Lessons - The Hidden Psychology Behind Persuasive Communication | Charles Duhigg - Bestselling Author of "The Power of Habit"

In this lessons episode, discover how every conversation fits into one of three types. Practical, emotional, or social, and how recognizing the difference can improve your relationships. Learn how asking deep questions reveals the mindset behind someone's words, learn how neural entrainment helps build trust and connection even across disagreements, and learn how to stop talking at people and start truly engaging with them. Walk me through how this even impacted your work. So when you, so now at this point, this is sort of like the first phrase. I know you go through a couple different frameworks in the book, but this is the first framework. So three types of conversations. You have the practical decision making, you have the emotional, you have the social identity. Maybe first explain them a little bit more so that people can wrap their minds around them, but then talk to me about how this impacted your day to day. When you, I mean, you've entered you more people than me. So when you're interviewing people, when you're doing investigations, when you're talking to your wife, when you're talking to your boss. Yeah, and it's worth noting in interview isn't necessarily a conversation, right? Like in this interview that we're doing right now, you're going to ask me a lot more questions than I'm going to ask you. And so it's not necessarily back and forth, but when we're having a conversation, oftentimes what what happens, well, let me explain what happens when we're having a conversation that works. When we are, when we connect with someone through conversation or through any type of communication, our bodies and our brains actually change without us realizing it. Like even in this conversation, even though we're separated by a continent, our breath patterns are starting to match each other. Our heart rates are starting to match each other. The dilation of our eyes is starting to become similar. And more importantly, if we could see inside your brain and my brain, what we would see is that our thought patterns are becoming more and more alike. And that actually makes sense when you think about it, because if I tell you about an emotion, I'm feeling you actually experience that emotional a little bit or if I tell you about an idea I had, you experience that idea. And so it would make sense that our brains would become more similar, but it turns out that similarity, what's known in neuroscience as neural entrainment is at the core of communication. When we communicate and we feel like we've actually heard and understood the other person, they've understood us and we feel connected to them, we trust them more, we like them more, even if we disagree with them, it's because we achieved that neural entrainment because our thoughts became very similar and trained with each other. And so what's interesting is that these two kinds of conversations that practical the emotional in the social, they use different parts of our brains. So a practical conversation is when we're thinking about logical, when we're thinking about logical systems in any respect, we're using the prefrontal cortex. So we're making plans for a vacation, we're setting a budget, we're deciding where to go to dinner tonight by sort of saying like, oh, I like Chinese, but I had it last week. Anything where there's what's known as a logic of cost and benefits is using your prefrontal cortex. An emotional conversation uses a very different structure or brain, it uses the deep interior structures that are brain, the basal ganglia, the amygdala, and in those cases, the logic of cost and benefits tends not to be as persuasive as what's known as the logic of similarities. Oftentimes when I'm confronted with a situation where it's I'm feeling an emotion, someone's discussing an emotion, it's clearly an emotional conversation, I try and figure out what to do next, by not by asking myself cost and benefits, not by comparing alternative paths, but by looking for something similar, like, oh, you just stubbed your toe. When I stubbed my toe, what I really needed was someone to like say like, it's okay or like, I have a friend, as I was mentioning that they just lost his house in the fires in Los Angeles, right? And like, he doesn't need me coming in and being like, okay, here's what you should do about like insurance next in Y&Z. What he needs is someone is like, oh my, I'm so sorry, man, that sounds so hard. And in order to figure out what to say, I'm going to think about those moments in my life when I've had some tragedy and what I needed and what people did for me. So that's the logic of similarities. And then the social conversation is kind of different because it doesn't rely on logic as much as it relies on evidence that the other person is acknowledging who I am. So a social conversation happens when I come to you and I say like, look, you know, as a, as someone who grew up in New Mexico or as a journalist or as a man or as a father. And I tell you something about myself based on how I see myself and how I believe society sees me. At that moment, what I, what I'm looking for from you without even realizing it is not empathy, like an emotions, it's not logic, like in the language of the practical conversation, it's simply acknowledging that you've heard me. If I come and I say, you know, I see this differently as you and here's why. The best thing that you can say in response is to say, oh, I totally, like, I totally hear what you're saying. You see this differently than I do. And that's that's legitimate. So when you, I'm just thinking through, now you have me thinking about all the conversations I have in my life and now I'm mapping out when some things just seem to not click and now it makes a lot of sense as to why the three kinds of conversations that you just mentioned, I feel like I feel like when we go into a conversation, the reason why we could not pick up on the type of conversation that the other person is trying to have could be because we have our own agenda going into that conversation and we want our own outcomes. And I don't even know if that's a conscious thought. I feel like in my case, if I'm going into a conversation, I've had this conversation so many different times, I just had this subconscious outcome that I'm looking for. And I'm not even, I'm not, it sounds cliche, but I'm not stepping in the other people's shoes, right? I'm just saying, I'm having this conversation. I'm feeling this emotion. This is what I want out of it. If I don't get that, I'm