Thinking Archives - How to be Awesome at Your Job

Pete Mockaitis
Emily, welcome!

Emily Falk
Thanks so much for having me, Pete.

Pete Mockaitis
Oh, thank you. I’m excited to hear some of your goods. So, then, tell us, with your book, What We Value, what’s the big idea or core message here?

Emily Falk
Well, the big idea in What We Value is that our brains shape what we value, and that happens in ways that we might not realize as they’re unfolding. And my hope is that if people can understand how their brains are calculating value that that has potentially a lot of benefits.

That one possibility is that we can feel more compassion for ourselves and for other people when we make decisions that don’t necessarily make sense to us. That it might also help us make choices a little bit differently or also communicate more effectively with one another.

So, the book is in three parts right there. The first part that explains how this all unfolds in the brain, then there’s a second part that focuses on what we might do if we want to change those kinds of processes, and then the third part focuses on how we connect with other people.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, you discussed the value calculation. What is that? And, ultimately, how are we generally going about making decisions?

Emily Falk
Well, your brain has a set of regions, a system that neuroscientists call the value system, and it takes inputs from lots of other brain regions, and integrates them into a subjective assessment of how rewarding each of any different possible options might be for you. And this kind of unfolds in three phases.

So, in the first phase, your brain identifies what the things are that you’re choosing between. And then in the second part of that, it assigns a subjective value to each of those possible options, which is really weighted towards things that are psychologically close, meaning things that are immediately relevant to you, like rewarding soon.

Geographically close to you, like, stuff that’s happening here in my community, as opposed to, like, across the world in Sudan. And, also, socially close, like, people who are similar to me or people who I know really well, as opposed to people who I think are really different from me or far away.

And in the brain, you can see that these kinds of psychological distance are computed similarly. So, like, future me is similar to a different person. So, in that second phase, your brain assigns a subjective value to how kind of immediately, presently rewarding things are likely to be. And then it connects to other systems that execute the choice.

So, we choose the one that we think can be most rewarding, and then keep track of how it went afterwards, like, “Was that actually as rewarding as I thought it would be?” And if it’s better than you thought it would be, like, let’s say, that you are at work and you sign up for an assignment that you’re willing to do, but it turns out that it’s like way more fun that you thought it would be, it generates what’s called a positive prediction error, and that makes it more likely that we’ll do that thing in the future.

Rather than something that you were really excited about, turns out to be worse than you thought it would be, it generates this negative prediction error, and we learn so that, in the future, it’s going to be an input to future value calculations.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, that’s what’s going on underneath the hood when we’re thinking about, “Do I do a thing?” And so then, if different people choose differently, I guess, what are the primary variables that explain it?

So, if someone says, “Hey, some guys are getting together for a fishing trip,” and then some people on the email say, “Yes, I’m in,” others say, “No, I’m not,” I’m sure there are all kinds of things that are happening externally in their life and their situations and their travel plans. But internally, what are the core things that might make the difference between folks saying, “Yes, I’m in,” versus, “No, I’m out”?

Emily Falk
Well, each of our choices that we’re making in a deliberate way like that are shaped by our past experiences, like we just talked about. Our current context, which can include a lot of different things.

Like I said, there are all these other brain systems that are feeding into our value calculations, which include what we think about ourselves, like, “Am I the kind of person who goes fishing?”

What we think other people around us might be thinking or doing, like, if many other people in the chain have already replied enthusiastically, then that signals that this is, like, maybe something that is going to be fun or beneficial. And those kinds of social influences are really powerful in shaping our value calculations.

Our current mood and our emotional states impact our decision-making, and there are lots of other things as well. So, there’s all of these different context cues that feed into our subjective value associations. And so, the difference between somebody making the choice of say yes to the fishing trip or no to the fishing trip is going to be dependent on all those different things.

But I think one of the things that’s really helpful to understand is that we can shift how we feel about it depending on what we pay attention to.

Pete Mockaitis
And when you talk about shifts, can you tell us the tale of Ernie Grunfeld’s parents and how that brings this to life?

Emily Falk
Yeah, Ernie Grunfeld, for folks who don’t know, was a star NBA player and went on to become the general manager of several major NBA teams. So, he’s had a really star-studded career in basketball. But when he first came to the US, he immigrated from Eastern Europe, and his parents and he were Holocaust survivors.

