Something You Should Know - How Animals Really Communicate & Proven Ways to Make Meaningful Connections

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Should you get a second opinion? A lot of people faced with a medical diagnosis often wonder about that. Will they offend the original doctor if they ask for a second opinion? Is it really necessary? Is it worth the trouble? Listen as I explain the value of a second opinion. https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/second-opinions We know animals communicate – but what are they communicating? When a wolf howls or a dolphin clicks, or a cricket chirps – what is it saying? Is it a language that can be translated or is it just noise to say, “Here I am!” Or is it something else entirely? And here is something interesting – we can teach our language to chimps and parrots – and they are able to use it. But they don’t use it when they are with another chimp or parrot who can also speak our language. Why not? Here to explain the science of animal communication is Arik Kirschebaum. He is a zoologist, college lecturer and fellow at Girton College, University of Cambridge and he has done extensive fieldwork on animal communication. He is author of the book Why Animals Talk: The New Science of Animal Communication (https://amzn.to/3LN4fwe) It's easy to think that loneliness and lack of social connections is a 21st century thing – but it’s not. Research going back decades shows that people have long felt they didn’t have enough friends and connections. Given that we are social creatures who crave connection, why is it so hard to make real friends? Maybe it isn’t. Maybe we just think it is. That’s what David Robson is here to discuss. He says that once we understand the barriers to connecting to other people, they are easy to overcome. David is an award-winning science writer and the author of the book The Laws of Connection: The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network (https://amzn.to/3ynUTDZ). Have you ever struggled with how to end an email? “Sincerely” sounds a bit formal. “Cheers” may be a little too informal. So, what’s best – and worst? Listen as I explain some popular email sign offs that you might want to avoid. https://www.grammarly.com/blog/how-to-end-an-email/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Download June's Journey now on Android or iOS. Today on Something You Should Know, should you get a second opinion on a medical diagnosis? I'll tell you what the statistics say. Then, animal communication. Why birds sing? Why crickets chirp? Why wolves howl? Well, wolves howl to

communicate with other members of their pack and members of other packs over long distances. But probably my favorite is wolves just like to howl. When a pack comes together, it's a social activity. Also, ever struggle with how to sign off on an email, I've got some suggestions. And the many psychological barriers to connecting with others. One is called the liking gap. When we meet a new person and we have a great conversation with them, we walk away underestimating how much the other person liked us. So each person is believing that they liked the other person more than the other person liked them. All this today on Something You Should Know.

Take back your free time with PC Express Online grocery delivery and pickup. Score in-store promos, PC Optimum points, and more free time. And still get groceries. Shop now at pcexpress.ca. Something You Should Know. Fascinating intel. The world's top experts and practical advice you can use in your life. Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, hello. Welcome to another episode of Something You Should Know. First up today, second opinions. I imagine that you or someone you know has gotten sick and have considered getting a second opinion. Should you? Probably so.

Even if it's only for your own peace of mind. Second opinions today are pretty commonplace, and for good reason. There have been multiple studies that make the case for getting additional medical opinions. In 2017, a study showed that 21% of patients who sought a second opinion at the Mayo Clinic left with a completely new diagnosis. And 66% of the diagnoses, while deemed partly correct, were refined or redefined by the second doctor. If you're worried about offending your doctor by getting a second opinion, don't be.

Many doctors encourage it and you won't hurt their feelings. According to an article from Yale Medical, you should always get a second opinion for sure. If the diagnosis is cancer, if the diagnosis is unclear, if your child is the one who is sick, and again, if you just want peace of mind. And that is something you should know. The next time you go out in nature, stop and listen.

And most likely you will hear animal sounds. Crickets, birds, dogs, cats, wolves howling, dolphins making those clicking sounds. So are those animals communicating something with that sound? And if so, what is it they're communicating? Is it a language you could translate? Or is it just noise to say, you know, I'm a cricket and here I am? Do animals of one species understand the sounds from another species? Do they understand what we're saying? I mean, clearly some animals understand human commands, but are we truly communicating with them? Well, that's what Arik Kirschenbaum is here to reveal.

