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Supercommunicators | 1. How to Talk to Anyone

How To!

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  • Nick Epley’s DUIs
    • Nick Epley’s bad choices as a teen, including two DUIs, led him to reflect on communication.
    • His parents’ shift from lecturing to asking “why” questions sparked a change in him. Transcript: Charles Duhigg Deep questions and how to ask them is something Nick Epley has spent his whole career thinking about. And the reason why goes back to something that happened when he was a teenager. Nick Epley When I was a high school student, I was not necessarily the best listener. I was a football player. I spent plenty of time screwing around. And I made a couple of bad choices, really bad ones. I was caught twice by police officers drunk driving. Charles Duhigg The first time this happens, the cop telephones Nick’s parents, and he asks them to come pick up their drunk son. And so they get in the car, and they go to get him. And on the drive home, they start lecturing him about what a dumb idea this was, that you really shouldn’t be drinking, that they understand what peer pressure is like, but they’re really Worried about him. Nick Epley All of which went about as well as you would imagine. They were not happy. They were telling me all the ways in which this could really ruin my life. And it kind of washed over me. I didn’t I didn’t really hear it. I wasn’t really engaged with it. Charles Duhigg Nick basically ignores the lectures that his parents are giving him. He ignores all of the lessons that he should have learned by getting pulled over and given a second chance. And then just a handful of weeks later, he gets pulled over for a DUI again. Nick Epley And the second time it happened, again, the police officers called my folks and had them come pick me up. And I remember this time, my mom and dad started asking me more questions about kind of why I was doing this, why I thought this was a good idea. Charles Duhigg And this time, something about being asked why he was drinking, rather than just being lectured at about all the things he had done wrong, those questions caused Nick to start thinking In a different way about his own life. When his parents started asking him questions, it started with why. Why are you drinking? Why does it feel so necessary to impress your friends this way? It was somehow powerful. And what’s more, those questions, they seem to spark something different in his parents as well. Nick Epley I do remember very vividly at one point my dad shared some stories with me about some mistakes that he had made when he was a kid that weren’t too far off from this. And I remember that moment because we’d never really talked. You know, that was kind of the first time like I’d really kind of gotten to know my dad a bit and I could feel a bit more why he was concerned about me. And that was that was really powerful. I mean, that really shook me out of, I think, what was a bad path and kind of got my life back on the same direction. I’ve never been drunk again since I was 17 years old. (Time 0:05:19)
  • Power of “Why” Questions
    • Not all questions have the same impact; some are more powerful than others.
    • Epley’s parents’ questions, focusing on “why,” sparked his interest in the power of questions. Transcript: Charles Duhigg But not just any question would have worked on him, he thinks. He suspects there’s something, I don’t know, almost magical about the questions his parents were asking. And so he starts to wonder, why are some questions more powerful than others? At about the same time that he’s starting to wonder this, Nick is also attending these weekly seminars with all of the other grad students, where everyone gathers to discuss academic Papers. And he hears about something called the Fast Friends Procedure. Nick Epley We had what’s called a pro seminar, this just magical weekly seminar, where all the faculty and the PhD students got together and read a paper called the Fast Friends Procedure, on a Series of 36 questions that escalate in intimacy. And by the end of these 36 questions, people tend to feel more connected to each other. That’s how you take strangers and make them friends quickly. (Time 0:09:00)
  • Fast Friends Procedure Experiment
    • The ‘Fast Friends Procedure’ involves 36 escalating intimacy questions.
    • In an experiment, 70% of strangers sought further connection post-experiment, some even marrying. Transcript: Charles Duhigg Full name is The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness, a Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings. It actually has some really interesting results. What happened is that the researchers asked pairs of strangers to come into a room and to sit down and to spend 45 minutes asking and answering a set of 36 specific questions. And once they did that, they told everyone that they could go home and all the participants assumed that the experiment was over. But actually, the experiment was just beginning. Because seven weeks later, the researchers contact everyone who had been sitting in those rooms and they asked them, you know, just out of curiosity, have you been in contact with that Person that you did this experiment with? Now, everyone participating was strangers, right? So they don’t know each other, and they don’t really have a way to contact each other after the experiment. But when the researchers start reaching out to them, they find that the vast majority of participants had sought out the person they had done that experiment with, and they had met up. There was this one guy who said, you know, I didn’t really catch my partner’s last name, but I knew his first name was John, and I thought his last name started with an R. And so I went through the directory one night, and I called every single John R until I found the right guy. Another participant told researchers that he went to go have a beer with the person he had done the experiment with. And then a week later, they went to go see a movie together. And a year after that, when they announced they were getting married, they invited everyone in the psych lab to come to the ceremony. All told, about 70% of the people who had participated in the experiment went out of their way to find their partner. And to Nick, learning about this paper, it seemed kind of amazing, because getting 70% of strangers to feel like they’ve made a friend in just 45 minutes, that doesn’t really happen. (Time 0:10:00)
  • Mandy Len Catron’s Viral Essay
    • Mandy Len Catron tried the 36 questions on a date, leading to a New York Times essay.
