The Click Effect — Inside the Science and Magic of Social Chemistry

Our outdoor space has always been fine. It worked, but it wasn't somewhere where you naturally wanted to spend time. We got a couple mismatched chairs, a table that did the job, stuff we kept me to upgrade but never got around to. Well, lately the weather started getting really nice here in Tulsa and we've been eating outside more. And once you do that a few nights in a row, you start noticing all the little things that could be better. So I've been on a wayfare looking at ways to improve it. Better seating, a table will actually fit what we need, maybe some lighting. What I love about wayfare is how easy it is to find things you want and need. You can filter by size, price, materials, go through tons of reviews and get a clear sense of what you're buying. And they've got everything in one place, you're not piecing it together across a bunch of different sites. They've also got fast shipping and options for assembly, which makes pulling the trigger a lot easier. It just makes the whole process simpler so you can actually follow through and upgrading your outdoor space. Get prepared for patio season for way less. Head to wayfare.com right now and shop all things home. That's wayfare.com. W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com. Wayfare. Every style. Every home. Wayfare. Every style. Every home. So when we first started the art of mailing a store, there was definitely that voice in the back of my head. What if nobody buys anything? What if this doesn't work? One thing that made it easier was having Shopify. We've used Shopify for years now to run the AOM store and it handles everything in one place. Inventory. Payments. Analytics. So you're not juggling a bunch of different tools. It's the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of all e-commerce in the US from big brands to smaller operations like ours. And Shopify actually helps you find customers. You can run email and social campaigns right from the platform and that shop pay checkout makes a big difference. Fewer abandoned carts. More completed purchases. And if you ever get stuck, they've got 24/7 customer support which matters when you're figuring things out as you go. It's time to turn those what is into results with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com/manliness. Go to Shopify.com/[email protected]/manliness. Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the AOM podcast which since 2008 has featured conversations with the world's best authors, thinkers and leaders that glean their edifying, life-improving insights without the fluff and filler. The AOM podcast is just one part of the McKay mission to help individuals practice timeless virtues through thought, word and deed. Also be sure to explore articles and artofmanlies.com. Read the deeper dyes we do in our substack newsletter at dinebreed.net and turn our content into real world action by joining the Strenuous Life program at strenuouslife.com. Now on to the show. We've all had that feeling. You meet someone new and the conversation just flows. You're in sync. You click. But what's really happening when that magic occurs? My guest today is journalist Kate Murphy, author of Why We Click, the Emerging Science of Inimpersonal Syncreening. And she says this experience isn't just a vibe. It's a miserable, physiological phenomenon and the most consequential social dynamic most people have never heard of. In our conversation, we dig into what happens when people click, why syncing with others feels so good and how it influences everything from friendships to teamwork to romantic relationships. We also talk about why some people have a knack for connection, how you can become more clickable and why video calls are the worst. After shows over, check out our show notes at awim.ias/click. All right, Kate Murphy, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure. You've got a book out called Why We Click. It's all about that feeling that we've all experienced where we're clicking with someone socially. It could be the first time we meet them and we're just like, man, I'm on the same page with this person. I'm vibing with them. And there's actually a name for this in the scientific literature, interpersonal synchrony. And you call it in your book the most important social dynamic. So why is interpersonal synchrony so important? Well, it is the way we connect, just like you said. It is the physiological mechanism, the under the hood mechanism for connection. And interpersonal synchrony, the way I define it is, it's the, and I still think it's magical, that moment of clicking, but it's the magical, but now scientifically documented, tendency of human beings to fall into rhythm with one another. And what I mean by that is when you gather two or more people together in a room, instantaneously, usually in less than 30 seconds, they will not only begin to match or mirror one another's gestures, facial expressions, and postures, they will also start to sync up their heart rate, their respiration, their hormonal activity, their pupil dilation, all these physiological signals that we cannot detect, but we sync up to them nevertheless. And why do we do this? We do this because when we internalize and embody one another, we are able to get a read on one another's thoughts and feelings. And so when you smile, when someone else smiles, you get a read on their joy. When you flinch, like when you're watching a football game and you see a quarterback get sacked and you flinch, you are actually intuiting their pain. And also when you sync up with somebody else's racing heart, you start to feel their anxiety. So it's really a evolutionary advantage of human beings of being able to tell very quickly, instantaneously, for under-fo. What are they thinking? What are they feeling? I think all of us have probably heard this idea that we mirror each other. So if someone puts their hand on their chin, we have a tendency to put our hand on our chin if we're syncing up with them. But yeah, you go into the fact that there's a lot more going on with our physiology than just that. Besides mirroring gestures, you mentioned your heart rate syncs up, your hormonal activity syncs up. And there's also research that shows that when people are syncing socially, their brain activity, their brain wave sync up. Yeah, that's key. And that really shows that there's been this transfer, particularly during meaningful conversations. It doesn't happen, interestingly, during vacuous conversations, very superficial conversations, during meaningful conversations. And I learned this when I was writing the listening book. And it really got me started on this next book about synchrony. But when the listener and the speaker are really understanding one another, their