The Laws of Connection — The Scientific Secrets of Building Stronger Relationships
Episode Stats
Summary
The quality of our social ties has a huge impact on our physical and mental health, and our overall feeling of flourishing. Yet many people still struggle to create these strong relationships in their lives, and often figure that things like weakening communities and digital technology are to blame. But my guest, David Robson, says that the barriers to establishing bonds with others may actually be more psychological than physical. And he shares research-backed tips for breaking through them in his new book, The Laws of Connection: The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network.
Transcript
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I wanna let you know that we're having an enrollment
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The Strenuous Life is an online offline program
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and writing about on AOM for the past 16 years.
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but also soft skills like how to be a better host,
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that are gonna push you outside of your comfort zone,
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goes through what we call The Strenuous Life Challenge.
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that's gonna help you develop a bias towards action
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that's gonna carry over to other areas of your life.
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If you wanna learn more about The Strenuous Life,
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And then the challenge, the bootcamp challenge,
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Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition
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Everyone has heard about the incredible benefits
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The quality of our social ties has a huge impact
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to create these strong relationships in their lives
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and often figure that things like weakening communities
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The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network.
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if we don't have what he calls a shared reality.
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We talk about why frenemies are so bad for you,
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check out our show notes at aom.is slash connection.
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on how we can improve our connection with others.
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And you talk about it's the lack of shared reality.
00:27:35.960
If you're not concentrating, you can just, like,
00:28:28.700
a sign of your genuine curiosity and passion for
00:28:31.220
what they're saying, you know, we don't have to
00:28:33.200
listen to the etiquette guides, that is going to
00:28:45.380
it's the fact that when we're listening to other
00:28:48.660
people, or they are listening to us, we all have a
00:28:58.740
And so, if you talk about something that isn't in the
00:29:01.480
other person's life, so it's totally novel, that's
00:29:04.820
when you have the novelty penalty, they just don't
00:29:07.080
feel the same level of connection to you through
00:29:10.860
I think it's very common when we're talking about
00:29:13.680
our kind of holidays, if the other person hasn't
00:29:16.740
been to the location that we're talking about, they
00:29:19.340
can feel very alienated and bored by the conversation
00:29:22.180
very quickly, because it's just difficult for them to
00:29:28.400
that our storytelling abilities just maybe aren't as
00:29:36.300
So, you know, you're leaving too many gaps in the
00:29:40.200
conversation in your descriptions that make it very
00:29:44.440
hard for them to really get a handle on what was so
00:29:46.920
exciting or fun or interesting about your experience and
00:29:52.340
And so, actually, to overcome the novelty penalty, it's
00:29:55.400
often better to embellish our stories a little bit more than
00:29:59.300
And I don't mean embellish with, like, you know, false
00:30:02.140
details, but I just mean, like, fill in those gaps, be a bit
00:30:07.180
Like, if something, like, completely changed your life by
00:30:13.340
Actually explicitly say what it was that was so
00:30:18.300
That just allows the other person to see inside your mind.
00:30:23.220
And that's really what is a shared reality is when people
00:30:26.180
can see inside each other's minds and really get to know
00:30:28.800
what's actually making you tick and what's actually
00:30:32.360
And I guess if you're listening to someone tell us a story and
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the novelty penalty is kicking in for you, like you're just
00:30:38.620
like bored, I think the solution to that would be ask
00:30:41.100
questions to flesh out those emotional details.
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I think like, you know, we should be really humble about
00:30:47.860
this and rather than just assuming that the other person is
00:30:50.860
really boring or getting irritated, like we should think
00:30:53.740
that maybe this is a reflection on us and that actually maybe
00:30:57.240
we're not asking the right questions or leading the
00:31:00.020
conversation in the way that will allow them to tell us why
00:31:03.380
that experience was so important to them and why they think
00:31:08.560
So oftentimes in a relationship to maintain it, we might tell
00:31:13.900
We basically tell something untruthful to not hurt the other
00:31:18.460
So, you know, typical one, hey, what'd you think of this food I
00:31:23.420
And you're thinking, well, actually I thought it was gross.
00:31:25.920
What does the research say about how that affects relationships?
