The Click Effect — Inside the Science and Magic of Social Chemistry
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Summary
Kate Murphy, author of Why We Click: The Emerging Science of Interpersonal Synchrony, says this experience isn t just a vibe, it s a miserable physiological phenomenon and the most consequential social dynamic most people have never heard of. In our conversation, we dig into what happens when people click, why syncing with others feels so good, and how it influences everything from friendships to teamwork to romantic relationships. We also discuss why some people have a knack for connection, how you can become more clickable, and why video calls are the worst.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AOM podcast, which since 2008 has featured
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conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers, and leaders that glean their edifying,
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life-improving insights without the fluff and filler. The AOM podcast is just one part of the
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McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word, and deed.
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Also, be sure to explore our articles in artofmanliness.com, read the deeper dives we do
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joining the Strenuous Life program at strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show.
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We've all had that feeling. You meet someone new and the conversation just flows. You're in sync.
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You click. But what's really happening when that magic occurs? My guest today is journalist Kate
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Murphy, author of Why We Click, The Emerging Science of Interpersonal Synchrony. And she says this
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experience isn't just a vibe. It's a miserable physiological phenomenon and the most consequential
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social dynamic most people have never heard of. In our conversation, we dig into what happens when
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people click, why syncing with others feels so good, and how it influences everything from
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friendships to teamwork to romantic relationships. We also talk about why some people have a knack for
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connection, how you can become more clickable, and why video calls are the worst. After the show's
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over, check out our show notes at awim.is slash click. All right, Kate Murphy, welcome to the show.
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Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. So you got a book out called Why We Click. It's all
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about that feeling that we've all experienced where we're clicking with someone socially. It could be the
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first time we meet them and we're just like, man, I'm on the same page with this person. I'm vibing with
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them. And there's actually a name for this in the scientific literature, interpersonal synchrony.
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And you call it in your book, the most important social dynamic. So why is interpersonal synchrony so
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important? Well, it is the way we connect. Just like you said, it is the physiological mechanism,
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the under the hood mechanism for connection. And interpersonal synchrony, the way I define it
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is it's the, and I still think it's magical, that moment of clicking, but it's the magical but now
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scientifically documented tendency of human beings to fall into rhythm with one another. And what I mean
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by that is when you gather two or more people together in a room, instantaneously, usually in less than 30
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seconds, they will not only begin to match or mirror one another's gestures, facial expressions and
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postures, they will also start to sync up their heart rate, their respiration, their hormonal activity,
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their pupil dilation, all these physiological signals that we cannot detect, but we sync up to them
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nevertheless. And why do we do this? We do this because when we internalize and embody one another,
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we are able to get a read on one another's thoughts and feelings. And so when you smile,
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when someone else smiles, you get a read on their joy. When you flinch, like when you're watching a
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football game and you see a quarterback gets sacked and you flinch, you are actually intuiting
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their pain. And also when you sync up with somebody else's racing heart, you start to feel their
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anxiety. So it's really a evolutionary advantage of human beings of being able to tell very quickly,
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instantaneously, friend or foe, what are they thinking? What are they feeling?
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I think all of us have probably heard this idea that we mirror each other, you know, so if someone
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puts their hand on their chin, we have a tendency to put our hand on our chin if we're syncing up with
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them. But yeah, you go into the fact that there's a lot more going on with our physiology than just
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that. Besides mirroring gestures, you mentioned your heart rate syncs up, your hormonal activity
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syncs up. And there's also research that shows that when people are syncing socially, their brain
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activity, their brain waves sync up. Yeah, that's key. And that really shows that there's been this
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transfer, particularly during meaningful conversations. It doesn't happen, interestingly, during vacuous
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conversations, very superficial conversations, during meaningful conversations. And I learned
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this when I was writing the listening book. And it really got me started on this next book about
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synchrony. But when the listener and the speaker are really understanding one another, their neural
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patterns, their brain waves start to sync up. And that is a measurable way of seeing, okay, there's been a
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transfer of thoughts, memories, and feelings. So that's really critically important. But also when
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you are having these meaningful conversations, particularly when you're in the presence of
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another person, and eye contact, you know, we've always been told, look people in the eye, it's really
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true, because we start to mimic other people's pupil dilation. And there are all these things happening
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like micro expressions on your face, that you are mimicking totally subconsciously, and that aren't
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really visible. But we're mimicking them just the same. And it helps us, again, embody, internalize
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one another, and really feel and get in the rhythm in the groove. We, you know, vibe sounds very West
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Coast woo woo, but to really get a read on the other person's vibe. People have energy, they have
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negative and positive energy. And that's how we pick it up. Yeah. And as you're talking about how we
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all have this desire to connect and click with people and how we want to sync up and basically
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almost become the same person. It reminds me, there's that myth from Plato, talking about where
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men and women came from. And the myth was that there was a time before in premortal time where
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there's these creatures that were kind of like a donut shaped, like a circle looking thing that had,
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you know, four arms and four legs and two heads, and they were together and kind of connected at the
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belly button. They kind of wheeled around like cartwheel to get around. And then they separated.
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And then they separated and that became men and women. And then like, we just had this desire,
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Yeah, the idea Plato had was that we're roaming the planet looking for our missing other half
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that we've been separated from. But interpersonal synchrony tells us that what we're really looking
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for is we are looking for the person with whom we effortlessly sync, the person who harmonize with
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us, the people that we are on their wavelength. I love how these all these turns of phrase,
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things that we have said for, you know, time immemorial being in sync, in step, in tune,
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on the same wavelength, and on the other side, discordant, you know, that kind of thing, unharmonious,
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that those are all actually true. These things that we were feeling, now we have the technology to
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actually see that's actually what's happening. We're syncing up in this way. And that's what feels so good.
