HoldsUp

Nick Epley

University of Chicago

Nick Epley is a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago. His work focuses on the science of social connection and the effects of daily social interactions on mental and physical health. He also examines social anxiety and the data behind the assumptions people make about themselves and others.

21 claims checked on air: 2 context 18 supported 1 unverified

What they said on air

0:00:00needs contextmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Exposure therapy requiring individuals to engage in real-world social interactions is more effective at overcoming social anxiety than simulated or imagined interactions.

"If you are afraid of talking with a stranger or having a deep conversation, the way to get over that is not to simulate it or to imagine. It's not like you get up and you give a pretend speech. That's what psychologists were doing for years. It doesn't work because it's still pretending. It has to be real. You send people out in the world and to do the thing for real." (said at 0:00:00)

While real-world (in vivo) exposure is traditionally regarded as the gold standard and meta-analyses show a modest advantage in efficacy and long-term durability specifically for social anxiety disorder, simulated modalities (such as virtual reality exposure therapy) achieve comparable, large effect sizes immediately post-treatment.

0:00:49supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Social anxiety reduction from exposure therapy is driven by changing beliefs about how other people will respond rather than merely desensitizing or dulling anxiety.

"That's how you ease that social anxiety and get rid of it. Not because you dull your anxiety so much. It's because you change your beliefs about what other people are like." (said at 0:00:49)

Clinical trial and experimental evidence directly supports the claim. In exposure therapy for social anxiety disorder, symptom reduction is driven by expectancy updating (prediction error learning regarding feared social outcomes and others' responses) rather than within-session habituation or desensitization of fear. An RCT analyzing exposure mechanisms found that expectancy updating predicted post-treatment and 3-month follow-up anxiety reductions, whereas fear reduction during exposure did not.

0:12:36supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

In comparative cognitive testing, 2-year-old human children perform similarly to chimpanzees and orangutans on physical IQ tasks, but significantly outperform them on social cognition tasks.

"On the physical IQ test problems, the human toddlers, the adult chimps, and the orangutans performed equally well. There wasn't a difference... When they tested the 2-year-old toddlers, the chimps, and the orangutans on these social IQ tests, that's where the 2-year-old toddlers were shining." (said at 0:12:36)

The claim directly reflects the findings of the landmark 2007 study by Herrmann et al. published in Science. The authors tested 2.5-year-old human children, chimpanzees, and orangutans using a comprehensive cognitive test battery and found that human children performed at very similar levels to apes on physical cognition tasks (dealing with space, quantities, and causality), but significantly outperformed both ape species on social cognition tasks (social learning, communication, and theory of mind).

0:21:25supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

When people hear an opposing political partisan's voice rather than reading their text transcript, they evaluate the person as more thoughtful, intelligent, rational, and less dehumanized.

"And what we found was that when people could hear what the person had to say, either while also seeing them, or just with their voice, they rated the person, particularly when they disagreed with them, when there was a person on the other side, as more thoughtful, more intelligent, more rational. This tendency to dehumanize the other side, to think of them as mindless idiots, was dramatically reduced when you actually heard what the other person has to say." (said at 0:21:25)

Experimental research by Schroeder, Kardas, and Epley (2017) directly supports this claim. Across multiple experiments involving polarizing political and attitudinal issues, hearing a political opponent speak their views—compared to reading a text transcript of the exact same content—led evaluators to perceive the speaker as having greater mental capacity (more thoughtful and possessing uniquely human mental traits) and reduced dehumanizing perceptions of the opposition.

0:23:42supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Job evaluators and recruiters rate job candidates as significantly more intelligent, rational, and hirable when hearing their pitch rather than reading their written pitch.

"The person seems more intelligent, more rational, more thoughtful, more hirable when you hear what they have to say. And yet the MBA students themselves think they'll be judged equally on those two." (said at 0:23:42)

Experimental research by Schroeder and Epley (2015) directly evaluated this claim across multiple experiments involving hypothetical employers and professional recruiters. Evaluators who heard job candidates' spoken pitches rated them as significantly more competent, thoughtful, and intelligent, and were more interested in hiring them, compared to evaluators who read transcriptions of the exact same pitches.

