00:01:45.020we've all had that feeling you meet someone new and the conversation just flows you're in sync
00:01:57.840you click but what's really happening when that magic occurs my guest today is journalist Kate
00:02:02.620Murphy author of why we click the emerging science of interpersonal synchrony and she says this
00:02:08.000experience isn't just a vibe it's a miserable physiological phenomenon and the most consequential
00:02:13.040social dynamic most people have never heard of. In our conversation, we dig into what happens when
00:02:17.840people click, why syncing with others feels so good, and how it influences everything from
00:02:22.080friendships to teamwork to romantic relationships. We also talk about why some people have a knack
00:02:26.600for connection, how you can become more clickable, and why video calls are the worst. After the show's
00:02:32.080over check out our show notes at awim.is slash click. All right, Kate Murphy, welcome to the
00:02:46.920show. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. So you got a book out called Why We
00:02:51.200Click. It's all about that feeling that we've all experienced where we're clicking with someone
00:02:56.560socially. It could be the first time we meet them and we're just like, man, I'm on the same page
00:03:00.620with this person. I'm vibing with them. And there's actually a name for this in the scientific
00:03:05.120literature, interpersonal synchrony. And you call it in your book, the most important social dynamic.
00:03:11.520So why is interpersonal synchrony so important? Well, it is the way we connect. Just like you
00:03:18.220said, it is the physiological mechanism, the under the hood mechanism for connection and
00:03:25.760interpersonal synchrony, the way I define it is, and I still think it's magical, that moment of
00:03:32.880clicking, but it's the magical, but now scientifically documented tendency of human
00:03:38.920beings to fall into rhythm with one another. And what I mean by that is when you gather
00:03:44.880two or more people together in a room, instantaneously, usually in less than 30 seconds,
00:03:51.700They will not only begin to match or mirror one another's gestures, facial expressions and postures, they will also start to sync up their heart rate, their respiration, their hormonal activity, their pupil dilation, all these physiological signals that we cannot detect, but we sync up to them nevertheless.
00:09:09.240I mean, why did John Lennon and Paul McCartney click on so many different levels and were able to produce and have the impact that they did?
00:21:54.800You pushed yourself through when you were in a lot of pain exercising.
00:21:58.400So that detachment from your body, and you can see how this would be a problem, is if you are trying to internalize, embody someone else's feelings, and again, this is all subconscious, but if you're not in tune with your own body, how can you be in tune with someone else's body?
00:26:04.800When I was younger, I'd occasionally overdraw my account, and I'd get slapped with an overdraft fee, and it just made an already dumb financial decision even more expensive.
00:35:02.800So I would say when you're looking at someone, if you're really looking at someone with interest and curiosity, then that's going to come across.
00:35:12.020But certainly, I think people have different tolerances for intimacy.
00:35:16.960And sometimes all the signals that you're getting from someone can be a little too much, and they need to look away every once in a while, and that's okay, too.
00:35:53.760And that's what's so hard being a nonfiction writer, which, you know, I'm mainly a journalist and I've now written my second book after my first, I said, I'd never do this again. But if you look at the landscape of nonfiction books, I think you're probably more familiar with this than most people, that it is all about this hack. If you just do this and then this will happen.
00:36:15.300And interpersonal synchrony and the things that I write about, it isn't something where
00:36:22.700And actually, nothing about life is like that.
00:36:25.960And it's, as you said, and I think it's really apt, it's a dance.
00:36:30.720And so if you go in wanting to dance and you go in with that curiosity and that openness
00:36:36.680and just generosity of spirit, you will find people who are on your wavelength, who will
00:36:43.380want to join in with your music, who you will play a beautiful song together or dance well
00:36:50.080together. And then there will always be people who will just sort of be on their own tempo and
00:36:55.860they're maybe distracted. They may be not even notice you or you're just not compatible. But
00:37:02.020again, that's okay. We're not meant, we don't have the cognitive or emotional resources to
00:37:08.180sync with everyone? And also, what would make it special when you do? So you mentioned one of the
00:37:14.320important things for interpersonal synchrony is you have to be with the person in person.
