 Well, great having you on the show, Jeffrey. Oh, thank you so much, AJ. We're excited to talk about your new book. The book is titled Belonging, and I'd love to just kick things off with what belonging means to you and why it's so important. Well, a sense of belonging is a sense that we're part of a group that values us, accepts us, and to which we can contribute. Evolutionarily, as human beings, we're wired to be social and we're exquisitely attuned to whether or not the people in our groups are accepting of us, welcoming of us. So it makes sense that belonging would be a really important concept. And it's something that we really care about, that we're exquisitely attuned to. In this sense of belonging and the seeking of belonging, you mentioned that we're social creatures, but many of us often feel in the out group or outcast or not quite in that sense of belonging. And what does science say about those feelings when we don't have a sense of belonging? It's toxic. It's toxic, at least when a sense of not belonging or being ostracized is chronic or prolonged. It is, as Steve Cole at UCLA Medical School puts it, one of the worst environmental toxins out there. So research suggests, for instance, that the damage to our bodies as a result of chronic isolation or chronic sense of being alone, being disconnected from humanity is as bad for you as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day in terms of even longevity. So we don't really think about environmental toxins this way. We're kind of usually thinking about the radon and micellar or secondhand smoke. But it turns out that these social toxins are pretty harmful too, even though they're kind of less visible and we don't really think about them. Then in terms of kind of acute effects, one of my favorite studies is from social psychologists named Kip Williams, where he just looks at the kind of these momentary experiences of ostracism, where in his famous paradigm, people are online playing a game of catch with graphic avatars. And they don't even know who these other people are that they're ostensibly playing catch with unbeknownst to the subjects. The avatars are actually just pre-programmed entities coded to stop passing the ball to the participants avatar after a few tosses. And they just pass it back and forth amongst themselves. And there's this kind of experience of, wait a minute, why am I on the out here? Why am I on the outside? And when Kip Williams explains the effects of this kind of momentary experience, he says it's basically pain, pain and actually activate some of the same regions associated with the experience of physical pain. Again, kind of going back to this idea that we're really involved to be highly attuned to whether or not we're accepted or rejected by others, sometimes exquisitely so. So being on the out can be very painful, especially when chronic. Now, is there an evolutionary case or basis for this in group, out group effect and why as humans, we sort of self select into these groups? I don't think we do well with the experience of strangeness or unfamiliarity. And there's some research out of NYU suggesting that, yeah, we seem to be much more easily conditioned, like it's very easy to train us to have a kind of aversive state of arousal in response to a new stimuli. It's called sort of negative conditioning. So this research out of NYU shows that we're actually just as fast to form these negative associations towards outgroups as we are towards, say, spiders or snakes, which we've presumably been evolutionarily to some degree program to be sensitive to. So it does seem as though while we really crave belonging, we're also very sensitive to those who are on the out outside of our group. And understandably so, I mean, you know, one of the, you know, as we know, people, other people are both the greatest delight to everyday experience, but also the greatest threat, you know, that, you know, people can really mess with you. And so it makes sense to be attuned to who's on the out and who's on the in. Not everyone you meet is worth your time. If those values do not align, they have a different worldview. There's going to be just going to be a lot of clashing going on. And even in that that clashing, regardless of how the respect you might have for one another, that clashing due to different values and a worldview can offend and hurt somebody just because it's completely different or alien to them. I totally agree with that. I think the the lesson of I mean, I wrote this book partly because, you know, we're kind of living in this era where divisiveness is just rampant along along so many group identities, class, race, even gender, political party. I do think that one of the themes of the research resonates with one of the where we are as a society, which is I think sometimes we're we're too quick to make the assumption that they are fundamentally different from us. And that might make evolutionarily evolutionary sense to kind of be on guard to that possibility that they are fundamentally different. But I think we're in this odd cultural moment where we are othering othering each other much more than we need to. And I think the the research does suggest that we are often a bit too quick, too reflexive in dismissing people or others who seem at first to be a little different from us, but who upon closer examination, maybe a little bit of perspective, giving perspective, getting might turn out to be more similar than we think. And I think we're kind of in this era. We also know more about each other than we have in the past, which makes it incredibly difficult. Everyone is very flippant, a posting about their ideas, their worldview, their hates, their loves, and we're seeing all this. And and what is also we know that in order to get that message to travel as far as possible, that it needs to be very biting and needs to be written in a way that evokes emotion. And so when you put all that out there, of course, people are going to get riled up, they're going to get angry, and they're not going to want a lot of that around them. Where in the past that we had more of a social cushion of civility that we participated in social contracts that allowed us to get along much better. And to your point, we're going to have to give people more time and more understanding in order to work this out, because that social those social contracts don't work in the way that they did in the past. We have this new form of media, which is just rearranging social relations in so many ways, rearranging psychological life in so many ways, rearranging our ability to connect with people who are different in so many ways. And I think we're still kind of in the growing pains of dealing with this new media. We're certainly in the middle of it. Yeah, or even in the beginning. I mean, this is probably the very beginning, you know, it feels like it's been a lifetime. It's like 2006. It's like that is not long to see where we are 100 years. Well, I think there's two other forces at play that I'm curious to hear your perspective on, because certainly a lot of the divisiveness that we're discussing here and we're intimating around is coming from leadership and institutions, whether it's political leaders or whether it's those people that we've looked up to. And a lot of it is around the consolidation of power to move their own whatever they may be fighting for their own issues to the forefront to rally their troops. And a lot of times in that divisive language, there's a labeling of others as the enemy. And then this other force that Johnny is talking about is with all of this information online and no real nuance in a tweet or in a short video clip or in some of the way that we parse our news and information. I feel like we're much quicker to judge others than ever before. So if I were to meet you site unseen, you know, 1950 at a house party, we may never get to our political