Ori Brafman: How to Build Instant Connections [Entire Talk]

I'm so delighted that he's here today to share these stories with us. And without further ado, here's Ori. Meet my press agent. It's really fantastic being here. I just got back from Kansas where I've been hanging out with the U.S. Army. And Kind of an unlikely person to be at the US Army, we'll get into that a little bit later, but peace and conflict studies major at Berkeley and then business here. And when we think about the US Army, we really think that they have a toolset, if you will, and their toolset is very complex. They have helicopters to basically inflict their will upon people. They have cannons, they have basically the best machines available to inflict our way upon the people of the world. And fighting in the U.S. Army instills one of two responses. It's either a fight or flight. And I want to talk to you for a second about fight or flight. I want to talk to you specifically about the biology behind these two. There is a chemical in our brain called cortisol. And cortisol is, amongst many others, a stress chemical. When we get a hit of cortisol, it makes us more amped, it gives us a huge glucose up in our bodies, and it makes us be able to deal with a fight or flight situation. And when you look at fight or flight, this is how it looks like in society. This is how it looks like in history, in military history. But what happens after that cortisol injection, that hit of cortisol? It oftentimes makes us feel like this. It's a taxing hormone on us. It makes us feel tired. It's bad on our bones. It's a chemical that afterwards leaves us exhausted. And it's with cortisol in mind that a few months ago, actually several months ago, a general from the Army got in touch with me and said he read one of my books. And this is the weird thing about writing books. You can be kind of a liberal living in California and all of a sudden people read your books. And this guy writes me and I didn't exactly know who he was. It turns out he is the general who is in charge of leadership for the Army. And he is right now in charge of the entire Army. And he said that they're basically facing a huge problem. And the problem that they're facing is that this is the first time in a very long time that for 10 years we've had back-to-back combat. People who have been deployed 3, 4 times in the course of a 10-year career. And as they come back, How do you create an army that isn't feeling the effect of cortisol? And cortisol tends to take— tends to have an effect like post-traumatic stress disorder, like problems adjusting. Like how do you build a trust-based network in the army? And regardless of your politics for a second, think about the implications that the head of the army right now is thinking about how do you build a trust-based network? How do you leverage something that the Army isn't known for, something called soft power? And for the last year, I've gotten to actually have a lot of conversations and I've been meeting a lot of these soldiers and Army officers who've had these combat experiences. People like Keaton, who's a helicopter pilot, served back-to-back tours. People like Elliot served back-to-back tours, 20 years in service. And what we've done, and what I just came back from Kansas, of all places, is we took these guys and put them here. Put them in a circle. And we got them to talk, amongst other things, about their feelings. And we got them to relate about what it's been like to have these experiences overseas and what it's like to come back. And we got them to relate in what I would argue is a more humane, human level. And what we've noticed is that of where weird things happens when they get into these circles. There's sort of intimacy, and that's a word you don't oftentimes hear in business, it's not a word you oftentimes hear in the army that develops. And here you'll see at the very edge there is a chair that's empty. And the reason that chair is empty is because there's a person taking the picture. And the person taking the picture I brought with me, not a usual suspect in Army circles. This is Kelly. And the thing to know about Kelly is that amongst other things, she practices soft power. Amongst other things, she's very soft. She likes to nurture human relationships. And if the Army works on cortisol, Kelly functions, I would say, on a different chemical: oxytocin. Oxytocin is released primarily when mothers give birth. And what it does is it actually creates an instant trusting relationship. When people are given oxytocin in lab situations, they trust their partners more. When a newborn is born, it's side of vision is just a few inches. When you think about that, that's exactly the distance from the mother's chest to her eyes. Oxytocin is responsible for those levels of connections. And what I want to talk about a little bit today is about oxytocin and about how you can have a leadership model that isn't based on traditional cortisol, but it's based on oxytocin instead. This is what oxytocin looks like. For me, this is what oxytocin looks like. This is my wife. I met her 7 years ago. It was a blind date. She wasn't big on emailing or talking on the phone, so we just sat across from each other at a restaurant. And from the moment I met her, she was absolutely beautiful, and I was obviously taken by her. Who wouldn't be? And the moment we connected was when we— shared a story about both our mothers being hippies. If you have a name like Ori, you know that your mother was a hippie. It means light. And about how our mothers made homemade granola. And we knew right there and then that it was a connection. We knew that this was it. We actually don't exactly know when we decided to get married and I know this is going broad but I'll admit it. We don't remember exactly when we decided to get married because we lied so much about it. We lied to our families, we lied to our friends. It was that soon after we met. This is what instant connections and intimacy looks like for me. When we look at it from a historical perspective, we see this as an archetype. Shakespeare talks about it. Romeo and Juliet, Act 1, Scene 5. This is Baz Luhrmann's interpretation of it. I'll show it to you in just a second. The reason I show it to you is because I used to have a crush on Claire Danes. But this captures that level of intensity, that level of finding someone so incredibly drawing from the get-go.

