The Neuroscience of Likability, Social Connection, and Brain Health | Ben Rein

Key Takeaway

Treat social connection like a daily health practice, not a special occasion. Today, upgrade one low-bandwidth interaction: turn a text into a phone call, a phone call into video, or a video call into an in-person coffee. If that is not possible, take a “shallow-end” social dip—thank a cashier, wave to a neighbor, or start a brief conversation. Then notice how you feel afterward; your brain often predicts less benefit and more rejection than reality delivers.

Episode Overview

Neuroscientist Dr. Ben Rein explains why positive social connection is a powerful, free intervention for brain and body health. He describes how isolation can amplify stress and inflammation, why in-person cues make interactions more rewarding, and how small conversations, authenticity, gratitude, and calibrated social habits can improve mood and relationships. The conversation also examines social media’s variable-reward design and its limits as a substitute for face-to-face connection.

Full Transcript

Transcript of The Neuroscience of Likability, Social Connection, and Brain Health | Ben Rein from 10% Happier. Auto-generated from episode audio; may contain minor errors.

Hello everybody. Welcome to the 10% Happier podcast. I'm your host Dan Harris. I, as you probably know, think a lot about brain health. Not only because I want to be healthy and happy for as long as possible, but also because I have a dad with dementia, and that's been pretty hard to watch. Uh, if you pay any attention to brain health, you've probably run into what I call neuro [ __ ] online. um expensive, unproven interventions that people are pedalling on Instagram. But it turns out there's actually one really big secret for keeping your brain healthy.

And uh it's completely free. Uh which brings me to my guest today, Dr. Ben Rin, who's a neuroscientist at Stanford and has written a book called Why Brains Need Friends. Dr. Ben Ryan, welcome to the show. show. show. Thank you so much for having me. I want to talk about your book in great detail, but let me just start with uh one of the ways in which you've made a name for yourself. Uh you've got a quite a large online following. One of the things you've done online, which I find very helpful, is debunk a lot of what I was calling neuro [ __ ] And so I'm just curious before we get into why brains need friends, what are some of the, you know, top offenders these days?

Uh what are you seeing online that worries you? Well, first off, I I deeply appreciated that intro. As soon as you said neurobshit, I was like, this is perfect because I mean, yeah, I've seen that it all started for me years ago and I kind of went viral on accident and was like, do I want to do this or not? Is this worth it? Is this good for my career? And then I started engaging with the social platforms more and discovered that so much of what people consider like scientific education online is actually far from scientific education.

there's a ton of misinformation out there and it's just pretty bad honestly. So that's why I kind of started doing what I was doing with the debunking and factchecking because for me it's very simple. It's like someone makes a claim online, they're probably referencing some data. Let's find the data and let's see if it's true. So I mean when it comes to the most common offenders, gosh, of course like we all know about the uh the big ones that have been circulating a lot these days, you know, autism and vaccines and all that.

um as a person who did my PhD in the neurobiology of autism and you know when I was doing my PhD I had people coming to me and saying gosh I hope you start looking into vaccines and you know I learned pretty early in my PhD the first time someone said that to me and I looked up in the literature that there's been studies with millions of children showing that autism is not linked to vaccination. So, of course, and now we have Tylenol and, you know, a lot of other uh offenders coming out these days, but you know, I I think probably the thing I see the most is like it used to be psychology says do this, you know, for happiness or whatever, and now it's neuroscience says or I'm a neuroscientist and this is what I think you should do.

And I think probably the the most common is supplements because maybe coincidentally they are an easy way to uh they're an easy item to be sold on social media. And so when you're giving someone a basically a prescription and then there's a 10% coupon, you know, uh it's a pretty easy way to make money if you're framing yourself as a neuroscientist. So something I recently started doing actually was this video series where I call it do supplements really work and I go through supplement by supplement and break down like here's the actual evidence.

Here's what people say it does. Does it actually do it? At least in in some clinical trials hasn't been shown to do that and you know take that as you will. If you want to use it, go for it. But here's what the evidence says. Is there anything you found that actually might help uh the brain? I have to admit I've been a little bit surprised by some of them because there's so many supplements out there and so many claims for each supplement that it feels like the whole supplement space is kind of garbage and doomed.

When I started looking into it, I was actually a little bit surprised. Like for instance, uh Ashwagandha, people say it's like good for stress. I looked it up. There are some studies showing it reduces cortisol levels. Okay, that's a good sign. Um, magnesium for sleep. I'll admit I take magnesium for sleep, but I'm also I have a magnesium deficiency, so I don't know if that's representative of the average person. I find it helps a lot. There are studies showing that it's helpful for insomnia. Uh, but, you know, for every every one that I find some evidence that's really promising.

There's other evidence for other supplements that looks kind of poor. And, you know, like colostrum is a good one. There's like no scientific evidence for like any of the things people say on social media. sorry to colostrum companies, but I mean that's, you know, you're if you're going to make a claim to sell a product, you should have evidence for that claim. That's my opinion. opinion. opinion. Just to say, and this is um this is not aimed at you, that this is aimed at the viewers and listeners.

If you're interested in taking a supplement, including any of the ones that Dr. Ryan just mentioned, please talk to your doctor first. Okay, having gotten that out of the way. So, another thing you hear online as neuroscientific, is that sugar is more addictive than cocaine. True or false? False. Um, hardly anything is more addictive than cocaine. I mean, the the reason why you can kind of like handwaveily make the claim that sugar is is addictive and actually sugar can be addictive is because it it stimulates dopamine.

And dopamine is like the key to reinforcement in the brain. And by that I mean you do something, your brain has a dopamine release and your emotional reaction to this is, "Wow, that was great. I want to do that again." You know, that's the whole point of dopamine. And so anything that stimulates dopamine release is going to have some sort of like addictive liability, I suppose. And sugar is one of those things, which is why, you know, you you crave sugar, tastes good, you want to have more of it.

Um, but cocaine is on a completely different level because what cocaine does is it goes straight into the brain areas that are releasing dopamine and it just dumps dopamine out. It actually kind of uh hijacks the transporter for dopamine and causes it to be dumped out. So, it's it's just a completely different kind of level of dopamine stimulation, which is why it's so addictive. Can sugar be addictive? Certainly. But do you need sugar? You know, there's a reason sugar tastes good and stimulates dopamine because it's a a great source of immediate energy and fuel.

