November 25, 2024 • 30 mins
It's Happiness Lab's fifth birthday - so as part of the celebration we're playing some of Dr Laurie's favorite episodes. The final selection attracted a lot of downloads when it went out. but also made some people mad. The Introvert's Guide to Extroversion.
Jessica Pan hated social gatherings - she cried when her friends threw her a surprise birthday party, and was even too scared to give a speech at her own wedding. Jessica was a hardcore introvert - and it was making her sad.
Extroverts find it easier to experience the joy that comes with social interactions - but that doesn't mean introverts are doomed to lives that lack such fun. Jessica read some research that suggested introverts can learn to enjoy being more outgoing - so decided to turn her social life around.
You can read more of Jessica's story in her book: Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come: One Introvert's Year of Saying Yes. She is posting updates from her year of extroverting at her Substack, "It'll Be Fun, They Said" (https://jesspan.substack.com/).
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We've been celebrating five years of the Happiness Lab by
resurfacing five of my favorite episodes of the show. We've
already gone all the way back to when we started
out in twenty nineteen, but this final episode brings us
nearly up to date, and my producer Ryan Dilly has
it ready to go. Ryan, what's episode number five?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
So this is from twenty twenty three, and it's called
The Introverts Guide to Extraversion. So why do you want
me to get this one out?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Oh? This is one of my favorites because it's also
about the benefits of social connection, even for people who
might not think they get a lot of benefit out
of social connection.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
It was a really popular episode, as I remember, and
did really well in terms of download but it also
prompted lots of complaints. Why didn't that work?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well? I think it triverts really felt that we were
attacking them, but that wasn't really the case. All we
were doing was showing the benefits of social connection, even
for folks who have persons that might not really resonate
with social connection. We got to interview this lovely guest,
Jessica Pan, who talked about her book Sorry I'm late.
I didn't want to come The Introverts Guide to Extroverting
and she did this lovely experiment where as an introvert,
(01:23):
she tried engaging in a little bit more extroverted activities
for a whole year, and she found there are many
more happiness benefits than she expected.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I mean, this is a subject really dear to my heart.
I've always been quite nervous about talking to new people,
and I don't think like doing this recording now, So
I worked really hard to try and overcome some with that.
I think it's been really good for me.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I was wondering if your behavior has changed because of
this episode of twime.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Oh for sure, As you know, I'm not the kind
of person that tends to talk to people. But in
part because of this, I realized that there are many
more benefits than even I expected. And so it's definitely
been something that's affected how I act.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And I hope it might give our.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Listeners some food for thought as well. And so here
is the last episode in our birthday celebration reruns, The
Introverts Guide to Extroversion.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
I feel like college was a real struggle for me.
This is author Jessica Pan. I always felt like, when
you know college kids would go out and party or
go to clubs, I thought we were all secretly waiting
to like come home and then you know, get our pajamas.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Jessica had many close friends in college, she couldn't always
relate to how outgoing her buddies were. Her besties seemed
to seek out noisy parties and busy dance floors, but
Jessica was much more at home with small gatherings.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
And intimate conversations.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Jessica's friends adored her, but they couldn't always relate to
her preferences and just assumed Jessica would want to go big.
To celebrate. When she turned twenty two.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
They threw me this surprise birthday party.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Friends and family members gathered secretly and waited in Jessica's
dark bedroom, ready to pop out and scream.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
As soon as she got home and I walked in,
there was like fifty people staring at me, and I
burst into tears. It was my worst nightmare. That's one
of the times I felt very much like, Okay, I
am slightly different from my extroverted friends.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
But it wasn't just those extroverted friends Jessica also felt
different from the people she grew up with.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I often say that my parents are like the two
chattiest people in America because they absolutely love talking to
strangers to the point where it is embarrassing. You'll be
in line for a restaurants, or you'll be on the
plane or anywhere, and my mom is talking to someone,
and then my dad's joining in, and there it's just,
I don't know. They're the complete opposite of me.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Jessica knew her social needs different from the people around her,
but she wasn't sure why.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So when I was growing up, the labels introvert and extrovert,
they were not these buzzy terms that everybody knew about,
so I'd never heard of them. And I think I
found out in my twenties what an introvert was, and
I immediately recognized myself.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
The American Psychological Association defines introversion as an orientation towards
the internal, private world of one's inner thoughts and feelings,
rather than toward the outer world of people. Compared to extroverts,
introverts are more with your reserved, quiet and deliberate.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Someone who concentrates really well is a good listener likes
to be alone, gets exhausted, over stimulated by lots of people,
and I felt really seen by that definition. I would
never raise my hand in a class. That would never happen.
I would fake sick if there was a presentation I
had to give. I think I got a solo to
sing in a choir and I didn't tell my mom
about it, and I just pretended that I had a fever.
(04:34):
I don't even think she knows about that to this day.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
And so Jessica began referring to herself as an introvert
with a capital I. It quickly became a badge of honor.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
But I began to use that label of introvert as
an excuse to say no to anything that gave me
any sort of social anxiety.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Jessica sat out important social events, even ones that she
knew might be good for her or for her career.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I didn't want to give speeches. I didn't want to
host parties. I didn't want to lead workshops because I
thought to myself, no, I'm an introvert. Introverts don't do
things like that. And I was completely limiting who I
was and who I could.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Come at times Jessica did question what she was passing up,
like the time she went to a friend's wedding.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
The bride stood up and she gave this amazing speech
and she was crying and her parents were crying, and
I felt like, why didn't I give a speech at
my wedding? And I didn't do it because I was
too anxious. I was scared I would not sound articulate.
I would be scared that I wouldn't look good. I
was scared that I embarrassed myself, when actually I wish
I had done that, because I think the benefits could
have tremendously outweighed the negative consequences.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
But the negative consequences of Jessica's introversion became even clearer
when she and her husband moved to London.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
It's notoriously not the most friendly place in the entire world,
and it's hard to make friends as an adult. And
also I was a freelancer, so I was working from home,
so it seemed absolutely impossible to make these connections and
get out of my shell.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
And that was when Jessica decided to embark on an
innovative personal experiment, one that wound up changing her life forever.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I was thinking, if I really want to commit to this,
I have to do this.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Listen to other episodes in this new season on getting
more social. Then you've probably already heard about the benefits
of connecting with other people. Pretty much every study ever
done on the relationship between well being and social interaction
shows that more people time makes us happier. But what
if you, like Jessica, dread parties and crowds and spontaneous
conversations with strangers. Are you doomed to less happiness than
(06:32):
your more talkative friends. Or is there a way that
the introverts among us can also get the happiness benefits
that come from more social connection. Our minds are constantly
telling us what to do to be happy, But what
if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are
lying to us, leading us away from what will really
make us happy. The good news is the understanding the
(06:54):
science of the mind can point us all back in
the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with
doctor Laurie Santo's.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Hi, Laurie, I'm having trouble connecting my mic, so give
you just a.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Sec I wanted to unpack what psychologists have learned about
the science of introversion and the unintended consequences it can
have for our happiness. And that meant there was one
person in the field I really needed to call.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
My computer's rejecting the Bluetooth connection.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Sonya Lubermirski is a professor at the University of California
at Riverside. She's the author of The How of Happiness,
A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want. Sonya
is a world expert on the science of happiness, so
not surprisingly, she's very much in demand.
