> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # How to Build 'Instant Connection' with Anyone (Backed by Science) - URL: https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/david-robson-beyond-podcast-episode-guest/ - Published: 2026-04-08T16:15:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-24T10:06:18.000Z - Description: Science writer David Robson on loneliness, the intelligence trap and the expectation effect, and the evidence-backed route to real connection. - Author: Elliott King - Tags: David Robson, episode, Season 3, #ep-6 **Why does loneliness rival smoking as a health risk, and why do high IQs so often lead to poor decisions?** Science writer and author [David Robson](https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/guests/david-robson/) joins host and producer [Aleksandra King](https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/aleksandra-king/) on The BEYOND Podcast with an evidence-grounded toolkit for connection, confidence and clearer thinking. ![David Robson in a blue suit and host Aleksandra King in conversation on the BEYOND set, seated on yellow sofas either side of a round wooden table](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5e/74/5e74ba0c-c249-4586-8ce5-03deb56fdf93/content/images/2026/08/David-Robson-Beyond-with-Aleksandra-King.png) ## Episode summary David explains how a shared reality synchronises brain activity between friends, why loneliness rivals smoking in its health risks, and what remote connection, the liking gap and introvert strengths reveal about how we actually bond. He unpacks the intelligence trap, why elevated IQs frequently lead to inflexible, poor decisions, along with rationality quotients, cognitive bias, earned dogmatism, and the intellectual humility that lets leaders admit mistakes. The conversation turns to the mind-body connection: reappraising stress as an adaptive tool, the expectation effect and its dark twin the nocebo effect, the science of self-efficacy and building true confidence, and the role of charisma, vulnerability and self-compassion in thriving rather than merely surviving. > “The capacity to update our beliefs is really fundamental to rationality.”– *David Robson* ![David Robson gesturing as he explains an idea at the microphone during his BEYOND interview](https://storage.ghost.io/c/5e/74/5e74ba0c-c249-4586-8ce5-03deb56fdf93/content/images/2026/08/David-Robson-Podcast.png) ## Key takeaways - Loneliness rivals smoking in its health risks, and a shared reality synchronises brain activity among friends. - The intelligence trap: elevated IQs frequently lead to inflexible, poor decisions, and rationality is a different skill from intelligence. - Stress can be reappraised as an adaptive tool, and anxiety reframed as beneficial for peak performance. - The expectation effect shows that what we believe about our bodies changes physiological outcomes, for better and, via the nocebo effect, for worse. - True confidence is built through self-efficacy and research-backed self-compassion, not bravado. > “Showing your vulnerability can actually be a way to charisma.”– *David Robson* ## Key chapters | Chapter | Timestamp | | -------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------- | | Overcoming social anxiety, and building a scientific toolkit | [00:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZ5cRqj7OU) | | Shared reality, the health risks of loneliness, and VIP pets | [08:42](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZ5cRqj7OU&t=522s) | | Remote connection, the liking gap, and introvert strengths | [18:38](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZ5cRqj7OU&t=1118s) | | Mind-body connection: reappraising stress as an adaptive tool | [28:07](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZ5cRqj7OU&t=1687s) | | The expectation effect, the nocebo effect, and the intelligence trap | [35:00](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZ5cRqj7OU&t=2100s) | | Rationality quotients, cognitive bias, and earned dogmatism | [43:04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZ5cRqj7OU&t=2584s) | | Intellectual humility, admitting mistakes, and leading teams | [51:10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZ5cRqj7OU&t=3070s) | | Self-efficacy: the science of building true confidence | [1:00:06](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZ5cRqj7OU&t=3606s) | | Charisma, vulnerability, and the power of self-compassion | [1:05:44](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZ5cRqj7OU&t=3944s) | ## The guest David Robson is a science writer and author. His books include The Intelligence Trap, The Expectation Effect and The Laws of Connection. His full background is on his guest profile. [David Robson's guest profile](https://www.thebeyondpodcast.com/guests/david-robson/) ## Where to listen - [Watch on YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmZ5cRqj7OU) - [Apple Podcasts](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/beyond-with-aleksandra-king/id1786173140) - [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/0haFQYUTnEn0fpr0LQYlhH) - [YouTube Music](https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=MPSPPL3iQHE-qteJING9jXVVuVUdDa-9qqer7J) - [RSS feed](https://anchor.fm/s/10464b2ac/podcast/rss) ## Transcript #### Read the full episode transcript ### Cold open *The first 1m 40s is a trailer montage: short clips lifted from later in the episode, plus David's self-introduction. The lines below recur in context further down.* 00:00:00 **David Robson:** What the research shows us, that sometimes people do just click, and we can see that in brain scans. The people who felt closest to each other were showing the most similar brain activity. 00:00:10 **Aleksandra King:** Does it count if you have a pet? 00:00:11 **David Robson:** Even having a connection with a pet is better than nothing. 00:00:14 **Aleksandra King:** Pets are VIPs in our life, and they need to be treated accordingly. How dangerous is loneliness? 00:00:20 **David Robson:** The lonelier people are more likely to die at an earlier age. I'm David Robson. I'm an author and science writer. I've written three books: The Intelligence Trap, The Expectation Effect, and The Laws of Connection. The Intelligence Trap– that is about why smart people make stupid decisions. The capacity to update our beliefs is really fundamental to rationality. 00:00:45 **Aleksandra King:** What is a genuine connection? 00:00:47 **David Robson:** We come to form a shared reality with the other person. 00:00:50 **Aleksandra King:** Why do so many high achievers end up feeling so disconnected? 00:00:54 **David Robson:** Successful people are going to face the same challenges as the average person. And they become very dogmatic– my way or not at all. There's lots of benefits to being introverted. Extroverts often are perceived as being quite shallow. What they could really learn from is how to listen more attentively to people. 00:01:09 **Aleksandra King:** Why is it so hard for people to admit they're wrong? 00:01:12 **David Robson:** We begin to attach our expertise and our performance to our ego. 00:01:16 **Aleksandra King:** Why do some people seem more naturally charismatic than others? 00:01:20 **David Robson:** If you really want to see who gains the most respect, it is having– 00:01:25 **Aleksandra King:** For the viewers, if they can take away one thing from the research that you've done that can really help turn their lives around, what would that be? 00:01:33 **David Robson:** Evidence-backed and very powerful, and that is– I'm an expert in psychology and neuroscience, and the ways that we can improve our behaviour to increase our wellbeing, both mental and physical. ### Episode 00:01:47 **Aleksandra King:** David, lovely to have you on the show. We love experts that help us improve our minds, our mindset– just to be better at everything that we're doing, to be braver, an all-round better-performing human. And that's why you're on. Can you help us with this? 00:02:06 **David Robson:** I certainly hope so. 00:02:07 **Aleksandra King:** You certainly hope so. 00:02:09 **David Robson:** That's really the main kind of inspiration and driver for my career– it has always been a kind of personal curiosity for what I can do to improve my own thinking, and how I can change my own behaviour to be more productive, but also kind of happier, more relaxed, healthier. And then that's what I want to communicate to other people. So every article I write, it starts from some personal question that I've got, and then I want to tell people what I found out about that. 00:02:35 **Aleksandra King:** Okay. So if you don't mind– and you don't have to answer it if you don't want to– but why is it personal? 00:02:41 **David Robson:** Yeah, I guess, like, when I was a kid, I was just always interested in the workings of the human mind, and how I could be the best possible version of myself, at school, at university. 