I brought you something close to me. Left with something yet See through your hands. You are my dreams. Nothing to do but believe. Just believe. Just breathe.

So when we— that did not end well, let's be clear. And when we often think of instant connections, we think about being very impulsive, right? You meet someone and it's not the rational thing to do. I wrote a book about decision-making. It's not a rational thing to do. It seems like one of those impulses that people follow and bad things happen. And when we decided to write this book, my brother and I, we decided to look at really both the science behind it. But one of the questions that we had is what happens— Romeo and Juliet were 12. What happens when grown-ups, if you will, have that same kind of connection? And we started talking to a lot of different people about their clique experiences, if you will, when they really clicked with someone, when they had that oxytocin boost. And one of the people that I met in a speaking engagement, this was in Augusta, Georgia. They stopped me and they said, you know, I really have to tell you this story. And this guy's name was Paul. Paul is a retired military lieutenant colonel, was a special ops guy. So very, very kind of tough guy, runs marathons for fun. And his— and Iron Man's. Paul tells me about the story about he was in charge of a cleanup project years and years ago. And he's in charge of this cleanup project and there's all these people who he's managing in order to write a big proposal. And one of the people that he flies in is a nuclear physicist that he flies in from Paris and her name is Nadia. And the moment that Paul lays eyes on Nadia, he automatically falls in love with her. Unfortunately, he doesn't make the same kind of impression on her. She can't stand him in the beginning because he tells her something about human relations never changing from the time of Aristotle and Plato. And she sends him a note as he's speaking. She sends him this note and it says, "I completely disagree with you." And he gets it and is kind of bewildered and afterwards he's And he says, well, I want to talk to you about it. And she says, anytime, anywhere. And that night they get together at the Ritz-Carlton in Pasadena. It's Pasadena, so I guess they get together at the Ritz-Carlton. And they're sitting across from each other. And they're supposed to talk about work. They're supposed to talk about catching up. And instead they just talk about each other's lives. He talks about being an officer during the Vietnam era. She talks about being a peace activist. And at the end of the night, Paulo, who has a lot more guts than I do, says something to Nadia. He says, "What if I told you that I was in love with you and I wanted to marry you?" And she looks at him and she says, "Well, let's see what tomorrow brings." And tomorrow they have the exact same thing sitting across from each other. At the end of the night, he says, "Well, did you think about it?" She says, "I thought about it." He says, "What did you decide?" She says, "I decided I love you too." And a month later, they were married. So two really beautiful stories, right? Romeo and Juliet, we know that didn't end well. Paul and Nadia. What about these relationships? And we had a very— our base question was what is the long-term effect of these relationships? There's a very interesting study from Holland where researchers found 1,000 names. From the phone book. And they reached out to these couples and there were really 3 types of couples. The first couple were a Romeo and Juliet couple. I'm sorry, the first couple were friends. They were friends first. So these are people who are now married who originally were friends first. Second were daters. And the third type were Romeo and Juliet, right? Instant clickers, instant relationships. And what they asked is 25 years later, Let's look at these people's lives and let's ask them specific questions. And the surprising part of the research was that almost by every factor, the couples were the same. They had the same level of education. They had the same level of household income. They had on average 2.1 kids. Here's a difference and raise your hand for a second, how many people are in relationships? Wow, this is a good crowd. How many people want to be in relationships or have been in relationships, can imagine being in a relationship? They asked the people this question, 3 different questions. And as I read these questions, ask yourself whether you would agree or disagree with these, okay? I cannot imagine another person making me as happy as my spouse does. There is something almost magical about my relationship with my spouse. And what happened was that the people who were the clickers, the instant connection folks, tended to agree with the statements much more. They tended to be the ones who felt the most passion in the relationship. Who felt the most intimacy in the relationship even 25 years later. That was the only difference amongst all the couples. That initial sense stays with us. This is what my brother— this is my brother, he's a psychologist— this is what he's been studying for more than 10 years. And what he did is he asked a whole host of very, very different people a very similar question. We asked them, when was the time when you felt a really magical connection in your life? And I'm going to draw on you guys for a second. Is there anybody who's had this kind of magical instant connection? You right there in glasses. Did you raise your hand or did I just cold call you? You did? Okay, yeah. I never cold call. I hate cold calling. It's déclassé. Yes. So, what was the experience like? That's cool. Tell me a little bit less. Who was it with? What was it like? Well, I was in a bar.

