'The Laws of Connection,' with David Robson

Why do we crave social connection? Why do certain people we’re close to cause us stress? Why does politics seem put our relationships under so much stress?

James Tytko spoke to the writer David Robson to find the the answers to these questions and more ahead of the release of his new book ‘The Laws of Connection.’

James - David Robson is a science journalist and author. His new book is called 'The Laws of Connection: 13 Social Strategies That Will Transform Your Life.' David, loneliness is something that's becoming more and more prevalent in society. You write in the book that 50 to 60% of US citizens report feeling social disconnection at regular intervals in their lives. I imagine that was one of the key motivations for writing this book, combined with the fact that it's a serious business, social connection, when it comes to our health, isn't it?

David - It's a really serious business. There's been overwhelming evidence now for five decades that social connection can be as important for our health as all kinds of other lifestyle factors that we take for granted. things like, what we eat, how much we exercise, whether we drink, whether we smoke, all of these things we know are connected to longevity, but there's just a huge amount of evidence now that social connection is right up there with those lifestyle factors. It's as important. That includes the number of ties we have, but also the quality of the ties. It's really undeniable. I think there's just so many strands of different bits of research all pointing in this direction.

James - Interesting that you mention that idea of quantity and quality both being important. One thing I was really fascinated by in the book is the fact that, as you might expect, our strongest social connections are the most beneficial for our wellbeing, but it's not necessarily our most antagonistic relationships, or the people we're least keen on, that are most detrimental to our wellbeing, is it? It's the ones in between.

David - Right. So, obviously we try to keep the really mean and nasty people to a minimum, but sometimes you can't avoid them. It could just be a colleague you really don't get on with. But those people are certainly not good for our health, but they're not as bad as the people who blow hot and cold. Those Jekyll and Hyde characters who might one day act like they're your best friend and then the next day they might lash out because they feel jealous. This inconsistency is very stressful for us. There's this uncertainty to each interaction with those people. Because they're so nice to us, we really care about what they think and so, when they're hurtful, it's even more upsetting to us. Scientists call these ambivalent relationships. I think in everyday conversation we might refer to them as frenemies. What the research shows is that they do have a really negative impact on our health. So just knowing that you're going to have to interact with one of these people amplifies the stress that you are already feeling. Then, we know that can have knock on consequences for things like biological ageing. This shouldn't be a surprise because we know that stress is related to how quickly you age through processes like the release of stress hormones and inflammation. What the research shows is that when these ambivalent relationships are a really big and important part of your social network, you do seem to age more quickly. Your biological clock is just ticking a bit more quickly.

James - We're all bound to have some of these ambivalent relationships in our lives. What would be your advice as to how to mitigate the adverse stress effects that they can inspire in us?

David - It's not an easy question to answer in that there's not one single solution because sometimes it could be that the good outweighs the bad with these people, or it could be that you are connected through family, you might even be married to this person. None of this is easy to just detoxify. But what we can do is, once we learn to identify that behaviour, we can manage our expectations. We know not to rely on that person so much if we do need some support, if we are feeling stressed already we might just choose to avoid them. I think also what this really told me personally in my life was maybe I was craving a bit too much approval from my frenemies and, when I put it in these stark scientific terms, I just realised that actually I needed to broaden my social network and to cultivate more of those purely supportive people. Once I had that support network, the effects of my frenemies just weren't so great. They just didn't occupy my mind so much. They didn't matter so much to me.

James - Not to take away from your evident altruism with all the help you're giving out with this book, but it sounds like there's definitely a bit of 'me-search' that's been going on over the course of writing as well. When social connections are going well, what do they look like? You touch on this idea in the book of a 'shared reality.' I wonder if you could expand on that.

David - This particular part of the research really blew my mind because it just crystallised so much of what I felt personally made a good relationship. The shared reality is just that sense that someone is processing the world in the same way as you are. They see events in the same way, they have the same immediate emotional reactions, they're thinking the same things. So in our everyday conversations, a really good sign of this is if you start finishing each other's sentences, or if you say the same thing at the same time, you both laugh at the same joke that maybe the rest of the group don't find funny but the two of you do. That suggests that you have that shared reality. These moments happen quite frequently amongst friends and the more they happen, the more frequent they are, the closer they feel to each other.

James - Do we have any understanding of the underlying mechanisms going on inside the brain when, as you describe, we have these two minds almost becoming one?

David - We do and that's what I love about this research so much is that the metaphors we use are actually very accurate, neurologically speaking. We talk about being on the same wavelength as someone, or like you said, like we feel we've got a kind of merged mind, a single stream of consciousness. The research suggests that actually that is what's going on in the brain. You could take a group of graduate students and show them a string of different YouTube clips, like a music video, a comedy clip, a documentary, something quite harrowing, all of these things. You could measure people's neural reactions to those events, which areas are becoming active at which time, and just from those brain scans, the similarities in two people's brain activity turned out to predict how close they were within that group of students and the degree of friendship within these people. When we're friends with people, it is like our minds are actually working in sync. It's like we really are on the same wavelength.

