Speaker 1: Pushkin. When I think of influence, I think of any
Speaker 1: time one person changes another person's attitude or behavior. That's
Speaker 1: Vanessa Vans, a professor of social psychology at Cornell, an
Speaker 1: author of the book You Have More Influence Than You Think.
Speaker 1: When I hear a title with the word influence in it,
Speaker 1: I immediately think of Dale Carnegie. In nineteen thirty six,
Speaker 1: he published the book How to Win Friends and Influence People,
Speaker 1: and it's still a bestseller today. Dale makes the case
Speaker 1: that influence is a skill we need to actively cultivate,
Speaker 1: but Vanessa makes the opposite argument. I am very purposely
Speaker 1: not the modern day Dale Arnegie, because I think there's
Speaker 1: so many resources out there that are trying to be that,
Speaker 1: you know, like here's how to win friends and influence people,
Speaker 1: just in these other thousand different ways. And I think
Speaker 1: my take is really that we already are influencing people,
Speaker 1: we just don't see it. On today's episode, what science
Speaker 1: teaches us about the influence we already have. I'm Maya Shunker,
Speaker 1: and this is a slight change of plans, a show
Speaker 1: about who we are and who we become in the
Speaker 1: face of a big change. I love when I come
Speaker 1: across research that shows we can improve our lives with
Speaker 1: just a small shift and perspective. Vanessa says, we don't
Speaker 1: need to follow a rigid set of principles or completely
Speaker 1: overhaul our personalities to be influential. There's a much simpler approach,
Speaker 1: and it starts with recognizing what even counts is influence.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people think of influence in
Speaker 1: a very formal sort of way. They think of those
Speaker 1: times when you're actively trying to persuade someone to completely
Speaker 1: change their minds, or you're standing in front of a
Speaker 1: room with your presentation trying to win over a set
Speaker 1: of clients. My definition of influence captures those kinds of instances,
Speaker 1: but it's also broader than that. It's also the times
Speaker 1: we just make a throwaway comment and suddenly that changes
Speaker 1: the way someone feels about something. It's just army or
Speaker 1: presence in a room that changes how people talk about
Speaker 1: a particular topic. And so I think of influence is
Speaker 1: so much more broad than a lot of people tend
Speaker 1: to think of influence. Yeah, and one reason your approach
Speaker 1: really resonates with me is that the know how to
Speaker 1: win over people strategically, it's always felt so ichy to
Speaker 1: me like a person needs to depart from who they
Speaker 1: are in order to have an impact on the world.
Speaker 1: And I think, as listeners will hear over the course
Speaker 1: of our conversation, this is about just staying true to
Speaker 1: who you are and what you already are made up of,
Speaker 1: and that can be enough. You don't have to engage
Speaker 1: in these huge strategic changes in order to affect people. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: we think we need to try so hard and get
Speaker 1: the wording exactly right to impact another person. But often
Speaker 1: just saying what we think, no matter how inarticulately, no
Speaker 1: matter how softly, at times people hear it and they
Speaker 1: think about it later, and we don't always see that.
Speaker 1: We think that if we had influenced someone will turn
Speaker 1: to us and say, right there, oh, you've totally changed
Speaker 1: my perspective on that. But think about all the times
Speaker 1: that you change your opinion, right, It often happens a
Speaker 1: week later, when you're still thinking about something somebody said.
Speaker 1: It happens after somebody else said the same thing. It's
Speaker 1: got this cumulative sort of nature, and we have a
Speaker 1: lot more influence that we don't see through these more
Speaker 1: subtle sorts of things. Yeah, as we're moving about in
Speaker 1: this world, we sometimes believe that we are wearing what
Speaker 1: you call an invisibility cloak. When we're sitting on the subway,
Speaker 1: listening to a podcast, or eating lunch at a cafe.