Arik is a zoologist, a college lecturer, and a fellow at Gerton College at the University of Cambridge. He's done extensive field work on animal communication, and he's author of a book called Why Animals Talk, The New Science of Animal Communication. Hi, Arik. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Thank you for having me. So it's probably because we humans have a language and we use it to communicate,

so we think that maybe the sounds that animals make, that they have a language, and that that's what they use to communicate with each other. But is it a real language, say, when wolves howl or dogs bark I mean I don't know that language but but maybe maybe they do I don't think so and in fact there's very good reason to think that while animals are communicating in a very complex way and they're conveying lots of information it's not a language like like human speak and so the first thing we have to do is to like make that switch and to think about why animals communicate and not think of it as a as a as just another language to

be translated but i always wondered like you know if wolves are howling if there's like nuances in the different howls that mean different things but but basically you're saying it's not a language that you can say well if the wolf howls this way, it must mean this. But it just it doesn't work that way. It really doesn't because, of course, animals have evolved to communicate to solve the problems that they face and to support the particularly support the social interactions that they have to deal with. And this idea of words in particular, this idea of a word that means something, is a very human thing. It's certainly necessary for our language,

but is it necessary for the way that animals communicate? Probably not in most cases. So even when there are animals that do communicate and convey lots of information, dolphins would be a good example or chimpanzees. We don't think that there's this sort of word-sentence-based system that they're using where one particular sound means a particular single concept.

Well, one of the things I've wondered about is, say, take a dog, for example. So a dog, if you have a dog, it watches you communicate with other people and it watches you talk and it must get some sense that that's doing something so when a dog barks at you and theoretically is trying to send a message is he trying to talk in the sense that he sees other people talk to you so he's trying to do the same thing. Dogs and their close relatives, wolves, of course, are a really good example because they are really quite similar to us in many ways. This is why dogs were the first animals to be domesticated, that their lives are social and cooperative and in many ways very similar to ours. They fit in very easily.

And when we communicate with each other and our dogs are watching us, then yes, they are interpreting that in the same way that a wolf would interpret the interactions between two other wolves. It just all fits in very neatly to their sort of social structure. So when your dog tries to communicate with you, yes, they're trying to communicate with you. Are they trying to imitate the talking that we're doing? That's a much more difficult question. It's certainly true that many animals, surprising number of animals, seem to have a more sophisticated ability to understand language than they actually use in the wild. We know we can teach language, we can teach human language to parrots and chimpanzees.

They have that sort of innate ability, but they don't seem to use it themselves for communication. Well, I've heard that like parrots, you know, can say a word, but they don't necessarily know the meaning of the word. They can't put a sentence together if they knew the five words to put a sentence together. They don't know how to do that because the meaning isn't behind it. They're just mimicking sound. Well, actually parrots, at least some parrots, are capable of understanding the grammar and the syntax and the meaning of language. And it's not easy, but you can do experiments with parrots and train them to understand human speech and to respond appropriately in human speech, not just to mimic words, but actually to understand the meaning of what's been done. And one person in particular, Professor Irene Pepperberg,

did a long series of experiments with parrots that she trained to understand human language. Now, parrots don't do that in the wild. This is not something that they need to do to communicate with other parrots, but they've got that mental machinery. They've got the brain capability to understand language. And that tells us an awful lot about what it is that is the foundation of language ability that we clearly, as humans, have developed so far. Well, what is your sense, what is it that we know about when animals do communicate

with each other and they're not talking in the way that we talk? Well, what is it that we know about when animals do communicate with each other and they're not talking in the way that we talk? Well, what are they saying? What are they trying to communicate? Their communication obviously varies. There is simple communication and there is complex communication. Many, many, many animals communicate a single message, which is, this is my territory, stay away, or perhaps come and mate with me. So there are very simple concepts that need to be conveyed, that may be conveyed in a simple way, like an alarm call. They may be conveyed in a complex way, like a bird song, which is designed to attract females and to repel rival males.