And they ended up in New York, and his parents made all kinds of sacrifices to get the family to the US. And so, when they arrived, his parents set up a store, and Ernie would help out at the store on the weekends. He enrolled in school. His parents prioritized sort of higher-rent housing situation in order to be able to get him that education.

He came from this family that had a really strong core set of values related to those things. But, on the playground, it turned out that Ernie was amazing at basketball. And so, Ernie started to play on the playgrounds in New York, and then eventually, in high school, he got really, really good. But his parents were really busy working and they didn’t know that.

And so, his son, Dan, wrote a book where he describes the high school basketball coach calling up Mr. and Mrs. Grunfeld, and saying, “Your son is incredibly talented, and this is something that he could pursue as a ticket to college. Like, it’s going to be his ticket to getting scholarships. He’s going to be able to pursue this education,” in a way that really resonated with them.

And I’ll also add that Ernie’s dad, Alex, was an athlete himself. He had been a star ping-pong player, among other things. And so, the conditions were really right, where you could imagine some parents being in the situation where they’ve sacrificed so much for their kid to be able to be in this new place and pursue an education.

And if Coach Isser had focused on other things, like, for example, maybe how talented he was at basketball and what a gift it would be to the sport for him to play, like, I don’t know how that would’ve changed his parents’ calculations.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, good for basketball, that’s not our priority right now. Okay.

Emily Falk
Yeah. And so, the people who are receiving the message, his parents, have one set of things that’s really important to them, and through this conversation, Coach Isser was able to kind of highlight for them what an amazing opportunity this talent that Ernie had could afford. And so, there’s a really incredible story of them coming to the gym one night to watch him play basketball. They closed the store, which was something that they never typically did.

And they came in to the gym, and they didn’t even recognize him on the court in his uniform and playing, and so they were like, “Where’s our kid?” And then, it turned out that there he was, like, being amazing on the court. And after seeing that, I think that made it even more concrete and vivid for them, like what was possible.

And so then, they became really big supporters of him playing basketball. They released him from his duties working at the store. And he did go on to have a really incredible college career and, eventually, moved into the NBA.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, you mentioned releasing duties from the store. So, whereas, before, it sounds like, was a bit more of a, “Okay, we tolerate this basketball thing because it’s a thing you like to do,” and then they got shifted over to, “Oh, wait a minute. This is the ticket to all the things that we’ve been trying to create for you, so now we’re all in on you and basketball.”

Emily Falk
Yeah, I’m not sure even how much they talked about it before Coach Isser brought it up, right? Like, this incredibly amazing story that highlights his parents not even recognizing him at the gym. I think it wasn’t on their radar that this was something he did. Like, he went to the playground, he played with his friends, he did whatever he did after school, and then the coach kind of brought that into their focus.

So, thinking about that first part of decision-making process of, like, “What possibilities are even available?” Coach Isser sort of foregrounded this as something that could be a path for their kid, where I don’t know how many conversations Ernie and his parents were having before that.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, so let’s say that we’re to utilize to use this cool brain science to see some good results in our lives, and maybe there’s any number of behaviors that we would like to change, maybe, “I wish I could focus longer, or on difficult strategic high-impact career things, or exercise, or have some challenging conversations with folks.”

If we want to make a shift in what we’re doing to doing more of the things that we think we “should” or would be good for us to do, where do we start?

Emily Falk
Yeah, let’s stick with the Ernie example for a little bit longer there because I think, although we’ve been talking about sort of his parents’ decision-making process, thinking about that long-term future for him, which is often something that his parents or as managers are trying to do, Ernie had different motivations for playing basketball.

He was playing basketball because he loved it. It was a way to make friends. It was a way to do something that felt really joyful for him in the moment. And I think that is a really instructive path towards success.

So, in particular, we often focus so much on distant outcomes, and in doing the thing that we think is going to be the best for us that we disregard or down-weight the things that, actually, is going to make the process joyful.

And so, going back to that idea that our brain has this system for calculating psychological distance, like our self-relevant system calculates what’s me and what’s not me, and it prioritizes the things that are immediately rewarding, that are socially similar to me, that are geographically close to me.

And so, when we think about how we can make those choices that you’re describing easier, I think one of the things that we can do is try to being them psychologically closer, try to bring the rewards psychologically closer.