Speaker 6 (07:38):
I've been crazy busy, so I'm like, this is like
I don't even have time to say hi, Like I bet,
I'm going from one meeting to another.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I was super grateful that Sonya made time for us
and that she put up with a few technical problems.
Speaker 6 (07:49):
Do you can you just keep talking? It's working that great.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
In order to share a key finding from her decades
of work in positive psychology.
Speaker 6 (07:57):
After many years of research, we landed on this cliche,
which is that the key to happiness is really connection,
and so if you want to increase happiness, you want
to make people feel more connected.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
It really is that simple.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
You will be happier if you interact with more people
even if you're an introvert.
Speaker 6 (08:14):
What's interesting is clear if the studies have shown that
actually both extrots and introverts benefit by more social interaction.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Most introverts predict that social interaction will feel exhausting, anxiety provoking,
and crummy, so they don't engage in this activity nearly
as much as extroverts do, and the science shows that
this choice can have big negative consequences for introverts. Happiness
research since the nineteen eighties has shown that, on average,
introverts are less happy than extroverts, presumably because they consistently
(08:44):
miss out on the well being benefits that social connection provides.
But that leads to an even bigger problem, because introversion
isn't just some flippant label we throw on when we
don't feel like going to a party. Introversion is one
of the five core dimensions that make up our personalities,
the other four being openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Psychologists
(09:05):
have long assumed that these so called Big five personality
traits are stable. They don't change all that much across
our lifetimes or across different situations. If you were outgoing
in the center of attention as a teenager, then psychologists
would assume that you're still likely to be extroverted decades later.
But if you spent your teen years like Jessica Pan
(09:25):
wishing you could run home to be alone, well, most
psychologists would probably assume.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
That you're unlikely to be a social butterfly today.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
But does that mean that introverts are doomed by their personality,
destined never to share the joy of connection that extroverts
take for granted?
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Sonia didn't think.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
So, what is a trade? Is basically ahavior? You know,
like when you do something over and over again. If
I'm like always making my bed and I'm organized and
I'm always on time, people say, oh, Sonia's h conscientiousness.
But if you're not high on constanciousness, theoretically you can
try to make your meetings on time and make your
bed every morning, and so the same thing for extroversion.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Sonia reason that introverts could engage in what she called
volitional personality change. If they simply behaved in a more
extravert way, maybe they could reap the happiness benefits that
come with having a more extroverted personality. To test this theory,
Sonya teamed up with her graduate student Seth Margolis and
recruited over one hundred college students to take part in
(10:22):
a new study. Some of these students were naturally introverted,
whereas others were more extroverted, but all of the subjects
were randomly divided into two groups. The first group was
told that for the next week they needed to be
as talkative, assertive, and spontaneous as possible. Essentially, they had
to act extroverted, but the second group was told to
(10:43):
do just the opposite. They were asked to act as deliberate, quiet,
and reserved as possible. They were going to be more introverted.
Both groups then filled out surveys to measure their overall
well being and how much positive emotion they experienced over
the week.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
So what did Sonya find.
Speaker 6 (11:00):
We found that both introversied extroverts during the week that
they were asked to act more extroverted got hugely happier.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Sonia says the boost and happy piness she observed in
this be more extroverted condition was one of the largest
effects she's observed in decades of studying happiness interventions. But
just as acting more extroverted had a significant upside, Sonya
also observed an effect of doing the opposite. Subjects who
were asked to act reserved in shy showed statistically reduced
(11:28):
levels of well being. Acting introverted for a week appears
to significantly reduce our happiness, But Sonya says the most
shocking finding from her study, especially for researchers in the
field of personality psychology, was that subjects were able to
do what she asked them to. People could change their
personality traits if they tried, at least for short periods
(11:51):
of time, and that finding was very good news to
author and introvert Jessica Pan.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I was like, oh, so we can change, we don't
always have to be the same, and yeah, I found
that really freeing.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
When we last left Jessica, she was sad and lonely
in her new life in the UK, and that's when
she began and reading about the psychology of introverts and
happened upon Sonya's new study. Learning that people could volitionally
change their personality traits led Jessica to try something radical.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I thought, look, I'm not that happy right now in
my life, and I'm a hardcore introvert. What would happen
if I live like the other half of the world.
What could I gain from that?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Jessica decided to begin her own experiment, but rather than
behaving more spontaneously and assertively for just a week, as
Sonya's subjects had done, Jessica pledged to act like an
extrovert for an entire year.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Her twelve month.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Journey turned into a new book, Sorry I'm late. I
didn't want to come one. Introverts Year of Saying Yes,
and Jessica's big Year of saying Yes didn't just involve
becoming a bit more talkative. Jessica committed to trying out
some of the most terrifying social encounters.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Possible, talking to strangers, public speaking, doing improv comedy, things
like that. That were my nightmares and.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
As you'll hear when we get back from the break,
Jessica found that pushing herself to make every social connection
possible required getting more vulnerable then even she expected.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I would need to just go for it and embarrass
myself again and again and again.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
The Happiness Lab We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
So I had this massive fear of talking to strangers.
I just couldn't do it.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Introvert Jessica pan was ready for an entire year of extroverting.
But where should she start. Jessica figured that some expert
advice might help her. First call went out to psychotherapist
and Boston University professor Stefan Hoffmann.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
He specializes in exposure therapy, so he'll have his patients
do really humiliating things like stand on the street and
just sing, or ask someone on the subway for like
two hundred dollars, things where they are guaranteed to be rejected.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Jessica explained to Stefan that she was terrified of putting
herself out there, especially with people she didn't know.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
If I was approaching a stranger, my heart would raise.
I'd feel like I was gonna throw up. I just
had so much anxiety around it. Stefan didn't advocate baby steps.
He wanted Jessica to dive head first into the social
deep end, and he said, okay, so you live in
London and you're scared of strangers. It's what I would
have you do is I would have you ask a
(14:25):
really stupid question to a stranger. I would have you
go up to somebody and say, excuse me, is there
a Queen of England? And if so, what's her name,
and as soon as he said this, I wanted to
throw up, and I was thinking, there's no way I'm
going to do that.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Stefan was making Jessica ask strangers pretty much the dumbest
question you could pose to a Londoner because back then
everyone knew that there was in fact a Queen of
England and her name was Elizabeth. It was an encounter
that was set up to make Jessica look as stupid
as possible, but as Stefan explained, that was kind of
the point.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Look, you know, no one's going to fire you, you're
not going to get arrested, your husband's not going to
leave you, you're not going to get thrown in jail,
so you're just gonna look a little bit stupid.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
And to comp I owned her discomfort. Jessica headed to
one of London's least welcoming locations.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
So I think one of the most awkward places to
talk to stranger in London is on the underground because
people they don't want to be bothered.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Jessica was ready to push herself, just like Stuffhanhead advised,
so she sought out the least approachable stranger she could find.