00:02:56 **Aleksandra King:** Why were you thinking like that as a young kid? That's not normal, is it? 00:02:59 **David Robson:** No, it's not. But you know what I was like– I was probably quite insufferable as a kid, actually. And it's something that emerged very early on. I remember coming home from school and complaining to my parents– I was like, I just learned nothing today. And I was so frustrated by that. There was something that I felt, like, if I was spending my time on something, I wanted to do it well. Personal growth was always just really fundamental to me. 00:03:23 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah, okay. And was there something that you were personally– besides not being taught at school– was it something you were struggling with, or was there something you wanted to overcome? What was it? 00:03:35 **David Robson:** I guess that kind of crystallised into a concern about mental health in my teens, when I did start to get really depressed and really shy. I just had terrible social anxiety from around the age of fifteen onwards. And so that was when this kind of general interest in the human mind became a bit more kind of existentially important for me, I guess, because I could just see the whole of my life playing out, and I was like, I don't want to feel like this in my thirties or forties or fifties. I really want to find a way through these feelings that I'm experiencing. So in that stage I got into a lot of things like mindfulness, and even self-hypnosis, which back then, there wasn't so much scientific evidence for that, but actually now we do know that the kind of hypnotic state can actually be very useful for overcoming certain barriers, like anxiety. And then when I started my career in science journalism, well, that's when I really started delving much more into the literature– really trying to find the evidence-based strategies that could help me to overcome some of those problems. I still suffered depression into my twenties, and anxiety. I just love that approach– I think it just really clicks for me, having a scientific background. I don't just want to hear platitudes, and I don't want to give them to other people. I want to know that it has been tested, and to really understand the nuances of those findings too, because there's never going to be one technique that works for everyone. But it can be really revealing to work out, well, why does it work for me, or why doesn't it, and what other approach might be useful. So I'd say over those, like, eighteen years now, I've really developed this kind of toolkit that I can go to when I'm in a low point, or when I'm facing some kind of barrier with my work, and I can pick and choose which tools are most appropriate for that particular situation. 00:05:27 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah, I love that. Well, thank you for sharing that. And social anxiety is a very real thing, and a lot of us suffer with it. I mean, I had a degree of social anxiety when I went out of work for a period of time to bring the kids up, and I went into that world, and I just didn't see many people, apart from the play club, or whatever– dropping them off at nursery. But really, I was more, dare I say, hermit, at home, and I just was in that world. And then when you propelled out of it, it's really scary. Suddenly you think, what's this feeling? Why am I so anxious to be around these people? And I'm being asked questions, and there's eyes on me, and I feel uncomfortable. And it's a very horrible feeling. 00:06:10 **David Robson:** Yeah, it's not nice. Yeah, exactly. Like, I feel at its worst, it's almost like you don't have a skin– you've just got kind of cellophane or something covering your internal organs, and it's like everything feels like it's on display, and you feel kind of embarrassed by that, shame by that. And every move you make, every time you try to account for your shyness, it feels like you make it worse and worse. 00:06:37 **Aleksandra King:** And then the problem with that is, because you feel like that, you avoid the situations. You see, oh no, there's a group of mums– oh, they're going to ask– oh, I don't want to talk to– and you avoid them, you avoid that situation, and then it reinforces that. Yes, that's scary, you don't go near it, and it just becomes worse and worse. And in a way, you've got to do the opposite. Unfortunately, horribly, but that's the only way it is. 00:07:00 **David Robson:** Yeah. I mean, avoidance in general, in psychology, is considered to be a bad strategy to deal with the– 00:07:05 **Aleksandra King:** A bad strategy, yeah. 00:07:06 **David Robson:** Like, it's a very counterproductive way to deal with the things that scare us, because ultimately, by avoiding it, you kind of build it up in your mind to be even worse than it really is. Whereas actually, we talk about approach and avoidance, and approach is the better response. But obviously we also need the kind of cognitive tools to be able to approach a situation, and to be able to manage the stress that we're feeling. And so a lot of what I write about, really, is giving us those tools to do so. 00:07:36 **Aleksandra King:** Yes. So you see, and this is why I love having you on as well, because you hear a lot of this misinformation going around on the internet– people advising that have no real qualifications whatsoever to be advising, and they really shouldn't– saying things that aren't necessarily helpful, that haven't been tested scientifically. And I am careful to bring on experts, people that really know their stuff, that believe it, and also, even better, someone that's experienced it themselves. You really know, you can understand, and read with people, and that's why you're on. And I'm hoping that– and I have a lot of questions to get through– but I'm hoping that whilst you answer these, we can answer some of the questions that these people have, that we have, I have, and we can all get better together, through science and tested techniques. 00:08:28 **David Robson:** Yeah. I mean, that is what I strongly believe, and it's what I'm trying to do in everything I write– to help as many people as possible to kind of live up to their potential, and to not be held back, to not be avoiding those situations. 00:08:41 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah, okay. So the first question I have is about genuine human connections, and why they're so powerful in everything– in our success, in our health, in our happiness. What is a genuine– I mean, a connection– does that mean you know each other really well and you speak a lot? What is a genuine connection? 00:09:02 **David Robson:** Yeah. I mean, I think what we've all experienced is that actually, you can feel a very strong, genuine connection with someone who maybe you've only spoken to for five minutes. Like, it just clicks. And I had that with my friend Alessia. I was doing some filming in Sardinia, for a documentary for the BBC, and she was the producer– had never met before. But within five minutes, we knew we were going to be very good friends. And six years later, I call her my sister, she calls me her fratello. So I really strongly believe in that, and that is what the research shows us– that sometimes people do just click. For other, in other relationships, that can take a long time. But the one thing that all of those relationships have in common is that we come to form a shared reality with the other person. And that is this kind of deep conviction that we're processing the world in the same way– 00:09:55 **Aleksandra King:** In a similar way. 00:09:56 **David Robson:** Yeah, exactly– at a very kind of visceral level. So you might be laughing at the same jokes, or you see the same event happen and you're both thinking the same thing. You're finishing each other's sentences, or interrupting each other– it's sometimes considered rude, but with these people it's natural, because you're on the same wavelength. And we can see that in brain scans, which I really love– that there's this kind of neural, literal truth to the idea that you're on the same wavelength. Because what you see, when you scan these people's brains– what they're watching in the experiment, it was like a series of YouTube clips, of music videos, comedy clips, documentaries, all of these things– but what you saw was that the people who felt closest to each other were showing the most similar brain activity. Their brains were somehow in sync. At each point in the clip, they were showing the same responses, whereas people who weren't really that good friends, they were showing very different neural responses. 00:10:52 **Aleksandra King:** Okay. Does that "we're on the same wavelength" come from– 00:10:55 **David Robson:** Oh yeah, exactly. I mean, I think we– 00:10:57 **Aleksandra King:** Kind of literal wavelength. 00:11:00 **David Robson:** Yeah. We understood it kind of intuitively, before it was proven scientifically, and now it's proven scientifically. 00:11:04 **Aleksandra King:** So our brains operate in a similar way. Or we want so desperately to be understood, don't we? 00:11:10 **David Robson:** Yeah, we do. I mean, that, I think, is the kind of core of connection– is feeling understood, and feeling seen. And so actually, when we look at all of these studies showing that social connection is so important for our health and longevity, I think really one of the best measures for that is just, do you feel understood by the people around you? And people who do feel understood and supported, they're the ones who have the better mental health, but also better physical health. 00:11:42 **Aleksandra King:** Wow. You could take that further, and put it into government, and say, oh, do these countries understand each other? Are they working together, or are they completely on a different wavelength, wanting different things? It expands, doesn't it? 00:11:54 **David Robson:** Yeah, I think it does, actually. Sometimes the dynamics that are working at an individual level also make sense at kind of a societal level, or even internationally, like you say. 00:12:04 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah. Sometimes I feel like, knowing this– and I agree with it– let's have a little tea, a little tea sip– that it would be better to trap leaders who are arguing in the same room, give them food and everything, and say, right, now you guys come to an understanding. We'll leave you alone, but you sort it out. Stop affecting your entire country with this toxin. Just sort it out. We'll see you in– whenever you decide to be– 00:12:32 **David Robson:** Yeah. Well, funnily enough, I was at a neuroscience conference about ten years ago, and this neuroscientist was telling me that her personal theory is that we just need to get world leaders into, like, relationship counselling. 00:12:48 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah, it's true. And go through all of those– honestly. Because they're sending all these other people on their behalf, and they never really sit down and chat. But they need to– in fact, every country should demand: you have to get in a room and talk. Stop using other people to communicate for you. 00:13:04 **David Robson:** Yeah, totally right. 00:13:07 **Aleksandra King:** Okay, so we're going to go to the other end of it– loneliness. How dangerous is loneliness? 