0:31:30supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Analysis of the Gallup Daily Well-Being Poll by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that the difference in daily well-being between spending the previous day alone versus with someone else is approximately seven times larger than the difference associated with a high versus low income bracket (roughly a $60,000 difference).

"When psychologists look at this, this comes from a famous paper by Danny Kahneman and Angus Deaton, both Nobel Prize winners in economics, neither of them economists, that looked at the Gallup daily well-being poll, right?... It turns out the difference between spending yesterday alone versus with somebody else, the difference in your well-being on these other measures is about seven times bigger than being relatively high or low on their income measure, which is about a $60,000 difference between these two groups." (said at 0:31:30)

Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton (2010) analyzed over 450,000 responses from the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index to investigate determinants of subjective well-being. They found that daily emotional well-being (experienced affect yesterday) is much more strongly predicted by factors such as social contact, loneliness, and being alone than by differences in household income, whereas income primarily predicted cognitive life evaluation.

0:34:00supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Across primate species, the size of the neocortex relative to the rest of the brain correlates with the social complexity and size of the social group in which the species lives.

"If you look across primate species, the size of the neocortex relative to the rest of the brain is correlated with—this is work on the social brain hypothesis, right? The size of the neocortex relative to the rest of the brain is correlated with the social complexity of the group the primate species lives in." (said at 0:34:00)

Comparative phylogenetic analyses and meta-analyses across primate species consistently demonstrate that neocortex size and the neocortex ratio (relative to the rest of the brain) correlate with social group size and indices of social complexity, forming the empirical foundation of the social brain hypothesis.

0:34:55supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Loneliness causes spikes in cortisol levels in the bloodstream, which compromises cardiovascular and immune system functioning and increases mortality risk.

"So, when you're lonely, you get spikes in cortisol in your bloodstream that compromises your cardiovascular functioning, that compromises your immune system. That's why being lonely can make you sick and why it can shorten your life, right?" (said at 0:34:55)

Substantial psychoneuroimmunological and epidemiological evidence supports the links described. Loneliness and social isolation are associated with hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis dysregulation (such as heightened cortisol awakening responses or altered diurnal cortisol rhythms), inflammatory and immune changes (such as altered natural killer cell activity and elevated pro-inflammatory cytokines like IL-6), heightened cardiovascular stress reactivity, and increased all-cause mortality risk. While human studies are predominantly observational and experimental stress paradigms rather than long-term randomized trials, the biological and epidemiological pathways are well-documented.

0:40:22supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Solitary confinement in prisoners produces substantial negative impacts on mental health and impairs their sense of self.

"I think the closest research to this, to the extent that there is research on this, is what happens to people, prisoners who are put in solitary confinement. And it's not good for their mental health. It's not good for their sense of selves, for who they are. They do lose a sense of themselves." (said at 0:40:22)

Systematic reviews and meta-analyses show that solitary confinement in correctional settings is consistently associated with significant adverse mental health outcomes, including general psychological deterioration, increased symptoms of mood, hostility, and psychosis, and a marked increase in self-harm and suicide. A 2020 meta-analysis found a standardized mean difference of 0.45 to 0.51 for general psychological symptomatology compared to general incarceration, and a meta-analysis in The Lancet Psychiatry identified solitary confinement as a strong environmental risk factor for self-harm (OR 5.6).

0:49:40needs contexthighHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

In economic experiments where participants are given money to allocate between themselves and an anonymous stranger, individuals typically share between 30% and 50% rather than keeping all of it.

