The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos - How to Make Friends and Compliment People

Episode Date: October 9, 2023

Connecting with people is a sure-fire way to be happier - and you can quickly build relationships with friends and strangers alike just by giving them a sincere compliment. In the first show of a season about how to be more sociable - we meet Troy Hawke, who makes a living complimenting everyone he passes on the street, and scientist Xuan Zhao - an expert on compliments who ditched her boyfriend for failing to say out loud all the nice things he thought about her. (For more on Xuan's public benefit startup Flourish Science - a company aiming to "help people discover joy, combat burnout, and cultivate deeper connections within supportive communities" - then visit www.flouriship.com.)  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Pushkin. clearly a connoisseur of the podcast art. We're opening this new season of the Happiness Lab with a special salutation from the founder, leading light, and well, sole member of the International Greeters Guild. We appreciate your custom ever so much. Never stop, never change. There's an old maxim that if you can't say something nice, you shouldn't say anything at all. Troy Hawk lives by a related maxim

that you can always, always say something nice. You have a very confident stride. Sorry? Very confident stride. Loved it. And Troy doesn't just say nice things to podcast listeners. Madam, your hair looks divine. You look like a painting and you're just sitting there.

It's fantastic. He says nice things at every possible opportunity. I adored the way you laughed at that pigeon. Whenever, wherever, and to whomever possible. You have a marvelous weight distribution between your feet, sir. He compliments strangers on the streets. Clearly a man with an eye for detail. In stores and cafes, and outside football stadiums and tourist attractions.

Sir, you're an aquamarine blue jeans filled with dreams. Yes, you are. Troy's mission is simple. To meet people, to greet people, and to tell everyone he meets the most kind, uplifting things possible. Adore your head, sir. Love it. Wisdom. Should be cast in marble. Now, you might think this is an odd way to spend your time.

I'm very much enjoying your animal print scarf, madam. You look wonderful. But as we'll see in this special new season of the Happiness Lab, it turns out there's a lot we get wrong when it comes to improving our social connections. I like your energy. Your cheeks are pinched with cold, but you're still smiling. I like that.

Over the next few episodes, we'll look at how our minds lie to us about the best ways to interact with other people. We'll see that we often miss out on the maximum happiness that social interaction can provide, in part because we don't really do it right. But not to worry, because we'll also be exploring simple steps we can take to correct our intuitions and connect more effectively. We'll look at how we can become more courageous

in social situations, how to less awkwardly turn strangers into friends, and how we can deepen our existing friendships, both at home and at work. And the topic of today's episode, as you might have guessed from hearing about Troy's mission, is how we can all become a bit more complimentary. You have wonderful sparkling eyes, sir. Never let anyone tell you any different.

We often think nice things about friends, family members, work colleagues, and even strangers. We don't always say those nice things out loud, which is unfortunate, because research shows that the simple act of complimenting the people around us matters more for our own and other people's happiness than we might imagine. 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 that understanding the science of the mind can point us all back in the right direction.

You're listening to The Happiness Lab with Dr. Laurie Santos. I mean, the exact date happens. Yeah, so, okay. How about this one? We'll hear more from Troy Hawk and his Greeter's Guild a little later. But first, I want to introduce Xuan Zhao, a research scientist at Stanford University. Xuan is an academic expert on the psychology of compliments, but she's known personally about the power of kind words for much longer than that. I still remember one compliment I got when I was in high school that really changed my life. As a teenager, Xuan detested one particular aspect of her physical appearance.

I have a single eyelid, and I hate that for my entire life. Single eyelids, which lack the fold that separate the lids into two sections, is a pretty common feature in people of Asian descent. But Xuan despised it. Over time, she grew so unhappy with this seemingly insignificant anatomical detail that she was planning a pretty radical solution. I was doing a lot of research on double eyelid surgery. I would go to Korea. I've saved this little pocket of money to actually do this surgery. Visiting a plastic surgeon isn't something to enter into lightly. There's the expense, the inconvenience, the

discomfort, and the risks involved in any medical procedure. But Xuan assumed it was the only way she'd ever feel better about how she looked. But she was wrong. Her self-esteem wound up being saved not by a surgeon's blade, but by a few well-chosen words from her high school boyfriend. One day, when the pair was hanging out, she took off her sunglasses. He simply looked at her and said, Your eyes are beautiful. I was like, really? I thought I suck.