inclinations. We may never get to our differences in that conversation. But now if I'm going to an event and I see who's on the list and I go click around on social media and I spend a few minutes just trying to get a sense for who you are. Well, a lot of these affiliations, a lot of these interests, a lot of these passions, pursuits and unfortunately some of this divisive language is now also at the forefront before we've even had a chance to sort of let our guard down and get to a place of getting comfortable with one another and understanding the nuance that we're discussing. And completely out of context, that is the era where we're in, where so much is in these little sound bites, denuded of context and very easy, first of all, for us to say something that isn't really expressive of who we are, but rather is kind of appealing to our political tribes or our group identities or kind of some emotion of the moment. In addition, it's very easy for other people looking at what we say online to make false inferences based on that, not knowing the context in which it occurs. I mean, Twitter is a quintessential example of that. I would add to this so little research by my colleague, Lee Ross, who coined this term that I think is very helpful in trying to create a more inclusive society to break down these barriers. The idea was what he called the fundamental attribution error, fundamental attribution error. And it refers to this pervasive bias we have to overattribute people's behavior to something inside of them and to underattribute their behavior to their circumstances. When combined with social media, that is a toxic combination. Yeah, I'm glad we got there. And I certainly want to discuss this bias. What strikes me in this conversation is just how indelible social media has become. You know, I cringe when I go back to the first post that I had on Instagram where I was sharing what I was doing and what I was eating and who I was in my late 20s to who I am now. But oftentimes we create this digital record and these are just snapshots of the mood, the sense of the room, what in group we're a part of now will often signal online with the messages, the things that we tweet. And then for someone to make a snapshot opinion of me based on that scattershot view of things that I was posting stream of consciousness almost as I first discovered this platform of Instagram and Facebook, it is a little scary. We're now armed with all this information that that feels to fall in line with the divisiveness that our leaders are selling us, that the other team is the enemy. They're out to get you. You can't go and cross the aisle, so to speak, politically. You can't participate in these other groups because they no longer align with your values. There is so much grist for our mills. If we want to go there, if we want to hate someone, if we want to feel like someone or some group is different, you can find ways to rationalize that so easily in the world that we're in. And I think what you're talking about, AJ, is a really profound point that our environment, social environment is so different from what it used to be because it's now digitized. And there's artifacts of ourselves that were our fingerprints that were leaving behind all the time. And it's just out there. When I was a teenager, fortunately for me, we would call up on the modem, right? And Lord knows what happened to all those exchanges. Nothing, as far as I know, was permanent. But now it's really different. And, you know, it is this kind of, you know, it's a problem. Kind of going back to the paraphrase, Kevin Hart, right? You have to grow up. You have to mess up. And we're messing up all the time in our social lives. I know I'm messing up all the time. Fortunately, I don't use social media that much. So it's not a matter of permanent record for me so much. It is a sign of the times and it's a dilemma of the times. And we may just need to learn to be really much more forgiving and to counter the fundamental attribution error a lot more. And one of my hopes is that by understanding these human biases, we might be able to kind of counter them, go from being reflexive to reflective, thinking, wait a minute, do I know where the person was? What their context was when they post this, for instance. And I think in our day to day social lives, the same applies. All for what it's worth. I think social media is one of the most devastating, has had a very devastating effect on our belonging, even though it could be a tool to connect us. I'm no expert in social media, but the research I've looked at does suggest that it is on balance, especially for the young, something that undercuts their sense of connection with other people. There's even a great study out of Liz Dunn's lab, where she finds that when you bring family members and friends together and just have them put their phones away and have a conversation, they enjoy the conversation a lot more. They're much more in the present. So even at that level, just having your phone out, something in our attention is diverted from the possibility of connections that we could have. And I really do feel like, I mean, I just saw Dr. Vivek Murthy talk about this at the APA conference. We really, it's pretty simple. We love connection. Connection is its own reward, but we are creating situations that threaten that possibility of achieving that connection. However, on the other hand, we have a lot of power in choosing our situations. I know that's what you both are doing with your clients, creating not so much change in ourselves, so that's important. But thinking about how do I turn, choose situations that are more aligned with my values and who I want to be, who I want to become. Well, I know a big part of the bootcap experience for our clients who come through is the fact that we do have a diverse audience. We do have a ton of different backgrounds who come to us for various reasons, all in search of that connection, all in search of better relationships. And one of the great parts about the end of that experience on the bootcamp is seeing that you're no longer alone in feeling this way and realizing that the skills that it takes to build those deeper connections can be learned and people from various backgrounds can learn them together in this really safe environment of experiencing together. And what Johnny and I do, the first thing we do in class starts is we ask everyone to take their phones and put it in a little box and shove it away so we can all be fully present to not only what we're sharing, of course, I'd love for the audience to hear what we're sharing, but also when every single member of the program opens up and shares a bit of their story and their personality and what they're searching for and what they really care about, those are the moments where we want everyone to be fully present because so many times that phone is what we've actually become the most connected to, right? As humans, we seek connection and we're more connected to the phone than to the other humans in the room. Yeah, and there's already a psychological effect of unknown people being in the room and so that you're gonna view them as the other with the few folks that you have made friends with until that connection is made. So allowing them to keep their phones only prolongs that time until that they do begin to talk with each other and connect and all realize that they all are there for the same reasons and if they can just get on the same page, they're gonna have an amazing weekend of growth and not only for themselves but for each one in that room. And so by taking those, we're removing a hurdle that would keep them from connecting. Why do you think people don't do that on their own so much? I've been a little perplexed by this because you would think that they would learn. It's a good thing. I think this idea of always being connected is just so pervasive