how you're behaving and actually take an interest in the person. Try to get to understand the people, get to know the people you're connecting with and see if that maybe helps. Focus less on the networking part and focus more on connecting and see if that helps.

Anita Brick:

One thing I'm curious about, what was the most surprising connection you've ever made? I know you talk about a lot of different things in the book and we talked about smiling and waving. In addition to those, is there one that comes to mind you're like, "I never thought it was going to end that way and it was really much better than I thought?"

Nick Epley:

I'll tell you two. Both of them interestingly happened in some relation to Washington DC. I don't quite know why that is, but one time I was in a cab in DC. Cab driver was Ethiopian. There's a big Ethiopian community in Washington DC because there's a direct flight on Ethiopian air from Asababa to Washington DC. And so lots of people take that flight and they just stay once they land. I was telling the driver how we had adopted two children from Ethiopia and that they were from Sadamo, which is a region in the southern part of Ethiopia. I was telling him more about where they actually lived, and it turned out that he grew up just a few miles from where they were born. Oh,

Anita Brick:

Wow.

Nick Epley:

He knew the region. So I remember very clearly singing to him in the car a song that I used to sing with kids when we first brought them home, which I think was a song that they sang at church, but I would sing them to bed with this song every night, but I had no idea what it meant. I had no idea if I was even getting the words right. I was just following their song. We would sing it together. It was very comforting for them. And I thought maybe he would be able to tell me what it meant. So I'm singing to this man in his cab. Turned out he did not know. He grew up close, but they speak lots of different dialects there. So he recognized the language, but didn't know what the words meant either. But that was a cab ride I'll never forget.

I don't think I've ever sung to another person, to a stranger like that before or since. The other one was on a flight to DC. I'd fly Southwest all the time. We just sat down wherever we could. I was sitting along the window and a woman looked like she was Chinese, sat down next to me and her husband, roughly same age, but a white guy, sat in the row or in the aisle seat. Turned out, getting to know them a little bit. He worked for the Department of Energy in Washington DC, had met his wife after the Vietnam War. He was a soldier in the Vietnam War, fell in love with her in the war, went back. She was on the border between Vietnam and China. Went back, asked her to marry him and brought her back, and they've been married for 50 plus years.

Wow. She teaches English as a second language to kids in a disadvantaged community in Washington DC. And he worked for the Department of Energy and was one of only a handful of people who had been inside the North Korean nuclear arsenal when they were running checks on that some years ago. We got so connected over that conversation. They invited me to come and stay at their house while I was in DC and to have dinner with them and to spend the night with them if I wanted to avoid being alone in a hotel room. It turns out I had to speak that night, so I couldn't do that. But I will never forget the sweetness of that conversation, how kind of amazing it was to have met these two people who you would never guess had led such an amazing lives and were also so kind to invite a stranger into their lives like that.

Anita Brick:

But see, you never know. And I think part of the thing that is in some ways so sad is that we are more apart than we are together. And I remember a part in the book where you talk about connecting with people that are very, very different than you are, and how individuals feel that the distance is too big to cross.

Nick Epley:

People have conversations with folks they disagree with politically these days.

Anita Brick:

Oh, unbelievable. All the things you talk about in the book are examples of where we can build bridges. And I think to me, that's one of the most important things about the work that you're doing.

Nick Epley:

I appreciate that. One of the key lessons from social psychology is that our behavior is driven a lot more by the context that we are in than it is by the type of person we are. And yet we tend to think about people in terms of the type of person they are. So generalize a person who does a bad thing, assume that they are a bad person, assume that somebody has political beliefs that we find reprehensible, presume that they hold those beliefs for reprehensible reason.

Anita Brick:

And

Nick Epley:

The Truth is almost always much more complicated than that. Most people behave in ways that they think are sensible at the time that they are doing it and hold beliefs that they have for reasons that are to them reasonable. And if you come to understand what those situations are like or what their reasons or beliefs are, they will likely be more reasonable to you than you would imagine them to be. And you find this out when you talk to them. Martin Luther King, he gave a talk at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, which is not far from where I grew up, south of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. At Cornell College there in Mount Vernon, it's a small little liberal arts school, likes to call itself the first Cornell. Martin Luther King gave a talk there, three-hour impromptu speech, no notes, just before his I Have a Dream speech in DC.

