0:00

LinkedIn presents.

0:05

I'm Rufus

0:06

Griskam, and this is the next

0:08

big idea. Today, Author

0:10

Eric Barker teaches our curator, Daniel

0:12

Pink, how to make friends, disarm

0:14

marital conflicts, and spotliers.

0:17

If you've been listening to this show for a while,

0:20

then you probably heard us talk about the

0:22

grant study. Back in nineteen

0:24

thirty eight, scientists decided to do something

0:26

that seemed simple on the face of it,

0:28

but which turned out to have a profound

0:30

influence on how we understand human

0:32

happiness. These researchers decided

0:35

they were gonna document the physics an emotional

0:37

health of two hundred and sixty eight Harvard

0:39

sophomores for the rest of their

0:41

lives. Who thrived and who floundered?

0:44

Who to come device and who triumphed over

0:46

it. Most importantly, who lives

0:48

long, happy lives. Here

0:51

is what they learned. The best predictor

0:53

of happiness in life isn't how much money you

0:55

make or how famous you are. It has nothing

0:58

to do with your IQ or your genes.

1:00

As the study's lead researcher George Valiant

1:02

put it, the only thing that really matters

1:04

in life are your relationships. When

1:07

he heard that, author Eric Barker

1:10

was filled with despair because

1:12

his relationships were not great.

1:15

But that despair soon turned into excitement.

1:17

You may not be able to change your genes or

1:19

your IQ, but you can change

1:22

your relationships. They're malleable.

1:25

Eric went deep on the art and science of relationship

1:27

building and the results can be found in his

1:29

new book plays well with others. In

1:31

addition to being a best seller, it was chosen

1:34

by our curators Malcolm Gladwell, Adam Grant,

1:36

Susan Cain and Daniel Pink as one

1:38

of the eight best books of the

1:40

year. And today, one of those

1:42

curators, Dan Pink, is gonna sit

1:44

down with Eric to talk about why we all

1:46

need to tend to our relationships if

1:48

we wanna live healthy, productive, and

1:51

meaningful lives.

2:02

You're listening to the LinkedIn podcast network

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the future works.

2:33

Hi,

2:33

everyone. to the next

2:36

big idea club conversation

2:38

with one of our great

2:41

selections. It's a book called

2:43

plays well with others.

2:46

The surprising science behind

2:48

why everything you know about relationships is

2:51

mostly wrong, and

2:53

the author is with us today, his name.

2:56

is Eric, Barker.

2:58

And he's a great American. I've known him for

3:00

a few years. And well, we're gonna get to know

3:02

him a little bit and talk about some of the really cool

3:04

ideas in book. Eric welcome. It's

3:06

great to be here there. So

3:08

Eric, before we get into the substance of book

3:10

itself, let's talk a little

3:12

bit about you. I think it's it's

3:14

interesting sort of how writers get

3:16

to a particular So take

3:19

us through sort of where'd you go

3:21

up and what was the trajectory of your early

3:23

life? I

3:24

was born in Philadelphia, raised in South

3:26

Jersey, went to a school in Philadelphia, and

3:29

I was a screenwriter in Hollywood

3:32

at I graduated from college. So

3:34

it's it's always funny to me talk, you

3:36

know, talking to other authors because some

3:38

have never really professionally written

3:41

before, some were journalists before.

3:43

You you were a speech writer before, you

3:45

know. And it's it's like

3:47

for me, I I came from the land

3:49

of of action movies

3:52

and animation. So

3:53

when you were a kid, did you wanna be a screenwriter

3:55

when you would you do wanna be, like, a movie

3:58

person when you were growing up?

3:59

Yeah. When I when I was in high school when

4:01

I first started thinking about writing, and

4:03

then at one point, it dawned

4:05

on me that actually

4:07

writes these movies and that I could

4:09

actually do that. And that was it was

4:11

a very big step. And so it

4:13

was in college that I realized that you

4:15

know, hey, let me let me see how the screenwriting thing

4:18

works. Now you

4:18

went to the University of Pennsylvania, which is

4:20

not notorious for its film program.

4:23

So tell us about tell us about

4:25

that. What'd you do there? What'd you what'd you study

4:27

there? And and how'd you make your way from

4:30

that part of Philadelphia to the mean

4:32

streets of Hollywood? I've majored

4:34

in philosophy, undergrad, which

4:36

doesn't really make sense. clear

4:38

direction afterwards anyway.

4:41

I think initially, I was gonna find

4:43

a mountain top and contemplate joblessness.

4:46

And so, like, it was

4:48

It was while I was in school, a

4:50

friend of mine started working on Hollywood,

4:52

and he was like, hey, you know, why don't you come out for

4:54

the summer? So I did two

4:56

kind of pseudo internships, like,

4:59

not formal. And that's how I started

5:01

meeting people, and that's how I was, like,

5:03

hey, yeah. You know, this would be this would be

5:05

really cool. But, no, there was no

5:07

formal pipeline at all. It

5:09

was just hodgepodge, but oddly

5:11

if that worked out.

5:13

And so I wanna come to the screenwriting here

5:15

in a moment, but I also wanna say that, you know,

5:17

a hundred years ago, I I started talking

5:19

about how we needed to merge

5:22

these two degrees, the NBA and

5:24

the MFA. Yeah. And lo and behold,

5:26

you're, like, one of the few people on the planet president.

5:28

Both. How did that happen? Tell us how

5:30

you got to get an MBA and

5:33

an MFA. It

5:34

was strange. It wasn't at all intentional.

5:38

But, yeah, I graduated

5:40

I graduated Pam, moved out. I started

5:42

writing. I got

5:44

lucky pretty fast. You know, I got

5:46

an agent, like, within a few years. I had a

5:48

couple movies made. But,

5:49

like, my friend had done this

5:52

awesome program at UCLA,

5:54

where the entire because it's in LA, because

5:57

there's strong actions of the film industry,

5:59

the MFA

5:59

program that's called the producers program

6:02

is what all taught by industry professionals.

6:05

All the classes are seven to ten PM.

6:07

So your classes your

6:09

classes in Hollywood legal

6:11

is taught by the head of Sony legal. Your

6:13

head in producing is taught by Sony within

6:15

Oscar. And so it was really

6:17

great. And it was a fantastic

6:19

program where I knew I'd meet people and I'd

6:21

learn a lot more about the industry.

6:24

That was my MFA. Then after a

6:26

few more years in Hollywood, ups and

6:28

downs, crazy stuff, I was like, you

6:30

know what? Maybe I should maybe I should

6:32

try something else. that was

6:34

the NBA. And

6:36

then ended up I did my enter my NBA

6:38

internship at Nintendo, and I went to video

6:40

games for a few years. but it was actually

6:42

in the NBA program that

6:45

I took a class on negotiation

6:48

that exposed me to a lot of social

6:50

science. And that's actually

6:53

where the rumblings of

6:55

my blog began because I really got

6:57

fascinated by that. And it

6:59

was after I graduated into

7:01

the post two thousand eight crisis

7:05

that I started my blog. And

7:07

so in two thousand nine, I graduated my

7:09

MBA. I started my blog, and

7:11

it was very funny because I was kind of

7:13

balancing these two things. And eventually,

7:16

I left my job in video games

7:18

to to pursue the blog full time,

7:20

which which led to the books. Right.