Speaker 1: It just feels like we're in our own little worlds
Speaker 1: and that no one's noticing us. I certainly feel this way,
Speaker 1: but research shows that isn't true, right, do you mind
Speaker 1: Vanessa sharing an example from the research. Sure. So. This
Speaker 1: is researched by my colleague Erica Boothby and her collaborators,
Speaker 1: and they show that we tend to think that we
Speaker 1: are observing other people more than other people are observing us. So,
Speaker 1: for example, and one study, researchers surveyed people who were
Speaker 1: eating lunch in a cafeteria and they asked them how
Speaker 1: much they thought other people were noticing them and curious
Speaker 1: about them. It turns out they underestimated how much people
Speaker 1: were noticing and curious about them by about sixty seven percent,
Speaker 1: which is a huge amount. You know, when I take
Speaker 1: a step back, it makes a lot of sense why
Speaker 1: we would reliably underestimate how much other people are observing us.
Speaker 1: We're rarely confronted with positive evidence that people are observing us, right,
Speaker 1: because it's really uncomfortable to sustain eye contact with someone
Speaker 1: on the subway who's just looked at you and you're
Speaker 1: looking at them. And you talk about the fact that
Speaker 1: humans tend to engage in what's called gaze deflection. So
Speaker 1: what this refers to is that when we look at someone,
Speaker 1: they have a tendency to deflect our gaze and to
Speaker 1: look away from us, even if they were just looking
Speaker 1: at us moments before. So we are absolutely left thinking
Speaker 1: that we are the only ones out there in the
Speaker 1: world who are observing others. That's right. And you could
Speaker 1: totally imagine the times that you know, you looked over
Speaker 1: at someone and caught eyes and you quickly looked away,
Speaker 1: and your assumption was probably that they caught you looking
Speaker 1: at them, right, when it's just as likely that you
Speaker 1: caught them looking at you. Okay, So, Vanessa, we've just
Speaker 1: established that generally speaking, we tend to underestimate how much
Speaker 1: people notice us. But you say that there's no need
Speaker 1: to get paranoid. Why should I not feel paranoid in
Speaker 1: this moment? Usually the first thing people think when I
Speaker 1: say that other people are paying attention to you more
Speaker 1: than you realize. Is that everybody's paying attention to the
Speaker 1: exact things that we wish that they weren't paying attention
Speaker 1: to our bad hair days or the times we misspoke
Speaker 1: or the times we tripped and fell, when in fact
Speaker 1: that's also not true, so it's actually kind of happy
Speaker 1: news all around. This is based on a finding called
Speaker 1: the spotlight effect. This fear that we have a spotlight
Speaker 1: shining on our most self conscious flaws or concerns, and
Speaker 1: that everybody else is looking at them, when in fact
Speaker 1: they aren't. They're seeing us as a whole person, and
Speaker 1: whatever embarrassing thing we have going on, they really aren't
Speaker 1: even noticing. So, to summarize, we tend to underestimate how
Speaker 1: much other people notice us, except when it has to
Speaker 1: do with something that we're very self conscious about or
Speaker 1: we're really embarrassed by. And one reason that this is
Speaker 1: so important is because of the connection between observation and influence.
Speaker 1: Right when others are observing us, we have the potential
Speaker 1: to influence them. When we're observing others, they have the
Speaker 1: potential to influence us. And so it's really important to
Speaker 1: realize that there is a really strong connection between these
Speaker 1: two concepts. That's right, So our mere presence with another
Speaker 1: person can impact so many things. Let's talk about a
Speaker 1: few situations in which we might be influencing people without
Speaker 1: realizing it, what I might call passive influence. Research shows
Speaker 1: that just sharing in an experience with someone can influence
Speaker 1: how they experience that thing. So this is work on
Speaker 1: this idea that shared experiences tend to be amplified or intensified.
Speaker 1: And some of my favorite work on this was done
Speaker 1: using chocolate, where they had a participant come in and
Speaker 1: eat a piece of chocolate and they either did it
Speaker 1: by themselves or they did it with another person in
Speaker 1: the room who ate the exact same kind of chocolate.