"Like if I give you $10 in an experiment and tell you you can divide it with another person however you want—you can keep all of it, give none of it, or give it all away—the standard prediction from economic theory is you'll be purely self-interested. You won't care anything about this person you know nothing about. You'll give them nothing. That's not what real people do. They give something: 30%, 50% typically, depending on the context that you're in." (said at 0:49:40)

In behavioral economics experiments (notably the Dictator Game and Ultimatum Game), participants given money to split with an anonymous stranger reliably give a substantial portion of their endowment rather than keeping all of it. In classic Dictator Games (where the recipient cannot reject the offer), meta-analytic evidence shows participants transfer an average of approximately 20% to 30% of their endowment (with notable clustering at 0% and 50%/equal splits). In Ultimatum Games (where recipients can reject unfair offers), mean offers typically range from 40% to 50%. The claim correctly captures the robust finding that humans consistently display other-regarding preferences rather than pure self-interest, though the 30% to 50% range slightly overestimates the mean baseline giving in pure Dictator experiments.

1:03:31supportedhighHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

People underestimate how interested strangers or other individuals are in engaging in conversation with them.

"We find in our work that people underestimate how interested others are in engaging with them. So you're sitting next to somebody on a plane or on a train, and if you're not already talking, you assume this person doesn't want to talk to you. But that person is more likely to say they're interested in talking to you than you would guess." (said at 1:03:31)

Multiple experimental and field studies demonstrate that individuals systematically underestimate how interested and receptive strangers and interaction partners are to engaging in conversation and connecting. These miscalibrated social expectations act as a barrier to initiating both casual and deep conversations.

1:04:50supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

People are overly pessimistic and fearful about how positively other people will respond when reached out to in a positive way.

"we find over and over again people are overly pessimistic, overly afraid about how positively other people will respond to them when you reach out to them in a positive way." (said at 1:04:50)

A series of preregistered experimental studies demonstrated that people consistently underestimate how positively recipients will respond to being reached out to (via brief check-in messages, notes, or small gifts). Initiators systematically underestimate recipients' appreciation, a miscalibration driven in part by initiators failing to anticipate how pleasantly surprised recipients feel upon receiving unexpected social outreach.

1:18:20supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Day-to-day positive affect and happiness is correlated with extraversion at approximately r = 0.5, while satisfaction with life correlates at approximately r = 0.3.

"Correlation between happiness, positive affect day-to-day, and extraversion is .5. That's huge. That is big. That's like the correlation between the heights of fathers and sons. That is a big correlation, right? It's a little weaker with things like satisfaction with life, it's a little more like .3, but that correlation is big and it shows up around the world, right?" (said at 1:18:20)

Large-scale meta-analyses synthesizing the relationship between Big Five personality traits and subjective well-being confirm that extraversion is consistently and strongly associated with positive affect/happiness (with typical raw and disattenuated meta-analytic correlations ranging around r = 0.4 to 0.5) and moderately associated with cognitive appraisals like life satisfaction (typically around r = 0.3).

1:19:20supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

When people are instructed in experiments to act more extroverted, they report feeling more positive affect, regardless of their baseline level of introversion or extroversion.

"Will Fleeson, a psychologist at Wake Forest University, was one of the very first people to do this. Half-hour lab study, asked people to act more extroverted or more introverted. When people acted more extroverted, they reported feeling more positive in that experiment. When you ask people to act more introverted, they felt less positive, regardless of where they fell on this personality scale to begin with." (said at 1:19:20)

Multiple experimental studies demonstrate that when participants are experimentally instructed or manipulated to act extraverted, they experience significant increases in positive affect, an effect that occurs regardless of their baseline dispositional introversion or extraversion. While longer, week-long interventions in daily life note that introverts may experience weaker gains alongside potential fatigue or negative affect, experimental laboratory trials consistently replicate the hedonic boost in positive affect across all baseline personality levels.

1:19:45supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Both extroverts and introverts report feeling better over the course of a day when spending time with other people compared to when they are alone.

"Over the course of a person's day, extroverts and introverts report feeling better alike when they're spending time with other people than when they're with than when they're alone." (said at 1:19:45)

Experience-sampling and experimental research in personality psychology consistently shows that both introverts and extroverts experience higher positive affect and well-being when engaging in social interactions or acting in an extraverted manner compared to when being alone or acting introverted. While extraverts generally have higher baseline positive affect, the affective boost from social interaction occurs across the dispositional extraversion spectrum.

1:20:02supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Asking people to act extroverted and connect with others over a two-week period increases positive affect across all levels of the extroversion scale.