00:31:29.060
I mean, there are very few situations where dishonesty pays off in
00:31:35.560
It's pretty much limited, actually, like a white lie can be beneficial
00:31:39.720
and is kind of acceptable if the other person has no opportunity to
00:31:47.200
So the obvious example is if you have like a bride or groom on their
00:31:51.920
wedding day and they're just about to kind of walk down the aisle and
00:31:56.080
they look pretty awful for some reason and there's nothing they can do about
00:32:00.060
Like they can't manage to get a new suit, a new dress.
00:32:03.960
Hearing that news is only going to make them feel a lot worse and be less
00:32:13.540
But in almost every other situation, people really respond well to the negative
00:32:21.200
And that's because people value honesty so much, because honesty is so essential
00:32:27.280
If you start to question whether the other person is really telling you the
00:32:31.280
truth, all of the shared reality that you've constructed together starts to
00:32:35.500
feel like this kind of illusion, this mirage that might disappear.
00:32:39.100
So, you know, even if you have negative feedback, don't be afraid to share it.
00:32:43.800
Just make sure that you are, firstly, you're being honest.
00:32:48.540
So don't make sweeping statements, but try to be very specific in, you know, what
00:32:53.760
you liked, what you didn't like on their project, for example, and try to offer your
00:32:58.540
own kind of support and resources to help them to make the changes that they need.
00:33:03.800
So, you know, if you're talking about a work project, offering to go out for coffee
00:33:08.500
with the person to kind of talk it through and to impart your expertise, that's going
00:33:12.300
to mean that the negative feedback is much better received and it's going to help
00:33:16.560
them to feel less stressed about the whole thing.
00:33:19.760
But there have been studies where, like, researchers got students to either go out
00:33:25.540
into the world for a few days and to be as kind as possible to all the people that they
00:33:30.880
You know, kindness was their number one objective.
00:33:36.560
So totally honest, even when it was uncomfortable, even when they might have naturally told those
00:33:41.560
white lies. And what they found was that actually both groups performed equally well.
00:33:47.280
They found similar benefits to their well-being compared to a control group who just carried
00:33:52.160
on as normal. And actually, those who had the honest conversations, they often reported
00:33:57.440
like feeling greater meaning in their interactions.
00:34:00.800
Like even when there was the discomfort, they felt that they got to know the other person
00:34:04.960
better and the other person got to know them better because they'd been brave enough
00:34:11.120
It has reminded me of a scene. So we just got done in our family. We just got done watching
00:34:16.240
Little Women. Have you seen the most recent one from 2019 with?
00:34:22.460
Yeah, yeah. She directed it. So it's that scene where Joe, the heroine of the story,
00:34:27.400
writes this novel and she presents it to this guy, Friedrich, who she kind of likes and he likes
00:34:33.060
her. And he reads it and he's like, this is awful. And she's like, what are you talking about? It's
00:34:39.800
like, no, it's just not good. I don't think it's good. And then she got really defensive. Like,
00:34:43.560
you think I'm a bad writer? He's like, no, I don't think you're a bad writer. I just,
00:34:46.020
I think what you wrote was not good. And in the short term, it kind of hurt the relationship.
00:34:51.520
Like she got all in a huff and she left. But in the end, it seemed like it was the right thing to do
00:34:57.360
because they ended up creating that shared reality.