But that really put things in a different perspective. And after that, I'm like, maybe I am beautiful. Xuan's high school boyfriend couldn't have imagined the powerful effect of that one-off compliment. You often struggle to appreciate or accept yourself. You think that you are not beautiful enough, accomplished enough. When someone tells you that you are beautiful, that means a lot. Like most high school romances, Xuan's teen fling did end. But in new relationships, Xuan continued to appreciate partners who were comfortable giving her compliments.

That is, until she started dating a new guy, someone she really thought could be the one. I really liked him. He seemed to like me, but I wasn't quite sure because he did not give compliments. I didn't know if he appreciated me or not. And I really struggled to tell how he felt about me. And Xuan's worries weren't just about a lack of flattery.

Her boyfriend's reticence to say nice things made Xuan worried he didn't really understand who she was or what really mattered to her. So I basically broke up with him and I decided that I should move on and find someone who liked me. And that's what I did. I'm just curious, like when you actually broke up, was that the stated reason or are you just like, oh, he doesn't like me. I'm just going to break up. I didn't say it's exactly about compliments because I also don't want to fish for compliments. I also don't want to force compliments. I just felt that maybe we're not meant to be with each other

because apparently he has more important things to talk about or to do. So Schwan moved the guy she thought was her forever catch into the friend zone and began moving on with her life without him. After a few months, he suddenly showed up and told me that he loved me. And I was shocked that he loved me. And I had no idea. Xuan's boyfriend said he had liked and admired lots of things about her, but it took actually losing her to spur him into saying any of the complimentary things he felt. Well, long story short, after he told me that he loved me

and he appreciated all these amazing qualities in me, we started dating again and we got married last year. So we are celebrating our anniversary in about a week. In the end, Xuan's story had a happy ending, but she also realized just how easily things could have gone a different way. And I was fascinated, and I wondered why he never realized

that he should have told me how he felt about me, how he viewed me, what kind of qualities he appreciated in me. These questions weighed on Xuan so much that she decided to study them scientifically. She dedicated her postdoctoral studies to investigating the psychology of compliments. And she chose to train at the University of Chicago with an expert who just happens to be a very good friend of the Happiness Lab, psychologist Nick Epley.

There are lots of sources of well-being standing around you. You just have to tap into them. Nick's research focuses on the happiness benefits we get from other people. Nick's research focuses on the happiness benefits we get from other people. All the ways that a quick complimentary word or short conversation with a stranger can make us feel better, way, way better than we expect. Even when we do want to connect with others, even when we are interested in engaging with somebody else, there's a wall there. As we'll hear in this season, Nick's conducted a ton of experiments to figure out where this wall comes from,

why we don't give compliments or express gratitude or engage with people nearly as much as we should. One reason, says Nick, is that we often struggle to work out what other people appreciate about us or expect from us. Another person's mind is the most complicated thing you're going to ever think about. We're bad at predicting how other people will react to our social gestures. We underestimate how nice someone will feel when they receive a compliment or hear some words of gratitude or share a smile. But Nick says we also fail to recognize how good we'll feel when we engage in social connection. Nick calls this under-sociality.

We underestimate the happiness benefits that stem from social interaction, both for ourselves and for the people we interact with. Nick has studied under-sociality in many contexts, in chatting with strangers, in expressing gratitude, and even in asking for help. But with Xuan, he wanted to explore under-sociality when it came to giving compliments. We all want to be appreciated, be seen by other people, especially those people we care about.

So there has been a lot of research on how receiving compliments not only just brightens our mood, but also improves our well-being, our happiness. The problem, Xuan thought, is that under-sociality may cause an emotional gulf between how we imagine our compliments will be received and the real reaction we get when we say something nice. To test this idea, she and her assistants headed to a popular park. They set up a table and tried to recruit every pair of friends they saw walking by. Hi, we are researchers from the University of Chicago.

