Modern WisdomThe Invisible Rules Of Social Success You Were Never Taught - Charles Duhigg
EVERY SPOKEN WORD
140 min read · 28,259 words- 0:00 – 2:31
What We Get Wrong About Communication
- CWChris Williamson
What do most people get wrong when it comes to understanding communication, do you think?
- CDCharles Duhigg
I think what most people get wrong is they think that it's something that should just happen naturally, right? That it's something that, that, that the best communicators are people who don't think about communication. But what we've discovered is exactly the opposite. I- if, if you know someone who is just fantastic at connecting with people, at communicating, and you go up and you ask them, you know, "Have you always been like this?" Inevitably, what they are gonna tell you is no. They'll say something like, "When I was in high school, I had real trouble making friends, and so I really had to, like, study how kids talk to each other," or, or, "My, my parents got divorced when I was a kid, and I had to be the peacemaker between them." The thing about communication is, it's just a set of skills. It's not even particularly complicated skills. It's a set of skills that anyone can learn. Anyone can become a super communicator. But you have to realize that they're skills, and you have to practice them a little bit. And, and you have to commit to thinking about how you communicate to get better at it.
- CWChris Williamson
I suppose communication is quite tightly tied to our sense of self. You know, it's the-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... it's our expression of who we are. So when we look at somebody that's a good or a bad communicator, that's because they're a good or a bad person. What was... their sense of self-worth comes through as well.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Absolutely. I mean, th- that happens a lot. And, and of course, um, you can be a bad person and be a great communicator (laughs) . You can be a good person and not be a great communicator. Um, but you're exactly right that, like, communication is very central to not only how we think about ourselves, but, but how we move through the world. And, and what's interesting is, if you think about it, communication is so ... Communication is Homo sapiens' superpower, right? It is the thing that has allowed us to, to be... you know, do better than every other species, to build families, and villages, and towns, to pass knowledge from, from one generation to the next generation. And so our brains have evolved to be pretty good at communication. Like, like, we have all of the stuff in our head to be fantastic at it. And as a result, because it's so important to who we are as a species, you're right, we tend to judge people, like their moral worth, on whether they're a good communicator or not. And, and that, that can be a little bit dangerous, but it also means that if you want to connect with someone and you're someone who's an introvert, you're someone who has trouble connecting, it's really just a matter of learning how... learning these skills about how communication works, and you can form that bond.
- CWChris Williamson
Talk to me
- 2:31 – 6:10
Differences Between Extroverts & Introverts
- CWChris Williamson
about the difference between introverts and extroverts. Are there advantages and disadvantages that each have? You'd... sort of off the top of your head, you'd think, well, extroverts have got all of the advantages here because they're the ones that are more outgoing, they're gonna have more experience, they're going to find social, um, engagements less energy-sapping. Uh, what, what did you come to learn about extroverts and introverts and communication?
- CDCharles Duhigg
So it, it turns out... It... To, to answer that question, let me tell you a little bit about what we know about the science of communication. So, um, when I started writing Super Communicators, the reason why is because I had fallen into this bad pattern with my wife, which probably is going to be familiar to you and anyone listening to this, which is, I would come home from a long day at work, I'd start complaining about my day. I was working at the New York Times at that point. I'd be like, "My boss doesn't understand me and my coworkers don't realize what a genius I am." And my wife would say this very, like, practical thing. She would say, like, "Why don't you take your boss out to lunch and you guys can get to know each other a little bit better?" And instead of being able to hear her good advice, I would actually get more upset, right? And I would say like, "You're supposed to be supporting me. You're supposed to be on my side. Why aren't you outraged on my behalf?" And she would get upset 'cause I was attacking her for giving me good advice. It was not a good scene, right? And I think many people... all relationships have some version of this, where, where, where one person wants to complain and the other person wants to solve the problem, and there's, there's conflict there. And so I was trying to figure out, like, why this was happening. And I went to researchers and I asked them and they said, "Well, we're actually really glad that you came and talked to us right now, 'cause we're living through this golden age of understanding communication." And one of the things that we've learned by studying the brains of people as they communicate with each other is that when you're having a discussion, you think it's about one thing, right? You're talking about your day, or like where to go on vacation, or next year's budget. But actually, they said, if you look at someone's brain, every discussion is made up of multiple kinds of conversations. And in general, these conversations tend to fall into one of three buckets. There's these practical conversations where we're, like, solving problems or making plans together. But then there's emotional conversations where I tell you what I'm feeling, and I don't want you to solve my feelings, I want you to empathize. And then there's social conversations, which is about how we relate to each other in, in society. And they said, "What we've discovered is if two people are having different kinds of conversations at the same time, they usually aren't even aware of it, but they literally can't hear each other." They literally can't understand what the other person is trying to say and they don't feel connected at all. But if you can figure out what kind of conversation is happening and you can match the other person or invite them to match you, then suddenly you feel connected. Even if you don't agree with each other, you suddenly feel like you have some type of connection and, and it feels like a conversation. So what does this have to do with introverts and extroverts? A lot of the research that's coming out, particularly now, says that introversion and extroversion is not necessarily something that we're born with or something that's hardwired into our brain. It's a set of habits that we become comfortable with, right? Extroverts oftentimes get more opportunities to practice having conversations, to practice having conversations such as emotional conversations, right? Or practical conversations. Or because they have practice, somebody comes up to them with an emotional problem and they try and give them a practical solution and it doesn't go well, and they say, "Okay, next time, next time I'm gonna handle this a little bit differently. I'm gonna do better." I think one of the big differences between extroverts and introverts is simply how much time and space we have and we give ourselves to practice. Because like anything that's skills-based, the first time you play soccer, the first time you play cricket, the first time you go and lift weights, you're not... you're not great at it. You gotta practice it. You gotta learn how to do it. And communication's exactly the same way.
- CWChris Williamson
What
- 6:10 – 10:36
The Skill of Asking Questions
- CWChris Williamson
would you consider the component skills of communication, if you were to bucket them together?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah. Okay. So, there's a couple of them. Um, and we should talk about what a super communicator is, because I think that'll help people kind of s- visualize this in their head. So, so let me ask you a question, which is, let's imagine you were having, like, a bad day, right? Like, just terrible day. You come home after work. You're like, y- and you wanna call someone 'cause you know calling this person will make you feel better.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Like, you'll just like it. Do you know who you would call? Like, does that person pop into your mind?
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. Yeah, probably-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah?
- CWChris Williamson
... either Luke, my tour manager, or George, who is a friend and has been on the show 10 times.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Okay. Okay. So, Luke and George are, for you, super communicators, and you are, I guarantee you, a super communicator back to them. Right? You don't- you do it without even thinking about it. You just know how to, like, you know how to ask the right question. You know how to show that you're listening. You know how to show that you care. You know how to... Each of those things that you're doing with- with those two guys are skills. And you might not recognize them as skills right now because they just feel so natural to you, but they are skills. And once we identify them as skills, they become fungible. We can- you can talk to a stranger the same way you talk to Luke. And if you do, it'll have the same impact that it has on Luke, which is that it feels like you're the most wonderful person on Earth. Okay, so what are those skills? So, one of the things that we know about super communicators, and this is the first skill, is that... And as I mentioned, we're all super communicators one time or another, but consistent super communicators, people who can connect with almost anyone, is that they tend to ask more questions, like 10 to 20 times as many questions as the average person. And some of those questions we don't even register as questions, or things like, "Oh, you know, what'd you make of that?" Or like, "Oh, did you like that restaurant?" Like, like, little things that just invite us into a conversation. But some of the questions are what are known within psychology as deep questions, and a deep question is something that asks us about our values, or beliefs, or our experiences. And that can sound a little bit intimidating, but it's, like, as simple as, like, if you meet someone who's a doctor, instead of saying, you know, "Oh, what hospital do you w- work at?" Saying, "Oh, what made you decide to go to medical school?" Right? It's as easy to ask the second question as the first, but the second question, like, invites them to talk about who they are. It's a deep question. It doesn't appear like a deep question, but it allows you to have a real conversation. So, this is the first skill. Super communicators ask a lot more questions, and they- they ask deep questions. They ask about... Instead of asking about the facts of someone's life, they ask how they feel about their life.
