How to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley
In a Nutshell
Social anxiety is overcome not by imagining interactions but through real exposure, which reveals that fears of rejection are usually exaggerated and others respond more positively than expected. Brief real-world conversations with strangers improve well-being more than expected, shift perceptions of humanity, and build connection because people are wired for social engagement and responsiveness. The same principle applies broadly: testing pessimistic assumptions about others—whether in daily interactions, adoption decisions, or parenting—consistently shows people are kinder, more helpful, and more receptive than anticipated.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
Social anxiety is something we really can help people with. The strategy is very simple. If you are afraid of talking with a stranger or having a deep conversation, the way to get over that is not to simulate it or to imagine. It is not like you get up and you give a pretend speech. That is what psychologists were doing for years. It does not work because it is still pretending. It has to be real. You send people out in the world and to do the thing for real. You are worried about getting rejected. Go out and start asking people for help and you will learn that your fear is misplaced, that you get accepted more often than you might guess. Exposing people to that thing that they are anxious of. When the belief is misplaced and with social anxiety, it is usually wildly misplaced. That is what we find over and over again is a mistaken barrier to connecting with other people. That is how you ease that social anxiety and get rid of it. Not because you dull your anxiety so much. It is because you change your beliefs about what other people are like.
Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I am Andrew Huberman and I am a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Nick Epley. Dr. Nick Epley is a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago and an expert researcher on the science of social connection. What is different about today’s conversation in the context of social connection is that it does not just center on improving relationships with friends or family or co-workers. We do talk about that, but we also talk about the smaller everyday conversations that we have with people that we do not know so well and the positive impact that that can have on mental and physical health. Now, I want to be clear. We are not talking about engaging in small talk for small talk’s sake. We are talking about taking opportunities to connect with people once or several times per day and the tremendous benefits that can have for people’s mental and physical health, including yours. We also talk a lot about the assumptions that we tend to make about other people, both in real life and online, and how those actually match up with reality. We also talk about Nick Epley himself because his life strongly has informed his research. We talk about his biological and his adopted children, raising a child with additional needs, and the incredible joy and growth those choices have brought him and his family by virtue of the sorts of social connections that they have brought. Today’s conversation went a lot of places that I did not anticipate. And it certainly inspired me to look differently at everyday interactions as far from trivial and in fact key to the fabric of social connection and our mental and physical health.
Dr. Nick Epley, welcome. Thank you so much for having me. We make a lot of assumptions about other people and in my case because I have a new puppy about animals. You know, we are always thinking that we know what other beings are thinking. Yeah. But as you have pointed out and as a colleague of mine in neurosciences, Dr. Carl Dyeroth has pointed out, most of the time we do not even know what we are thinking. Like there is stuff going on in there, but like we are not that good at thinking, oh, that last thought was a complete sentence that means blank. That is not how the human mind works. So, usually when we hear the word anthropomorphism, we are talking about humans making assumptions about other animals. But humans are animals. We just happen to be the curators of the planet. So why and how do we anthropomorphize about other people and how does it hurt us and how does it help us? Yeah. So I think the way to think about anthropomorphism is that what we are doing is we are trying to understand what is going on within another agent essentially. And so anything that acts independently, right? You got a ball rolling across the table. If something else bumps into it and it moves in perfect, you know, perfect deflection off of it, you do not need anything to explain why that ball moved as it did. But if this ball is coming across the table and another one hits it and it just keeps going or goes some other direction, well then it seems like there is something going inside that thing that might be driving it, right? And that in that thing that is inside that ball might be a mind, right? Might be a set of thoughts or beliefs or attitudes, some kind of psychology that is pushing it. At least that is the way we interpret what an independent agent might be doing. We do this when we think about other people, right? You are nodding your head now. I think you are thinking about something, right? You move this way or that. You wanted to do this thing or that thing. We do that same kind of mind reading, right? With non-human agents, animals, gods, sometimes the planet, even ourselves, right? We reflect on ourselves. We have experience at least with having certain mental states come to mind and we use that experience as a guide to what is going on in other people too. That kind of anthropomorphism, that kind of mind reading, right, where we infer others thoughts or beliefs or attitudes, that is helpful to us for at least two reasons. One is it gives me some sense of why you are doing what you are doing now. It allows me to understand what you are doing right now. Are you trying to be kind? Are you trying to be aggressive? Are you trying to be friendly? But it also is pretty good at allowing me to predict what you are likely to do next. So if I think you feel hungry, well, you are going to go try to eat something. If I think you do not like me very well, you are going to behave a particular way towards me. So this kind of mental state inference, this kind of mind reading serves us pretty well for getting around in a social world. Do not always get it right, but in general, it is better than not doing it at all.