neural patterns, their brain waves start to sync up. And that is a measurable way of seeing, okay, there's been a transfer of thoughts, memories, and feelings. So that's really critically important. But also when you are having these meaningful conversations, particularly when you're in the presence of another person. And I contact, you know, we've always been told, look people in the eye, it's really true because we start to mimic other people's pupil dilation. And there are all these things happening like micro expressions on your face that you are mimicking totally subconsciously. And that aren't really visible. But we're mimicking them just the same. And it helps us again, embody and turnalyze one another and really feel and get in the rhythm and the groove. We, you know, vibe sounds very West Coast woo-woo. But to really get a read on the other person's vibe, people have energy. They have negative and positive energy. And that's how we pick it up. Yeah. And as you're talking about how we all have this desire to connect and click with people and how we want to sync up and basically almost become the same person, it reminds me there's that myth from Plato talking about where men and women came from. And the myth was that there was a time before and premortal time where there's these creatures that were kind of like a donut shaped like a circle looking thing that had, you know, four arms and four legs and two heads and they were together and kind of connected at the belly button. They kind of wheeled around like cartwheel to get around. And then they separated. I know exactly what you know. And then they separated and that became men and women. And then like we just had this desire like we want to become that one person again. Yeah. The idea Plato had was that we're roaming the planet looking for our missing other half that we've been separated from. But interpersonal synchrony tells us that what we're really looking for is we are looking for the person with whom we effortlessly sync. The person who harmonize with us. The people that we are on their wavelength. I love how these all these turns of phrase things that we have said for, you know, time and memorial being in sync and step in tune on the same wavelength. And on the other side, discord and you know, that kind of thing unharmonious that those are all actually true. These things that we were feeling now we have the technology to actually see that's actually what's happening. We're syncing up in this way. And that's what feels so good. So syncing feels good in the moment. And then when you consistently have those clicking moments with someone, that's what makes for fulfilling long term relationship. What contributes to our ability to sync with others? Is there a genetic factor? Does it have something to do with our early childhood development? Is it a mixture of both? Yeah, I think it's all of that. And I love that you're bringing up the genetics because that I really I really want to say on the outset that this This is an emerging science, and we don't understand it. Exactly. Why it happens when it happens. That's why it's still magical. I mean, why did John Lennon and Paul McCartney click on so many different levels and were able to produce and have the impact that they did. And the same thing with all of us when we click with somebody, it's still somewhat magical. But yes, I do think everything comes into play there. It's genetics, it's your history, it's everything that has happened to you in life. It's embodied within you in every neural twitch, everything that you do is a product of all of those pieces all the way back to when you were in utero. So I like to use the analogy that we're all kind of like we're made up of trillions of oscillating cells. And what we're all kind of like are these massive symphony orchestras with all of these different instruments playing at different frequencies and amplitudes. And you meet another person and they've got their whole orchestra from all these different pieces that came together. And it's just a matter of whether or not you two are able to harmonize that you are able to, it's not necessarily you're going to start playing their song and get on their tempo entirely. Are they're going to do the same to yours. What's really remarkable is how we both somewhat accommodate to one another and play this even more beautiful tune together. And we also the key point is we interpret it as pleasurable. So it's not so much of putting each other in a exact common state of arousal. It's more accommodating one another and playing this beautiful song together that we both are really in the groove. If that makes sense. Yeah, it's a dance. It is a dance. Well, what you talk about is stuff like genetics and upbringing influences someone's general ability to sync with people. It's like their overall capacity to connect with people. But those things, they also influence your personality, your disposition, which also influences whether we click with people. Like there has to be some kind of alignment there. Not that you have to be perfectly parallel in the same. You can still sync if you compliment each other in some way, even if you're different. Yeah, because that's what's sort of kind of cool about this is if there are so many people that we can think of who are odd couples that come together. And that we never would have like, God, I never would put those two together, whether it's friends or romantic couples. So you can sync with people that you never thought you would single with. Something else you talk about is that there are certain people who are just especially good at syncing with other people. And there are people that have, and I talk about this in the book, we have something called effective presence. And we're all familiar with personality and that's sort of the general state of how we feel. But effective presence is this consistent way that we make other people feel. And there are some people that just for lack of a better word have a really good vibe that people just sync to very easily. You can call it charisma, you can call it a vibe, you can call it just, you know, somebody who's just really has a compelling personality. And it doesn't mean there always a beat. It's not just that. It's just people are drawn to them. But we all carry around an effective presence that is something that is I think useful to think about is how do I leave people? Am I leaving people better or worse than I found them? Are they more uptight? Are they happier after they're around me? And what does that mean and what can I do about it? I think that's worth remembering that we all have this personal atmosphere that can influence how people feel. And then we should be mindful and thoughtful about how we want to leave people feeling after we leave their