- CWChris Williamson
It's interesting thinking about, uh, the two guys that I mentioned, because they would both- both a lot of the time drop into that. And I think there's a sense of being seen when somebody asks you a question about, "How did that make you feel?"
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Because at no point are they denying the fact that you felt that way or should have felt that way, that it feels like a judgment-free zone.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Totally. Totally. And the thing I love about that, too, and I think that this is- that's a really- that's a really smart comment, because what it also recognizes is, when I ask you about your personal experiences, I'm asking you about something that you are an expert on. And so- so let's say we're having a political debate and we disagree with each other, and I've got all my facts in my pocket and you've got all your facts in your pocket. But if I ask you, like, "How did you feel on election day? Like, when you saw the results come in, how did you feel?" You're the expert in how you feel. I can't be like, "Oh, you didn't feel that way. You actually felt this way," right? Like... And- and then when you ask me how I felt, I'm the expert in what I feel. And so instead of us trying to out-expert each other and out d- and out-duel each other, we're both coming with these authentic experiences that we have, and- and it allows us to find all the things we have in common. 'Cause if you voted for someone that... If you voted for the person I didn't vote for and vice versa, my guess is, actually, that was the smallest part of that week, right? (laughs) Was- was casting that ballot. There was also, like, waking up the morning after. There's taking your kids to school. There's, you know, talking to friends about the election. Those are all things that we have in common. And finding that commonality really helps us also talk about what we don't have in common, which is really powerful.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- 10:36 – 14:33
How to Listen Better
- CWChris Williamson
Okay, next skill.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Okay. So, s- first one is asking deep questions. Second skill is that once we ask those questions, we often think that it's just our job to listen to people, and- and that's a little bit of a misunderstanding of what listening is. So, what's interesting is that most of the time when we think about listening, what we think about is we think about remaining silent, right? Two ears, one mouth, remaining silent, listening to what you're saying. Maybe we'll nod our head. Maybe we'll, like, look you in the eyes and- and say, like, "Hmm, that's interesting." That's not- that's not listening. That's the first condition of listening, but you need more to actually be a good listener. And in part it's because, particularly when we're talking about something that's really sensitive, or really important, or really controversial, or something we have- feel conflict over that we disagree with each other, there's always a sneaking suspicion in the back of our heads that you are not actually listening to me. You're just waiting your turn to speak. So, what do I do to overcome that suspicion? Well, there's actually this technique. We- uh, well, let me give you the answer. The answer is that you have to prove that you're listening. You have to prove to the person you're paying attention. And there's actually this technique that they teach at, like, Harvard and Stanford and all these other fancy schools that's called looping for understanding. And this is what- this is what it is. There's three parts to this. When you're talking to someone and you get to that point in the conversation where, like, things are getting real, step one is you should ask a question, right? Preferably a deep question. Try and use that, you know, ask someone, "How do you feel about that? What does that mean to you? Why'd you decide to do X?"... and then listen to what they're saying in response and when they're done answering the question, repeat back in your own words what you heard them say. Now the key here is, it cannot be mimicry, right? This is what bad salespeople do. They just say back what you just said to them, or the last thing that you said. What, what it has to be is you have, you're trying to prove to them that you're actually processing this, so it has to be something like, "You know, what I hear you saying is this, and, and that reminds me of something you said last week, 'cause I think they're connected." Right? You're proving to them that you're thinking about what they said. And most of us do these first two steps intuitively, right? This is just like, we kinda learned this in school. It's step three that I always forget, because once you've said to them, "Here's what I, here's what I heard you say. Am I getting this right?" Or, you say, "Did I hear you correctly?" You, you ask if you got it right, because what you're really doing in that moment is you're asking for permission to acknowledge that you were listening. And when you acknowledge that I was listening, I become many, many times more likely to list- likely to listen to you in return. This is basic social reciprocity.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
So that's the second skill is prove you are listening. Ask deep questions, prove you are listening through a technique like looping for understanding or maybe just asking follow-up questions or maybe saying, "Oh man, that sounds so hard. I, I kinda know what that's like. I've been through something myself." Prove you're listening.
- CWChris Williamson
So...
- CDCharles Duhigg
The third... Oh, sorry. Go ahead.
- CWChris Williamson
No, just it, it, it makes an, an awful lot of sense that it, it can... Conversations, bad conversations can feel like a game of tennis where everybody is just waiting their turn. Oh, the ball's coming over the net, it's coming over, it's gonna bounce, and then, oh, now it's my turn to hit it.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah. And those aren't... That's not fun, right? Like, it's not like... And, and by the way, if you look at transcripts of great conversations, what you see is that they're a total mess. Like, like if you have, if you have a transcript and everyone's being really eloquent, they're saying things in like these really like practiced ways, that's not a great conversation. It might be a great transcript, but like if you were in that conversation, you'd be like, "This is the most boring thing on earth. Like, everyone's just waiting to hit the tennis ball."
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
A good conversation is kind of messy and it's, it has these non-linear aspects, and that's, that's important. That's, that's how we connect with each other.
- 14:33 – 26:03
The Role of Vulnerability in Conversation
- CDCharles Duhigg
- CWChris Williamson
What's the third skill?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Okay. So, there's two more. The third skill is that you need to understand vulnerability and the role of vulnerability in a conversation, because most people misunderstand what vulnerability is. We, we... This word has gotten used so much we tend to think it means like, you know, crying on someone's shoulder or talking about like when your mom was mean to you. That's not what vulnerability is. Vulnerability has a very, very spe- specific definition in neuroscience and psychology, and it's something that our brains have evolved to do, which is that when I tell you something that you could judge, it creates a sense of vulnerability in me. Now, I might tell you something where I don't care about your judgment. I might tell you that I like, um, I like Star Trek better than Star Wars. I think it's a better sh- uh, better, better plot, better acting. And you could be like, "That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard." Like, (laughs) like, "Star Wars is definitely better than Star Trek." I don't care. I don't care if you agree with me. It's not like it's a high-stakes thing. But the act of me telling you something that you could judge, it sets off a neural cascade in my brain that creates a sense of vulnerability. And here's what we know is that when I do that, if you don't judge me, if you choose to withhold judgment, and even more powerfully, if you share something about yourself that I could judge, then it is impossible for us not to trust and like each other a little bit more.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Our brains literally have evolved to use vulnerability as a signal as to whether we should trust other people. And that doesn't mean that like I might agree with you. It doesn't mean that I might like think you're, you'd be a good friend. But as, uh, once I am vulnerable with you and you are vulnerable with me, once we engage in reciprocal vulnerability and reciprocal authenticity, we will trust each other and like each other a little bit more.