She picked a busy looking businessman in an expensive suit.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
I was like, excuse me, and he was like what,
And I said, is there a Queen of England? And
he was like the Queen of England? And I said, yeah,
who is she? And he said it's Victoria and then
he walked off.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
That wasn't the answer she was expecting. Victoria hadn't been
queen for over one hundred years. Was the man walking
Jessica giving a stupid answer to her stupid question. Jessica
wasn't sure, so she fled down another scary looking businessman
and posed the same question again, and.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
He also said Victoria. And I didn't know if it
was they were just messing with me or what was happening.
But then I flagged down a few more women and
they told me it was Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Looking idiotic in front of total strangers in a noisy,
dirty subway station might not sound like fun, especially for
an introvert, but the experience left Jessica feeling elated.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I felt like I could fly. I felt insanely exhilarated
because it was so embarrassing and there are other people listening.
It was my worst fear, and Stefan was right. Nothing
bad happened.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
To take her extroverting to the next level. Jessica tagged
in yet another expert, one who may sound kind of
familiar if you've listened to other episodes in this special season.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Should call him Nick? Or what should I call him?
Speaker 5 (16:47):
I'm Nicholas Epley, you can call me Nick.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Nick is a professor of behavioral science at the University
of Chicago's Booth School of Business.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I had read his research that said that when two
commuters are forced to talk to each other, they are
happier than they would have anticipated.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
You might remember this study from an episode we ran
in our very first season entitled Mistakenly Seeking Solitude. In
the experiment, Nick found passengers who were about to hop
on a train from the Chicago suburbs on their way
to work.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
We gave them an envelope that had a five dollars
Starbucks gift card in it, which turns out to be
the most valuable incentive that we know on the planet.
People will do anything for a five dollars Starbucks gift card,
including doctor strangers on trains.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Nick then told one group to spend the entire train
ride enjoying their solitude. They weren't allowed to talk to anyone,
which is pretty much what most of us usually do.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
And almost nobody talks to strangers on the train.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
But Nick asked a second group of commuters to do
something a little more radical. They had to spend the
entire train ride talking to someone.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
We asked them to try to make a connection with
the person who sits down next to you this morning
on the train. Try to get to know something about
him or her. So they were going to have a conversation.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
After the ride. Nick surveyed the commuters to find out
how they were all feeling. The results were striking. People
who were forced to spend their entire train ride talking
to strangers felt happier than the ones that were told
to enjoy their solitude. When I first read that recon,
I was like, what is he talking about? That sounds
insane to me. Nick says that Jessica's not the only
(18:15):
one with that reaction.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
I get a lot of pushback on this because the
expectations are so strong.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Nick has even tested these mistaken expectations directly. In a
second study, Subjects were asked which would feel better talking
to some random stranger on the train or just enjoying
the ride.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
In silence.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
People overwhelmingly thought that being in the talkative condition would suck.
They predicted the exact opposite of what Nick's results showed.
Like Jessica, most of us think that connecting with strangers
will feel awkward, but we're wrong.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
That's not what people's experience actually is.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Nick's subjects also mispredicted how much the stranger they chatted
with would enjoy the experience of being talked to.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
That is, they underestimated how social other people were. And
notice that belief then becomes a kind of self fulfilling prophecy.
If I think, Glori, you don't want to talk to me,
then you know I'll sit down next to you at
a conference, say I won't talk to you. You will
sit there and we'll not talk to me. You'll look
to me, and because I'm not talking to you, you
will infer that I'm not interested in talking to you either,
(19:17):
and we'll both then sit there in silence, next to
each other, and we will both then confirm our expectations
that talking to you would have been unpleasant. We don't
ever get data that would tell us that those beliefs
are wrong because we don't try it.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
But author Jessica Pan was ready to try it. She
met with Nick and quickly realized that he really practices
what he preaches.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Nicholas has no issue talking to strangers.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Nick talks with people on trains and planes and buses.
He chit chats with waiters and baristas and cafes and
cashiers at his local grocery store.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
We know all of them now, often by name. They
know our kids, and that's fun. Once you start the conversation,
it's pretty easy to make it go. That's not hard.
It's starting it that's hard. It's like a speed bump
at the top of a hill, and you have to
get over this speed bump to actually get things going.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Speed bump what Nick thought of as a bump in
the road a mountain. To an introvert like Jessica, I
felt like he.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Could not relate to my anxiety at all, and I
couldn't relate to his total nonchalance about chatting with people.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
But Nick did share one fact about social connection that
put Jessica a little more at ease. He said, look, Jessica,
nobody waves, but everybody waves back. Like you have to
be the first person to make a move, and if
you do that almost one hundred percent of the time
people will If you wave to someone, they'll wave back.
You say hi to someone, they'll say hi back. Jessica
(20:38):
began to realize how rarely she put in the work
to make that all important first move.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
So I feel like in the past, I'd go to
a party and I'd linger in the hallway or the doorway.
I wouldn't want to go fully in. I would hover
near the cheeseboard or the drinks and the kitchen, or
look at my phone, and then I would probably leave.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
But if Jessica was committed to being the one to
open a conversation, what she wondered should she start talking about?
Are there particular topics that are more effective for really
connecting people. In the rare cases in which Jessica did
talk with someone new, she usually stuck to the easy stuff,
what Nick calls shallow or surface talk.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Surface talk is like we talk about our commutes or
what we had for dinner or the weather. In deep
talk is our hopes and our dreams and our fears,
and so much of our life is rooted in just
doing surface talk. You know, you could see the same
person every day for ten years and you might not
actually know what's going on with them because you literally
just talk about very topical things.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
But Nick has found that there's a much more effective
style of conversation if your goal is to truly get
to know someone, to truly connect. It's what he and
other researchers have called deep conversation.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
It's sharing our human experience of struggling and loneliness and
things that actually bring us together.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
In one study, Nick asked people to engage either in
shallow talk talking about the weather or their favorite TV shows,
or in deep talk. And the deep talk conversation starters
were pretty heavy, things like can you describe a time
that you cried in front of another person? And if
you could undo one mistake you've made in your life,
what would it be?
Speaker 5 (22:13):
And these deep conversations go much better than people expect
they will, and they're much less awkward than people expect.