And so, your body, you know, your brain is wired to tell you this is, you know, easy to use fuel um and easy to store as fat, so you should eat more of it. whereas cocaine is just like hitting those brain centers and just telling you go back. Okay. So, so as we've established, there's a lot of stuff that's masquerading as neuroscience online and actually is not. We've also established that often people will use neuroscience to sell you stuff. Uh but as as I mentioned in the intro and as is the core thesis of your new book, there's actually a really powerful if not the most powerful intervention and it doesn't cost any money at all.

So, what is that? that intervention would be social interaction, social connection as it's named in the the book title. Um yeah, human beings are wired for connection. We've heard that before probably. Um or some variation of that. But the depth to which interaction influences our biology and our mood is unbelievable. It is it touches on so many systems uh you know our bones, our immune system, our skin healing in addition to of course our brains, our hearts, you know being isolated increases your risk for dementia, stroke, uh heart disease, diabetes, not to mention depression, anxiety, suicide.

I mean it is so important and in an era where we are living through a loneliness epidemic uh and an era of also technology and AI and you know remote interaction here we are Dan you know virtually um it's the standard now I I worry that we're losing sight of something that's unbelievably important for our health. I believe you you say that interaction is medicine for the brain. So like walk us through exactly how you know what are the what's happening in our brain and what are the downstream effects when you connect with someone and you're having a positive interaction.

There are three neurotransmitters happening and being released in the brain that together are responsible for something called social reward. This is this you know this feeling of just like sugar is pleasant you want to have more of it. Social interaction is pleasant. you're having a good time with your friends, your spouse, whoever it may be, you want to have more interaction with them. Those three neurotransmitters are oxytocin, which is, you know, the love hormone, social bonding kind of molecule, serotonin, and dopamine. And of course, both serotonin and dopamine are are rather well known for their, you know, mood supporting and uh, you know, positive emotionromoting effects.

But those three neurotransmitters together are a really powerful concoction. In fact, one of the things that I I love to point out is that if you look for a drug that has the same effect or at least a pretty strong overlap with those neurotransmitters, one of the only drugs out there you'll find is MDMA, ecstasy. And the fact that interacting and connecting with others stimulates the same brain pathways as ecstasy tells you one why people who interact more are at lower risk for anxiety and depression and two how important social interaction has been historically for the human species that our brains have wired to make us feel good for being around others.

I like to think about connection as kind of a two-sided coin. On one side we have everything I just said. Interaction makes you feel good. It stimulates the brain in a special way. It makes you feel great and want to come back. On the other side, we have isolation. And it's not just that when you're isolated and when you're not connecting, you're missing out on all the great stuff I just described. It's actually that isolation has its own kind of biological profile that's not good, like specifically bad for you.

What happens is when we're isolated, it's it triggers a stress response. Our cortisol levels start to go up. And when cortisol levels go up, something that happens is in the short term, our inflammation is suppressed. Because in a, you know, short-term fight orflight situation, it's not useful to have inflammation. We need to put that inflammation away and get ready to fight. But over the long run, if we're continuously stressed and our cortisol remains high, kind of the opposite happens because instead of suppressing inflammation that your tissues, your heart, brain, etc., they're like, "All right, this cortisol has been here a long time.

I can't keep suppressing inflammation. So, I'm just going to kind of start ignoring the cortisol, which can over time lead to a buildup of inflammation. Chronic inflammation is something that's not good. It's not something that you want. And there's evidence actually that this buildup of inflammation in organs like the brain and in like the arteries, atherosclerosis, all this um is just detrimental to organ function. And specifically in the brain, there's this one study I love. It's so interesting. They found that they were actually studying stroke.

They were trying to look at how the brain recovers after a stroke. And they were doing this in mice. And so they were inducing a stroke should have been the exact same stroke across all of the mice because, you know, these were scientists, really well controlled. But some of the mice had much bigger strokes than others and had, you know, much poorer recovery. They had worse symptoms. They were more likely to die. Turns out those mice with the worst strokes were living alone. They just happen to be living alone in their cages.

So the researchers suspected maybe this has something to do with the inflammation buildup from isolation. Before they induced the stroke, they suppressed the inflammation. Then the stroke happened. No longer was the stroke much larger. And so you think about this playing out in like real life with humans. And of course we shouldn't extrapolate from mouse research to human research, but there is similar evidence in in humans that you know isolated people have higher uh inflammatory burden. And when isolated people have a stroke, they have worse strokes.

So we could think about this playing out in the real population where you have this buildup of inflammation, suddenly something happens. You have a stroke, you have a heart attack, you have a fall, and what happens next is is really important because basically either your body is going to be resilient and it's going to be able to kind of handle and tolerate and adapt to this shift or it's not going to handle it very well at all. And that's kind of the the big difference between, you know, who has a healthy outcome, who doesn't, well, who's returning to a home with loved ones and who's going back into a home after exiting the hospital and living alone.

So, it's kind of a subliminal quiet thing that's playing out throughout our society um and influencing a lot of different brain and body systems. body systems. body systems. What is inflammation? Okay, it's a great question. And to be honest, this is like kind of embarrassing. I feel like I shouldn't be the one to answer it because I can give you like my neuroscience explanation of it, but it's it's one of those things that I fear I will butcher. It's kind of like if you ask like an immunologist to explain like synaptic transmission.

It's like I probably shouldn't. But roughly speaking, it is the body's response to an injury or an illness. And what you don't want is uh antibodies flooding the zone and the body um acting as if it's had some sort of insult all the time, which is what isolation does to us, to us, to us, right? Yeah. I mean, I guess this is how I imagine it. And I picture a bunch of inflammation um in the brain and then a stroke occurs, right? There's a there's a an event where the blood flow is restricted, the nutrients are are restricted for some short time and a number of brain cells die.

Probably the number of cells that die in that event will be higher if they're already kind of surrounded with inflammation that's interfering with the ability to, you know, function typically. And then also when the kind of restorative process after a stroke is unfolding and you know the cells are trying to recover if there's all this inflammation built up that's blocking the way then it's also not going to be good. Again this is like an incredibly naive like stroke is not my area. Um but that's kind of how I think about it at least.

