Ben Rine

But another thing that's very interesting from a neuroscience perspective is that

When people are isolated, it actually changes the way that they process social information in certain ways, and again, in negative ways.

So for instance, an isolated person, when they have an interaction, they will experience less of that social reward.

They won't feel quite as good afterwards or during.

They will also have trouble with trust.

They tend to distrust others.

And unfortunately, as a consequence of that, others distrust them more.

And also the isolated brain tends to pay closer attention to negative social signals where we kind of, you know, there's literally studies showing that the brain will show larger responses to viewing negative social images, things like a man slapping a woman, things like that, where the brain just responds much more robustly.

That's right.

And I think the overlooked part of our social diet is actually strangers.

There's a lot of great evidence suggesting that interacting with strangers, it makes us feel better and it can hit on those same brain systems that interacting with the best friend does.

Of course, sure, it's probably not the same, not exactly the same.

It's not equivalent in the reward that it gives you.

But it does make a difference.

And so I really encourage people to think about all the time that you spend in the company of strangers waiting at the doctor's office, waiting in line at the grocery store, which, by the way, is why it's important to go out and do these things in real life.

And during those times, if you have a short conversation with a stranger, which, by the way, you probably won't want to, you'll probably feel that it's not going to go well.

But if you do, I can almost guarantee that you will feel better after because there's a bunch of data suggesting that.

Yeah, I mean, it's easy to get sucked into that that trap and especially even more easy when you're already isolated because of the way the brain sort of shifts its thinking.

Right.

That's exactly right.