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So syncing feels good in the moment. And then when you consistently have those clicking moments with
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someone, that's what makes for fulfilling long-term relationship. What contributes to our ability to
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sync with others? Is there a genetic factor? Does it have something to do with our early childhood
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Yeah, I think it's all of that. And I love that you're bringing up the genetics because that I really,
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I really want to say on the outset that this is an emerging science and we don't understand it
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exactly, why it happens, when it happens. That's why it's still magical. I mean, why did John Lennon
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and Paul McCartney click on so many different levels and were able to produce and have the impact that
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they did? And the same thing with all of us. When we click with somebody, it's still somewhat magical.
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But yes, I do think everything comes into play there. It's genetics. It's your history. It's
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everything that has happened to you in life is embodied within you. And every neural twitch,
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everything that you do is a product of all of those pieces, all the way back to when you were in utero.
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So I like to use the analogy that we're all kind of like, we're made up of trillions of oscillating
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cells. And what we're all kind of like are these massive symphony orchestras with all of these
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different instruments playing at different frequencies and amplitudes. And you meet another
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person and they've got their whole orchestra from, you know, all of these different pieces that came
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together. And it's just a matter of whether or not you two are able to harmonize, that you are able
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to, it's not necessarily you're going to start playing their song and get on their tempo entirely,
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or they're going to do the same to yours. What's really remarkable is how we both somewhat accommodate
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to one another and play this even more beautiful tune together. And we also, the key point is we
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interpret it as pleasurable. So it's not so much of putting each other in a exact common state of
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arousal. It's more accommodating one another and playing this beautiful song together that we both
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are really in the groove. If that makes sense. Yeah, it's a dance. It is a dance. It is a dance.
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Well, what you talk about is stuff like genetics and upbringing influences someone's general ability
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to sync with people. It's like their overall capacity to connect with people. But those things,
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they also influence your personality, your disposition, which also influences whether we
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click with people. Like there has to be some kind of alignment there. Not that you have to be perfectly
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parallel in the same. You can still sync if you compliment each other in some way, even if you're
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different. Yeah. Because that's what's sort of kind of cool about this is if there are so many people
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that we can think of who are odd couples that come together and that we never would have like,
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God, I never would have put those two together, whether it's friends or a romantic couple. So
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you can sync with people that you never thought you would sync with.
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Something else you talk about is that there are certain people who are just
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There are people that have, and I talk about this in the book, we have something called effective
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presence. And we're all familiar with personality. And that's sort of the general state of
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how we feel. But effective presence is this consistent way that we make other people feel.
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And there are some people that just, for lack of a better word, have a really good vibe
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that people just sync to very easily. And you can call it charisma. You can call it a vibe. You can
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call it just, you know, somebody who's just really has a compelling personality. And it doesn't mean
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they're always upbeat. It's not just that. It's just people are drawn to them. But we all carry
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around an effective presence that is something that is, I think, useful to think about is how do I
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leave people? Am I leaving people better or worse than I found them? Are they more uptight? Are they
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happier after they're around me? And what does that mean? And what can I do about it?
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I think that's worth remembering that we all have this personal atmosphere that can influence
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how people feel. And that we should be mindful and thoughtful about how we want to leave people
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feeling after we leave their presence. You know, as we're talking about this, people might be
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thinking that these good sinkers, these people who can click easily with people, you know,
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people probably think, well, they're probably all extroverts. They're bubbly. They're charismatic.
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And that's sort of stereotypical way we think of charisma. But you highlight examples of individuals
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who have that great, effective presence. And they're not super dynamic, but people are still
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Yeah. And I think that's because they're able to put them in sort of a calming cadence, for lack of a
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better word. They calm you down. They make you feel more secure. There are also lots of people that
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can just make you feel more competent, or just there's something about their presence that you
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find pleasurable. Again, it's like tuning into them and you find it pleasant. I also, I think it's worth
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noting that we're not going to sink with everybody. And as much as we might like to, or think we like to,
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we're really not meant to. And so part of maturity is realizing that there will be people that you can
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really hum along with, and you're really going to click with them. And other people, you're just, no,
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that's not going to work. And you know it instantly. And there's no use really forcing the issue. And it's
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also, people usually have two reactions to that. Failure to connect is to say, first of all, there's something
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wrong with that person. You know, that, that, that I didn't connect with them. There's something wrong.
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There's something wrong with that person, or there's something wrong with me that I wasn't
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compelling enough or that's why we didn't connect. And sometimes, you know, no harm, no foul. You're
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just not a good fit and that's okay. Yeah. You're not for everybody and everyone's not for you.
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Exactly. Yeah. So there's some individuals who just, they've got some sort of knack for clicking
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with a lot of people. They got that effective presence. What about individuals on the autism spectrum?
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Because that's something that you hear about. Like it's hard for them, people with autism to
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socialize because maybe they don't pick up on cues as much. Are they still able to sync?
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You know, that's an interesting question. I actually found it really fascinating because
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there are two schools of thought about that. And one is, is that just having a really difficult
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time noticing, thinking that they're just so internally directed that they have a hard time
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syncing with other people. There's another school of thought is that they are so
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overwhelmed by all the signals they're receiving that they're flooded. And so they aren't able to
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sync. There's also some absolutely fascinating literature that they're, and this is the case for
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also people who have some learning difficulties, also perhaps with ADD, but certainly autism,
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is that there are deficits in their ability to keep time, keep a beat, essentially. They have a really
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hard time keeping a beat to music and also apparently keeping a beat with other people because we all
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have a rhythm. Neural patterns are rhythmic, inherently rhythmic. Everything in the universe
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is pretty much because, you know, atoms in and of themselves, inherently rhythmic. And so the inability
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to keep time is an indicator and is also how they're actually using that as a way to diagnose people who do
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have some of these neurological difficulties to find out whether or not that's sort of a marker.
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And also it's coming into play as a type of treatment to help people with their music awareness,
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with rhythm, perhaps dance, to try and help with that timing deficit that translates into our ability
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to sync up with other people. Isn't that fascinating?