Uh-huh.

They were dancing and stuff.

Nice.

Anybody else has had this experience? Anybody else had the experience? Be a little more brave. Yes, sir. So, I met my wife on a Manhattan street and I chased her 4 blocks to So I caught her in the street and we got married. Nice. And we're living only a couple blocks from campus and still married. Congratulations. Anybody else had that experience you want to share? Yes. My husband, it'll be 34 years in August. So I met him and we had that instant connection. And I want to ask you guys, to reflect upon both listening to these stories. Also think about an experience that you've had yourself and you don't want to share. And what Ron found, my brother, was that when people recall an instant connection, when they recall that magical experience, those same emotions tend to come up with them again even when it was 30-some-odd years later, even when it's remembering chasing your wife down the street. Even when you're talking about dancing in a bar with someone. And that those emotions actually really stay with us, so they not only define the nature of the relationship, they have a certain level of— again, we're feeling that oxytocin again even when we think about it years later. And when you think about these kind of stories, oftentimes it's exactly this, right? It's people meeting each other in a bar, down the street. They often have a romantic take to them. We ask the question, well, what about at work, right? This is— after all, we're trying to talk about careers here. Paul and Nadia are actually working together. They're married, been married for 20 years. They started a company and they're really successful and talk about how that initial clicking relationship really affected the tenor of their relationship. There's a study that looked at a bunch of MBA students. And they categorized the MBA students into two sectors. One were people who naturally clicked and the other were just people who knew each other who were just classmates. And they separated them out and they put them in little small groups and they got them to do a couple of tasks. The first was to do a bunch of blocks. They had to arrange them in different ways, very menial on purpose, very boring. And the second one was they had to evaluate application essays. And what they did is they then and compared the application essays to how the admissions committee scored them, to how the quote-unquote professionals did. And what they found was that time and again, the people who clicked had a very different tenor in terms of their interactions. They were actually much more effective. They built more blocks, they built them better, they were more accurate, and they were much better at the admissions application essay. And they Researchers found out that there were two elements of difference. The first element was that the clickers would more naturally cheerlead each other, more supportive. It was just kind of a more positive environment that they were in. And the second element was that there was actually more conflict with the people who clicked. And this part is completely counterintuitive, right? You think that if someone's clicking, if they're so in love, everything is going to be rosy for the rest of their lives. And this is where the studies really shed a light onto an element of these relationships. A group of researchers from England looked at string quartet. And what they did is they asked the string quartets whether the people naturally clicked with each other. And then what they did is they measured how many recording contracts the quartets had, how much they charge for their concerts, right? Two huge elements because by the time you are a professional string quartet player, You're on the top of your game. And what they found was that again, the clicking string quartets had more conflict. And that the conflict actually directly resulted in the string quartets having higher paying gigs, being more successful, getting more recording contracts. And here's why. Let's say you're in a string quartet where you basically, you're not natural clickers, but you just, you know, you get along decently. And first violinist decides to play Beethoven piece in one way, second violinist wants to play it in a different way. So they're professional, they talk about it and says, "You know, John, I want to play it this way." "Well, Eric, I want to play it a different way." That's nice. At the end of the day, what they oftentimes do is they brush the conflict under the rug. And when it's actually performance time, the first and second violins aren't agreeing on an interpretation. With the clicking quartets, what you had is that they actually took conflict head on. They actually went there. And by going there, by having those honest conversations mixed with that intimacy that they had because they liked each other already, you had a better performing crowd. So that initial connection, that initial oxytocin makes a difference. But we've all seen situations where you don't have that initial connection, right? Where you kind of hate someone from the get-go or you're at best neutral about them. What do you do then? Is there anything we can do to actually foster that intimacy?