So some animals have very simple communication needs, but there are some animals, particularly those who live in complex societies like wolves, like dolphins, like chimpanzees, who have a much greater need to convey social information. They need to talk about what they want, what they need, what they don't want. Do they want to interact at the moment? Are they having a need, what they don't want. Do they want to interact at the moment? Are they having a bad day and they don't particularly want to play with someone else? Are they looking for food? Where is the food? Where you have socially cooperative, communicative animals, there's scope for a lot of information that they need to tell one to the

other. What are some of the animals that are sending these simple messages that this is my territory, stay away, or come mate with me? Well, songbirds are the best example. Everyone knows songbirds. We all hear them. And it's often the males that are singing, not exclusively, but it's largely the males that are singing their song. And the song is intended to Firstly to demarc the territory to say this is my territory stay away

But also we also find in a lot of songbirds that the more complex a song the male sings the more attractive He is to the female. So there's two messages there one is is saying to other males This is my territory stay away but at the same time he's trying to impress the females and to show that he is a fit and capable male that's worth mating with. When an animal is part of a large group, like a bird in a big, huge flock of birds, do they typically single out birds and communicate or try to communicate with them? Or are birds communicating to the entire flock there are some birds and many other animals indeed that live in in large groups but they don't

necessarily cooperate a great deal so you will see more communication more complex communication in particular when you have large blocks of birds they often will use an alarm call, for instance, to warn of a predator. More complex communication than in simple solitary songbirds. But if they're not actually cooperating to achieve some kind of complex goal, then their communication needs are still relatively simple. Where you really see the complex communication is where you have groups of animals that need to work together, that need to hunt together or to, or to interact in a, in a, in a very, uh, intimate way within the social group, then there's a need for, for complex communication. What are crickets saying when they chirp? It's one of my favorite sounds of the summer. And I've heard that it's a mating call, but it seems pretty relentless.

It is. And there are mating calls that are very simple, like a cricket or a frog, and it's largely the same thing over and over again. And there are mating calls that are more complex, like some of the more complex songbird songs. But in any case, whatever it is, there's something about it that has evolved to attract females, to attract mates. So in the case of, for example, a northern mockingbird, quite a common bird in North America, their songs are incredibly complex. And the more complex they are, the more attractive they are to a female in the case of a cricket where there's not much scope really for um for their their call to be particularly complex they're still trying to attract a female and and that may be although i'm not saying this is necessarily the case uh in crickets but it is with some other animals it may be that the consistency of that call is

is an indication that they're more attractive they may if they can do the same repetitive call with great precision over and over maybe that's what's attractive to the female wait a minute but if they have to do it for a long period of time how effective is it if the female never shows up and just wants to sit back and listen well if you're a cricket and you need to mate, then really you haven't got anything else to do. It's worth investing that time, no matter how long it takes. We're talking about animal communication, and my guest is Arik Kirschenbaum. He's a zoologist and author of the book, Why Animals Talk, the new science of animal communication. From the kitchen to the laundry room, your home deserves the best.

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and only make left turns where it's safe to do so be alert be aware, and stay safe. So Arik, you know when you watch like a National Geographic movie, you'll see scenes where animals of different species are inhabiting the same space. You know, different species are drinking out of the same river. They're walking around each other. And they're not looking like they're threatened. And they don't look like they want to attack. They're just kind of peacefully coexisting.

Are they communicating with each other? Are they just ignoring each other? Or they have some kind of understanding? Or what? When you have a large number of species, it's because there are a large number of opportunities. There are a large number of different niches, different ways that they can make their living, largely different ways to find food or different foods to eat. So there's never really any overlap. Whenever you find a real overlap between different species, then almost inevitably one of them wins out over the

other, given enough time. So in your example, the giraffe is clearly not eating the same kind of thing as the hippopotamus, so they don't compete with each other in that sense. Occasionally, you can have competition for nesting spaces or something like that. But mostly you find that even if it's not immediately obvious when you look at them, even if at first glance it seems that all these animals are in the jungle together or something like that, actually they've all got very well-defined specific niches, and they're not really competing in between species. If there is ever an animal that looks like it's communicating, it's a wolf. I mean, when you see a wolf howling, it looks like it's trying to tell

somebody something. Why do wolves howl? Well, wolves howl to communicate with other members of their pack and members of other packs over long distances. Howling is really a long distance communication system and it's intended to get a number of a small number of messages across over a very very long distance. The kinds of messages that wolves want to convey in their howls are number one I'm here where are you so if if an individual is separated from the rest of the pack, they need to stay in touch, they need to know where they are so they can come back together. They want to send messages to other packs,

so this is my territory, stay away from my territory. And that's often done as a group. So when you have a group of wolves from a single pack all in one place, they'll often howl as a way of broadcasting this idea that this is our territory um and there are a lot of us so don't come near here but probably my favorite um use of of howling is wolves just like to howl you know when when a pack comes together and they're all together and they're clearly happy about the fact that everyone's there and everyone's safe. And one of the ways they express that is by howling.