7:21

It's a it's a fascinating I mean, I think

7:23

it's a really interesting story because, I mean, there's

7:26

no way like, first of all, if you were go back to

7:28

your screenwriting days, you would not

7:30

have ever architected a story that

7:32

began in South Jersey winded

7:34

its way through the leafy

7:36

campus of University of Pennsylvania, a

7:39

detouring to Hollywood and the UCLA

7:41

MFA program, then an NBA

7:43

program and a stint in video games followed

7:46

by some blogging that turned it into these

7:48

great books. So I I think it's helpful

7:50

especially for some of our younger listeners to hear

7:52

the trajectory of successful people like

7:54

you and recognize how profoundly

7:57

and deeply non linear it is.

7:59

And you

8:01

know, and how one has to be opportunistic

8:04

about those kinds of things. So and

8:06

and risk taking. So, you know, you got up you

8:08

got your ivy league degree when everybody is going

8:10

into finance and consulting, and you pulled up

8:12

stakes and, you know, went to Southern California

8:15

to type. Mhmm. You know, during

8:17

the, you know, there were probably were not a lot of people

8:19

in your NBA class who came out of that NBA

8:21

program and started blogs. So

8:23

I think it's super interesting and I'm glad to hear

8:25

that story. So so you

8:27

have this blog super successful. You have

8:29

your newsletter, you know, blog barking up

8:31

the wrong tree. newsletter barking up

8:33

the wrong tree. It's one of my

8:35

favorite newsletters of all time. It's massively

8:37

successful. You have a giant audience.

8:39

It's just so profoundly and and well

8:41

done. That leads you into these books.

8:43

this is your second book. And here you decided to

8:46

take on this this topic of

8:48

relationships. Okay? So this is a

8:50

book about relationships and a lot of like kind of

8:52

social science that undergirds relationships.

8:55

Why a book on relationships, Eric?

8:57

I mean, two

8:58

reasons actually, three

9:01

reasons. First and foremost, when

9:03

I was writing barking up the wrong tree, my

9:05

first book, you know, was all about

9:07

kind of mit busting

9:09

the maximum of success we all grew up

9:11

with. And, you know, Floyd said,

9:13

you know, life is all about work and love. And

9:15

so to me, they kind of bookend each other

9:17

that my first book was, you know, about,

9:19

like, work career success. Second was

9:21

about relationships. The second

9:23

reason was relationship

9:25

for not something that I was

9:27

really good at. I think that's part of the reason why I was

9:29

fascinated by it. and

9:31

I was kind of curious on a personal

9:33

level. But then what was

9:35

very strange was after

9:37

the book deal closed, literally,

9:40

Two weeks later, California locked down

9:42

for the pandemic. And I was like, okay.

9:44

I'm not the only one who's probably gonna need

9:46

this book. You know, it's I

9:48

I was thinking, like, I hope this isn't too indulgent.

9:50

I mean, I know people are right. It's

9:53

important. I know people made them, but this is kind of

9:55

like a personal journey It's like, okay. This isn't this

9:57

is a journey we're all on because we're

9:59

all gonna need, like, the relationship to fit

10:01

for later when this thing is over. And

10:03

what's the third reason? Oh,

10:06

I know. Number one was 408

10:08

Number two was my personal interest. I'm under

10:10

previously panda. Oh, okay. Okay. Got

10:12

it. Got it. Got it. Alright. I had conflated I had

10:14

conflated two and three because as you

10:16

know, I'm a devout orthodox

10:19

trinitarian. So if you tell me you're

10:21

gonna have a list of three and you only

10:23

give me two, I am not gonna

10:25

let you off the hook. So think

10:27

that's interesting because I think it's true for a lot of writers

10:29

that that at some level all research is research.

10:31

And so that we're trying to we're trying to

10:34

figure these things out. But I think of the things that's

10:36

interesting, Eric, about your book is

10:38

that it's some level of the word

10:40

relationships. I don't wanna

10:42

say that it's soft

10:45

But it's a little softer than say

10:47

work and success in those kinds of things.

10:49

And yet, you make a pretty good case in this

10:51

book that It

10:53

really matters. Tell tell us a little bit

10:55

about some how how much relationships

10:57

matter to our both

10:59

emotional and physical well-being.

11:01

yeah, it was crazy to see

11:04

that some of the research literally

11:06

that in terms of health, you

11:08

know, you've got, like, everything from

11:10

a grant study at Harvard, which, you know,

11:12

launched a journal study that followed, you know, group

11:14

of men for their entire

11:16

lives. and George Valiant,

11:18

who led the study for for

11:20

most of the time it was there. He

11:22

was interviewed. Here's a study that had

11:24

lasted decades And

11:27

interviewers were like, what what did you learn?

11:29

And instead of giving

11:31

some long diatribe of the, you

11:33

know, warehouse full of insights,

11:35

he came back with the only thing that matters in

11:37

life for your relationships to other people.

11:39

And he found correlates in terms of,

11:41

you know, health, happiness,

11:43

so many areas And in

11:45

terms of both health and happiness, one study

11:47

showed that relationships are, you know, second only

11:49

to genetics. It's

11:52

really really critical and

11:54

we give it lip service, but

11:56

I don't think it's something that we pay a lot

11:58

of attention to. And then

11:59

beyond that, I think relationship

12:02

book, it's It's kinda right up

12:04

there with the word infomercial sometimes.

12:06

It's not really it's not

12:08

really taken as

12:10

seriously as we should. the grants that I

12:12

think what's what's to me compelling about

12:14

that is not only the

12:16

effective relationships on our

12:18

overall well-being, But

12:20

on

12:20

our physical health,

12:22

that is it matters to,

12:25

like, our cardiovascular health.

12:27

to our endocrine health, to the various

12:29

biological systems in our

12:31

body are improved when

12:33

we have healthy relationships. The

12:35

other thing about it that I think is that the value of the

12:38

book going to one of the the factoids

12:40

that you gave is that our

12:42

relationships are second only to

12:44

our genetics in our

12:46

well-being. So CRISPR

12:48

notwithstanding, it's very difficult to

12:50

alter our genetics.

12:52

but we can do something about

12:54

our relationships. Now, give me one more beat on

12:56

this because I think there's AAA

12:58

converse side. I think there's a flip side to

13:00

this relationships, which is You

13:02

mentioned some of the research. I don't wanna spend a lot

13:04

of time on this, but you mentioned some of the research

13:06

on loneliness. A couple years

13:08

ago, we selected Vivek

13:10

Murphy's book. together about

13:12

the epidemic of loneliness. Give us a

13:14

little bit of a for those who haven't

13:16

read that book. Give us a little

13:18

bit of texture on unlownliness

13:20

and the deleterious effects that it

13:22

has on people. John

13:23

Cacciopo was leading researcher on loneliness.

13:26

And, you know, what he found was the elevation

13:28

of stress hormones caused by

13:30

loneliness is the equivalent of a

13:32

physical attack. Like, loneliness is like

13:34

getting beaten up. It's staggering.

13:36

I mean, every I I'm

13:38

exaggerating, but not by much. But,

13:40

like, you know, it's correlated with

13:42

basically almost every negative health

13:44

outcome you can imagine. and

13:47

which is terrifying because I was in pandemic

13:49

lockdown, writing about loneliness

13:51

by myself, living by

13:53

myself, not seeing friends, reading about

13:55

how terrible this is for

13:57

you. And I'm just, like, oh,

13:59

I'm I'm like, I wrote in the book, you know.