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It is. Yeah. I thought that was really interesting that your ability to keep a beat
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with music translates over to your ability to keep a beat socially.
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I thought that was really interesting. But I mean, it makes sense because one of the things you see
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people do in groups sometimes, you know, an organization will have people participate in a
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And in beating on the drums, it gets people in sync because they're creating a rhythm together.
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Well, I think just in general, that's the other side of this is that when we are syncing with other
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people behaviorally, meaning we're doing the same thing at the same time, particularly to a beat,
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to your point, it fosters feelings of rapport, of trust. People volunteer more information.
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They're generally kinder and more helpful. Even babies strapped into face forward carriers and bounced
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in time to music are significantly more likely to favor an experimenter who is also bouncing in time
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to music versus an experimenter who's bouncing out of sync or who is not bouncing at all.
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So there's something about, I mean, I myself am in a line dancing class and a lot of those people in
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this class, I mean, just really probably little else in common, but I mean, we are so cohesive and
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there's such a sense of joy of doing the same thing at the same time. You lose this sense of
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yourself. You become more of this larger organism moving together and it does stimulate joy. And if
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you think just even back in history, synchronized behaviors, movements have been used as a kind of
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social glue. Think of religion, people singing together, praying together, kneeling together,
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standing at the same time together and in the military marching to a beat. And also all soldiers
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are really pretty much on the exact same schedule, doing the same thing at the same time. And it builds
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this incredible sense of cohesion. It brings this feeling of emergence. So when soldiers see something
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happening to one of their own, it's like it's happening to them. Yeah. I think we've all maybe
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experienced that. I know when I worked in a restaurant when I was in high school or I worked
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at Jamba Juice making smoothies and you get really busy and whenever the crew, they were just synced up.
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Yeah. In the zone. In the zone. Like we didn't have to talk to each other, but we could look at each
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other and knew what they were going to do and what I needed to do. And it just felt awesome. Like,
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this is amazing. We're just cranking out smoothies like nobody's business. Yeah. I love that.
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You know, and the same with like the greatest sports teams, the ones where everybody's cohesive
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and really clicking, you can see that. And those are the ones that succeed.
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Another factor that plays a role in our ability to sync socially is something called interoception.
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What is that and what role does it play in our ability to sync with others?
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Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up. It's really, I found this, well, I found everything in the book
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really fascinating, but this was a revelation to me because we like to think of our feelings come
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from, okay, we, something happened. We process what happened in our mind and that results in our
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feelings. But the research is really coming to show that really feelings start in our body and our brain
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interprets feelings from these experiences, these feelings in our body. And then we translate that
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to emotions. So interoception is the ability to read what's going on in your body. It's essentially
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body awareness. It's the flip side of perception. Perception is what you're perceiving outside of
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your body. Whereas interoception is being really in tune with what's going on within your body.
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And that's super important because if you don't understand the sensations and what they mean in your
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body, you really can't sync up to another person or embody another person and take on their feelings
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and be really in tune with them. So for example, we all experience, if you think about how, what does
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fear feel like for you? Do you feel it in your stomach? Do you feel it in your chest? Do you feel
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it in your head? Do you feel it in your feet? Some people feel it in their genitals. I mean, all of us
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have a different physical signature for fear. And if you're not in tune of, okay, what does that mean?
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What am I feeling right now? Is that anger? And where we get into trouble as human beings is when
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we start to misconstrue or get detached from those inner feelings within us and what they mean.
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Like a lot of people have a different sense of what hunger means. I mean, what the feeling is,
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is it gnawing in your chest or do you get kind of irritable? People have different ways of perceiving
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hunger. But where we really get messed up is where we misconstrue things. Like you can feel like a
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little bit irritable or lethargic and think that's hunger when it's really boredom. And people get
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mixed up with that. And particularly in our culture where we're so busy and it's almost a badge of pride
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to say you didn't sleep when you were tired. You didn't eat when you were hungry. You pushed
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yourself through when you were in a lot of pain exercising. So that detachment from your body,
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and you can see how this would be a problem, is if you are trying to internalize, embody
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someone else's feelings. And again, this is all subconscious. But if you're not in tune with your
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own body, how can you be in tune with someone else's body?
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Yeah. So I mean, I think that's interesting. One of the first things you can do to help develop your
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own ability to click more with people is just get more in tune or more aware of your own
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emotions and what they feel like in your body. Yeah. Just do an internal review. Because if we're
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internalizing other people's heart rate, their respiration, all of these things, and we're not
00:21:28.640
even aware of our own heart rate, you're not going to pick up someone else's anxiety if you're not even
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aware of your own heart rate. They've done a lot of research with particularly heart rate, but there
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are lots of other things where people work on their interoception, going through different parts of
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their body and what are you feeling? And there was one study I thought was just fascinating where it
00:21:49.420
had high frequency traders at a hedge fund and the ones that had better interoception were better
00:21:55.540
traders. They made more money and they stayed in the job longer because they had more of that sense of,
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okay, this is danger or what these other people are doing. I'm getting sucked into something that
00:22:06.760
maybe I shouldn't, where they really had a sense of their own self. And, and again, this is all
00:22:12.640
subconscious, but the fact that they had better awareness, higher awareness of their heart rate
00:22:17.680
and whether it was up or down versus another person made them a better trader. We're going to take a
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chocolate flavor. It's really good. And now back to the show. Okay, so personality can influence
00:25:02.680
whether we click with someone, but there can be situations where the fit has potential, but you're
00:25:07.820
not syncing because you're just not generally good at syncing with people. And we've talked about
00:25:13.080
that some people are just better able to click with people and more people than others. I mean,
00:25:17.800
some of that is genetic and upbringing, but there's also things we can all do to improve
00:25:22.360
our clickability. And we've talked about some of those things already. I mean, like beware of your
00:25:26.380
own emotions, do things in a group, like some kind of physical activity together where you're all in
00:25:30.780
sync. But what else can we do to make ourselves more clickable? And you actually have a chapter on what
00:25:35.700
the world of speed dating can teach us about this. So what can speed dating teach us about being open
00:25:42.040
to interpersonal synchrony? Well, your listeners should know there's a vast scientific literature
00:25:47.920
on speed dating, which was news to me. And not only speed dating, but speed networking. And they've
00:25:54.260
done a lot of studies to find out what that's how they really figured out what is happening when people
00:26:00.260
are clicking. And the people that reported a sense of attraction, and they wanted to see this person
00:26:06.740
again, whether it was in a professional or personal context, romantic context, it was that they were
00:26:12.480
syncing on all these different levels. And the thing that I think people can do that we discount,
00:26:19.140
and of course, that's what my first book was about, is to you really want to be present, of course.