It's a social activity. So animals have social activities just like humans do. Do they howl at the moon? No, they really don't. And actually, it's only quite recently that people have started doing studies to test that. There's no indication they howl more when the moon is out. Well, you know what's interesting about what you said about trying to locate, like, where are you? Because when I've heard wolves howl, it's very hard to

tell where it's coming from. So how that works as a geolocator seems odd to me, unless the wolves have some sort of sense super hearing thing that allows them to zero in. I think it's because howling is, is a very long range, uh, communication system. It doesn't need to be very accurate. Um, you know, if you are three miles away from, from everyone else, then you don't need a precise bearing on, on where they are. You just need a, uh, a, a need a general idea so

that you can head in that direction and then narrow in when you get closer. But you can tell the direction. In fact, this is one of our main research tools when studying wolves in the wild, is to howl. We will howl at them. And then you listen for the howls that come back because wolves will reply when they hear humans pretending to howl. What's very difficult, in fact, is to estimate the number of wolves that are howling. And that's probably intentional. This has probably evolved precisely to confuse anyone who's listening, any wolves from another pack, just how many animals are present. One animal that has gotten a lot of attention regarding their ability to communicate and their intelligence and all that are dolphins. And has that been a bit overblown or are these creatures head and shoulders smarter than a lot of others pink dolphins are

very smart and possibly as important as being smart and it's not unrelated is that they live in complex societies dolphin communities are are very complex uh the ocean is a big place you know you can you can um disappear in any direction come come back, no one sees you. So dolphin societies tend to break up and we come back together and you might see another animal that you haven't seen in a few months. Or you might go off with a group of other dolphins and then come back and mix with some other dolphins. It's a very fluid social structure. And that fluid social structure engenders a lot of communication. Dolphins in particular need to know who's around.

We think that dolphin communication reflects their social needs. It reflects the complexity of their social system. We know that dolphins have names for themselves. So this idea of individual identity is clearly very important. But I think that beyond that, there's no doubt that there is a sort of slightly exaggerated sense of what the dolphins might be saying one to another. Remember, animals communicate for the purpose of achieving some kind of goal and um it's not likely that dolphins would evolve a really really complex language if they don't actually need it to to achieve some kind of end what about animals that are more like us closer to us apes and how do they communicate

certainly i mean we haven't talked about chimpanzees for instance our closest relatives how much do they talk how how much do they communicate and with chimpanzees you can teach them to talk not particularly well but you can you can teach some elements of human language to chimpanzees so they have this sort of innate ability to understand what language is, to understand combinations of concepts. But they don't use it in the wild. They don't seem to have a language of their own in the wild. And this is something you see across a few species,

which is telling us that this ability, this sort of innate language ability seems to be out there, seems to be out there among certain species, but they haven't put it together the way that our ancestors did to make a fully fledged language. And this is really, this is sort of cutting edge research now to understand just exactly what can animals do? What do animals think about when they are using these sort of language-like constructions? Just how much, how far can they go down that road of understanding what humans are saying? And we don't really know the answer to those things. Wouldn't it be, that's so surprising to me that if you trained a chimpanzee to talk, especially if you trained two chimpanzees to talk, especially if you trained two chimpanzees to talk

and then put them out in the wild, that they wouldn't go, hey guys, look what I've got here. This is really cool. We can now talk to each other. Instead, what you're saying is they kind of just revert back to the old chimpanzee way. Yeah, but it's been, you know, it's been four billion years. And it could be actually that, actually, that language isn't that useful. It could be that the reason that life has been on Earth for four billion years and only right now has one species evolved language. It may just be that we think language is really important. It may not actually be all that useful. But the vast majority of animals, it's a little bit of a waste of time.

