How to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  We constantly 'mind read', and it's useful but error-prone

  Epley, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago, explains that we infer thoughts, intentions and attitudes behind other people's behavior, and even behind animals, gods or the planet. The inference helps us explain what someone is doing and predict what they'll do next. It's better than not doing it, but it systematically misfires in predictable ways.

• 02

  With strangers, we use our own minds as the template

  When we know nothing about someone, the main tool we have is ourselves: if I feel cold, I assume you do too. Egocentrism also means we overestimate how clearly we come across. We know what we meant, so we assume an email will be read the way we'd say it, and sarcasm or jokes land badly in text.

• 03

  Voice conveys a mind; text is mostly 'dead'

  Speech happens as thought happens, so rate, pitch and intonation reveal enthusiasm, sadness, intent and sarcasm. In a study with Juliana Schroeder on the eve of the 2016 election, people who heard Trump or Clinton voters explain their choice rated them as more thoughtful, intelligent and rational than people who read the same words. The effect was strongest when they disagreed with the speaker. Yet most people say they'd rather write to seem smart because they can edit.

• 04

  People underestimate how much others want to connect

  Across more than 30,000 participants in over 120 experiments, Epley's lab finds people consistently underestimate how positively others will respond when they reach out. If two strangers sit silently next to each other, each reads the other's silence as disinterest, which creates a shared but mistaken belief that nobody wants to talk.

• 05

  Extraversion strongly predicts happiness, and acting extraverted helps everyone

  The correlation between daily positive affect and extraversion is about 0.5, comparable to the correlation between fathers' and sons' heights, and about 0.3 for life satisfaction. Ed Diener called it a foundational finding. Will Fleeson's lab studies and Sonja Lyubomirsky's two-week interventions found that acting more extraverted raised positive feelings regardless of baseline personality. Introverts, too, report feeling better with people than alone.

• 06

  Sociability is like exercise: a habit, not a fixed type

  Epley thinks the difference between people who seek out connection and those who don't is largely the habits they've built. Avoiding people keeps you from developing the skills to read cues, gracefully exit 'sticky' conversations or spot when someone is busy. Those skills come from approaching.

• 07

  Brief exchanges matter more than we assume

  Huberman admits he'd thought of small talk and manners as 'crackers', not nourishment. Both conclude that fist bumps, compliments and quick shared moments create a real sense of kinship. Epley's students hypothesize, though it is untested, that one good exchange with a stranger shifts how you feel about the whole group they belong to.

• 08

  Social anxiety persists because beliefs never get tested

  Exposure works because you discover your predictions were wrong. If you never reach out, you never get that disconfirming evidence. Much social anxiety is a fear of seeming creepy or 'too sticky'. Epley's answer is calibration rather than avoidance: friendly is not the same as friends, and if someone doesn't call back, don't ping them a third time.

• 09

  Context and norms shape what counts as polite

  Earbuds and phones signal 'don't bother me'. In the UK, and even more in Japan, staying out of strangers' business is itself politeness. Epley cautions that what looks like eroding manners may be people trying not to intrude. He treats a greeting as an invitation the other person can accept or decline.