Why starting conversations feels hard

In this reair episode, Eric chats with Juliana Schroeder, Associate Professor in the Management of Organizations at Berkeley Haas. She studies how people think about the minds of other people, and how they are often wrong trying to understand what others are up to. Her work has been discussed in outlets ranging from Vice to The Atlantic and Forbes.

Eric and Juliana review her exciting recent work on “undersociality.” Talking to other people is often meaningful, not just for extraverts, and yet we hesitate to talk to others, making overly pessimistic predictions about how awkward and unpleasant such interactions would be. This leads us to “mistakenly seek solitude.” Juliana discusses what we can do to motivate ourselves to talk to others more, why that is so beneficial, and why she herself struggles to do it.

Links:

Juliana's review paper on undersociality: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1364661322000432?casa_token=KI1Vjeg9NKUAAAAA:aTAEDP2eF1ay3I0rGI74FHNW21s83r_KvXCQMvr5auCxaVnhEah82tbASwjzwfc-68D54q8Kc2E 

Juliana's key empirical paper: https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037/a0037323 

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