The first time we met, we hated each other. No, you didn't hate me, I hated you. The second time we met, you didn't even remember me.

I did too, I remembered you. The third time we met, we became friends.

We were friends for a long time.

And then we weren't.

And then we fell in love. 3 months later we got married.

It only took 3 months?

12 years and 3 months.

Harry Met Sally, anybody didn't see the movie? A few people didn't see the movie? Okay, so Harry, Sally, they meet the first time, he's a total jerk to her, they're driving cross-country, he's awful to her. Second time they meet, they— he barely remembers her. But the third time they met, Something happened. And I'm going to show you this clip where it was the third time that they met. It's at a bookstore. And what I'd like you to do is pay attention to two things. First thing is how open you think he is and how he opens up throughout the clip. And the second thing is watch her body language. Watch Sally's body language and see how she walks towards or away from him. During the conversation. How are you?

Fine.

How's Joe?

Fine. I hear he's fine.

You're not with Joe anymore?

We just broke up.

Oh, I'm sorry. That's too bad.

Yeah, well, you know. Yeah. So, what about you?

I'm fine.

How's married life?

Not so good. I'm getting a divorce.

Oh, I'm sorry. No, I'm really sorry.

Yeah, well, what are you going to do? What happened with you guys? So we're going to look at 3 elements in which you can, if you will, accelerate these clicking connections. And the first one is what we just saw Harry do, right? He was vulnerable. It's that easy. He was open with his feelings. And you think about vulnerability, you oftentimes think about it as a weakness, as being too soft, especially in business. And the data suggests that leaders who are vulnerable are far more trusted by their employees. People who are vulnerable tend to start more intimate relationships. We talked to a a police officer from San Jose down the street who is a hostage negotiator. And when you think of hostage negotiators, you oftentimes think of guys who are very gruff, you think of Bruce Willis types, right? And this guy's job is— imagine this, right? Someone took a hostage and you have to basically talk them down and you can't shoot them or anything like that because the hostages will obviously be killed. So this guy takes the hostages and he is a two-time offender already. Which means that by getting caught now with the hostages, he's going to automatically go to prison for the rest of his life under three strikes. And the cops have a name for this type of scenario, and it's called suicide by cop. The guy is so afraid of going to jail for the rest of his life that he's going to take himself out in a blaze of glory. He sits there and he talks to this hostage. He goes, take her. And he talks to him, imagine this, for 15 hours. He doesn't try to intimidate him. He doesn't try to play mind tricks on him. They just have a conversation. And at the end of the conversation, the hostage taker says something about his mother. He says, "Yeah, my mother died a while ago." And then Greg, our hostage negotiator, sees an opening and authentically says, "Yeah, I've— I had my mom die on me too this last year. It was really terrible, painful experience." And all of a sudden they bond, right? The most unlikely two people in the world all of a sudden click, the police officer and the hostage taker. And they bond so intensely that at the end of the scenario, the guy finally gives himself up. And when he goes out, the SWAT team is ready to pounce on him. And he says, wait, I want to give Greg a hug. And the SWAT team is still angry at Greg to this day for the fact that he actually gave the hostage taker a hug. And you know, he's saying, okay, so what's the big deal about two people giving each other a hug? I would say the big deal is that when people are even artificially told to express a level of vulnerability, they automatically form a connection. And that connection again all of a sudden changes the tenor of the relationship. It brings in the soft power element. So we have vulnerability. Second one we're going to look at is proximity. And— This one on first take looks very obvious, right? You're going to be more likely to connect and form a relationship with someone who goes to Stanford than someone who goes to Berkeley or someone who lives in Moscow or someone who lives in North Pole. But what's really interesting about this is how those last few feet really make a difference.