00:35:00.580
Yeah, exactly. And so that's it. Sometimes like you might get a negative reaction initially because
00:35:05.940
the other person needs to calm down and to process what you've said. But you know, according to these
00:35:10.980
studies, ultimately, it does bring you closer together to be honest. I don't think this means
00:35:17.260
that we, it gives us like an excuse to just be rude or tactless. I think there's always going to be
00:35:23.080
a much kinder way of kind of telling the brutal truth than just saying it in the kind of nastiest
00:35:29.120
way possible. Like there's always a way that you can make your words like really emphasize how much
00:35:33.620
you care about the other person and your honest intentions for doing so. The purity of your
00:35:38.560
intentions to help the other person. But yeah, mostly like just having that bravery, it's going to pay
00:35:44.760
off for you and the other person. It's going to help them to achieve their goals better. And it's going
00:35:49.120
to help you as a kind of dyad, like as friends or as in a relationship, it's going to help you to grow as
00:35:57.560
So another thing that can get in the way of relationships is the emotion of envy. I think
00:36:03.100
this is a really fascinating topic. We did a podcast last year about the philosophy of envy with Sarah
00:36:08.640
Protassi. And she described envy as this aversive feeling when somebody, could be even a friend, has
00:36:15.820
something that you don't have, but you want and you feel bad. How do people typically manage envy in a
00:36:25.060
So I don't think we manage it very well. So often, our fear of provoking envy in the other person
00:36:32.800
just leads us to not share the things that we're really proud of, like the stuff that's given us
00:36:38.180
joy. That's been shown in like multiple surveys that people will just keep it quiet if they've got
00:36:43.560
promotion or, you know, if they've received a bonus, if they're, you know, if they're super proud,
00:36:48.820
even like a personal best at the gym or by the number of like Twitter followers that they've just
00:36:54.500
received, like it's kind of part of their personal reality. They want to be able to share that with the
00:37:01.000
people that are closest to them, but they avoid doing it because they don't want to seem like some
00:37:06.220
kind of blowhard, like some kind of braggart. And those motives are so misdirected because actually
00:37:12.740
what the research shows is that the very act of hiding your success can be incredibly insulting
00:37:18.680
to the other people because your motives seem pretty paternalistic. So when you finally found
00:37:24.520
out that your best friend has got a promotion or, you know, that he's won this amazing like prize for
00:37:31.620
his novel, when you find that out and you realize that he was hiding that from you, that makes you feel
00:37:37.240
like he kind of, he expects you to act like this spoiled child who has to win at every competition
00:37:43.800
and that you're going to act like this kind of, you know, brat who has a tantrum. It kind of shows
00:37:49.700
disrespect as if you're not strong enough to deal with that good news and to actually feel joy for that
00:37:54.660
other person. So there've just been so many studies showing this, so many multiple experiments showing
00:38:00.920
that false modesty really doesn't pay off. And that includes humble brags, you know, where you try to
00:38:06.080
kind of bail your boast in this kind of complaint or self-deprecating joke. Like all that tells the
00:38:13.380
other person is that you're trying to manipulate them and that you're kind of trying to make them
00:38:19.240
respect you without risking envy. And that doesn't go down well either because when there's the
00:38:26.800
perception of insincerity in someone that shakes the foundations of shared reality. So pretty much we
00:38:34.380
should be more willing to celebrate our achievements. You know, we don't need to be ashamed of them.
00:38:39.380
We just have to make sure that what we're saying is honest and what we're saying doesn't involve any
00:38:44.920
social comparison. So that's really crucial. So it's fine to kind of talk about your promotion,
00:38:51.440
talk about your prize, talk about your achievements at the gym. Just don't say something like,
00:38:57.120
oh yeah, I was running like faster than everyone I could see at the gym. Or, oh yeah,
00:39:01.180
like I'm now earning more money than like 90% of the people I know. Because this social comparison,
00:39:07.000
it triggers all of these kind of hardwired evolved responses where we're really suspicious of people
00:39:12.320
who are trying to kind of climb the ranks of our society's hierarchy. Like we just don't want to
00:39:18.180
think of people overtly comparing themselves to others because we might also be included in their
00:39:24.180
negative judgment. That really puts people's defenses up. But provided that you're honest and you avoid
00:39:29.800
social comparison, people respond really well to hearing about your successes. And often they
00:39:35.460
experience this emotion called konferlicity or mitfreude, a German word like schadenfreude,
00:39:41.840
which means, you know, joying with someone, like experiencing that vicarious happiness of
00:39:51.500
Okay. So the antidote to envy is this konferlicity.
00:39:54.680
And the way you can do that, just share the good news, don't do the social comparison.
00:39:58.500
And then when someone shares good news with you, what can we do to have better mitfreude?
00:40:03.600
Basically, like when someone shares their good news with us, like even if we are feeling a little
00:40:08.540
bit of envy, we just have to let the kind of mitfreude shine. We have to try to kind of put our envy
00:40:14.960
to one side. I mean, the chances are you're, you know, we have complex emotions,
00:40:20.200
so you might feel a little bit of jealousy, but you know, you probably are genuinely happy
00:40:24.620
for the other person. And just expressing that, showing the other person how glad you
00:40:29.120
are for them, you know, that is a really good bonding experience. Scientists call that process
00:40:35.860
where you experience mitfreude with another person, they call that capitalization because
00:40:41.940
it actually ends up increasing the well-being of both parties, the person who's had the good
00:40:46.720
news and the person who is vicariously experiencing the good news.