and there's this separation anxiety that occurs with the phone whether it's from workaholism here in the States, it's a slack culture, the notifications, the phone always having something to hit that little dopamine button for you to make you feel even more connected and drawn to it. We've talked about this in the past, how you'll have that phantom buzz and you'll think your phone is ringing but it's not, but you have to check it. And it's just taking up processing power, as you said that's keeping us from fully engaging in the conversation fully seeing and hearing the other person in that room. And unfortunately, that's why a lot of our clients are relieved at the end of that experience to see like, wow, if I don't engage with my phone for an entire weekend, look at all these magical connections that I can make. Yeah, I am a social psychologist and that's relevant to what you're saying in this one way which is I study the power of the situation as it is right here, right now, the present moment. There's a lot of research that and a lot of kind of everyday common folk wisdom about how important personality is and of course personality is important. But what I study is this kind of the water that we're inhabiting together to use a sort of David Foster Wallace metaphor where we're just kind of swimming together in this moment, in this situation. And there is a sacredness to the situation and the situations get better, situations get better. The more we pull our common attention into them and work together to make them better. And I think that that is the kind of, the sacredness of the situation is one of the lessons of my field. When people are in common purpose, for instance, even just down to the level of the situation, right? The kind of what we're doing right here, we're just working together on having a conversation, for instance, or doing some puzzles together. I've been really surprised by the power of games to bring people together, like a board game. We're just kind of doing this together. There's something, it's like a world apart. And it sounds like that's what you're kind of creating with your clients is a world apart. But we don't really, I think, maybe it is about having a real appreciation that, God, every situation is so special, didn't have to be this way, and it could be even better. Well, you bring up these personality traits. And I know many in our audience love the Myers-Briggs and love the Enneagrams, and we all like to understand ourselves better. And then, especially when you can hear someone else's and go, oh, now I totally know who you are, right? It feels like a cheat code. It feels like a shortcut. But then you write in the book that many people don't realize this is no predictor of your behavior, right? It's a group of questions to survey you, but it doesn't predict that the next time you go in that room, you're gonna be an introvert. Or the next time you go in the room, you're gonna be an extrovert on the Myers-Briggs scale. And I think for a lot of us, we get so wrapped up in personality traits, and it's very easy then to just label someone as something and either write them into your life or write them out of your life and not take into account the situation. There are some situations where I'm gonna feel more socially anxious, and therefore I'm probably gonna show up more as an introvert than as an extrovert. And there are some situations where I'm gonna be really extroverted because I'm really comfortable and my social anxiety is that, hello. So let's talk about the situation crafting because I love this idea and concept and Johnny and I know the power of it in the way that we run our programs, but I don't know that many people in our audience are even aware of this concept. The degree to which we attach excessive importance to the power of character and personality, of course, of course, personality and character matter, but in the Western world, we have this sort of Titanic individualism that leads us to overestimate how much it matters. And that's been pretty consistently demonstrated. We think that what really matters in influencing a person's fate, trajectory, destiny is what's inside of them, and we discount the importance of what's outside of them, their circumstances. And I mean, I love the Myers-Briggs. It's fun. It's like astrology, right? So soon you kind of, I'll marry, that's the best one. So I'm pretty happy. We're Scorpio, so we're happy with our score as well. That makes you the other. We're on the top. So I know we can rest free. I mean, I don't know about the Libras, but whatever. They might be okay. But it's fun. It's fun as a way to kind of surface, to bond, to connect. It's great. My father loved the Myers-Briggs. He worked in industry. He felt like he thought he could peg anyone in the Myers-Briggs within 30 seconds of meeting him. So he was really big into it. But that's one thing is, yeah, we kind of, we overestimate it. And so I think, I think we spend way too much time in our work, in school, in our social lives, in our just day-to-day encounters, trying to sort people, right? Figure out who's the best match? Who will be the best person for my work or at school or even a relationship partner? And we spend way too little time thinking about how can I craft the situation to bring out the best in people? We're often trying to read people when we have this kind of power to rewrite situations in ways that will make us feel connected even across vast lines of difference. So that is the kind of idea with situation crafting. It's telling us, it's like that drunk who lost their keys under the lamp, the street light. And it's just looking under the street light for their keys and they actually dropped them out, they might have dropped them outside of the illumination, but they're not looking there. It's the same thing. We're not looking in the places we're not thinking of. And one place that we could look for explanation, prediction, and control is the situation and ways to kind of craft it, even in little ways. And I know with your clients, it sounds like that little bit of situation crafting where you put the phone away, that's powerful. That's powerful. I had a friend, he had a teacher who was renowned for his ability to get rowdy children to sit and listen and learn. And he ascribed this teacher success to the fact that this teacher would always refer to his students as mister or miss with the formal designations. And it's a little thing, but one of the things that I really have grown to appreciate is how big of an effect little things can have. And of course, as we're all pushing the ball forward to change the system, change laws, change policies in this difficult era we're living in, we need to still understand that these little things really matter. It's their day-to-day life, the warp and woof of everyday social interactions that we have some superpower of. And it sounds like you all are kind of aware of that, that you can craft situations in ways that create more genuine connection and unleash people's potential. Definitely 100% agree. And when we started the show 15 years ago, we spoke about this in terms of choosing first dates. So we were very focused on romantic relationships. And we said, you can actually situation craft, you can change what a first date is and spark different emotions and see other sides of a person and just sitting across from them, watching them chew down a Caesar salad. But many of us get caught up in these ideas of like, well, I have to follow what everyone else is doing. I have to put myself in the same situations. And they often think about situations as just the location or the fixed things in the location. Johnny and I realize that your behaviors in that location are gonna be influenced by others. So one of the things that is magical about the boot camp experience is I'll talk to someone before they're preparing to join us and