presence. You know, as we're talking about this, people might be thinking that these good singers, these people who can click easily with people, you know, people probably think, well, they're probably all extroverts, they're bubbly, they're charismatic and that sort of stereotypical way we think of charisma. But you highlight examples of individuals who have that great effective presence and they're not super dynamic, but people are still drawn to them. Yeah, and I think that's because they're able to put them in sort of a calming cadence for lack of a better word. They calm you down, they make you feel more secure. There are also lots of people that can just make you feel more competent or just there's something about their presence that you find pleasurable. Again, it's like tuning into them and you find it pleasant. I also, I think it's worth noting that we're not going to sink with everybody. And as much as we might like to our think we like to, we're really not meant to. And so part of maturity is realizing that there will be people that you can really hum along with and you're really going to click with them and other people you're just, no, that's not going to work. And you know it instantly and there's no use really forcing the issue and it's also people usually have two reactions to that failure to connect is to say, first of all, there's something wrong with that person, you know, that that I didn't connect with them. There's something wrong with that person or there's something wrong with me that I wasn't compelling enough are that's why we didn't connect. And sometimes, you know, no harm, no foul, you're just not a good fit. And that's okay. Yeah, you're not fair, everybody and everyone's not for you. Exactly. Yeah. So there's some individuals who just, they've got some sort of knack for clicking with a lot of people, they got that effective presence. What about individuals on the autism spectrum? Because that's something you hear about, like it's hard for them people with autism to socialize because maybe they don't pick up on cues as much. Are they still able to sink? You know, that's an interesting question. I actually found it really fascinating because there, there are two schools of thought about that. And one is is that just having a really difficult time noticing, sinking that they're, you're so internally directed that they have a hard time sinking with other people. There's another school of thought is that they are so overwhelmed by all the signals they're receiving that they're flooded. And so they aren't able to sink. There's also some absolutely fascinating literature that they're, and this is the case for also people who have some learning difficulties also perhaps with ADD, but certainly autism is that their deficits and their ability to keep time, keep a beat essentially. They have a really hard time keeping a beat to music and also apparently keeping a beat with other people because we all have a rhythm. Neural patterns are rhythmic inherently rhythmic. Everything in the universe is pretty much because, you know, atoms in and of themselves inherently rhythmic. And so the inability to keep time is an indicator and is also how they're actually using that as a way to diagnose people who do have some of these neurological difficulties to find out whether or not that's sort of a marker. And also it's coming into play as a type of treatment to help people with their music awareness with rhythm, perhaps a dance to try and help with that timing deficit that translates into our ability to sync up with other people. Isn't that fascinating? It is. I thought that was really interesting that your ability to keep a beat with music, translate over to your ability to keep a beat socially. I thought that was really interesting, but I mean, it makes sense because one of the things you see people do in groups sometimes, you know, an organization will have people participate in a drum circle. Yep. And then beating on the drums gets people in sync because they're creating a rhythm together. Well, I think just in general, that's the other side of this is that when we are syncing with other people behaviorally, meaning we're doing the same thing at the same time, particularly to beat to your point, it fosters feelings of rapport of trust people volunteer more information. And then we're doing something that is really kinder and more helpful, even babies strapped into face forward carriers and bounced in time to music are significantly more likely to favor an experiment or who is also bouncing in time to music versus an experiment or who's bouncing out of sync or who is not bouncing at all. I mean, I myself am in a line dancing class and a lot of this people in this class, I mean, just really probably little else in common, but I mean, we are so cohesive and there's such a sense of joy of doing the same thing at the same time, you lose this sense of yourself, you become more of this larger organism moving together and it does stimulate joy. And you think just even back in history synchronized behaviors movements have been used as a kind of social glue, think of religion, people singing together, praying together, kneeling together, standing at the same time together, and in the military, marching to a beat. And also, all soldiers are really pretty much on the exact same schedule doing the same thing at the same time and it builds this incredible sense of cohesion, it brings this feeling of merges. So when soldiers see something happening to one of their own, it's like it's happening to them. Yeah, I think we've all maybe experienced that I know when I worked in a restaurant when I was in high school or I worked at Jamba Juice making smoothies and you get really busy and whenever the crew they were just synced up. Yeah. - Yeah. - In the zone. - In the zone, we didn't even talk to each other, but we could look at each other and knew what they were gonna do and what I needed to do. And it just felt awesome. Like this is amazing. We're just cranking out smoothies like nobody's business. - Yeah, I love that. You know, and the same with the greatest sports teams. The ones where everybody's cohesive and really clicking, you can see that. And those are the ones that succeed. - Another factor that plays a role in our ability to sink socially is something called interoception. What is that and what roles it played in our ability to sink with others? - Oh, I'm so glad you brought that up. It's really, I found this, well, I found everything in the book really fascinating, but this was a revelation to me 'cause we like to think of our feelings come from, okay, we, something happened, we process what happened in our mind and that results in our feelings. But the research is really coming to show that really feelings start in our body and our