00:26:25.060
And really, if you can be in person, in person, you're going to pick up all these different signals
00:26:31.220
that you don't pick up online, or in a two dimensional, or even three dimensional, if it's
00:26:36.660
virtual reality, you're not going to pick up, it's a multi-sensory, syncing is a multi-sensory
00:26:42.620
dynamic. And so you're losing a lot of information that helps you sync up with somebody if you're not
00:26:49.280
in person. So there's that piece of it. But also, learn to be a really good listener, when you are
00:26:56.320
really trying to inhabit somebody else's narrative, and really trying to understand them. And listening
00:27:03.720
isn't just being quiet. I mean, it is really trying to almost be with someone in the sense that, like
00:27:10.380
you're watching a movie where you'd get totally lost in the other person, and to almost let yourself
00:27:15.940
go in what the other person has to say, get rid of your own personal agendas, and really be a good
00:27:22.180
listener. That is something that helps with that neural syncing we were talking about with brainwaves.
00:27:27.340
So that's a piece of it, too. But I just think in general, what's so powerful about this knowledge
00:27:34.300
is to be aware that this is even something that happens. I mean, I don't know if you knew this before,
00:27:41.160
but I certainly didn't know that on all these different levels, we're syncing up with other people.
00:27:45.340
And to try and be sensitive to that. And you kind of let yourself go with it, if it's something that's
00:27:50.900
working for you. But if you get that feeling that discordant feeling, or sort of like that needle across
00:27:57.400
vinyl, you know, you know, when you meet someone to also pay attention to that, too. Because you have
00:28:04.200
intuited you have felt something that's pretty important to pay attention to.
00:28:08.320
Can you hack social security? Because I mean, some bit of advice you always see in magazines or blog
00:28:14.280
posts is, if you're on a date, or maybe even you're on a networking or a job interview, well, if you really
00:28:19.880
want to sync up with someone, you should just do whatever they do. So if your date crosses their legs, you
00:28:25.940
cross your legs. And be intentional about that. Does that actually work?
00:28:29.300
No. Short answer, because we are really fine tuned to authenticity, human beings are, you know, you're
00:28:39.560
talking about a superpower, we're really in even subconsciously, anything that's a little bit off,
00:28:43.720
or that we don't perceive as being authentic, we pick up on that. And then also, when there's a big
00:28:50.020
disconnect between that's another thing about syncing, is to actually be authentic. Because if there's a
00:28:57.040
disconnect between what you're feeling and what you're doing or saying, people pick up on that,
00:29:02.460
that's sort of like crossed wires. And so people are, they pick up on that, whether they are aware
00:29:07.960
of it or not. They're aware of the end feeling, which is discomfort.
00:29:13.640
Yeah. Another bit of advice I've seen people use to try to sync up is, but if you don't do it right,
00:29:19.400
it's a total turnoff. It's using people's name. Oh, yeah.
00:29:22.720
You know, Dale Carnegie famously said something like, the sweetest sound a person can hear is
00:29:27.660
their own name. And I think a lot of people hear this advice, and they feel like, okay,
00:29:31.760
I got to drop someone's name as much as possible in this conversation.
00:29:36.320
Yeah. I mean, I've had salespeople do this to me. And I'm just like, okay, I know what you're doing.
00:29:40.180
And it's just really annoying. So you can just stop it. Please stop. But I've also had podcast guests
00:29:45.300
who say my name throughout the conversation. And it sounds natural. And I'm like, oh, wow,
00:29:50.060
that does feel really good. Even when I think someone is doing it intentionally to be charming,
00:29:53.900
it still feels good if it's natural. But when it's really forced, it's irritating. It's a complete
00:30:00.060
No, absolutely. Because there is a natural way to do it. I have a friend who's an airplane mechanic,
00:30:05.560
and he's absolutely delightful. And he does that. He uses people's names, partially it's to help him
00:30:10.640
to remember, but it's so natural. And I mean, Dale Carnegie's right. It is like music to your ears
00:30:16.860
when it's, he's authentic. He wants to know me. He wants to be friends with me. And you feel that.
00:30:25.140
And when someone just drops it every once in a while, Brett, you know, I mean,
00:30:28.660
that's right, Brett, Brett, Brett, Brett, it just, it doesn't, yeah, it doesn't have the same
00:30:33.920
feeling. It's discordant. Yeah. Okay. So you can't do the whole mirror somebody to sync up with them.
00:30:40.280
That's just going to happen naturally if you're syncing up with them. What about looking people in the
00:30:45.160
eye? You mentioned that eye contact is important. Yeah, that's huge. Look people in the eye.
00:30:50.140
But how much is too much? Well, you know, there's creepy staring people in the eye. But I think when
00:30:56.400
that happens, there isn't a synchrony going on. The person is just in their mind thinking,
00:31:01.720
I'm going to stare at this person. Do you know what I mean? There's a difference between really
00:31:06.580
looking with a sense of interest and a sense of exploration and really wanting to sync with somebody.