I'll say, now over the course of the weekend, you're gonna talk to 200 people. And they're like, that's crazy. I'm an introvert or I have a little bit of social anxiety. I don't think I've talked to 200 people in the last year. And I'm like, well, it's gonna happen over the course of the weekend. And it's a little hard to fathom if you're coming from an environment or a situation where your friends aren't very social, you've been in a work from home situation, you don't really get outside of your bubble, you don't experience new things. So of course you're kind of running into familiar faces and you're not really stretching yourself socially. But when you're surrounded by a group of eight other people with that goal to talk to 200 people and all of the coaches and our team members are socializing with everyone, literally everyone we interact with, then over the course of that weekend, it becomes really easy to hit that 200 person goal because everyone in the group is being social. And all of a sudden it's acceptable for you to be social. It's acceptable for you to be extroverted and put yourself out there. And I love that situation crafting, not only thinking about, well, what is the location that I'm in or I'm sitting at a table or it's this time of day, but thinking about all the behaviors around you that are influencing you in these subtle ways, either towards your goals or away from your goals to showcase a side of your personality or to hide a side of your personality. To set it up to go with your strengths and weaknesses. If you're not the most chatty person and has the best conversational skills, well, perhaps you wanna take yourself and your date to somewhere where there is something else going on that diverts your attention that you can both enjoy. And if you are good at those skills and having the dinner and drinks where you guys can chat and get to know each other will work in your favor. But if you don't have those skills, why put yourself in that situation? One thing that you said that really resonates is there's two things. One is that you can choose your situations, as Johnny said, like we have a lot of agency in choosing our situations. Second is even within a given physical situation, we have a lot of power in altering it in seemingly subtle ways that can be very profound. So yeah, we might be at a restaurant together or we might be at a bar together or we might be in a classroom together. You might be a teacher, right? It's the same kind of brick and mortar place yet as people in the situation, we share some of that power of the situation, we can alter it. And there's many different tools for doing this. One is the question, right? A question can be powerful as you're saying AJ, there are some questions that open up worlds and there are some questions that close them. The craft of the question is a really important lever for us in our day-to-day interactions. And there's actually some lovely research by Art and Elaine Aaron to psychologists of connection and they have this exercise or activity where people ask questions of one another, I think they're 48, sometimes they're 24 and the questions are of gradually increasing intimacy such that by the end, you're asking the person a question like, if it were your last day on earth, what would you wanna say to your loved ones that you haven't said already? And why haven't you said that? And that's a question that opens up a lot, that opens up a psychological world. There is some craftsmanship, that's why I chose the term craftsmanship. You can't just jump into that kind of question, right? It's something, it's like a musical composition. That would be a false note, you build up to it. But if you're aware that, man, there is more potential in this situation than I can see, which is one of the lessons of social psychology, then you start thinking, how can I create a little opening here so that potential can come out? One answer is the question, there's several others too. That one really stands out to me, the nonverbal behavior. So one of our classic examples of this from a boot camp experience is something we call the diamond dance. So we will go to certain venues and over the years that have dance floors. And of course, at the start of the evening, a dance floor is pretty empty, right? Everyone's just kind of coming in, they're not quite sure, they're all sort of waiting for that one person in the reference group to take the lead, to be the dancer, right? And we would challenge our clients to go out in a group of four and form what we call a diamond on the dance floor. And in this diamond formation, they all face the same direction. And whoever is at the top of the diamond and in the direction that it's facing is the leader and gets to choose whatever dance move he wants or she wants. It could be the lawnmower, it could be the sprinkler, it could be the macarena. You, whatever you feel like doing, you're the leader of this foursome, you're at the top of the diamond, you do your dance move for a little bit and then you throw it to one side and then everyone turns to face a new direction, there's a new top of the diamond and that person's the leader. And inevitably hearing this right now in the podcast or watching this on YouTube, you're thinking, I could never do that, why are you putting your clients through that? That sounds so intimidating and awful. And at the end of this experience, every single client remarks how much fun they had because they became the reference group of that event, they drew everyone onto the dance floor. And after two or three revolutions of the diamond dance, the dance floor is now full, people are trying to become part of the diamond, they're pulling our clients into conversation, what are you guys doing, what's the story here? All because again, through nonverbal communication, we created an environment, a situation where it then became acceptable to dance. So we've all been in a situation, right? Where there was no one on the floor, so it's like, oh, I'm gonna go to the bar, I'm not gonna get on the dance floor yet because I don't wanna be in the spotlight and there's this security in a group of four, all going out there at once, having a little bit of fun, showing a little personality, a couple revolutions of the diamond and all of a sudden the dance floor is filling, people are having a great time and realizing, oh yeah, this space is here so that we can dance. It's not just to stand on the edge and stare at. And you have some agency in turning the situation around. I bet it was very powerful, a powerful experience in so many ways to your clients that feel like, wow, I could have just been passive during this whole outing and had a totally lackluster evening, but I had a great evening, partly because I had some agency in it and there's often this kind of leeway or room to maneuver in situations that we under appreciate. Some ambiguity that we can kind of work with. Many of the situations that we come to are predefined to a great extent. You're supposed to dance on the dance floor, you're supposed to drink at a bar, you're supposed to eat at a restaurant, there's kind of scripts that we have for our day-to-day situations. And yet there is this kind of room to maneuver to kind of push the boundaries in ways that create more connection and more creativity, I think, in the case that you used. It was a kind of creative moment. And there's a couple of things in what you say that I could kind of highlight, I think, that might be interesting. One is the power of social norms, right? It's not so much what is inside of me that predicts my behavior, but what I think we do, what I think is okay and appropriate here. And so that's a lever to pull, the social norms. We can often create them as you're suggesting and it's kind of as a micro norm. The second thing is that I think in redefining a situation, you often need the support of a new