Speaker 1: And they weren't allowed to speak, and they couldn't even
Speaker 1: look at each other and make guys and decide that
Speaker 1: this is good or this is bad. All they could
Speaker 1: do was be present in the same room together, and
Speaker 1: the fact that they were eating this chocolate in the
Speaker 1: same space as another person actually amplified the experience of
Speaker 1: eating that chocolate. So when the chocolate was sweet and delicious,
Speaker 1: they said that it was even more sweet and delicious
Speaker 1: if they were eating it with another person than if
Speaker 1: they were eating it by themselves. But the most interesting
Speaker 1: thing to me is that it's not just that the
Speaker 1: presence of another person made the experience better or more positive.
Speaker 1: It turns out that when they gave them bitter chocolate,
Speaker 1: which didn't taste great, and they ate it with another person,
Speaker 1: they thought it tasted worse and more bitter. So even
Speaker 1: in the case where you were doing something negative, the
Speaker 1: experience was amplified. It wasn't made better by the presence
Speaker 1: of another person. It was actually just intensified intensified. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And what do you think the mechanism at play here is? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the researchers explain this finding by something that they
Speaker 1: call mentalization. So basically what this is is that while
Speaker 1: you're having an experience and reflecting on how you feel
Speaker 1: about that experience, you're simultaneously wondering how that other person
Speaker 1: is experiencing that thing and what they think of this chocolate,
Speaker 1: for example, And because you're seeing it through two minds,
Speaker 1: your own and another person's, it amplifies that experience. It's
Speaker 1: that experience squared, deliciousness squared deliciousness squared. Yeah. And you
Speaker 1: also say in your book that when we read books
Speaker 1: that we other people are reading. When we watch shows
Speaker 1: that other people are watching, we tend to pay more
Speaker 1: attention to those shows. We remember them better, Right, So
Speaker 1: it just feels like we're having a more immersive experience.
Speaker 1: That's right. When you have a book club and you
Speaker 1: know all your friends are reading the same book, you're
Speaker 1: reading the book with those other people in mind. I
Speaker 1: wonder how so and so is going to react to
Speaker 1: this plot turn, I wonder what this person's going to
Speaker 1: think of this particular character. My friends and I do
Speaker 1: this thing we call music Taste Test, where we all
Speaker 1: submit a set of songs and then it gets downloaded
Speaker 1: to a playlist that we all listen to, and then
Speaker 1: we rank them all after a couple weeks of listening
Speaker 1: to this playlist. It just makes listening to a playlist
Speaker 1: so much more interesting because the whole time I'm thinking like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I know that this person is going
Speaker 1: to hate this song or this person's going to love
Speaker 1: this song, and it just amplifies the whole experience and
Speaker 1: makes it so much more pleasant. Yeah. I love the
Speaker 1: research showing that even when we're just an audience member,
Speaker 1: we can have influence on the person or people who
Speaker 1: are at the front of the room. And the reason
Speaker 1: that this is so surprising is because it's definitely a
Speaker 1: context in which we think influence flows in just one direction,
Speaker 1: right from say the speaker to the crowd, but it's
Speaker 1: actually flowing in two directions. Yeah, this is one of
Speaker 1: my favorite findings. Just like we think of influence in
Speaker 1: this formal way, right, we think that it's that person
Speaker 1: in the front of the room on the podium with
Speaker 1: the microphone, that's the person doing all the influencing in
Speaker 1: the room. But in fact, for anybody who stood in
Speaker 1: front of a room of people, you are looking out
Speaker 1: at that crowd of people and wondering what they think
Speaker 1: of you. Right, You're trying to get a response from them.