You've issued all the right caveats and been as as uh humble as one can expect. This is the problem online when people don't issue caveats and have no humility. So I think you're good. A few things before we hear from our sponsors. I just want to gently nudge you, if you haven't done it already, to go over to danharris.com and sign up for my newish meditation app, 10% with Dan Harris. I am so proud of what we're doing over there. We've got all of these live video sessions at least once a week where you can meditate with me or one of our amazing teachers and then get your questions answered.

We've also got courses from legendary teachers like Sharon Salsberg and Joseph Goldstein. We've got a growing library of guided meditations from teachers like Sharon and Joseph, but also 7A Salassie, Jeff Warren, and on and on. But really, the secret sauce is community. It is so hard to boot up or maintain a meditation practice. And one of the things that really helps is doing it in the carpool lane, and that's what we have set up over on the app. Go to danharris.com. There's a free 14-day trial if you want to check it out before you buy.

We'll be right back after this. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. You've heard me talk about BetterHelp for many years on this show, but I don't know that we've ever actually talked about how many people love this service when they use it. You can check it out yourself at betterhelp.com/res to see amazing customer reviews in real time. The reviews are updated every day with hundreds of people saying how much they love BetterHelp and how helpful it's been to them. Please uh visit betterhelp.com/res betterhelp.com/res betterhelp.com/res to see for yourself.

BetterHelp has an average live therapy session rating of 4.9 out of five based on over 1.7 million client session reviews. The feedback from people who have actually used the service speaks for itself. Better Health Therapists have at least 3 years and a thousand hours of hands-on experience. They also hold all required education, training, and certifications across a range of mental health specialties. See the reviews, see what stands out, and see if BetterHelp is right for you. Visit betterhelp.com/happier. betterhelp.com/happier. betterhelp.com/happier. That's betterhp.com/happier. Speaking of the studies uh of the science here around the dangers of isolation, of having insufficient interpersonal interaction, I believe there was one study that showed and this was a study of over 300,000 people that found that people with weaker social relationships are 50% more likely to die over a seven and a half year period.

Am I am I is this all correct? No, you're right. Yeah, I I I think that particular study may have been kind of flipped that the exact finding may have been that those who were more socialized were 50% less likely to die. Um so that effect similar um but there's there are also other larger studies with like millions of people that have found 32% higher risk of mortality uh death by any cause in those who are isolated. And so that's kind of how I I think about this as well is like nobody dies of loneliness, right?

But if you have this quiet health burden that's influencing your brain and your heart and all these tissues and then you have a heart attack or you have a stroke, are you going to have a lower likelihood of recovering? Are you going to have a higher likelihood of death? Uh and that's I think how we kind of end up with these these kind of shocking numbers of 32 or 50% higher likelihood of death by any cause. And another thing too is I think about the social support that community provides.

Um, and there like there are some studies really interesting. I there's a section in the book all about dogs and pets and why it's good to have a pet and why it's good for you. And in one of the studies they had people go through really stressful experiences like you know doing math in front of an audience or putting their hand into an ice bath or something uncomfortable with or without their pet in the room. And what they found is that basically people had lower more manageable stress responses and you know a a weaker spike in their heart rate during these stressful experiences when they had their pet in the room.

So what I think about with that is what if it's your spouse in the room instead you know and you are better a able to tolerate stress like that community acts as a buffer. And I think about you know someone getting a phone call and uh it's bad news and their heart rate spikes and they have a heart attack. Would they have the same stress response? would they be at at equal likelihood for that event if they had their spouse next to them kind of acting as that kind of ice pack on their nervous system and buffering the stress?

It's complicated and it's and it affects so many different biological systems in many different ways. different ways. different ways. Are pets can they approach the protective power of a spouse or a tight friend group? The comparison of of spouse to pet or friend to pet uh I as far as I'm aware has not been done but I I think it should be done because I get this question a lot and and I'm personally curious. What I can say is it's in the same direction for sure.

There's definitely evidence that having a pet or having a dog specifically um but other animals too, cats and such is is basically good for us. It's uh reduces the likelihood of things like like heart disease and heart attack. I really believe that for people who are vulnerable to isolation, especially like older folks, having a pet can be a great kind of substitute to living instead of living alone. I think you could kind of restore a little bit of the healthy, supportive properties of interaction by having a pet around.

Let's talk to the introverts listening to this who may feel like, "Wait a minute, my brain [ __ ] because I don't really want I don't want to be going to parties or I don't want to be hanging out with with my friends so often." This is a an important subject that I think is is should not be ignored. Generally, Generally, Generally, the evidence suggests that interacting more is better uh you know for longevity, for health, etc. But of course we have to ask the question of does that you know broad generalization kind of neglect introverts.

What I've seen in the literature is that introverts benefit from interaction on a smaller scale. It's almost like interaction is a is a medicine and the appropriate dose is lower for introverts and they're much more prone to overdosing. You know, and and any introvert who has spent too long at a party or gone on a long than longer than preferred vacation with friends or family can tell you, "Yes, I can definitely overdose and I feel like shit." And uh and that's what the research says, too, is that, you know, if you if you basically force an introvert to be extroverted and socialize all the time, they burn out really quickly and they don't feel good.

So that I have this kind of framework that I like to think of that everyone is like a potted plant. And just as some potted plants need to be watered all the time, others only need, you know, a little bit of water every once in a while. Introverts are like those plants that don't need to be watered often. They're like snake plants. An introvert can go to a party, they could stay there for an hour or two, come home and be perfectly satisfied and not need to go out again for, you know, another couple days.

And what's really important there for the introverts is like avoiding overwatering. And I think most introverts are are great at that. I think most people who are introverted, they by nature are like, "Nah, I'll skip the party. I'm good." So, you don't want to overdo it, of course. But I think on the other hand, it's equally important, maybe more important, honestly, to not let the soil dry out, to not go way too long without interacting because it doesn't feel like a need. But actually, my belief is that there is a kind of set level of interaction that everybody needs and everyone's different.

And so, I'm for me, I score pretty high on extraversion assessments. if I don't interact with my friends two or three times a week, you know, I can start to feel a difference. Um, but for someone else, it might only be once a week. And so, what I actually think everyone should try and figure out is where do they exist on this continuum of introversion to extroversion? And the great news is there's a simple 20 question assessment. It's a real, it's not like a Buzzfeed quiz.