As we make assumptions about others and their intentions and their past choices in some cases, right? Like if somebody hits somebody else, we make an assumption about the certain things might have led up to that. Yes. Right. Are we mainly paying attention to behavior and or are we paying attention to what they seem to be paying attention to? So theory of mind. Yeah. So it depends a lot on what kind of environment we are in. We think about the minds of others in lots and lots of different contexts. My wife right now is back home in Illinois. I can think about what she might want for dinner, right? Or what she is feeling at any given time. We can think about people when they are not present. We can think about strangers, people we know nothing about. I write a book. I am trying to think about how will people understand this book. Right? These are all cases where there is not somebody in front of us at all. Right? And when we are doing that, particularly with strangers, people we know nothing about, things we know nothing about, then the one thing we have at our disposal is ourselves. We can use our own minds. Right? So, if I walk into a classroom and I think it is kind of cold in here, well, I can assume that other people will think it is cold, too. I am using myself as a guide. Once I know a little more maybe about you, right? I learned that you are, you know, you are a PhD from Stanford. I learn that um, you know, somebody is a is an athlete or whatever. I learn something about you. You are a doctor or you are a lawyer. Then I can use that information, my beliefs about groups of people as a guide. That is stereotyping. And stereotypes contain a fair bit of accuracy to them. If I know that you are a Democrat or a Republican, I can make some reasonable inferences about other thoughts you might have, other beliefs you might have. Not perfect, but better than chance guessing. And then once I see you like what we are doing right now, if I can see you, then I am watching your behavior. And then behavior dominates. Behavior though is tricky. I am watching you, right? You could have two people kissing. They seem, you know, delightfully in love, right? They seem just so nice together. And you can you can make one set of inferences. When you see that that happening based on that, you can infer what is going on behind that based on what you are seeing. And when we can see the behavior in front of us, that is then what we are paying most attention to. But each of these different mechanisms, egocentrism, stereotyping, and behaviorism, we might think about working backwards from your behavior. They all give us some accuracy, but they also create some error. Egocentrism creates egocentric biases. I assume that you think more like I do than you actually do. Stereotyping tends to create a different set of mistakes. I tend to think that groups are more distinct and different from each other than they actually are because stereotypes are about the defining features of groups which tends to exaggerate the differences between groups. And when it comes to behavior, I tend to assume a simpler, more simplistic mind behind that behavior than actually exists. Psychologists refer to this as the correspondence bias. I tend to infer an intention or set of beliefs or attitudes that corresponds with your behavior as I see it. So if I see you hit somebody, I might assume you are an aggressive person. That is how I interpret right away. Had I known it was in self-defense, then I would interpret it very differently, right? But we tend to leap to mental states or intentions from behavior. Sometimes that can get us into trouble when the relationship between intentions or thoughts and behavior is a little complicated. So each of those gets us some accuracy, but each of them also creates some error.
If you are willing, I would like to return to the example you gave at the beginning of a ball rolling on a table and another ball striking it or not. You know, in the second example you gave that the ball simply takes off on a different trajectory, you said that we are going to make some assumption that the ball has something like a mind, something controlling its decisions. What I am about to say reflects a strong bias, which is that I have long been interested in the visual system of non-human and human primates because we are so visual and the eyes are two pieces of the brain. They are the only pieces of the brain in healthy individuals that are outside the cranial vault. And they give us a lot of information. And I think people know that, but I do not think they appreciate just how much information they give us. Not just pupil size and whether or not our gaze is locked with theirs. All that is true, too. But if I could just alter your experiment for a second. Let us say that first ball had eyes. Oh, yeah. And it is rolling forward, but then the eyes shift to the left and then the ball goes to the left. Now I have additional information. I have a window literally into the brain where I can say what is over there that might have motivated that decision. And I think with humans, we do this, right? Like if somebody is going down the street just swinging their arms wildly and hitting people, we think this person is out of control, they are crazy. Whereas if they see somebody then they orient to their gaze toward them. Now we start making all sorts of assumptions about the operations of that mind. And in my worldview no pun intended the eyes are the best source of information about intent about goals etc. So limiting the conversation to conditions where we can see the other person and what they see. Are there any examples of our judgments about other people’s thoughts and behavior and etc improving by virtue of. Sure. Yeah. I mean so the eyes are do provide a lot valid information. Absolutely. The voice also contains an awful lot. So that is the other thing we spend a lot of time studying. But we are the most socially sophisticated primate species on the planet. We have a brain uniquely equipped for connecting with the minds of others. And that means that we are hyper sensitive to certain things. The eyes are one of them. There is this great paper in 2008 on the cultural intelligence hypothesis. It is a science paper where they compared, you know, they try to assess what is it that makes humans sort of unique on this planet. And they compared a little over 100 two-year-old toddlers, right? Imagine running this experiment if you would. A little over 100 two-year-old toddlers. This was done at the Max Planck Institute in Germany. One of the Max Planck institutes over 100 chimpanzees and then just for good measure another 36 orangutans who apparently had nothing better to do. What a funny. Yeah, it is crazy. Exhausting. Exactly. Men, I can not. Yeah. I would like to know the background of of details of this, how it was actually done and how long it took. But what they did essentially is ran each of these groups through two different kinds of IQ tests. You might think of them as one was an IQ test involving physical objects, right? So things like, you know, tracking where a reward was placed under a shell game or using a tool to solve some kind of problem. Jane Goodall once, you know, psychologists once believed, biologists once believed that tool use was what made humans unique until Jane Goodall watched the chimpanzees using twigs to get termites out of a termite mound. Right? On the physical IQ test problems, the