Speaker 1: You're trying to get them to like you, to agree
Speaker 1: with what you have to say, and so you're looking
Speaker 1: out for any kind of cue that they may or
Speaker 1: may not be agreeing with what you have to say,
Speaker 1: and so you're altering your behavior based on what you see.
Speaker 1: You also are altering the things you say based on
Speaker 1: what you presume that audience is going to respond to. So,
Speaker 1: in a classic study on how much we tend to
Speaker 1: tune our messages to the audience, that we're talking to.
Speaker 1: The experimenters brought participants into the lab and they had
Speaker 1: them listen to this speech. It was a neutral speech
Speaker 1: about legalizing marijuana, so there were pros, there were cons.
Speaker 1: It didn't make any particular conclusion. And then these participants
Speaker 1: were told, we'd like you to summarize this speech to
Speaker 1: this other person. They were either told, this other person
Speaker 1: is already pro legalization, or this other person is against legalization.
Speaker 1: The participants gave the summary of this neutral speech, but
Speaker 1: when they gave it to the person who was pro legalization,
Speaker 1: it took on a little bit more of a pro
Speaker 1: legalization bent. When they gave it to the person who
Speaker 1: was against legalization, it came across as much more against legalization.
Speaker 1: The most fascinating part about this is that the person
Speaker 1: who was receiving the summary knew that that person giving
Speaker 1: the summary didn't actually have this belief. They were just
Speaker 1: summarizing someone else's belief. So, for example, imagine I was
Speaker 1: summarizing this particular speech for you maya. I know that
Speaker 1: you know that it's not my opinion. I'm just doing
Speaker 1: this for the experiment, or I'm just summarizing this speech,
Speaker 1: and yet I'm somehow tailoring it to your viewpoint, because
Speaker 1: that desire to tune to your audience is so strong.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is so interesting. I don't know, it
Speaker 1: just feels like this very primitive desire to be liked,
Speaker 1: for people to like us. And so even when we
Speaker 1: know that person's not going to describe what I'm saying
Speaker 1: to my own values or beliefs, you just know in
Speaker 1: that moment, they're still, through some sort of association, going
Speaker 1: to like me a little more if I err on
Speaker 1: their side of the debate. Absolutely, we just don't want
Speaker 1: to be associated with that position that we know this
Speaker 1: person isn't going to like, even if we kind of
Speaker 1: say no, no, no, no, it's not mine. I'd love
Speaker 1: to also talk about situations where we make decisions that
Speaker 1: we think are just for us or just for ourselves,
Speaker 1: that they can have a really strong influence on those
Speaker 1: around us. Yeah, So this is another aspect of how
Speaker 1: we can impact people simply by them seeing what we do,
Speaker 1: simply by them observing our behaviors and our decisions. So
Speaker 1: you can imagine, you know, we see somebody else litter
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, we think, okay, that's normative around here.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's not a big deal if I'd throw my
Speaker 1: banan appeal on the ground. If we see somebody else
Speaker 1: put some trash in the correct receptacle, you know, we're
Speaker 1: more likely to follow suit. So one of the things
Speaker 1: that comes out of this tendency for people to observe
Speaker 1: our behaviors more than we realize and then follow suit
Speaker 1: with our behaviors more than we realize is that every
Speaker 1: time we make a decision or engage in a behavior,
Speaker 1: that decision or behavior actually has too a fact. We
Speaker 1: have a direct effect on our environment that particular decision
Speaker 1: that we've taken, but there's also this secondary indirect effect
Speaker 1: that could be even bigger, and that indirect effect is
Speaker 1: all the people who observed us do that thing who