brain interprets feelings from these experiences, these feelings in our body and then we translate that to emotions. So interoception is the ability to read what's going on in your body. It's essentially body awareness. It's the flip side of perception. Perception is what you're perceiving outside of your body. Whereas interoception is being really in tune with what's going on within your body. And that's super important because if you don't understand the sensations and what they mean in your body, you really can't sync up to another person or embody another person and take on their feelings and be really in tune with them. So for example, we all experience, if you think about what does fear feel like for you? Do you feel it in your stomach? Do you feel it in your chest? Do you feel it in your head? Do you feel it in your feet? Some people feel it in their genitals. I mean, all of us have a different physical signature for fear. And if you're not in tune of, OK, what does that mean? What am I feeling right now? Is that anger? And where we get into trouble as human beings is when we start to misconstru or get detached from those inner feelings within us and what they mean. Like a lot of people have a different sense of what hunger means. I mean, what the feeling is. Is it annoying in your chest or do you get kind of irritable? People have different ways of perceiving hunger. But where we really get messed up is when we misconstrued things like you can feel like a little bit irritable, or lethargic, and think that's hunger when it's really boredom. And people get mixed up with that, particularly in our culture where we're so busy. And it's almost a badge of pride to say you didn't sleep when you were tired. You didn't eat when you were hungry. You pushed yourself through when you were in a lot of pain exercising. So that detachment from your body-- and you can see how this would be a problem-- is if you are trying to internalize and body someone else's feelings-- and again, this is all subconscious. But if you're not in tune with your own body, how can you be in tune with someone else's body? Yeah. So I think that's interesting. One of the first things you can do to help develop your own ability to click more with people is just get more in tune or more aware of your own emotions and what they feel like in your body. Yeah, just do an internal review. Because if we're internalizing other people's heart rate, their respiration, all of these things and we're not even aware of our own heart rate, you're not going to pick up someone else's anxiety if you're not even aware of your own heart rate. They've done a lot of research with particularly heart rate, but there are lots of other things where people work on their inter-oception, going through different parts of their body, and what are you feeling? And there was one study I thought was just fascinating where it had high-frequency traders at a hedge fund. And the ones that had better inter-oception were better traders. They made more money, and they stayed in the job longer because they had more of that sense of, OK, this is danger. Or what these other people are doing, I'm getting sucked into something that maybe I shouldn't. Where they really had a sense of their own self. And again, this is all subconscious. 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And we've talked about that some people are just better able to click with people and more people than others. And some of that is genetic and upbringing. But there's also things we can all do to improve our clickability. And we've talked about some of those things already. I mean, beware of your own emotions, do things in a group, like some kind of physical activity together, where you're all in sync. But what else can we do to make ourselves more clickable? And you actually have a chapter on what the world of speed dating can teach us about this. So what can speed dating teach us about being open to interpersonal synchrony? Well, your listeners should know there's a vast scientific literature on speed dating, which was news to me. It not only speed dating, but speed networking. And they've done a lot of studies to find out what, that's how they really, figured out what is happening when people are clicking. And the people that reported sense of attraction and they wanted to see this person again whether it was in a professional or a personal context, romantic context, it was that they were thinking on all these different levels. And the thing that I think people can do that we discount, and of course that's what my first book was about, is to you really want to be present, of course, and really if you can be in person, in person you're going to pick up all these different signals that you don't pick up online are in a two-dimensional or even three-dimensional, if it's virtual reality, you're not going to pick up. It's a multi-sensory, sinking is a multi-sensory dynamic. And so you're losing a lot of information that helps you sync up with somebody if you're not in person. So there's that piece of it. But also, learning to be a really good listener when you are really trying to inhabit somebody else's narrative and really trying to understand them. And listening isn't just being quiet. I mean, it is really trying to almost be with someone in the sense that like you're watching a movie where you'd get totally lost in the other person and to almost let yourself go in what the other person has to say, get rid of your own personal agendas and really be a good listener. That is something that helps with that neural sinking we were talking about with brainwaves. So that's a piece of it too. But I just think in general, what's so powerful about this knowledge is to be aware that this is even something that happens. I mean, I don't know if you knew this before, but I certainly didn't know that on all these different levels we're syncing up with other people and to try and be sensitive to that. And you kind of let yourself go with it if it's something that's working for you. But if you get that feeling, that discordant feeling or sort of like that needle across vinyl, you know, you know, when you made someone to also pay attention to that too. Because you have intuitive, you have felt something that's pretty important to pay attention to. Can you hack social secrecy because I mean, some bit of advice you always see in magazines or blog posts is if you're on a date or maybe even you're on a, you're networking or a job interview, well, if you really want to sync up with someone, you should just do whatever they do. So if your date crosses their legs, you cross your legs and be intentional about that. Does that actually work? No. Short answer because we are really fine tune to authenticity human beings are. You talk about a superpower. We're