human toddlers, the adult chimps, and the orangutans performed equally well. There was not a difference. It is not reasoning about physical things in space that make us unique. The other group of IQ problems were social problems where it required reasoning about the mind of another person. And this involved doing things like tracking where someone’s eyes are looking in order to monitor what somebody is thinking because we tend to look at things we are thinking about and think about things we are looking at. If I want to know what is on your mind, what is governing your attention, I want to be really good at tracking your eyes. And we are amazing at this as human beings. I can tell whether you are looking at me right now or looking at my right ear from this far without any trouble. I can tell from 50 feet away, whether you are looking at me or looking at, you know, 10 feet above me. We are amazingly good at this. Super sensitive this. I could not calculate the angle on a roof if you gave me a month and an arm load of protractors to do it but I can detect the angle in your eyes in an instant. Also involve things like being able to understand somebody’s intentions from their actions right so if I reach out to for this glass of water and I miss it you can infer I am thirsty and I want a drink you could oh you could hand me the glass Nick right if if I wanted a drink and because that is you could read my mind essentially you could infer my thoughts when. And they tested the two-year-old toddlers, the chimps, and the orangutans on in these social IQ tests. That is where the 2-year-old toddlers were shining. That is where we were crushing the competition on those social IQ problems. You can do this, you know, in front of a chimpanzee all day long and they will do nothing for you, right? Nothing for you. I do that in front of you and you can hand me the glass of water super easily. So yes, the eyes give us a lot and we are extremely sensitive to all of those social cues that convey might convey what is on the mind of another person because it allows me to anticipate what you are doing before you do it.
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And you mentioned voice. I am going to make an assumption, I am sure it is wrong, um, or at least partially wrong, that voice offers a lot of information about autonomic tone, how stressed or how relaxed somebody is. And I would be curious to know a, if that is true, what else it conveys, and also how much prior exposure to voice matters. Today is the first time I have met you. I do not know what your voice normally sounds like in this context, so I am just operating off what I have got. So, what is in voice? What is not in voice and and what what are we aware of? What are we not aware of? Yeah. So, there are lots of things contained in the voice because it is very closely connected to your mind. You notice that your eyes are right. Your eyes are closed, but your voice is also very closely connected to your online conscious experience. You are speaking while you are thinking. And as you are having thoughts, your voice can reflect authentically what is going on in your mind. So, when I speed up, you can tell I am kind of excited about something. When my voice varies in pitch, you can tell if I am enthusiastic or not or kind of sad about something. You can pick up a lot about what is actually going on in the mind by listening to a person’s voice. And there are a couple of things that we have studied in our research. One is voice just contains a lot of information that allows us to understand other people better. Right? So, if you compare typing to somebody versus talking to them, the voice allows you to determine things like intentionality to differentiate when you are telling a joke or being sarcastic than when you are not. Right? We will type this email. This is so funny, right? We think when we are sending off an email to somebody, it seems funny to us because we know this is meant to be a joke. Person on the other end does not realize the comment about this person’s aunt or brother or whatever was meant to be a joke and they are all offended, right? But if you say this in your voice, sarcasm is crystal clear. Interestingly, what we find, and this is because of egocentrism in part, we are not always so sensitive to how our own communication is interpreted by another person because we know what we are thinking when we are conveying something. We tend to think we will be understood equally well whether we are typing or talking, but of course on the receiving end, it varies a lot. So voice contains a lot of information that allows us to understand what somebody is saying better. But what we also find which I think is at least from my perspective also interesting is that the voice also conveys the presence of mind. I do not have access to your thinking to your reasoning to to what is going on between your ears. I can only watch from the outside right and I get cues. I can see your visual gaze but I can also hear you. The voice contains a lot of cues to the presence of mind. When you are really thinking hard about something, your voice slows down and you deliberate. And that variability in the pace of your voice kind of tells me that your mind is alive. Just like I can tell that you are biologically alive because you are moving, your voice also moves. And it tells me you got a lively mind. It conveys the presence of emotion. It can convey the presence of thinking. So when we have partisans, for instance, we did this, this was with Juliana Schroeder, who was one of my amazing PhD students from years ago. She is now on the faculty at Berkeley at Haas. We had people, this was on the eve of the 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. We had people who were voting for Trump or Clinton say why they were voting for the candidate they were voting for and they gave a verbal pitch. And we could get a few different cues from this. We could get an audio recorded clip so we could see and hear the person. We could just get their voice and we could also strip out their voice and just see the content of their text, right? To see the words they were saying. They also wrote a pitch about an explanation for why they were voting for this particular candidate. Okay. What we then did is we had people watch and listen read the transcript or read the written explanation and say essentially how mindful is this person? How thoughtful are they? How thoughtful, how intelligent, how rational, how capable of experiencing emotions are they. Essentially they are asking are you a mindful intelligent person or are you kind of just like a mindless idiot? Are you humanlike or are you kind of not humanlike like a more like a rock? And what we found was that when people could hear what the person had to say either while also seeing them or just with their voice, they rated the person particularly when they disagreed with them when there was person on the other side as more thoughtful, more intelligent, more rational. This tendency to dehumanize the other side to think of them as mindless idiots was dramatically reduced when you actually heard what the other person has to say. So I think the voice along with the eyes along with eye gaze but the voice allows us gives us a lot of information allows us to understand what is on somebody’s mind and it also allows us something deeper allows me to tell you that you have got a mind that you have one.