00:13:16 **David Robson:** So loneliness is incredibly dangerous. I kind of alluded to this earlier, but actually, there's now more than a hundred of these longitudinal studies, where you follow populations of thousands of people over the course of their lives, and you look at the kind of risk factors that there are for different diseases, and mortality overall. And what you find– it doesn't really matter how you measure loneliness, whether it's asking people how supported and understood they feel, asking them simply how many friends they have, what their daily interactions are– whatever measure you use, you find that the lonelier people are more likely to develop short-term illnesses, like catching a cold, long-term illnesses, like cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's disease, and they're just more likely to die at an earlier age because of all of this. So it's kind of a cumulative risk– the longer you feel lonely for, over the course of your life, the more likely you are to suffer from all of those negative outcomes. 00:14:15 **Aleksandra King:** Does it count if you have a pet? 00:14:17 **David Robson:** Pets can really help. And so I think that's also the important thing to remember– loneliness can be experienced differently by different people. So for me, for example, I do quite like having a broad social network, but it's even more important for me to have just a few people who I feel very connected to. Other people might put much more value on just the sheer number of connections they have. For some, it could just be having, like, a spouse that really understands you. They're all good in different ways. And even having a connection with a pet is better than nothing. 00:14:56 **Aleksandra King:** Gosh, a connection with pets is brilliant. 00:14:57 **David Robson:** Yeah. I mean, sometimes I think we undervalue those relationships, and also we don't have a way of talking about the grief when a pet dies, when actually they can be such a stable and core part of your life. And yet society as a whole is kind of like– we don't really have funerals for pets. 00:15:13 **Aleksandra King:** We don't. Stop that right away, immediately, and we're putting it out there on this podcast: pets are very important, like VIPs in our life, and they need to be treated accordingly. Right? 00:15:26 **David Robson:** Exactly, yeah. And people's emotional responses to that should be respected. 00:15:30 **Aleksandra King:** Should be very much respected. And it's a serious thing to be grieving after a pet. Yeah, okay. On high achievers– why do so many high achievers, really successful people, actually end up feeling so disconnected? Despite having all these people around them, advisers and everything, they're kind of like on an island sometimes. 00:15:49 **David Robson:** Yeah. I've been thinking about this a lot, because of Taylor Swift's huge success, and then people were saying about her latest album, like, oh, well, she doesn't seem that happy. And I kind of feel, but she's a human being. It doesn't matter how much material success she's got, there's still going to be people who are kind of dissing you, who you don't feel connected to. Successful people are going to face the same challenges as the average person. And also, maybe they find it harder to form that shared reality with people, because there are so few people in the world who have the particular set of circumstances and pressures that they're experiencing. So I think that does– it's not just Taylor Swift, it's not just pop singers– I think that's probably true in lots of different spheres. 00:16:38 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah. I mean, it's even CEOs. For example, let's say there's a big company, a corporation, and at the top you've got the CEO. There's lots of people in the company– high-level manager, middle manager, whatever you want to call it, and then the employees, and everyone's there. And then let's say you've got a party after work, and everyone's sort of chatting amongst themselves, because they're on a similar understanding, on a similar level. And then the CEO walks in, and it's like, oh, the CEO– and people are too scared, and the CEO is feeling awkward, and it's totally a vibe– like, bad vibe. 00:17:09 **David Robson:** The power dynamics can be very difficult, yeah. Because people do feel that fear– and they shouldn't feel fear– but I think it's kind of right, in some ways, that if you've established a hierarchy within an organisation, there's benefits to that, but there's also kind of costs. 00:17:29 **Aleksandra King:** Personal– 00:17:29 **David Robson:** There's also costs, personal costs. And it is that then people feel a bit awkward around you. 00:17:35 **Aleksandra King:** And then you've got people like Oprah, and that, who then say, I've learned to say no, and to put those barriers in. Because when you are very successful, then everyone comes to you for things, and that's nice, because you can help with a lot of things, but then sometimes it's also not nice, because you're just being flooded with requests. 00:17:51 **David Robson:** Yeah, exactly. And I think one of the main problems, I imagine, for someone in that situation as well, is it's very difficult for you to talk about the pain that you're feeling, and the loneliness you might be feeling, because the assumption is, well, you've achieved so much, what do you have to complain about? Your situation can't be comparable to my situation. But actually, I think we do need to have compassion for these people. It doesn't matter what situation you're in– if you're feeling isolated from others, that's a terrible, painful position to be in. And so we need to separate, I guess, people's material success from the kind of everyday human feelings that they'll be experiencing. And they deserve just as much compassion and respect as anyone else. 00:18:38 **Aleksandra King:** Okay. So the world, since Covid, has moved into a lot of this remote working. So a lot of us are working from home, maybe not the whole week, but most days of the week, some days of the week, and that can also be lonely– you're not really seeing anyone. So how do you build connection when you're actually isolated, physically? 00:18:58 **David Robson:** Yeah. It's a big problem, I think, that has emerged in the last five years. And I feel it as a freelancer as well– all of my work is remote. I would say the research shows that those remote conversations that we have are still valuable. So there's some kind of cynics who think that connection doesn't happen unless you're having a face-to-face conversation. But actually, the research shows video calls give you a pretty good sense of being connected with someone, because you can read their body language. Phone calls are still pretty valuable, because you can hear their tone of voice. But even, like, a short text message can establish some kind of connection with someone– especially if you've already established that shared reality with them, so you already have that rapport, and then those quick texts are just kind of reminding you of that. So it could just be a funny GIF that reflects a kind of shared joke and re-establishes that connection, or just sharing the news in your life. All of these things are valued. So I think we can be conscious of that, and try to make the most of it. But I do think we also have to think carefully about our schedules, to try to get the face-to-face connections where we can as well. And maybe even if the travelling is inconvenient, we have to recognise that is a price we have to pay to get that. It's like paying for premium foods that are more nutritious– it's worth the investment to do that. 00:20:28 **Aleksandra King:** It's worth the investment. It's why I love an in-person conversation as well, for podcasts, because it's just better. It's deep, especially for deep subjects– you want to see the person and how they're responding. You want to have that. But there's friends that I have that are very good at that. They will always be the ones that schedule the next thing, and even if you're not reaching out, because you're in your own little world, they'll always tap in and go, hey, you free for lunch? Let's do this. They'll always reach out. It's almost like a really good habit that they've got. Some people just have that, I don't know. 00:21:01 **David Robson:** Yeah, no, they do. I have to say, I'm not one of those people, actually. I'm a little bit too passive with friendships. But it's something I'm working on, especially after having written The Laws of Connection. Because I guess with that book, I learned that there's lots of kind of psychological barriers we have that prevent us from reaching out to other people. And one of them is just that we're very kind of pessimistic about how much other people value us. So I think for someone like me, who's a little kind of socially anxious anyway, I'm just a bit too reluctant to suggest to someone, let's meet up, because my assumption is it will be an inconvenience for them. But the research shows this is quite a common bias, and it's probably wrong. They're probably feeling like I am– like, they want someone to reach out, and they're maybe feeling a bit shy too. So if we can try to become that person, it's better for everyone. 00:21:58 **Aleksandra King:** Oh, I love that, I love that. But I love also what you said earlier about re-establishing a connection. So even that little funny joke or whatever it is, you're just tapping in, and you're showing someone you care. And you're saying the connections are good– they're good for all of us, they're good for our health, they're good for our brains. 00:22:14 **David Robson:** Yeah, they really are. So there was a huge meta-analysis– now, what we mean by that in science is where you gather all the evidence to date, look at all of the studies, perform statistical tests to make sure that the effect that has been reported is reliable and robust, and to measure the average size of that, across lots of studies. And what this meta-analysis showed was that actually, loneliness can be as dangerous as lots of other health factors that we just take for granted– so whether you smoke, whether you drink, whether you are vaccinated, take blood pressure medication. 00:22:54 **Aleksandra King:** As dangerous as, if not more than, most of those. 