We have a study about interpersonal communication. Would you be interested in participating in our research? Willing participants were then divided up. The first person was made the complimenter and told, please list three positive things about your friend that you have noticed, but for whatever reason, have not had a chance to compliment them on yet. After they wrote down the compliments, we asked them to predict how you think the recipient would feel. The second person, the recipient, then read those compliments and was asked how they felt. It probably won't surprise you that the recipients were much happier than the complimenters had predicted. Complimenters were off by an entire point on a 10-point happiness scale.

Complimenters also significantly overestimated the awkwardness of the experience. They assumed their kind words would be met by at least some level of cringiness, but recipients were mostly just psyched. at least some level of cringiness, but recipients were mostly just psyched. When we get back from the break, we'll discuss more of the hurdles you need to overcome to become a better complimenter. And excitingly, we'll do so

with the help of a professional. Hello, this is Troy Hook, and I just want to utter my heartfelt appreciation for you making it thus far. Look at your big old pat on the back. Never stop, never change. Enjoy the rest. I'm sure you will. The Happiness Lab will be right back a well-delivered compliment is like a free drug that gets them high and it gets you high

while this may sound a lot like master greeter Troy Hawk, who you met earlier, I'm actually talking to Troy's alter ego and creator, the comedian Milo McCabe. Because it turns out that Troy Hawk is not exactly a real person. Milo invented Troy's character a few years ago when he was searching for a new persona for the Edinburgh Comedy Festival.

Troy's comic backstory is that he was homeschooled by a rather strange mother who kept him shielded from the realities of the world. She wanted to mold him into the exact shape that she wanted him to be. And that shape has ended up being a very Errol Flynn stroke David Niven-esque 1930s stroke 40s English movie idol. To become Troy, Milo grows a thin pencil mustache and dons a colorful silk scarf and smoking jacket. He looks every inch the classic movie star,

which means that in public, alongside the average people in sneakers and sweatpants, Troy stands out like a sore thumb. But that is part of Milo's comedic plan. The oddness of Troy's upbringing has led him to question a lot of things about himself, about society, etc, etc. One of the things Troy questions is how people interact with one another. Unlike most people, Troy never hesitates to strike up a conversation. And when he does, he's extremely polite and complimentary.

But compliments weren't originally part of Troy's comic repertoire. Milo's original intent was simply to put his alter ego in odd situations and film the results. Like the time Troy walked into a store and pretended that he worked there. So Wilco's is like a local convenience store. It's like Walmart or something like that. So I decided to get a Wilco fleece and show local convenience store. It's like Walmart or something like that. So I decided to get a Wilco fleece and show up at this place with a cameraman and just start working there and see how long it would take before anyone threw me out. The problem was British people kind of hate to make a scene.

So I'm just working. I'm tidying up the shelves. I'm helping customers. I'm in there for an hour. And eventually I'm like, are they ever going to kick us out? The footage Milo gathered was charming, but it wasn't all that funny. So me and the guy that was filming, we took a break to formulate a strategy as to how I could, despite the fact that I'm this 1930s gentleman who's suddenly shown up working in their store, how I could attract a bit more attention to the point where they'd actually look at me and go, hang on a second, this isn't quite right. And he said, why don't you greet people at the door? Welcome to Wilco, sir. Welcome to

Wilco. Chatting to customers as they entered the store was much funnier. Do let me know if you need help with any wicker items. It also definitely caught the attention of the staff at Wilco's. Hello there. What are you doing here? Suddenly the general manager comes out. He's like puce, his head's purple, he's furious. So I don't want any money. So if you've come out here to pay me, then that's absolutely fine. No, no, I think you need to step away from the booth. He's demanding my Wilco fleece. I point out that I made it myself. I did. And eventually boots me up. So yeah, if you wouldn't mind, please leave in in the comments. No worries. You're not welcome on Brooks. I've been working very hard.