And so, just to be concrete about what I mean, so you’re talking about, like, networking as one example. Sometimes we think about how we can take advantage of a conference or a new situation or we’re going to meet people at work as an opportunity to network and to build relationships that are going to be useful in the future.

But I think when people think about it that way, it’s kind of obvious why you would dread that, it’s like, “I’m going to kind of muddle through these maybe awkward interactions in service of some payoff that’s in the distant future.”

Whereas, if we think about, like, the chance to get to know somebody now and to actually have fun with a few people that we care about, like our peers, I think that can be a more successful strategy because it’s fun in the moment. So, it’s rewarding now but it also is building those bridges to the future.

And what I would say about that also is when we think about research on conversation, that people often underestimate how fun conversations with strangers are going to be. And so, maybe we are dreading things unnecessarily. Like, when you actually start to ask people questions that you’re curious to know the answers to, rather than just kind of the trite small talk stuff, then it actually can be really fun.

We also tend to underestimate how much other people like us. And so, people sometimes avoid having conversations because they’re worried that other people don’t want to have them but then it turns out that they do.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, I think you’re great, Emily, and I like you.

Emily Falk
I think you’re great, too, Pete. Thank you. I appreciate it.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, we bring it close to us. And then I want to hear a bit about, when you say “like me” or “not like me,” my buddy, Scott, gave me a tip from somewhere about how it can actually be quite powerful to say, as we’re doing a thing that we want to do more of, it’s like, “Oh, it is so like me to wake up early and exercise.” And I was like, “Is that a real thing, Scott?” Tell us, Emily, is that a real thing?

Emily Falk
Yeah. Well, that is a good strategy in terms of thinking about the ways that the things that we want to do can be congruent with aspects of our personality or identity already. So, in the book, I talk a little bit about an experience that I had talking with my brother who is a real athlete. And when I was growing up, I didn’t really think of myself as specifically an athlete or a runner. I run to de-stress, I exercise for my mental health, but my siblings have always been much more athletic than I am.

And one day my brother came to me, and he said, “You know, if you did some targeted workouts, you could get much faster.” And initially I was like, “Why would I want to do that?”

Pete Mockaitis
“Speed? Who cares?”

Emily Falk
Yeah, right. Like, “Why do I need to run faster? Like, I have this other goal in mind.” And he was like, “Well, if you got faster, then you could hear the gossip on runs with me and Lily,” my sister. So, that was one motivation. But in terms of whether I was capable of it, he said to me, “Academics often make really good runners because they know how to plan and work hard towards a goal. And you already have all of these mental skills that you would need in order to be a really good runner.”

And so, he kind of reframed what I would think of as like a dichotomy previously of like nerd versus jock, like, “I’m really good at math and science, and I really like school.” And, instead, he said, “No, actually those things that make you really good at your job also could make you really good at this other thing.” And so, by connecting that aspect of my identity with this thing that he wanted me to do, he opened up that possibility.

And so, it’s not like, all of a sudden, I’m running marathons as quickly as he is but sometimes, I’ll add a few sprints to the end of my run now. And then there’s this kind of feed-forward cycle, where when we do do a thing that’s compatible with the longer-term goal, then that can become more a part of our identity. So, like, “I am a person who could run faster,” right? And so, then once I have that in mind, it makes it more motivating to do it in the future.

And underneath that, when we think about what’s happening in people’s brains, what we see is that self-relevance and value are really deeply intertwined. Like, there’s been research that Rob Chavez and Dylan Wagner did, where they showed that the same patterns of brain activity that can distinguish between whether somebody rates, say, a photo of a puppy as good or bad, positive or negative, that value calculation, can also distinguish whether somebody, that same person, will say that a given adjective, like boring or intelligent or messy, describes them.

And so, what that means is that, since the brain is kind of conflating self and value in these ways, that we tend to prioritize choices that immediately kind of feel like me and that sometimes we cut off or take off the table of possibilities for things in all different aspects of our life because they don’t necessarily immediately resonate as something that someone like me would do.

Pete Mockaitis
Yeah. Well, it’s funny, I’m thinking about Bob Cialdini’s work with, who’s on the show and he’s amazing, Pre-Suasion, where he asked folks, I think the study was they asked folks to check out a new energy drink or a new food or beverage of some sort. And most people are not interested, like, “Hey, I’m just trying to shop, like go away.”