00:31:14.000
And then there's this, okay, I'm just going to look at you because that's what I'm supposed to do.
00:31:18.760
And also, I think there are people who, you know, everybody's not as good at this. People have
00:31:24.340
different tuners. And so some people really can try and look at somebody. And it's almost like a blank
00:31:31.940
stare. And that's where it's creepy because you don't, on a certain level, you know that your pupil
00:31:37.460
dilation is not syncing up. They're not syncing up with your heart rate. You feel that disconnect.
00:31:42.280
So I would say when you're looking at someone, if you're really looking at someone with interest
00:31:48.620
and curiosity, then that's going to come across. But certainly, I think people have different
00:31:54.700
tolerances for intimacy. And sometimes that all the signals that you're getting from someone can be a
00:32:01.640
little too much. And they need to look away every once in a while. And that's okay, too.
00:32:06.680
Yeah, that's fine. So I mean, it sounds like if you want to be more clickable with people,
00:32:10.280
it's not so much about tactics or techniques. It's more about an attitude or a stance you take to
00:32:16.800
whatever social interaction you're in. And that attitude is just one of presence
00:32:22.500
and curiosity and wanting to know about this person. And if you have that attitude,
00:32:32.860
And that's what's so hard being a nonfiction writer, which I'm mainly a journalist. And now
00:32:39.820
I've written my second book. After my first, I said, I'd never do this again. But if you look at
00:32:44.080
the landscape of nonfiction books, I think you're probably more familiar with this than most people,
00:32:49.460
that it is all about this hack. If you just do this, and then this will happen. And interpersonal
00:32:56.200
synchrony and the things that I write about, it isn't something where if you do X, then Y will
00:33:02.260
happen. And actually, nothing about life is like that. And it's, as you said, and I think it's really
00:33:08.400
apt is it's a dance. And so if you go in wanting to dance, and you go in with that curiosity and that
00:33:16.300
openness and just generosity of spirit, you will find people who are on your wavelength,
00:33:22.320
who will want to join in with your music, who you will play a beautiful song together,
00:33:29.440
or dance well together. And then there will always be people who will just sort of be on their own
00:33:34.940
tempo. And they're maybe distracted, they may be not even notice you, or you're just not compatible.
00:33:41.960
But again, that's okay. We're not meant we don't have the cognitive or emotional resources to sync
00:33:48.560
with everyone. And also, what would make it special when you do?
00:33:53.480
So you mentioned one of the important things for interpersonal synchrony is you have to be with
00:34:02.300
And you have this whole section about the research on our ability to socially click with people via
00:34:10.740
Well, as I touched on earlier, synchrony is a multi sensory experience. And in fact,
00:34:19.080
interpersonal synchrony suggests that we have more senses than the five we take for granted. Like,
00:34:24.680
how do you sense someone's heart rate, their respiration, their hormonal level,
00:34:29.820
even like these subconscious smells? I mean, we have all these pheromones that we're throwing out
00:34:35.600
that they think is responsible for why women sync up their menstrual cycle. So there are all these
00:34:41.060
things. And you're not going to get that online. You're not going to get this full panoply of
00:34:46.820
signals that someone is throwing out that you could potentially sync up to. And that doesn't mean you
00:34:52.840
can't sync, you know, on certain levels. I mean, we certainly see things go on viral online, or people's
00:34:57.720
outrage gets stirred up online. So it's not like you can't have synchrony or feel like you have
00:35:03.960
synchrony with people online. But oftentimes, and people who've done online dating know this
00:35:10.040
better than most, is you might think you have a connection with someone online. And then you meet
00:35:16.020
them in person. And you think, Oh, my God. No, I mean, you just all you can think about is how long
00:35:22.800
do I have to sit here before I can break this off without seeming rude? It's just, you know, you
00:35:28.320
really do not get the full sense of another person online. Yeah, that's an interesting point about
00:35:34.400
online dating. Because it also could happen, there might be people in your in person social circle,
00:35:40.040
maybe at work or church, where your filters on the dating apps wouldn't have brought you to that
00:35:45.480
person. Absolutely. Because, you know, the filters on dating apps are very superficial, like how tall you
00:35:50.500
are, you know, money, income. But there might be people in your interpersonal social circle that you
00:35:56.480
never would have thought you would have like, I want to date this person, but then you get to
00:36:00.200
be around them and interact with them. And you're like, Oh, wow, I kind of like this person.
00:36:03.920
Yeah, you swipe, you would have totally swiped left if you had read their profile, but then you see
00:36:07.600
them in person, and you totally click. Yeah. So yeah, that in person thing is important. Let's talk
00:36:12.320
about this. We're on the podcast, I don't do video podcasts. And a lot of podcasts are going the video
00:36:19.380
route. I'm talking to you, I cannot see you, you cannot see me. I do all my interviews,
00:36:25.080
remote without video. I don't like video. I do video calls every now and then I don't like it.
00:36:33.060
What is it? Help me justify myself here. Like, why do I have this aversion to video calls? And why
00:36:39.260
do I prefer voice only calls? Well, the science backs you up on that. I mean, I'm not just trying
00:36:44.740
to make you feel better. I mean, the science totally backs you up on that. And I salute you
00:36:48.460
for resisting it, because that is the way of the world right now where everybody's moving to video.