14:01

I was I'm surprised that, like, insurance

14:03

companies don't mandate that you, like, spend

14:05

more time with friends. You know, it wouldn't be a

14:07

bad idea. But it was it was funny

14:09

I read the Doc Murphy's book and it

14:11

was thing was really interesting was

14:13

he hit on something that I thought was

14:15

critical here, which was the

14:17

issue of loneliness is

14:19

horrible for you. However, solitude

14:21

is actually protective against

14:24

loneliness. And that distinction is

14:26

really critical because what

14:28

Ketchyoko found was

14:30

that loneliness isn't about

14:32

proximity. It's not about merely

14:34

physically spending time with other people.

14:36

Basically, he found that

14:38

lonely people don't spend any less

14:40

time with others than nonhuman

14:42

people do. You and we've all felt lonely in

14:44

a crowd. You can relate to it. Exactly.

14:46

illumliness is how you feel about your

14:49

relationships. So if you feel

14:51

bad about your relationships near

14:53

alone, you know, that's loneliness. That's

14:55

bad. you feel good about your relationship,

14:57

but you'd have time alone? That's

14:59

solitude and it's a positive. I

15:01

I think that's such an important distinction. And and

15:03

you mentioned it. You you saved some data in

15:05

the book, which I think is often presented

15:07

as an alarming problem, but you put

15:09

it I think in better context. I I'm forgive me,

15:11

Eric. I'm not gonna get slightly

15:13

wrong. But something like one in

15:16

seven Americans lives

15:18

alone. Is that about right? Roughly,

15:20

it's been increasing, like, numbers

15:23

have just been up into the road?

15:25

A hundred years ago was close to, like, one in

15:27

a hundred.

15:27

Yeah. And and and the craziest thing

15:30

is we're not even the United States

15:32

is is not even number one on that. A lot

15:34

of European countries and the Nordic

15:36

countries, the majority of households are

15:38

one person. So just

15:40

been increasing. And there's

15:42

really strong negative effects there. We don't have

15:44

kind of the community to support the people

15:46

around that we used to. And when you combine

15:48

that, with a

15:50

lot of the reasons, like Fail

15:52

Burdie, who teaches at the University of York, did

15:54

this fascinating research where she

15:56

looked back historically. And the

15:58

word lonely didn't used to have the

16:00

negative connotation that it did before

16:02

the nineteenth century. She

16:04

exaggerates a little bit and basically

16:06

says that loneliness didn't exist before the

16:08

nineteenth century because we were

16:10

all embedded in a

16:12

group, a religion, a tribe, a

16:14

nation, something. So we felt

16:16

connected to other people on an emotional

16:18

level even if we weren't physically

16:20

proximate to them. And now with

16:22

the rise of individualism since the

16:24

nineteenth century, and the breakdown of a lot of those

16:26

institutions, if we don't have

16:28

those connections to friends and

16:30

family locally, we also

16:32

don't have those big picture,

16:34

tribal connections that

16:36

always make made us feel we were a part of

16:38

something. Yeah.

16:38

And I wanna when we talk about friendship here

16:41

in a moment, I wanna come back to that

16:43

idea of you word embedded.

16:45

How an embedded set of

16:47

relationships is more nourishing

16:49

than a kind of disaggregated

16:51

set of relationships even if it's

16:53

the same number. Yeah. I thought I thought

16:55

that was a super super very, very interesting

16:57

point in your book. Okay? So here's what

16:59

we know. We know that relationships matter

17:01

deeply to our physical health and our

17:03

well-being. They matter as much as, you

17:05

know, that matters second only to genetics.

17:07

Their relationship is something that we can control.

17:10

We know that we have from Vivek's book and some of your book

17:12

a serious problem with with loneliness, which is

17:14

not only about people living alone

17:17

or solitude, but it's about people

17:19

feeling disconnected people feeling

17:21

that they lack something that you say toward the end

17:23

of the book, a lack of sense of belonging.

17:25

So let's go to start out talking

17:27

about the two sort of to meet sort of two

17:29

main kinds of relationships that people have in their

17:31

lives, friends, and romantic relationships. So

17:34

companion relationships and

17:36

romantic relationships Let's start

17:39

with friendship. I

17:41

mean,

17:41

friendship makes us happier than any other

17:43

relationship. Sorry about The interesting

17:46

thing about friends is

17:48

there's this there's this

17:50

interesting kind of aspect to

17:52

it where you know, friendship

17:54

is kind of the the, like,

17:56

the stepchild of relationships. There's no

17:58

formal institution backing it.

18:00

You know, it's like -- Interesting. -- marriages are enforced

18:02

by law. Your your relationship with your

18:04

employer has a contract. If you

18:06

don't take care of your kids, the

18:08

the the state is gonna do something about that. But

18:10

your friends, there's no institution behind

18:13

it. So friendship doesn't

18:15

get the attention, the poor.

18:17

Nobody goes to a we go to a marriage therapist, we

18:19

go to child therapist, there's no friend

18:21

therapist. And that is

18:23

a weakness in terms of friendship doesn't

18:26

get kind of the the dedication,

18:28

the flip side is that that's one

18:30

of the reasons why friendship is so

18:32

powerful, is it's never an

18:34

obligation. is that your friend your

18:36

friends are only there because you like them

18:38

and they like you. It's a hundred

18:41

percent voluntary So therefore, its

18:43

fragility proves its

18:45

purity. So

18:45

we we get so much from

18:48

it because The

18:50

only reason they're there is because you want them

18:52

to be. So -- Yeah. -- it stays

18:54

honest. And because of that is Daniel Connolly's

18:56

research that shows friendship increases

18:58

subjective well-being more than any other

19:00

relationship. It's something that I had not thought

19:02

about, this idea that we

19:04

don't have the force of law

19:06

or the force of religion or state

19:08

action behind friendships.

19:10

They are, you know,

19:12

they're entirely unregulated. They're they're

19:14

sort of the the a Bitcoin of

19:16

relationship. So they

19:18

are probably not the best

19:20

analogy. Yeah. And

19:22

so friendship friendship is deeply, deeply meaningful.

19:24

And it's it's interesting you say that because in some

19:26

other the last book that I wrote

19:29

about regret and what people regretted

19:31

one of the things that people regret the most

19:34

are not reaching out

19:36

and not maintaining connections.