But if he prefaced it with, “Would you consider yourself an adventurous person?” and most people are like, “Well, adventurous is good. And I guess kind of, yeah.” It’s like, well, that was the pre-question. And then he asked, “Well, would you like to then try this new product?” The response rates went up because I think, in so doing, he made kind of a bridge in terms of, “Oh, yeah, trying this new product is congruent with who I am. I am an adventurous person and, therefore, I try new foods and beverages. Why not?”

Emily Falk
And that’s a great example of sort of that second part of value calculation, where if you want to change the way that you’re responding to something, or the way somebody else is responding to something, that the context matters so much, right?

And so, in general, maybe you’re moving through a supermarket and you’re thinking about one set of factors, like, “Am I thirsty? Like, have I already had a cup of coffee today?” whatever, right? But, by focusing on this aspect of your identity, like, “Oh, actually, I’m an adventurous person,” that is shifting the spotlight onto a different part of, like, the choice space, right? And so, it’s making it easier for you to say yes to that thing.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Now, you also had some research showing that our brain activity in the value system predicts whether or not we’re going to do some stuff better than whether we, ourselves, say we’re going to do the thing, whether it’s about using sunscreen or reducing smoking or exercising more. Can you speak a bit more on this?

Emily Falk
Sure. And I would say that those sources of information complement each other. So, it’s not necessarily that the brain is better, but that sometimes it gives different information than when we ask people about things like their intentions to change their behavior or their confidence in their ability to do it or their attitudes, like about the behavior in question.

And so, just like you said, we found that when you look at what happens in people’s brains, as they’re being exposed to these messages about all different kinds of behaviors, it can help predict not only whether people are going to change their behavior, but also what kinds of messages are going to be effective in shifting people’s preferences or other kinds of things that they do.

Pete Mockaitis
And so then, under the hood, is it that we can observe, I’m talking about, brain waves or activation energy? What is the thing we’re seeing? And what does it mean in terms of “activity” in the value system?

Emily Falk
There are a lot of different neuroimaging techniques that scientists use to measure brain activity. Most of the studies in what we value focus on functional magnetic resonance imaging studies, which uses changes in oxygenated and deoxygenated blood as a proxy for brain activity. So, the way that MRI, magnetic resonance imaging technology works is that there’s a big magnet and a changing magnetic field, and all of your blood has hemoglobin, like little tiny bits of iron that are susceptible to that magnetic field.

And so, what we can do is we can follow the change in concentrations of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood that are going to fuel your brain cells. All of the cells in your body need oxygen and glucose in order to function. And so, that’s why when certain parts of your brain are firing a lot, then they’re consuming more of that energy, and so the blood flow changes in order to supply that.

And so, the fMRI tracks, over the course of seconds, how much is the blood oxygen level dependent signal shifting. And so, when we say that the activation within the value system is changing, what we mean is that certain neurons in your brain are firing in a way that is then changing how the blood is flowing and supplying them with energy, and that we can pick up on that proxy for brain activity.

Pete Mockaitis
I love that. Because I’ve read that a lot, I was like, “Oh, FMRI studies show activation,” I was like, “How exactly does that even work?” So now we know. Thank you. That’s fun.

So, then, I guess I’m curious, it sounds like, as I’m imagining a person who’s hearing about a message about exercising more, and who ends up doing it, and then someone who doesn’t, the difference is that, in their brain, the parts associated with the value system are kind of they’re working it, they’re in it, they’re fired up, they’re doing the thing. And then someone else is, I guess, less so into it.

So, I’m curious, could you maybe venture to speculate, what are the kinds of things happening inside someone’s mind? What does it sound like when their value system activity is revved up versus what is it not? What is maybe a snippet of example illustrative internal dialogue sound like?

Emily Falk
Great. So, we started to talk a little bit before about some of the things that might make people more open to changing. So, one of them is feeling like there’s a more immediate reward.

In studies that we’ve run, looking at people who were relatively sedentary, and we’re trying to coach them to be more physically active, we may give them messages about how or why they would do that.

So, stuff like, “People who are at your level of physical inactivity are at increased risk for heart disease,” or, “The best parking spots are the ones that are farthest away. So, park at the edge of the parking lot and get some extra steps as you’re walking into your office.” And for a lot of us, when we get this kind of coaching that suggests that stuff we were doing in the past might not be optimal, one of the reactions that it triggers is defensiveness.