00:36:53.140
But the problem is that because we have this instinct to sync, looking at video is very
00:37:01.300
disruptive and makes us feel ill. I mean, zoom fatigue is a real malady. And that is because
00:37:10.700
the way the technology is at this point, the way that video images are encoded and decoded and buffered
00:37:20.180
and all these things that are manipulated about the image and, you know, not to mention pixelation,
00:37:25.240
it distorts all these tiny little cues, these facial expressions. And then back to eye contact,
00:37:33.300
you are making eye contact with your, or maybe you aren't, with your camera. So nobody's actually
00:37:39.900
looking at you. And so you, in your brain, again, this is subconscious, you're just rapidly spinning
00:37:46.920
your wheels, trying to do this adaptive, evolutionarily entrained thing with another
00:37:54.440
person to sync up with them. You're looking for all those micro, micro expressions, you're looking
00:38:00.280
for that eye contact, and you're just spinning your wheels trying to do that. And it ends up making
00:38:05.700
people feel uncomfortable, vaguely disturbed, a little bit off. And I have never met a single
00:38:12.740
person who says, Oh, goody, a zoom meeting. And I don't know why it's become something where
00:38:18.920
everybody thinks is to rigor. Because I, I mean, I've had people that I've talked to who that I've
00:38:24.600
worked with who say, Oh, God, I had, you know, I loved reading that in your book. And I, I hate zoom
00:38:29.020
calls. And yet they'll schedule a zoom call with me. And I should be like, Oh, why is this? But I totally
00:38:35.960
agree with you that we are able to connect and sync on a much more authentic, real level, just by
00:38:43.560
hearing each other, then getting all that faulty information that we get from the video that throws
00:38:51.260
us off. And it's some part of our brain is really struggling. And it makes it really hard to connect
00:39:00.160
Yeah, I love I love talking to people on the phone. I've been doing that a lot more lately.
00:39:05.900
I've got a friend who's moved and every like once a month, I'll take a walk for an hour. And we just
00:39:11.960
talk to each other on the phone. And it's like we're together, even though we don't see each other.
00:39:16.700
Yes. Yeah, no, I agree. And there's also there's, don't you think there's kind of an intimacy
00:39:21.540
having someone right in your ear? Yeah, that there's that piece of it, too.
00:39:26.220
No, I agree. Whenever someone does a zoom call, I always feel kind of like a heel,
00:39:30.880
because I'll do the zoom call, but I'll keep my video camera off. And then the other person's like,
00:39:36.340
is your video camera not working? And I say, No, it's fine. I'm just gonna do audio only like it's
00:39:41.980
Well, but let's be honest, Brett, people are mostly looking at themselves on this call.
00:39:47.020
Yeah, you're checking yourself out image of themselves. They're really not looking at you.
00:39:51.240
Or they're getting distracted by looking at like, you know, what's that art in the background?
00:39:54.860
What's is that a cat crossing in the back? Or, you know, and then when people blur all around
00:39:59.260
them, and they look so peculiar with that blur stuff around them. I mean, you do kind of feel
00:40:05.200
like a jerk because I have nothing to hide. It's not that it's just I really want to pay attention
00:40:10.780
to what you're saying. I really want to connect with you in some way. And I want us to be productive
00:40:15.980
and sink in a way that we can solve problems or get to an agreement. And the video just subverts that.
00:40:22.980
All right. So let's use this as a clarion call to end zoom video.
00:40:28.500
Boy, you know, if that came out of my book, I would feel like I had just accomplished something
00:40:33.940
Yeah. You have a chapter about the importance of interpersonal synchrony in romantic relationships.
00:40:40.620
What happens whenever a romantic relationship is not synced up?
00:40:45.020
Well, it's not good. I mean, when we are not in sync with another person, we experience it as
00:40:50.600
discomfort, romantic or otherwise. And I think it's particularly painful when you have been in sync,
00:40:57.460
and then you move out of sync. And actually, that's not a bad thing. Because you do want to
00:41:04.260
have periods of asynchrony in any relationship. It's natural and healthy. Because that's how you get
00:41:10.560
back in touch with yourself and recalibrate and makes you better able to, when you do sync back
00:41:17.860
up with the other person, that you each can bring something to the dance. I do. I like your analogy.
00:41:25.440
So that's okay. But I think a lot of times, particularly people who have anxious attachment
00:41:30.480
styles, they get very upset when there is a sense of asynchrony. And so they really spin their wheels
00:41:39.240
trying to, like, you know, what's wrong? Which only drives people apart. And they often will do things
00:41:47.300
that provoke the person. Like, if they're really agitated, they will provoke the other person so
00:41:53.520
they're agitated too, just so they'll be in sync on that level, which is not good for a relationship.
00:42:00.300
But if you really find that you're really on different wavelengths and really feel like a real
00:42:05.220
distance is coming between the two of you, you know, go back to those things of make sure,
00:42:10.000
are you spending enough time together? Are you with each other enough to establish those
00:42:14.820
physiological synchronies? And also activities, those joint activities we talked about.
00:42:20.220
Go for a walk together. I mean, make time so you're doing things, having these shared experiences
00:42:25.220
and these joint activities that help you sync up more readily.
00:42:31.080
Okay, that's great advice. So make sure you're syncing up regularly.
00:42:33.260
People are busy, you know, as a couple, you can just sync up in the morning when you're having
00:42:37.800
a cup of coffee together, talk about what's going on with your day. And then maybe at the end of the
00:42:42.840
day, have another chat where you just hang out, talk about how the day went.
00:42:46.840
Well, I mean, that's one of the greatest things about being in romantic relationships is, you know,
00:42:50.780
they used to call it like pillow talk, but just, you know, when you're laying in bed at night
00:42:54.560
and just talking and that quiet, and that, you know, again, you're not necessarily looking at
00:42:59.760
each other, but you're so synced up physically by proximity and just talking about your day and
00:43:05.840
sharing things that that really promotes that synchrony and that sense of intimacy.
00:43:12.780
So we've been talking about the benefits of interpersonal synchrony. It allows you to feel
00:43:17.740
connected to people, close. It feels good. It allows you to get stuff done efficiently and effectively.
00:43:22.620
But are there downsides to being too in sync with somebody?