Because if you don't have the kind of complex, I mean really complex social structures that our ancestors obviously did, then it may not give all that much of an advantage as we think that it does. Language evolved primarily because of the absolutely suffocating complexity of our social, of our ancestors' social systems. And language is one way to deal with that. That's really, I love that. Because it's so interesting when you think about it.

They may be looking at us going, thank God I don't have to know how to conjugate a verb and go to English class and write all that crap. And you guys have it tough. It's much easier to just grunt and howl. And, you know, it's just better. I think that's a really good way of summarizing it, actually. Yeah.

Well, great. This has been fun. And you've answered a lot of questions I've always wondered about in terms of how animals communicate. My guest has been Arik Kirschenbaum. He is a zoologist and college lecturer and fellow at Girton College at the University of Cambridge. And he's author of the book, Why Animals Talk, The New Science of Animal Communication. And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

Thanks, Arik. Appreciate you coming on. Thanks, Mike. This has been fantastic. We've talked about some great stuff and thanks for inviting me. This episode is brought to you by Melissa and Doug. Wooden puzzles and building toys for problem solving and arts and crafts for creative thinking. Melissa and Doug makes toys that help kids take on the world because the way they play today shapes who they become tomorrow. Melissa and Doug, the play is pretend, the skills are real. Look for Melissa and Doug wherever you shop for toys.

Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast. And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years. She now works to raise awareness on this issue.

It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show. There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. We've talked in previous episodes about the importance of friendship and social connection because it's such an important topic and there's new information coming out all the time.

Not only how critical it is to have social connections, but also how to do it, how to create and maintain those connections. And here with the very latest research on this important topic is David Robson. David is an award-winning science writer who's been on this program before. He's author of The Intelligence Trap, The Expectation Effect, and his latest book is called The Laws of Connection, The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network. Hey David, welcome back. Good to have you on Something You Should Know. Thanks so much for having me back on. So I imagine everyone listening knows or has a sense or feeling that having

friends, having social connections is good. It's good to have people to talk to, to do things with, that we're social creatures and we need to communicate with others. But it's more than that, right? You know, over the last 50 years, there's just been an enormous amount of research that's shown that beyond those benefits for our mental health, that cultivating good relationships with people

can be incredibly beneficial to our physical health as well. A huge meta-analysis of lots of longitudinal studies found that our sense of social connection can be as important as known lifestyle factors like the diet that you eat how much physical exercise you get whether or not you over whether or not you drink too much alcohol even you know whether or not you smoke is comparable to all of these lifestyle factors for influencing our health and our longevity so I don't think that's really questionable anymore I think what had been lacking in some of the previous research and some of the books that

had been written on this subject was really a sense of what we can do about this you might have had some advice like you you know, join a club or, you know, say hi to your neighbours, you know, things that might seem a little bit shallow or superficial. But what's really changed in the last five years is that psychologists have come to understand what the kind of internal barriers are to social connection. So all of these kind of false intuitions that we have that actually prevent us from saying the right things to connect to people, doing the right things to connect with people in the way that we crave. I think there is a sense, because we hear about it,

that people are more lonely today. People are craving connection more today than in the past, that in the past it seemed to be easier to make friends and all. Is that true or is that just perception? When you do look at the available data, and there isn't perfect data, certainly not going back a century, but even if you look back over the past 50 years, what you do find is that, you know, over the decades, people have always felt pretty lonely, like there's always been this sense that we're not quite connecting as well as we could do. And so that's why I find this new research on these psychological barriers so interesting, because I think actually, the problem might not just be our environment, I think it is actually a problem with kind of how we're viewing our

relationships, how we're responding to other people, how confident we are in reaching out to others. And the really great news is that once we understand these psychological barriers, they're often very easy to overcome. So it's actually like a real key to getting that connection we crave, you know, without changing the whole world and the way the whole world operates. Well, let's wait no longer. Let's get into the psychological barriers and what are they? I think the most important one for me personally was a phenomenon called the liking

gap. And it's really this psychological bias that we have that means that when we meet a new person and we have a great conversation with them, we walk away underestimating how much the other person liked us. Now, the fact is that the other person is doing that too. So each person is believing that they liked the other person more than the other person liked them. And, you know, that is a big deal, actually, because if you really admire and respect someone, but you think they don't reciprocate, you're less likely to build on that instant rapport to suggest a new meeting or to call on their help when you need it. You kind of stay distant. You kind of orbit each other without actually touching and connecting.