really and even subconsciously. Anything that's a little bit off or that we don't perceive as being authentic, we pick up on that. And then also when there's a big disconnect between that's another thing about syncing is to actually be authentic because if there's a disconnect between what you're feeling and what you're doing are saying, people pick up on that. That's sort of like crossed wires. And so people are, they pick up on that whether they are aware of it or not, they're aware of the end feeling which is discomfort. Yeah, another bit of advice I've seen people use to try to sync up is, but if you don't do it right, it's a total turn off. It's using people's name. Oh yeah. So you know, Dale Carnegie famously said something like the sweetest sound a person can hear is their own name. And I think a lot of people hear this advice and they feel like, okay, I got to drop someone's name as much as possible in this conversation. It's so aggravating. Yeah, I mean, I've had sales people do this to me and I'm just like, okay, I know what you're doing and it's just really annoying so you can just stop it. It's please stop. But I've also had podcasts, guess who say my name throughout the conversation and it sounds natural. And I'm like, oh, wow, that does feel really good. Even when I think someone is doing it intentionally to be charming, it still feels good if it's natural. But when it's really forced, it's irritating. It's a complete turn off. No, absolutely. Because there is a natural way to do it. I have a friend who's an airplane mechanic and he's absolutely delightful and he does that. He uses people's names partially to help him to remember. But it's so natural. And I mean, Dale Carnegie's right. It is like music to your ears when it's he's authentic. He wants to know me. He wants to be friends with me. And you feel that. And when someone just drops at every once in a while, bread, you know, let me tell you Brett, Brett, it just it doesn't yeah, it doesn't have the same feeling. It's discordant. Yeah. Okay. So you can't do the whole mirror somebody to sync up with them. That's just going to happen naturally if you're syncing up with them. What about looking people in the eye? You mentioned the eye contact is important. Yeah, that's huge. Look people in the eye. But how much is too much? Well, you know, there's creepy staring people in the eye. But I think when that happens, there isn't a synchrony going on. The person is just in their mind. Think I'm going to stare at this person. Do you know what I mean? There's a difference between really looking with a sense of interest and a sense of exploration and really wanting to sync with somebody. And then there's this, okay, I'm just going to look at you because that's what I'm supposed to do. And also, I think there are people who, you know, everybody's not as good at this. People have different tuners. And so some people really can try and look at somebody. And it's almost like a blank stare. And that's where it's creepy because you don't, on a certain level, you know that your people dilation is not syncing up. They're not syncing up with your heart rate. You feel that disconnect. So I would say when you're looking at someone, if you're really looking at someone with interest and curiosity, then that's going to come across. But certainly, I think people have different tolerances for intimacy. And sometimes that all the signals that you're getting from someone can be a little too much. And they need to look away every once in a while. And that's okay too. Yeah, that's fine. So I mean, it sounds like if you want to be more clickable with people, it's not so much about tactics or techniques. It's more about an attitude or a stance you take to whatever social interaction you're in. And that attitude is just one of presence and curiosity and wanting to know about this person. And if you have that attitude, the clicking is going to happen naturally. Yes. If you're compatible with the person. Right. Yeah, that's important. And that's what's so hard being a nonfiction writer, which, you know, I'm mainly a journalist and I've now written my second book after my first, I said, I'd never do this again. But if you look at the landscape of nonfiction books, I think you're probably more familiar with this than most people. That it is all about this hack. If you just do this and then this will happen. And interpersonal synchrony and the things that I write about, it isn't something where if you do X, then why will happen? And actually nothing about life is like that. And it's, as you said, and I think it's really apt is it's a dance. And so if you go in wanting to dance and you go in with that curiosity and that openness and just generosity of spirit, you will find people who are on your wavelength, who will want to join in with your music, who you will play a beautiful song together, our dance well together. And then there will always be people who will just sort of be on their own tempo and they're maybe distracted. They may be not even notice you or you're just not compatible. But again, that's okay. We're not meant we don't have the cognitive or emotional resources to sync with everyone. And also what would make it special when you do? So you mentioned one of the important things for interpersonal synchrony is you have to be with the person in person. Yes. And you have this whole section about the research on our ability to socially click with people via digital mediums. What does that research say? Well, as I touched on earlier, synchrony is a multi-sensory experience. And in fact, interpersonal synchrony suggests that we have more senses than the five we take for granted. Like, how do you sense someone's heart rate? Their respiration, their hormonal level. Even like these subconscious smells. I mean, we have all these pheromones that we're throwing out that they think is responsible for why women sync up their menstrual cycle. So they're all these things. And you're not going to get that online. You're not going to get this full panoply of signals that someone is throwing out that you could potentially sync up to. And that doesn't mean you can't sync, you know, on certain levels. I mean, we certainly see things go on viral online or people's outrage gets stirred up online. So it's not like you can't have synchrony or feel like you have synchrony with people online. But oftentimes and people who've done online dating know this better than most is you might think you have a connection with someone online. And then you meet in them in person and you think, oh my god, no, I mean, you just all you can think about is how long do I have to sit here before I can break this off without seeming rude? It's just, you know, you really do not get the full sense of another person online. Yeah, that's an