And that goes back to the idea that we conflate self and value, so stuff that I did in the past, we tend to be biased to think like, “Well, that was me, and so, ideally, that was a good decision.” And so, messages or coaching or feedback that suggests that what we were doing in the past isn’t optimal can be threatening to that sense of self.

And so, people, their internal dialogue might be something like, “Yeah. Well, okay, some people who are sedentary are at increased risk of heart disease. But I eat a pretty good diet and I try to keep my salt down, so it’s probably not that big of a deal for me.”

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. So, this is what low-value system activity kind of sounds like.

Emily Falk
Yeah. So, if it’s like coming up with reasons why this doesn’t really apply to me, or that this information, or advice isn’t particularly valuable, then we’d expect to see less activation within the value system. And so, in the study that I’m describing here, one of the ways that we tried to help people be more open to that information was a process called values affirmation.

Where before they got any of the coaching, half of the people are randomized to get these values affirmations where they choose a value that’s really important to them. And then we have them think about scenarios where that value is going to come into play. So, like, what’s a value that’s really important to you, Pete? Friends and family, creativity, spirituality?

Pete Mockaitis
Let’s say learning.

Emily Falk
Okay, great. So, learning is a value that’s really important to you. So, we’d have you maybe vividly imagine situations where, like, what’s a time that you have learned something that was really amazing that helped you do your job better? Or what’s a time when you have learned something that changed the way that you interacted with other people? Or what’s a time in the future where learning is going to open new doors for you?

And so, we might have you reflect on these different kinds of scenarios and imagine them vividly. And that would be the values affirmation. People in the control group would do a similar kind of thing but we would give them a value that’s not important to them.

And what we saw was that then going into those coaching messages, which are literally the same for everybody in the study. The only thing that’s different is whether they’ve gotten to reflect on that value that means a lot to them or not beforehand.

The people who got to do that work of kind of zooming out and thinking about what actually matters to them, I think, could then see that, like, whether or not they parked in the farthest parking spot from their work, or actually we’re moving around as much as the federal guidelines recommend, that that doesn’t actually determine whether you’re a good person or not. It’s not the thing that determines your self-worth.

And so, that’s one possibility for why we would see more activation in the value system, more activation in the self-relevant system when they’re exposed to those coaching messages after getting that chance to zoom out.

And then the last piece of the puzzle was the more people showed increased activation in the value or self-relevant system as they were getting those coaching messages, the more they went on to actually change their behavior.

So, for the month afterwards, we sent them text message reminders that were kind of little boosters and measured their physical activity with accelerometers, like imagine a Fitbit that doesn’t give you feedback.

And so, it seemed like the intervention that we did, made people’s brains more receptive to the information. And then the more they were receptive to that information or the more they showed activation in these brain regions, the more likely they were to change their behavior afterwards.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, that’s really cool and actionable. Thank you. I guess I’m curious, if there’s many, many different values, it seems like some of them would seem to map better to exercise more than others. But just doing it, value affirming any one of your values, makes you more down to exercise kind of whatever the value, regardless of the value?

Emily Falk
Well, there’s two different pathways that I think you’re pointing at. So, one is, in values affirmation, in that literature, mostly people focus on values that don’t have to do with the behavior that you’re trying to change, because the idea is you’re trying to get somebody to kind of zoom out and reduce the threat of the thing that you’re asking them to change.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay, so defensive reduction happens regardless.

Emily Falk
Exactly. So, you’re trying to reduce their defensiveness by anchoring them in something that kind of is bigger than themself, right, something that connects them to other people, ideally, like something that is self-transcendent.

And so, when they reflect on those kinds of things, then the logic is that it can help them see that, like, like I said, whether you exercise or not this week doesn’t make you a good or bad person, right? And that there could be useful information in this coaching, even if it means changing something about what you were doing in the past. So, that’s like one pathway.

You’re also kind of highlighting, though, with your question that, like when my brother tried to connect my identity as an academic with the possibility of running, that’s sort of a different way of tapping into a connection between something that we value and our identity, and tailoring a message in that way can also make it more effective. So, there are tons of studies that have shown that when messages are tailored to people’s values and to their lifestyle and to their demographics that it can make the messages more effective.