00:43:29.180
Oh, yes. Because we have this instinct to sync, it makes us vulnerable to getting sucked into other
00:43:34.920
people's emotional vortex. I mean, I think we've all had the sense that when we are with somebody
00:43:41.160
who's, you know, just high drama, incredibly manic, that it's exhausting. I don't think everybody has a
00:43:47.980
great emotional vocabulary, but we all can recognize someone who's hard to be around versus easy to be
00:43:54.120
around. And the people that are hard to be around are the ones that sort of sweep us up into this
00:43:59.800
emotional cadence, resonance that we're not comfortable with. And it is difficult. And it's
00:44:08.320
also difficult because when we embody and we internalize other people, it feels like it's coming
00:44:13.920
from ourselves. So I think we've all had the experience of like, why did I do that? Why did I
00:44:18.320
say that? Or there was sort of a blow up and you're like, how did that happen? And that's because you
00:44:23.660
climb the ladder of emotion, arousal, agitation with another person because of this instinct to
00:44:31.560
sync. And you lost sight of yourself. You lost sight of where that person begins and you end.
00:44:39.600
And so that's why things like interoception are really important. And also just, you know,
00:44:44.640
by reading this book, you just to have an awareness that this is what's happening. And when you start
00:44:50.240
getting those feelings, you can kind of think within yourself, okay, what am I doing with this? I'll
00:44:55.160
give you a really good example. When I was first working on this book, I had really gathered most of
00:45:00.060
the data. I hadn't really finished writing the book. I was invited to speak about my last book at a
00:45:06.200
major university. And I won't say which one, which will become clear in a minute. And I was invited
00:45:11.280
to lunch with one of the deans and we were at lunch and he was, let's just say he was socially very
00:45:19.340
anxious and he was just, he was spinning and he was having a hard time looking me in the eye. He was
00:45:27.000
just kind of agitated. And as a result, I was pretty miserable. I was really uncomfortable and I was
00:45:33.840
feeling really anxious and I was feeling very socially awkward. And I realized, which is,
00:45:38.060
you know, not me. I, you know, I love meeting people. And I realized, oh my God, this is what's
00:45:42.760
happening. I've totally internalized this guy. And once I was aware of that, I was able to pull back
00:45:50.100
and do things like think about, okay, where am I putting that? You know, I realized, okay,
00:45:53.660
my shoulders are hunched. Let me bring them down. Let me take some deep breaths. I even slowed the
00:45:58.620
cadence of my speech, crossed my legs the other way. And I totally changed the rhythm of the encounter.
00:46:06.900
And not only did I feel better and bring myself back to myself, but he started to relax. He started
00:46:14.760
to sink to me. So there's a real power in catching yourself and it's hard. It seems like an easy thing
00:46:23.020
to do, but it's really hard because it's so instinctual and you become so wrapped up in the
00:46:28.600
moment that you don't realize it's happening as it's happening. And you do the debrief kind of
00:46:33.740
afterwards, you realize, oh, that would happen. But if you get good at reading yourself and reading
00:46:38.640
other people and the degree to which you are matching, mirroring that other person, it really
00:46:44.660
can make a total difference in your social life.
00:46:47.320
So the Osmonds famously saying, one bad apple don't spoil the whole bunch, girl. But you say
00:46:57.100
the Osmonds were wrong. One bad apple does spoil the whole bunch.
00:47:01.320
Yes. And I think the best example of this was an incredibly interesting study that was done in the
00:47:09.720
early 2000s by Will Phelps, who's now in Australia. He's at University of South Wales in Australia,
00:47:16.640
at the time he was at University of Washington. And what he did is he created all of these work
00:47:22.440
groups out of University of Washington business students. And he created all these work groups,
00:47:27.680
but he introduced a Confederate or an accomplice who was to go in and either act like a jerk,
00:47:34.360
a slacker, or a depressing downer and see what happened, what the effect was on group functioning.
00:47:41.240
And he actually, he didn't know, Will Phelps did not know about interpersonal synchrony at the time.
00:47:46.420
He was just looking for the effects, but he said, now, knowing what he knows now,
00:47:50.460
he would have done the study totally differently. Because if you look at the video,
00:47:54.860
it's striking that like during the slacker condition, he's like leaning back in his chair,
00:48:01.720
he's eating, he's acting like he couldn't be bothered with the task at hand. And sure,
00:48:06.020
shooting, everybody else starts leaning back. They're starting to say things like, you know,
00:48:11.060
let's get this over with. And they performed really badly. And the really heartbreaking one
00:48:15.580
was the depressive downer one. And the guy comes in, he's acting real depressed and really lethargic.
00:48:22.500
And it's really sad. You start seeing everyone else slow down, putting their heads down on the table.
00:48:28.720
And you get this sense, and they actually verbalize it. It's not only the task at hand
00:48:33.820
was meaningless, but life in general seemed meaningless. And so you can see how this contagion
00:48:40.340
happens in situations. And I think we've all experienced where somebody new comes into a group
00:48:46.360
and it just totally upsets the dynamic and pulls people in one direction or another. And it can be,
00:48:52.460
you know, there can be good apples too. It can be positive or negative. But it's true that one bad
00:48:58.520
apple, the greatest predictor of the success of a team or organization is not how stellar the best
00:49:05.060
person is, or even the average abilities of the rest of the people, but how awful the worst person
00:49:11.700
is. That predicts the success or failure of a group. So if you're a leader of a group, what do you
00:49:17.620
do when you're dealing with a bad apple? Do you just have to get that person out of there? Or do you try
00:49:21.180
to rehabilitate them? Like, what's the strategy? Well, you know, most CEOs that I've interviewed are just
00:49:25.980
like, yeah, you got to get rid of it. Yeah. It's going to ruin everything. But I think what they
00:49:30.080
try to do more on the front end is hire very carefully. And again, you know, don't interview
00:49:37.540
by zoom. Don't rely on, you know, an algorithm that's going to pick the right resume. Cause as
00:49:42.600
you rightly said, you know, sometimes with like dating apps, the people that you swipe left on are
00:49:47.020
the people that are the right person. So there's that. And there's also, I, when I interviewed Danny
00:49:53.420
Meyer, he allowed me to go. And I watched, I mean, you talk about synchrony in his Michelin
00:49:59.400
starred restaurants, the synchrony between the kitchen and the front of the house. And there's
00:50:04.300
just a tempo. It's a ballet in there. And I was talking to one of the managers and he said with
00:50:10.180
hiring, they typically bring in somebody and have a trial run, which I think is probably a really
00:50:18.320
good idea with a lot of organizations to the degree that you're able, because it's to the benefit
00:50:22.800
of the potential hiree, as well as the employer, because they all get a sense of, you know, am I
00:50:30.120
clicking here? Is this somewhere where I can flourish? Is this someone who's going to fit in
00:50:35.540
with the vibe, the rhythm of the team? So I think more to really try and head it off from the beginning.