Milo edited the footage and put it up on YouTube, hoping it would attract a bigger audience for his stand-up shows. But the video totally blew up. People went crazy for Troy's greeter act. And some random person on TikTok actually, I think it was, I remember

them, the handle, B3RN underscore 1111, just comments, why don't you do this to other places? And I thought, hey, good idea, B3RN underscore underscore 1111. And so the International Greeters Guild was born. I adore your purple hair, madam. Thank you. Giving compliments to total strangers became the staple of Troy's comic persona. I love the orange. It pops. And Milo wound up with viral video after viral video.

Your hair looks freshly washed. It's adorable. Get in there. Buy everything. Rather than throwing Troy out into the streets, businesses now welcomed him. So too did soccer clubs, sporting tournaments, and boxing promoters. You have very kindly eyes. It didn't go unnoticed. But why were people so taken by a polite man saying nice things? Why was it so remarkable? Because British people don't do it because we're all so repressed. But the science shows it's not just British people who are repressed

when it comes to giving compliments. When psychologists Nick Epley and Xuan Zhao first began their compliment studies, they started out with a quick survey that flat out asked people if they thought they shared enough kind words with the people they cared about. People report that they think they don't give enough compliments. They often notice nice things in other people, but they don't verbalize it. We already heard about Nick and Xuan's study showing that people underestimate how much joy a compliment can bring another person. But what other factors prevent us from giving the true volume of compliments we probably should? One big factor, Nick says, is performance anxiety. You know,

I'm giving you a compliment. How good does it sound? How articulate is it? And how capable am I of making you feel better? Nick says we fixate on performance in lots of social situations. We fear that we'll come across as dorky or dumb, that we'll use the wrong words or flub the delivery, and that we'll wind up just embarrassing ourselves. But Nick and Schwan's research has shown that recipients don't really care about our performance. They are being judgy, but they're judging us by a totally different criterion,

our warmth. How nice and friendly and kind are we? Nick and Schwan have observed this pattern time and again. Recipients of compliments simply don't care about the complimenter's word choice or performance. They were just happy that someone took a genuine interest, that the compliment giver noticed something truly good about them.

So that's mistake number one. We wind up concentrating so much on the quality of our compliment giving that we completely mispredict how awkward a recipient will feel. And Nick has found that these pessimistic mispredictions matter a lot. Because it's those expectations that fundamentally drive your choice. If you think engaging in a conversation with somebody or giving a compliment to somebody is going to be weird or awkward

or it's not going to turn out so well, you're not going to reach out and do it. You might miss an opportunity to engage with somebody that otherwise you could have had. But Nick says there's also a second misprediction that prevents us from sharing as many kind words as we should. Many of the folks said this wasn't the right time to do it, but they were going to wait for the right time. If you've listened to other episodes of The Happiness Lab, you've probably already heard about how biased we are when it comes to our perception of time. That we're prone to putting off happiness-inducing actions now because we assume we'll remember to do them later. And this bias, it turns out, also prevents us from

giving compliments. It's a problem that even an expert like Nick has fallen prey to. Like the time he failed to commend a university colleague on a well-deserved promotion. That missed opportunity ate away at him. It had been months and months. I mean, a long time had passed, and I just hadn't seen her. And I saw her in the hallway yesterday, and that's like too late. The timing's all wrong. But I knew that was dumb, and so I just told her how valued she was by the faculty here, and I hope that she had heard that. And of course, she felt great. But it's not just performance anxiety and bad timing

that prevent us from sharing what we love about the people around us. Xuan says we also fall prey to a third bias. We assume that people are already aware of all their good traits. I won't give this compliment because that person already knows this. Someone else must have told them about this.

Xuan thinks we implicitly assume that the whole point of compliments is simply to share some positive fact about the recipient so they're aware of it. But it's not. It's about building relationship. Recognizing this relationship-building reason behind our compliments

has helped Schwan explain a strange finding that she and Nick observed in their studies. The power of compliments doesn't seem to degrade over time. Most of our happiness is subject to what's called adaptation. We tend to get used to the good things we experience over time. Nick and Schwan had originally assumed that we'd show adaptation for compliments too. That giving a compliment over and over would weaken the positive effect a recipient would get from your kind words. Think, honey, those scrambled eggs were great.