Excuse me, do you mind? Everywhere else is full. Not at all. I'm Ron, by the way. Ron Weasley. I'm Harry. Harry Potter. So, so it's true. I mean, do you really have the The— the what? The scar. Wicked. Anything off the trolley, dears? No thanks, I'm all set. We'll take the lot. Mmm. So? Has anyone seen a toad? A boy named Neville's lost one. Mom? Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see then.

So there's a little bit of vulnerability there, right? Where Harry shows his scar, Ron admits to not having any money. But think of the simple fact that these three characters, it's very archetypal, spend the rest of their lives together in the same school, right? They dine together, they get in trouble together, they grow up together. And that sense of connection for them started right there in that train, in that little train booth. And Harry Potter in a way Explains a mystery that was faced by Stanford researchers studying an MIT dorm. And there was this weird thing going on in this MIT dorm. This isn't the actual dorm, but it was shaped like this. They tore it down. It was a U-shaped dorm. And here's the mystery. There were residents throughout the dorm. They asked them, how many people are you really friendly with? And the residents in the middle had a ton of friends. And the residents living in the edge of the dorm had no friends whatsoever. So the first guess, you'd say, well, why is that? It might be pretty simple, right? If you're kind of a loner, you live at the edge of the dorm. Well, the housing assignments were actually random. So they really sat down and said, well, what could it actually be? And what it came down to was how physically close you live to people. And specifically, when they asked people, who is your best friend in the school at MIT? 40% of the people said that it was their next-door neighbor. And their next-door neighbor, the place between two doors was a distance of 19 feet. And something really weird happens when you go to the person who lives the next door down, 38 feet. All of a sudden, the chances of people hitting it off, of making a connection goes down by half. You go down another 19 feet, it goes down by half again. It's exponential. It's not linear. Researchers at Bell Labs asked a company— it was a research company— about who you are most likely to collaborate with regardless of interest in the field or anything like that or education. And in scientific environments, people were much more likely to collaborate with people who worked exactly right next to them, 10.3%. When you went down to the other side of the hallway, it could be the same department, it could be people working on the exact same project, the likelihood of them collaborating is 1.9%. You go down to another floor and it's fraction of a percent. You go to a different building and there's almost no chance of people collaborating. And you think of the implications of that of When you're having a meeting, do you show up? When you're having a conversation, do you have a virtual conversation or do you do something in person? A study about work meetings found out that the vast majority of the meeting, of what was useful about meeting, actually happened before and after, not during, because that's when people were able to develop a little bit of trust with each other. So this is a really interesting crowd. Why don't we have a very brief meeting right here? I need just 6 volunteers. This is going to be fun and exciting, I promise. So just either stand up or come on down, and I need 6 people. 1, yay, 2, 3, 4, 5, and I think we have 6. I want you guys each to grab one of these Chairs is what they're called. And I just want you to sit in a circle. I'll take notes. Actually, no. Sit right here if you don't mind. Sorry. There's more space. Just actually form a circle. Great, great, great. Perfect. Let's give them a round of applause. That was a fantastic circle, fantastic circle. I'm not going to make you guys actually have a boring meeting because we've been in enough of those, but I want you to do something. I want you to lift your arms and about try to touch the other person's shoulders. And see, they're about— you had to adjust a little bit, but most of you literally sat about arms-length apart. And that's how we sit. Like, this is a very cultural thing. You can let your arms down. It's not how we sit in the United States. Now I want you to do another thing. And this is going to feel weird, but it's going to be good. I promise. Are you up for it?

Yep.