James - While we're still on this topic, we talked about the rise in social isolation. People might in the future turn more and more to these parasocial relationships. Perhaps it might be a favourite YouTuber who they seek comfort in or, with the rise of artificial intelligence, a chatbot that can kind of mimic the effects of social connection. But I'm guessing with what you're saying about the shared neural activity in our brains, there's only so far that these relationships can really fulfil our need for social connection.

David - Yeah, I feel so. Parasocial relationships or technological alternatives can create the illusion of a friendship and they can create that illusion of having a shared reality. But I think we're always going to be conscious of the distance between us and that celebrity or us and that technology. We're going to know that there fundamentally isn't this synchronous brain activity and that they don't really understand us or get us in the way that we would crave from a real person sitting in the same room who is reacting totally spontaneously to the events around us in a way that we feel really seen and understood through that conversation.

James - Another way in which technology is shaping our social connections more and more is via social media. And I think I'm right in saying one of the roots of some of the mental health issues young people particularly experience with consistent use of social media is that there's this prevalence of putting your best foot forward isn't there? Observing other people's lives and reflecting on our own in comparison. And you argue in the book, don't you, that this kind of mentality can block our eagerness to show vulnerability, which in itself is crucial for social connection.

David - Absolutely. So there's just so much research showing that social comparison in all forms, even before social media came along, is pretty bad for our mental wellbeing. It can instantly destroy any happiness you would have from any particular achievement in your life if you immediately compare yourself to someone who has achieved even more. What I think social media does is it just makes that social comparison much easier. We're probably engaging in it much more than we had in the past. As long as we are on that treadmill, trying to compete with other people, I think we are going to feel isolated ultimately. There's this phenomenon with a beautiful name called the 'beautiful mess effect,' and that essentially shows we tend to be very scared about revealing any kind of vulnerability because we think it will be perceived as being weak or embarrassing. We hold these things that we feel ashamed of as secrets and that can leave us feeling more isolated because it stops us from having that shared reality, from knowing that other people have experienced the same things as us. But what the research shows is that when people do reveal their vulnerabilities, others' perceptions are often much more positive than they believe. So rather than seeing weakness, people might see courage and actually just the whole act of self-disclosure is giving material to build that shared reality. So if we were just a bit more honest on our social media, we might find that we receive a lot more empathy from other people than we would expect and a lot more support.

James - I'm thinking as you were speaking about whether certain politicians might take some of your advice. There's this idea that you need to show strength and I suppose vulnerability would be something that the media could take you down for. I'm thinking particularly of when Rishi Sunak actually announced the date of the election in the pouring rain outside Downing Street, and the fact that he didn't even pay any note to the fact that it was pouring down with rain made the whole thing seem a bit ridiculous.

David - Totally. I feel like that particular event attracted a lot of ridicule partly because it did lead you to question his planning skills a little bit. But I wonder if he gave an interview afterwards and if he admitted that he'd made a mistake and that he felt embarrassed by that mistake, I think it would've actually attracted a lot more sympathy and empathy than he'd expected. Whereas just always trying to appear like everything is on purpose and that you're not bothered at all by the negative comment, I don't think that is actually a good way of connecting with voters

James - When it comes to our social connections, it feels like very few things put them under as much strain as politics. What can you tell me about the cognitive biases that lead to them being such flashpoints in our relationships? It feels like people who we otherwise have so much in common with, we can disagree so viscerally about politics.

David - I think this comes partly because we see our political beliefs as being this core part of our identity and it is part of our worldview. When we find that someone who we might agree with on lots of other issues, really have that shared reality, when we find that they don't share our political views, that can put that shared reality under stress. But actually there are some biases that maybe lead us to be too pessimistic about the possibility of reaching mutual understanding. One of these is that we have faulty assumptions about what the other person wants to achieve with these conversations. We assume that they want to just persuade us, to hit us over the heads with facts. Sometimes we think they just want to have an argument. What we don't understand is that actually when you look at the research, most people genuinely do want to build an understanding. They're genuinely curious about what you think. We think their motives are maybe worse than they actually are. What I love about the research is that they've engineered these conversations between people who disagree and they've encouraged them to just make their interest and curiosity explicit. People actually, rather than just jumping to those assumptions, they actually say, "Look, I really care about what you believe and I want to hear more about it." They found that that immediately diffuses the landmine of the conversation. It just makes it a lot more constructive. And actually, when both parties are describing their curiosity in that way, each party is then more willing to accept the holes in their own arguments and to just be a bit more humble about their beliefs. So you can actually have a real conversation where you can both exchange your views honestly, which allows you to repair that shared reality and to come to some kind of mutual understanding. Even if you don't agree, you can at least identify the points on which you do agree and you can understand why you disagree on the others and recognise that it doesn't make the other person this terrible evil human being for thinking the way they do.

James - Yes. Some very actionable advice there to try and show a genuine interest in another person's point of view and their arguments. David, just to say, a big thank you for your time, it has been a pleasure talking to you.

David - Such a pleasure. Thanks for having me on the show.