not happy with the interaction, but I'm not consciously doing that. That's almost like a subconscious entrained. Well, and there's a way, there's a way to side step this, right? So this is, this is one of the first big skills is how do we figure out what kind of conversation we're in and how do we get ourselves out of our head? Because oftentimes before we have a conversation, we might think about it like if it's an important conversation or something we're kind of uptight about, we'll think about it and what we think about is what I want to say. Like here's what I want the other person to know. Here's what I want to say. That's not really a conversation, right? That's a monologue. That's, that's what most people cling to. That's, that's totally, it's totally natural. So what do we do when we start that conversation to make it an actual conversation? The first and most important thing we can do is to ask a question, but not all questions are created equal. Some questions are much more powerful than others. And within psychology, these are known as deep questions. And a deep question is something that asks about your values or your beliefs or your experiences. And that can sound a little bit intimidating, but it's as simple like if you met someone who's a lawyer, you know, instead of asking them, oh, what law firm do you work at asking them, oh, what made you decide to go to law school? Right? But do you like being a lawyer? Like what do you love about it? When we ask those kinds of questions, when we ask people not about the facts of their life, but how they feel about their life, what we're doing is we're inviting them to tell us what kind of mindset they're in. Because that person who's a lawyer, you know, at one party, he might say, oh, you know, like I just, I wanted to study job and I knew that there's always going to be demand for lawyers. And so I did. So he's in a practical mindset, right? At another party, the exact same person might say, oh, like I actually saw my uncle get arrested when I was a kid. And I felt like it was really unjust and I wanted to help fight against that. Okay, so that's that's much more of an emotional, maybe even a social conversation, asking a deep question allows us to not only figure out what's happening in the other person's head, but it interrupts that subconscious thing that you're talking about. Because instead of just barreling in and being like, here's what I want you to know about me. I'm asking you a question, we're starting a dialogue. And the great thing about deep questions is that as soon as you ask that question and they answer it, it's very natural for you to answer your own question, right? Oh, you became a lawyer because you saw your uncle get arrested. That's really interesting. I'm a doctor and I became a doctor because I saw my dad get sick when I was a kid. So that's the that's the first and most important step is their skill is learn to ask the right questions and then ask them. When you ask these, first of all, it's sort of a two-pronged question this. The first part is when you ask these, or how practical is it to ask these deep questions before every interaction that you have? Because that's what you're alluding to. This is what you, this is what your team, before you have any kind of conversation, you have to get almost a barometer reading of where that person is at to a degree. You've been at, well, sometimes, sometimes like, I mean, sometimes you you walk up and like you're in gyms, your co-workers, like we got to discuss the budget and you're like, okay, let's discuss the budget. Like you know that he's in a practical mindset, right? He's announced it. Sometimes people just announce what what mindset they're in. I think it's some situations when you're not, when it's not announced. And those moments, that's when asking this deep question. And I think what you're really asking is like, man, that seems like so much work, but actually asking a deep question usually takes a couple of seconds and the reply usually takes no more than 20 or 25 seconds. Right. Like, like you mentioned that you lived in Miami. So like a deep question I would ask you would be like, oh, you know, what made you guys decide to move to Miami? Like what, like what was going on that like, and you're going to answer that question and you're going to tell me something about yourself. You're sick of the cold or you wanted to get away from your in-laws or whatever it is. Something, something was going on that gives me some insight into who you are, what kind of mindset you're in right now. But it's not going to be a big like cry on each other shoulder moment. No. In fact, in schools, they teach teachers to do this by saying, look, if a student comes up and they want to have a conversation with you, start the conversation by asking them, do you want to be helped? Do you want to be hugged? Or do you want to be heard? Which are the three kinds of conversations that practical the emotional and the social? And if anyone listening has kids at home, try this with your kids, they will tell you exactly what they want immediately. They will say like, no, I don't need your help. I just want you to hear what's going on or I need a hug. When you at the second part to that question that I was just asking was when you have, when you ask these deep questions, is there a greater degree of connection made with that person? Is there some sort of deeper level of understanding or empathy, like some bond that's formed? Well, so you're starting to entrain, right? Like if I say to you, you know, why'd you come a lawyer? I saw my uncle get arrested and they say, oh, I became a doctor because I saw my dad get sick. Now, we're both having the same kind of conversation, right? We're finding something that we have in common. We are starting to entrain with each other. And the thing that's interesting about entrainment is you can't help but feel closer to the person when you entrain with them. Like literally, like, even if you dislike each other, even if you disagree about everything on earth, entrainment doesn't mean you're going to change your mind. It doesn't mean you're going to, you're going to walk away saying I agree with you. Entrainment is something that we achieve with another person that makes us feel connected. And when we feel, when we are entrained with someone, we like them more, we trust them more, we're more persuaded by them. And that doesn't mean that we really like them or that we really trust them. But it does mean that we feel connected to them in some way. Thanks for tuning in. 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