interesting point about online dating because it also could happen. There might be people in your in-person social circle, maybe at work or at church, where your filters on the dating apps wouldn't have brought you to that person. Absolutely. Because you know, filters on a dating apps are very superficial like how tall you are, money, income. But there might be people in your interpersonal social circle that you never would have thought. you would have, like, I want to date this person, but then you get to be around them, and you interact with them, and you're like, "Oh, wow, I kind of like this person." - Yeah, you would have totally swiped left if you had read their profile, but then you see them in person, and you totally click. - Yeah, so yeah, in person things important. Let's talk about this. We're on the podcast. I don't do video podcasts, and a lot of podcasts are going the video route. I'm talking to you. I cannot see you. You cannot see me. I do all my interviews, remote, without video. I don't like video. I do video calls every now and then. I don't like it. What is it? Help me justify myself here. Why do I have this aversion to video calls, and why do I prefer voice-only calls? - Well, the science backs you up on that. I mean, I'm not just trying to make you feel better. I mean, the science totally backs you up on that, and I salute you for resisting it, because that is the way of the world right now, where everybody's moving to video. But the problem is that because we have this instinct to sink, looking at video is very disruptive, and makes us feel ill. I mean, Zoom fatigue is a real malady, and that is because the way the technology is at this point, the way that video images are encoded and decoded and buffered, and all these things that are manipulated about the image, and not to mention pixelation, it distorts all these tiny little cues, these facial expressions, and then back to eye contact. You are making eye contact with your, or maybe you aren't, with your camera. So nobody's actually looking at you. And so you, in your brain, again, this is subconscious, you're just rapidly spinning your wheels, trying to do this adaptive, evolutionary and trained thing with another person to sync up with them. You're looking for all those micro expressions. You're looking for that eye contact, and you're just spinning your wheels, trying to do that, and it ends up making people feel uncomfortable, vaguely disturbed, a little bit off. And I have never met a single person who says, "Oh, goody, Zoom meeting." And I don't know why it's become something where everybody thinks is derigger, because I mean, I've had people that I've talked to who that I've worked with who say, "Oh God, I loved reading that in your book, and I hate Zoom calls." And yet they'll schedule a Zoom call with me. And I'm like, "Oh, why is this?" But I totally agree with you that we are able to connect and sync on a much more authentic, real level just by hearing each other, then getting all that faulty information that we get from the video that throws us off. And that some part of our brain is really struggling, and it makes it really hard to connect in any way, shape or form. - Yeah, I love talking to people on the phone. I've been doing that a lot more lately. I've got a friend who's moved, and every once in a month, I'll take a walk for an hour, and we just talk to each other on the phone. And it's like we're together, even though we don't see each other. - Yes. - Yeah. - No, I agree. And there's also, don't you think there's kind of an intimacy having someone right in your ear like that? There's that piece of it too. - No, I agree. Whenever someone does a Zoom call, I always feel kind of like a heal, 'cause I'll do the Zoom call, but I'll keep my video camera off. And then the other person's like, "Is your video camera not working?" And I say, "No, it's fine. I'm just gonna do audio only." Like it's a phone call. - Well, but let's be honest, Brett. People are mostly looking at themselves on this call. - Yeah, you're checking yourself out. - There's a little image of themselves. They're really not looking at you, or they're getting distracted by looking at like, you know, what's that art in the background? What's does that a cat crossing in the back? Or, you know, and then when people blur all around them and they look so peculiar with that blur stuff around them, I mean, you do kind of feel like a jerk, 'cause I have nothing to hide. It's not that. It's just, I really want to pay attention to what you're saying. I really want to connect with you in some way. And I want us to be productive and sink in a way that we can solve problems or get to an agreement. And the video just subverts that. - All right, so let's use this as a clarion called an in Zoom video. (both laughing) But, you know, if that came out of my book, I would feel like I had just accomplished something great in the world. - Yeah. You have a chapter about the importance of interpersonal synchrony and romantic relationships. What happens whenever a romantic relationship is not synced up? - Well, it's not good. I mean, when we are not in sync with another person, we experience it as discomfort, romantic or otherwise. And I think it's particularly painful when you have been in sync and then you move out of sync. And actually, that's not a bad thing because you do want to have periods of a synchrony in any relationship. It's natural and healthy because that's how you get back in touch with yourself and recalibrate and makes you better able to, when you do sync back up with the other person that you each can bring something to the dance. I do, I like your analogy. So that's okay, but I think a lot of times, particularly people who have anxious attachment styles, they get very upset when there is a sense of a synchrony. And so they really spend their wheels trying to, like, you know, what's wrong? What do you, you know? Yeah, yeah. Which, which only drives people apart. And they often will do things that provoke the person, like if they're really agitated, they will provoke the other person. So they're agitated too, just so they'll be in sync on that level, which is not good for a relationship. But if you really find that you're really on different wavelengths and really feel like a real distance is coming between the two of you, you know, go back to those things of, make sure are you spending enough time together? Are you with each other enough to establish those physiological synchronies? And also activities, those joint activities we talked about. Go for a walk together. I mean, make time so you're doing things, having these shared experiences and these joint activities that help you sync up more readily. Okay, that's great advice. So make sure you're syncing up regularly. People are busy, you