Speaker 1: are now impacted by it. And this is something called
Speaker 1: behavior contagion, where basically, when we see somebody else do something,
Speaker 1: we're more likely to do it ourselves. So one example is,
Speaker 1: say I schedule a destination wedding. I'm not just responsible
Speaker 1: for the carbon footprint of my own wedding, but also
Speaker 1: for the fact that everybody who comes to my wedding
Speaker 1: and has an amazing time wants to have their own
Speaker 1: destination wedding, and now there are all these other destination
Speaker 1: weddings who are producing their own carbon footprint, and then
Speaker 1: those weddings spawn more people having destination weddings, and so
Speaker 1: there isn't just the one decision of my wedding, but
Speaker 1: in fact there is this effect where it continues on
Speaker 1: and on. After the break, Vanessa teaches us how to
Speaker 1: navigate situations when we're intentionally trying to influence others. She
Speaker 1: also shares a cautionary note about how we can wield
Speaker 1: our influence more carefully. We'll be back in a moment
Speaker 1: with a slight change of plans. So far, we've talked
Speaker 1: about ways in which we have what I was calling
Speaker 1: before more passive forms of influence, the way that we
Speaker 1: can influence people literally just by showing up. But of
Speaker 1: course there are times when we're more actively trying to
Speaker 1: influence people. So, for example, sometimes we need people to
Speaker 1: do things for us, and it can be extremely uncomfortable
Speaker 1: and nerve racking to make these kinds of requests. What
Speaker 1: does the research say about how we should be navigating
Speaker 1: these kinds of situations. This is such a fascinating topic
Speaker 1: because it seems like such a simple thing to ask
Speaker 1: someone for something. If I want something, you know, be
Speaker 1: a raise, or I just need a favor from a friend,
Speaker 1: I should be able to just go ask. And yet
Speaker 1: we all know that it's just not that simple, that
Speaker 1: asking can be so painful and awkward. But what we
Speaker 1: found in our research is that, in fact, people are
Speaker 1: much more likely to agree to do things for us
Speaker 1: when we ask for them than we expect. So this
Speaker 1: idea that people are disagreeable and when we ask for something,
Speaker 1: what we're trying to do is to get to yes
Speaker 1: or even get past no. Right, it's just not true.
Speaker 1: In fact, people tend to default to being agreeable, but
Speaker 1: we don't realize that until we start asking more and
Speaker 1: suddenly we realize that people are actually much more likely
Speaker 1: to agree than we expect. And you found this during
Speaker 1: your early years as a right. Yeah, When I was
Speaker 1: a graduate student at Columbia, Frank Flynn a professor at Columbia,
Speaker 1: and I we're running a study where we wanted a
Speaker 1: diverse adult participant sample, and so I left the Columbia
Speaker 1: campus and went down to Penn Station every day and
Speaker 1: asked people to fill out my survey for the study.
Speaker 1: And it was so painful going up to people. Yes,
Speaker 1: I can understand. It was just torturous going up to
Speaker 1: people over and over and being like, will you fill
Speaker 1: out my survey? Will you fill out my survey? And
Speaker 1: so when the study was completed and Frank Flynn and
Speaker 1: I started looking at the data, it didn't work out,
Speaker 1: and I was particularly devastated because it had been so
Speaker 1: painful to collect that data. Yeah, And so I was
Speaker 1: describing this to Frank and saying, oh my god, I
Speaker 1: just I can't believe it after all that, and he
Speaker 1: kind of looked at the data and was like, can
Speaker 1: you say more about what all that is because I'm
Speaker 1: looking and in fact, it looks like most people were
Speaker 1: saying yeah to you where the nose particularly bad? And
Speaker 1: I was like, no, actually, people were pretty polite when
Speaker 1: they said no. Most people were pretty happy to help.