It is very interesting. The vision piece I am familiar with for reasons I stated before. The physical behavior piece makes a lot of sense. The voice piece as a reflection of an active mind is something I have not really considered. You know, we will hear sometimes that the content of people’s words is less informative than, you know, the timbre of their voice or something like that. I do not know that I completely believe that. I think that that is a I think that is a 90s that is like an 80s 90s pop psychology. Absolutely. That is a highly stylized
Words matter significantly in how people are perceived. Research with MBA students giving elevator pitches shows that people appear more intelligent, rational, thoughtful, and hirable when evaluators hear their voices compared to reading transcripts or text alone. The MBA students themselves believed they would be judged equally on audio and written versions, but this was not the case. When asked how to communicate to seem most intelligent, people overwhelmingly preferred writing because they could edit, but they miss that the sound of voice conveys the presence of a thinking mind.
Dead text lacks paralinguistic cues. It has no intonation, no pitch variation, and no indication of thinking in real time. While talented novelists can simulate these qualities, most text feels lifeless and people fail to recognize this limitation.
AI currently delivers primarily text responses, though future versions may include avatars or video. Voice in AI interactions would increase believability and trust because people would anthropomorphize the system the way they do with other humans. AI is already used for facts and information, but it will increasingly be applied to social purposes. Research is exploring how AI can help people practice difficult conversations before engaging with actual humans.
Potential problems exist with AI replacing human connection. However, when voice quality mimics human speech well, people can trust AI more readily because the presence of voice triggers the same psychological processes as interacting with another person.
Modern media provides far more exposure to political figures than previous generations experienced. People now observe voice, behavior, decision-making patterns, and even eye movements. This abundance of information does not necessarily lead to better understanding because other people remain fundamentally ambiguous. The same statement can sound like a joke to one person and hostile to another depending on the listener's beliefs and perspective.
Social psychology emerged from biology and vision sciences with the assumption that human judgments could be measured like sensory perception of hot and cold. However, other people are not crystal clear stimuli. Two individuals with different beliefs, attitudes, or perspectives can interpret the exact same stimulus in completely different ways. This is known as my side bias in politics. Additional information does not automatically produce better understanding when people start from different perspectives.
Spending time alone feels significantly worse than being with others. Research from Nobel Prize winners Danny Kahneman and Angus Deaton analyzed Gallup daily well-being data and found that the difference in well-being between spending a day alone versus with someone else was approximately seven times larger than the difference between being relatively high or low on income, roughly equivalent to a $60,000 income gap. Moving from no social contact to some contact produces the largest improvement in well-being. Additional forms of interaction add further benefits, but the initial leap from isolation matters most.
Different communication media serve different purposes. Texting works well for maintaining existing relationships and expressing simple emotions like sending a heart emoji. It allows frequent connection without requiring sustained time investment. However, texting is not optimal for building relationships over time. Spending thirty minutes typing back and forth is less effective than a phone conversation for developing deeper connections.
Human brains are built for social interaction. The neocortex is dramatically larger relative to the rest of the brain compared to chimpanzees and other primates. This expansion supports theory of mind, tracking who knows what, determining trust, and navigating complex social groups. Across primate species, neocortex size correlates with social complexity according to the social brain hypothesis.
For most of human history, isolation was a death sentence because survival depended on group cooperation. This evolutionary pressure created neural architecture that drives connection with others. Loneliness triggers cortisol spikes that impair cardiovascular function and immune response, which explains why prolonged isolation can lead to illness and shorter lifespan. The brain actively signals that connection feels rewarding and isolation feels punishing.
People sometimes enjoy solitude, especially when they already maintain meaningful relationships. However, extended isolation can distort thinking. Without others to reflect thoughts and experiences back, individuals may begin questioning their own existence in a meaningful way. This is not merely philosophical. Research on prisoners in solitary confinement shows deterioration in mental health and sense of self.
Sociologists in the early 1900s developed the concept of the looking glass self, proposing that identity forms through interaction with others. Self-esteem functions partly as a monitor of how well one is getting along with people. When no one exists to provide feedback or confirmation, people can lose their sense of who they are. Romanticized notions of complete isolation, such as mountain men or extended wilderness living, often fail to account for these psychological costs.
The best approach is to create incentives for more positive interactions on social platforms. Most people ultimately want interactions where their thoughts and feelings matter. This responsiveness allows individuals to detect that others are paying attention.