know, as a couple, you can just sync up in the morning when you're having a cup of coffee together, talk about what's going on with your day. And then maybe at the end of the day, have another chat where you just hang out, talk about how the day went. Well, I mean, that's one of the greatest things about being in romantic relationships is, you know, they used to call it like pillow talk, but just, you know, when you're laying in bed at night and just talking and that quiet, and that, you know, again, you're not necessarily looking at each other, but you're so synced up physically by proximity and just talking about your day and sharing things that that really promotes that synchrony and that sense of intimacy. So we've been talking about the benefits of interpersonal synchrony. It allows you to feel connected to people close, it feels good, it allows you to get stuff done efficiently and effectively, but are there downsides to being too in sync with somebody? Oh, yes. Because we have this instinct to sync, it makes us vulnerable to getting sucked into other people's emotional vortex. I mean, I think we've all had the sense that when we are with somebody who's, you know, just hydromet, incredibly manic, that it's exhausting. I don't think everybody has a great emotional vocabulary, but we all can recognize someone who's hard to be around versus easy to be around. And the people that are hard to be around are the ones that sort of sweep us up into this emotional cadence resonance that we're not comfortable with. And it is difficult. And it's also difficult because when we embody and we internalize other people, it feels like it's coming from ourselves. So I think we've all had the experience of like, why did I do that? Why did I say that? Are there was sort of a blow up? And you're like, how did that happen? And that's because you climb the ladder of emotion, arousal, agitation with another person because of this instinct to sync. And you lost sight of yourself. You lost sight of where that person begins and you end. And so that's why things like interception are really important. And also just, you know, by reading this book, you just to have an awareness that this is what's happening. And when you start getting those feelings, you can kind of think within yourself, okay, what am I doing with this? I'll give you a really good example. When I was first working on this book, or I had really gathered most of the data, I hadn't really finished writing the book. I was invited to speak about my last book at a major university, and I won't say which one, which will become clear in a minute. And I was invited to lunch with one of the deans, and we were at lunch, and he was, let's just say he was socially very anxious, and he was just, he was spinning. And he was having a hard time looking me in the eye. He was just kind of agitated. And as a result, I was pretty miserable. I was really uncomfortable, and I was feeling really anxious, and I was feeling very socially awkward, and I realized, which is, you know, not me. I love meeting people, I love them. And I realized, oh my god, this is what's happening. I've totally internalized this guy. And once I was aware of that, I was able to pull back, and do things like think about, okay, where am I putting it? And I realized, okay, my shoulders are hunched. Let me bring them down. Let me take some deep breaths. I even slowed the cadence of my speech, crossed my legs the other way, and I totally changed the rhythm of the encounter. And not only did I feel better and bring myself back to myself, but he started to relax. He started to sink to me. So there's a real power in catching yourself. And it's hard. It seems like an easy thing to do, but it's really hard because it's so instinctual, and you become so wrapped up in the moment that you don't realize it's happening as it's happening, and you do the debrief kind of afterwards, you realize, oh, that would happen. But if you get good at reading yourself and reading other people and the degree to which you are matching, mirroring that other person, it really can make a total difference in your social life. - So the Ozman's famously saying, one bad apple, don't spoil the whole bunch. Girl. But you say the Ozmans were wrong. One bad apple does spoil the whole bunch. - Yes. And I think the best example of this was an incredibly interesting study that was done in the early 2000s by Will Phelps, who's now in Australia. He's at the University of South Wales in Australia, but at the time he was at University of Washington. And what he did is he created all of these work groups out of University of Washington Business students. And he created all these work groups, but he introduced a Confederate or an accomplice who was to go in and either act like a jerk, a slacker, or a depressing downer, and see what happened, what the effect was on group functioning. And he actually, he didn't know Will Phelps did not know about interpersonal synchrony at the time. He was just looking for the effects, but he said now knowing what he knows now, he would have done the study totally differently because if you look at the video, it's striking that like during the slacker's condition, he's like leaning back in his chair, he's eating, he's acting like it couldn't be bothered with the task at hand and sure a shootin', everybody else starts leaning back. They're starting to say things like, "Let's get this over with," and they performed really badly. And the really heartbreaking one was the depressive downer one. And the guy comes in, he's acting real depressed and really lethargic. And it's really sad you start seeing everyone else slow down, putting their heads down on the table. And you get this sense and they actually verbalizes, it's not only the task at hand was meaningless, but life in general seemed meaningless. And so you can see how this contagion happens in situations. And I think we've all experienced where somebody new comes into a group and it just totally upsets the dynamic and pulls people in one direction or another. And it can be, you know, there can be good apples too. It can be positive or negative. But it's true that one bad apple, the greatest predictor of the success of a team organization is not how stellar the best person is, or even the average abilities of the rest of the people, but how awful the worst person is. That predicts the success or failure of a group. - So if you're a leader of a group, what do you do when you're dealing with a bad apple, do you just have to get that person out of there or do you try to rehabilitate them? Like what's the strategy? - Well, you know, Mosio said, I've interviewed her just like, yeah, you got to get rid of it. Yeah, it's going to ruin everything. But I think what they try to do more on the front end is hire very