And this was kind of a warmup to that. And he said in that talk, little college town in Mount Vernon, Iowa, he said that I believe men hate each other because they don't talk to each other and they don't talk to each other because they fear each other and they fear each other because they're not connected to each other and they misunderstand each other. And God grant that something would open channels of communication between them. Even Martin Luther King believed that people would get along better, understand each other better if they actually talked to people and that the thing that was actually driving folks apart was avoidance. Not an accurate understanding what the other side was like, but avoidance that created misunderstanding. When we bring people into the lab or online as we do, who have very different beliefs, political beliefs, they talk with somebody about major political issue of the day that is dividing the United States in half.

Randomly sign them either to have a conversation with someone they agree with or someone they disagree with, and either to have a conversation, an actual dialogue with the person, back and forth conversation, or serial monologue where they just tell each other why they believe what they do. People tend to think that the only thing that's going to matter for the outcome of the conversation is the type of person they're talking to. If they're talking to somebody they disagree with, it's not going to be very good. They're talking with someone they agree with, it's going to be pretty good. But that the type of interaction that they're having is not going to matter. In fact, the type of interaction that they have really matters a lot. Like Martin Luther King suggested opening channels of communication, having an actual dialogue with the other person, which is responsive and back and forth, connects people a lot more than people think, allows people to understand each other a lot better because you get feedback.

You get to tailor your responses in response to how the other person responding. You get to show them that you're actually interested in them. And we find in this work that having a conversation, having a dialogue with someone you disagree with turns out people report afterwards being just as positive an experience when it's a stranger as talking with someone, having a dialogue with someone you agree with. And what then people misunderstand the most is what it's going to be like to have a conversation with someone they disagree with. They mistakenly think that's going to be terrible, and in fact, it's not.

Anita Brick:

Okay. So in lab, we use that, well, literally and figuratively, that's one thing. How do you get people to do that or even be in the same room, virtual or otherwise, if they know they're on very distinct sides of an issue? How do you build those bridges?

Nick Epley:

That's a problem. Our research actually doesn't really cover that. So to the

Anita Brick:

Extent

Nick Epley:

That mistaken beliefs, mistaken prejudice, overly extreme beliefs about the other side is driving people apart so that they're not even having an interaction at all.

Anita Brick:

Yeah. Yeah, it's true.

Nick Epley:

Problem is with people's mistaken beliefs. And the way you overcome that is you actually have the conversation. There are two ways to deal with this. One is to try to change people's beliefs in a case where the beliefs are so strong, you're not even having that conversation at all. That's not going to happen because people aren't even doing it. The other is to create spaces where people actually do have these conversations. That is not happening in the United States today that often, but there are third spaces that hopefully do some of that. Churches are places where those conversations can sometimes happen, encouraging those conversations more often in the workplace, which is going to sound crazy to some people, but it's that craziness that keeps us from doing that and having those conversations that might actually help people understand each other a little bit better. In your own life, being willing to test your beliefs and actually see what it's like to have a conversation with someone who you think has icky beliefs, that's how you do it.

Anita Brick:

The book is a little bit more social. Maybe you do it by saying hello. Maybe you do it by smiling. Maybe you build a bridge in a way before you even know what the beliefs are. It was really interesting. This was in 2018. I was on the bus heading south and I was going to a peace meeting and it's early in the morning. It was a Sunday morning. Someone taps me on the shoulder and I'm like, "Don't touch me on the bus." I jumped. He said, "Oh, I'm really sorry." He said, "I think I'm on the wrong bus." He wasn't. He just didn't know that it was going to get off of Michigan Avenue and upstate street and all that. And we were chatting a little bit and I said, "Oh, what are you reading?" And he was reading this book called Trumpocalypse. But he said, "Yeah, he was really depressed." And I said, "Well, I meditate.