So maybe just say— just go around right now and just say your name. Just, hi, my name is— Hi, my name is Lauren. Hi, my name is Jonathan. I'm Alex. My name is Jay. I'm Hendrick. My name is Gabriel. And why don't I get you guys to literally sit knee to knee, like touching knees. And what I want you to do now, again, very simple, just tell me what you ate for breakfast today, if you had breakfast at all. A banana. Eggs. I didn't have breakfast. An apple. Eggs. I had Cocoa Puffs. A question for you guys, how does it feel sitting knee to knee? Other than weird and everyone's breath smells great. It's fine. It's fine? Closer and connected to everyone. Really? Yeah. We're friends already. I don't know if you can see them from here, I don't know if you can see their faces. There is a little bit of— they're smiling more. And notice— and I'm going to pick on you— notice his body language now as it was before. You're kind of leaning into each other. And thank you, this is the meeting. You did a fantastic job. Thank you. Those last few feet really make a difference, but those last few inches make a whole lot of difference. And try this out, and I've seen this happen in the Army, I've seen this happen in hospitals, I've seen this happen in corporations. When there's a conflict in an organization, they get people to literally sit knee to knee. And I'm not trying to make any converts here or something like that, but I would talk to them afterwards and see whether it actually felt different. I mean, you felt connected just by talking about breakfast foods and by your names, and yet there's that rush of oxytocin that we talked about. And we talked about that— there's a research from Berkeley about the NBA, about the power of touch. And what they did is they looked at all 30 NBA teams in the 2008-2009 season and then counted the number of times the players touched when they're celebrating, when they were hugging each other, when they gave high-fives, when they gave fist bumps. And what they found out was that the teams where there was more touch were actually much more successful by the end of the season. And the theory is that touch translated into greater trust, that people kind of felt a little bit closer to each other, and that collaboration is actually really good on the court. So we can be vulnerable. We can try to literally stick ourselves next to each other. The last thing we're going to look at is people who have this as a natural trait. They're called high self-monitors. I want you to meet Dina Kaplan. Dina has a problem in her life. The biggest problem that Dina has in her life is that she gets invited to too many wedding invitations every year. And she gets invited to these invitations where people invite her that she's barely met. And she's natural when she goes into— if she was in this room, you know, if only Dina was in this room, people just naturally like her. She's not just likable by being very beautiful, but she just has that natural kind of personality. And probably a lot of us have met someone like that. Some people probably in here are like that. People who can form these natural instant connections. A Stanford researcher tried to figure out what is it about people like that, how is it that they're able to form these connections. And what he did is he got a bunch of people to answer questions and whether they agreed or disagree with these questions and see whether you agree with these. I find it hard to initiate the behavior of other people. Ask yourself this question. I have trouble changing my behavior to suit different people in different situations. And lastly, I can make impromptu speeches even on topics about which I have almost no information. [LAUGHTER] Dina would have answered no to the first two questions and yes to the last question. And it's not that Dina is fake. It's not that Dina is disingenuous in any ways. The thing about people like Dina is that they naturally meet us where we are, as opposed to trying for us to meet her where she is. She naturally mirrors us, and when people naturally mirror us, we naturally tend to like them. So you're saying, well, it's great for Dina, you know, it's fantastic for a cocktail party and maybe it's even fantastic if you want to get a lot of wedding invitations. What about when you guys graduate? A team looked at high self-monitors and low self-monitors and normal people after they graduated and they looked at their career fields. And what they noticed was that high self-monitors tend to change jobs much more frequently. But there's a difference. The high self-monitors were much more likely to be in the center of networks. And the reason that they changed jobs so frequently was because they were getting promoted so rapidly that they got different job offers. They were much more successful, they were making more money, they were able to have higher positions in less time. And when you looked at their position within the company, right, by any social theorist would say who is the person you want to be in this equation, right? You want to be the guy in the center. So for an average person, it takes 18 years to get into the center of the network. Guess how long it takes a high self-monitor? 6 months. Almost. 13 months. A high self-monitor can achieve within 13 months what it takes a normal person, someone like us, 18 years. And it's not that they're natural schmoozers. It's not that they have the ability to pass out more business cards. It's just that they mirror themselves into the situation. They're able to be more fluid. And that brings us back to the army. It brings us back to forms of leadership. When we think of leadership, when we think of the corporation, it was actually created by generals, the modern corporation, the hierarchy. And think about tones in corporation for a minute and think about how you can change that tone. I'm going to show you two videos. They're going to be very similar. The first video I'm going to show you is— this is something brilliant, really pretty amazing. It's people who strap parachutes to their skis and go down a mountain. So I'm just going to show you a little bit of this clip.