People pretty dramatically underestimate how much they are going to
enjoy deep conversation.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Armed with all of Nick's advice, Jessica threw herself into
the conversational deep end. She signed up for a professional
networking event, and rather than hiding away in the corner
like she'd normally do. She immediately headed over to a
group of people, started chatting and, going against all her instincts,
took the conversation deeper.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I felt like people really responded to that, and they
would sort of go, oh, this person's here to be real,
to be honest, to actually make a connection.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Jessica went from feeling like a shy wallflower to the
life of the party. I could visibly see the difference
in people's faces.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
They were having that dopamine hit two because we were connecting,
we were laughing, we were bonding over something, and I
realized that we all have the power to steer the
conversation into something deeper. But Jessica knew that talking was
only half the battle. She had succeeded in initiating deeper conversation,
but it couldn't be a one way thing. You need
(23:23):
to make a person feel like they're being listened to,
not just waiting for my turn to talk or my
turn to share my story, but actually listening to them
and being a part of what they're saying. People like
feeling paid attention to.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
It.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Really is this underrated magic skill that we can all have,
and that really transforms how they treat you because they
like being treated that way, but they like being treated special.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Jessica left the event feeling over the moon. She had
proven to herself that she could not only talk to strangers,
but also that it felt great. Her experiences inspired her
to go even more hardcore in her quest to extrovert.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
I'm very much an all or nothing person, So I thought,
if I'm going to do this insane year of torture
and extroverting, then I'm not going to leave anything.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Out exactly what torture was just planning for her introverted self.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
It felt like, Okay, if I can survive that, then
I can survive anything.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
You'll find out when the happiness lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
I think I always thought that to be a good
public speaker, you need to have total confidence when you
get on stage and before you even do the thing.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
All if you're an introvert. Jessica Pan had always hated
speaking in.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Public when actually it's so obvious, but you have to
be scared to do it, and then when you survive,
that's where that confidence comes from, because you survive doing
the scary thing.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
So for the pinnacle of her ear of acting like
an extrovert, she decided to push herself to the limit,
and I.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Thought, okay, so the final step in this is to
perform for an audience where they're often encouraged to heckle you.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Jessica was going to try stand up comedy. She signed
up for a comedy course. When it came time for
the first class, she was terrified, so terrified that she
climbed into bed and assumed the fetal position. Is that
not what other people do? That feels really natural to me,
hoping somehow to muster the necessary courage. But that first
comedy class went well, and in a few weeks it
(25:25):
was time to perform for real.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
The first show I did was with my other fellow
classmates and our friends and our partners at this pub
downstairs in central London, and I was so nervous. I
felt like, I don't know, I felt like I was
on fire or something, and in a way, Jessica was
on fire.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
She got a ton of laughs.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
The first performance went really well. My friend and I decided,
let's go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is like
the epicenter of comedy, and let's perform on an open
mic night.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Performing in front of a small crowd of friends and
supporters at a low key gig isn't quite the same
as getting up on stage at the premier comedy festival
in the world.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
It did not go as well.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Jessica now admits that she was a bit unprepared for Edinburgh.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
In that particular act, I talk about living in England
and loving living in England, and I forgot that Edinburgh
is in Scotland, and I was like, yeah, loving and
I love it here. And it was like an audience
full of Scottish people who were like boo, like, get
off the stage. You're not in England. And for a delicate,
shy introvert, that's enough to kill you. But I didn't
(26:34):
actually die.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Jessica had made it through her year of living extrovertedly.
She'd embarrassed herself on a tube train, talked candidly with
strangers at parties, taken a comedy class, and had bombed
in front of an angry crowd at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
But in spite of it all, she'd still emerged unscathed.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
The lesson from the year is that I learned a
lot and nothing really bad happened to me.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Jessica hasn't quit her day job to become a stand
up regular, but she does still practice many of the
social skills she learned during her year long experiment.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I would say one of the biggest lessons from the
year was to go deeper and be vulnerable and be
willing to do it.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
First.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Most people want to talk to you, and most people
are nicer than we imagine in our heads, because I
think we build up these big, scary judgments that oftentimes
don't even exist.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Jessica now uses a series of go to social hacks
to overcome her introversion, little rules that she puts into
effect whenever she feels daunted by a scary situation. The
first involves breaking her usual cycle of avoidance. If she's
invited to a party, she goes, and she even tries
to show up early.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
If you show up late, everybody looks like they're already
in those little clicks and circles, and you feel like
you can't join in, and it's so intimidating. But if
you're the first person there, like the second person there,
it's not as scary.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
But Jessica also warns that you shouldn't underestimate the discomfort
you might initially experience doing something new, and this means
you need to give yourself a little self compassion and patience.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
You know, when you go swimming and you get in
the water, it's absolutely freezing, but then your body adjusts
to it and it doesn't feel so bad. I mean
that's a cliche metaphor, but I think it really works.
Like after you break the ice with one person, it's
not as scary with the second one, and it's not
scary with the third one, and by the fourth you
know the life of the party.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Jessica has learned to appreciate the benefits of social connection,
but the extroverted habits she now engages in regularly haven't
fully dismantled her true personality.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
I'm definitely still an introvert, like I definitely prefer to
be at home or in a small group of people.
But I now know I can give a speech, I
can talk to a stranger, and that hard won social
confidence that came from this year long experiment has had
a big impact on Jessica's well being. I had more friends,
I had less anxiety. I you know, in my neighborhood.
(28:50):
Now I talk to tons of people. I recognize lots
of people. That feels like the small little village in
central London. I was a lot happier by the end
of the year.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
When Jessica first encountered the extroverted psychologist Nick Eppley, she
was floored by the ease with which he talked to
complete strangers and how quickly he struck up friendships with
the workers he met in stores and cafe. Jessica didn't
think she'd ever be that comfortable in getting to know
strangers herself, but a year into her experiment, she had
really changed. A barista in her local coffee shop was
(29:19):
one of the first to notice.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
And he said, I remember when he used to come
in here, like a long time ago. And I was like, yeah,
I remember that too, and he said, you didn't talk
it to us ever, like anybody, and I was like, yes,
that's correct. And he's like, now you're like friends with
each other and I was like, yeah, exactly. And you know,
I didn't say here's the book and here's why, but
he had noticed it. And it was really strange to
(29:40):
be perceived as an extrovert. And by the end I
just thought, I don't even recognize myself and I don't
mean like that I was pretending to be someone else,
or that I wasn't being true to myself. But it
was more like I haven't let these fears and anxieties
shackle me to the person I've always been. That I
felt like I had grown and I had changed.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
The science shows that we can all enjoy the well
being boost that comes from social connection, no matter what
our personality type is. But to get those social connection benefits,
we need to actually connect with the people around us,
whether we know them well or not. So why not
push yourself and get a little more social. You could
talk to a local cashier, or a barista, or the
(30:22):
person sitting next to you on your commute, and when
you dive into conversation, try to push past the shallow
stuff and get to topics that feel a little deeper.
And remember psychologist Nick Epley's insight that not everyone waves,
but people usually wave back. I hope this episode has
given you some tips on how to extrovert a bit more,
even and perhaps especially if it doesn't come to you naturally,
(30:45):
And I hope you'll join me again next week for
more in our series on getting more social. Next time
on the Happiness Lab, with me, Doctor Laurie Santos
Pushkin.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
We've been celebrating five years of the Happiness Lab by
resurfacing five of my favorite episodes of the show. We've
already gone all the way back to when we started
out in twenty nineteen, but this final episode brings us
nearly up to date, and my producer Ryan Dilly has
it ready to go. Ryan, what's episode number five?