And when I meditate, I really meditate that Trump be a great president." And then he went back to reading and I said, "I'll give you a heads-up, two stops before you stop." He said, "Great." So I did, and he said, "I have to tell you something. I thought all Trump supporters were the devil incarnate." And he said, "But you seem like a really nice person." I said, "Well, what makes you believe that I support Trump or don't support Trump?" And he said, "Because you're meditating for him to be a great president." And I said, "We all need him to be a great president." It made me think that sometimes we jump to conclusions and we stop having the conversations at all, but I do think it's really important. Is there anything you want to add before I jump into a couple concluding questions?

Nick Epley:

The one thing that we haven't talked about yet I think is another instance of the choice that's really important, but also that is easy to overlook and to not use the power that we have in these situations to make the moments better. We talked a lot about choosing to start conversations or to engage or to reach out. A lot of the book is not about conversation, it's about pro-social actions that connect us with other people, acts of kindness, which we underestimate the power of

Expressing gratitude, being honest in our relationships. But another instance of the choice comes once we're actually engaging with someone, the choice about what to talk about. Do we have a deep and meaningful conversation with someone or do we stick to shallow conversation? This is another place where I think we can choose to make our interactions better without making them longer, without requiring more effort or time. If you're going to spend some time engaging with somebody, you might as well have the conversation that you want. We find that people underestimate how open others will be to deep, meaningful conversation. All of our incoming MBA students, for instance, now during their orientation do an experiment with me on deep conversation. They tend to pretty dramatically underestimate how much they're going to enjoy these conversations, how much they'll have in common with the person that they talk to.

And so being willing, once you're actually engaging with someone, to ask a meaningful conversation about something that's important to them rather than avoiding it, maybe before you know what their answer will be, like you're going to talk about politics maybe, is another important way to strengthen your relationships and improve your social life in surprisingly positive ways.

Anita Brick:

Okay. So MBA students coming in during orientation, they're very open and all of that. But you talk about how you had executives in the hedge fund industry.

Nick Epley:

Yeah.

Anita Brick:

It was so interesting that you freaked them all out and you weren't even sure it was a great idea. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Nick Epley:

The very first time I took one of these deep conversation experiments out into the wild, essentially, when I'm giving a public talk, I will run these sessions with my audience. Very first time I did this was at a financial decision-making conference at a hedge fund in Connecticut. And I thought they'd kind of brought me in for the entertainment a Lighthearted conversation in this talk from this psychologist at this financial decision make conference. These are all these high level executives that are running pension funds and things like that. These are not exactly touchy-feely types, but I was going to have them have a conversation, run an experiment with them where they had a conversation that was deeper than what they typically have. So I put questions up on the board that they were going to have a conversation about things like, what are you most grateful for in your life?

Can you tell me about one of the last times you cried in front of another person? A guy sitting in the front row, he was sitting next to. I'll never forget this. He was sitting next to Toby Moskowitz, who was one of our former Booth faculty in finance, a friend of mine like a lot, he's now at Yale. But this guy sitting in the front row, as soon as I put these questions up, he belts out, "Ah, shit,"

As if he had regretted coming to this session at all. And my heart just sinks. I can just feel the energy leaking out of this room as everybody starts to grumble, "Ah, damn, we're going to have to do this." I send him to a survey online where they tell me how they think the conversation's going to go. I then get them into the conversation, which I just am panicking thinking this is going to be a total disaster. This is the first time I've ever run it, not in the lab. And I think this is going to be a disaster. This is the wrong group to run this with. And yet once they started talking, it was like I'd flipped a switch on people's backs. It was the most remarkable thing that I've ever seen in the classroom or in a public setting like this. I've now seen it thousands of times.

I've done this with more than 5,000 people of all different varieties, not just hedge funders or not our MBA students. I've done this with high school students. I've done this with senior citizens at a senior citizen, a residential living center, bankers, attorneys, so many different people, doctors, med students. It was unbelievable though how much the tenor and tone of the room changed. These kind of grim sort of banker types who were very serious, lightened up. They were smiling, they were laughing. The room kind of came alive. It sounded like a locomotive. It just got super loud, all these folks talking with each other. I couldn't then, once I got them started, I couldn't get them to stop. It was amazing. I thought they were going to be done in 10 minutes. Nope, 15 minutes. They're still going strong. By 20 minutes, I'm having to scream a countdown from five to them, which I learned from my kid's kindergarten teacher to get them to be quiet before finally bringing them back.