19:39

And They end up being so much about

19:41

friendship, not so much about family or anything

19:43

like that, so much about friendships

19:45

and and and the pain that people

19:47

feel when these relationships sometimes

19:49

drift apart. Now, so give us some

19:51

guidance here because this book is like your

19:53

like your newsletter and blog, it's Chocolate Black

19:55

with some good news you can

19:57

use tips. Give us some guidance based

19:59

on the science about how

20:02

do you

20:02

how do you form a friendship? Like, how do

20:05

friendships form? Well, it was it was interesting because taking that

20:07

mythbusters approach, the first thing I looked at

20:09

was the the reference that most people

20:11

use, which is the alparity. And

20:13

the funny thing is Dale Carney wrote his

20:15

book long before the advent of social science

20:17

research. But -- Yeah. -- the majority of

20:19

what he said actually got

20:21

proved out. The the only thing he was he was wrong about

20:24

was he was he talked about seeing things from the other

20:26

person's perspective, and we're

20:28

actually really bad at that. Nicholas

20:30

Appley's research at University of Chicago show,

20:33

like, we we're not good at at at

20:35

reading other people's minds and coming out. But

20:37

everything else that Carter you talked about

20:39

was, you know, really true. It was, you know, paying sincere

20:42

compliments, focusing on similarity. You know,

20:44

it's like all these things have

20:46

benefits. The only thing is, Carnegie

20:48

wrote his book largely for business

20:51

relationships for contacts. And

20:53

there's a number of lines in there. You can see

20:55

a very strict strategic book, you know,

20:57

about getting things from people and

20:59

influencing people. So it really

21:01

doesn't get to, you know,

21:03

the deeper levels of friendship

21:05

that that we want to. It'll get you to the acquaintance

21:07

phase. You know, what's really critical in

21:09

terms of building deep relationships, the ones

21:11

that last, like you said, the ones that people regret

21:13

when they lose. you know,

21:15

are we we need to send and look for

21:18

costly signals. Boom. This is

21:20

such an important point. So let's let's give us a so

21:22

so you talk about friendship depends

21:25

on costly

21:25

signals. Tell us about

21:27

that because I think that's a huge takeaway from this

21:29

book. Yeah. I mean, basically, how do you know if somebody's

21:32

just you know, a calist

21:34

manipulator, you know, trying to get stuff from you, you know,

21:36

just trying to act like a friend is

21:38

closely signals of principle

21:40

from economics. is the idea of

21:42

signals that are expensed, quote unquote,

21:44

expensive to send, and

21:46

that's what we should show, that's what

21:48

we should look for. The first is time, you

21:50

know, because time is always scarce. If I

21:52

if I spend an hour talking to you

21:54

every day, I can't do that for more

21:56

than twenty four people. and I

21:58

got to sleep. So time is scarce. Scarcity

22:01

means costly. So time is

22:03

really critical and one study

22:05

from Notre Dame should they

22:08

they track eight million phone calls,

22:10

and they found that people that stay in

22:12

touch every two weeks, those

22:14

were the relationships that were more likely

22:16

to last. So touching base

22:18

is really critical, spending time when people

22:20

need you. And the second is

22:22

vulnerability is opening

22:24

up. Because if I tell you things

22:26

that could hurt me, that could make me look

22:28

bad, that could be used against me,

22:31

That is strong demonstration of trust. And Diego

22:33

Gambetta is a researcher in Italy who

22:35

looked at it and the best way to

22:38

build trustful relationships is

22:40

to first demonstrate trust. It's easy to

22:42

say, but to actually tell people,

22:44

here's things that are embarrassing. Here's things

22:46

I might not want to be public.

22:49

that says, I trust you by

22:51

doing it. And very often,

22:53

people will reciprocate. Getting back to what

22:55

we talked about earlier, there are major health

22:57

implications of this. where Robert Garfield

22:59

at University of Pennsylvania found that

23:02

not opening up, not being

23:05

vulnerable increases the chance of a

23:07

heart attack and doubles the chance that

23:09

that heart attack will be lethal.

23:11

We need to kind of like release

23:13

some of the PSI on on

23:15

the the stress, the problems we're

23:17

dealing with and we do that by opening up

23:19

to others. Howard

23:19

Bauchner: Yeah, and and I I think that this this

23:22

idea of disclosure and

23:24

vulnerability is is fascinating

23:26

because it is potentially costly.

23:28

If I were to reveal to somebody

23:30

something that I'm not proud of, something that I did wrong,

23:32

something that makes me look

23:34

bad, it's a risk because that is potentially costly.

23:36

And you describe to give give us one beat

23:38

on this kind of almost this kind

23:40

of choreography that goes on in

23:43

friendship. where you you

23:45

don't divulge everything -- No. --

23:47

all at once. That's too costly. Yeah.

23:49

You make a little

23:50

small investment that's reciprocated, but this

23:53

tells about that. Yeah. Basically,

23:55

like, don't confess any murders upfront.

23:57

They get incremental. This is research

23:59

by Daniel Hirschka. which showed that, basically, it's

24:02

like, start small, build. You know,

24:04

start small, wait for people to reciprocate.

24:06

If they do, escalate.

24:08

this is actually a mild

24:11

formula, you know, for

24:13

building deeper friendships. Is say something that's

24:15

kind of silly, say something in

24:17

small. And, you know, if they reciprocate,

24:19

graduate that. Like, I in the book, I talk about

24:21

the scary rule. If it's -- Right. -- scares you

24:23

a little bit, that's

24:24

a good sign that this would be

24:27

something worth, you know, opening up about. And

24:29

if you incrementally increase it in

24:31

that way, this is powerful. Arthur

24:33

Aaron, you know, did research. and

24:35

he made people feel

24:37

like lifelong friends in

24:39

under an hour just by having

24:41

people go back and forth revealing

24:43

things about themselves, you know, on

24:45

an increasing increasing the deepness

24:47

of it. And two of

24:49

the research associates that he had on it

24:51

ended up getting married. So so this

24:53

is smart advice. So if you wanna create

24:55

a friendship, build a friendship, you

24:57

wanna transmit costly signals time,

25:00

devote time, and vulnerability

25:02

and that vulnerability is sort

25:04

of this kind of incremental

25:06

disclosure and counter to closure

25:08

and so forth that can unify. And you

25:10

say if it's, you know, the your

25:12

scary rule was, like, if it if it feels uncomfortable,

25:14

that's probably a good idea. Yeah. You

25:16

talk about sort of maintaining contact

25:19

within maintaining I think what's you

25:21

just mentioned a moment ago that two week --

25:23

Yeah. kind of check-in rule, so you you

25:25

wanna nurture that. So so there is I think one

25:27

of the interesting things about the way you've written this

25:29

is that it suggests I think sometimes we

25:31

have this idea that relationship just

25:34

some blossom, you know, like the prairie grass in

25:36

my backyard after a Washington

25:39

DC rain. But in fact, it's

25:41

much more we have to

25:43

bring a lot more intention to it, so

25:45

costly signals and then this two week

25:48

rule.

25:55

We hope

25:55

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27:04

Let's

27:04

talk about work. Friendship with work.

27:06

More important

27:07

than we realize on. Oh,

27:09

really critical. You know, it's like people who had

27:11

more friends at work. your research showed

27:13

that they they were happier with their lives.

27:15

Not happier at work. They were

27:17

happier with their lives. And people's

27:20

backgrounds with their manager you know, was dramatic

27:22

increase in the workplace satisfaction.

27:25

We draw a boundary there that's sort

27:27

of artificial. our

27:29

brains don't draw a distinction

27:32

between contacts and

27:34

friends and it's really

27:36

important to feel something organic

27:38

there and to feel that devotion, otherwise, it's

27:40

gonna be it's gonna be really artificial.

27:42

This point about

27:42

boundaries on friendships is also really interesting.

27:45

I think it comes out in a

27:47

number of different ways in in the book. So not only

27:49

this boundary between our work cells and

27:51

our and our self cells, where, you know, where

27:53

you say just as you said a moment

27:55

ago that our that's that having a friend

27:57

at work increases our life

27:59

satisfaction. You also talk about a

28:01

couple of interesting things, which

28:03

is there's some research showing that when we become

28:05

good enough friends with people,

28:08

the

28:08

boundary between ourselves

28:12

can

28:12

dissolve. Explain that. Yeah. So it

28:14

was funny. I was looking for there

28:16

there was

28:16

a crazy problem I had writing a

28:18

book in the sense that when

28:20

I was writing about romantic relationships, the amount

28:23

of research is staggering.

28:25

You know, it's like because of

28:27

marriage therapists, There's a whole

28:29

institution here that has been looking for

28:31

answers to these problems. With friendship,

28:33

I

28:33

have the exact opposite.

28:35

which is there's no institution. There's not

28:37

much research. Like so I

28:39

was really scrambling to look for decent

28:41

stuff at first, and I actually ended

28:44

up turning towards ancient philosophy

28:47

to as like a a start.