And when I understood, you know, when I learned about the liking gap, it really opened my mind to this possibility that actually so many other intuitions might be incorrect. When we might be feeling unnecessarily lonely because maybe other people are desiring connection just as much as we are. We just have to be a bit braver to kind of make that first move to try to actually build on that connection. And that's exactly what I found when I

looked into the kind of more deeply into the research that was available. Well, that's certainly something to keep in mind. And what are some of the other psychological barriers? Because I mean, that's a big one, that liking gap. we're often thinking really great things about other people, the people closest to us or even strangers. But we always bite back those compliments, because we kind of assume that we're going to be really clumsy in the way that we phrase them. We kind of think the other person probably knows that they're fabulous, and they don't need us to tell them that. And actually, we worry that it might just cause them to feel embarrassed or awkward um those fears are really unfounded people really love to hear compliments they like to feel appreciated as you would expect um i mean as you would hope um and you know we're pretty good at

giving compliments like we're we do it in the right way so that um they just they recognize it as a really warm and kind gesture rather than seeming kind of unctuous or kind of overly flattering as if you're trying to, you know, get something from them. Like, you know, in general, we're worried about flattery seeming insincere, but most people do take it at face value. important because there's other research showing that when we do compliment and praise people and show gratitude, that that strengthens our relationship with them. It also has downstream effects on our physiology and their physiology. It's actually a really good way of suppressing the stress response is to just express gratitude to the people you're working with. There's a wonderful study based on the format of Shark Tank, that TV program where students got together in pairs and designed a product and then had to present it to this panel for a prize. And what they found, the scientists found, was that

if one member of the pair expressed their gratitude to the other person for their contribution, it actually suppressed the stress response in both people. And I think that, again, just comes from the fact that when we have this sense of connection, we can feel a lot bolder, a lot braver. We know we've got more resources that are available to us, and that is beneficial to us psychologically as well as physiologically. I know you say that we tend to be pretty timid. We're not brave enough in the topics we bring up in conversation to connect with people. Explain what you mean by that. We tend to assume that other people aren't really interested in our kind of intimate thoughts and feelings. You know, no one really cares what's going on underneath so we just stick to kind of superficial shallow small talk you know how's the weather where did you last go on holiday you know what are you doing for halloween topics that don't really get beneath

the skin and to form a good relationship with someone you really do need to kind of find out what you've got in common in your inner world, in that kind of stream of consciousness. Research shows that when two people realise that they're having the same emotional reactions to an event, they feel a lot closer. And it's a lot more important than just knowing kind of superficially that you might share, you know, roughly similar music taste, for example, it's actually, you know, the kind of intimate thoughts and feelings that really, that really generate the sense of connection. And the problem is that we, we assume the other person doesn't want to

know about those details, so we don't share them. And that prevents the connection from forming. So we can just be a bit braver in our conversation to be a bit more revealing, to talk about the things that we feel passionate about, to talk about the things that we fear, to talk about our hopes and dreams. That's really fueled to, you know, it's really the material that provides the foundation for a more authentic lasting relationship with someone. Is there research that would indicate true or false that the people, like I know people that truly have a lot of good friends, but I wonder, do they think, do they still feel like they're not connected

because maybe they know people who have even more friends? Like, is it the grass is always greener, everybody wishes they were more connected, no matter how connected they are, or not? Yeah, I mean, I definitely think that's a possibility, because we see it in so many other phenomena in life, you know? No matter how rich you are, you always feel, you can always feel that kind of negative social comparison

when you look at someone else who's even wealthier than you. You've just bought this great car, another person's got an even better car, that makes you feel that you're missing out. I'd be surprised if there isn't an element of that when we're comparing our relationships or our friendships, because we're not our relationships or our friendships, because we're not seeing the full picture of those people's lives. We, you know, perhaps we are seeing like how many times they're invited to birthday parties or to go on holiday with these other people. But what we're maybe not seeing is the other side of those friendships, maybe where they feel underappreciated.