Conversation feels pleasant because of back-and-forth responsiveness that signals attention. Nonverbal cues like nodding, eye contact, and verbal affirmations such as "mhm," "right," or "yeah" help people recognize their thoughts are having a positive effect. Psychologists refer to this as responsiveness or being in synchrony with another person.
Recording artists continue touring primarily to experience the apex of collective human action at a distance through their performance and audience response. Examples include Eddie Vedder scaling stage structures during concerts and repelling down on a microphone wire, all done spontaneously. Artists love seeing the response of the people they perform for, and audiences attend because they sense their own impact on the performance.
Humans appear driven by core wiring to seek social connection. As children in preschool, learning to sit still, let others speak, and hold impulses represents early socialization. Social connection matters because it enables coordination with others, improving survival, existence, and the ability to pass along genes.
Groups that coordinate and cooperate outperform those where individuals compete without cooperation. This principle explains why corporations function effectively, with individuals operating as a single unit toward common goals. The East India Trading Company could send ships worldwide because corporate structures allowed investors to share risk without losing all resources if one vessel failed.
Social connection evolutionarily pushes toward cooperation and coordination, especially with non-kin. Coordination with family members requires no special mechanism since relatives share genes. The ability to cooperate and care for non-kin defines true sociality on this planet.
The power of context and roles drives behavior more than biological wiring alone. When adopting children from Ethiopia, the moment a decision was made to adopt specific children, their visual perception changed instantly. They appeared different, and more love was felt. Once children enter a family, the role of being a parent matters most. All children—biological and adopted—are experienced equally as one's own.
No other species loves beyond kin in this way. Economists traditionally model humans as purely self-interested, yet real behavior shows greater generosity. In experiments where participants divide $10 with a stranger, people typically give away 30% to 50% rather than keeping everything as pure self-interest would predict. Love and connection function largely through the roles people play in each other's lives.
Humans love each other beyond what kinship and biological offspring predictions would suggest. Hardwired circuitry supports caring, loving, and connecting when effort is made. In some cultures, such as certain South American communities, people go out primarily with existing friends rather than seeking new connections. These lifelong friendships reflect smaller social structures where everyone knows each other.
Anxiety about connecting with strangers exists across cultures and varies by location. Some places show more sociability than others. This reluctance stems from uncertainty about trust and the unknown. Familiarity breeds comfort because people know and trust what is familiar. Everything unfamiliar carries more perceived risk.
Manners function as habits and sensibilities about treating others kindly. Public reluctance to engage often stems from not wanting to interrupt or appear impolite. Signals like earbuds or phone use indicate a desire not to be bothered. In the UK and especially Japan, strong politeness norms discourage entering others' business. General norms of greeting strangers have diminished partly due to constant phone use.
Challenges in finding romantic partners often center on fear of appearing creepy or not wanting strangers to initiate contact. People report fear on both sides of interactions. Conversations with Uber drivers or on airplanes demonstrate that meaningful exchanges remain possible.
Research shows people underestimate how interested others are in engaging. When two people sit silently, each may assume the other does not want to talk, leading to mutual misunderstanding. Most people actually desire meaningful conversations.
Social connection can be viewed as an opportunity or invitation rather than a risk. People are overly pessimistic about how positively others will respond to positive outreach. Taking genuine interest in others—such as asking about their background or experiences—leads to reciprocal engagement. Brief connections, such as a 23-minute car ride revealing profound personal stories, improve the moment without requiring lasting relationships.
Well-being resembles a leaky tire requiring constant attention rather than relying solely on major events. Amazing trips or experiences lose impact quickly upon return to daily life. Happiness comes from creating positive moments that lift both the individual and those around them. Opportunities for connection exist in everyday settings like plane flights, grocery store checkouts, and casual encounters.
Taking interest in others changes daily experience. Compliments and kind thoughts are shared without anxiety. A single positive interaction, such as complimenting someone's hat, brightens a moment. Good days consist of strung-together good moments, and good weeks, months, and years build from these accumulated positive exchanges.
Moments of passing connection, such as fist bumps with strangers on the sidewalk or spontaneous comments about shared music interests like Minor Threat, create a sense of kinship with other members of the species. These brief exchanges do not involve money or opportunities but reinforce the feeling that people are connected and in something together.
Interacting with a stranger does not only create a connection to that individual. It also shifts one's sense of connection to the entire group. Delivering a compliment, such as telling a woman with striking red glasses that she is "killing it today," can leave the recipient feeling uplifted about people in general and produce a more favorable view of human nature.
A conversation on a train with a young man named Gustavo, who was entering a culinary training program, left the speaker feeling better about kids in general and more optimistic about young people trying to make their way. These interactions improve feelings about entire categories of people rather than only the specific individuals involved.
Manners function as part of the social fabric rather than as something fake. Polite habits taught by parents or partners from the South represent genuine kindness that supports everyday interactions. Public figures often lose access to anonymous, brief exchanges because recognition shifts conversations toward the podcast or public persona, reducing opportunities for simple human connection.