group, right? One of the best ways to create change is to take people out of their existing group, put them in a new group with a new direction for change. And that's one of the things that you did in that situation is to basically when you create a new group, the turf is wide open. This group could be anything. It's like a T group, right? It could be anything and we could do anything and there's a lot of possibility. One person in isolation, very difficult. Some people can do it, right? Some people have that leadership skill, that charisma to redefine the situation. But that takes time, I think, to develop, but if we can kind of create a little coalition within these situations, we often change them in pretty surprising ways. Part of it too, I guess the third thing I would say is there's a bit of vulnerability. So, you know, kind of go into some Brené Brown's work where there is a kind of degree to which what unites us is our insecurities, anxieties, weaknesses, loneliness. We have all been there. That's one of the parts of being human is we know what it's like to feel insecure, feel vulnerable, feel alone. And that can be a powerful bonding agent just to share that. Like, I'm feeling awkward here. I don't know what to do. I feel a little, like, I don't know what to do with my body, right? And you create a kind of situation where, hey, yeah, we all feel that way. What are we gonna do with this? And often that little bit of insecurity or discomfort is a seed for a new direction, right? So, I love that. And that vulnerability often is evoked in the silly dance move that the leader in the diamond is choosing, right? We're not asking for sophisticated ballroom dancing here. It's just whatever jumps to mind improv style. And oftentimes there is a lot of vulnerability in the dance that you choose. Moving a little off beat, not having it fully choreographed, all four members not quite moving in the same direction but trying their best to follow the leader. And that, again, that window of vulnerability in a nonverbal way or in a verbal way then grants the other person comfort in getting vulnerable too and sharing a bit of what's going on for them. Even if they might not be feeling the same way or might not want to participate in exactly what you're doing, that window of vulnerability is so key. Yeah, I love that. I think the window metaphor is really useful because like a window, these situations often open up and then close. One of the things I'm really interested in is how do you keep the window open? So I was curious if you have any tips from your work with clients, how do you generalize that lesson into my work, into my home life? Because we know from educational psychology, there's this problem of transference where you might learn some kind of conceptual idea like the conservation of momentum over and over and over again but then when you have to apply to a new problem, new situation, people are clueless. So how do you keep the window open? A few factors go into the experience. Number one is just that, it's an immersive experience. So, hey, I'm a huge fan of podcasts. I love reading books. Johnny and I are voracious learners. We try our best to soak up all of these concepts but I don't fully grasp a concept and I certainly don't make it part of my repertoire until I have experience really immersed in it to start using it in conversations, to start using it in my daily life. So that's a big part of the experience over the weekend. It's just being fully immersed in all these working pieces to communication, vulnerability, storytelling, opening up, showcasing your personality. Then there's this shared experience and connectedness that comes out of that that often leads to the participants staying in touch and holding each other accountable through the magical experience they just had. And as I said, coming from diverse backgrounds, some in the military, some run their own business, some digital nomads, some family, men and women who have children and then being united in, hey, I'm lacking in this area of my life where I feel like I should have more connection in my life. Coming out the other end being like, wow, that was actually easier than I thought, whether it was diamond dancing or striking up conversations with 200 people and then the self-fulfilling momentum of staying in touch with one another and offering support through our coaching after the program is how we try our best with those clients to take the learning of the experience of taking these concepts from the podcast, concepts from psychology, applying them in a weakened environment that's foreign that gives them a little air of cover, so to speak, so they're not failing with social consequences back home and then having some wins come out of it, some real success come out of it, right? So part of the experience that I think breaks things open is when you actually see things working, right? Often what leads you to come take a program is you've found an area of your life where things aren't working, conversations aren't going well, conversations aren't working to your advantage, people aren't connecting with you and then to come out of an experience where people were connected with you, conversations went well, that's also self-reinforcing and empowering. It's like a magic power now of, well, who else can I connect with? Can I connect with the barista that I see every morning on my way to work? Can I connect with my coworker who shares the cubicle next to me now that I know this? And for us, it is pointing out it's pattern recognition of flawed thought patterns that are not working on their favorite or behaviors that are stunting any of their connection or conversations and then being able to point those out throughout the weekend of showing them in all these different areas where that one idea or that one thought is playing on a loop is interfering. And once they see that, oh, you found it here, you also found it over here. And now in video work, which we do with all of our clients are like, now it's front and present and I'm seeing it right in front of me. You're able to see how it's affecting you in multiple different places and hopefully, and I think this is why we've been so successful by the end of the weekend, they're able to identify those patterns themselves. And once they're able to identify those patterns themselves, then they can begin the work on habituating new behaviors that counter those old flawed thought patterns or behaviors. Yeah, and not just cognitive, but social. Sometimes the way they're kind of interpersonal. We are kind of styles of interacting can be pretty destructive. I wonder if there's some way in which you can take these kinds of principles and generalize them to some of the social problems that we have. Now, of course, we're in an era when there's a lot of powerful social forces at work creating divisiveness, undermining the possibility of our society having some of the characteristics that you're creating in your sort of micro bubble here, economic inequality, institutionalized racism, xenophobia, there's just so many powerful social forces at work that kind of undermine that possibility for creating that sort of connection and those growth opportunities in our day to day social lives. So I wonder if there's some way to take what you're all doing and apply it to some of the problems that are racking our society, just kind of thinking aloud. I think that this idea of getting people outside of their existing group and putting them in new groups is very powerful. It probably has a lot of implications for political discussions. So many attempts at political reconciliation had people in their kind of preexisting reference groups in one way or another, bringing Democrats and Republicans, for instance, together away from the sway of their groups so that they can interact as individuals rather than representatives of their group might create