Kelly welcomes University of Chicago professor Nick Epley back to the podcast to discuss his fantastic new book “A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health and Connection.”  

One of the things that I think is really delightful about many of your studies on how humans interact with other humans is that the studies are so often conducted on Chicago public transportation. 

“So, I will tell you there have been a number of occasions where I’ve planned to run some of the most impactful research that I’ve ever done, and other people have told me, ‘That’s just a really bad idea. You shouldn’t do that.’ The most obvious one, is when we tried to figure out why it is nobody talks to each other on the trains? Maybe talking to strangers sucks. Maybe we’re happier keeping to ourselves in all of these places. And I remember I told a senior colleague of mine at Booth, a very well-respected psychologist, I told him that I want to take our experiments out onto the train. I want to conduct an experiment on the train where we have people actually try to have a conversation with somebody or keep to themselves, and he had this look of bafflement, just because it’s not the kind of thing that psychologists often do, right? We run very carefully controlled experiments, you know, in the lab, or like we have done with you guys as well. Sometimes we’re not reluctant to get out into the world a little bit, but still, getting out onto the trains was an unusual thing.” 

You note that one of the reasons we are reluctant to talk to a stranger – even if those experiences usually turn out great – is we feel that encounter might go badly? 

“Yeah. Yeah. Mistaken reasons. I mean, it’s not so obvious at the moment, right? So, when you think about reaching out and engaging with somebody else, like talking to a stranger on the train or on the sidewalk or on a plane or out in the world or sharing something meaningful with a coworker or with a random group of strangers, you are taking what feels like some kind of risk, right? That is, you have to reach out and do this thing. And part of you wants to do it to connect. You kind of know that maybe this will turn out well. You like engaging with people, but you worry about how the other person’s going to respond. And that’s really the thing that creates a mistake. We find that over and over again we tend to underestimate how positively others will respond when we reach out to connect with them – and underestimating then the power that we have to connect with other people is the thing that really keeps us from doing it more often in our lives.  

Probably the most fascinating studies in this book are the ones that offer that acting extroverted makes you happier, even if you clasify yourself as an introvert. 

“If you think of personality as the type of person you are, then changing the type of person you are doesn’t make sense. But if you think of it as the type of choices you make, and that maybe extroverts are just choosing to do different things than introverts, then it does make sense to think about this as a potential intervention in the same way that you know exercising is a type of choice we make, and changing those choices could make us healthier. And indeed, what psychologists found was that when you asked people to act more extroverted, positive mood went up basically across the board in general, regardless of how extroverted you report being on a personality scale.”