The common assumption that extroverts gain energy from connecting with others while introverts gain energy from solitude is not supported by data. Extraversion correlates with well-being at approximately 0.5 for positive affect and around 0.3 for life satisfaction. These correlations appear across cultures.
Asking people to act more extroverted for half an hour increases positive feelings regardless of their baseline personality. Will Fleeson at Wake Forest University demonstrated this effect in laboratory studies. Over longer periods, Sonia Lyubomirsky at UC Riverside found that directing people to spend more time connecting with others raises positive affect across the entire extroversion spectrum over two weeks.
The difference between people who remain withdrawn and those who connect lies in developed habits. Just as exercise improves well-being regardless of current habits, reaching out more often can improve life quality even for those who currently keep to themselves.
Social anxiety involves nervousness about reaching out that exists to varying degrees in everyone. For severe cases, exposure therapy developed by Stefan Hofmann provides effective treatment. The approach requires real-world practice rather than imagined or simulated interactions.
People are instructed to perform the feared action, such as asking strangers for help. This reveals that fears of rejection are usually misplaced. Acceptance occurs more often than expected, which changes beliefs about how others will respond rather than simply reducing anxiety through repetition.
Gia Jiang created rejectiontherapy.com to document 100 days of deliberately seeking rejection through outlandish requests. Examples include asking a bank security guard to borrow $100, requesting Olympic-ring-shaped donuts at Krispy Kreme, asking to co-pilot a plane, and requesting permission to plant a rose in a stranger's yard.
Analysis of the 106 requests showed acceptance 51 times and rejection 48 times, with a few ambiguous outcomes. Negative reactions occurred in only about seven cases. The experience demonstrated that others are often more accommodating than anticipated, shifting beliefs about rejection and human responsiveness.
One man tested his fear of rejection by making unusual requests for 100 days. He approached strangers asking if he could play soccer in their backyard, get free rides, or other unexpected favors. Rather than developing thicker skin through rejection, he discovered that people are far kinder than expected. He found that when asking for help, others are much more willing to assist than anticipated. This experience became what he described as a "superpower" because it revealed how willing people are to help.
Research by Frank Flynn at Stanford and Vanessa Bohns at Cornell documented the underestimation of compliance effect. When people predict how many others will agree to a request, they consistently overestimate how many people they will need to ask. People are much more likely to agree than expected. Research also shows that those who agree to help feel significantly better about doing so than the requester anticipates.
When requests were declined, the man was not overly persistent. Instead, he often accepted alternative offers. At Costco, he asked the manager if he could announce his love for the store over the intercom. The manager declined but offered a free lunch instead, which the man accepted. On a Southwest Airlines flight, he could not deliver the security briefing but was allowed to address the entire plane. When given a clear "no," he simply said thank you and moved on.
A neurologist named Ben Baris demonstrated exceptional friendliness by greeting janitors and bringing items to underpaid front-office administrators. He used the term "sticky" to describe people who take a casual exchange and assume greater closeness than actually exists. This concept relates to social anxiety because many people fear being perceived as creepy or overly persistent.
One anecdote involved a tall college roommate who would stare directly at people in group conversations, making others uncomfortable. After being told he could not stare, the roommate asked where he should look instead. The advice given was to keep his gaze moving. With this adjustment, he became well-liked within the social circle.
Understanding the line between being friendly and being sticky is a skill that requires practice. A fist bump is appropriate, but remembering someone's name the next day does not make them a close friend. If someone does not respond after initial contact, that typically signals they do not wish to continue the interaction. This applies regardless of gender.
Women may experience heightened concern about men misinterpreting friendly signals in ways that could become threatening. Data indicates that pessimistic beliefs about others never get corrected through avoidance. While some encounters may be negative, learning to move on from those people is part of developing social skills. The greater cost comes from missing wonderful people by avoiding interactions altogether.
Social skills improve with practice, just like public speaking or any other ability. The recommendation for those feeling nervous is to start small with safe, easy interactions. Greeting a familiar person in the office whose name is unknown represents a low-risk first step. Skills for ending conversations or recognizing overly persistent individuals develop through approaching, not avoiding.
Many people remain absorbed in their phones, making eye contact and initiating conversation more difficult. One strategy involves offering an invitation rather than making a demand. Approaching a stranger who appeared stern and was inserting earbuds, saying simply "Hi, I'm Nick," led to an immediate positive response. The man removed his earbuds, smiled, and introduced himself as Tibo. They became friends over subsequent years.
The key is treating beliefs about others as testable hypotheses rather than facts. Cues like earbuds can be ambiguous. Someone may insert them because no one has initiated conversation, not because they reject interaction. Testing these assumptions reveals that barriers are often weaker than anticipated.
Religious gatherings, festivals, and other venues where people gather for shared experiences tend to foster friendly interactions. These settings provide natural opportunities for connecting with strangers. People appear to crave such interactions after periods of increased isolation and device use.
A daughter named Lindsay was adopted from China. Earlier, during a pregnancy, the family learned the expected child had Down syndrome. Research findings about overly pessimistic expectations regarding others' responses influenced how this situation was approached. Families raising children with Down syndrome consistently described their children as blessings who brought joy and broadened perspectives.