"Sonja Lyubomirsky, uh psychology professor at UC Riverside, has done has done some of the best research on this. Over the course of 2 weeks, you shift the well the positive affect meter up across the entire extroversion scale when people are connecting with others compared to when they're acting introverted." (said at 1:20:02)

Randomized behavioral trials show that instructing participants to engage in extraverted behavior increases positive affect and well-being. Furthermore, research examining dispositional traits indicates that the hedonic benefits of acting extraverted occur across all levels of the introversion-extraversion spectrum.

1:31:33supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

People systematically overestimate how many individuals they will need to ask in order to get a target number of people to agree to a request, a phenomenon known as the underestimation of compliance effect.

"Frank Flynn and Vanessa Bohns... documented this phenomena known as the underestimation of compliance effect, which is you ask people to predict what percentage of people or how many people will agree to some request and the very robust tendency is that they they overestimate how many people they'll have to ask in order to get some number to agree to a request. People are just much more likely to agree than you think." (said at 1:31:33)

Experimental research demonstrates the 'underestimating compliance effect' (Flynn & Lake/Bohns, 2008). Across experimental and field settings, individuals systematically underestimate others' willingness to comply with direct requests for help (underestimating compliance likelihood by as much as 50%), which corresponds directly to overestimating the number of people they will need to ask to reach a target number of compliers. This bias arises because help seekers fail to fully appreciate the social difficulty and costs helpers face when saying 'no'.

1:32:10supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

People feel happier and better when agreeing to help someone than the person asking for help predicts they will feel.

"We find in our research that not only are they more willing to agree to the request, they also feel much better when they agree to help you than you would guess. You ask somebody to take a picture of you down along the boardwalk on in LA, right? You think you're you're you're you're pestering somebody, right? You're being a burden to them. They're usually happier to have helped you because we are happier when we are being kind to other people." (said at 1:32:10)

A series of laboratory experiments, recalled experiences, and live interaction studies (total N = 2,118) demonstrated that individuals seeking help consistently underestimate how positively helpers feel after being asked and agreeing to help, and overestimate how inconvenienced helpers will feel.

1:52:14unverifiedvery lowHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome face a substantially higher risk of miscarriage or stillbirth.

"So, children with Down syndrome face a much higher risk of miscarriage or stillbirth. 6 months was a stillbirth." (said at 1:52:14)

No relevant studies evaluating the rate or risk of spontaneous miscarriage or stillbirth in fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome were fetched within the search limit. Consequently, the claim could not be verified directly against retrieved abstracts, though this does not prove the claim is false.

2:16:55supportedmoderateHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

High deer population densities cause significant ecological damage to woodlands in the Midwestern United States.

"Turns out the deer are kind of a threat. There's a lot of ecological damage that they that they cause in the woodlands in the Midwest because there's just a lot of them." (said at 2:16:55)

Field experiments and long-term observational studies in the Midwestern United States demonstrate that high white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) herbivory causes substantial ecological disruption to woodland understories. Deer browsing markedly reduces tree seedling survival and regeneration, decreases shrub cover and forb abundance, and shifts plant community composition toward unpalatable or browse-tolerant taxa while facilitating exotic plant invasions.

2:22:35supportedhighHow to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

Experimental psychological research demonstrates that people are systematically overly pessimistic about how positively others will respond to social engagement.

"In our research, when I think about how you how you apply the stuff we're learning in our experiments of people being overly pessimistic about how others will respond to them, the way you apply that in your own life isn't that you learn how to behave differently from learning this is that you take that and you try to develop a little habit that then makes that something you do routinely over and over again." (said at 2:22:35)

A extensive body of experimental psychological research (notably led by Nicholas Epley, Amit Kumar, and colleagues) demonstrates that people exhibit systematic forecasting errors regarding social interactions. Across multiple behavioral experiments and field studies, people consistently underestimate how positively others will respond to social engagement—such as initiating conversations with strangers, expressing gratitude, providing social support, or asking for help—while overestimating potential awkwardness and negative evaluations.

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