So, for example, in a study that Hannah Chua led at Michigan, looking at smokers, when smokers received messages that were tailored to their personal motivations, let’s say, it’s like they’re motivated to quit because smoking is really expensive, or they’re motivated to quit because they have kids and they’re really worried about the effects of secondhand smoke, that those messages both increased activation within parts of medial prefrontal cortex, which is core to several of the kinds of key systems that we’ve been talking about. And that those tailored messages are more effective in changing their behavior.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, now that you got me thinking about those tailored messages, do we tend to get better results stoking our fears or by amplifying a beautiful positive vision, or the combo?

Emily Falk
There have been meta-analyses that show that fear appeals can work. So, you can get people to change their behavior by highlighting the negative consequences of things that’ll come.

There’s also a set of research on what’s called mental contrasting with implementation intentions, where the idea is that it’s not enough to just fantasize about a future that you want, like the good things that would come. You have to identify what the gap is between where you are now and that future state. So, that’s the mental contrasting part.

And then once you’ve figured out, like, what are the things that are potentially in the way of you moving from where you are right now to where you want to be in the future, then you can use the second part of that MCII, mental contrasting with implementation intentions, the implementation intentions part, which is those if-then plans where you say, “If I’m in this situation, then I will do this.”

So, for example, this has been applied to voting, like making detailed plan of like, “When it’s Tuesday morning and if it’s raining out, I’m going to get my partner, get an umbrella, and go to our polling station anyway,” or, “I’m going to get a ride from my mom,” or whatever the thing is that’s going to help you overcome the obstacle that you’re perceiving.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. Well, Emily, in our final minutes here, can you share what are your top-top do’s and don’ts you recommend if we are looking to make a change? Do more of something or do less of something, we want to, if we could, as close as possible, flip the switch, wave the magic wand so that we’re now behaving the way we’d like to be?

Emily Falk
One is, I would say, do think about how you can make the process joyful now. Like, don’t just save all the rewards for later. So, if you’re trying to get more exercise and you really hate running, like, go dancing or choose something, which is gonna be…

Pete Mockaitis
Pickleball.

Emily Falk
Yeah, Pickleball. If you love pickleball, play pickleball, right? Do the thing that’s going to be fun now and also compatible with the longer-term goal. Or if you’re trying to eat healthier, like, choose things that are both tasty for you now and healthy. Like, surely there are things that are at the intersection of those rather than just, like, stomaching something that you are not going to want to do over and over again for the long term. So that’s one thing.

Another thing I would say is thinking about that defensiveness and making sure that when you go into a conversation or situation where you’re going to get feedback, that you don’t throw out helpful advice because it’s potentially threatening to your sense of self, right?

So, knowing that our brain’s default is to kind of conflate self and value, we can be aware and on guard for that kind of feeling. And instead, think about, like, “What are the things that we can learn from the feedback that we’re getting? What are the pieces of feedback that can help us grow and change and do what we want to do?”

And then the last thing that I would say, that we haven’t delved as deeply into, is that social rewards are incredibly powerful. And so, for all of these things, as we’re trying to think about, “How can we make something more rewarding now that the long-term payoff is far in the future?” We can do it with other people who also care about it.

In my lab, we often work together on tasks that are the least fun tasks, work on that thing you don’t want to work on. An acronym for that, that my grad school pal, Elliot Berkman, coined is wotty’d wot wot. And when you do it with other people who also value the goal and the work, then it’s more fun.

And, likewise, you can think about, like in this moment, looking around and trying to think about like, “What can I do to improve the situation that we’re all in?” like, that can feel vague and distant and in the future. But if you think about like, the most important thing is just to do something, right? Like, think about what you want to change, and then do it visibly with other people. That can also be a really powerful reward. So, those are a few for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Well, beautiful. Thank you, Emily. Well, now could you share a favorite study or experiment or bit of research?

Emily Falk
Yeah. One of my favorites right now is the study that I talked about where they showed that the same brain patterns that can classify whether something is good or bad can also classify whether something is me or not me.

Because I find, personally, that that’s so useful to keep in mind, that those things are getting intertwined in our brains in ways that we may not necessarily be paying attention to, and then can have all of these knock-on effects in terms of making us feel defensive or on the other side, restricting the possibilities that we see for ourselves and others.

And that same research team has gone on to do a bunch of other interesting research about, like, how we represent our sense of self and relate to other people. So, that’s one of my favorites right now.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And a favorite book?