You did a great job tidying the yard. That's a great outfit. You might assume that that third great might start sounding a little less sincere. Nick and Schwan decided to test whether this was the case by getting people to say nice things to a close friend every day for five days. They recruited a group of participants to serve as complimenters and asked them to write five positive things about a good friend. They then emailed each of these five compliments one by one to recipients over the course of five days and then surveyed how they felt.

What did Nick and Siobhan find? Well, it turns out that their adaptation prediction was dead wrong. Recipients really liked the compliment they received on day one. They said they were at a 9 out of 10 on a positive mood scale. But they also really liked the compliment they received on day one. They said they were at a 9 out of 10 on a positive mood scale. But they also really liked the compliment they received on every day of the study. Even by day five, that flattered, positive vibe hadn't worn off. If anything, recipients reported being a tiny bit happier by the end of the week. And to further emphasize the importance of actually voicing nice things to the people we love,

Schwan shared a poignant postscript to this adaptation experiment. At the end of the study, Xuan sent the recipients a short final survey, just to see if they had any questions about the experiment. One of the recipients did have a question, one that Xuan found pretty shocking. She said, I don't know if I'm qualified to be in this study because my friend actually passed away in the past week. A few days after taking part in the experiment, one of the complimenters in Schwan's study was killed in a tragic car crash. I want to learn more from you, she had written to the

recipient. On another day, she told her friend that she had a nice smile. Her final compliment was simply, you care about people and people like you. These kind words were deeply comforting to the recipient after her unexpected loss. And she also wrote a really nice email to me afterwards expressing how she appreciated having this opportunity to hear from her friend. During the email exchange, the recipient wrote, I will remember her forever, my dear friend. Thank you for providing me a chance to still hear from her, even if I lost her. This tragic story really struck a chord with me. How many times do I think something nice about a friend or family member or work colleague, but just walk away without actually saying it? Not to get all morbid, but there's likely going to be one

unlucky day that I might not get a second chance. So why don't we all commit right now to sharing as many kind words as we can? After the break, we'll get some practical tips on how we can do just that. We'll hear that there are strategies we can use to become masterful, confident, and even happier compliment givers. And we'll get all this helpful expert advice from the guy who does it for a living. The first couple of times I did it, I was nervous. And we'll get all this helpful expert advice from the guy who does it for a living. The first couple of times I did it, I was nervous. But what I think is interesting is giving the compliments and literally seeing every one of them land.

The Happiness Lab will be back in a moment. Over the course of this new series on being more social, I'll be extolling the virtues of many different kinds of social interactions. But not all of them. I like receiving compliments as much as anyone. But I certainly don't want some jerk approaching me on the street and saying I'd have a pretty face if I smiled more. And social interaction aficionado Nick Epley agrees. He thinks that's not the type

of compliment people should be throwing around. The ones that are not received well are the ones that are inauthentic. The ones that aren't really intended to make the other person feel good. The ones that seem forced or are indeed creepy, that are mostly oriented towards the self and not oriented towards the other. Our data do not suggest you should go around all the time saying nice things to other people no matter what. Our data suggests that when you have a nice thing to say to somebody, you shouldn't hold back from saying it. And as Nick's colleague Xuan Zhao explains, it does help to remember that context really matters. There is a time for everything. So yes, probably don't compliment your female colleagues about their appearance.

Compliment them about their competence and their skills. This is something comedian Milo McCabe thinks about a lot. When he goes out dressed as Troy Hawk of the International Greeters Guild, Milo wants to get a laugh, not to creep people out. He doesn't want to get slapped or arrested. Wisely, Milo looks for inspiration from his own experience of being complimented. I bet if I asked you, right, I bet you could remember random compliments people gave you like years ago.

Personally, I remember walking down the street when I was about 23 or 24 and some guy just going, oh, I like those jeans. And you remember, it stays with you, and it brightened me up. So Milo aims to brighten a stranger's day with a genuine observation, but also one that can't be misconstrued as the prelude to something annoying or creepy. They might think you're after something. They might wonder if you've got any motivation. I mean, I've got a motivation. I want to say something funny that's on point that I'm catching on camera, but the character has no motivation.