The pregnancy ended in stillbirth at six months. After mourning the loss, the possibility of adopting a child with Down syndrome was raised. Initial reactions involved uncertainty about whether this would be manageable. The researcher applied the same principle of testing pessimistic assumptions to this personal decision.
As a researcher, the speaker constantly reflects on his data. Three months prior, he and his wife had been calling families about their children's blessings. At the time of speaking, his team had run over 30,000 people through more than 120 experiments documenting how people underestimate how positively others respond when they reach out. Participants consistently hold back rather than engage and connect with others. When facing the decision to adopt, the speaker was filled with the same doubt experienced by study participants. His data provided data-driven courage, showing him he was in the same position as his participants and that reaching out would be surprisingly good rather than merely good.
The speaker and his wife Jen have resources, a strong marriage, and the capacity to raise a child with intellectual disability. About a year after the initial conversation, they flew to China as a family of six to adopt two-year-old Lindsay, who had been abandoned. They will never meet the woman who gave her up and cannot know her circumstances. Lindsay had beautiful brown eyes and a relentless smile despite a difficult start. Raising a child with an intellectual disability is genuinely challenging, yet she has been a blessing in the ways other families described. Lindsay lives without the social anxiety many people experience. She has no filter on her hello and greets everyone while grocery shopping, lighting up faces in the same way the speaker's friend Tibo does when his switch is flipped.
Lindsay functions as the magnet in the family. As the youngest, everyone gathers around her. She greets her father with a loud "hi dad" when he comes home, and all siblings receive the same enthusiastic welcome. She remains very connected to everyone. The other siblings grow older and go their own ways, but everybody loves Lindsay. The speaker notes he has zero minus infinity knowledge about adoption statistics for children with Down syndrome. In the United States today, families can adopt a child with Down syndrome and there is a waiting list in most places.
Genetic testing now allows families to identify various genetic conditions at the three-month mark. While some conditions are extremely difficult to manage or incompatible with life, Down syndrome is not one of them. Many families at the three-month decision point feel skeptical or pessimistic about their ability to handle the situation. They may not know available supports, may underestimate their own strength and capacity for love, and some end pregnancies that could have been massive blessings. The speaker shares his story without telling others what to do. He emphasizes that people have strength they might not realize. Down syndrome is not as challenging as many imagine, and these children are amazing. Once children become yours, the diagnosis becomes background rather than what defines them.
Lindsay is simply Lindsay with her own personality. The intellectual disability becomes almost a background element. She loves playing with dolls and Disney characters, listening to stories, reading books, playing on the trampoline, playing in her outdoor kitchen, and playing with neighbor kids Demi and Delilah, her closest friends. She has a huge personality that defines her day-to-day life.
The interviewer notes the speaker and his wife show zero minus infinity shame about Lindsay's Down syndrome, which creates a positive force. The speaker contrasts this with a famous neuroscientist who was ashamed of his son with epileptic seizures, would not bring him to events, and hid him despite working in a field where such conditions should not carry shame. Another example involves Eddie Chang, chair of neurosurgery at UCSF, who works on treatable forms of epilepsy. Shame about a child's condition impacts how the child moves through the world. The speaker acknowledges he has had concerns and worries about what people will think, including about his other children.
The speaker describes his son who did not find college engaging. Despite being a third-generation PhD, the speaker initially kept his son on an academic path. When they finally let go and allowed him to attend trade school, the son became happier than ever. The speaker recently saw him taking a culinary class and felt tremendous pride. Fulfillment comes from engagement rather than following any prescribed path. Parents struggle with loving their kids for who they are, and this requires practice, deliberate thought, and attention. It makes a world of difference for the children.
The speaker and his wife sometimes refer to Lindsay as a unicorn because there are not many like her. A collection of unicorns is ostensibly called a blessing, which matches what she has been for their family.
The interviewer asks how to respond when seeing parents with children displaying atypical behavior that may be disruptive, such as being loud, having tantrums, or saying things that do not make sense. The speaker suggests the stuttering analogy works well: wait patiently without calling attention to the behavior, allow the person to express themselves, then continue naturally. If you get to know someone, you can ask directly how they would like you to help or respond. Patience is the key approach. Some differences are harder than others.
The interviewer grew up in a town with many professors and high-achieving parents. The speaker affirms that fulfillment can be found in many ways. His son in trade school has never been happier. The speaker himself considered joining the fire service at one point and believes he would have found it fulfilling. Firefighters serve others directly. Fulfillment is about engagement. The speaker notes that he has not always been great at encouraging his children down non-traditional paths but now recognizes this is what parents should do.
Parents can help by loving children for who they are and helping them find what makes them happiest. The University of Chicago Laboratory School sets very clear expectations for students. Many children struggle when those expectations do not fit who they are. Parents should tell children that any path is okay, whether becoming a carpenter, pursuing a PhD, or following any passion.