And the conversation went much better than they thought, and I've now seen that many, many times.

Anita Brick:

I thought that was incredibly powerful. I'm glad you had the courage. I'm glad you didn't, as the energy was leaking out of the room, as you said, that you didn't call it a day. So I'm glad that you did that.

Nick Epley:

I've had these other moments where even though I've seen thousands of data points here, I go into these sessions and I still think, well, maybe not this group. This might be the one that doesn't show it. I was in New York working with an international construction company. Folks do things like build massive bridges and subways and airports and things like that. And the room was full of 30 guys, all men, except for the assistant and my daughter who was with me in the back. They all look like the left tackle from my college football team. I'm the left guard on my college football team. And the CEO of the organization, after I tell him what I'm going to do, he says, "Oh my, you're going to have a tough time with this group. They're not going to be in for this." Turns out they were totally in for it.

They showed some of the biggest gaps that I've ever seen. The guys in the front row, I remember very distinctly when I was giving a debrief on this, I was talking about this and why it mattered. I remember looking at guys sitting right in front of me, we're all tearing up. They had had a conversation about something that went far beyond just what they were talking about that conversation. They didn't do this very often and they show those effects very powerfully. So yeah, often the folks that even I think won't show this effect still do. Turns out people are often just people

Anita Brick:

And

Nick Epley:

They like to connect.

Anita Brick:

That's true. So do you have time for one more question?

Nick Epley:

You bet. You bet. Okay.

Anita Brick:

That was great. Thank you for that. What are three things that you would advise someone to do who wants to be a little more social, to be happier, and even more successful?

Nick Epley:

So I end the book with a line that is my advice, which is to recognize easy opportunities routinely. The way to turn this research into something that is going to affect your life is not by just reading about it or hearing us talk about it, but actually by putting it to practice. I'll suggest three things. One, recognize there are opportunities in your life that you could choose to connect with people that you're choosing not to. Just think about your yesterday over the course of the day, were there times where you could have said hello to somebody, where you could have passed along a compliment, where you could have expressed your gratitude, you could have asked for help, and you chose not to. Recognizing those moments is the first step to choosing differently. Second, look for easy opportunities. These don't have to be hard things. Where's something in your life where it'd be easy to say hi to somebody or easy to pass along a compliment or easy to do something.

Doesn't require you going out of your way. You're already going for a walk. You might as well bring somebody else with you. You're both neighbors sitting there watching the football game together. You might as well invite the neighbor over to watch it with you. You're just sitting there alone, the two of you. What's an easy thing you could do? Where's not taking a lot of extra time, but you could connect. And then I think the last important part is routinely look for opportunities where it's easy to do this daily and routinely. Is there something in your life? I have a train ride every morning when I'm in Chicago. That's a spot where I can routinely choose to say hi to people. I walk to my office every day through the Harper Center. I can choose to smile and say hello to people as we're going through the building and make that day brighter.

So those are the three things I suggest. Recognize when you're making the choice, look for easy opportunities to choose differently and try to make it routine. Look for the spots where you can make it a habit.

Anita Brick:

Create those habits. I really appreciate that. This is easy to do long as we set our intention or we decide we're going to experiment because you can always experiment, right?

Nick Epley:

Yep. Particularly experiment with the barriers that are keeping you from reaching out. The thoughts that say, "I'd like to, but this probably won't go well." When you're in those approach avoidance conflicts, that's the time to test. See what happens.

Anita Brick:

Good point. Good point. Well, thank you, Nick. I know you have a lot of things that you do, and making time for us, I really deeply appreciate it.

Nick Epley:

Thank you, Anita. I love what you do for Booth. I'm very grateful for it. Appreciate you very much. Thank you for asking me to be on this.

Anita Brick:

Thanks again. And thank you all for listening. This is Anita Brick with Career Cast at Chicago Booth. Keep advancing.