This is a like validated measurement of extraversion um that I include in my book. It's also on my website where you can figure out pretty quickly where you stand. What's your web address? So, just people want to go to it right now. It's uh my name Ben Rin b- n i n.combook and then the uh the resources will be in there including that extraversion assessment. assessment. assessment. Let me go back to the word loneliness that you mentioned earlier. I feel like a lot of us don't see ourselves in that word.

Um, and I worry every time loneliness comes up, like I never put it in the title of a podcast because I I I feel like people who actually technically qualify as lonely don't believe they are because they are maybe surrounded by family and colleagues. But loneliness is not about how many people you know and interact with. It's something else. something else. something else. There's an important distinction between loneliness and isolation. Isolation is what you just said, how many people you interact with. You know, if you're if you're alone all the time, you are isolated, but you may not be lonely.

You may not feel that you're missing out on interaction. Loneliness is about whether or not your social needs are being met, whether you perceive them to be. And yeah, it's a really interesting point you make that people don't really relate to loneliness. Not it's not often that someone sits back when they're not feeling right and says, "What's what's off? Oh, I'm lonely." It's usually that they say, "Oh, I'm I didn't get enough sleep or I had, you know, crappy food for lunch or I've been stressed with work." You know, we often kind of overlook loneliness as a mediator of our feelings.

Uh especially especially introverts. I think a lot about like the surgeon general announced that we have a loneliness crisis and from where I stand like not a whole lot changed after that. like people heard the news and were like, "Oh, bad for me. I didn't know that." Okay. And then just went on with their lives. You know, like using the selfch checkckout lane and and ordering, you know, groceries delivered to your house instead of going to the store, you know, and like there's not a meaningful change.

And I wonder if that's part of the problem that that nobody really relates to it that they don't see it in themselves. Honestly, I think it's exactly that. Let me ask a related question just sort of on how we've structured our society. You talked about selfch checkckout lane and um you know ordering stuff online instead of going to a restaurant. Why do you think it is that we know every TED talk mentions that we're social animals? I've given a TED talk that mentions that we we know we're social animals.

This is not news. And yet we have built a society that militates against interaction at pretty much every turn. not only through technology but also through just our overarching ethos of individualism. How did we get to this point? point? point? You know, honestly, I think CO was a big part of it. When CO happened, we all had to adapt to a world where we couldn't interact, right? And for a, you know, capitalistic society, um, what happens? Well, all of a sudden you can get groceries without interacting, without going to the store.

You can, you know, everything. You can work from home. You can work out from home with a trainer on a screen. You can do tele medicine and talk to your doctor over the phone. Uh you can get a taxi whimo. You can sit in the back of a taxi where there's no human driver in the front seat and it's super convenient. But is it healthy? Is it good? And I I think obviously not. I think on the whole when we kind of summate all of these micro interactions that we're losing by automating things, it adds up to a pretty significant amount of time that we that we're no longer interacting.

And if you look at the data, I mean it's everything's headed in the wrong direction. Um there's a shocking statistic probably uh this is colored by COVID, but from 2013 to 2021, the amount of time that people spent alone every month increased by 36 hours per month. There's almost an entire work week. And maybe it is because people are working from home. Again, that may have been COVID related, but I mean, even still, like ever since then, the numbers have continued to be in the wrong direction.

Like last year there was a study um finding that 69% of Americans are lacking emotional support. It's clear that this this problem exists but we're not addressing it and you know maybe we need to build more infrastructure for social connection. I think that's probably a big part of it. You know people talk about third places. We've lost third places um which is this this idea of places besides uh your home and your work that you can go and spend time with friends. you know, people used to hang out in malls and all this.

That doesn't really happen anymore. Now it's pretty much just bars. Um, so I'd like to see more of that happen. I think we just need to build the infrastructure and and give people good convincing reasons to step away from the TV and the phone and the computer and, you know, get back to face to face contact. So that's the kind of macro view. Let's talk micro because you you have a lot of practical suggestions in your book. What do you just top line? What do you recommend if somebody's listening to this and thinking, "Yeah, I I care about brain health.

Uh you've talked me out of most supplements. Uh and you've talked me into social interaction. How do I get more of it?" I have three suggestions. Um number one, look to replace any virtual interactions with in-person interactions. And even if you can just kind of level up your virtual interactions. So if it's text message, phone call instead. If it's a phone call, video call instead. If it's a video call, in person instead, my my justification there is that the way that the brain detects that you are interacting with another human and has the, you know, stimulates those things like oxytocin and dopamine and serotonin is through the observation of social cues, right?

You can see someone's facial expression, you can hear their tone of voice, you can read their body language, you can see the the glassiness in their eyes, right? All of these pieces of information tell your brain you're interacting with someone. And so you would expect that as you kind of strip away that those those pieces of information that interactions would become less enjoyable because they're not so effective at stimulating doxytocin, dopamine, serotonin. And uh while the the molecular biology hasn't been done yet, um there is evidence that less lifelike interactions like texting are perceived as less pleasant and less enjoyable.

So if you can try to get back to something closer to resembling an inerson interaction. Number two, I think we often hold ourselves back from connection because of uh these what I call these bad social predictions. We it's normal to be anxious socially. Um you know we talk about social anxiety as like a like a diagnosis. Um but really everybody experiences some level of social anxiety. And specifically, there's a couple of things that have been well shown. Uh, one of them is that we actually think people don't like us as much as they really do.

This is called the liking gap. It was discovered by a researcher, Dr. uh, Erica Boothby. So, we think people don't like us as much as they do. Number two, we underestimate the benefits of socializing. We think that it's, you know, when it everyone's been there Friday night, you're like, do I go to this party or not? It's likely that when you're thinking, "What am I going to get out of this?" Whatever you expect, is an underestimation of the actual positive emotions you will experience. In addition to that, people tend to think that they are worse at socializing than they really are.

Number four, we also overestimate the likelihood of being socially rejected. socially rejected. socially rejected. And number five, we expect that as a conversation goes on for longer, it will get progressively worse, which is also not true. It just kind of stays pretty stable. Of course, there's an upper end of that. You can't talk for, you know, 60 hours and still have a good time. But, you know, all of these things together basically push us toward I don't really know if it's worth going to the dinner.