carefully. And again, you know, don't interview by Zoom, don't rely on, you know, an algorithm that's going to pick the right resume, because as you rightly said, you know, sometimes with like dating apps, the people that you swipe left on are the people that are the right person. So there's that. And there's also, when I interviewed Danny Meyer, he allowed me to go and I watched, I mean, you talk about Synchrony in his Michelin star restaurants, the synchrony between the kitchen and the front of the house, and there's just a tempo. It's a ballet in there. And I was talking to one of the managers, and he said with hiring, they typically bring in somebody and have a trial run, which I think is probably a really good idea with a lot of organizations to the degree that you're able, because it's to the benefit of the potential hiring, as well as the employer, because they all get a sense of, you know, am I clicking here? Is this somewhere where I can flourish? Is this someone who's going to fit in with the vibe, the rhythm of the team? So I think more to really try and head it off from the beginning. So you got this one chapter I'm going to end on this. I thought this was really interesting. You explore our sometimes uncanny ability to sync with people from afar. So for example, I'm sure some people have experienced this where they get a feeling that someone they know who lives far away is having a hard time or maybe something bad happened to them. And they think, I better check on them, and come to find out something bad did happen to that person. What's going on there? Well, you know, I'm not sure, but I do talk about this in the book. And again, this is, you know, very, it's, people don't agree. This is, you know, highly speculative. But in the physics world, they are coming to think that our brains operate much like a quantum computer. And again, I really want to preface this that there is a lot of disagreement among physicists, but there is a camp that believes our brains work like a quantum computer. And quantum is subatomic particles and their behavior is very unique. And one of the things that is a factor of quantum mechanics is something called quantum entanglement. And that is where these subatomic particles, they can become synced, but then when they are separated by time and space, they maintain that synchrony. And since they think that our brains are operating like quantum computers and obey the laws of quantum mechanics, including quantum synchrony, you can see this really trippy notion that if the quantum particles within your brain are synced up and can become entangled, you can imagine how the quantum particles in another person's brain that would sync up to your brain would be operating in that same synchronized way. And that might, and I emphasize might, might explain why we are able to into it, feel, predict telepathic types of things. And we've all had them happen and thought, whoa. You know, I mean, how did that happen? And you can see how that might be an explanation of why that would happen. - That's interesting. Yeah, 'cause I know people like that. My wife is able to do this. She'll have those moments where she'll be lying in bed. She's like, "I got a friend who's having a hard time. "I need to call them." And then sure enough, she calls them, like they're having a hard time. Like how did someone on there? So yeah, it could be quantum entanglement. It could just be, you know, the romantic, we're just so combined that we just are on the same wavelength, no matter where we are. So who knows what this could be on there? - But I do like that there's still some magic to this that we don't quite understand at all. For me, there's something intellectually as well as kind of spiritually satisfying about the fact that synchrony binds us not only to one another, but also to the universe as a whole because synchrony has been observed throughout the natural and life sciences. Everything from the tiniest quantum particle to supermassive quasars exhibit synchronistic properties. And so it really shouldn't be so a surprise that human beings do it too. - Well, you have a section on this. I mean, we can get a little more, let's go more woo-woo, I like this. (laughing) About syncing with nature. I've had that experience where I've been out backpacking in the Rocky Mountains and I'm just staring at a mountain by this lake and I feel like the mountain is talking to me. - Right. - And I know it's not talking to me, but it feels like it. - But on some level, it is. I mean, the science is pretty clear on this because I mean, think about it. We are ruled by nature, the sun coming up, the sun coming down. We have all these internal clocks that are based on the rhythms of nature and the research is very clear that people feel better out in nature. And they think that is because we sync up with the regular rhythmic patterns of not only what you hear in nature, but also what you see in nature, which is not what happens in urban environments. So we probably need to have another conversation if you're actually seeing lips moving on the mountain and talking to you. But the sense of communion and feeling in sync while you're out in nature and with the mountain, I think that's perfectly valid and accurate. - Yeah, humans designed to click. - Yes. - We love to click. - Well, Kate, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book and your work? - Well, I think the best way is just to go to my website. It's www.journalistcapemerphy.com and you can read about the book and any journalism that I've done and that's probably the best place to go. - Fantastic. - Thank you, Sophie. Thanks, time's been a pleasure. - Thank you, Brad. - My guess is Kate Murphy. She's the author of the book, Click. It's available on Amazon.com and Bookstores Everywhere. You find more information about our work at our website, journalistcapemerphy.com. Also check out our [email protected]/click. We find links to resources. We delve deeper into this topic. (upbeat music) Well, that wraps up another edition of the A1 Podcast. If you haven't done so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to get a review on the podcast or Spotify. It helps out a lot. If you've done that already, thank you. Please consider sharing the show with a friend or family member who you think we get something out of it. As always, thank you for the continued support until next time's Brett McKay. Reminding tell us on this A1 Podcast, but put what you've heard into action. Hey, before you go, here's one more episode to consider. In episode number 716, we dig into a paradox. How do you make your life easier without becoming passive? It's all about clearing friction, choosing your battles wisely, and crafting habits that help you move forward with less drag. You can find it at aam.is/efferliss.