Dr. Nicholas Epley

speaker

1,223 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 15 Jul

Dr. Nicholas Epley’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Liz Moody Podcast · The One Habit That Will Instantly Make You More Likeable · 15 Jul 2026 podcast

And third, we asked them to predict how they'd feel if they had a conversation with someone who came and sat down next to them, right?

They try to make a connection.

And here people's beliefs were crystal clear.

They believe that talking to a stranger was a bad idea, that they would have a more pleasant experience and it would be more productive if they kept to themselves in solitude or did whatever they normally did than if they talked to a stranger.

And that sort of makes sense because that's what everybody is choosing to do here.

But as a psychologist, as a behavioral scientist,

we know that those predictions, those expectations, we don't take them necessarily as facts.

Those are bets.

Those are guesses about how an event might unfold if you tried.

We guess incorrectly all the time.

And there are reasons to think that maybe this might be systematically wrong.

And so we ran another experiment where instead of asking people to tell us how they thought they'd feel if they did each of these things, we actually had people do

each of these things to see how they actually felt at the end of their commute.

If they kept themselves in solitude, did whatever they normally did or connected with a stranger.

And what we found there was precisely the opposite of what people expected.

People actually reported having a more pleasant experience when they talked to someone who sat down next to them than they did when they kept to themselves in solitude or did whatever they normally did.

And there were no differences in productivity between these three groups.

So people's beliefs here about how this experience would go weren't just wrong.

They were precisely backwards.

But notice, those beliefs are really important because they guide our choices.

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