I think it maybe just be easier and more uh energizing to sit on the couch and watch TV or something else. So, try whenever you experience any of those miscalculations, try to think for a second, is this actually true? And what a good place to start also is actually on the other side of it after you come out of an interaction try to do like a little bit of a self-inventory. Do I feel good right now? And most of the time, as long as it was a, you know, regular healthy interaction, you'll notice that you feel pretty terrific.

It's, you know, I actually I tend to think of it like um like exercise. Like if people didn't have the idea that going to the gym and lifting weights or whatever is good for them, I feel like we could easily overlook the fact that it makes us feel really good to exercise. But when you come out of the gym, you're like, "Man, I just did the best thing for my health I could possibly do. I feel great. Like, I'm sweating. I'm dirty. Doesn't matter. I feel awesome." Right?

And if you start to tune into it, you actually will notice that interactions make you feel pretty good as well. Someone who read my book, she actually works at a bookstore. She told me that after reading my book, it totally changed the way she interacts with her job because people come into the bookstore all day. And you know, you small talk, it's retail. And after reading my book, she realized that connecting with a customer made her feel so good. And so she started putting more intentionality into these interactions and noticing that she was uplifting them as well.

And now she like loves her job again because she's enjoying these interactions she gets. So try not to fall prey to those uh those social traps. Six years ago during COVID, uh, this podcast went virtual and for a variety of reasons, we have not gone back in person except rarely. And I've started recently upping the in-person quotient quite significantly. And I like my job again. It's not like I've hated my job. I love, you know, I love that I have this show, but it is so much more enjoyable to host a show and conduct an interview when you're doing it in person as we did in the early days of this show.

Like we would I would not have anybody on the show who couldn't come to the studio. And um I think I'm kind of heading back toward that. And it's um I'm a little embarrassed that it took me six years to truly wake up to this, but it is now thunderously obvious to me. Well, that's great. I mean, and that aligns with the evidence, right? more lifelike interactions are more pleasant. And I've always noticed interacting in person, especially for something like this, like a thoughtful conversation, you know, you're you really want to dive in.

It's it just seems to be better in person. person. person. Having said that, this is going great and we're virtual, so it it it doesn't mean it can't be done. Running a business means you're always reachable until you're not. And the moment you miss that call, that text, that followup, a competitor is the one that picks it up. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, which is spelled Quo, the business phone system built so you never miss an opportunity. All your calls, texts, and voicemails live in one place so anybody on your team can pick up a conversation, see the full history, and respond quickly.

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Money's on the line. Always say hello with Quo. Try Quo for free plus 20% off your first 6 months when you go to quo.com/happier. That's qo.com/happhappier. Okay. But there was a third thing you were going to recommend when it comes to practical strategies for getting more interaction to our lives. Yeah. So my number three suggestion is I like to think about connection, social connection as a pool. And I I specifically think about it and this is kind of silly and ridiculous like as a neuroscientist saying this, but I think about it as a pool of oxytocin.

The reason for this is because oxytocin specifically, I mentioned before that it it makes us feel good. It stimulates dopamine and serotonin. There's another thing there. Oxytocin has all of these great healthpromoting benefits. It's been shown to be neuroprotective, anti-inflammatory, could boost immune function, bone growth, wound healing, all these amazing things. And so I think of it as if every time we connect with someone, we take a swim in this pool of oxytocin as you can with a regular pool. You can swim at any depth if you want.

You can dive into the deep end and you can connect with your best friends and have a, you know, long night together or you can swim in the shallow end. You could just walk around, have the water up to your waist, and you can talk to a grocery store or cashier on your way out of the store. Or if you really don't have time, you can simply dip your foot in and wave to your neighbor as you're walking by their house or, you know, walking the dog.

All of these depths of swimming swimming swimming will have some level of benefit. And of course, some will be more measurable than others. You know, swimming in the deep end definitely better for you than waving at your neighbor. But I think it's important that we don't forget to like engage with the pool at some level. And I think part of the problem too that people don't is because when they hear about connection and they think about, you know, how do I embed this in my life?

They're only thinking about the deep end. They're only thinking about the kind of high barrier long, you know, timeconuming timeconuming timeconuming feels the most energy draining kind of interactions. But even just going in the deep end and just talking to the cashier or whatever you may do is is also very effective. And there's a bunch of evidence that you know talking to strangers or even having short interactions can can provide a a pretty significant boost in mood. And so I think you know the way I phrase this in summary is connection is a pool not a plunge.

You don't always have to plunge all the way in. You can just dip your toes in. And I actually encourage like it's you should always try to think about like if you have the opportunity just take a little dip and then get back to whatever you're doing. Uh cuz it's going to be better for you if you do. If I was never really or or rarely engaging in profound interpersonal connection, but I was doing a lot of talking to strangers. What would be the implications for my brain health?

It's like exercise. Anything is better than nothing, right? Walking is better than being sedentary. So socializing with strangers I actually is pretty good. The more you can do generally the better. There's a researcher Dr. Nicholas Epley at University of Chicago has done these amazing studies. I'm obsessed with them because he goes into like realworld environments instead of doing everything in the lab and for instance he'll go to the train station and ask people hey will you go have an interaction on your commute into work today uh in you know instead of just sitting alone.

And what he found is that one, this is actually where that a couple of those things I mentioned earlier that people uh overestimate the likelihood of rejection. He found that people expected like 50% or more of the strangers to reject their interest or their uh invitation to talk. Turns out 0% of the strangers turned them down. And then people also expected that they wouldn't really benefit from the interaction. Turns out they enjoyed their commute much more. the end reported learning more um even more so than people who like just had a normal commute or also those who specifically sat in solitude.

So anyhow um he's replicated this across a handful of different places not just trains but also like buses and uh like taxis. And so there's this growing body of evidence that strangers are a very good reliable source of kind of a mood boost. And the way I see it is like we have this like ripe fruit all around us. You know, we go out in the public and we don't interact with anybody and we kind of keep to ourselves, but on the other side of that barrier that we're kind of self-creating is a fruitful interaction that can make us feel better.

So, I I'm a I'm an extrovert. I talk to people all the time. Um I love it. I I really enjoy it. I'm one of those people who will just like start a conversation with you randomly and uh usually it ends up going pretty well. I'm an extrovert, too. But I was for much of my life kind of a snobby dick and not really talking to people um you know trades men and women who would come through uh our apartment or now our house or you know people on you know in airports or whatever.