a sort of window of opportunity for them to kind of at least empathize more. And in new environments, you know, you look at summits and symposiums and G8 and where world leaders leave their environment and leave the pull of those groups and actually meet in rooms in different environments. You see them leaving the room with their tie off. They're a little bit looser, more relaxed because they all go in pushing an agenda but that environment piece that we're talking about I think is one of the biggest that allows you to not feel so judged and constrained based on behaviors and actions that fit the environment that you spend most of your time in. And instead, spending a weekend with us, whether it's Las Vegas, Miami, LA, where you get an opportunity in a new environment, where there are no reference points to past behaviors or people that could judge you or those forces that be in your political party that are pushing their agenda so that you can actually see someone engage with someone in a more meaningful way. Taking people outside the existing currents of their social situation and putting them in a new situation with new currents that that's one, that's one kind of strategy that comes up in political reconciliation and also these sort of successful diplomatic efforts like the Camp David Accords where people are brought in outside of the or kind of a bit freed from the constraints of their existing reference groups and the norms and their constituents. So I think that maybe we could put like three, I think there's three things that kind of come up here. One, and this kind of resonates with a lot of what's in the book about the ingredients for social change. One is that or even personal change. One is that it's always participatory. So people are kind of, you know, as your clients are doing, they're kind of involved, right? They're taking action. They're experiencing the new idea for themselves. It's never really top down. And that really dovetails with a lot of the research. Top down efforts to lecture at people, get them to think what you think almost invariably backfire. Because as you're saying, it has to be something that has to be part of my lived experience. So participatory. The other is that there is always a social element to it, especially a novel social element where I'm with new people who perhaps share a common discomfort that we all acknowledge and who share perhaps a common vision of trying something different. I think you need both of those. Yeah, both of those. And then the third is what is called in social psychology, self-affirmation. Which is creating these situations where people can express who they are and feel valued for it rather than hide and shame. And I think that those three ingredients, participatory processes, social, the social element in self-affirmation seem to be kind of a special cocktail for creating change. Like even at this kind of, at the level of personal change, but I think also at the level of social change when you're looking at what creates political reconciliation, for instance. The other thing that I think that makes it different, difficult and what I'm trying to figure out what's going on and it's a he said, she said debacle online politically. There's usually a large degree of cognitive distortions going on that neither party want to admit is going on. There's a lot of mind reading. There's a lot of reading in the things that aren't there and no one's just having a genuine conversation. So we're certainly not gonna be able, in that hostile environment, you're not going to be able to share the commonalities of vulnerabilities that you might have. And you're, which is also gonna make you deciding with that mutual vision is going to be. I also feel this empathetic listening component of allowing the other person to verbalize and not only express their feelings, their thoughts, their beliefs, but also the story behind reaching those conclusions and getting to that place of thinking, that belief, that view. And I think that is often lacking in a lot of these situations and conversations where we're not actually trying to allow the other person to explain themselves fully and we're not doing it in an empathetic way. We're often listening to it in an analytical way to try to pick apart faults, find something to disagree with, catch them in a gotcha moment that we could spin around on them. And I've always been curious around those studies that show you can sway people's political opinions just by sitting with them and listening to them and not actually lecturing them or telling them there's anything wrong about their views at all, but allowing them to experience the fullness of whatever view they're holding onto and explain for themselves and sit with how they got to that conclusion. Because as Johnny's saying, a lot of this stuff is simply participating in what you view as the in-group. And there's a lot of overlap between the two political parties. We were to draw a Venn diagram. There's a lot of things they agree on versus the areas of disagreement, yet we hold onto these areas of disagreements and these beliefs often because we want to be part of that in-group, whatever tribe we've aligned with and we haven't really reason to rationalize them for ourselves at all in any ways. They're just sort of taken as, well, it's the latest bumper sticker, it's what the leaders are talking about, it's what I've seen on social media, so hashtag now I believe it too. Yeah, there's a few things that get in our way, get in the way of our ability to form genuine connection. And one, as you're alluding to is stereotypes. We see the other in these, along these simplified caricatures in terms of, we have images of what the average Trump supporter is or the average Trump opposer is. And then what we end up doing in these interactions or encounters across the political line, say, is to interact with a projection in our mind rather than the flesh and blood person right before us. And this happens all the time. I mean, I know I am frequent, when I go back to New Jersey, my hometown, I'm frequently stereotyped as the egghead academic and I can just feel the quicksand of judgment. I'm sliding into it as I try to explain my point of view on some academic matter. Anyway, but I think that is a big problem. And so I think one way out is through respect, which is a word whose etymology means to look again, respectate, so looking harder, looking more deeply is one antidote to the effects of stereotypes. And there's a lot of research that suggests that just pausing and thinking, why am I thinking this can do a lot of good in terms of breaking the hold of stereotypes on our perception. The other element here that I think would be is kind of interesting to talk about is this work on perspective getting. Too often when we're trying to understand another person, we try to take their perspective, imagine it, when really what we should be doing is asking people for it. And this is research from Nick Epley and Juliana Schroeder showing that we vastly overestimate our ability to read other people's minds. We get it wrong even when reading our friends' minds, even when reading our own minds. We don't really know ourselves as well as we think we do. Yeah. And so it's like sometimes less well. Yeah, if you journal at all, you recognize that real quick. Right, that's right. And so perspective getting is one tool to kind of break down these barriers where we just ask people, hey, what did you mean by that? What were you thinking? What do you feel on that issue? What do you think about the topic of minimum wage and asking a really kind of non-judgmental way, open, curious, genuinely curious way? That is a powerful way. I'm into these everyday scientifically validated ways to create connection that seem ordinary on the face of it, but then upon deeper inspection, they're actually pretty extraordinary. The act of asking