Speaker 3 (00:39):
So this is from twenty twenty three, and it's called
The Introverts Guide to Extraversion. So why do you want
me to get this one out?
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Oh? This is one of my favorites because it's also
about the benefits of social connection, even for people who
might not think they get a lot of benefit out
of social connection.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
It was a really popular episode, as I remember, and
did really well in terms of download but it also
prompted lots of complaints. Why didn't that work?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Well? I think it triverts really felt that we were
attacking them, but that wasn't really the case. All we
were doing was showing the benefits of social connection, even
for folks who have persons that might not really resonate
with social connection. We got to interview this lovely guest,
Jessica Pan, who talked about her book Sorry I'm late.
I didn't want to come The Introverts Guide to Extroverting
and she did this lovely experiment where as an introvert,
(01:23):
she tried engaging in a little bit more extroverted activities
for a whole year, and she found there are many
more happiness benefits than she expected.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
I mean, this is a subject really dear to my heart.
I've always been quite nervous about talking to new people,
and I don't think like doing this recording now, So
I worked really hard to try and overcome some with that.
I think it's been really good for me.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:42):
I was wondering if your behavior has changed because of
this episode of twime.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
Oh for sure, As you know, I'm not the kind
of person that tends to talk to people. But in
part because of this, I realized that there are many
more benefits than even I expected. And so it's definitely
been something that's affected how I act.
Speaker 5 (01:58):
In the world.
Speaker 1 (01:58):
And I hope it might give our.
Speaker 2 (01:59):
Listeners some food for thought as well. And so here
is the last episode in our birthday celebration reruns, The
Introverts Guide to Extroversion.
Speaker 1 (02:12):
I feel like college was a real struggle for me.
This is author Jessica Pan. I always felt like, when
you know college kids would go out and party or
go to clubs, I thought we were all secretly waiting
to like come home and then you know, get our pajamas.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Jessica had many close friends in college, she couldn't always
relate to how outgoing her buddies were. Her besties seemed
to seek out noisy parties and busy dance floors, but
Jessica was much more at home with small gatherings.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
And intimate conversations.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Jessica's friends adored her, but they couldn't always relate to
her preferences and just assumed Jessica would want to go big.
To celebrate. When she turned twenty two.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
They threw me this surprise birthday party.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Friends and family members gathered secretly and waited in Jessica's
dark bedroom, ready to pop out and scream.
Speaker 1 (02:57):
As soon as she got home and I walked in,
there was like fifty people staring at me, and I
burst into tears. It was my worst nightmare. That's one
of the times I felt very much like, Okay, I
am slightly different from my extroverted friends.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
But it wasn't just those extroverted friends Jessica also felt
different from the people she grew up with.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
I often say that my parents are like the two
chattiest people in America because they absolutely love talking to
strangers to the point where it is embarrassing. You'll be
in line for a restaurants, or you'll be on the
plane or anywhere, and my mom is talking to someone,
and then my dad's joining in, and there it's just,
I don't know. They're the complete opposite of me.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
Jessica knew her social needs different from the people around her,
but she wasn't sure why.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
So when I was growing up, the labels introvert and extrovert,
they were not these buzzy terms that everybody knew about,
so I'd never heard of them. And I think I
found out in my twenties what an introvert was, and
I immediately recognized myself.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
The American Psychological Association defines introversion as an orientation towards
the internal, private world of one's inner thoughts and feelings,
rather than toward the outer world of people. Compared to extroverts,
introverts are more with your reserved, quiet and deliberate.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
Someone who concentrates really well is a good listener likes
to be alone, gets exhausted, over stimulated by lots of people,
and I felt really seen by that definition. I would
never raise my hand in a class. That would never happen.
I would fake sick if there was a presentation I
had to give. I think I got a solo to
sing in a choir and I didn't tell my mom
about it, and I just pretended that I had a fever.
(04:34):
I don't even think she knows about that to this day.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
And so Jessica began referring to herself as an introvert
with a capital I. It quickly became a badge of honor.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
But I began to use that label of introvert as
an excuse to say no to anything that gave me
any sort of social anxiety.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
Jessica sat out important social events, even ones that she
knew might be good for her or for her career.
Speaker 1 (04:57):
I didn't want to give speeches. I didn't want to
host parties. I didn't want to lead workshops because I
thought to myself, no, I'm an introvert. Introverts don't do
things like that. And I was completely limiting who I
was and who I could.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Come at times Jessica did question what she was passing up,
like the time she went to a friend's wedding.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
The bride stood up and she gave this amazing speech
and she was crying and her parents were crying, and
I felt like, why didn't I give a speech at
my wedding? And I didn't do it because I was
too anxious. I was scared I would not sound articulate.
I would be scared that I wouldn't look good. I
was scared that I embarrassed myself, when actually I wish
I had done that, because I think the benefits could
have tremendously outweighed the negative consequences.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
But the negative consequences of Jessica's introversion became even clearer
when she and her husband moved to London.
Speaker 1 (05:43):
It's notoriously not the most friendly place in the entire world,
and it's hard to make friends as an adult. And
also I was a freelancer, so I was working from home,
so it seemed absolutely impossible to make these connections and
get out of my shell.
Speaker 2 (05:56):
And that was when Jessica decided to embark on an
innovative personal experiment, one that wound up changing her life forever.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
I was thinking, if I really want to commit to this,
I have to do this.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Listen to other episodes in this new season on getting
more social. Then you've probably already heard about the benefits
of connecting with other people. Pretty much every study ever
done on the relationship between well being and social interaction
shows that more people time makes us happier. But what
if you, like Jessica, dread parties and crowds and spontaneous
conversations with strangers. Are you doomed to less happiness than
(06:32):
your more talkative friends. Or is there a way that
the introverts among us can also get the happiness benefits
that come from more social connection. Our minds are constantly
telling us what to do to be happy, But what
if our minds are wrong? What if our minds are
lying to us, leading us away from what will really
make us happy. The good news is the understanding the
(06:54):
science of the mind can point us all back in
the right direction. You're listening to the Happiness Lab with
doctor Laurie Santo's.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Hi, Laurie, I'm having trouble connecting my mic, so give
you just a.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Sec I wanted to unpack what psychologists have learned about
the science of introversion and the unintended consequences it can
have for our happiness. And that meant there was one
person in the field I really needed to call.
Speaker 6 (07:20):
My computer's rejecting the Bluetooth connection.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Sonya Lubermirski is a professor at the University of California
at Riverside. She's the author of The How of Happiness,
A New Approach to Getting the Life You Want. Sonya
is a world expert on the science of happiness, so
not surprisingly, she's very much in demand.
Speaker 6 (07:38):
I've been crazy busy, so I'm like, this is like
I don't even have time to say hi, Like I bet,
I'm going from one meeting to another.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
I was super grateful that Sonya made time for us
and that she put up with a few technical problems.
Speaker 6 (07:49):
Do you can you just keep talking? It's working that great.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
In order to share a key finding from her decades
of work in positive psychology.
