Hidden Brain
Relationships 2.0: The Power of Tiny Interactions + Your Questions Answered: Erica Bailey on Authenticity
14 Apr 2025
As you go about your day, you likely interact with family, friends and coworkers. These relationships can help you feel cared for and connected. But what if there’s a whole category of people in your life whose impact is overlooked? Today, in a favorite episode from our archives, psychologist Gillian Sandstrom reveals some simple ways to make your life a little more joyful and maybe even a little less lonely. Then, we talk with researcher Erica Bailey, who responds to listeners' questions about authenticity and how to reveal our true selves to the people around us.In this episode you'll learn: The sociological concept of "weak" and "strong" ties, and the important roles they play in our lives.How "weak ties" contribute to our happiness.How to talk to strangers — including how to start, maintain, and end a conversation.How to decrease feelings of loneliness and increase feelings of connectivity in your daily life.If you enjoyed today's conversation with Gillian Sandstrom, be sure to check out these other Hidden Brain episodes: You 2.0: The Gift of Other PeopleHow Others See You
Full Episode
This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. Ask yourself what makes you happy. Many people would say spending time with close friends, quality moments with family, playing with a pet. Most of us can agree relationships are at the heart of a life well-lived. Social science research bears this out. Countless studies suggest that our emotional ties to others shape our well-being.
Long-running analyses that track people over time show that social connections are not just about our emotional well-being, they're important determinants of our physical health. But it's one thing to say that relationships are important. It's another to go about getting them or preserving them. Lifelong friends move away to other towns and countries. Romantic relationships come undone.
Relatives pass away. And especially as people get older, many find it difficult to form new relationships, even as they yearn to feel close to others. New psychological research suggests a solution to this problem, or at least a partial solution, and it's one that's easily accessible to everyone.
Last week in our Relationships 2.0 series, we looked at the common mistakes we make when negotiating with other people. This week on Hidden Brain, we bring you a user's manual on how to boost your social connections and your happiness. Rigorous studies suggest that the problem of loneliness is growing around the world. Many people feel they don't have others in whom they can confide.
Making friends can be hard, especially if you're someone who is naturally shy. At the University of Sussex, psychologist Gillian Sandstrom studies what we can do to combat the growing challenge of social isolation. Gillian Sandstrom, welcome to Hidden Brain.
Hi, thanks for having me.
Jillian, I understand that you were somewhat introverted and shy as a child. Can you describe the younger version of yourself to me?
I was definitely a shy kid, very bookish. And so I remember, you know, anytime we went to my grandma's house for Christmas and all the cousins and aunts and uncles were there, I would be off in a room somewhere with a book, just finding the quietest place in the house, just sitting there reading. And my dream when I was a kid was that I would grow up and I would live on an island.
I don't mean like a tropical island. I mean, an island that was just me. My own island, where I had a big library, and that was my dream.
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