a question, asking someone for their point of view, surfaces who they are, and it creates a magic that really can be life changing. And we've seen this in a lot of our own research. I'm curious around the stereotypes and uncertainty. So our brain is wired to seek certainty, right? There's a degree of safety in certainty. And I feel that stereotypes are a degree of certainty that we're giving ourselves in labeling someone else. And then you can start to predict their behavior, move towards them, move away from them, depending on whatever the stereotype is. And I wonder, historically speaking, if in great times of uncertainty, like a pandemic or any other way that you could scientifically measure it, we hold on to stereotypes more or stereotypes have a greater impact on our socialization and our social fabric and political discourse. Because it feels to me, what we're all trying to do is not only seek connection, but we're trying to seek certainty and safety. And at times, those are at odds where this connection that we're seeking has a degree of uncertainty. I don't really know what that person's gonna say. I don't really know what that opinion is gonna be. And it might actually be completely different from mine. And I know John and I have discussed this and we have different political views and I've shifted in Suede and he's shifted in Suede, but in large part through this empathetic interrogation or just questioning to get to the deeper, well, how did you get to that conclusion or how are you getting the information to lead you in that direction has led me thinking differently or me seeing things differently. But there's a level of trust between me and Johnny that if Johnny were to call me or label me and other political party or call me something, it doesn't have the same weight as a stranger labeling me that or calling me that stereotype. So what is science showing around that? And I'd love to get your thoughts on that because I feel a lot of what we're seeing with this uncertainty is then leading to more stereotyping of the other, more labeling than ever. And it's actually led me feeling nervous as someone who studies connection, who loves connection, nervous at times in certain company to share my true thoughts and feelings. Right, because you feel like you're gonna be pegged just as economists hate uncertainty, psychologists hate uncertainty too, but for a different reason, right? It's not just bad for the market, it's bad for our minds. To some degree, to some, it's a strong statement, it's not completely true, it's more of a double-edged sword. But when we're in an uncertain state, we look for patterns. Some nice research by Adam Golinski showing that when people are put in a state of unpredictability, where they feel like they're, they can't predict what's going on, they see more images in random patterns. So I do think, I mean, I just visited Berlin and visited a concentration camp and I saw, I mean, it kind of drove home things I already knew to some degree, but in a really powerful way. One being what was so surprising. I mean, this is just like, I know people know this, but it's still surprising to me that Hitler and the Nazis were democratically elected. That tells us what democracy is capable of producing. And a lot of it, not all of it, a lot of it came from a experience of national humiliation and uncertainty, which then drove a need to blame and to scapegoat, which was manipulated by the Nazis. So there's a whole kind of concatenation of things that are made that happen, the horrors of the Holocaust. But I do think it speaks to a powerful craving we have to think that our, believe that our world is fundamentally predictable, at least, you know, and I'll be okay here. We'll be okay. And the problems we'll be able to manage together. Someone comes in in that moment of unpredictability where things seem to be going to hell in a handbasket. I don't know where we're going and says, they're to blame, they're the problem. That is a huge moment of vulnerability. One that we're in in this country to some degree, I think, predictability, unpredictability, that experience of unpredictability can be exploited. Now in our everyday encounters, that's very true too. I have this analogy of being a driver on the freeway of life. Like social life is very much like being a driver on the freeway. We're all going to different destinations. We all have something crazy going on inside of our cabins, right? But somehow, if we're driving safely, we all get there. If you're feeling tired, if you're feeling stressed, feeling burned out, if you're feeling enraged, it's my father taught me to drive, get off the road. Because you're judgment, at the very least question your mind more because you will be looking for things to blame. The fundamental attributioner runs rampant in that situation. They're to blame. What the hell? Why is everyone an idiot? Like that old George Carlin skit, right? Everyone is either an idiot or maniac except for me. So I think that one of the things we can do are these sort of psychological calisthenics to kind of restore our mind. I would put meditation up there, mindful meditation. I would put reflections on our core values. What is my core? I got to return. I got to reground myself to what my core values are before I go out onto the highway of life again. And that helps to, at least in our day-to-day lives, prevent us from being so reflexive and helps us to be more reflective. The ways in which that plays out are so manifold, but that's just to answer your question about uncertainty being fertile grounds for stereotypes and stereotyping when it really should be grounds for questioning and perspective getting. If we go back to the beginning of the pandemic, all of that uncertainty drove people first to look at what resources they had because the uncertainty was in front of them. What did they do? They ran on food. And of course, we all saw the videos of shopping carts of toilet paper because it was a resource battle. What happens next? Which is your safety. We go to a Maslow's hierarchy and needs. If there's going to be a lot of uncertainty and that uncertainty is going to play into our resources, well, now we have to collectivize because we're going to be more powerful in a group than as an individual. And so now for collectivizing, it is now it becomes in group, out group and it's going to go, who is on my side? And everyone goes through their rolodex of values and everything else that comes with natural group selection. Yep, in times of uncertainty, it's a very adaptive reflex, right? A lot of these awful things happen from very adaptive underlying needs. We look for people who we can share the problem with and cope with and often that's our tribe and that is a double-edged sword. Laid over top of that, you had a very contentious election for president and we have a political class that is weaponizing this in group, out group phenomenon and identities that are layered beneath it with this emergence of identity politics on both sides. And you write about this in the book that the fundamental attribution error, both sides of the political spectrum fall prey to it. So it doesn't matter if you're a liberal or a conservative, this fundamental attribution error will cause problems for you. And we now are talking about layers and layers of things here, right? So you have our own physical health and wellbeing, which became, oh my God, where am I gonna get my toilet paper? Then you have all of this political messaging that's soaked through every layer of media. You could not consume a single piece of media, whether it's YouTube, whether it's a comic book, every layer of media with this contentious political election was soaked with this in group, out group phenomenon and many were left in a fog, right? In a fog of war of not knowing who's on what side or what's the appropriate thing to say in this moment. And