- CWChris Williamson
C- have you thought... Have you looked at this from an adaptive lens through sort of a-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
O- okay. So can you give me the, uh...
- CDCharles Duhigg
Oh, totally, totally.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CDCharles Duhigg
So let's, so let's talk about like why, why communi- from an adaptive perspective, why communication is so important, why this particular trait might be even more important. So, it... Clearly, it's adaptive to be able to communicate, right? If I can, if I can... We, we know that societies do better than individuals, and the way that I can coordinate with a society is I can talk to them and we can become, we can share goals together. So communication is clearly adaptive. But then there's this question about like why would vulnerability be something that's, that's adaptive instead of maladaptive, something that helps us? And the answer is that once we build a society, it's very, very hard to police that society without it being really expensive. So, if, if we have rules like you should not murder someone or you should not steal and we have to get cops on every single corner to watch people all the time to see if they're stealing, it's incredibly expensive. It's not efficient. It take- it undoes all the advantages of a society. So what we need is we need some system where people learn the rules and they just wanna live by the rules, right? They wanna stick by the rules. And more importantly, if somebody breaks those rules, they take real offense at it. In a system like that, when a stranger comes to town, I have to determine whether that stranger poses a risk or not 'cause I can't follow them around with a police officer for a long time. And so, one of the things that happens is if they show me something that I could use against them, if they show me their underbelly, if they admit something to me that I could judge-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
... they're giving, they're giving me a little bit of leverage. They're giving me a little bit of power.And, and that means... And, and if I do the same thing back to them, we've given each other some power. And in that situation, we don't have to worry about the police keeping everyone in line because you and I now know something about each other, we owe something to each other, we've, we've taken the measure of the other person by giving them a chance to attack us. So, if they're the type of person who's an attacker, we, like, gave them a perfect opportunity and they didn't do it. And that doesn't mean that, like, everyone in that society is gonna be moral and ethical all the time. But it does mean that in a very... when I need to very quickly evaluate whether you're a risk or not, looking to the vulnerability and whether it's authentic vulnerability is going to be a real test. And there's another interesting part to this which is, when people aren't authentically vulnerable-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
... we detect it almost immediately.
- CWChris Williamson
Can you give me an example?
- CDCharles Duhigg
It's incredibly... Yeah. So, like, if I say, like, "Hey, you know, I just wanted to let you know, like, um, you know, I spent all this money on this yacht and, like, I'm a little stressed about, like, how much money I spent on it. But, bro, it's a sweet yacht." Like, that does not... That's, that's clearly not me being vulnerable, right? (laughs) That's... I mean, I said something that ostensibly-
- CWChris Williamson
It's a humblebrag.
- CDCharles Duhigg
It's a humblebrag. I said something that you could judge. You could be like, "Yeah, you spent too much money." But like, the... So, that's, that's inauthentic. Or if I go... If I ask you where you went on vacation, it doesn't take you long to figure out I don't care where you went on vacation. I just wanna tell you where I went on vacation so I can brag about, like, this cool safari I went on.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Our brains become-
- CWChris Williamson
Whereas if you were to ask, if you were to ask a question of, "Have you ever gone on a vacation and... with your partner and it's been emotionally difficult?" Have you ever had that? 'Cause, 'cause-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Oh, totally. That's, that's a great question.
- CWChris Williamson
... you know, I... That, that was something that happened to me recently. And, and i- dude, it's weird 'cause you've got this sort of bittersweet sensation. You're away in somewhere that's so beautiful, but you, you and your significant other aren't really getting on. And I, I, I don't really know... I mean, is that common? Like, has that ever happened to you?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Oh, y- you mean the va-
- CWChris Williamson
You know, like, that's an interesting one.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah. That's... Exactly. That's a fantastic, deep question. Because what you just did is you admitted something vulnerable to me and it didn't cost you much. It's not like I think, like, "Oh, this guy is, like, such a jerk 'cause he went on a vacation with his girlfriend once." (laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Like, there's no cost to that type of vulnerability, but it is authentic. You're, you're trying to share something real and meaningful with me as opposed to trying to, like, send some signal.
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- 26:03 – 33:13
Categorising Conversations
- CWChris Williamson
the final skill?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Okay, so the final skill is, once you're asking deep questions, once you're proving that you're listening, looping for understanding and sort of showing that, once you're, you're willing to be vulnerable under the correct definition of what vulnerability is, it's really important that we pay attention to what kind of conversation is happening. I mentioned before that there's these three kinds of conversations. The, the practical, the emotional, and the social. And, and in the book Super Communicators, there's all these stories about, like, a CIA officer who's, like, recruiting overseas spies, and, uh, and why The Big Bang Theory became such a hit 'cause it was a flop when they, when they made the pilot. And at the core of it is this thing that if I, if I become attuned to diagnosing what kind of mindset you're in, if I can just ask myself, like, "Does this seem like he's in a practical mindset or an emotional mindset or a social mindset?" And then I can just do the smallest thing to try and match you there, right? Like-
- CWChris Williamson
Hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
... like, you mentioned that you went to your kids' graduation this weekend, and, and, and I say... instead of saying, like, "Just congratulations, that's awesome," I say, "Oh man, what did that feel like to watch your kid walk across that stage? 'Cause clearly, you are... you're... this is kind of an emotional experience for you to go to your kid's graduation." I'm just gonna ask about it. When we can pay attention, just the smallest amount, to what kind of conversation is happening, when we can match others and we can invite them to match us, all of a sudden, our conversations get much, much better. And there's actually a scientific basis to this, which is because of, again, how our brains have evolved, because communication is so important to our species, when you're in a good conversation, like this conversation we're having right now, without our... us realizing it, our bodies start to match each other. So you and I are breathing at a s- basically the same rate, our heart rates are matching each other, our... The... Actually even the pew- the dilation of our pupils is starting to mirror each other. And more importantly, if I could see inside both of our brains, what I would see is our thoughts are becoming more and more similar. Literally, we're using the same parts of our brain with the same type of energy, we're, we're moving through similar neural pathways. And that kind of makes sense that our brains would become similar, 'cause if you think about it, when I tell you about an emotion I'm feeling, you actually experience that emotion a little bit, right? Or, or if I tell you about a... an idea, you experience that idea. So it makes sense that our brains become, become aligned, but what the neuroscientists that I mentioned earlier have found, and there's a guy named Uri Hasson at Princeton who's kind of the grandfather of this research, is that the more our brains become aligned, the more we're thinking the same thoughts at the same time, the better we understand each other, the more we feel connected to each other, and most importantly, the more we like the conversation. Within neuroscience, this is known as neural entrainment. We become neurally entrained, and when we are neurally entrained, it re- w- it releases this reward sensation, this cascade of, of neurotransmitters that make us feel good. And in part, this is adaptive because, you know, our brains want us to communicate with people, they want us to have real conversations, they want us to connect and bond. And so when we feel good, even if we disagree with each other, we still feel good about the conversation, we still feel like the conversation was a success. Now the thing is, these three types of conversations that I mentioned, they use different parts of our brains, right? So when I'm talking to my wife and I'm in an emotional mindset, I'm using the, the basal ganglia, the interior structures of my brain. And when she responds by giving me some practical advice, sh- she's having a practical conversation, she's using her prefrontal cortex. So it's very hard for our thoughts to become similar if she's using the front of her brain and I'm using the interior of my brain. That's why matching each other is so powerful, is because literally what I'm doing when I ask you, "Oh, what did it feel like to watch your kid walk across that stage at graduation?" What I'm doing at that moment is I'm activating the same part of my brain that I know is active in your brain, and it's gonna make it so much easier for us to become neurally aligned. And then once we're aligned, we can move from emotional to practical to social and back to emotional all together, and we'll understand each other so much better the entire time.