What do people think?

Pretty intense? Yeah. Crazy? Yeah. Anybody want to do it? Yes. Couple people. How does the room feel? How do you feel when you watch it? Tense. Tense. Excited. Excited, energized. I'm kind of in awe of these guys. What I did is we're going to see the exact same movie. And we're just going to change the music.

How's it feel?

And when you think about this video, it's exact It's the same message, right? It's the exact same content. And yet you can change the tone. And whether it's the army or a business or a classroom, you can change the tone by being a little softer. All of a sudden you can see the beauty of this thing. You can understand why someone would do something crazy like that. The elegance. In it. And that if we want to, whether it's by how we interact with each other, how close we sit with each other, how open and personal we are, how much we meet people where they are, we can change that tone as well. And it's a lot easier said than done. But I think that from a generational perspective, from a chemical perspective, There's a lot to be said for oxytocin. I'd argue that in our beginning, that oxytocin is maybe the more important of the two chemicals. We know how to deal with fight or flight. The question is, how can we really leverage oxytocin? How can we leverage that soft power? How can we leverage intimacy towards the exact same goals? So I really, really appreciate being here, and it's fantastic being here again at Stanford, and I think we have a few minutes for Q&A. Thank you. Yes, sir. I have a question on these instant connections. We hear a lot in the media about how people meet quickly, they click, and then they get married in Vegas, and obviously it doesn't work out. Is that a perception bias, or what happens there? It happens a lot. It is a perception bias. So the longitudinal study that we— the study that we talked about that looked at people 25 years afterwards find that the people were actually pretty similar afterwards in terms of the instant connections versus the people who were more kind of knew each other for a longer time. So can you get infatuated? Yes. Can you make really dumb mistakes in Vegas? Yes. The thing though is that we actually go in the exact opposite way. We try to think about, especially in business, we try to think— we try to have kind of like first grader mentality. If someone really liked each other, let's separate them so they're not in the same team. Let's discourage people from dating in the office. Let's discourage people from being friends. While all the data suggests that the opposite might actually be much more effective. So yes, you can be infatuated and yes, like just because you meet someone who you think is really pretty down the street doesn't mean you should marry her. But the converse of that is that you shouldn't discount something just because you had those first initial strong feelings. Yes, sir? So I mean, I think oxytocin also has a dark side to it in that it also promotes ethnocentrism, tribalism, and it's also been shown in studies that increase decrease the amount of envy someone feels and the anger they feel when they're betrayed. So how do you balance between the light side, which is you feel in a group, and the dark side when people outside the group are trying to enter, you feel you want to protect yourself and attack other people. And on the flip side, you say that people, when they're closer, they work together better. So does that mean if you promote an oxytocin-based environment, you're going to make silos more easily occur? And people basically base their relationship on closeness rather than this collaborative meaning that goes beyond just your emotions and beyond how you feel at first sight? That's a great question. When you want to create collaboration in a large institution or an environment, theoretically you just put a bunch of people on Facebook and they'll collaborate together. The problem is that people don't actually do that. The problem is that in order to build a real trust-based environment, you need to have some level of emotional connection. So you're right, if I'm outside of the circle, if I was outside, if these 6 people who sat here were having lunch together, would any of you walk up to them and say, "Hi, my name is Ori. I'd like to join you for lunch." No way, right? They were obviously a closed-off system which is— can be problematic. And at the same time, what if you're trying to get that specific circle to be more intimate with each other? What if you're trying to get them into a circle to be more trusting? When you look at it from a societal perspective, the government asks everyone— sorry, the government has a huge database that they collect that basically asks a zillion questions about people's relationships or friendships, things like that. And one of the questions that they ask is how many confidants, very, very close friends people have. The numbers over the years have been basically pretty much steady. And on average, the most frequent answer given is 3. People have about 3 confidants. And something very interesting happened in 2002, 2003, right when people started doing a lot more social networking. Guess what is the modal or the most frequent answer that is given right now in terms of how many confidants people have?