00:37:21.680Yes. And you have this whole section about the research on our ability to socially click with
00:37:27.360people via digital mediums. What does that research say? Well, as I touched on earlier,
00:37:33.460synchrony is a multi-sensory experience and in fact interpersonal synchrony suggests that we
00:37:40.700have more senses than the five we take for granted like how do you sense someone's heart rate
00:37:46.600their respiration their hormonal level even like these subconscious smells i mean we we have all0.99
00:37:53.400these pheromones that we're throwing out that they think is responsible for why women sync up their0.95
00:37:58.720menstrual cycle. So there are all these things and you're not going to get that online. You're not
00:38:04.060going to get this full panoply of signals that someone is throwing out that you could potentially
00:38:09.920sync up to. And that doesn't mean you can't sync, you know, on certain levels. I mean, we certainly
00:38:14.820see things go on viral online or people's outrage gets stirred up online. So it's not like you can't
00:38:21.500have synchrony or feel like you have synchrony with people online. But oftentimes, and people
00:38:27.880who have done online dating know this better than most is you might think you have a connection
00:38:33.800with someone online and then you meet them in person and you think, oh my God, no. I mean,
00:38:40.740you just, all you can think about is how long do I have to sit here before I can break this
00:38:45.000off without seeming rude? It's just, you know, you, you really do not get the full sense of
00:38:50.860another person online. Yeah. That's an interesting point about online dating because it also could
00:38:56.240happen, there might be people in your in-person social circle, maybe at work or church where your
00:39:02.760filters on the dating apps wouldn't have brought you to that person. Absolutely. Because the
00:39:07.980filters on dating apps are very superficial, like how tall you are, money, income. But there might
00:39:13.680be people in your interpersonal social circle that you never would have thought you would have,
00:39:18.280like, I want to date this person. But then you get to be around them and interact with them.
00:39:21.540And you're like, oh, wow, I kind of like this person. Yeah. You would have totally swiped left
00:39:25.620if you had read their profile, but then you see them in person and you totally click.
00:39:29.740Yeah. So yeah, that in-person thing is important. Let's talk about this. We're on the podcast. I
00:39:34.720don't do video podcasts and a lot of podcasts are going the video route. I'm talking to you.
00:39:41.280I cannot see you. You cannot see me. I do all my interviews remote without video. I don't like
00:39:48.500video. I do video calls every now and then. I don't like it. What is it? Help me justify myself
00:39:55.480here? Like, why do I have this aversion to video calls? And why do I prefer voice only calls?
00:40:01.920Well, the science backs you up on that. I mean, I'm not just trying to make you feel better. I
00:40:05.540mean, the science totally backs you up on that. And I salute you for resisting it, because that
00:40:09.620is the way of the world right now where everybody's moving to video. But the problem is that because
00:40:16.020we have this instinct to sync, looking at video is very disruptive and makes us feel
00:40:24.420ill. I mean, Zoom fatigue is a real malady. And that is because the way the technology is at this
00:40:33.540point, the way that video images are encoded and decoded and buffered and all these things that
00:40:41.300are manipulated about the image and you know not to mention pixelation it distorts all these tiny
00:40:48.080little cues these facial expressions and then back to eye contact you are making eye contact with
00:40:55.360your or maybe you aren't with your camera so nobody's actually looking at you and so you
00:41:02.400in your brain again this is subconscious you're just rapidly spinning your wheels trying to do
00:41:08.720this adaptive evolutionarily entrained thing with another person to sync up with them you're looking
00:41:17.680for all those micro micro expressions you're looking for that eye contact and you're just
00:41:22.340spinning your wheels trying to do that and it ends up making people feel uncomfortable vaguely
00:41:28.500disturbed a little bit off and i have never met a single person who says oh goody a zoom meeting
00:41:35.060And I don't know why it's become something where everybody thinks is to rigor because I, I mean, I've had people that I've talked to who that I've worked with who say, Oh God, I, you know, I loved reading that in your book and I, I hate zoom calls and yet they'll schedule a zoom call with me.
00:50:18.960One bad apple does spoil the whole bunch.
00:50:20.940Yes. And I think the best example of this was an incredibly interesting study that was done in the early 2000s by Will Phelps, who's now in Australia. He's at University of South Wales in Australia, but at the time he was at University of Washington.
00:50:38.480And what he did is he created all of these work groups out of University of Washington business students, and he created all these work groups, but he introduced a Confederate or an accomplice who was to go in and either act like a jerk, a slacker, or a depressing downer, and see what happened, what the effect was on group functioning.
00:51:01.100And he actually, he didn't know, Will Phelps did not know about interpersonal synchrony
00:51:06.360He was just looking for the effects, but he said now, knowing what he knows now, he would
00:51:10.760have done the study totally differently.
00:51:12.460Because if you look at the video, it's striking that like during the slacker condition, he's
00:51:19.940like leaning back in his chair, he's eating, he's acting like he couldn't be bothered with
00:51:24.260the task at hand and sure as shooting, everybody else starts leaning back.
00:51:29.260they're starting to say things like, you know, let's get this over with. And they performed
00:51:32.620really badly. And the really heartbreaking one was the depressive downer one. And the guy comes
00:51:39.380in, he's acting real depressed and really lethargic. And it's really sad. You start seeing
00:51:44.460everyone else slow down, putting their heads down on the table and you get this sense. And
00:51:50.360they actually verbalize it. It's not only the task at hand was meaningless, but life in general
00:51:55.600seem meaningless. And so you can see how this contagion happens in situations. And I think
00:52:02.700we've all experienced where somebody new comes into a group and it just totally upsets the dynamic
00:52:08.660and pulls people in one direction or another. And it can be, you know, there can be good apples too.