Speaker 6 (07:57):
After many years of research, we landed on this cliche,
which is that the key to happiness is really connection,
and so if you want to increase happiness, you want
to make people feel more connected.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
It really is that simple.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
You will be happier if you interact with more people
even if you're an introvert.
Speaker 6 (08:14):
What's interesting is clear if the studies have shown that
actually both extrots and introverts benefit by more social interaction.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Most introverts predict that social interaction will feel exhausting, anxiety provoking,
and crummy, so they don't engage in this activity nearly
as much as extroverts do, and the science shows that
this choice can have big negative consequences for introverts. Happiness
research since the nineteen eighties has shown that, on average,
introverts are less happy than extroverts, presumably because they consistently
(08:44):
miss out on the well being benefits that social connection provides.
But that leads to an even bigger problem, because introversion
isn't just some flippant label we throw on when we
don't feel like going to a party. Introversion is one
of the five core dimensions that make up our personalities,
the other four being openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Psychologists
(09:05):
have long assumed that these so called Big five personality
traits are stable. They don't change all that much across
our lifetimes or across different situations. If you were outgoing
in the center of attention as a teenager, then psychologists
would assume that you're still likely to be extroverted decades later.
But if you spent your teen years like Jessica Pan
(09:25):
wishing you could run home to be alone, well, most
psychologists would probably assume.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
That you're unlikely to be a social butterfly today.
Speaker 2 (09:33):
But does that mean that introverts are doomed by their personality,
destined never to share the joy of connection that extroverts
take for granted?
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Sonia didn't think.
Speaker 4 (09:42):
So, what is a trade? Is basically ahavior? You know,
like when you do something over and over again. If
I'm like always making my bed and I'm organized and
I'm always on time, people say, oh, Sonia's h conscientiousness.
But if you're not high on constanciousness, theoretically you can
try to make your meetings on time and make your
bed every morning, and so the same thing for extroversion.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Sonia reason that introverts could engage in what she called
volitional personality change. If they simply behaved in a more
extravert way, maybe they could reap the happiness benefits that
come with having a more extroverted personality. To test this theory,
Sonya teamed up with her graduate student Seth Margolis and
recruited over one hundred college students to take part in
(10:22):
a new study. Some of these students were naturally introverted,
whereas others were more extroverted, but all of the subjects
were randomly divided into two groups. The first group was
told that for the next week they needed to be
as talkative, assertive, and spontaneous as possible. Essentially, they had
to act extroverted, but the second group was told to
(10:43):
do just the opposite. They were asked to act as deliberate, quiet,
and reserved as possible. They were going to be more introverted.
Both groups then filled out surveys to measure their overall
well being and how much positive emotion they experienced over
the week.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
So what did Sonya find.
Speaker 6 (11:00):
We found that both introversied extroverts during the week that
they were asked to act more extroverted got hugely happier.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Sonia says the boost and happy piness she observed in
this be more extroverted condition was one of the largest
effects she's observed in decades of studying happiness interventions. But
just as acting more extroverted had a significant upside, Sonya
also observed an effect of doing the opposite. Subjects who
were asked to act reserved in shy showed statistically reduced
(11:28):
levels of well being. Acting introverted for a week appears
to significantly reduce our happiness, But Sonya says the most
shocking finding from her study, especially for researchers in the
field of personality psychology, was that subjects were able to
do what she asked them to. People could change their
personality traits if they tried, at least for short periods
(11:51):
of time, and that finding was very good news to
author and introvert Jessica Pan.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
I was like, oh, so we can change, we don't
always have to be the same, and yeah, I found
that really freeing.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
When we last left Jessica, she was sad and lonely
in her new life in the UK, and that's when
she began and reading about the psychology of introverts and
happened upon Sonya's new study. Learning that people could volitionally
change their personality traits led Jessica to try something radical.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
I thought, look, I'm not that happy right now in
my life, and I'm a hardcore introvert. What would happen
if I live like the other half of the world.
What could I gain from that?
Speaker 2 (12:28):
Jessica decided to begin her own experiment, but rather than
behaving more spontaneously and assertively for just a week, as
Sonya's subjects had done, Jessica pledged to act like an
extrovert for an entire year.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
Her twelve month.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
Journey turned into a new book, Sorry I'm late. I
didn't want to come one. Introverts Year of Saying Yes,
and Jessica's big Year of saying Yes didn't just involve
becoming a bit more talkative. Jessica committed to trying out
some of the most terrifying social encounters.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
Possible, talking to strangers, public speaking, doing improv comedy, things
like that. That were my nightmares and.
Speaker 2 (13:02):
As you'll hear when we get back from the break,
Jessica found that pushing herself to make every social connection
possible required getting more vulnerable then even she expected.
Speaker 1 (13:11):
I would need to just go for it and embarrass
myself again and again and again.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
The Happiness Lab We'll be right back.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
So I had this massive fear of talking to strangers.
I just couldn't do it.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
Introvert Jessica pan was ready for an entire year of extroverting.
But where should she start. Jessica figured that some expert
advice might help her. First call went out to psychotherapist
and Boston University professor Stefan Hoffmann.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
He specializes in exposure therapy, so he'll have his patients
do really humiliating things like stand on the street and
just sing, or ask someone on the subway for like
two hundred dollars, things where they are guaranteed to be rejected.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Jessica explained to Stefan that she was terrified of putting
herself out there, especially with people she didn't know.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
If I was approaching a stranger, my heart would raise.
I'd feel like I was gonna throw up. I just
had so much anxiety around it. Stefan didn't advocate baby steps.
He wanted Jessica to dive head first into the social
deep end, and he said, okay, so you live in
London and you're scared of strangers. It's what I would
have you do is I would have you ask a
(14:25):
really stupid question to a stranger. I would have you
go up to somebody and say, excuse me, is there
a Queen of England? And if so, what's her name,
and as soon as he said this, I wanted to
throw up, and I was thinking, there's no way I'm
going to do that.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
Stefan was making Jessica ask strangers pretty much the dumbest
question you could pose to a Londoner because back then
everyone knew that there was in fact a Queen of
England and her name was Elizabeth. It was an encounter
that was set up to make Jessica look as stupid
as possible, but as Stefan explained, that was kind of
the point.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Look, you know, no one's going to fire you, you're
not going to get arrested, your husband's not going to
leave you, you're not going to get thrown in jail,
so you're just gonna look a little bit stupid.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
And to comp I owned her discomfort. Jessica headed to
one of London's least welcoming locations.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
So I think one of the most awkward places to
talk to stranger in London is on the underground because
people they don't want to be bothered.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Jessica was ready to push herself, just like Stuffhanhead advised,
so she sought out the least approachable stranger she could find.
She picked a busy looking businessman in an expensive suit.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
I was like, excuse me, and he was like what,
And I said, is there a Queen of England? And
he was like the Queen of England? And I said, yeah,
who is she? And he said it's Victoria and then
he walked off.