    • The essay, “To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This,” went viral, garnering millions of views. Transcript: Charles Duhigg So, okay. So let me, let me take a step back. Do you remember the first time you heard about the fast friends procedure? Mandy Len Catron I do. I think I was in the midst of a breakup when I found it initially, actually. And yeah, I was writing about love because I was going through this breakup and, and my parents had divorced a couple of years earlier. And I was thinking like, surely there must be better sources of information about this experience of committing to someone. And so I was very interested in taking a more sort of scientific approach. Charles Duhigg If you’ve heard of the Fast Friends Procedure, or as it’s also known, the 36 questions that lead to love, it’s probably because of this person, Mandy Lynn Catron. Mandy is a writer and a professor of creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and she rocketed to international fame about a decade ago when she wrote a modern love essay For The New York Times. Mandy Len Catron So basically, I had been dating online for, I would say, a couple of years at that point and sort of having a short relationship here and there. And basically, sort of out of nowhere, I ended up going out on a date with an acquaintance of mine. And I say out of nowhere because this was someone that I was sort of interested in, but I didn’t know him well. And I didn’t know that we were on a date. Like, I kind of thought, oh, we’re just going to the art gallery together because we’re both interested in this exhibit. And after we left the art gallery, we went to a bar and we started talking about love and relationships. And he said to me, oh, you know, I have this theory that actually given enough sort of commonalities, you could really fall in love with anyone. And I said, you know, actually, there is this study. And because, you know, I thought he was kind of cute, I said, I’ve always wanted to try it. And so we sat down at this bar, I pulled up my phone, I pulled up these 36 questions, and we just passed my cell phone back and forth across the table for hours, just taking turns asking and Answering each of these questions. And it was like the rest of the world sort of fell away. And it was just the two of us talking. (Time 0:13:04)
  • Escalating Intimacy
    • Deep questions should escalate in intensity, starting with casual icebreakers and gradually becoming more personal.
    • Ensure both individuals engage in self-disclosure by answering every question. Transcript: Charles Duhigg She just had an interesting experience. But she does have some guesses about what’s going on. For instance, the first few questions in the Fast Friends procedure are pretty easy to ask and answer. They’re things like, if you had a dinner party and you could invite anyone from history, who would it be? Or what would constitute a perfect day for you? Mandy Len Catron Like it matters that they sort of start out pretty casual, like icebreaker style questions and then become more intense as you go along. Charles Duhigg Question number seven is, do you have a secret hunch about how you will die? Question 24, how do you feel about your relationship with your mother? And question 35, the second to last question, describe the last time you cried in front of another person. Mandy Len Catron It matters that both people are doing the self-disclosure. Like, both people are answering every question. And I think it matters that they’re not about, like, politics. They’re not about, you know, books that you’ve read. They’re about you. They are personal yeah and i think all of that makes a big difference and so that creates this sense of like shared warmth toward one another that’s like built into the process it’s just Like it’s so beautiful i mean this sounds super cheesy but like it just feels so like you feel yourself being noticed in this way that is like really a nice feeling. (Time 0:18:19)
  • Deep Questions and Feelings
    • Deep questions prompt discussion about values, beliefs, and experiences.
    • They encourage sharing feelings about life rather than just factual details. Transcript: Charles Duhigg In the original experiment of the Fast Friends procedure, the researchers referred to these questions as a process of, and I’m quoting them here, sustained escalating reciprocal Personalistic self-disclosure. And there’s a couple of important ingredients in what’s going on that makes these questions so powerful. For instance, the first time that they did this experiment, the researchers used a bunch of different questions. And some of them didn’t work at all. But they found that the ones that did work, the ones that made people feel closer to each other, they all had something in common. They prompted people to talk about their values or their beliefs or their experiences. And that’s what a deep question does. As Nick Epley described it to me, instead of asking us about the facts of our life, deep questions ask us to describe how we feel about our life. (Time 0:20:06)
  • Starting Conversations
    • Avoid starting conversations with overly personal deep questions like “When’s the last time you cried?”
    • Begin with general interest questions to gauge the other person’s willingness to engage. Transcript: Charles Duhigg So I went back to Nick Epley and I asked him, how do you do this? So you sit down next to someone on the New York subway with one of your kids with you who are like, dad, don’t embarrass me. What’s the first question? Because if you start with when’s the last time you cried in front of another person, they’re probably not going to react positively. Nick Epley That is not a good conversation opener. Not in real life. Like in our experiments, it works. I mean, because people, they feel they’re given license to have that conversation. But you have license in daily life to be interested in other people too. Like that’s what it means to care for somebody. You have a license to care about somebody, right? So for instance, we were in New York a little while ago and I was there with my daughter Sione and multiple train rides. I had conversations with people. One of them, woman came down and sat next to us and I asked her, you know, are you looking forward to your day today? That was my first question. And she said, no, I’m, uh, I’m going to try to find my brother who’s schizophrenic, ran away last night and spent the night on the streets. And right away, because this was something about, you know, what are you looking forward to? Something meaningful as it wasn’t just what you’re doing or how’s the weather. It was something personal. And right away, she knew I was interested. She shared this super meaningful thing with me. We had a very powerful conversation that I think it was uplifting (Time 0:25:15)
  • Practice Makes Perfect
    • Practice asking deep questions regularly.
    • Don’t be discouraged by awkwardness or rejection; keep trying and it will become natural. Transcript: Charles Duhigg And here’s the thing. There’s one other big insight that Mandy and Nick found to be really helpful in becoming better at asking questions. It’s important to ask deep questions, right? But you also have to remember that it takes practice to get good at that. And if the first couple times you do it, it feels awkward, that’s totally fine. If the person next to you on the bus, if they blow off your question and they don’t want to have a conversation, that’s okay. That doesn’t mean that you failed. What matters is that you keep practicing at it. And eventually you’ll get to a point when asking these questions is like the most natural thing in the world. And the thing that we’ve learned is that even if this doesn’t work all the time, it’s still completely worth learning how to do this. Nick Epley What I think happens when you become somebody who does this a lot is you become an expert at spotting opportunity. Like person sat down next to me on the train. We were there one-on I said, hello. She said, hi back. That was an opportunity. Why wouldn’t you choose to do that? Yeah. It’s just dumb. This is dumb. Have bad conversations. You don’t have to do that. You can have good ones, right? So that’s what I choose to do, have good ones. And then you make nice friends and it’s better. It’s better. (Time 0:27:57)