Of course, not everyone is charmed by Troy's shtick. Sometimes somebody will just absolutely refuse to engage on any level. Just eyes down, what's going on? No eye contact. Just keep going straight past. But echoing what Nick and Schwan found in their studies, Milo finds that the vast majority of his interactions aren't awkward. Milo reckons his success rate in landing compliments is nearly 100%.

It will start as shock, surprise. Somebody's talking to me animatedly, and they're looking me directly in the eye, and they're giving me 100% their attention. So it'll be this kind of slight withering or fear or good Lord, what's going on? And then I will sort of look them right in the eye and fire this compliment at them. And almost always, it's an instantaneous kind of land. And I'll see someone brighten up almost every time now. Someone brightens up, smiles.

So what is Milo's formula for a compliment that will land? I think the key is like tailor-made, unmotivated. You can just go, I like your shoes. It will land because, you know, I'll be complimenting something they've probably thought about. Like a type of makeup or an arrangement of clothes that go together. They'd have probably put that on and gone, right, this is good. And then here, this bizarre looking stranger is reaffirming this with a big smile. And so it'll land, I would say, bespoke, unmotivated, and sincere. And you can't really go far wrong with that, I would say. I'd say that's the trifecta of necessary elements for a well-delivered compliment.

Now, you may wonder if Troy's compliments really are all that unmotivated and sincere. You might have assumed that Milo's mostly doing the whole Troy thing to establish his comedy career and pay the rent. But Milo's found a much more altruistic mission in the role of Troy Hawk. And you're not looking to get anything out of the person. You're just spreading a bit of joy. But you do get something out of the person because you get to feel good that you've just made someone else 2% happier.

Just like the participants in Nick and Schwan's experiments, Milo has found that most of his own anxieties about giving compliments were misplaced. He's learned firsthand that greeting strangers kindly isn't that scary. The reactions to his off-the-cuff comments are far more positive than he usually predicts. So much so that Milo doesn't even need Troy's scarf and smoking jacket to go into greeter guilt mode. What's interesting is in my personal life, I've actually started giving people more compliments. I kind of chastise myself if I'm passing someone and I notice something, you know, they are, that's cool.

I'll chastise myself now if I don't say it because I'm like, come on. And people don't recognize me out of character either. But even doing it out of character, I've got nothing but a good reaction. Whether it's brightening someone's day by politely complimenting a passerby or giving a heartfelt expression of appreciation to a friend, colleague, or family member,

the science shows we should all be trying to unlock our inner Troy Hawk. So why not try sharing a compliment with someone new? And try doing it without the usual fear of looking foolish, and with no expectation of getting anything in return. And commit to doing this same practice often, whenever and wherever it feels appropriate. Those few words could have a more profound impact than you think. Just ask Siobhan's husband.

His reluctance to say out loud what he genuinely felt in his heart nearly cost him the woman he loves. You know, our relationship got better and he was more, you know, he put more effort practicing his skill, giving compliments. And indeed, I receive compliments on a daily basis now.

So I really love that. Hello, this is Troy Hawke and you've hit the finish line. Wonderful endurance. You are a leviathan of the listening arts. Some folks will choose podcasts that's merely chewing gum for the ears. You've gone a different route, a more preferable one in my opinion, one that could enrich your understanding of yourself and others. So you give yourself a big old cuddle. That is a command. Deeply appreciate your patronage. On the next episode of this season on Connecting Better, we'll explore another way to fight under-sociality by

reaching out a bit more frequently to the people we care about. We'll see that we often underestimate how important a quick text or phone call can be to a friend in need. And we'll learn helpful tips for overcoming the usual busyness that can prevent us from being the best friend we can be. All that and more on the next episode of The Happiness Lab with me, Dr. Laurie Santos. With me, Dr. Laurie Santos. Special thanks to my agent Ben Davis and all of the Pushkin crew. cultivate deeper connections. You can learn more at flouriship.com. That's flouriship, F-L-O-U-R-I-S-H-I-P dot com.