Shankar Vedantam

You know, a few years ago, we had former U.S.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy talking to us on Hidden Brain, and he was describing a time when he visited Flint, Michigan, and this was shortly after people there suffered from a major contamination in the water supply.

And one thing I remember he told me was that people were desperate, but not just for their water supply to be fixed, but for the sense that the world was not moving on, that the world actually stopped to notice what was happening, to say, we recognize and we empathize with what you're going through.

Above and beyond what we need to survive in a biological sense, human beings need to feel valued and special.

When we are in trouble or in pain, in particular, it's important to feel that we are not alone, that what happens to us matters to other people.

When we come back, the urge to feel seen and heard and cared about, and the consequences of feeling like we are not.

You're listening to Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedantam.

This is Hidden Brain.

I'm Shankar Vedantam.

Gordon Flett is a psychologist at York University in Canada.

He studies the psychological conditions that people need in order to thrive.

Gordon, early in your own life, you were fortunate enough to have many experiences of feeling like you were seen and heard and valued.

But I understand that being around your grandmother in particular made you feel like a mini celebrity.

Tell me that story.

So when you went to this cafeteria guard, it wasn't just your grandmothers who were rolling out the red carpet.

It sounds like it was everyone who was there.

So many years after those memorable experiences at that cafeteria, you were sitting in a library reading a textbook as part of your graduate studies in psychology, and you came across this term that was new to you.

What was this term?

Give me the context, Gord.