And now I am much more in part because I've seen the research and you know I've been hosting this show for more than a decade. So I think I probably started as a result of hearing about the research but now I do it. It doesn't matter what the research shows. I know what it's happening, what is happening in my N of one sort of inner laboratory. The the pleasure centers are lighting up most of the time. I'm having these interactions as I move through the world.

A million more questions to ask you about um interaction. Should we be placing a lot of emphasis on eye contact only if it's comfortable? I mean, for most people, eye contact is can be uncomfortable. You know, there's kind of a threshold. For some people, as soon as you make eye contact, it's like, "No, thank you. This is awkward." Uh, other people, you know, it's like you can do it for a while and then you start to notice like, "Gosh, I've been really been holding my eye contact for too long and now you don't know what to do." But eye contact is a is a strong uh builder of affiliation.

Um, not only is it is it helpful for reading and understanding another person's emotions, but also there's studies showing that the the longer you hold eye contact, the more someone reports respecting you. It's also seems to be important for triggering interbrain synchry, which is this idea of kind of your your brain synchronizing in in certain ways with the person you're interacting with, which can be supportive for like collaboration and teamwork. So, eye contact definitely important. However, you know, this is kind of like my stance on on on all things science and medicine related.

Uh if it's stressful, don't do it. you're told to do something on social media because it's good for you and then you try it and it's really uncomfortable. Like that's probably not going to be a thing that's supportive for your health if it if it triggers a stress reaction. So, um the good news though is that there's this one study where they came up with this like eye contact illusion. I don't even know why they tested this how this came about, but they basically found that when people were 3 feet apart, if you were looking at the other person's mouth, they have they cannot tell you're looking at their mouth.

they if you ask them they will think yes you're looking at my eyes. Um I remember reading that study and then going upstairs out of my office and going up to my wife and just staring at her mouth and talking to her for a while and just like starting laughing and she's like what is it? And I'm like nothing anything seem off about me and she's like no what? And she didn't notice. So I have used it a little bit uh cuz people don't really it's normal to look at someone's mouth because you often do that to you know figure out phonetically what they're saying.

Uh, so if you do feel uncomfortable making eye contact, there's a little cheat code. One of the other things I think you recommend in terms of upping our interaction quotient is to give more compliments and express more gratitude. Say more. Say more. Say more. Well, first off, it's just a good thing to do, of course, but it's also it it's good for us. It's it's another one of those mood boosters. Um, which I think is fascinating that being nice to others makes us feel good. Why is that?

I don't know. Is it because we're gaining some form of social credit, you know, or building our social capital? I'm not sure. But it is a reliable way to, you know, boost your mood and and well-being. Um, and I mean, gosh, if if there's anything out there that you can do that makes you feel good and also makes someone else feel good, I think those are the things we should be focusing on to, you know, not only boost our own health and wellness, but also kind of heal our uh, fractured society.

Another recommendation is to speak more and ask questions. I think a a lot of people feel like speaking more and asking questions are things you shouldn't do if you want to be polite. So, this is from the chapter on likability. Um, there's a bunch of research on on unlikability and what makes people likable. Um, yeah, we typically think that we should kind of speak less. There's a kind of general assumption that people like to talk and and like to talk about themselves and so you should give them the space to to do that.

So there was a study where they had college students interact and they they told them beforehand basically this is how much you're going to get to talk. They kind of governed it with a timer and so people were sometimes assigned like 30% of the time or 70% of the time and what they found was that actually the the people who spent more time speaking were reported as more likable. So there's an upper limit again you know you don't want to overspeak in in that you're spending too much time talking.

You also don't want to speak over someone and interrupt them. Uh but generally this, you know, the the impulse to hide yourself and kind of remain quiet to preserve your reputation may be misguided. It may actually be better to open up and share. And that's also been shown that sharing things about yourself, being vulnerable, those are great ways to build connection and deepen uh bonds. You mentioned that there's research around likability. What does the science say we can do other aside from what you've already just mentioned to make ourselves more likable?

Some things are obvious where someone's like, "Oh, I watched the same show." And you're like, "My gosh, it's my favorite show." Like, of course, having things in common is a great one, but some of these I'm more fascinated by some of the like less obvious things. For instance, mimicry, super fascinating. It's very common in interaction to model the body position of who you're interacting with. And I I ever since I read these studies, I notice it all the time. If you know do this, I cross my arms in a conversation and then all of a sudden a minute later, the other person crosses their arms.

Happens all the time. Turns out it's like an affiliative kind of subconscious behavior that when you're just like when you say, "Oh, we watch the same same TV show." It's like, "Hey, look at this. Our bodies go in the same position." And when you're noticing kind of subconsciously that you're sharing a position, you're doing the same thing, you're speaking the same way as someone, um you're making the same facial expressions, it makes you more likable. Also, uh the brain seems to extrapolate whatever it's seeing to generalize to a person's reputation or to a person's personality.

So that's why like smiling, if you're if you're seen smiling, you're deemed like more trustworthy and more affiliative and more likable. Uh whereas on the other side of this, um this there's no scientific word for resting [ __ ] face, but uh for for those who suffer from resting [ __ ] face, me are often judged as being like kind of, you know, a dick that people tend to think that it's, you know, that must be what their personality is. So, you know, being being open, being um expressive, sharing your emotions, smiling, you know, show having things in common are just a few of the things that make people likable.

people likable. people likable. It's so interesting that there's like science here and we can follow a recipe. This it's like the thing most of us want ever since like school. Uh we want to be popular. We want to be liked. And actually, there are things you can do to make yourself more likable. That's just really good news. Yeah. I don't necessarily want people or hope people that will read the book and say, "Oh my gosh, here's my recipe for success." Right? Although likability is important. It it definitely is.

The more liked you are, you know, people treat you better. But rather, I I I hope it will be a a guide for anyone who reads it and says, "Oh, I don't do that very well. Maybe that's something I should work on rather than a let me completely, you know, artificialize myself into this hyperlable, hyperlable, hyperlable, you know, key that goes in the lock and turns it." Um because the other thing to consider is that authenticity is important. So if you're perceived as as inauthentic, then your likability drops.

