Dr. Nicholas Epley

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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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And compliments tend to have outsized impacts on people's experience.

The way we respond to positive and negative events in our lives is often insensitive to the actual magnitude of them.

Not completely, right?

A really big loss hurts us more than a small loss and a really nice positive thing makes us feel better for longer than a really small thing.

But even really small things tend to have effects that are outsized compared to their magnitude.

So the difference between how positive you feel over the course of your day when somebody passes along a kind word

versus, you know, finding out in the morning you won an award.

Both of those things are going to decay, right?

Both of those things are going to make you feel really good.

And even just the small, kind word might leave you feeling just as good for just as long as this big thing, this award.

That's what psychologists refer to as scope insensitivity.

our response to this as insensitive or some relatively insensitive to the scope or the magnitude of the experience.

And that means that kind words like compliments are often the places where we can get the biggest return on our investment.

If you want to think about this in financial terms, right?

These little things that we can pass along that really have a lot of power to lift people up.

But when we ask folks, how often do you have a kind thought that you don't share?

They typically tell us around, you know, a third of the time.

They won't share a kind thought, right?

You can understand why you might not pass along an insult to somebody.

But why wouldn't you pass along a compliment?

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