00:40:51.500
So you got a law about helping others who are going through a hard time and it's offer emotional
00:40:56.020
support to those in need, but do not force it upon them. And I think there's another thing that keeps
00:41:01.740
people from connecting with others. When they see someone going through a hard time, they don't reach
00:41:06.320
out because, you know, they don't know what to say, right? So if they have a friend who lost a loved
00:41:11.880
one to death or someone lost a job, they don't say anything or reach out. It's like, I'm going to say
00:41:16.440
the wrong thing and it's just better that I don't say anything. But the research actually says that
00:41:21.080
that fear is unfounded. What does the research say? And then what can we do to overcome that fear
00:41:27.840
Yeah. So, I mean, what I found so surprising about this research was the fact that actually the nature
00:41:33.860
of the relationship didn't seem to really change how grateful someone was to receive that emotional
00:41:40.960
support. So whether they were close friends or whether they were vague acquaintances, like walking
00:41:47.060
up to someone and saying, I'm really sorry to hear that your dad died or that you've been ill or you're
00:41:54.380
going to be kicked off your course. Like, I'm really sorry and I want to be here to support you. You know,
00:41:59.420
no matter what the nature of that relationship, people really appreciate your effort to reach out.
00:42:05.400
So we don't need to be as scared of offering our support as we would be. Because, you know, most people
00:42:12.060
do assume that it's going to be kind of awkward, that they'll say something clumsy, that they'll end up
00:42:17.020
making the other person feel worse rather than better. But the research suggests that, you know,
00:42:22.220
those fears are unfounded. We're actually much better at providing the support that they need than we
00:42:27.900
think we are. And what we really need is just a bit more bravery to do so.
00:42:31.760
When we do reach out to someone and say something, anything that the research says is or isn't
00:42:39.360
Yeah, definitely. So, I mean, one thing is that, you know, it's one thing to express your support
00:42:45.600
to another person, but you shouldn't be overbearing in the way that you go about that. So, you know,
00:42:51.080
sometimes a few short words, a few short sentences is enough. Trying to force someone to speak about
00:42:57.820
something when they're still, you know, in the middle of a painful experience, that's not really
00:43:02.980
going to help them to feel closer to you. So just making it clear that you're there for them whenever
00:43:07.960
they want you, but you're going to kind of be willing to step back and allow them to approach you.
00:43:13.800
That can be really important. Secondly, there's a lot of research looking at the downsides of venting.
00:43:20.900
And essentially, when we have supportive conversations with people, sometimes we can just
00:43:26.460
kind of egg them on to kind of relive the painful experience in as much detail as possible. And in
00:43:33.220
some ways that can be very validating because, you know, people want to be heard. They want their
00:43:39.060
feelings to be known. You're engaging in their shared reality by kind of telling them how painful
00:43:45.700
that must have been and how much you sympathize with them. But after a certain point,
00:43:50.560
it can become quite toxic because when you're reliving a painful event again and again and again,
00:43:57.060
it's not really helping them to move on. It's not really helping their mental health. And so that's
00:44:01.980
why we need to combine validation with some kind of attempts at helping them to see a new perspective
00:44:08.960
on the situation. Now we have to be like sensitive and delicate in the way that we do that. So kind of
00:44:16.680
blundering into the conversation and being like, oh, well, what you need to do is this and giving like
00:44:21.320
really misguided advice because you don't actually really know, you know, precisely what they're
00:44:26.280
feeling. Like that's not going to help too much. But it could be you tentatively suggest another way of
00:44:33.820
looking at the problem, but do it humbly and kind of ask for their opinion. Like, do you think that
00:44:39.340
would be helpful? You know, that's a sensitive way of helping them to reappraise what they're going
00:44:43.920
through. Sometimes it's just kind of asking the right questions and allowing them to kind of come
00:44:50.500
to a different perspective by themselves. So just asking them, you know, what do you think you might
00:44:55.480
learn from this experience? Or how do you think you might move on from this? Like, what's your plan
00:45:01.940
now? Just making sure that that is part of the conversation so that it's not solely focused on the
00:45:08.960
pain that they're feeling. That has been proven to be really fundamental to not just reaffirming
00:45:14.780
your relationship, but actually helping the other person to recover from whatever they're going
00:45:19.720
through. A related law to that is a law on forgiving and asking for forgiveness. And you talk about the
00:45:27.060
research about what happens to us when we hold on to a grudge. What does that research say?