So if you try to make yourself something you're not to be likable, it may not work. work. work. These don't scan to me as manipulation or uh tools or a recipe for falsity. There are little hacks like eye contact and giving compliments, but at root the recipe is to be yourself, but to do it strategically, like to be vulnerable vulnerable vulnerable in the right dose and at the right time, for example. for example. for example. I completely agree. Yeah, it's about being yourself, but um but also sometimes noticing when yourself may not be uh likable, you know, like maybe if your natural instinct is to interrupt people all the time and you know, be really outspoken and like voice opinions that are controversial and stuff like that, like you know, maybe it's it's worth noticing, okay, hey, likability is important.

That's a quality I I have that may make me unlikable. And so maybe that's something I should work on for myself. You know, it's it's about understanding yourself and and really ultimately bettering your relationships because relationships are so important. As a small business owner and somebody who's friends with many other small business owners and people who are involved in businesses of all sizes, one very common, if not universal concern is protecting yourself against digital attacks. Here's why this matters. 75% of attacks on executives happen at home or away from the office.

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Stop online threats before they become real world attacks with iron wall. We've established that interaction is important for the brain, perhaps the most important intervention. Um and yet we are in an era when we have this technology that's called social media. Um, can we get any of the benefits of social interaction via social media? Okay. I'm generally net negative on social media. Um, I think that if something happened, all the Silicon Valley servers shut down and there were no longer any social medias or social media formats out there, I think that people's mood and productivity and sleep and depression levels and anxiety levels, they would all go in the direction we hope they go in.

And there's evidence for that. You know, it's people who spend more time on social media higher risk of anxiety, depression, they have poorer sleep, they sleep less. Whether this is a place where you can have a meaningful interaction is a totally different question and I think there's a there's a time and a place for it. I think for people who have trouble connecting in person or for people who, you know, are uh geographically restricted and and want to connect with people in a different area, I think it's terrific.

But for the average person, if we were to remove all inerson interactions and replace them with social media interactions, interactions, interactions, horrible consequences in my opinion. You know, I one thing I've I've noticed is this empathy, something that I was, you know, leading research at at Stanford on the biology of empathy is not something that we see a whole lot of online. when we post uh maybe you've seen this in your social channels and you know anybody who who posts social media content has seen the what what happens in the comment section and you don't you can scroll on any post and look at the comment section and what you will find is is is a ridiculous level of hostility and and anger and division and arguments and people start arguing with each other in the comments.

It's it's really out of control. And this this actually like hit me when I was doing this research and I would go to the lab, do experiments on empathy, come home, post videos on social media debunking misinformation, etc. And seeing that and it clicked for me this one day that like, oh my gosh, as I mentioned earlier, the way that your brain knows you're interacting with someone is by observing their fa their social cues, facial expressions, vocal tone, and all that. We don't have any of those things on social media.

And that is the way that the brain activates these empathy systems to help you understand what someone is feeling and help you feel what they are feeling. And so like for instance, if I said something really mean to you right now, Dan, and it really upset you and you started crying, I would feel bad because I'm sitting here observing your emotions and naturally my brain starts to soak those up and I feel what you feel. This is this is empathy. But if as soon as we signed off from this, I mailed you a letter saying the exact same thing and you open the letter and you sobb and you feel horrible.

I feel nothing because I'm not there. I'm not observing it. I'm not I'm not witnessing the reaction I caused. And so, how can we feel empathy for each other when we're leaving mean comments and then closing our phone and going away and forgetting it happened and we're not seeing each other? We're not interacting with each other. So, like I said, I think there's a time and a place for it, but I think on average, the interactions we have online are not realistic. They are more hostile.

They are less productive. Uh, and people generally kind of don't behave naturally. They behave in a in a very kind of disconnected sort of like anim animalistic way. Um, that's I don't think good for humanity. Setting aside what what uh social media does to our empathic capacities, what do we know about what it does to the brains generally of heavy users? Yeah. So, there's some research I remember reading a few years ago um about social media addiction. Um I mean, social media platforms are designed to be as captivating as possible, right?

They are fighting for your attention. And this is also something that's been increasingly acknowledged. increasingly acknowledged. increasingly acknowledged. Are they more addictive than cocaine? No, I wouldn't say so. Um, unless they, you know, start stimulating those dopamine pathways directly. But I mean, that's kind of what they're approximating, right? They are trying to make something a product that is as tailored to your interests as possible and just basically as addictive as possible. I mean, and in fact, I I think about this all the time. If you look at any of these social media platforms, kind of what they look like, there's a video that pops up in your feed.

You watch it, you have some dopamine reaction. You know, is this good? Is this interesting? Do I like this? If not, swipe. How's this one? Swipe. Boom. This one's amazing. Oh my gosh. Okay, on to the next one. Hunting for that next hit, right? And the the rewards, the good videos are delivered kind of randomly, right? It's not like every other video. It's like you get you go three and then boom, there's a really good one. This is called a variable uh schedule of reinforcement that the like if you have a mouse, picture a mouse like pressing a lever and getting a little treat.

The the best way to get a mouse to press a lever is to have random increments of rewards delivered. They press it once, they get one, five presses later, they get one, and then two presses later, and then 12 presses later. It's just random. It's totally unpredictable. This is the exact same mechanism that social media uses to make you keep swiping. And also, I've noticed this on the creator side, arguably even worse. You post a video, you're hoping it goes viral. Not this one. Post another one.

Not this one. Post another one. Boom. Virality. Amazing. Oh my gosh, I need to post 20 more videos. You post the 25th video, viral. And you end up hunting and hunting and hunting. And I I mean, I don't know. I would imagine like these are smart people behind these platforms. They know how to I don't want to say control but uh influence human behavior. And so when you have that system paired with a hyperpersonalized algorith hyperpersonalized algorith hyperpersonalized algorith recommendation algorithm, recommendation algorithm, recommendation algorithm, what you get is an intensely rewarding experience that's hard to look away from.

There is some evidence about social media addiction and there's there's been some even some uh neuroscience done from what I remember reading um the brain changes that are seen in social people who are diagnosed with social media addiction are very much resemble the brain changes of drug addiction. And so the question there for me is is there a brain signature of someone who is prone to becoming addicted to something uh and that's why there's a correlation between those two types of brains or is it that social media you know is a drug basically.