28:49

And Aristotle has this great, you

28:51

know, quote versus a friend is

28:53

another self. you know, that that makes

28:55

for a fantastic quote on

28:57

Pinterest. But I was

28:59

like, this isn't science.

29:01

And then I kept looking And

29:04

actually, it had been proved out by the

29:06

literature that basically

29:09

that when we become close

29:11

to someone, when we feel

29:13

empathic towards someone that

29:15

basically our self definition and

29:17

our definition of person starts to

29:19

overlap like a VIN diagram. And

29:22

increasingly so, the closer you are to

29:24

someone, the more the overlap, and this was

29:26

tested pretty rigorously. When when you put

29:28

women in an MRI, and

29:30

mention their friend's name,

29:32

their

29:32

best friend's name, the

29:33

areas for self processing in the

29:35

brain light up. when you ask

29:38

people about their close friends, it's

29:40

like, is this personality

29:42

trait true of you or true

29:44

of them? the closer you are to

29:46

the person, the longer the

29:48

lag in the answer. Because you

29:50

actually your brain has to disentangle you

29:53

from them say, is that me or is that, you know,

29:55

it's it's really crazy,

29:57

but those are the kind of another

29:59

self, you know, sort of friendships that

30:01

that we're going for. Right.

30:03

The other

30:03

thing is that this is after

30:06

all these years, your ability to

30:08

quote Aristotle is a sign that your Ivy

30:10

League education is finally finally

30:12

after a couple Yeah. Mom would be proud. Mom would

30:14

be happy. Philosopy major CMO. III

30:17

know who Aristotle is, and I can

30:19

quote him and then connect it

30:21

and then my liberal arts education allows me

30:23

to connect it to some FMRI

30:25

research. So there you go.

30:27

Money well spent. But

30:30

I I do think area of of boundaries is really interesting

30:32

sort of like how bounded ourselves

30:34

are both in terms of our roles that we play

30:36

in our lives and with other people.

30:39

One last point on this, which I think is connected,

30:41

is as you talk about

30:44

relationships, use the word earlier embedded

30:47

and the idea that friendships

30:49

that are embedded in something

30:51

that are part of a bigger community

30:54

are actually more nourishing. I did

30:56

a pretty bad job of sort of explain that, so explain

30:58

it better. No. It was it was

31:00

really interesting in terms of

31:03

you know, in in one section, I talk about a friendship and the

31:05

other section I talk about community.

31:07

Yeah. And

31:07

there's this interesting distinction

31:10

here because we

31:12

I think community has really broken down.

31:15

Friendship's broken down a little bit as well. But

31:17

what's really powerful is this

31:19

idea that one off friendships.

31:21

You have five friends and they don't know each

31:23

other and they're sort of this one on one

31:25

friendship. That's fulfilling. That's great. But

31:27

it's not as powerful when

31:29

you your friends know each other. When your

31:31

friends know each other, now you're taking

31:33

that step from friendship

31:36

to community And -- Exactly. -- there's a

31:38

powerful increase both in well-being,

31:40

but also the feeling will support.

31:42

Because now if you share

31:45

something with five friends separately and they don't know each

31:47

other, you know, maybe they're helpful.

31:49

But once friends know each other

31:51

and you say, I'm feeling down, I'm

31:53

having problems, your friends can

31:55

coordinate to help you. That

31:57

just adds this entire another

31:59

level. You know, this this words a little

32:01

abused, but it's synergy. You

32:03

know, there really is this kind of two

32:05

plus two does equal five when

32:07

all of a sudden your friends can work

32:09

together to take out, make you feel better,

32:11

to help you find a new job. That

32:13

ability to coordinate isn't there

32:15

when they don't know each other. So we

32:17

see how friendship and then

32:19

community is really a whole another level and

32:21

there are added advantages. So you have five

32:23

friends who don't know each other and then five friends who do know

32:25

each other. To me,

32:26

for whatever

32:27

it's worth. That I

32:29

started thinking of, like, our brains -- Yeah. --

32:31

and how our brains are integrated in

32:33

that way. And maybe there's something in the way

32:35

that we think. that finds

32:38

that more evolutionarily advantageous.

32:41

Okay. So let's shift from friends

32:43

to romantic relations ships. And let's begin with

32:46

something. I'll show one of my many, many pet

32:48

peeves. People who say,

32:50

my spouse

32:51

is my best friend. God

32:54

bless you if that's the kid. I just I

32:56

I find that. I don't I

32:58

I don't I don't love that and and

33:00

I'm I'm apparently not alone. No. There's

33:02

some there's some there's some national differences there. Tell us about

33:04

that. There was there was huge variability, you

33:07

know, in at a one study in the

33:10

United States you know, digit percentage of people who have said

33:12

this process their best friend. And I think

33:14

it was in the in Mexico City to

33:16

survey people and answer was zero. You know,

33:18

it's like that that

33:20

that's not required. You know,

33:22

it's like friendship and romantic

33:25

relationships, you know, aren't distinct. and

33:27

we might be better off in some ways if we

33:29

realize that distinction. Friendship is

33:31

a big part of it. John Gottman, a leading researcher

33:33

of our romantic relationships does

33:36

say that over the course of a long term romantic

33:38

relationship, the friendship is the critical

33:40

part to focus on. However, it

33:42

is only part. They are not

33:44

the same. Right? Tell us

33:45

a little bit more about Gutman because in this

33:47

realm, it's I think it's important at some

33:49

level to know who he is, why he matters,

33:51

and some of the things that he he he

33:53

found because it seems like Even though there's a

33:55

huge amount of research in relationships, a

33:57

lot of roads lead back to him.

33:59

Oh,

33:59

absolutely. The critical thing that's

34:02

fascinating about John Gutman is that, you

34:04

know, with so much of, you know, early

34:06

days of psychology, early days of all of this, it was

34:08

very you look at Freud, it was

34:10

very speculative. romance,

34:12

you know, we we have a lot

34:14

of we have the desire to have

34:16

more of a narrative, you know, more

34:18

a little more magic. We we appreciate

34:21

that. John Gutman has a math background.

34:23

John Gutman was -- Right. --

34:25

mathematician, like, hardcore. And

34:28

so he

34:30

really brought to the study of romantic relationships, a level

34:32

of scientific rigor that just had

34:34

not been seen before and

34:36

just went

34:38

to extreme lengths to be able to isolate

34:40

those variables. He has a love

34:42

lab where literally couples will move

34:45

into an apartment you know, that

34:47

is just wired with, you know, cameras,

34:50

audio, everything. He did

34:52

tests. You know, he had people hooked up for

34:54

blood pressure. hormones, everything to just see all of

34:56

the minutiae of what was going

34:58

on in couples' interactions,

35:00

you know, over the course of days together,

35:02

not like

35:04

you know, a fifteen minute study and getting

35:06

all of this data. So it just gave

35:08

gave us all this, like, rigorous

35:10

level of analysis that hadn't been

35:14

seen before. So he is undoubtedly the number one guy in the

35:16

field. If you had to pick

35:17

sort of Gottman's greatest hits, like, if you had a

35:19

if you have the Gottman

35:21

playlist on Spotify. What are the what are the first two tracks,

35:24

like, of what Gutman found out? What did you

35:26

say is some of the stuff you did looking

35:28

at video? I mean,

35:29

he he found some some staggering

35:32

stuff. And news you can use

35:34

in the sense that just by

35:36

listening to the first three minutes of a

35:38

couple's argument, he could predict the ending

35:40

with ninety six percent accuracy.