Speaker 1: And so we realized that maybe that was the big
Speaker 1: finding that in fact, the way influence was in my head,
Speaker 1: the way it was to ask someone for something so painful,
Speaker 1: so awkward, actually wasn't as awful in reality. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: just thinking back to when I was an undergrad doing research,
Speaker 1: and that was during the period of my life where
Speaker 1: I studied non human primates, and so we'd end up
Speaker 1: going to this island where the monkey to human ratio
Speaker 1: is five hundred to one, and you can't like ask
Speaker 1: a monkey, hey, hey, monkey, do you want to participated
Speaker 1: by experiment? And so what we do is like we
Speaker 1: walk around with little fruits like coconuts and apples and
Speaker 1: stuff to try to lure them into the experiment, which
Speaker 1: was a whole different kind of asking. And I thought
Speaker 1: that was already a fairly painful experience, but it still
Speaker 1: fell short of how uncomfortable it was to ask adults
Speaker 1: a year later in my visual perception lab to fill
Speaker 1: out a survey for me in exchange for candy or
Speaker 1: whatever it was that I was asking of them. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. It's hard. It's hard for us humans. That
Speaker 1: needs to be my next study where I just have
Speaker 1: people either ask a person or some sort of non
Speaker 1: humans a recess of a caste exactly bring me back.
Speaker 1: Lots of screeching on that island. So backtracking a little bit,
Speaker 1: when it comes to people's willingness to say yes to
Speaker 1: things more than we think you said, that can also
Speaker 1: change our approach to asking people for things. I think
Speaker 1: the two main risks of underestimating our influence and others
Speaker 1: willingness to do things for us. Is one that we
Speaker 1: might be overly assertive, right if I think that you're
Speaker 1: not going to be open to my influence attempt, if
Speaker 1: you're going to say no, then I'm going to come
Speaker 1: in guns blazing trying to push for what I want.
Speaker 1: Other risk is that I assume that you're just going
Speaker 1: to say no, and so I don't even bother asking,
Speaker 1: or I ask for too little, or I ask indirectly
Speaker 1: by sort of hinting, so I don't really run the
Speaker 1: risk that you're actually going to reject me. And of
Speaker 1: course all those are also in effective ways of influencing
Speaker 1: other people. So it really keeps you from hitting that
Speaker 1: sort of perfect middle ground where you ask directly, you
Speaker 1: ask for what you think you deserve, but you don't
Speaker 1: do it in this overly assertive way that people don't
Speaker 1: respond well too. So there are studies showing that people
Speaker 1: are twice as likely to agree to things they're being
Speaker 1: asked then we think they are, and so we just
Speaker 1: overestimate in a lot of cases the likelihood of rejection.
Speaker 1: And you and your research team just ran such a
Speaker 1: clever study where you got people quite outside their comfort zone,
Speaker 1: I would say yeah. So one day we came up
Speaker 1: with the idea of sending our participants into libraries with
Speaker 1: a book that we made to look like a live
Speaker 1: book and asking people to vandalize the book. So they
Speaker 1: would go up to people in libraries and say, Hey,
Speaker 1: I'm playing a prank of my friend. Will you please
Speaker 1: just write the word pickle and pan in this library book.
Speaker 1: Of course, they thought most people would say no, yeah,
Speaker 1: but when they actually made the request, most people said yes.
Speaker 1: We didn't even think it was going to work. We
Speaker 1: were a surprise as our research participants. This is crazy,
Speaker 1: there's no way the study is going to work. And
Speaker 1: yet the majority of people ended up saying yes, yeah.
Speaker 1: And there's an interesting mechanism at play that's leading people
Speaker 1: to say yes that we might not fully appreciate. Do
Speaker 1: you mind talking about what researchers call insinuation anxiety? Sure? So.
Speaker 1: Insinuation anxiety is this fear we have of insinuating something
Speaker 1: negative about another person. So, for example, if someone were
Speaker 1: to ask me to borrow my cell phone and I
Speaker 1: said no, what does that say about what I think
Speaker 1: of them? That I don't trust them to give my
Speaker 1: phone back, that I think they might do something weird
Speaker 1: with it, that I don't think that they look like
Speaker 1: a nice person that I want to help out. There's
Speaker 1: so many worries there about what saying no might insinuate,
Speaker 1: and we're really averse to doing things that are socially risky,
Speaker 1: potentially making someone feel bad or awkward, or suggesting that
Speaker 1: we're not a helpful person. And you can see how
Speaker 1: powerful this effective is because even in a case where
Speaker 1: people are being asked to do what most of society
Speaker 1: would agree is an immoral act, which is vandalizing a
Speaker 1: public library book, their fear of insinuating that they don't
Speaker 1: trust this person is so strong that a lot more
Speaker 1: people than we would think are actually willing to go ahead.