- CWChris Williamson
Was this what the Dartmouth study was looking at, and that's something to do with g- a, a guitarist as well?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah. There's a ton, there's a ton of studies that have looked exactly at this, right? Like, like, you mentioned the Dartmouth study. They would w- have people watch these confusing movie clips together. Um, and, and then they would actually turn off the, um, the sound, and they were oftentimes foreign movies so the people were actually not even speaking English and there was no subtitles. And they would have people just watch, watch these movies, these movie clips that were super confusing, and then they would put them in groups to try and have them answer these qu- a, a bunch of questions, like, "What's going on in that scene?" X and Y and Z. The, the group has to come to a consensus. And what they found is that some of the groups w- came to a consensus faster and easier than others, and when they put them in MRIs and they showed them the clips again, what they found was that those groups that came to consensus really, really quickly... And not quickly, but n- but easily, fully came to consensus, their brains all looked like each other after they had had this conversation. The first time they were watching the movie in the MRI, their brains all looked different, but the conversation somehow got their brains to look similar, to remember and watch these scenes as if they were all sharing kind of the same perspective. And so they're trying to figure out, why does this happen in some groups and it doesn't happen in other groups? And Bo Sivers, Seavers is the name of the researcher who did this research, and what he found is that in the groups that came to consensus, in the groups that became neurally aligned, there was at least one person who was a super communicator. There was someone who, like, would just ask a lot more questions than the average person.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
And again, a lot of the questions were like, "Oh," like, "What, what did you, what'd you think of that scene?" Or, like, you know, "Oh, what'd you think of what happened next?" They are just questions that invite us into the conversation. They would also do things like repeat what other people said a lot more often. "You know, Jim, Jim, you had a really interesting thought. Uh, you mentioned that you thought that this one scene was about death." Right? They're proving that they're listening.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
And in that group, people begin modeling themselves after that behavior. So other people start then proving
- CWChris Williamson
It's so prosocial that it sets a tone everyone else-
- CDCharles Duhigg
It's so prosocial.
- CWChris Williamson
... wants to follow.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
One super communicator in a group can cause everyone else to become neurally entrained. And when they're neurally entrained, they hear each other so much better. They like (laughs) each other so much better. And that doesn't... Like, they had people in these rooms who, like, were, like, conservatives and liberals, and people who were from the South and from the North. Like, these weren't people who necessarily, like, all naturally would have been friends. But just putting that super communicator in the room, having them model those behaviors, it made everyone else feel like that group came together, that it clicked, and that's really powerful.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah. It's, um,
- 33:13 – 37:23
People That Make You Feel Interesting
- CWChris Williamson
it's interesting how one correctly positioned person can sort of change the, the dynamic of a conversation.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
And I often think about, I often think about... Or I had this idea recently about w- why around some people it feels like we have so much to say and around other people e- we don't feel that interesting. I'm sure that you'll have read the story about Winston Churchill's mother meeting-
- CDCharles Duhigg
No.
- CWChris Williamson
Have you not r- heard it? Oh, you're gonna absolutely love this one. So I wrote about this in my newsletter a c- a couple of weeks ago. So, um, Winston Churchill's mother, I never realized, she was kind of a bit of a, a, how would you say, like a socialite type thing.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Okay.
- CWChris Williamson
Sort of a little, uh, like, a Hollywood socialite type thing. She's called Jennie Jerome. So, uh, she got to dine with Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and William Gladstone on consecutive nights. So there was the-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Oh, wow.
- CWChris Williamson
... the two, the t- the two rivals that were vying for leadership, and she got to dine with them on consecutive nights. And she said, "When I left the dining room after sitting next to Gladstone, I thought that he was the cleverest man in England. But when I sat n- next to Disraeli, I left feeling like I was the cleverest woman."
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
And it sort of perfectly explains why around some people it feels like we have lots to say and around other people i- it feels like we're boring. And, um, I realize a lot of the time what people are... want, they want to be charismatic, you know? Gen Z even had to recreate it as rizz because chara-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... charisma, charisma was too sort of boomery and uncool. Um, and everybody wants rizz. But when you actually think about, okay, so how do you become charismatic, which is sort of energetic, outgoing, extroverted likeability with sexiness, I guess, um, it's really hard. But how do you make an uncharismatic person more charismatic? It's really difficult. But reverse charisma, which is not trying to be interested, in- interesting to other people but trying to make them feel interesting around you, that's way easier. That's significantly easier to do.
- CDCharles Duhigg
It's way, it's way easier. And, and this- there's this quote that I'm sure you've heard from Maya Angelou that no one remembers what you said, they only remember how you made them feel. And it turns out that actually the science tells us that's, that's right. Like, if you think back to the, a great conversation you had in the last week, and I would ask you to tell me what people talked about, you could probably come up with, like, two or three topics that came up, and you will remember nothing specific about what anyone said, right? Like, like, when we're in a conversation, it's not like we're tr- transcribing it. We're not paying attention to the words.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
What we are paying attention to... Now, if I asked you how you felt during that conversation, you'd actually be able to tell me with s- like, surprising accuracy how you felt at different periods in the conversation, and you'd certainly remember how you felt at the end of it. That's what we tend to remember.
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah, I, I mean, Adam Mastriani has this great insight around, uh, everything is just vibes basically, which is the same, th- m- the same-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... sort of realization you've come to. You know, he's a guy who I think is still in academia. Uh, he did, uh, postgrad, he did a PhD, he did all of this stuff, and I think maybe he did his undergrad-... 15 years ago, something like that. And he was on the quiz team, the qui- quiz, quiz, quiz-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Oh, really? Oh, I didn't know that.
- CWChris Williamson
... quiz
- NANarrator
Bleeds.
- CDCharles Duhigg
I know Adam. I didn't know that he was on the-
- CWChris Williamson
Apparently.
- CDCharles Duhigg
... on, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Oh, interesting.
- CWChris Williamson
And, uh, he tested himself to just remember the names of the classes that he took in his first year of undergrad, just the names of the classes.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
And I think he got 40% of the names-
- 37:23 – 42:07
How to Improve Your Small Talk
- CWChris Williamson
So, one of the, uh, area, you know, we've sort of talked about the deep conversations. Uh, something which a lot of people have a mortal fear over is small talk. You know, the sort of-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... awkward elevator, the water cooler thing, the sat waiting for whatever. How can people better survive small talk?