00:22:57 **David Robson:** Yes, most of those, yeah. And I think we just don't fully accept that at the moment, but I think that's changing. So the World Health Organization has set up a task force to try to promote this message, and to get people to take it as seriously as diet or exercise, for example. The former US Surgeon General did the same. It's breaking through, but I think we need much more public health messaging on that. 00:23:25 **Aleksandra King:** Yes. And also, because the more we communicate and interact with people, and spend time with people, the better we get at interacting with people and spending time. It's like working a muscle. 00:23:37 **David Robson:** It really is. And actually, you can see big benefits quite quickly. So there was one study that basically took the form of an app– it's giving people what was called a scavenger hunt, and it was just saying, talk to strangers. But the app gave people goals, like, talk to someone with a cool pet, or great hair, or who's doing something artistic in public. And they kind of tracked how often people were doing that, and also how they felt afterwards. And what they saw was that on the first day, lots of people felt very shy. They were experiencing this thing called the liking gap, which is that gap in perception where you think that the situation is going to be more awkward and more painful than it really is, and then actually, afterwards, you find that you did build that rapport quite easily. So people had quite a big kind of perception gap at the start, where they were feeling very anxious. After just five days, that gap had already closed. So they were already coming to recalibrate their expectations, and to recognise that, more often than not, those interactions were going to be fulfilling for both parties, and they were going to get this mood boost, just from reaching out to someone. And I think that's incredible– just five days of exercising that social muscle is enough to bring about a change in the way we feel. 00:25:00 **Aleksandra King:** Wow. Wow. So what if you're not naturally an extroverted person? Because there are some that have no problem talking to anyone, and anywhere. But what if you're not? What if you're analytical, and you're introverted, and you are painfully shy, and it's scary– you don't want to speak to strangers? 00:25:18 **David Robson:** Yeah. There's lots of people who feel like that, myself included. But I suppose what this study that I mentioned kind of already shows us is that even people who were feeling pretty anxious beforehand were benefiting. And there have been others that have specifically measured people's introversion, and then encouraged them to act more gregariously. And what they found was that the people who scored higher on the personality trait of introversion, they did feel more pessimistic than extroverts to start with, but they gleaned just as much benefit from that afterwards. So pushing through their introversion helped them to feel kind of greater reward at having had this social interaction. And I would say, lots of people are proud introverts, and if you don't want to change your personality, maybe you feel like you're getting enough social connection as it is– there's no reason why you should feel obliged to change your personality just to fit with society's expectations. And I think Susan Cain's book Quiet kind of helped us to realise that there's lots of benefits to being introverted. But what I find encouraging about that research is that it shows that if you feel that your introversion is actually leading to loneliness, then there is a way through that. And you can choose which situations you act introverted in, and which situations you act more gregariously and extroverted. It doesn't have to be one or the other. You have that power. 00:26:42 **Aleksandra King:** At the same time, you probably have some extroverts that probably shouldn't be speaking to everyone. They're talking to too many people, and they need to bring it down. 00:26:48 **David Robson:** Well, so that's the other side of this research. 00:26:50 **Aleksandra King:** I know some people like this. 00:26:52 **David Robson:** Right, yeah. And that was something that surprised me with researching The Laws of Connection– extroverts often are perceived as being quite shallow, actually. So they might think they've got great people skills, but often they don't. And what they could really learn from is how to listen more attentively to people. Because the perception of extroverts is that they'll say platitudes, but you're not really establishing that shared reality. 00:27:17 **Aleksandra King:** Because they're spreading themselves too thinly, maybe. Yes. And they're possibly saying things they shouldn't, because they're so extroverted that they're not actually reading– maybe an introvert would be a little bit more careful, and read the body language, and perhaps assess the situation a bit more carefully. The extrovert will dive in, and then possibly say something they shouldn't say, or they just haven't read the room as well. It's too much. You don't always have to speak, either. 00:27:40 **David Robson:** No. Yeah, and I think that's almost the kind of tragedy here– that introverts are maybe better equipped to form those really authentic, deep relationships, but they avoid the situations in which they might be able to– 00:27:54 **Aleksandra King:** Avoid it, they avoid it. It's fascinating, actually. So can mindset actually alter measurable things, like fitness, immune response, or pain? Can your mindset actually change these things? 00:28:10 **David Robson:** In all of these factors of your life, it can. So that was the big question that I set out to understand in The Expectation Effect. There's a century of research looking at an expectation effect called the placebo effect, which I think we all know– positive expectations about medications often bring relief, even if you're actually taking a sugar pill. It's a real thing. We know that it has physiological effects on the body, so it can change things like the expression of the endogenous opioids in the brain that will help to reduce inflammation and pain, for example. So we've known for a long time the placebo effect is a real thing, and that it can be powerful. But what this latest research covers, that I was looking at for The Expectation Effect, showed that our mindset can produce this kind of placebo-type effect in other areas of life. So fitness, how we respond to a diet, how we deal with sleep loss, how we cope with a stressful situation, even how we physically age as we get older. And it sounds incredible, but it's all backed up by really robust research, and there's always these kind of very well-accepted, plausible biological mechanisms. This isn't kind of calling on the law of attraction, or something pseudoscientific. We know what the connections are between the brain and the body that could produce those. 00:29:37 **Aleksandra King:** So there's things happening with mindset– this is how, in layman's terms here– there are literal things happening within the body that are helping you, just by changing your mind about something. 00:29:51 **David Robson:** Yeah, exactly. And that shouldn't be as surprising as it is, if you just think about it in terms of what happens during your day. You start thinking about your favourite meal, your mouth starts watering, your stomach starts rumbling. Well, that is a change in mindset that has changed your body in those ways, because your brain is controlling the release of enzymes that will help you to digest your food. Or if you think about an upcoming job interview, for example, you might start getting butterflies in your stomach, you'd find that your blood pressure was increasing a little bit. That is another case of our mindset shaping our physiology. What the research is doing is just kind of adding more nuance to that, and looking at, well, how can we change our mindset, and in what ways, to produce the biggest benefits for us in each of these specific situations. 00:30:40 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah. I've had things where, as a child, I used to run a lot, and if my mindset was, I'm going to do so well in this race– I would just have that mindset for a race, no real reason why this race, but I just knew I would do really well in this race, and I would know even before the race started– I'm going to do so well in the race– I did really well in the race. Then today, if I think, oh no, that's going to give me anxiety, I get so anxious– I almost know what's going to happen. But you're saying that your mind is programming you in that direction. You've decided something, so therefore all hormones and blood systems and heart and everything is going– the sail is set. 00:31:21 **David Robson:** Yeah, it is. But– so I think stress and anxiety is a really good example here. Because what I'm not saying is, well, just repress your stress, just ignore it. You can't, actually– the research shows if you just try to kind of stamp down on stress, you actually feel even more stressed, because it's another responsibility. So what we can do, rather than trying to remove it, is just change the way we think about stress and its effects. A lot of us– and I think this has really been promoted in our culture– we see stress as just this inherently bad thing. It's like this monster that we have to avoid, or it's going to be bad for our health, and it's going to be bad for our performance. So we see it as inherently debilitating. So when you start feeling those butterflies in your stomach, and your heart racing, you become even more scared, because you're like, well, I can't do this interview now, because I'm going to be performing worse. So you're adding another layer of worry, and it gets through this kind of vicious cycle of catastrophising, that actually then impairs your performance. Now, there's another perfectly rational way of viewing stress, and that is that it's an adaptive response that evolved to help us to boost our performance in the situations where we needed it. So not just running away from, like, the lion in the forest, but also hunting for our own prey, or trying to impress the other people in our group, so that we would maybe rise the ranks in the social hierarchy. And what the research shows is that you actually– you tell people about this, and you explain some of the benefits of stress– the fact that when your heart is racing, it's pumping a lot of oxygenated blood around your body, which is leaving you energised; the fact that those jangling nerves, well, that's actually a sign of cortisol, which is kind of waking you up and making you more alert and more focused. Now, you tell people about those benefits, you've changed their mindset, so stress is no longer this monster, but something that can be– maybe not enjoyed, but something that you can accept is a necessary part of dealing with the challenge that you're facing. 