You know, we see this with celebrities. You hear people like Lizzo, who posted on Instagram how lonely she often feels and, you know, how shy she feels. And from looking at her performances, you wouldn't believe that someone like that could, you know, could still feel that they weren't connected when she has, you she has millions of Instagram followers. But it does happen. So yeah, I think we have to always be conscious when we're looking at someone else's life that we're never getting the full picture. I want to go back to what you said in the beginning of our conversation about the advice

you often hear from people that if you're lonely, if want connection join a club say hi to the barista say hi to your neighbor what about that advice is it valid so absolutely i don't think there's anything wrong with all of those tips i just i guess what the research shows is that it might not be enough we have to go a step beyond that. So actually, you know, there are good studies showing that if you do encourage people day after day to talk to strangers, talk to someone on public transport or who's next in line at the coffee shop or someone with an amazing dog in the park, you know, if you do that again and again and again, you do build up those social muscles. It does increase your overall confidence and your ability to connect. And then that can be beneficial in other areas

too. Like maybe you're less likely to suffer the liking gap when you meet someone cool in the office, for example. You know, maybe you are a bit readier to kind of self-disclose when you've got this impression that actually people are much friendlier than you thought. So practice is really important. But I do think there's a lot of value in kind of knowing the full range of psychological barriers that might be holding you back. So you can be a bit more conscious about correcting each one of those and recognising the situations in which you might be, you know, needlessly sabotaging a potential relationship. So let's look at what you just said about, let's say you approach somebody or you don't approach somebody who has a dog at the park. And you don't approach them because, why?

Why do people, are they afraid of being rejected? Are they afraid, oh, this guy may, this person may become, want to become my new best friend and I don't really want them to? Could this person be a serial killer? Could this person think I'm a serial killer? What are we thinking? What's stopping us? Or is it all those things or none of those things? I definitely think a fear of rejection is one of the main factors. You know, from a lot of this research, what we see is that people just don't feel very socially competent. Like they have that desire to connect, but they just feel that their words are going to seem clunky, that they worry they'll dry up. They won't have a fluent way of continuing the conversation if they

do start some idle talk with someone. And what the research shows is that actually those fears are unfounded because the other person isn't really judging your social competence. It's not like they have a checklist and they're like, oh, this that was a bit awkward i'm gonna mark him down for that or you know he repeated himself that was super boring so i don't want to be friends with him you know just because just because he um you know uh like because you know because we can't plan i think that's what's really important is um conversation is inherently a little bit messy, and everyone understands that when we're on the receiving end, but we worry too much, we're too self-conscious about the times when we make the mistakes ourselves. And what people are

really looking at is how warm we seem, how kind, how interested, you know, how caring, that's what they're judging. They're not really going to, an hour later after the conversation, be judging you on a tiny faux pas, they're just going to remember that they met this really friendly person in the park who made them feel great. You know, and that's what we have to kind of remind ourselves is that even if we stumble over our words people are they're listening to the feelings as much as the uh the kind of message itself isn't that isn't that so true that you were when someone stumbles or you can tell they're having trouble you're very forgiving you don't you're not like you don't get your little notebook out. Oh, I'll kind of mark him down for that. And yet we feel when we stumble that, oh, my God, this is going nowhere.

I'm making a fool of myself. And that's not what's happening at all. Right. I mean, you know, there's research on all kinds of faux pas where we expect others to judge us far more harshly than we would judge another person. So, you know, imagine that you turn up to a dinner party and you're the only person who hasn't brought a bottle of wine or a dessert. When you ask people how much they would judge another person, most people are very forgiving, you know, it's no big deal. It's just one of those things. When people guess how much they're going to be judged for the same mistake, they kind

of double the amount of censure that they think they're going to receive compared to what they would actually receive. They think the judgment is going to be twice as harsh as they would judge someone for doing exactly the same mistake. So, yeah, we're really, really kind of pessimistic about these things. And actually, we don't need to be like people want. Most people want to see the best in you. And they're going to be forgiving of lots of little mistakes that you might make.