- CDCharles Duhigg
So, so this gets to these deep questions again. So I, I, I give a lot of speeches, right? I give speeches about... And, and it's usually like a room of say, you know, 1,000 or 5,000, um, people who are like in a trade show. And so when I'm talking about super communicators, I always start it the same way. I say, "In 30 minutes, I'm gonna ask you to turn to the person next to you and ask and answer one question. And that question is, when is the last time you cried in front of another person?" And then I ask them, "Who's excited about this?" And literally no hands go up, right? (laughs) Nobody wants to do this. They just came to some conference. They're at Vegas. And now here, this guy, guy on the stage is telling them, "I'm gonna force you to, like, have a conversa- have a therapy session with this stranger who's sitting next to you," right? Nobody likes this idea. And then I spend the next 30 minutes explaining why this is a good idea. Uh, what we know about deep questions, what we know about neural entrainment. And then we do the experiment. And I ask people, and this is based on some work that Nick Epley, a professor at the University of Chicago has done, 'cause he's done this experiment thousands of times. And, and I ask people to estimate how much they think they're going to enjoy this conversation that they're about to have, right? How awkward they think it'll be, um, whether they're gonna feel close to the other person. And when Nick does this, he actually has it, has them take a poll on a phone, and what he finds is that people say, before they have this conversation, "This is gonna be super awkward." Right? Like, "This is not... I'm not..." They actually say that they, they might enjoy it a little bit because, like, if you're sitting next to your boss, everyone, everyone doesn't mind hearing how their boss c- cried last time.
- CWChris Williamson
(laughs)
- CDCharles Duhigg
So there's a little bit of plagiarism, but it's not, it's not a huge amount-
- CWChris Williamson
Right.
- CDCharles Duhigg
... of enjoyment they anticipate. And most importantly, they do not think they will feel closer to the person afterwards. They think, they think they will feel even more distant from them because it's just weird to talk about crying with this stranger. So then, and I do this from the stage, we do it. You turn to the person next to you, spend two minutes asking and answering the question, then you switch places, spend another two minutes. The room, like, fills with this cacophony of noise. And then finally, if I can get people to shut up (laughs) vast enough, I ask them what that experience was like. I ask them for a show of hands, "How many people enjoyed that e- that ex- that, that experience much more than you thought you would?" Every single hand will go up, because people are bad at estimating what it, what a real conversation is gonna feel like. So this gets to small talk. The problem with small talk is not small talk. The problem with small talk is the anxiety we feel when we go into it and the anxiety we feel about asking a deep question.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
And yet, again, and again, and again, if we ask that deep question, we will discover the other person loves to answer it, they want to hear us answer our own question, and we will walk away having enjoyed that conversation.
- CWChris Williamson
Well, I'm a- I'm aware that a lot of people get worried about that level of opening up. "Ugh. I don't wanna be seen as sort of too keen or too serious. That doesn't seem very fun, doesn't seem very exciting." But as a, to, you know, fight the fight as a, a person that likes deep conversations, uh, who likes small talk? No one.
- CDCharles Duhigg
No. Right.
- CWChris Williamson
No one. No one likes small talk, regardless of what it is. And it's, it, people are very, uh, publicly, uh, castigating of small talk as well. Say, you know, it's the worst thing in the world, like, we're talking about the weather. You know, somebody brings up the weather and it's like, "Can you believe that's all that they had to talk about to do their thing?"
- CDCharles Duhigg
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
Um, okay. So practically-
- CDCharles Duhigg
But let's, let's take the weather as an example, because you're exactly right that nobody likes small talk, but you don't have to ask that. If someone brings up the weather, you don't have to ask them the last time they cried in front of (laughs) another person. You can say something like, you know, "It, oh, yeah, it's really been raining, and, and you mentioned, like, you don't like the rain. So I'm wondering, like, what, what got you to move to Seattle? Like w- like why'd you move here-"
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
"... since it's kind of a rainy place? Like, what was it about this city that you like?" And suddenly, that's an easy question to ask, right? That doesn't, that doesn't seem like a deep question, but it actually is.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
'Cause inevitably that person's gonna say something like, "Oh, I fell in love with someone and I moved here to follow them," or, "I got this job opportunity and it just seemed so great, but then it didn't work out and I ha- now I'm working someplace else." Small t- small talk is kind of what we talk, what we, the word we use to describe boring talk, but you can transition almost immediately to something that's real and meaningful.
- CWChris Williamson
How
- 42:07 – 44:00
Asking & Receiving Deep Questions
- CWChris Williamson
can people better start deep conversations in a less awkward way, and how can people better receive deep questions in a less awkward way?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah. It's a great question. So, so this guy Nick Epley I mentioned, who basically he studies deep questions. Once, um, once a month he'll get on a bus in Chicago...... and he'll sit down next to a stranger, and his goal is to ask that person about their hopes and dreams within three questions. And when he told me this, I was like, "Oh, this sounds miserable, man. This sounds like the (laughs) ... Like, I don't wanna do this. This sounds terrible." And he's like, "No, no, it's the easiest thing I've ever done," 'cause it usually only takes two questions. Like, usually I- I sit down, I introduce myself, and I'm like, "Hey, what do you do for a living?" And they say, "Oh, I'm an accountant." And he goes, "Oh, did you always want to be an accountant? Was that your dream as a kid?" And they say, "No. No kid wants to be an accountant (laughs) right? Like, I wanted to be an astronaut." But now, suddenly, he's like, "Oh, so what happened? Like, did you- did you try and become an astronaut now?" Now, they're actually having a conversation, right? They're talking about like, "Oh, I had kids, and I had to raise them," and Nick can say like, "I have kids too. You know, I have five kids, actually. And- and I know it's- there's these challenges to raising kids." Now, you're having a real conversation. So, I think the way to start it and to respond is to ask something that you're actually curious about.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
When I ask you, "Where do you live?" basic small talk question, I do not care where you live. It is not something I'm actually interested in. Maybe it is, right? Like, like, you live in Austin, and I want to learn a little bit about Austin. But- but if I'm asking you something that's genuinely interesting to me, like- like, "Why did you decide to move from the UK to the US? What was it about that?" That's actually, like, really fascinating to me. That's something that could seem like a small talk, throwaway question, but if I'm actually curious about it and I ask it with curiosity, we're gonna be having a deep conversation within minutes.
- 44:00 – 50:36
How NASA Discovered the Importance of Laughter
- CDCharles Duhigg
- CWChris Williamson
You mentioned astronauts there. Didn't you look at NASA?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Didn't you learn a bunch of stuff from NASA? What'd you learn?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah. So, um, so this is one of my favorite stories from the book. So, uh, about 15 or... 15 years ago, NASA started developing plans to build the International Space Station, and they realized that in addition to all the technical plans they came up with, there was actually this big problem that they needed to solve, which is, up until then, about the- the longest national- NASA mission had been about 10 day- 10 days in space. And they had basically realized, you can send, like, the biggest jerk on Earth up into space for 10 days and it's gonna be fine, right? Like, they're gonna pick fights with their co- with their co-astronauts. They're gonna pick fights with mission control. They're just gonna be like a pain in the ass, but it's fine. It's only 10 days. But the thing about a space station is, you're sending astronauts up there for three months or six months or 12 months at a time, and if you send a jerk into space for (laughs) 12 months, he's gonna drive everyone else crazy. So, NASA realizes, "We need to start choosing astronauts, finding astronauts who have emotional intelligence." This is actually a lot harder than it sounds though, because the problem for NASA is when you make it to the final rounds of an astronaut interview, you are awesome, right? You're like, you're handsome or you're beautiful, you have like two PhDs, and most importantly, you've been doing interviews your entire life.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Like, you know the right answers to every question. And what they realized is, they couldn't tell the difference between the people who were faking emotional intelligence from the ones who actually had it. So, they turned to this guy, Terry Maguire, the lead psychiatrist for manned space flight at NASA, and they ask him to come up with- with an interview question that will let them figure out who actually has emotional intelligence. And for nine months, he works on this problem, and he can't come up with anything. He keeps... He tests a bunch of questions, none of them work, and then one night, he's listening to recordings of old interviews with old candidates, and he knows which of those candidates went on to be really good leaders inside NASA, and which kind of like washed out.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
And as he's listening, he realizes the really good leaders, they're laughing differently than everyone else in the interview. So, he comes up with this whole new way of doing his interviews. Now, what he does is he brings the a- astronaut candidate into a room. They're sitting there by themself. He walks into the room, and he's holding this big stack of papers, and he trips as if on accident, and he spills the papers all over the floor. And then, he laughs this big, boisterous laugh. He goes like, "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! I cannot believe I did that!" And then he pays attention to how the candidate reacts.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Because everyone reacts in one of two ways. Some people go like this, (laughs) "That's really silly. Let me give you a hand." And some people go, "Ha, ha, ha! That's really silly. Let me give you a hand." Everyone knows what's going on in that moment, right? You made a mistake by s- dropping the papers, and then you made the mistake even worse by overreacting, by laughing this huge, kind of like inappropriately big laugh. Like...