00:33:35 **Aleksandra King:** A tool. It's like your AI– it's a tool. 00:33:37 **David Robson:** Yeah, exactly– AI. And what you find is that you change people's mindset just like that, just through education, and then, first of all, they perform a lot better. So this has been shown in, like, really difficult Graduate Record Examinations in the US, for example. Or you have people with high maths anxiety, who then take their high school exams, and they perform much better, because they've managed to see that their stress is actually enhancing and energising their performance. They perform better at public speaking, they perform better on the sports field– all of these ways they're performing better. And physiologically, their bodies are responding to this stress differently. So they're still having that racing heart, but their blood pressure isn't spiking so dramatically, their cortisol levels aren't spiking so dramatically– they're actually having a more muted stress response, so it's kind of more adaptive to the situation at hand. And then afterwards, they're better able to relax, so the body goes more quickly into the rest-and-digest state that it needs to kind of maintain your organs, which is really important for your long-term health. And that's really powerful, just from a reappraisal of how you're feeling. So you're not changing how you're feeling, exactly– you're just changing how you think about what's going on. 00:34:53 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah. You've mentioned expectation effect– so, just so we all are clear, you've written a book about the expectation effect. Can you just tell us, what is the expectation effect, so we understand– and how is that different to manifestation? The whole manifestation culture. 00:35:14 **David Robson:** Yeah. So the expectation effect is this phenomenon where our beliefs create self-fulfilling prophecies. And so that can be through changes to perception– it just changes your kind of mood, essentially– or it can change what you focus on in your environment. If you focus on, like, a happy face in the crowd, or the kind of angry face in the crowd– 00:35:38 **Aleksandra King:** What you see. So, what you see– the yellow car. 00:35:40 **David Robson:** Yeah, yeah, exactly. Through changes to your behaviour– so moving you from avoidance to approach, for example, encouraging you to just do the workouts that you've been avoiding. And then physiologically, which we've spoken about– so that kind of mind-body connection, in which our mindset is actually changing the way our body responds to a challenge. So that's the expectation effect. It's got those three mechanisms. Now, manifestation, I'm sure, is very useful for lots of different people, but I do see a lot of pseudoscience around this as well. Because I don't think it's as specific as the science on the expectation effect– I don't think it's looking at these particular situations and kind of determining when it can help and when it can't. And sometimes with these ideas, like the law of attraction, where you're thinking, well, I will just imagine my bank account filled with money, and then somehow that money will just come to me– 00:36:40 **Aleksandra King:** The religious– well, you call them religious, but I won't name, just in case I get into trouble– there's some that say, just think of that car, think of your Ferrari, and you'll just have the Ferrari. 00:36:51 **David Robson:** Exactly. And I don't want to insult people who believe in that. It's just, I personally don't think that has any scientific basis for it. Now, I still think, actually, sometimes it might work for some people, because if they're changing their mindset in that way, sometimes it might be shaping their behaviour, for example. So it could be that if you're really focused on getting rich, you're also more likely to notice opportunities to start your own business, or to apply for a job that maybe beforehand you wouldn't have felt confident enough to apply for. But you just think, well, I'm manifesting this, so I might as well go out and get it. I think that is healthy. But what I don't think is healthy is kind of sitting at home visualising all of these things, but not really then having any means of actually achieving that. 00:37:37 **Aleksandra King:** Actions, and physical happenings– I'm going to call them now, in a non-scientific way. Okay. So can negative expectations then damage your health, damage your performance– having negative thoughts? Because I had someone in here, a facialist to the royals, who built an empire– global empire in skincare– and the one thing she wants nothing to do with is that negative– what– mindset, let's call it negative mindset. And if she spots something even remotely negative, she goes, never do that again. 00:38:15 **David Robson:** Huh, interesting. 00:38:15 **Aleksandra King:** And I just thought, whoa, relax. But she's right. What's that, then? 00:38:22 **David Robson:** Yeah. To my mind, that's a little extreme. But it is certainly true that negative expectations can have a real influence on important outcomes. And so, in medicine, for example, we've spoken about the placebo effect, but there's also what's often known as the kind of evil twin, which is the nocebo effect. And that is where negative expectations create– 00:38:54 **Aleksandra King:** Nocebo effect? 00:38:55 **David Robson:** Nocebo. So it comes from Latin, to mean kind of, I will harm, rather than, I will please. 00:39:01 **Aleksandra King:** Wow. 00:39:01 **David Robson:** And a lot of drug side effects are kind of amplified by a nocebo effect. So you're warned by your doctor that your pills might create headaches, or nausea, and then, through the mind-body connection, your brain is then creating those symptoms. And they're physically real. So, for example, when people are warned that they might get a headache, even though they're taking a sugar pill– you can see that there are changes in, like, neurotransmitters, things that would change the vasculature of the brain, make those vessels a little more dilated, which might be behind the pain. You can see those kinds of changes, just like we saw with the placebo effect. And I experienced this myself when I was on a course of antidepressants– and this was actually what inspired The Expectation Effect for me. So my doctor had warned me, you might have bad headaches because of these, and within a few days– 00:39:57 **Aleksandra King:** You had the same. You read that and take it seriously. 00:40:00 **David Robson:** Exactly. But luckily, I was writing a piece about the mind-body connection for the BBC at the time, and so that made me think, well, I'm just going to actually look at the scientific literature– how much of this is an inevitable biological reaction to the chemicals in the pills, and how much might it just be an expectation effect? And what I found from that was, well, actually, when you compare people taking the drugs with people who believe they're taking the drugs but they're not actually, you see that there's a really sizeable nocebo effect there. 00:40:34 **Aleksandra King:** Sizeable, yeah. 00:40:35 **David Robson:** So I'd say the majority of people who experience the headaches are probably experiencing it because of their expectations. And opening my mind to that possibility– 00:40:46 **Aleksandra King:** That is powerful. 00:40:50 **David Robson:** –kind of made the pain disappear, almost immediately. So that then made me think, well, what else can our expectations do? And that was why I started collecting a whole body of, like, 400 papers, that eventually became The Expectation Effect. 00:41:06 **Aleksandra King:** Wow. This is very empowering– you realise how strong your mind is. 00:41:12 **David Robson:** Yeah, exactly. 00:41:13 **Aleksandra King:** Okay. And then you wrote a book called The Intelligence Trap. 00:41:17 **David Robson:** Yeah, that was my first book. 00:41:19 **Aleksandra King:** Your first book. So tell us about The Intelligence Trap– what's it about? 00:41:23 **David Robson:** So that is about why smart people make stupid decisions, and how to avoid doing that ourselves. 00:41:31 **Aleksandra King:** A nice title. Do smart people make stupid, or bad, decisions? 00:41:36 **David Robson:** Yeah– worryingly frequently. And so, what I discovered was that there are lots of reasons for that. One is the fact that– so, IQ– I'm not going to bash IQ, because I think it certainly has its place in scientific research, and it does correlate with some important things, like educational achievement, primarily, but also then how people do in their careers. So there is something in IQ that matters. It is reflecting the kind of efficiency of our neural networks, to a certain degree. But I kind of compare that to the engine of a car. So you could have, like, a super fast engine, but if you don't have a good suspension, good steering, a GPS to guide you on the right route, that can just drive you off a cliff really quickly, if you don't have checks and balances to keep it in control. And that's really what happens with the intelligence trap– we need all of these other traits that I write about, so things like intellectual humility, open-mindedness, and the ability to take other people's perspectives– things that aren't measured by IQ, that can prevent us from driving off that cliff. 