35:42

Basically, he just saw again and again in

35:44

these studies that if it starts out,

35:46

you know, harsh it's gonna end harsh. That was really

35:48

critical. Other things he found was,

35:50

you know, his four horsemen, you know, the

35:52

four things that

35:54

predict doom, which were

35:56

criticism, stonewalling, defensiveness,

35:59

and contempt. Those four

36:01

things predict divorce like eighty one

36:03

percent of the time. and

36:05

it was really fascinating to sort of

36:08

disentangle the first one criticism. You

36:10

know, we think that couples complaining

36:12

a lot. complaining isn't

36:14

a problem. You know, what's what's a problem

36:16

is criticism. The distinction being

36:18

complaining is to say, here's

36:20

an issue. criticism is to say, here's

36:23

an issue and you're at fault and you're

36:25

a bad person and it's due to

36:27

your fundamental personality. And so to realize that

36:29

those four things, you know, criticism,

36:32

defensiveness, stone walling, and contempt

36:34

were really predictive

36:36

of divorce that was

36:38

powerful. The other big, big Gutman

36:40

insight that I would point to

36:42

is Gutman rose to

36:44

fame on the issue that by just

36:46

listening to a couple for five minutes with

36:48

ninety plus percent accuracy, we could

36:50

predict whether or not they'd be divorced in five

36:52

years. And the way he

36:54

does that isn't some

36:57

really mathematical crazy

36:59

algorithm. He asks the couple

37:01

to tell their story. And but if it's

37:03

a story that celebrates the struggles and

37:05

moves upward, that is a

37:07

very positive sign. And

37:09

it's a the story that sounds a lot more

37:12

negative and emphasizes it

37:14

focuses on the negative, that's a really

37:16

bad sign. Yeah.

37:17

Yeah. It's fascinating. With to me, the what

37:19

what I found really compelling in some of the

37:21

Gutman researches is this notion of

37:24

contempt and how incredibly

37:27

toxic that that can be.

37:29

I mean, if you have contempt within

37:31

a romantic relationship, it's

37:34

I agree with him that it's essentially over.

37:36

He described

37:36

it as

37:37

sulfuric acid for love.

37:40

Exactly. Exactly. So it's

37:40

really obnoxious. I think it's

37:43

super thing. And yet, there is some evidence though that in

37:45

our romantic relationships that are that

37:48

endure. I don't mean to diss the friendship

37:50

part of romantic relationships because

37:52

there is sort of a trajectory

37:54

of sorts. Isn't there a in how very healthy

37:56

romantic relationships will move?

37:59

Tell us about that. I

38:02

think roughly,

38:02

you know, after eighteen months, a

38:04

lot of the big explosive

38:08

romantic feelings tend to die down. There is kind of a a

38:11

romantic entropy, you know, of sorts.

38:13

Yeah. And usually, that's okay. Usually, that's

38:15

a movement from

38:18

know, the more romantic forms of love to what's called companion

38:20

at love. Exactly. But the other thing

38:22

is, you know, you can keep those

38:25

romantic feelings alive. The issue is that

38:27

people think, oh, well, when we were first

38:30

dating, we we were in love, so we did all

38:32

these exciting

38:34

things together. But actually, that

38:36

relationship works both directions,

38:38

which is you fell in love

38:40

because you did exciting

38:42

things together. We we have this There's emotional

38:44

contagion is what they call it in psychology.

38:46

Basically, that whatever environment we're

38:48

in, we tend to associate the feelings

38:50

we have with the person

38:52

we're with. So if you keep

38:54

doing fun, exciting stuff,

38:56

you can keep those more

38:59

thrilling, excited, you know, feelings

39:01

for your partner when we settle

39:03

into too many Netflix

39:05

and pizza Fridays, you know, that that that tends to die

39:07

down. And there there were studies where they had

39:10

couples that one cohort to

39:12

go on

39:14

pleasant dates. And then another couple will go on exciting dates. An

39:16

exciting one hands down. It really

39:18

boosted their happiness. That is

39:20

truly I mean, because you we wanna bring this

39:22

back to me,

39:24

of course, really one of my one of my margin

39:25

notes is I have and

39:28

the reason I remember this is that I

39:30

showed it to my wife,

39:32

which was excitement, and then

39:34

I put, like, greater than, like, greater

39:36

than signed -- Yeah. -- pleasantness.

39:38

And and then also just,

39:40

like, excitement and novelty

39:42

and how continuing to do those things

39:44

actually is extraordinarily healthy.

39:46

And I did I actually had a conversation with my wife

39:48

about that based on what

39:51

I what I read in here and based on that little

39:53

mathematical rendering of this complex point. So and yet in

39:55

our romantic relationships, we don't always

39:57

get along. So but

40:00

you have some advice on how to argue, better, have? I mean,

40:02

first and foremost is, like, those

40:04

first three minutes. You know, it's, like, if

40:06

if it starts harsh, it's gonna end

40:10

harsh. you know, it's like take a deep breath pause. You

40:12

know, it's like if you started out talking

40:14

about the issue, not criticizing

40:18

the person, that is a fantastic start. The other

40:20

thing Gutman found, because the Gutman's

40:22

for horsemen has has gotten a lot of

40:24

publicity. And that's great because

40:26

it's true. But there's

40:28

there's a there's an escape clause there.

40:30

There's another aspect to it,

40:32

which is that plenty of

40:34

couples have one or two. They've got a couple

40:36

horsemen riding around. And that does

40:38

not necessarily spell doom

40:40

because of what he calls repair,

40:42

which is maybe you are

40:44

expressing more criticism. Maybe you do

40:46

so well. But in the midst of an

40:48

argument, if you take

40:50

a step back metaphorically and

40:52

make joe a joke

40:54

laugh, hold

40:55

their hand, say something nice. You can undo

40:57

some of the negative that is

40:59

done by those. We we we talk

41:01

a lot about compassion. but

41:04

the best use of compassion is in the midst of an

41:07

argument. Couples who show more

41:09

compassion and sensitivity during

41:12

an argument you know, have have less volatile arguments and they

41:14

have them less often. Right.

41:16

So there's some some really I think some

41:17

really, really good takeaways there. Be wear gauntlets

41:20

for horsemen.

41:22

which are criticism, defensiveness, stonewalling,

41:25

and contempt. Go

41:27

for excitement over pleasiveness,

41:30

particularly as a relationship goes on. I I

41:32

never thought about it this way either this idea

41:34

that the the causal arrow runs

41:36

both ways on the newness and

41:39

they excitement. Yeah. And then so so go for

41:41

excitement as much if not more than

41:44

pleasantness. And then show

41:46

compassion in

41:48

the midst of an argument. So I hope my wife is

41:50

listening. So let's

41:52

you also have some good advice here and

41:54

we'll go through this a little bit faster.

41:58

you also have some good advice on sizing

42:00

people up sizing people up. And

42:02

and I found that this there's some very, very

42:04

good stuff on here. So for instance, let's

42:08

talk about first impressions, there's the old line. You never get a

42:10

second chance to make a first impression.

42:12

And so is that true? Do

42:13

we care about that? Our first

42:16

impression is meaningful? And

42:18

and are they are they useful gauges

42:20

for us of when we assess

42:22

potential friends or potential romantic partners

42:24

or potential colleagues? there is definitely a germ of

42:26

truth to that in the sense that when

42:28

we're

42:28

talking with someone who

42:30

we know, our ability

42:34

to read their mind to know what's going on, to kind of

42:36

Intuit where they're coming from. We're

42:38

not very good at that.