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
We've all been embarrassed that way.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
And some of the candidates were like, "Oh, I'm- I'm just gonna pretend this didn't happen. I'm gonna just help you put this under the carpet." And some of the candidates were like, "You know what? I know what you're feeling right now. Like, I- I know that you're embarrassed, and the best way I can remove that embarrassment is I can jump in the boat with you. So, I'm gonna laugh this big, boisterous laugh. I'm gonna match you. I'm gonna mirror your energy and your affect." Those were the people who had emotional intelligence, and those went on to be some of the best leaders in NASA's history. And it's all just paying attention to how they laugh in an interview that makes the difference.
- CWChris Williamson
Why do humans laugh? Did you look at this? What is it?
- CDCharles Duhigg
It's really interesting. There's a guy named, um, Provine, Robert Provine, who's now passed away. He was at the University of Maryland. He actually studied laughter for years. He would- he would go, like, to malls and restaurants and hide tape recorders (laughs) so he could tape people talking to each other. And what he- what he found is that about... His initial thought was like, we laugh when we see something funny, and he actually wanted to figure out what like the science of funny was, but what he discovered was totally unexpected. He discovered that 80% of the time when we laugh, it is not in response to anything humorous. Right? Like, you're not a comedian, I'm not a comedian, our friends aren't comedians (laughs) , like, and yet we laugh all the time. So, what's happening when we laugh? When we laugh, we're oftentimes showing the other person, "I want to connect with you."And when they laugh back, that same reciprocity that I mentioned before... And it's 'cause it's a little bit vulnerable, right? Like, if I laugh, uh, if I laugh, I'm kind of saying like, "I think that's funny," and you could be like, "Oh, my God. You're such a jerk for thinking that's funny." Right? So, so I'm showing you a little bit of vulnerability. When you laugh back, the most normal reaction, you're showing me that you want to connect right back. Laughter is how we forge connections with other people. The fact that we also do it in response to something funny is actually almost a byproduct. It's not the main function of laughter.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. Yeah, that's interesting. It's... I don't know. I just... What an odd sound that emanates-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
... from us, but I suppose that also explains why watching a recording of a standup set on Netflix in your house on your own versus going to a comedy club surrounded by 150 other people, the level of laughter is way different.
- CDCharles Duhigg
That's exactly right. Well, and there's actually some... So, I, I don't think... Someone told me this theory and, and my understanding is it hasn't been proved out, but that there's some research behind it.
- CWChris Williamson
Oh, my favorite-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Which is that-
- CWChris Williamson
My, my favorite place for a theory to sit.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah. Exactly. Exa- so-
- CWChris Williamson
As yet unproven and maybe to be replication crisis-ed out of existence.
- CDCharles Duhigg
(laughs) So, if there's, if, if you, if you're looking at a group of primates, there's a noise that they will make that means that there's like a lion or a danger nearby, and that noise sounds like laughter. And so the theory is that laughter evolved because it's inherently prosocial, it's a noise that I make to warn others of danger, and most importantly, there's a huge sense of relief associated with it because when I know that there's a danger out in the woods and I'm up in the trees, then suddenly, like, I actually feel a sense of relief because I'm not in danger. And so, the theory is that this is why that weird noise has evolved is it actually has these roots in this very prosocial behavior, which would also help us make sense that, like, oftentimes a joke is about building up tension, and then saying something funny to relieve the tension.
- CWChris Williamson
That's interesting. What about
- 50:36 – 55:56
Best & Worst Ways That Couples Communicate
- CWChris Williamson
when it comes to couples? The potentially the most fraught, most important communication-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Oh.
- CWChris Williamson
... with the genesis of your story as well.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah. No, absolutely.
- CWChris Williamson
What, what are the best and worst ways that couples communicate?
- CDCharles Duhigg
So, there's a, there's a lot of, um... In, in the book, there's actually like a whole chapter about, um, i- the story that involves, um, the, the, the growth of marriage therapy as a, as a field of research. And one of the things that marriage therapists have found is that there's this one pattern that's basically disastrous. Um, they call it kitchen sinking. So, every couple fights, that's just totally... That's part of every relationship, right? There's always like little like, yeah, disagreements or tension. But when some couples fight, a fight about one thing becomes a fight about everything, right? So, we start talking about, like, "Where are we gonna spend Christmas?" And like within minutes, it's like, "Well, your mom hates me 'cause like... And she's not nice. And by the way, if we earned more money, we'd be able to go to Hawaii instead of ha..." Right? So, a fight about one thing becomes a fight about everything. Kitchen sinking. That is disastrous. That will make the fight toxic. And so researchers were trying to figure out, why does this happen? 'Cause it happens pretty consistently, even to like couples that like are well matched. And they found that what happens is that when we're in a conflict, when I feel threatened, I wanna control something. Like, that's just a n- normal response, to find something to control. And the easiest thing for me to control is you, like the person I'm talking to. So, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do things like, I'm gonna attack you back. I'm gonna bring up your mom. I'm gonna say things like, "I'm not gonna talk about that." I'm, I'm gonna try and control what, what, what topics are allowed. If you're upset, I'll say things like, "You shouldn't be upset about that. Like, that's a dumb thing to be upset about." I'm gonna try and control your emotions. That's toxic. That's where kitchen sinking comes from. So, what's the solution? Well, the solution is not to say you shouldn't try and control something, 'cause everyone feels that impulse for control. That's, that's very human. But instead of trying to control the other person in the relationship, try and find things you can control together, like controlling, for instance, the environment. You start fighting at 11 o'clock at night. If one person says, "Look, I really want to talk about this. Can we wait until 9:00 tomorrow morning when we both wake up and we're not exhausted? Is that okay?" Like, now we're controlling the environment together. Or to say like, "Well, I want to control the boundaries of this conversation." Say like, "Let's talk about Christmas. Let's not talk about moms. Let's not talk about money, if that's okay. Like, let's just focus on making a decision about Christmas." Now we're on the same side of the table. We're controlling the boundaries of this conversation together. And the reason why this is really important, why, why the best couples... The best couples, it's not that they don't fight. It's that they fight and there's no lasting consequences of it, because they- they're basically sort of teammates, finding things to control together, even if they disagree with each other.