00:42:56 **Aleksandra King:** I love that you're writing about this and talking about this, because the other day I was actually looking into– I don't know what I was doing it for– I think research. And I looked at different types of– how are intelligence types categorised? And yes, you've got the more academic intelligence, which– a lot of it is what you've learned, memory retention. But then there is another that's a pillar, and some people have– everyone has some level of it, but you might have more or less– but another massive pillar is emotional intelligence, and I suppose some of the things that you were mentioning there would fall into that. And it's possibly one of the most powerful forms of intelligence. And then there was another one, which is almost like an intelligence that allows you to adapt and learn on the fly. So nothing taught, nothing memory-retained, but solving on the problem– kind of– I don't remember– flexible intelligence, or something like that. 00:44:00 **David Robson:** Yeah, exactly. I mean, cognitive flexibility is hugely important, and that doesn't automatically go with kind of IQ-style intelligence, analytical intelligence. And so there was some great work by this guy called Keith Stanovich, who was working in Toronto. And so he came up with something called the rationality quotient, and that was essentially looking at how susceptible people are to cognitive bias– so those things that the Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman looked into. So anchoring, which is where you're buying a house, and your estate agent shows you a super expensive house first of all– 00:44:40 **Aleksandra King:** Right. 00:44:40 **David Robson:** –and then they show you something not so good, but because they've anchored your idea of what a reasonable price for a house is, you then pay more for the second one. 00:44:50 **Aleksandra King:** Cruel. 00:44:50 **David Robson:** So he looked at all of these kind of things, and what he found was that the two are just imperfectly correlated. And so what that means is that you can have some people who are highly intelligent, but also highly susceptible to cognitive bias. And he calls this dysrationalia. So it's kind of akin to dyslexia– where dyslexic people can score really highly on all kinds of areas of intelligence, but it's a kind of isolated issue with reading. Well, with dysrationalia, it's the same. You can score great on cognitive tests, but then, when it comes to actually making a rational judgement, you're failing. Now, the good thing about that is, well, first of all, he thinks that by measuring it, you can identify who might be most suitable for particular roles, and who wouldn't be suitable, because the potential for cognitive bias to do damage would be so much greater. But also, the good news is that often, by learning about those biases, we can increase our rationality quotient. So there are ways to become more rational, whatever your intelligence. 00:46:00 **Aleksandra King:** I've never heard about that. That's a fascinating way to think about human behaviour. It will also explain, to a large extent, why some people choose the partners they do, and get influenced by people the way they do– dragged into things, and conned. 00:46:15 **David Robson:** Exactly, yeah. And so one of those biases that he looks at, that I think is especially important, is something called the sunk cost fallacy, which is, once you've put a lot of investment into a project, you don't want to let that investment go. So everyone might be telling you, this is failing, pull out– but you don't, because you can't bear to see all of that money wasted. And I think, like you were saying, with relationships– I think often we've put in a lot of emotional investment there, and so we don't want to leave that person, even though we know they're not good for us. 00:46:49 **Aleksandra King:** No– but yes. And I've got this– I encounter clients like this. Sometimes they're very precious about something that they've invested in. A lot of money's gone into it, people's time, everything– it's an emotional thing as well. And then you do the research that shows, yeah, possibly not a good idea. And then you've got to be a good business person– you've got to do the right thing, to sort of say– but you've also got to manage personalities, and be delicate, and try and gently steer, without sort of destroying the relationship with a client. 00:47:23 **David Robson:** Which is where emotional intelligence comes in, I think, to be able to do that. And on the side of the client, I think they have to use their emotional intelligence to recognise that, okay, it hurts, but I'm going to feel better in the long run if I scrap that. And that's not an easy decision to come to. 00:47:41 **Aleksandra King:** Not at all, not at all. It's a very difficult one. I find facts sometimes help, but it's the presentation of facts that's the more difficult thing. So do these successful people– let's say business owners– fall into different types of thinking errors? Do they make certain types of errors? 00:48:03 **David Robson:** Yeah. I think there's such a wide span of potential cognitive errors that we can make, that we're all probably falling into some of them. But I'd say that one thing that seems to afflict people with expertise, in particular, is this phenomenon called earned dogmatism. And it's like, you've reached a certain point in your career where you've kind of proven yourself, and so you come to trust too much in your judgement because of that. And obviously, expertise does help you to make better predictions for the future, but these people just close their minds to any new information, and they just forget the fact that situations change. They lose that flexibility that we spoke about. So they become very dogmatic– it's like, my way or not at all. So that does seem to come with expertise, and it's incredibly inhibiting, because the capacity to update our beliefs is really fundamental to rationality. And so it's exposing you to lots of different biases, this process of earned dogmatism. 00:49:09 **Aleksandra King:** I love the way you word things. The way that you just said– the ability to update your beliefs– it's just– you've coined the term. Because that is what it is. And yes, we have our beliefs, and we should be updating them, based on the information, and we should never stop growing. So I love the update– it's like updating your apps, and updating everything. You should be updating these beliefs. 00:49:34 **David Robson:** Yeah, absolutely. In business, a market can change very quickly, and you need to be prepared for that. You need to accept that sometimes everything that you thought you know is no longer applicable, and so you have to start again. Like, in Zen Buddhism, you call this the kind of beginner's mindset. And actually, we lose the beginner's mindset when we accumulate our expertise, but we should always retain a part of it– always be ready to learn more, to grow, like you said. Because that makes us more flexible, and better able to deal with new challenges. 00:50:05 **Aleksandra King:** So why is it then so hard for people to admit they're wrong– all of us included? It's difficult to say, oh, I made a mistake, I'm wrong. Why? 00:50:15 **David Robson:** It is. And I think a lot of it is because we begin to attach our expertise and our performance to our ego, and to our identity. I think that's the main thing. It's like, well, if I no longer can predict what's going to happen in my business, like, who am I, essentially? Because I've established so much of my identity around the fact that I'm a successful business person who knows this market inside out. And then it's just really painful to admit that maybe you don't know as much as you thought you did. But there are ways around that. So one is to develop this growth mindset, and to recognise that when you make a mistake, that is actually just a sign of growth– it's giving you the potential for further improvement. So if you focus on your trajectory, it's not so scary if you make one mistake, because it's not going to bring you crashing down. It's just going to mean that you can actually build on your expertise and become even better. So that can be really powerful. Another is a process called self-affirmation, which– I don't like the term, because it sounds a bit like manifestation– 00:51:26 **Aleksandra King:** Self-affirmation, okay. 00:51:27 **David Robson:** But actually, what this is, is more just recognising that you're multifaceted as a person. So your whole identity doesn't have to rest on any particular expertise or trait. And what you find is that when you ask people to essentially list, what are my best qualities, and to explain why the top three are so important for them– and it could be, in addition to being an entrepreneur, I'm also a devoted mother or father, or I play music in my spare time, and that's really essential for me, that creativity– you remind people that they're more than just this one single trait. And then they find it easier to recognise that they may have made a mistake, because suddenly it doesn't feel like their whole identity is crashing– it's just one part of them, that they can then grow and build again. 