But does knowing this stuff mitigate it at all? So I think it does. You know, simply having that kind of awareness can be very helpful. I think, you know, practice, like I said, like just, you know, talking to strangers, being the first person to, you know, to reach out after that first meeting to suggest another meeting um you know the more you receive that kind of uh that positive feedback the easier you're going to find it the next time but you have to do it regularly it's not enough to just have you know do this like once a month and to expect your social life to change like the research really suggests you know day-to-day practice is important as if you're

learning a musical instrument um so i think that is important um i also think like there are other psychological strategies that we can use that can help to calm some of those nerves that are kind of fueling uh these negative biases um so one of the things that i'm a great believer in is practicing self-compassion. And I think like in our society, we often see self-compassion as being this kind of indulgence that we can't afford to do. We think that if we want to improve, we have to be self-critical. We have to really beat ourselves up for our mistakes so we won't do them again. But the research shows it's really counterproductive. to really beat ourselves up for our mistakes so we won't do them again. But the research shows it's really counterproductive.

And I think that's especially true in these social situations. If you are constantly reminding yourselves of all of the things you've done wrong in the past, it's going to be much harder for you to kind of behave positively and openly in the future. Are there things, are there topics, are there common interests that people tend to connect over? Something that comes out of the research is that a shared music taste is really predictive of friendship. It's one of the best predictors of friendship. And I actually think this, again, speaks to this idea of the kind of inner world, that shared reality. If you're reacting emotionally in the same way as someone else to the same song,

if you're getting chills at the same moment, you know, that speaks volumes about what kind of things affect you, what kind of things matter to you emotionally. And so I think that's why it's so good for connection. I recently did an interview with someone about friendship and she said something that really struck a chord with me. And she said, for a friendship to endure any length of time, there has to be an about. That you can't just like a person and be their friend because you like their personality you have to like something there has to you both you both like to go hiking you both like baseball you both like transformers you both like but there has to be an about if there is no about there's no glue and if there is no glue it won won't work. I mean, I, you know, totally agree with that.

You know, having kind of shared activities are super important for any relationships because, you know, conversation can just kind of run dry unless you have something. Right, right. Hasn't that ever happened to you? Yeah, that's happened to me where, you know, this seems good, but it hits a wall like, well, now what? Now what are we going to do? about, it can be a kind of movable feast. By which I mean that, you know, you might find in the first few years of your friendship, like going to the cinema was the thing that kind of held you together. And then you might both decide that actually you felt like taking art classes, or you both become parents. And so it's much more about family activities together. So I think that's one of the core mechanisms that can explain this phenomenon.

Well, I think this is an important topic that I think people worry about. They worry that they don't have enough friends. They don't have enough connection. They need more. But as you point out, people have probably always thought that this is not a recent phenomenon. But what's important is to hear those psychological barriers that keep people from connecting and what we can do about it. David Robson has been

my guest. He is an award-winning science writer and author of the book The Laws of Connection, The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network. And you will find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Thank you, David. Thanks for explaining all this.

It can sometimes be a struggle to figure out how to end an email, how to sign off on it. And it really depends on the nature of the email, who the recipient is, and all that, but here are a few to avoid. First of all, looking forward to hearing from you. That kind of sign-off can come off as manipulative or passive-aggressive because it implies a demand that the recipient writes back. Yours truly. You don't truly belong to the recipient, so that's a bit insincere. Love. Unless you're writing an email to your significant other or a close family member, using the word love in a sign-off is a bit too personal. Respectfully yours. This can come off as too formal or too stiff or aloof.

Have a blessed day. It's generally best to avoid any religious overtones in professional or casual emails. Have a good one. That's another example of an overly informal sign-off that's better said in person than in an email. Hope this makes sense. This sign-off can be considered passive-aggressive as it implies that any misunderstanding is on the recipient's part rather than due to your communication skills. And good luck.

This sign-off leaves too much to interpretation. Does it imply the recipient needs luck? That a task is too difficult? It's just better off left alone. Things like regards or thank you, you can't go wrong with those. And that is something you should know. If you haven't yet, because I've been asking this for years, if you haven't yet told a friend about this podcast, shared a link, this would be the time.

This would be a great time. So please, if you know someone who you think would like this podcast, please share it with them and do it today. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their fingers

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