Emily Falk
One that I used as a foundation for the last chapter in the book is Maria Ressa’s autobiography, How to Stand Up to a Dictator. And one of the things that I really love about that story is that it highlights how the person that we become, and when we do big hard things like she did, that it’s really a series of these tiny little decisions.

And so, as we think about the choices that we’re making on a day-to-day basis, Maria Ressa went on to get a Nobel Peace Prize for her work in journalism, making all of these extraordinary and brave choices. But when she describes the process of growing up and the things that shaped her values and the things that shaped her daily decisions, it feels accessible and ordinary. So, that’s a book that I really loved recently.

Pete Mockaitis
And a favorite tool?

Emily Falk
One of my favorite tools in the lab is what we call fast friends. And fast friends is a protocol where you can randomly assign people to have a friend in the lab. And sometimes you want that because the real history of people’s friendships comes with all kinds of baggage and different people have different kinds of friendships and so on.

So, psychologists develop this tool called fast friends, which starts out with surface-level questions, like, “If you could have dinner with anyone in the world, who would it be?” or, “What constitutes a perfect day for you?” And then the questions get increasingly intimate, building to things like, “If you were to die tonight, what’s one thing that you haven’t told anyone? And why not?” And asking your partner for advice.

And so, over the course of like an hour, you actually become friends with someone. So, that’s a favorite psychological tool for me.

Pete Mockaitis
Now, is this the same questions to fall in love with anyone?

Emily Falk
Yeah. So, the media has often characterized this as, like, 36 questions to fall in love. And, yeah, great, use it for that. But also, I’ve done it with my grandmother. I’ve done it with my father-in-law. I’ve done it with my kids.

I’ve done it with, recently, I went to an experience potluck, which was super fun. People brought different experiences with them and then offered them to each other, kind of like a food potluck, and I brought fast friends, and I got to do it with a stranger who’s now my friend.

Pete Mockaitis
Cool. And a favorite habit?

Emily Falk
Making time to actually focus on quality time with my partner. So, a habit involves something where there’s a cue and then a thing that you repeat and then kind of a reward that you get at the end. And so, after our kids fall asleep, that’s the cue, and then there’s like half an hour to an hour where we hang out in the kitchen and try to actually focus on the present.

And the reward is getting to feel close to a person that I care about. I don’t always do that perfectly. So, I don’t know if it fully counts as a habit because the definition of a habit involves essentially doing it fully on automatic pilot, and that’s kind of the opposite.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And is there a key nugget you share that really seems to connect and resonate with folks, you’re being quoted back to yourself often?

Emily Falk
That we’re not ever really making decisions alone.

So, we imagine that we’re making decisions independent of lots of other factors, but the data really bear out the idea that our brains value systems are deeply influenced by what other people are thinking and feeling and doing in so many different areas, ranging from what foods we like to who we think is attractive, to the art that we hang on our walls, to whether we vote.

And so, that idea that we’re not deciding alone and that it’s not just that we’re performing some kind of conformity, but that our value calculations are actually deeply shaped by the people around us. And so, I think that really kind of, like, complicates the idea of authenticity, right? That, like, often, sometimes people think that, when they’re conforming or when they’re following along with other people’s preferences, that that’s somehow inauthentic.

And actually, I think, the people that we choose to spend our time with are really deeply shaping who we are in so many important ways. And so, we want to be aware of that, both in terms of who we’re choosing as role models, and who we’re choosing to spend our time and energy with, and how we’re showing up for our kids and our friends and our colleagues because we’re shaping them also, right? So, the kind of future and the way that the world is going to unfold is starting also in our own minds.

Pete Mockaitis
And if folks want to learn more or get in touch, where would you point them?

Emily Falk
Well, my lab’s website, FalkLab.org, has all of our research papers for free. I also share research, both from our team and others on LinkedIn. And then our lab has a bunch of other social media channels that you can find on the website.

Pete Mockaitis
Okay. And do you have a final challenge or call to action for folks looking to be awesome at their jobs?

Emily Falk
Just like we know that other people influence us, we’re influencing other people. And so, when we look around and we see big challenges or hard things that we want to have be different in the world, then it’s not that we have to have a perfect plan, but that if we choose something and start to move towards it in a way that prioritizes doing it in a way that feels fun and joyful, and then we can bring other people in and show them what we’re doing, that I do think we have the capacity in aggregate to make big changes.

Pete Mockaitis
Emily, thank you.

Emily Falk
Thank you, Pete. So great to talk to you.