00:45:32.200
Yeah, I mean, there's been a lot of like, philosophical and religious teaching around
00:45:39.300
this. Like, I think it's probably pretty well established in so many traditions that holding
00:45:45.160
a grudge is bad for us. And the scientific research just kind of proves that point. Like,
00:45:51.300
you know, if you kind of lash out and retaliate, that can help you in the moment, but it doesn't
00:45:56.400
necessarily help you to recover emotionally afterwards. In fact, when we act spitefully
00:46:02.020
to someone, even if we feel that we're justified, it kind of causes us to lose our sense of humanity.
00:46:08.360
We, you know, there's lots of scientific questionnaires that psychologists can use to
00:46:13.660
kind of measure that aspect of, you know, how human do you feel? And what you find is that people's
00:46:19.060
answers subtly change. So it looks like they are now considering themselves to be a bit more kind of
00:46:23.920
animal-like than they would have been if they'd expressed forgiveness instead. So choosing
00:46:30.360
forgiveness, taking that moral high ground, that can be, you know, really beneficial to how we feel.
00:46:36.740
And then there's, you know, a bunch of research showing that people who forgive over those who
00:46:40.220
hold lasting grudges, they tend to be much healthier with their psychological well-being,
00:46:47.340
but also their physical well-being. When you hold a grudge, you really feel disconnected from
00:46:52.120
other people. So it kind of poisons you inside. And, you know, you face the consequences of that
00:46:58.560
for things like your, you know, risk of chronic pain, even, you know, your risk of things like
00:47:03.920
heart disease can be linked to whether you hold grudges or not.
00:47:08.300
What about asking for forgiveness? Is there research that tells the best way to approach
00:47:12.380
offering an apology and how we typically mess it up?
00:47:15.720
Yeah. I mean, I think the biggest problem that most of us face is that we just
00:47:20.300
don't apologize, even when we know that we've acted wrongly. That's not just stubbornness. I think
00:47:26.040
there's research showing actually that, you know, people often really want to express
00:47:30.160
their apology, but they just assume that the other person isn't going to forgive them. So
00:47:35.040
they don't say those words. They think, again, that they're going to be rejected,
00:47:40.040
that they might even make the situation worse by apologizing. So they almost just,
00:47:44.580
they're too fatalistic about losing the relationship rather than recognizing that
00:47:49.380
they might be able to heal this rift and that often relationships are much more robust
00:47:54.180
than we expect, even when they have suffered some serious damage through some wrong behavior.
00:48:02.060
So the first thing to learn, I think, is just to, you know, if you genuinely feel sorry,
00:48:06.760
it's to actually to say those words. When you're apologizing, you kind of need to tick like multiple
00:48:14.260
boxes. So you've got to accept your full responsibility for what you've done. You have to listen to the other
00:48:22.060
person to hear about what the consequences were of what you did and take responsibility for that too.
00:48:28.840
You really should then try to show how you're going to act differently in the future. Like,
00:48:34.140
you have to make it clear what you've learned from your mistake and why you're going to avoid hurting
00:48:40.240
the other person again. A lot of the time we just try to rush our apologies. You know, if we are brave
00:48:45.760
enough to apologize, we might be like, oh yeah, I'm sorry. Anyway, now you have to get over it because
00:48:50.140
we need to go back to normal. That is not going to help the other person. Like, they need to feel
00:48:55.060
that they've been heard and that you are going to change as a result of what's happened.
00:49:01.260
Well, David, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book
00:49:06.280
So my website is davidrobson.me. You can find links to buy my book there. You know,
00:49:14.140
it should be available in all of the usual retailers. So your local bookshops, big stores
00:49:19.080
like Barnes and Noble, Amazon, obviously, you know, wherever you get your books. You can also
00:49:24.960
follow me on Twitter. That's D underscore A underscore Robson. And on Instagram, where I'm
00:49:31.780
just starting to kind of build a following. It's david A. Robson.
00:49:36.180
Fantastic. Well, David Robson, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:49:40.280
My guest here is David Robson. He's the author of the book, The Laws of Connection. It's available
00:49:45.260
on amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. You can find more information about his work at his website,
00:49:49.480
davidrobson.me. Also check out our show notes at awim.is slash connection, where you find links
00:49:54.680
to resources, where you delve deeper into this topic. Well, that wraps up another edition of the
00:50:05.820
AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at artofmanless.com, where you find our podcast
00:50:09.500
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00:50:26.720
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