42:40

That's that's roughly with

42:42

strangers worth at roughly twenty percent

42:44

accuracy with friends, thirty percent, with

42:46

spouse's thirty five percent, which basically

42:49

means two thirds of the time, whatever you think is on

42:51

your spouse's mind, you're wrong. But what's incredible

42:53

This is the this is the Epley research. This is that

42:55

you mentioned earlier. Yeah. Exactly.

42:58

Now, here's where things take an interesting

43:00

twist and that is when we're

43:02

first meeting someone and they're making

43:04

a first

43:06

impression we're actually surprisingly accurate. About

43:08

seventy percent of the time,

43:10

we size people's global personality

43:14

traits up pretty accurately, and they would they would match, you

43:16

know, that person, they would match what

43:18

others think. But again,

43:20

seventy percent

43:22

if if your kid brought home all these, you wouldn't be too thrilled.

43:24

So, you know, thirty percent of the

43:26

time we're wrong. So, we're good, but

43:29

here's the double edged sword of first impressions and

43:31

that is we are right that

43:34

we're right more often than we're wrong, you know,

43:36

a lot. However,

43:38

once we're wrong, confirmation bias

43:40

kicks in. Once we've made

43:42

up our first impression, now Our

43:45

brains are not objective

43:47

scientists looking for the truth. Our

43:49

brains are lawyers vigorously

43:52

defending the positions we hold looking

43:54

for things to confirm what we already believe. So if somebody

43:57

makes a bad first impression, they

43:59

can get stopped. because

44:02

we're we're, you know, the the the

44:04

store that updates our beliefs is not open

44:06

for business. And it's

44:08

very, very

44:10

difficult. And That leads

44:12

to continuing problems because for us,

44:14

if we meet somebody for the first time, they

44:16

don't make a good impression, if we have

44:18

the option, what might be we do? not

44:20

hang out with them anymore. You know, so

44:22

our negative impressions are always going to be less

44:25

accurate than our positive impressions your

44:28

positive impressions, you see them again, you get the chance

44:30

maybe to update your beliefs. So

44:32

you're getting a bigger sample size

44:35

versus negative impressions you it

44:37

might be somebody who's having a bad day and they're not gonna

44:39

get down chance. Well, do you think we should

44:42

give is is the lesson of that that we should give

44:44

people those second chances? Absolutely.

44:46

I mean, we should we should, you know, be cautious,

44:48

but it's like we should we should give people that

44:50

second chance because otherwise, there's

44:52

there's no appeal. And by

44:54

the same token, the other big takeaway

44:56

from this is to think about your

44:58

first impressions, the ones that you make.

45:00

because as we see, people are going to lock on to

45:02

those. And it's gonna be really hard

45:05

to correct any errors they have about

45:07

you once confirmation bias kicks

45:10

in. what

45:10

are one or two tips you have for

45:12

either conveying a better first impression or for more accurately

45:15

interpreting the first impressions

45:18

of others? I mean, for for more accurately

45:20

interpreting, you know, most of that is

45:21

unconscious.

45:22

You know, the the the truth is that it's

45:24

like, if you look at the research on thin

45:26

slicing, people

45:28

can watch a video of a teacher teaching a class for

45:30

five minutes without sound and,

45:33

you know, often predict how

45:35

confident a teacher that is. The

45:37

the issue we have really is confirmation bias.

45:40

The issue we have is we have to

45:42

realize that the the

45:44

verdicts that we're making are

45:46

not final. So the

45:48

war, it's less about, you know,

45:50

kind of the Rosetta Stone of trying to

45:52

read people's body language, and it's a

45:54

lot more about going Oh, there's a

45:56

jerk. Okay. I'm getting a feeling there, a

45:58

jerk. Let me let

45:59

me

45:59

test this theory before I

46:02

immediately go with my intuition Let me on

46:04

this a little bit. Let me ask them another

46:06

question. Let's change the

46:08

conversation. Let me see

46:10

if my theory,

46:12

you know, you know, Kenny proved wrong. Yeah. So that's that's

46:14

a good

46:14

segue into something else that I wanted to talk about, which

46:16

is first impressions is is body language.

46:19

channel. I remember hearing about body language

46:22

years and years and years ago.

46:24

And, you know, I've

46:26

always been I don't know the research very well,

46:28

but I've always been like slightly skeptical

46:30

about its value. And I think your

46:32

book has has done nothing to dampen that

46:34

skepticism. So -- Mhmm. -- like, what

46:36

do we know about about body language.

46:38

And in particular, you have one item in the book that

46:40

says, there's something better to

46:42

do than watching people's body language.

46:45

Yeah. This is work by our speech, which

46:47

is really, really interesting.

46:50

Just basically the the body language

46:52

isn't a consistent predictor

46:54

of there are no consistent like I said, there's no

46:56

rosetta stone for body light, which

46:58

because the issue is we never really know

47:00

where it's

47:02

coming from. Is the person shivering because they're nervous or they shivering because

47:04

they're cold? We don't know. We don't

47:06

know contextually, like, if

47:08

they had a

47:10

horrible day, and that's why they're angry or because their legs are

47:12

crossed. We we don't have

47:14

any kind of things. You know,

47:16

by language, specifically

47:18

within a person because the the biggest

47:20

issue with effectively using body

47:22

language is if we have a baseline.

47:24

Exactly. So if you don't know somebody, body

47:26

language is pretty useful less.

47:28

But as I said, the ethylene research,

47:30

friends were higher. We could read friends

47:32

better than we could read strangers. We could read spouse's

47:34

better. Part of that,

47:36

unconsciously is certainly we're picking up

47:38

lessons as we go. But without baseline,

47:40

it's pretty much useless. And

47:42

what's really critical, the point you raised,

47:44

is we do have

47:46

something better. and that is voice. If you can see

47:48

someone, but you can't hear them,

47:50

empathic accuracy drops off more than

47:52

fifty percent. You know? But if we

47:54

can hear someone, but we can't see

47:56

them. Empathic accuracy only drops off

47:58

like four percent. So boom.

47:59

So focus on

48:02

the Yeah. Yeah. I thought that was super super

48:04

interesting. Follow your ears

48:06

rather than your rather than your eyes. I think the point

48:08

about baseline when we read body language is

48:11

also interesting tend to be

48:14

a slightly fidgety or

48:16

Me too. You know? Me

48:19

too. And if you know me, he's like, okay, that's just how he is. Yeah. And

48:21

but I can see how that can be and probably has been

48:23

in my life misread. I was like, oh, this guy's really

48:25

kind of fidgety. I wonder if he's really

48:27

telling the truth. He's really uncomfortable. It's like,

48:29

I'm not uncomfortable on the lease. I'm just the little

48:32

nuts. Yeah. So and

48:34

that's my

48:36

baseline. But I think the point about voice

48:38

is so I think baseline is a really good point

48:40

for for body language. And and I think

48:42

what you're also talking about both body language and

48:44

first impression in general is be

48:47

humble about how much you know and how accurate you are.

48:49

Yeah. Intellectual humility can go a very

48:51

long way on that.

48:56

The next

48:57

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48:59

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49:00

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49:56

smarter has never been so easy.

50:02

So let's

50:04

bring us

50:08

home

50:09

with, I

50:12

think, some some

50:12

of the most useful advice, at least for me personally here

50:16

is liars. Okay? So

50:18

so we've got, you know, first impressions,

50:20

we've got body

50:22

language. We've got detecting liars.

50:24

First of all,

50:26

there is just

50:26

a boatload of lying going on

50:29

out there that I mean,

50:31

we your numbers on on the amount of lying was

50:33

sort of disheartening to me. Tell us about

50:35

that. Yeah. I mean, it was it

50:37

was it's pretty crazy. Like,

50:39

all the stats online was I literally had to

50:41

cut that section down with the data. Oh, really? Yeah.