00:50:44.200
So you got this one chapter. I'm going to end on this. I thought this was really interesting.
00:50:47.200
You explore our sometimes uncanny ability to sync with people from afar. So for example,
00:50:54.740
I'm sure some people have experienced this where they get a feeling that someone they know who lives
00:51:00.820
far away is having a hard time or maybe something bad happened to them. And they think, I better check
00:51:06.060
on them and come to find out something bad did happen to that person. What's going on there?
00:51:10.340
Well, you know, I'm not sure. But I do talk about this in the book. And again, this is, you know,
00:51:17.100
very, it's, people don't agree. This is, you know, highly speculative. But in the physics world,
00:51:25.340
they are coming to think that our brains operate much like a quantum computer. And again, I really
00:51:32.900
want to preface this, that there is a lot of disagreement among physicists. But there is a camp
00:51:38.660
that believes our brains work like a quantum computer. And quantum is subatomic particles,
00:51:45.380
and their behavior is very unique. And one of the things that is a factor of quantum mechanics is
00:51:53.560
something called quantum entanglement. And that is where these subatomic particles, they can become
00:52:00.300
synced. But then when they are separated by time and space, they maintain that synchrony. And since they
00:52:07.960
think that our brains are operating like quantum computers and obey the laws of quantum mechanics,
00:52:13.440
including quantum synchrony, you can see this really trippy notion that if the quantum particles
00:52:22.360
within your brain are synced up and can become entangled, you can imagine how the quantum particles
00:52:29.840
in another person's brain that would sync up to your brain would be operating in that same
00:52:35.820
synchronized way. And that might, and I emphasize might, might explain why we are able to intuit,
00:52:45.280
feel, predict, telepathic types of things. And we've all had them happen and thought, whoa,
00:52:51.840
I mean, how did that happen? And you can see how that might be an explanation of why that would happen.
00:53:00.220
That's interesting. Yeah, because I know people like that. My wife is able to do this. She'll have
00:53:04.620
those moments where she'll just be lying in bed and she's like, I got a friend who's having a hard
00:53:07.380
time. I need to call them. And then sure enough, she calls and like, they're having a hard time.
00:53:10.660
I'm like, what's going on there? So yeah, it could be quantum entanglement or it could just be,
00:53:15.040
you know, the romantic, we're just so combined that we just are on the same wavelength, no matter
00:53:21.060
where we are. So who knows what's going on there. But I do like that there's still some magic to this,
00:53:26.840
that we don't quite understand at all. For me, there's something intellectually,
00:53:30.720
as well as kind of spiritually satisfying about the fact that synchrony binds us not only to one
00:53:38.720
another, but also to the universe as a whole. Because synchrony has been observed throughout
00:53:44.360
the natural and life sciences. Everything from the tiniest quantum particle to supermassive
00:53:51.000
quasars exhibit synchronistic properties. And so it really shouldn't be a surprise that human beings do
00:53:58.540
it too. Well, you have a section on this. I mean, we can get a little more, let's go more woo woo.
00:54:03.000
I like this. About syncing with nature. I've had that experience where I've been out backpacking
00:54:10.540
in the Rocky mountains and I'm just staring at a mountain by this lake. And I feel like the mountain
00:54:16.580
is talking to me. Right. Like it's just, it's, and I know it's not talking to me, but it feels like it.
00:54:22.660
But on some level it is. I mean, the science is pretty clear on this because, I mean, think about it.
00:54:27.960
We are ruled by nature, the sun coming up, the sun coming down. We have all these internal clocks
00:54:33.640
that are based on the rhythms of nature. And the research is very clear that people feel better
00:54:40.520
out in nature. And they think that is because we sync up with the regular rhythmic patterns of not
00:54:49.000
only what you hear in nature, but also what you see in nature, which is not what happens in urban
00:54:55.740
environments. So we probably need to have another conversation if you're actually seeing lips
00:55:01.200
moving on the mountain and talking to you. But the sense of communion and feeling in sync
00:55:08.220
while you're out in nature and with the mountain, I think that's perfectly valid and accurate.
00:55:13.840
Yeah. Humans are designed to click. We love to click.
00:55:16.900
Well, Kate, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book
00:55:20.200
and your work? Well, I think the best way is just to go to my website. It's www.journalistkatemurphy.com.
00:55:27.520
And you can read about the book and any journalism that I've done. And that's probably the best place
00:55:32.240
to go. Fantastic. Well, Kate Murphy, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:55:37.580
My guest here is Kate Murphy. She's the author of the book, Click. It's available on amazon.com
00:55:41.260
and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about our work at our website,
00:55:44.060
journalistkatemurphy.com. Also check out our show notes at aom.is slash click.
00:55:48.080
We find links to resources and we delve deeper into this topic.
00:55:58.380
Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. If you haven't done so already,
00:56:02.060
I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on Apple podcast or Spotify. It helps
00:56:06.020
out a lot. And if you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend
00:56:10.080
or family member who you think would get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued
00:56:14.080
support. Until next time, it's Brett McKay. Remind you to our list of the AOM podcast,