That was all fascinating just in terms of how we as individuals should think about interacting with social media. If I'm hearing you correctly and please correct me if I'm making the wrong extrapolation here. It feels like your argument is hey look a little bit of social media is not going to kill you and maybe it could even be fun or enjoyable on some level and that's that's okay. You don't need to be a lite. You you don't need to like disconnect from this thriving uh for better or worse aspect of human affairs right now.

However, if you are doing too much of it or if you're not actually getting IRL interaction, that could be quite problematic. problematic. problematic. Yeah. The only thing I'll add to that is there are literally clinical trials that have been done where the the drug or whatever the intervention that was tested was a break from social media. And so they ask people to, you know, for a week or two weeks to limit their intera. Um, which by the way, they find they often find that it's impossible to get people to actually stop using social media.

So they usually end up having to limit it. And when people do that, their depression levels, their anxiety levels both go down. You know, they start sleeping better. So yes, I agree with that. I think that as long as you're you're limiting it and you're kind of monitoring it, um it's okay because I mean let's let's face it, social media is is pleasant, right? You love going on and seeing something. Some people cannot disconnect. In fact, I cannot tell you the number of times where, you know, I meet someone and someone says, "Oh, you know, this guy does Tik Tok or whatever." or somehow Tik Tok comes up and I cannot tell you probably 90% of the people I talk to say oh I can't have Tik Tok I get addicted to it I literally had to delete it from my phone because I was losing days of my life and now Instagram YouTube even like LinkedIn all these platforms are becoming more Tik Tokesque and I think there's good reason for it because it works really well I remember a member of Congress calling Tik Tok digital fentinol which struck me as a quite vivid uh uh description for people who are socially anxious.

Is alcohol uh an effective and appropriate social lubricant? social lubricant? social lubricant? Well, I don't want to like d prescribe alcohol here, but um I mean can it can it be helpful? Of course. Uh you know, I I think I remember a study finding that for every one drink consumed, social anxiety reduces by 4%. Which, you know, 4% is not a whole lot, but you have five drinks and all of a sudden you're down 20%. That's pretty strong. Yeah. And you're also naked and peeing in the corner of the bar, right?

Yeah. So, my take on this is alcohol is not uh something that's healthy for you. That has been increasingly uh talked about recently, which is good, I think, because we've built an entire world around alcohol as a social lubricant. It's also very much worth noting that alcohol makes us feel more more more comfortable socially, but it actually does not make us better interactors. It makes us much worse interactors. And like you said, you're naked peeing in the corner. I mean, the reason why that that example makes sense is because when we're start getting drunk, we stop we stop caring about what other people think.

This is very well established both, you know, in the world and also in neuroscience that people kind of turn off their um mental models of what others are thinking. They're worse at understanding other people's opinion or perspectives and stuff. They actually there's a study showing that tipsy people showed uh less activity in the amygdala, the you know emotional reaction kind of area uh to negative social content. And so the way I think about that is you're drunk at a bar and you make a super inappropriate joke towards one of your co-workers and all everyone's like, "Oh my gosh, like how could you say that?" In that moment, your brain's very likely having a weaker reaction because it's like, "Oh, I don't really care.

I don't, you know, my the amydala is not firing up as well." And so, you're like super not socially anxious, but you're also doing things that are not conducive for building connection. Uh, and also, you know, struggling with empathy. And so it's good that humanity has found this kind of system that allows us to connect through alcohol, but I do wish it were a different drug that we were all using to to get together. Well, like which drug? MDMA. Uh I honestly didn't mean anything specific by that, but probably if I had to pick one, I'd probably go MDMA.

Although that's also not something you want to be doing all the time for your brain health. Yes, I have plenty I have luminous amounts of experience with MDMA and I love it. Um and and I would not readily recommend it because it can, you know, the the days afterwards can be, as a friend of mine has said, you are borrowing happiness from the future. Yeah, I love your transparency on this show, Dan. I really appreciate it. Honestly, Honestly, Honestly, I've mentioned this on the show many times, so loyal listeners, I apologize.

I'm going to say something I've said many times before. I'm a a super extrovert and I've also like as a consequence of hosting the show for so many years, I've been highly sensitive to the benefits of social interaction um and benefits I was overlooking for many years uh because of workcoholism and other stupid uh behaviors. I have many many uh standing dinners and lunches with friends and one of them is with three women who I'm friends with and one of them was saying made a comment to me and this is the relevant piece to your talking about how open I am.

She she described my business as an empire built on my own v vulnerability. Um, and you know, I'm not a researcher like you and I uh so I'm not an expert in anything. I'm not a meditation teacher. All I have is my ability to take uh from contemplative history and modern psychology and neuroscience and refract it through the lens of my own personal experience in service of the audience. Oh, well, it's probably what makes you so likable. Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, it doesn't always work.

Um, I have found you, sir, to be extremely likable and this conversation to be very, very fun. Final question for you is, uh, can you just promote your book and your social media channels and your website and everything that you want us to know about? about? about? My book, it's called Why Brains Need Friends. Um, and it's for international listeners. It's published in like 16 or 17 languages. It's really a neuroscientist's attempt at trying to solve the loneliness crisis by infusing as much, you know, neuroscience understanding as possible written at a level that anyone can understand.

But, you know, the brain is is a organ shrouded in mystery and darkness. My goal with the book is is to basically help people understand what they cannot see. What is really going on inside the brain? What sort of benefits can you experience from connection? What things have you maybe never considered that you should consider like drugs and likability and empathy and all of these facets of our lives that influence our brains, influence our health, influence our connections, uh, and we may have never considered before.

So, if that's your jam, I, you know, I appreciate anyone who's interested in reading it. We'll put links in the show notes if somebody anybody wants to buy it. We'll put links to your website and your um social media accounts um, if anybody wants to get more from Dr. for Ben Ryan. In the meantime, uh Ben, great job with this. Great to meet you. Thank you for your work. Thanks for your time. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It's been honestly a great conversation.

I appreciate it. Thank you so much to everybody who works so hard to make this show. 10% Happier is produced by Tara Anderson. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer. DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the great indie rock band Islands wrote our theme. One last thing I want to say before you go. If you enjoy this show, please do me/ us a solid. Follow the show and leave a rating and a review on whatever platform you watch or listen to us on.

It only takes a minute. It's free and it really helps new people find us and spread the good news that the mind is trainable. Thank you sincerely. I mean it. Thank you.