- CWChris Williamson
Where does that sense of-
- CDCharles Duhigg
And the reason why-
- CWChris Williamson
Where, where does that sense of teammate-ness come from?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Well, 'cause if you and I are controlling the environment together, we're on the same side of the table, right? Like, we might disagree about like, you know, how we should raise our kids, but we've both decided like, we're gonna wait 'til 9:00 in the morning, we're gonna do this together. We're just gonna talk about whether like Jimmy's ar- allowed to eat like snacks after 3:00. We're not gonna talk about, like, how you were raised and spanking and ex- right? Now, suddenly we're kind of partners in figuring out, like, what's our goal? What's, what are the... How are we gonna control this conversation together and what's our goal in all this? Now, the reason why I think this is really important is because it turns out the exact same thing happens online with social media. When social media goes bad, when people start screaming at each other, when social media becomes like a cesspool, it's oftentimes because people are trying to control each other, right? You make some argument. You say, "I think guns are great."... and I say, "You're a moron. You're not even thinking about, like, all the guns that, like, kill kids in schools. Like, why are you a fascist?" Like at that moment, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to control you. I'm trying to force you into a box. I'm trying to force you into the fascist box. I'm trying to force you into, "You- y- you're thinking about Second Amendment, but you should be thinking about the kids." When we try and control each other on social media, it's very, very natural. It's very natural online because we're not seeing each other face-to-face.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
It can become toxic. But if we take a step back and we say, like, "Look, like, I actually wanna talk about this guns thing. Like, like, let's try and figure out, like, what aspect of guns are we talking about?" Then an online conversation becomes just as good as any other conversation. And in fact, there's all these interesting studies done by someone, again, at Dartmouth, where he found that even just adding "please" and "thank you," if one person in a thread says "please" and "thank you," the tenor of the whole conversation improves. Because "please" and "thank you" is a way of me showing you that I wanna share control with you.
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. As opposed to, "I want to control you."
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah. As opposed to, like, "I, I'm powerful and you're a dick, and so, like, let, let me try and control you as much as I can."
- 55:56 – 1:04:09
The Impact of Online Discourse on Communication
- CDCharles Duhigg
- CWChris Williamson
Mm. What do you think online discourse has done to our expectations of communication?
- CDCharles Duhigg
So it's a good que- Well, let me ask you 'cause you, you, you're online a lot. Like, what... Do you, do you feel like, do you feel like the conversations you have online, how do they compare to the conversations that you have offline?
- CWChris Williamson
I'm pretty good at posting and ghosting, so I'm not maybe the best, uh, uh, avatar for someone who sort of gets into maybe the kind of interesting cantankerous s- style back and forth conversations that people are thinking of. Uh, I certainly know that it's done one thing which is, which is pretty interesting, which is it's given people, uh, a sense of surrealness when the real world doesn't reflect the world that they expected from what they learned online. Um, f- for instance, let's say that you are a, uh, successful young woman and you have moved up within your industry and have managed to get yourself to a place where you feel, uh, pretty sort of competent and well-respected and you keep hearing all of these stories online about how, you know, women are oppressed and there's rampant misogyny everywhere. And, uh... And you look at your own life and you struggle to see that and you think, "Well, actually, to be honest, sort of being a woman's kind of helped me in many ways. I, I've, I've, I've been given opportunities that I'm not sure I would have been given if I was a man." The way that the discourse is put forward online, the, uh, type of conversations that rise to the top, the ones that are the most inflammatory, obviously, it's edge cases, right? Edge cases are exactly what gets the, garners the most attention.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Gets the attention.
- CWChris Williamson
It's never the reliable woman who worked her way up step by step and didn't encounter any catastrophe along the way. It's the, the, the one that had a awful, predatory boss who was making them do terrible things in an attempt to try and climb the, the totem pole. And rightly so. That's newsworthy because it's interesting and scandalous. Uh, but e- you lose the vast majority of the bell curve, like, the boring bell curve, uh, and you just get these edge cases. Um, but I think what that leads to... Or, you know, a- any other highly politicized topic online, um, y- I mean, you've seen this in, uh, uh, surveys, right? When, uh, people are asked how many X type of people are shot by police every year, it's like, "Thousand, thousand percent, 10,000%, 100,000% overex- estimations," because what is presented online and what is newsworthy, if it bleeds, it leads, doesn't necessarily represent... What I think is, uh, people believe, like, the number of people that get shot versus the number of people that die by cancer or something, and you're like, "Well, because people die by cancer every day and it's not-"
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
"... newsworthy, unless it's some celebrity or whatever." Um, so y- we have this skewed perspective of how the world's supposed to treat us, how other people are supposed to see us, different social groups, different classes, different genders, different races, different positions within society, and then when we encounter evidence in the real world, which should be the most real thing that we have, that doesn't agree with what the online world told us that we should do, we end up in a-
- CDCharles Duhigg
There's a cognitive dissonance.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, massively. And, you know, I realized this when having a conversation with Freya Indua, who's on Substack, uh, that she does a blog called Girls. Brilliant. And she was saying a lot of the time, Gen Z gets sort of, um, criticized for... Well, uh, this, the internet isn't the real world. And you say, "These kids are spending eight to ten hours a day online. They're m- they're maybe spending twice as much time on the internet as they are asleep."
- CDCharles Duhigg
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
The internet is the real world.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Is real world for them, yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Yes.
- CDCharles Duhigg
You know, that, that is the boundaries of your world. And so I think one of the things that's happening there, there's a, there's a researcher named Jay Van Bavel at NYU who's kind of looked at this phenomena, particularly on social media. And what he's found is that the problem with social media and the problem with online conversations is that oftentimes they highlight one aspect of identity very, very prominently when in real w- r- real life, that's one of many identities that someone contains, right? So the thing that we know is that, like, if I knew that you were Republican, I would assume a bunch of things about you, that you must be pro-gun, you must be pro-Trump, you must be anti-immigrant, right? And if you knew I was a Democrat, you would assume a bunch of things about me. I must be pro-trans. I must, like, think Kamala is the greatest thing on, on Earth. I must, like, wanna just tax everyone t- to death. Whenever we see someone described as, by their label, then we tend to maximalize what we assume their beliefs are into that label.Now, in real life, oftentimes, if I met you and I'm like, "Oh, I'm a Democrat," but we're like at our kids' soccer game together and you know that I'm also a journalist and like also like I like to do model rocketry and you and I ride bikes together, right? Like, that one identity, I'm a Democrat, eh, there's so many other identities around it because all of us contain multitudes that it doesn't, it doesn't shape what you assume about me. Whereas, when we are on Twitter, and we go to our little thing (laughs) our little description in Twitter, it's like, "Proud to be part of the resistance," or like, "January 6th was the best day ever." Like, we're actually just giving into one identity, we're giving into one label and it makes that conversation harder. Now you asked though, what's happening to our conversations as a result of this, right? With Gen Z spending all this time online that- that the internet is their real world. So what I would say is this. There's actually a lot of room for hope, um, and the reason why is this, this story from about 100 years ago. So, when telephones first became popular around the world, but also particularly here in the US, when phones first became popular, there were all these articles that appeared that said no one will ever have a real conversation on the telephone. Because up till then, every conversation had happened face-to-face, right? And they were like, "Nobody will be able to do this on the phone. If you can't see the person and make eye contact with them, if you can't hear all the nuances in their voice, you're never gonna have a real conversation." And what's really interesting is if you look at the transcripts from those early phone conversations, they were exactly right. People did not know how to use phones. They used them like telegrams. They would call up and they would say, "Here's what I," here's like, uh, "Here's a, here's, here's what I need on the stock market." Or they'd call up and say, "Here's my grocery order." And then the other person would say, "Okay," and then they would both hang up. Like, there was no back and forth. There was no give and take. Now, you fast-forward a little bit to like when you and I and everyone else listening was in middle school, and we could talk on the phone for like seven hours a night, right? (laughs) Like, we loved talking on the phone. And so, and they were some of the most important conversations of our life at that point. And so, what, what happened? What changed? What changed was, we learned how to use telephones, and, and we, we, we learned how to use that technology. And what's interesting is when you are on the phone, you actually talk differently. All of us do. You will over-enunciate your words by about 30% on the phone. You'll put about 15% more emotion into your voice than if you're talking to someone face-to-face because you know subconsciously that they can't see you. You need to ch- you need to signal. So you actually learned a bunch of skills for phone conversations. Right now, we are living through a period of people learning skills for online conversations. And like, we're like those, we're like that first 15 years after phones came out (laughs) and became popular, right? Like, it's a lot of screaming, it's a lot of like, a lot of, a lot of mistakes, but it's from those mistakes that we learn. And Gen Z, these... I have two teenagers at home, I'm a dad. Both my teenagers, they know how to have real conversations over text. I don't know how to do that. They have emotional conversations with emojis. Like, they are... We don't need to despair for the future because we learn how to be good at communication, uh, uh, be good communicators. Our brains crave being good communicators, and they teach us how to do it.