we've seen it in our clients coming to us saying, I feel more disconnected than ever. Well, it's like, yeah, it makes a lot of sense if you look at all the various layers that have stacked against our connection that have led to us have this even greater yearning for belonging. So I wanna talk a little bit about empathy as we wrap this up because we've discussed empathy a lot on the show with past guests and we've also been on the terrible end of receiving someone with zero empathy. You're not alone. Maybe even virtually for some of us. Of course, the common advice is just put yourself and the other person's shoes. Well, that's great when your experiences, your his past histories line up pretty well but what we're talking about here is bringing groups together all of these different factions, tribes, identities that we're all in this melting pot here in society of that advice falls pretty flat in practice if I haven't had the same experiences as you. And what we're finding is, we're kind of sorting ourselves based on education level based on coast where we live, income. So in some situations, yeah, it's really easy to feel empathetic for someone you share experiences with but how do you develop this empathy muscle if you have no experience being in someone else's shoes and you have no experience with that culture? I have two answers. One coming out of Jamil Zaki's lab, a colleague here is simply to understand that empathy is like a muscle. It does grow, you can get better at it. And he shows that believing that leads to that that people hang in there a little bit longer to empathize when they have a growth mindset around empathy. And I do think that one of the overriding virtues that came out a lot of the research I reviewed is just the importance of patience, hang in there, hang in there, especially in these difficult fraught encounters. Often they will go better if you hang in there because as you're talking about with a relationship people use the fact that you're hanging in there as a gauge of your level of commitment. And the more you hang in there, the more it says, I really want to learn and grow and understand. So that's one is have a growth mindset around empathy. The second answer to how to achieve this empathy is through what's known as emotion-based empathy or an emotion-based empathic strategy. And this was developed by a colleague of mine, Ronaldo Mendoza, but has been subsequently used in the political context, basically boils down to first try to understand the person's emotion. What are they feeling? And then think of an analogous time in your life when you felt that emotion too. So you're not putting yourself in the shoes of the other person. Because a lot of times when we do that, we say, yeah, I mean, if I were in the same situation, I wouldn't have done that. So it actually drives people hard. But what you do instead is you listen to the heart, not the head. What are they feeling? And often it's hurt, pain, disrespect. And then you think of a time in your own life where you've been there. And a lot of times it's not very flattering. You learn, you realize that, hey, what I did in similar situations when I was feeling that way was uncomfortably similar. But it can be used as a tool for creating understanding across political lines. David Brukman and Josh Kala have this great and very hopeful study showing the power of deep canvassing to bridge divides. Long story short, they go into these very conservative districts in Florida, Miami-Dade, and they try to open people up to transphobic rights. It's just a 10 minute conversation that the residents have with a canvasser. There's a lot of elements, but there is one thing in there that I think is very important, which is this analogic perspective taking. They're trying to open up these conservative residents to the idea that people who are transgender should be supported and their rights recognized legally. And usually the residents are like, no, I don't get why anyone would be transgender. I don't like it, like their minds are closed, but their hearts are open. So what they do is they say, they'll ask people, you know, we all know it hurts. It hurts to feel treated negatively or unfairly because of something about you that you can't control or because of something about who you are. When have you felt that way and what happened? And that just opens people's heart. So it's the first, it's the heart that opens, then the head falls. And one of the residents talked about how he had PTSD after serving in Iraq and he couldn't find employment because he had PTSD. And so he, and that made him understand, oh, that's kind of the emotional experience that these transgender kids and individuals are having too. And oh, I kind of could kind of understand a little better. And that intervention, all told, there's a few other elements is the only thing that I know of that enduringly opens people up to change on strong beliefs. And I think it begins as Marshall Rosenberg, the pioneer of difficult conversations put it, begin with listening to the heart. He wrote, and he had all these awful toxic conversations with people, racist, xenophobes. And he just had this remark is really kind of stuck with me. He's like, you know, I just find life a lot much more enjoyable if I listen to what's going on in people's hearts and don't really give too much credence to what's going on in their heads. I find that I understand the universality of who we are better when I think about and try to empathize what's in their heart. So those are my two answers. I definitely know that what we focus on in terms of connecting with others in our programs and teaching our clients is exactly that. Seeking the emotion and validating the emotion first before getting into the logical piece. And many of us make the mistake that we think, oh, in order to connect with someone, I just need to find shared experiences. I just need to find those overlap of logical things we have in common. When in actuality, the one thing we universally all have in common is feeling those emotions. Yeah, and it requires some vulnerability, some safety. We can't do that on our own. We need to create classrooms, workplaces, everyday settings where the situation creates a norm for that to happen. So people can kind of rest assured that if I put myself out there, other people will and it won't be held against me. So the social norms are such an important element of crafting situations. You can't do it alone. I think these strategies that we're all talking about are personal empowerment. They're often more likely to be effective if we create situations rather than relying on people's willpower or personal initiative. How can I structure my workplace or my classroom or my day-to-day social life in a way that kind of fosters these sorts of opportunities for greater connection and empathy? I think there's like a lot of little things we can do, but then there's a lot of things that we can do as educators, managers, political negotiators to create those situations that bring out our best. We love asking every guest what their X factor is. What do you think makes you unique and extraordinary? Yeah, I mean, it's a hard question. It's a hard question. People would disagree with what I'm about to say, but I do think that I listen. I listen. Not necessarily to what people are saying, which is where I'm misunderstood. But I think I'm pretty good at listening. Pretty good at listening. We definitely enjoy this conversation. Thank you for joining us, Jeff. Where can our listeners find out a little bit more about you and all the great work that you do and your latest book, Belonging? Well, they can go to my website, JeffreyLCohen.com, which will be up in September, but also at Stanford University website, and the book will be coming out and available at all the usual places, September 13th. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you.