00:52:16 **Aleksandra King:** Do you know why I like to be a business owner? I really loved to be an employee as well, and do a job really well. I loved that. The thing about the job that I did was, I never quite thought that I was good enough to do that job. It was very technical– I'm not that technical– a lot of numbers, I mean maths, for me, but I had to do it all the time, and details and everything. And I thought, but I'm better at comms, and I wish I did more people things. But I did that job– I did it for a long, long time– but it really relied on me. And when I didn't do something well, or I wasn't able to do something as well as some other people, that it came really naturally to, and they loved– the number crunching, all the programming and everything– it took a lot out of me to do it. I could do it, eventually, but it just took so much energy out of me. And then I would be hard on myself as well, and I would almost suffer in the fact that I don't have this skill, or I don't have that skill, and I wish I was better at these things. And you look at yourself in isolation, in a way, of the job that you're doing. The good thing about having a business, and working with other people, is that it's then okay to not have expertise– like, the detailed, down to the most granular level, expertise in something specific. You bring in someone that's better than you at that thing, and you need to know enough, but you have that– it's almost like help in all these areas, and you bring these people in, and you realise the power of a team. And it's just the most empowering, amazing thing. And in a way, you've got to let go of your ego. You've got to then admit, I can't do everything, I'm not good at this thing, they are more skilled than me. You've got to accept and value that. And that is a mindset change– it's like a journey, I've had to learn that. 00:54:10 **David Robson:** Yeah, definitely. It's not easy, but I think it is demonstrating what I referred to as intellectual humility there– to recognise, it's okay for me to accept I don't know this, and someone else knows it better. Because you can't know everything, right? My identity isn't built around knowing everything. What I'm doing is bringing all of this together, and kind of helping to set the overall vision for what I'm creating. 00:54:35 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah. And then you can appreciate the ones that love the numbers, and that's what they want to do, but they don't want to do the talking, necessarily, with a client. And then you all realise how beneficial it is to work together, and actually then you're a whole, and then it's complete, and everyone's skills are used. Because everyone's got something to bring. When you actually sit with a person– that's why I love the podcast– you realise how much there is in each person, and you think, wow, I don't think about things that way. And it's just incredible. When you give people that time, and you open up to them, what they bring– it is interesting. 00:55:13 **David Robson:** Yeah, totally. And I think it's just really fundamental for leaders to understand that– acknowledging that there's a gap in your knowledge, like, that doesn't have to be a sign of weakness. And people don't read it as a sign of weakness. You actually get more respect for doing that than for bluffing. And you set a kind of culture where everyone then is a bit more willing to be intellectually humble. And the knock-on effect of that is that you then avoid those cognitive biases that I spoke about. So by modelling that behaviour, you're really protecting your company from going down that terrible route of, like, a company like Enron, where there was very little intellectual humility. 00:55:58 **Aleksandra King:** Okay, do you want to just tell people about what happened with Enron, just in case someone doesn't know? 00:56:03 **David Robson:** Yeah. So I'm no expert at all, but I think, like, it was a company that was famous for having the smartest people in the world working for it– everyone was going to be the smartest person in the world. But they were also all covering up mistakes, dubious work practices, that ultimately led to the collapse of the company, with, like, a huge knock-on effect for the economy. And so that's often, in psychology, and business psychology, that is taken as this kind of example of the dangers of intellectual arrogance. And you want to be very different from that. And I think someone like Warren Buffett is actually quite famous for his intellectual humility, and for his ability to update his beliefs based on new information. And so– I'm sure he has flaws, but he's often taken as a better example of a wise means of doing business, because of this. 00:56:57 **Aleksandra King:** Yes. And investing in yourself– that's something that he always– his tip to anyone starting off, or anyone at all, actually, doesn't matter what age you are, is to take that time to invest in yourself. Do some courses, work on your communications, the soft skills– that sort of interacting with people. 00:57:13 **David Robson:** Yeah. Which I wish we didn't call them soft skills, because they're easily as important as the hard skills. So I think we need to almost have a kind of image change here, of how we value those other elements. Actually, in The Intelligence Trap, I show they're just as important for making good decisions as, say, intelligence or expertise, which would be considered, like, hard skills. 00:57:37 **Aleksandra King:** I actually bring in public speakers and trained actors onto the show, to help with comms– even how you speak on camera, in a Zoom call, and what you do with your hands, and what you do with your camera, and your body language, and even what you wear, how you behave. Or whether you're standing on a stage– how do you do that? Are there any hacks? Anything you can do with your voice– that wobbling voice, just before, the nervous swallow. It's a major problem for me. 00:58:09 **David Robson:** It's a major problem, but there's things you can do. 00:58:11 **Aleksandra King:** There's things you can do– you really can. And you can also hire a personal coach– you can get training in that, and they'll sit with you, and they'll watch what you– we even have intelligence officers, and people like that, for body language, reading cues– what you do with your hands, how you sit. He would, for example, say, you're sitting very confidently, because you've got your chest– you're not hiding your body. So the way that you sit, and you're open to receiving information. It's important, even how you sit. 00:58:40 **David Robson:** Yeah, exactly. We're giving off all of these cues that we don't realise. I would say body language is really important, but I think the substance of what you're saying is also so essential. If you are someone who's going into a meeting, and you're really self-conscious of the way that you're holding yourself– don't feel too nervous or worried about that, don't catastrophise that. Because actually, if you have the competence and the warmth– those are the two things we need for charisma, competence and warmth– so you seem like a genuine, honest person who's willing to cooperate, and you know what you're talking about– those are the fundamentals that people are going to be judging you on, when they appraise whether you're going to be a good leader, for example. 00:59:25 **Aleksandra King:** Wow, I love this, I love this. So we spoke a little bit about the mindset of some of the high achievers– they make mistakes, and they're sort of closed off to information, which is interesting– but I love the updating your beliefs. So what's the most surprising research you've seen on confidence and self-belief? 00:59:55 **David Robson:** So it's actually something I'm researching for my next book. And it's kind of extending what I wrote about in The Expectation Effect, but it's looking at this quality called self-efficacy. So that is your confidence– can I do what needs to be done to reach my goal? It's as simple as that. And so you can have self-efficacy in all different areas of your life, and it might be different– you might have low self-efficacy in working out, for example, but high self-efficacy in starting a new business. But there do tend to be correlations between them, so that would mean that some people lack self-efficacy in lots of areas in their life, and some have high self-efficacy in most of the areas of their life. And what you see is that this is basically the number one psychological factor for predicting who will achieve what they want in that particular domain. You can look at all kinds of different factors that might influence it– so, like, education levels, for example; self-esteem, which is slightly different– that's about how you value yourself, so do you feel like you're a worthwhile person or not, which isn't quite the same as feeling confident that you can execute the right actions. It just knocks the socks off all of those other things that we might think were important. And so the big question is, well, how do we become more self-efficacious? How do we build that confidence? And there are a few different ways, but one of the things that is so important is just to make sure that when you're going kind of step by step through your goal, you're building up your competence slowly, and at each point you have a mastery experience. So you've proved to yourself, I was able to do this– and then that gives you the confidence that, I can do the next thing well. So it's very relevant, for example, in learning new skills. I've seen it, say, in public speaking. I didn't start kind of giving talks to thousands of people to start with. I would just be practising alone at home, to prove to myself that I could get through a talk– actually store it in my mind and produce it. That built up my self-efficacy, so that I could then practise giving a talk to my friends, and then to my colleagues, and then giving bigger talks at literary festivals, and then a TEDx talk. So it's really important. And I think one of the big reasons for failure is, often we're just too ambitious. So we're trying to do something that is beyond our current skill set, and that really damages our self-efficacy, and leads us to either give up, or just damages our confidence, so we're having all of those terrible nerves. But what the research shows is that everyone can build up their self-efficacy, if they just take that slow, step-by-step trajectory, and really plan it out accordingly. 01:02:54 **Aleksandra King:** That's beautiful advice. That's absolutely wonderful. You said that– there's a marathon runner, I don't know if you know him, Eliud Kipchoge– 01:03:02 **David Robson:** Oh yes, I do, yes. 01:03:04 **Aleksandra King:** And they asked him, why don't you get nervous, or do you get nervous, or what's going through your mind, when you're standing there and you have to perform? There's all these expectations on him– he has to be the best all the time, and he's not always the best, but he has to go through that every time he stands on that start line. And he said what you just said, which is: I always remember the training that I did. All those mornings that I had to get up, every run, and how that's built up over time. I know what I've done– the work I've put in. 01:03:34 **David Robson:** Yeah. And that's easy to forget. And so reminding ourselves of that journey is also a way to kind of boost our self-efficacy, just before the important event. And that's what I do before my book talks, for example. It's like, I remember that I've done this before– I've given talks, I've never had a disaster, I've done the research, I know the material. One time, I had a few notes on my iPad, and then it ran out of battery– 01:03:59 **Aleksandra King:** And that was– ah– moment, right? 