The speaker grew up in rural Iowa and began deer hunting with his father at age four. He would walk through the woods pushing deer before carrying a gun or bow at age twelve. Hunting created real community. He hunted with Lane McDow, a University of Iowa football player who also played for the Detroit Lions, and McDow's son Thad. As an adult, the speaker remains connected to the outdoors, loves being in the woods, and does conservation work including invasive species removal. He and his wife enrolled 40 acres in the conservation reserve program and planted 9,000 trees. Hunting and fishing are rarely done alone and carry an important social element.
The speaker's oldest son Ben, a third-year PhD student at Oregon State, invited his father on an elk hunting trip in northeast Oregon during October or November. They hiked miles from the nearest road into remote wilderness with snow on the ground. They used backpacking tents and were unprepared for the cold. On the first day scouting, they encountered a group of five hunters who had been using the valley for years. The older hunter Dennis had lost a longtime hunting partner who passed away recently. The group included Corey and the younger Eric. Despite initial anxiety about connecting, the speaker encouraged staying to talk. The other hunters shared knowledge about hunting spots and a blind location. They invited the speaker and Ben to their heated wall tent for dinner, offering red or white wine despite being miles from any road. The connection transformed the trip. Just yesterday, Corey texted about applying for elk tags and invited them to join again. Corey harvested an elk on the first day. Eric asked the speaker to help bone out the elk, noting the speaker's experience butchering deer from venison he harvests.
Nick Epley described a recent experience hunting with a friend named Corey where they encountered other hunters who had already harvested animals. Epley helped bone out the backstrap and loins while leaving bones for wildlife like cougars. He emphasized that the courage to connect with these strangers came directly from research findings showing how easy it is to underestimate how positively others respond when reaching out. What could have been a competitive or avoidant situation became a meaningful connection, and the families have stayed in touch since, planning to see each other again in the fall.
The host noted that Epley's description provided a strong, ethical picture of hunters, contrasting with common stereotypes. Epley explained that he cares deeply about woodlands and protects them as best he can. In the Midwest, deer populations cause significant ecological damage, so responsible harvesting helps manage this. He now hunts exclusively with a crossbow for greater accuracy, allowing him to take animals ethically and humanely. Most hunters he knows care about the outdoors and being with others, with the actual harvest being secondary to the experience. Epley noted that non-hunters often fail to appreciate this genuine care that outdoorsmen have for the natural environment.
The host reflected on his own upbringing, noting his father was a theoretical physicist who took him to a lab with liquid nitrogen and fruit for experiments like freezing and smashing bananas, rather than showing him equations. The host also mentioned fishermen on his mother's side and his girlfriend's family with a history of hunting and farming. Epley and the host discussed how social dynamics and learning occur in species, referencing the Netflix series Chimp Empire about social dynamics among chimpanzees, including both brutal conflicts and beauty within troops. The host described raising a puppy named Strummer and explained that the fastest way to train a dog is with an older dog because humans teaching cues misses the dog's natural mindset and sensory abilities.
Epley stated that within every species, older members teach younger members how to socialize. He observed this in his own life through watching his parents handle situations. While much of the conversation focused on individuals overcoming anxiety, parents, older siblings, and role models have an equally critical responsibility to model good social interactions. The host asked for recommendations specifically for the 40 and up crowd on how to model positive social behavior, noting that some children may have single parents, be away from parents, or have had negative experiences with family members.
Epley advised paying attention to personal habits, particularly the small moments where behavior shows. He acknowledged his own tendency toward a quick temper stemming from his college football background and actively works to create habits that prevent reactive responses, such as removing himself from frustrating situations rather than trying to correct them in the moment. He emphasized that people watch these little moments, and what seems unimportant is often what others notice most. The application of research findings is not just learning new behaviors but developing small, routine habits that become automatic.
Epley shared a specific habit he developed: when walking from the building entrance to his office, approximately a 150-yard path through an atrium to elevators and down hallways, he now keeps his head up, smiles, and says hello to nearly everyone he passes. He named specific colleagues and staff including Nigel, Keith, Mario, Zia, Eric, Virginia, Jane, Emma, and Joe, noting how this small change brightens his mood and has become automatic. He stressed that cultivating such habits matters because children watch constantly, and these routine actions become part of who people are. A colleague who never swears in class, even outside the classroom, inspired Epley to think about consistency across contexts.
The host described applying classroom rules to his social media presence, refusing to engage in exchanges he would not allow in an undergraduate, graduate, or medical school classroom. He blocks or deletes comments that attack others to maintain a tone of education and respect, though heated discussion is acceptable. Regular commenters have told the host they feel safe commenting on his platform because of these standards. Epley agreed that the key is consistency in small, routine actions rather than grand gestures.
The host thanked Epley for appearing and for his work, mentioning Epley's upcoming book titled A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection. He noted that Epley represents an example of someone whose work and life mutually inform each other, applying research findings about the goodness and untapped beauty in social spaces people often avoid. Epley expressed gratitude for the conversation and agreed to return. The host directed listeners to show notes for links to Epley's work and book, encouraged subscriptions on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple, and mentioned his own upcoming book Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body available for presale at protocolsbook.com.
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