00:52:13.680It can be positive or negative, but it's true that one bad apple, the greatest predictor of
00:52:20.520the success of a team or organization is not how stellar the best person is, or even the average
00:52:26.540abilities of the rest of the people, but how awful the worst person is. That predicts the success or
00:52:34.320failure of a group. So if you're a leader of a group, what do you do when you're dealing with
00:52:38.320a bad apple? Do you just have to get that person out of there? Or do you try to rehabilitate them?
00:52:42.460Like, what's the strategy? Well, you know, most CEOs that I've interviewed are just like, yeah,
00:52:46.160you got to get rid of it. It's going to ruin everything. But I think what they try to do more
00:52:50.800on the front end is hire very carefully. And again, you know, don't interview by Zoom. Don't
00:52:58.780rely on, you know, an algorithm that's going to pick the right resume. Because as you rightly said,
00:53:03.440you know, sometimes with like dating apps, the people that you swipe left on are the people that
00:53:07.440are the right person. So there's that. And there's also I when I interviewed Danny Meyer, he allowed
00:53:14.620me to go. And I watched, I mean, you talk about synchrony in his Michelin starred restaurants,
00:53:20.340the synchrony between the kitchen and the front of the house. And there's just a tempo. It's a
00:53:25.460ballet in there. And I was talking to one of the managers and he said with hiring, they typically
00:53:32.260bring in somebody and have a trial run, which I think is probably a really good idea with a lot
00:53:39.300of organizations to the degree that you're able, because it's to the benefit of the potential
00:53:43.560hiree, as well as the employer, because they all get a sense of, you know, am I clicking here?
00:53:51.040Is this somewhere where I can flourish? Is this someone who's going to fit in with the vibe,
00:53:57.100the rhythm of the team? So I think more to really try and head it off from the beginning.
00:54:04.060So you got this one chapter, I want to end on this. I thought this was really interesting.
00:54:07.060you explore our sometimes uncanny ability to sync with people from afar. So for example,
00:54:14.600I'm sure some people have experienced this where they get a feeling that someone they know who
00:54:20.420lives far away is having a hard time or maybe something bad happened to them. And they think,
00:54:25.140I better check on them and come to find out something bad did happen to that person.
00:54:29.220What's going on there? Well, I'm not sure, but I do talk about this in the book. And again,
00:54:35.900And this is, you know, very, it's, people don't agree.
00:54:40.220This is, you know, highly speculative, but in the physics world, they are coming to think
00:54:46.880that our brains operate much like a quantum computer.
00:54:51.340And again, I really want to preface this, that there is a lot of disagreement among
00:54:55.980physicists, but there is a camp that believes our brains work like a quantum computer.
00:55:01.660and quantum is subatomic particles and their behavior is very unique and one of the things
00:55:09.360that is a factor of quantum mechanics is something called quantum entanglement and that is where
00:55:17.060these subatomic particles they can become synced but then when they are separated by time and space
00:55:24.180they maintain that synchrony and since they think that our brains are operating like quantum
00:55:30.760computers and obey the laws of quantum mechanics, including quantum synchrony, you can see this
00:55:36.980really trippy notion that if the quantum particles within your brain are synced up and can become
00:55:45.240entangled, you can imagine how the quantum particles in another person's brain that would
00:55:52.140sync up to your brain would be operating in that same synchronized way. And that might, and I
00:55:59.180emphasize might, might explain why we are able to intuit, feel, predict telepathic types of things.
00:56:08.860And we've all had them happen and thought, whoa, I mean, how did that happen? And you can see how
00:56:16.020that might be an explanation of why that would happen. That's interesting. Yeah. Cause I know
00:56:21.720people like that. My wife is able to do this. She'll have those moments where she'll be lying1.00
00:56:25.560in bed and she's like, I got a friend who's having a hard time. I need to call them. And
00:56:28.800then sure enough, she calls and like, they're having a hard time. I'm like, what's going on
00:56:31.700there? So yeah, it could be quantum entanglement, or it could just be, you know, the romantic,
00:56:36.320we're just so combined that we just are on the same wavelength, no matter where we are. So who
00:56:42.520knows what's going on there. But I do like that there's still some magic to this, that we don't
00:56:47.220quite understand it all. For me, there's something intellectually, as well as kind of spiritually
00:56:53.100satisfying about the fact that synchrony binds us not only to one another, but also to the universe
00:57:00.960as a whole. Because synchrony has been observed throughout the natural and life sciences.
00:57:06.520Everything from the tiniest quantum particle to supermassive quasars exhibit synchronistic
00:57:13.820properties. And so it really shouldn't be a surprise that human beings do it too.
00:57:18.860Well, you have a section on this. I mean, we can get a little more. Let's go more woo woo. I like this. About sinking with nature. I've had that experience where I've been out backpacking in the Rocky Mountains and I'm just staring at a mountain by this lake and I feel like the mountain is talking to me.