01:04:02 **David Robson:** It was actually transformative, in fact. Because after that, I felt so much more confident– because then I just had to do it all from memory, and I did it fine. And actually, my publicist came up to me afterwards, and she's like, that was amazing– what's your secret? You've improved so much. And it was because I was in that moment– spoke naturally. And I think I reappraised my stress response as well. So I was just telling myself, it's fine, you feel nervous, that's natural, but you can do this. And it's actually helping you to remember more, if you feel more alert. The worst thing would be to give a talk when you're feeling quite so chilled, you're actually a bit drowsy, and you're not on top of it. 01:04:42 **Aleksandra King:** Okay. So I'm just going to ask you now, but I'm going to roll these two into one. Why do some people seem more naturally magnetic, or charismatic, than others? 01:04:55 **David Robson:** So I think this comes back to those two key factors. I think we can overcomplicate what charisma is, but if you really want to see who gains the most respect, it is having confidence– proven confidence in what you're saying– and warmth. 01:05:13 **Aleksandra King:** Warmth, yeah. 01:05:14 **David Robson:** So, do you seem like the kind of person who is going to cooperate, who's genuine, who's telling the truth? Or do you seem like someone who is very polished, and holding themselves back? And actually, that is often what we mistake for charisma, but it isn't what the average person is responding to. And so that kind of makes me think of a finding that I found very powerful while researching The Laws of Connection, which was something called the beautiful mess effect. So you look at someone like Princess Diana, who I think we all agree had tons of charisma– totally incredible how popular she became. When she gave her interview to Panorama, a lot of the royal family thought she had basically provided her own character assassination– because she had revealed her vulnerability, she had openly admitted to a lot of mistakes herself, as well as the kind of general problems she was facing with the royal family. So they were quite chilled about it, actually. They thought, this is the end of Diana, basically. But her popularity increased massively after that interview. And it was because she had been open and honest, and showed her vulnerability, that she actually gained a lot more respect. And I think that's a powerful demonstration– which has also been kind of proven in scientific experiments– that actually showing your vulnerability can be a way to charisma. 01:06:41 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah. And she still did so in a very nice sort of– in a very elegant way. Yeah, she's incredible. I did see some social media about her– how she interacted with the little kiddies that she went to go and see, in all these areas, and she'd sit with them, and be very warm and tactile. 01:07:01 **David Robson:** Exactly. So I think– and I know she's still a very divisive figure, but I think it's kind of undeniable that she did have charisma. And I think her vulnerability was part of what helped so many people to relate to her, and respect her. 01:07:13 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah. It sort of comes back to that emotional intelligence as well, and the ability to read a room, to read the temperature of a country, to read the temperature of an issue that's going on, and possibly how to react to it. I know that it's risky sometimes, to reveal your vulnerability. 01:07:31 **David Robson:** But there is research showing that it works for leaders, in business. Like I said– kind of recognising your intellectual humility is respected, but also opening up to mistakes is respected too, for the same reason. Because people suddenly see, like, there's a human being behind that– someone who is warm, and honest, and cares about what they're doing. And that's charismatic. 01:07:56 **Aleksandra King:** Yeah. But then again, you also have the celebrities– the tabloid things– where they're releasing absolutely everything, every bad– you don't even know if these things are even valid, or some of them are making it up to get the PR. Some of them take it so far– every single bad thing in the whole universe has happened to them, and they're coming up with something new every week, just to get into the papers. And it's almost too much of it. Sometimes this can be exploited as well. 01:08:19 **David Robson:** I think it can. And I think people do have quite a good filter. The worst thing is if it looks like you're lying, or trying to be manipulative, because then that takes your warmth rating right down. If it looks like you're playing on people's emotions just to kind of rise the hierarchy– it's kind of an evolved response, that we're very sceptical of anyone who might be manipulating us. So I think it has to be a kind of genuine authenticity. That's what you have to be aware of– however you're acting, is this going to be perceived as authentic, or is it going to be seen as some kind of power play? That's the kind of big rule, I would say. Anything that will be seen as manipulative is going to backfire. 01:09:03 **Aleksandra King:** And we've seen that happening. We've seen it– and even within the royal family– we don't have to go into mentioning– but we've seen that happening a lot. Okay. So, for the viewers– if they can take away one thing from the research that you've done, scientifically backed, that can really help turn their lives around, change their career path, if that's what they want to do– what would that be? 01:09:28 **David Robson:** So, forgive me, because this is going to sound very soft, but it's evidence-backed and very powerful. And that is to treat yourself with self-compassion. Now, I think you hear the word self-compassion, and it seems like– I don't know– it seems like you might be just talking about kind of luxuriating in your sorrow, or indulging yourself. And we kind of pride ourselves in having very high standards– lots of people say, I'm my worst critic, or, you can't say anything that I don't know already, because I'm so critical to myself. But self-criticism just really backfires. There's such a huge body of evidence showing that we think we're being productive when we beat ourselves up about something– because we think that's the best means of changing, to punish ourselves for having made a mistake– but the opposite is true. Because when you're overly self-critical, it creates this kind of really inhibiting stress response, that is bad for your cognition– so your decision-making– and your mental health. And it quickly becomes this kind of spiral. You're actually less able to think about ways out of your problem when you're being overly self-critical, and taking your mistake very personally. Whereas if you're self-compassionate– and all that means is you're accepting that making these errors is part of the human experience, that no one can be perfect a hundred per cent of the time, and recognising that you can acknowledge your error while still being kind to yourself. You don't have to have your inner critic calling you all of these horrible names. You don't have to start questioning your whole credibility just because you made one mistake. So you can make excuses for yourself, you can look for the other factors that might have influenced what you did, while still also recognising that fundamentally there was something wrong with your actions, that you can improve on. People who do that are just much healthier. They have lower levels of things like inflammation, which we know is related to our overall health. They're less likely to suffer from kind of cardiovascular disease, that kind of stuff. But also, they are just better at changing– they're much better at self-improvement. By being kind to yourself, you're putting yourself in this position where you have more cognitive flexibility. You're better able to solve problems, and to make the changes that you need, to avoid the same mistake happening again. 01:12:06 **Aleksandra King:** Gosh, we can help ourselves after all. Stop being so mean to yourself– that's what you're saying. Stop being so horrible. 01:12:13 **David Robson:** Yeah. Treat yourself– like, it's a kind of cliché, but talk to yourself like a friend or family member might. And that would involve maybe recognising the mistake, telling you some home truths about what you did wrong, but not judging you eternally for that mistake, and not dealing in, like, name-calling, or questioning your whole future based on one error. 01:12:39 **Aleksandra King:** Some of us are definitely very strict with ourselves. Loosen up a bit, be easy on ourselves– it's the way to success, is to actually treat ourselves with kindness. It's been very educational. Thank you so much for your time, thank you for coming on. And I hope people listen, and benefit, and realise that this is science-backed, and we do have power over our minds. 01:13:06 **David Robson:** Yep. Yeah, no, we really do. 01:13:07 **Aleksandra King:** Thank you for your time. 01:13:09 **David Robson:** It's been a pleasure. ## Follow Aleksandra - [Instagram](https://instagram.com/king.aleksandra) - [X](https://x.com/aleksandrabking) - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksandraking) - [YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/@AleksandraKing) - [Aleksandra's Inner Circle](https://laylo.com/aleksandraking) Business and collaborations: [aleksandraking.com](https://aleksandraking.com) | [aleksandra@aleksandraking.com](mailto:aleksandra@aleksandraking.com) *The views expressed by guests are their own and do not reflect those of Aleksandra, the podcast, or its producers. This podcast is for entertainment only.*