Speaker 1: I think that this shows up in a lot of
Speaker 1: really consequential situations. If I'm not willing to insinuate that
Speaker 1: you're a bad, untrustworthy person, if you're asking me to
Speaker 1: vandalize a library book, if there's any ambiguity about some
Speaker 1: comment that you make that's inappropriate, then what am I insinuating?
Speaker 1: If I speak up in that situation so that fear
Speaker 1: can cause us to hold back from saying all sorts
Speaker 1: of things that we maybe should say. Yeah. So, I
Speaker 1: think this is such an important mechanism to talk about
Speaker 1: insinuation anxiety, because we might have all this influence that
Speaker 1: we don't realize we have, but we never want to
Speaker 1: misuse that influence. And so given that we know people
Speaker 1: are sometimes saying yes to us simply to allay their
Speaker 1: own anxieties, their own social anxieties, we should be quite
Speaker 1: careful of what we ask of people, right, because they
Speaker 1: might be inclined to say yes, but not always for
Speaker 1: the right reasons. That's right. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people assume the takeaway from my research is that we
Speaker 1: should just ask all the time for anything we want
Speaker 1: because people are more likely to give it than we think,
Speaker 1: when in fact, if part of the mechanism there is
Speaker 1: that people are often saying yes because it's so hard
Speaker 1: to say no because they have anxiety about I know,
Speaker 1: to us, then really it's not about just asking for
Speaker 1: anything we want. It's about being more mindful about what
Speaker 1: we ask for. Yeah, being judicious. Yeah, All of this
Speaker 1: research is just about increasing our awareness of our influence.
Speaker 1: It's not saying use it more, use it less. It's saying,
Speaker 1: be aware of all the spaces in which that influence exists,
Speaker 1: and then use your moral judgment to figure out what's
Speaker 1: appropriate in any given situation. Exactly another finding that I
Speaker 1: loved reading about in your book. This is such a
Speaker 1: hopeful message, Vanessa, that we regularly make better and less
Speaker 1: awkward impressions on people than we think, and on the
Speaker 1: whole people feel more positively towards us, which is powerful
Speaker 1: because we know from research that when someone likes us more,
Speaker 1: we do have a greater ability to influence them. You
Speaker 1: call this the liking gap, right, the difference between our
Speaker 1: perception of how much people like us and how much
Speaker 1: they actually do like us. That's right. This is more
Speaker 1: research by Erica booth Be on this finding called the
Speaker 1: liking gap. And what she does is she brings people
Speaker 1: together and has them just have a simple conversation. Then
Speaker 1: she lets them go their separate ways and gives them
Speaker 1: some questionnaires and ask them how much do you think
Speaker 1: that other person liked you and enjoyed that conversation? How
Speaker 1: much do you think that they'd want to hang out
Speaker 1: with you again in the future. But she also asked
Speaker 1: them how much did you like that other person, and
Speaker 1: what she finds is this gap in our perceptions, and
Speaker 1: that gap between our perceptions of how much we think
Speaker 1: the other person liked us and how much they report
Speaker 1: having liked us is twelve percent. So people like us
Speaker 1: twelve percent more than we think that they did. And
Speaker 1: this is consistent across the board, but it's especially true
Speaker 1: for introverts. So people who are particularly shy and worried
Speaker 1: about how they come across in a conversation are actually
Speaker 1: doing much better than they tend to think. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm sure your book has empowered so many people by
Speaker 1: helping them realize the influence they already have. And as
Speaker 1: we've talked about, it's a double edged sword. You want
Speaker 1: to moderate your behaviors in certain cases, and you want
Speaker 1: to lean in to your behaviors in other cases. Any
Speaker 1: personal stories, Vanessa, of ways that it's changed your approach
Speaker 1: to try and influence people or not try every being
Speaker 1: aware that you might be influencing them in ways you
Speaker 1: didn't want to. I'm just curious to how this has
Speaker 1: affected your personal life. One of the things I talk
Speaker 1: about in the book is how much more expressing gratitude
Speaker 1: means to other people than we tend to think or realize,
Speaker 1: and so I'd say, if there's one thing that's really
Speaker 1: impacted my life, it's that I try to express gratitude more.