Speaker 2 (15:48):
That wasn't the answer she was expecting. Victoria hadn't been
queen for over one hundred years. Was the man walking
Jessica giving a stupid answer to her stupid question. Jessica
wasn't sure, so she fled down another scary looking businessman
and posed the same question again, and.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
He also said Victoria. And I didn't know if it
was they were just messing with me or what was happening.
But then I flagged down a few more women and
they told me it was Elizabeth.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Looking idiotic in front of total strangers in a noisy,
dirty subway station might not sound like fun, especially for
an introvert, but the experience left Jessica feeling elated.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I felt like I could fly. I felt insanely exhilarated
because it was so embarrassing and there are other people listening.
It was my worst fear, and Stefan was right. Nothing
bad happened.
Speaker 2 (16:36):
To take her extroverting to the next level. Jessica tagged
in yet another expert, one who may sound kind of
familiar if you've listened to other episodes in this special season.
Speaker 1 (16:45):
Should call him Nick? Or what should I call him?
Speaker 5 (16:47):
I'm Nicholas Epley, you can call me Nick.
Speaker 2 (16:49):
Nick is a professor of behavioral science at the University
of Chicago's Booth School of Business.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
I had read his research that said that when two
commuters are forced to talk to each other, they are
happier than they would have anticipated.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
You might remember this study from an episode we ran
in our very first season entitled Mistakenly Seeking Solitude. In
the experiment, Nick found passengers who were about to hop
on a train from the Chicago suburbs on their way
to work.
Speaker 5 (17:15):
We gave them an envelope that had a five dollars
Starbucks gift card in it, which turns out to be
the most valuable incentive that we know on the planet.
People will do anything for a five dollars Starbucks gift card,
including doctor strangers on trains.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
Nick then told one group to spend the entire train
ride enjoying their solitude. They weren't allowed to talk to anyone,
which is pretty much what most of us usually do.
Speaker 5 (17:35):
And almost nobody talks to strangers on the train.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
But Nick asked a second group of commuters to do
something a little more radical. They had to spend the
entire train ride talking to someone.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
We asked them to try to make a connection with
the person who sits down next to you this morning
on the train. Try to get to know something about
him or her. So they were going to have a conversation.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
After the ride. Nick surveyed the commuters to find out
how they were all feeling. The results were striking. People
who were forced to spend their entire train ride talking
to strangers felt happier than the ones that were told
to enjoy their solitude. When I first read that recon,
I was like, what is he talking about? That sounds
insane to me. Nick says that Jessica's not the only
(18:15):
one with that reaction.
Speaker 5 (18:17):
I get a lot of pushback on this because the
expectations are so strong.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Nick has even tested these mistaken expectations directly. In a
second study, Subjects were asked which would feel better talking
to some random stranger on the train or just enjoying
the ride.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
In silence.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
People overwhelmingly thought that being in the talkative condition would suck.
They predicted the exact opposite of what Nick's results showed.
Like Jessica, most of us think that connecting with strangers
will feel awkward, but we're wrong.
Speaker 5 (18:47):
That's not what people's experience actually is.
Speaker 2 (18:49):
Nick's subjects also mispredicted how much the stranger they chatted
with would enjoy the experience of being talked to.
Speaker 5 (18:55):
That is, they underestimated how social other people were. And
notice that belief then becomes a kind of self fulfilling prophecy.
If I think, Glori, you don't want to talk to me,
then you know I'll sit down next to you at
a conference, say I won't talk to you. You will
sit there and we'll not talk to me. You'll look
to me, and because I'm not talking to you, you
will infer that I'm not interested in talking to you either,
(19:17):
and we'll both then sit there in silence, next to
each other, and we will both then confirm our expectations
that talking to you would have been unpleasant. We don't
ever get data that would tell us that those beliefs
are wrong because we don't try it.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
But author Jessica Pan was ready to try it. She
met with Nick and quickly realized that he really practices
what he preaches.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
Nicholas has no issue talking to strangers.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Nick talks with people on trains and planes and buses.
He chit chats with waiters and baristas and cafes and
cashiers at his local grocery store.
Speaker 5 (19:49):
We know all of them now, often by name. They
know our kids, and that's fun. Once you start the conversation,
it's pretty easy to make it go. That's not hard.
It's starting it that's hard. It's like a speed bump
at the top of a hill, and you have to
get over this speed bump to actually get things going.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Speed bump what Nick thought of as a bump in
the road a mountain. To an introvert like Jessica, I
felt like he.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Could not relate to my anxiety at all, and I
couldn't relate to his total nonchalance about chatting with people.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
But Nick did share one fact about social connection that
put Jessica a little more at ease. He said, look, Jessica,
nobody waves, but everybody waves back. Like you have to
be the first person to make a move, and if
you do that almost one hundred percent of the time
people will If you wave to someone, they'll wave back.
You say hi to someone, they'll say hi back. Jessica
(20:38):
began to realize how rarely she put in the work
to make that all important first move.
Speaker 1 (20:44):
So I feel like in the past, I'd go to
a party and I'd linger in the hallway or the doorway.
I wouldn't want to go fully in. I would hover
near the cheeseboard or the drinks and the kitchen, or
look at my phone, and then I would probably leave.
Speaker 2 (20:59):
But if Jessica was committed to being the one to
open a conversation, what she wondered should she start talking about?
Are there particular topics that are more effective for really
connecting people. In the rare cases in which Jessica did
talk with someone new, she usually stuck to the easy stuff,
what Nick calls shallow or surface talk.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
Surface talk is like we talk about our commutes or
what we had for dinner or the weather. In deep
talk is our hopes and our dreams and our fears,
and so much of our life is rooted in just
doing surface talk. You know, you could see the same
person every day for ten years and you might not
actually know what's going on with them because you literally
just talk about very topical things.
Speaker 2 (21:37):
But Nick has found that there's a much more effective
style of conversation if your goal is to truly get
to know someone, to truly connect. It's what he and
other researchers have called deep conversation.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
It's sharing our human experience of struggling and loneliness and
things that actually bring us together.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
In one study, Nick asked people to engage either in
shallow talk talking about the weather or their favorite TV shows,
or in deep talk. And the deep talk conversation starters
were pretty heavy, things like can you describe a time
that you cried in front of another person? And if
you could undo one mistake you've made in your life,
what would it be?
Speaker 5 (22:13):
And these deep conversations go much better than people expect
they will, and they're much less awkward than people expect.
People pretty dramatically underestimate how much they are going to
enjoy deep conversation.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Armed with all of Nick's advice, Jessica threw herself into
the conversational deep end. She signed up for a professional
networking event, and rather than hiding away in the corner
like she'd normally do. She immediately headed over to a
group of people, started chatting and, going against all her instincts,
took the conversation deeper.
Speaker 1 (22:46):
I felt like people really responded to that, and they
would sort of go, oh, this person's here to be real,
to be honest, to actually make a connection.