- 1:04:09 – 1:08:48
Communication as a Source of Identity
- CWChris Williamson
Dude, awesome. Let's bring this one into land. What a great place to finish. I, uh, I, I, I love it. I've been very much thinking about communication over the last few years, and, uh, I think an interesting element is how closely tied it is to our sense of self.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
But, um, what maybe some people have got in the back of their mind is, "Well, you know, it, it's all well and good you saying that I can work on my communication and I can build up these skills, but I don't wanna be fake, you know? I d- I wanna be me." And it's so funny how nobody attributes their natural God-given pickleball ability to them. And if I was to say-
- CDCharles Duhigg
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... "Well, you went and got a coach, didn't you? And you, you improved your dink game and you improved your serve, but did you not want to have, you know, your real... Were you not worried about your real serve coming out?"
- CDCharles Duhigg
Right. (laughs) Your, your-
- CWChris Williamson
Like, "What about that? You've lost it."
- CDCharles Duhigg
... inner, your inner pickleballer. Like-
- CWChris Williamson
Correct.
- CDCharles Duhigg
... you, you've repressed them, right?
- CWChris Williamson
You've r- you've ruined it. Yeah, exactly. I started working with a, a speech therapist about three, four years ago, a diction coach, and, um, one of the things that a bunch of friends said to me was, "Dude," they were like, "I mean, you gotta be careful. What if you, what if you totally lose all, all of the, the character?" You know, and, but nobody says that about, well, I'm, you know, you're 270 pounds and, you know, f- t- 28% body fat, and you go, "But what about all of that beautiful fat that you've spent all of this time building up?" You, you, well, what are, you know, are you gonna put, replace it with this muscle? Really? Is that the real you? Is that, is that muscle really you? And it's just odd, you know, and when you see it, you can't unsee it. There's certain things that we have that are very tightly tied to our sense of self, right?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Our thought patterns, the texture of our mind, the way that we speak, the language that we use, the way that we enunciate. And, um, there's other things that aren't, like our waistline.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- CWChris Williamson
Uh, and when you confuse the two, when you confuse... I, I mean, you, you get into some pretty hot water.
- CDCharles Duhigg
You stop learning, right? You stop improving yourself because you assume that something is inherent or God-given or in-born or unmutable. And the truth of the matter is, all of it's just skills. Can, can I ask you a question actually-
- CWChris Williamson
Mm-hmm.
- CDCharles Duhigg
... uh, on that? So, I mean, what's, what's interesting about... So you moved here from the UK, right? You moved to the UK to the US.
- CWChris Williamson
Three years ago, yeah.
- CDCharles Duhigg
You're still clearly, still clearly a Brit. Like, we, I, I, I doubt anyone bumps into you and they're like, "Oh, that guy gr- grew up in Austin."
- CWChris Williamson
Yeah.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Do you-
- CWChris Williamson
Australia, I get accused of a lot, but yeah.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Okay, okay. (laughs) So do you feel like, have, how you communicate, has that, it had to change since you moved to the US?
- CWChris Williamson
A little bit because-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah?
- CWChris Williamson
Well, the cultural way markers that you rely on, it's, it's interesting being an immigrant, which I am, to a country that speaks the same language as you because you forget that you're an immigrant. If I was in Mexico or Thailand...... I would be permanently reminded of the fact that I'm not from there. People don't look like me, people don't sound like me. Uh, but you- you're snuck under the radar here and, um, it's odd because you're culturally displaced. You know, if I want to use an example for a- a chocolate that everybody would have eaten as a kid, I can't really use Cadbury's-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Right.
- CWChris Williamson
... because Cadbury's is a British brand. I can't really talk about Yorkshire Tea or Newcastle Brown Ale or the Inbetweeners. So I have to do this weird sort of projection and I have to think, "Okay, what would Charles... What is the equivalent sort of ruminative thing that Charles knows that is the parallel of the thing I'm trying to use?" So you have to sort of go around the houses-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah.
- 1:08:48 – 1:10:01
Where to Find Charles
- CWChris Williamson
so good. Where should people go-
- CDCharles Duhigg
Thank you so much.
- CWChris Williamson
... if they wanna keep up to date with everything that you do and write and talk about?
- CDCharles Duhigg
Yeah, absolutely. So if y- um, I have a Substack if people wanna come sign up for my newsletter. It's called The Science of Better. Um, you can find a signup for that on my ema- or on my, my website, which is charlesduhigg.com, D-U-H-I-G-G. Or if you just Google The Power of Habit, which was the first book I wrote, or Super Communicators, you will definitely find, um, my website. And actually, I have my email address on my website. And I will say, I read and respond to every single email I get from a reader. So, yeah, it's-
- CWChris Williamson
Uh-huh. You may regret that after this, uh-
- CDCharles Duhigg
(laughs)
- CWChris Williamson
... after this episode, but we'll see.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Sometimes- sometimes it takes me-
- CWChris Williamson
Go forth!
- CDCharles Duhigg
... a little while, uh, 'cause I kinda-
- CWChris Williamson
Go forth my pretties and destroy his inbox.
- CDCharles Duhigg
(laughs) But I would love to hear from folks. And- and if you do wanna buy a copy of Super Communicators, you can find it at Amazon and Barnes Nobles and- and most importantly, your local bookstores. So...
- CWChris Williamson
Heck yeah. Charles, I appreciate you. Until next time.
- CDCharles Duhigg
Thank you so much. Thanks for having me on. (upbeat music)
- CWChris Williamson
Do you think that your algorithm on YouTube is a bit of a god? Is it able to know things about you that you don't know about yourself? Well, the YouTube gods have selected this episode specifically for you, bespoke. So go and- go and check it out.
Episode duration: 1:10:01
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