The One Habit That Will Instantly Make You More Likeable
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How did a train conversation inspire experiments on social pessimism?
How do you account for the fact that I might want to leave a party three hours before my husband would want to leave a party? I've always said I'm an introvert, so the party wore me out quicker. I'm going to go home, whereas it costs my husband less so he can stay out longer.
So one thing that you'd want to know as a researcher is are you choosing to behave differently at the party? You might just be exercising more. Your husband might be sitting down and chilling with a beer with the fellows on the couch.
No, I feel personally responsible for the quality of everybody's conversation.
That's tiring, right? So what you've just done is run a marathon. Your husband just took the stairs to the third floor. It's no surprise that you're more tired. It doesn't mean you're an introvert. It just means you were exercising more. People tend to overestimate how introverted they are.
Welcome to the Liz Moody Podcast, where we believe that there is always something that you can do to create a life that feels amazing, and we help you figure out how to find the lever to pull at any moment to actually do that. Nick, welcome to the podcast. Thank you, Liz. Great to be here. So you performed one of the most talked about studies that exists in psychology. I've been talking about this study for years and you had some really exciting findings that I think will change how we all interact with the world on a day-to-day basis.
Yeah, so first, let me make sure I credit Juliana Schroeder, who is my amazing PhD student who did all of the really hard work on this experiment. But this was one that really did change the way I live my life too. And it actually came from an experience I had one morning on a train on the way into the University of Chicago, where I'm a professor of behavioral science. And I was sitting there on the train, writing a chapter from my first book, which was titled Mindwise, describing how we're uniquely social on the planet. We've got brains that are uniquely equipped for connecting with the minds of others, how we're made happier and healthier by connecting with the minds of others. And yet I look around on the train and
That morning. It's not like I hadn't been on the train before. I've been on it many times, but he had just looked at it with a particular careful, insightful lens at that time. And I realized we've got this whole train of highly social people and nobody's saying a word, right? We're all sitting there ignoring each other. And that seemed weird. Why is it that highly social creatures like us can at times seem to be so unsocial? And so I had a lovely conversation with somebody on the train that morning. The conversation I had wasn't just positive, wasn't just good. It was surprisingly good. It went much better than I thought it would. And I thought that gap, particularly in understanding how other people might respond to us, that might be a common thing
that I do a lot, maybe something a lot of us do. So anecdotes, there aren't evidence. So a guy has a nice conversation on trains. So what, who cares? So that was where we needed to get actually down to work and do an actual experiment. We went to a train station on the line that I take into the University of Chicago at Homewood, Illinois. And we actually ran two experiments. In one experiment, we asked people, we asked train commuters to imagine how they would feel on a ride into Chicago that morning. if they did three different things. One, if they kept to themselves in solitude, just focused on, you know, their day ahead. Second, if they just did whatever they normally did, which is typically keep to themselves, focus on their day ahead.
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.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
How did a train conversation inspire experiments on social pessimism?
0:00–11:15
2
Why do people expect conversations with strangers to go badly — and what did the commuter experiments find?
11:15–36:25
3
How can fear of judgment and misconceptions about warmth vs. competence keep us from connecting?
36:25–53:27
4
How can a simple follow-up question turn small talk into a meaningful conversation?
53:27–55:07
5
Why should we reach out during others' grief instead of avoiding them?
55:07–57:15
6
How do small daily social moments build long-term happiness?
57:15–1:01:44
7
What are practical habits (like the 10-5 rule) to become more social and likeable?
1:01:44–1:43:48
Speakers
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