Speaker 2 (22:56):
Jessica went from feeling like a shy wallflower to the
life of the party. I could visibly see the difference
in people's faces.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
They were having that dopamine hit two because we were connecting,
we were laughing, we were bonding over something, and I
realized that we all have the power to steer the
conversation into something deeper. But Jessica knew that talking was
only half the battle. She had succeeded in initiating deeper conversation,
but it couldn't be a one way thing. You need
(23:23):
to make a person feel like they're being listened to,
not just waiting for my turn to talk or my
turn to share my story, but actually listening to them
and being a part of what they're saying. People like
feeling paid attention to.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
It.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Really is this underrated magic skill that we can all have,
and that really transforms how they treat you because they
like being treated that way, but they like being treated special.
Speaker 2 (23:45):
Jessica left the event feeling over the moon. She had
proven to herself that she could not only talk to strangers,
but also that it felt great. Her experiences inspired her
to go even more hardcore in her quest to extrovert.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
I'm very much an all or nothing person, So I thought,
if I'm going to do this insane year of torture
and extroverting, then I'm not going to leave anything.
Speaker 2 (24:06):
Out exactly what torture was just planning for her introverted self.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
It felt like, Okay, if I can survive that, then
I can survive anything.
Speaker 2 (24:15):
You'll find out when the happiness lab returns in a moment.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
I think I always thought that to be a good
public speaker, you need to have total confidence when you
get on stage and before you even do the thing.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
All if you're an introvert. Jessica Pan had always hated
speaking in.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Public when actually it's so obvious, but you have to
be scared to do it, and then when you survive,
that's where that confidence comes from, because you survive doing
the scary thing.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
So for the pinnacle of her ear of acting like
an extrovert, she decided to push herself to the limit,
and I.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Thought, okay, so the final step in this is to
perform for an audience where they're often encouraged to heckle you.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
Jessica was going to try stand up comedy. She signed
up for a comedy course. When it came time for
the first class, she was terrified, so terrified that she
climbed into bed and assumed the fetal position. Is that
not what other people do? That feels really natural to me,
hoping somehow to muster the necessary courage. But that first
comedy class went well, and in a few weeks it
(25:25):
was time to perform for real.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
The first show I did was with my other fellow
classmates and our friends and our partners at this pub
downstairs in central London, and I was so nervous. I
felt like, I don't know, I felt like I was
on fire or something, and in a way, Jessica was
on fire.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
She got a ton of laughs.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
The first performance went really well. My friend and I decided,
let's go to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which is like
the epicenter of comedy, and let's perform on an open
mic night.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Performing in front of a small crowd of friends and
supporters at a low key gig isn't quite the same
as getting up on stage at the premier comedy festival
in the world.
Speaker 1 (26:06):
It did not go as well.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Jessica now admits that she was a bit unprepared for Edinburgh.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
In that particular act, I talk about living in England
and loving living in England, and I forgot that Edinburgh
is in Scotland, and I was like, yeah, loving and
I love it here. And it was like an audience
full of Scottish people who were like boo, like, get
off the stage. You're not in England. And for a delicate,
shy introvert, that's enough to kill you. But I didn't
(26:34):
actually die.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
Jessica had made it through her year of living extrovertedly.
She'd embarrassed herself on a tube train, talked candidly with
strangers at parties, taken a comedy class, and had bombed
in front of an angry crowd at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
But in spite of it all, she'd still emerged unscathed.
Speaker 1 (26:53):
The lesson from the year is that I learned a
lot and nothing really bad happened to me.
Speaker 2 (26:58):
Jessica hasn't quit her day job to become a stand
up regular, but she does still practice many of the
social skills she learned during her year long experiment.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
I would say one of the biggest lessons from the
year was to go deeper and be vulnerable and be
willing to do it.
Speaker 5 (27:13):
First.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
Most people want to talk to you, and most people
are nicer than we imagine in our heads, because I
think we build up these big, scary judgments that oftentimes
don't even exist.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Jessica now uses a series of go to social hacks
to overcome her introversion, little rules that she puts into
effect whenever she feels daunted by a scary situation. The
first involves breaking her usual cycle of avoidance. If she's
invited to a party, she goes, and she even tries
to show up early.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
If you show up late, everybody looks like they're already
in those little clicks and circles, and you feel like
you can't join in, and it's so intimidating. But if
you're the first person there, like the second person there,
it's not as scary.
Speaker 2 (27:53):
But Jessica also warns that you shouldn't underestimate the discomfort
you might initially experience doing something new, and this means
you need to give yourself a little self compassion and patience.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
You know, when you go swimming and you get in
the water, it's absolutely freezing, but then your body adjusts
to it and it doesn't feel so bad. I mean
that's a cliche metaphor, but I think it really works.
Like after you break the ice with one person, it's
not as scary with the second one, and it's not
scary with the third one, and by the fourth you
know the life of the party.
Speaker 2 (28:20):
Jessica has learned to appreciate the benefits of social connection,
but the extroverted habits she now engages in regularly haven't
fully dismantled her true personality.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
I'm definitely still an introvert, like I definitely prefer to
be at home or in a small group of people.
But I now know I can give a speech, I
can talk to a stranger, and that hard won social
confidence that came from this year long experiment has had
a big impact on Jessica's well being. I had more friends,
I had less anxiety. I you know, in my neighborhood.
(28:50):
Now I talk to tons of people. I recognize lots
of people. That feels like the small little village in
central London. I was a lot happier by the end
of the year.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
When Jessica first encountered the extroverted psychologist Nick Eppley, she
was floored by the ease with which he talked to
complete strangers and how quickly he struck up friendships with
the workers he met in stores and cafe. Jessica didn't
think she'd ever be that comfortable in getting to know
strangers herself, but a year into her experiment, she had
really changed. A barista in her local coffee shop was
(29:19):
one of the first to notice.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
And he said, I remember when he used to come
in here, like a long time ago. And I was like, yeah,
I remember that too, and he said, you didn't talk
it to us ever, like anybody, and I was like, yes,
that's correct. And he's like, now you're like friends with
each other and I was like, yeah, exactly. And you know,
I didn't say here's the book and here's why, but
he had noticed it. And it was really strange to
(29:40):
be perceived as an extrovert. And by the end I
just thought, I don't even recognize myself and I don't
mean like that I was pretending to be someone else,
or that I wasn't being true to myself. But it
was more like I haven't let these fears and anxieties
shackle me to the person I've always been. That I
felt like I had grown and I had changed.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
The science shows that we can all enjoy the well
being boost that comes from social connection, no matter what
our personality type is. But to get those social connection benefits,
we need to actually connect with the people around us,
whether we know them well or not. So why not
push yourself and get a little more social. You could
talk to a local cashier, or a barista, or the
(30:22):
person sitting next to you on your commute, and when
you dive into conversation, try to push past the shallow
stuff and get to topics that feel a little deeper.
And remember psychologist Nick Epley's insight that not everyone waves,
but people usually wave back. I hope this episode has
given you some tips on how to extrovert a bit more,
even and perhaps especially if it doesn't come to you naturally,
(30:45):
And I hope you'll join me again next week for
more in our series on getting more social. Next time
on the Happiness Lab, with me, Doctor Laurie Santos
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.