Speaker 1: And even this happened just last week. So I am
Speaker 1: writing a new syllabus for a new course I'm teaching,
Speaker 1: and I was thinking about how when I was a
Speaker 1: first year in college, so twenty five years ago, I
Speaker 1: took this amazing course, and I want this course to
Speaker 1: feel like that course. And I was thinking about someone's class,
Speaker 1: another person's class from twenty five years ago that was
Speaker 1: still impacting me today. And because I know that gratitude
Speaker 1: means so much, I sent him a thank you note.
Speaker 1: I tracked down his email. He had already moved to
Speaker 1: another school. I said, thank you so much. Your course
Speaker 1: meant so much. I'm thinking about it twenty five years
Speaker 1: later and trying to incorporate it into my syllabus. He
Speaker 1: wrote back this lovely email. We had a back and
Speaker 1: forth kind of just updating each other on our lives.
Speaker 1: It was like, let's stay in touch. And it was
Speaker 1: just such an amazing experience that went from I learned
Speaker 1: something from someone, which is awesome, but not just that
Speaker 1: I appreciated how longstanding that impact was and got to
Speaker 1: give something to him in the form of their gratitude
Speaker 1: and received something back and the fact that I felt
Speaker 1: so good about it. So it became such a more
Speaker 1: wonderful situation. And we hold back so often because we
Speaker 1: worry about saying the right thing. We think that we're
Speaker 1: going to write this awkward email and the other person's
Speaker 1: going to feel weird, But in fact, the other person
Speaker 1: doesn't really care how you say. It gets back to
Speaker 1: not worrying about in articulate right. No one cares how
Speaker 1: you express gratitude. If you're expressing gratitude to them, it
Speaker 1: just feels good. Hey, thanks so much for listening. Join
Speaker 1: me next week when I talk with science writer Florence Williams.
Speaker 1: After her twenty five year marriage came to a sudden end,
Speaker 1: Florence went on a quest to understand how heartbreak was
Speaker 1: affecting her mind and body. Heartbreak is one of the
Speaker 1: hidden landmines of human existence, and we don't really take
Speaker 1: it seriously enough. It's so disorienting in a way that's
Speaker 1: kind of like a deep freak out, and you feel
Speaker 1: it emotionally. And it turns out our immune systems and
Speaker 1: our bodies are really paying very close attention to that
Speaker 1: sense of freak out, so I had this tremendous urgency
Speaker 1: to try to understand it. A Slight Change of Plans
Speaker 1: is created, written an executive produced by me Maya Schunker.
Speaker 1: The Slight Change family includes our showrunner Tyler Green, our
Speaker 1: senior editor Kate Parkinson Morgan, our sound engineer Andrew Vestola,
Speaker 1: and our associate producer Sarah McCrae. Louis Skara wrote our
Speaker 1: delightful theme song, and Ginger Smith helped arrange the vocals.
Speaker 1: A Slight Change of Plans is a production of Pushkin Industry,
Speaker 1: so big thanks to everyone there, and of course a
Speaker 1: very special thanks to Jimmy Lee. You can follow A
Speaker 1: Slight Change of Plans on Instagram at doctor Maya Shunker.