50:44

I mean, there's a lot of a lot of

50:46

line going on. You

50:48

know, we We lie the most

50:50

to mom. III my

50:52

assumption is that's largely to to she

50:54

doesn't worry. We lie to our

50:56

spouse is the least, but we tell them the

50:58

biggest ones. So there's well, you know,

51:00

plenty of wine going on. And most

51:02

of the advice we get

51:04

is terrible.

51:06

you

51:06

know, is just terrible. The the, you know,

51:09

the the polygraph doesn't work. It's

51:11

it's and what was funny

51:13

is it was actually developed

51:15

in part by William William

51:18

Marcin, who is a guy who

51:20

developed the DC comics character, Wonder

51:22

Woman, and the the lasso

51:24

truth worked the line detector does not. Again, much like we

51:26

talked about earlier, it's like somebody feeling

51:28

stressed out, their heart their blood pressure

51:30

going up, their heart rate going up,

51:32

sweating more, These are not

51:34

necessarily correlated with lying. We we

51:36

we don't know this. And if

51:38

people can be stressed for many reasons, not

51:40

the least of which, they're hooked up to a

51:42

lie detector. You know, I mean,

51:44

so it's you know, that hasn't been valuable. What was was really valuable was

51:47

finding out that

51:50

basically, after nine eleven,

51:52

there was a lot of government

51:54

research, you know, by social scientists

51:56

to try and figure out for

51:58

interrogation for other purposes, what actually works? And

52:01

this was really powerful

52:03

to realize that the

52:05

perspective of stress is

52:07

not a good model for detecting lies.

52:10

What is called cognitive

52:12

load, which is that basically,

52:14

lying takes a lot more

52:16

mental force power than we realize. You have to think about what you

52:18

have to think about the lie you're telling you. To think

52:20

about the truth, you have to think about what the other person's

52:22

perception, you have to update that in

52:24

real time,

52:26

You have to make sure they're not catching

52:28

on. That's a that's a lot for for your for your

52:30

processor to be doing. And the best

52:32

way to detect wise is to further

52:36

up the cognitive load. And there are a number

52:38

of methods for doing that, but the the

52:40

most accessible and usable

52:42

of which

52:44

was to ask on

52:46

anticipated questions. And what's

52:48

really fun is I was

52:50

reading this

52:52

research and saw everything, and it's now used by airport screeners

52:54

at airports. And I was at a

52:56

I was gonna do a wedding in Prague in

53:00

June, and an airport screener came up to me and started asking

53:02

me, so, you know, where did you

53:04

go while you were in prod? What are you thinking?

53:08

I'm on the other end of this research right now, which

53:10

may be incredibly nervous. But I wasn't worried

53:12

because nervous doesn't impose a lot.

53:14

Point wise, they do use this.

53:17

So it's really powerful to

53:19

ask unanticipated questions because a liar

53:21

cannot prepare for every question you would

53:23

ask them, and they're going to

53:25

have to think. when police officers were told,

53:28

don't ask your police officers told don't

53:30

ask yourself does it seem like this

53:32

person is

53:34

lying? ask

53:34

yourself, does this person have

53:35

to think hard? And just

53:38

by asking just

53:39

that changing question, dramatically

53:41

improved police officers abilities to

53:44

detect lies. Howard Bauchner: Yeah, I think

53:45

that's really powerful. So if yeah. Like,

53:47

I thought that was such useful advice

53:49

Like, is the is the person having to think

53:52

hard about what they're

53:54

they're saying?

53:56

And also surprising then with

53:58

that unanticipated question. You have a

54:00

good example in there just to make it a

54:02

little bit more

54:04

concrete about And the bar? IDs. IDs

54:06

and IDs and and and and drinking. Tell

54:08

us about that. Yeah. So if you were

54:10

bartender and someone came into the

54:12

bar who

54:14

was clearly under age. If you ask them, how

54:16

old are you? They're gonna say twenty

54:18

one. You know, that's road. We all

54:20

know, you know, what the property, but

54:23

If you wanna ask the person, what you know, when were you

54:26

born? What is your birthday?

54:28

That's a very easy question

54:30

for someone who's telling

54:32

the truth. but someone who's lying is gonna do some math.

54:34

So all of a sudden, that creates the

54:36

biggest kind of delta, that creates the biggest

54:38

change where here's a question

54:40

that every person who's telling truth can

54:42

say quickly and someone who

54:44

didn't take the time to

54:46

falsify the year they were

54:48

born is That's

54:49

really how because they're doing

54:51

the math in their head. Yeah. They are to

54:54

use your language, you're you're making

54:56

them think you know, you you

54:58

say, oh, wow. They're thinking hard. Yeah. And that's a sign of so

55:01

so sweatiness, jitteriness, not

55:04

sign of lying unnecessarily.

55:06

It could be, in fact, a very false

55:08

signal, but but are they thinking hard? I

55:10

think that's so, so, so,

55:12

so useful. So lots of useful

55:14

stuff in this book. One last question for you,

55:16

Eric. So you've you now are

55:18

the relationship.

55:20

guru here. How, if at all, has this changed your

55:23

own relationships, your own friendships,

55:25

or any romantic relationships,

55:27

or your connections with

55:30

your family? I mean, the the writing of it is the

55:32

hard part in that sense

55:34

because oh, god. I'm doing that

55:36

wrong. This is, like, my my whole career

55:38

these days

55:40

is just reading research, oh, I do that wrong. So that's the

55:42

hard part. You know, it's just it's

55:44

it's constant staggering list of

55:46

all the things I'm doing incorrectly.

55:49

But that

55:50

said, afterwards, it's always a positive

55:52

because I can try and improve. For

55:54

me, it's like I'm making a

55:56

time for my making sure

55:58

I'm staying in touch. And I have not been

56:01

a paradigm of vulnerability in

56:03

the past. So just opening

56:05

up about those things,

56:08

it really makes a difference. You know, it really makes a difference

56:10

when people know where you're coming from.

56:12

They know what you're dealing with. They

56:15

can help. It's amazing how poor people are at helping when

56:17

they don't know what's wrong.

56:20

So it's made

56:22

a difference. It's

56:23

astonishing sometimes how bad

56:25

people are at reading our

56:27

minds. So it's just it's amazing. Maybe that's the next book,

56:29

but this book is a great book.

56:31

This is Eric Barker famous

56:34

for barking up the wrong tree,

56:36

the mammothly successful

56:38

blockchain newsletter. I

56:40

think that he plays well with others, and that's the name of

56:42

his book. He plays well with others, which is just

56:44

chalk a block with all kinds

56:47

of great evidence based insights

56:50

and tips on how to build our

56:52

relationships. Eric, thank you.

56:54

Thanks, Dan.

56:59

That was author

57:00

Eric Barker speaking with

57:03

our curator, Daniel Pink. If you'd like

57:05

to hear more from Eric, you can

57:07

check out his previous appearance on this show. That episode

57:09

is called relationships. You can also try downloading

57:11

the next big

57:14

idea app. There you can

57:16

hear Eric share the five key insights from

57:18

his book plays well with others

57:20

in just twelve minutes. And

57:22

Eric is just one author

57:24

among hundreds Nowhere else on the planet, can you hear folks like

57:26

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57:28

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57:56

was written and produced by Caleb Bissinger,

57:59

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58:02

producer is Michael Kapton. We play

58:04

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