1.

1. Guess. 10. 10. 7. 0. The mode is zero, that we've given up in the idea of building cross-silos and building a ton of connections. We've, I think to a degree, lost out on the intensity of the connections, the intimacy of the connections. But I would agree with you that you need both. The last thing you need is a complete solid organization where it's us versus them. However, when you're in us versus them situations, it also builds intimacy. Yes, in the middle. Yes.

Hi. I'm just wondering, do you think—

do your research or findings either consciously or subconsciously change how you live your life, or are there things you try to do or that you're more cognizant of since you started doing this kind of research? If only I was a better person. I guess a couple of— honestly, the best— biggest two differences are one is The guy who I'm writing my current book with, this guy named Judah, I met him at this party and we just had a really great conversation. And I was like— and he was like, what are you doing? I was like, oh, I'm writing a book about instant connections. And all of a sudden we had that, you know, we had that click. And I literally was just walking away and I was like, wait a second, I just— my research says, you know, that you actually follow those type of relationships. And I went to him and I did something I've never done this to anyone else. And I went right back to him and said, you know what, you look like someone who I want to be friends with. Can we be friends? And it felt a little first-gradey and it felt a little silly and I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's. And we had dinner and now he is someone who I probably work closer with than anybody else. In terms of how I try to behave, the biggest thing I aspire towards, A, show up always. When a general from the Army calls, even if you don't know exactly what generals do, you show up in the same office. And B is this idea of being high self-monitoring in terms of really meeting people where they are. And I think there's obviously philosophy around that, but there's so much I think to be said about how can I actually present myself in a softer way and I know I'm a guy living in San Francisco, that's not exactly a huge problem that I have, but I think it's a continual path for me personally. Yes, hi. You're talking about self-control and— And I lack it all? And how the individuals adapt themselves to the people that they meet. I was wondering whether if this kind of a mentality gets embedded into you over time, whereas you keep on adapting to circumstances, do you not become overly dependent on outside forces? Do you not have one identity of yourself that can last you through tough times? You just forget, you just keep on imagining. [Speaker:GHION.AI] Yeah, the research suggests that it really is them. So people who are— research suggests a couple of things. One is that it's an innate thing. And two, so people are born with it. And two is that it's not that they don't have a personality. It's not that they're going to— Dina is going to be a very different person if she's here than if she's at a big party or if she's at an investor meeting. It's just that she's going to be able to modulate her. There was a slide that I skipped through, the restaurant test. And think about sitting in a restaurant, it's very quiet, there's candles. A high self-monitor is going to be able to match that environment. A low self-monitor is going to talk a little bit like this. They're going to not know how to modulate themselves to the environment. Now interestingly, you sometimes want low self-monitors in your work because they're the ones who are going to give you more honest feedback about something. So you want a combination. But it's the high self-monitors who are going to modulate themselves more who are going to end up being more successful. So it depends on which side of the equation you want to be on. I think we have time for one more, two more? [Speaker:AUDIENCE] So you talked a lot about what happens after oxytocin is that you form these instant connections. So I was wondering what the research shows about when this happens. What makes two people click? It's still a big mystery. We looked at specific psychological factors like the vulnerability, the touching, and things like that. Smell actually plays a really big role so that in one study they put people, women in a room and they had them look at pictures of guys and they found the guys much more attractive if there was a hidden swab like in the corner taken from this guy's sweat. So that, yeah, sweat a lot, that's a ticket. We're also much more attracted to people who are similar to us so that if someone has the same name you're likely to give them more money than if— and even if your name is Steve, just by being asked. If you think that someone has the same birthday, the same horoscope, even the same fingerprint pattern. And we're really only starting to understand the neurology of it. There was a recent study that found out that when people have emotional pain, we feel it exactly the same way as physical pain. In our brain so that we are naturally kind of built in order to build those connections. And we're finding out. But let me know what you find out in terms of your personal research. And—

Good. Perfect.

That was absolutely terrific.

Thank you so much.