Adam Grant: Don't Trust Your Gut. Test It.

Adam Grant (0:00)

When you and I are vibing, our brainwaves actually start to synchronize, and so do our heartbeats. The highest sign of chemistry between people is not agreeing with them, it's actually enjoying your disagreements with them. Don't believe anything that can't be verified. That's just a precept of science. But also, don't disbelieve anything that can't be falsified. They're a narcissist, a Machiavellian, or a psychopath.

Brian Keating (0:22)

Check.

Adam Grant (0:22)

I'm not qualified to diagnose you, Brian.

Brian Keating (0:24)

Morton's Adam Grant runs the experiment on why some people click and others clash. At the end, he tells me why my somewhat snarky critic of his newest study has his team talking about in a follow-up. I want to start off, because this book is a stealth physics book. I have a feeling, Adam, you're a deeply closeted physicist, because this book brings up one of physicists' favorite topics, vibrations. Let me give you some quotes, okay? Not all of these appear in the book, but some do.

Max Planck, the originator of quantum theory.

All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force, which brings the particle of an atom to vibration. Okay, that's number one. Richard Feynman, our hero, right? Light is waves in electric field. We represent it as a vibration. So this is a big deal, a big field, vibration is. I used to use this as the ending of my podcast. I said, what is the most succinct sentence that describes the most information? And I got that from Feynman, and he said that everything is a vibration, little particles in perpetual motion. Okay, that's Feynman. Michio Kaku, another podcaster, the highest profession, right? Podcasting professors, there aren't many of us, Adam. According to string theory, if we could magnify a point particle, we might see vibrating strings. Brian Green says the same thing. And then finally, of course, there is Tesla. If you want to find the secrets to the universe, Adam, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.

What does vibration mean to you?

Adam Grant (1:51)

I had to cut out a lot of physics metaphors from this book for the average reader to find it hopefully interesting. But I think people throw around this word vibe, and they say, it's a vibe or I like her vibe. And what they're overlooking is that a vibe doesn't just sit there. It's not just dormant in a place or a person. It comes alive in our interactions.

So when I think about a vibe, I think about a high quality connection between people. And I think about it happening in ways that neuroscientists can actually measure in the body and the brain. When you and I are vibing, our brainwaves actually start to synchronize, and so do our heartbeats.

And so there is a physiological trace. And I don't think we should find that surprising, right? We are literally vibrating on the same energy frequency. But I think when people hear vibe, they start to think of something that's a little bit hippie or woo woo. And they don't realize, no, no, no, this is real. It's observable.

Brian Keating (2:48)

There's so many physics quads you left out, including one from my favorite Southern Californians. I'm picking up good vibrations. She's giving me excitation. And then, of course, Marky Mark, feel it, feel it, good vibrations. You know, there's always this danger of like woo woo, you know, and how do you avoid that woo? You know, Patina, you're a rigorous academician, scientist and intellectual.

How did you avoid that temptation to fall into the trap that Tesla and other people have so easily slipped into?

Adam Grant (3:17)

I try to think about this in two ways. One is, I hope I've built a reputation for being an evidence-based social scientist. And I hope, you know, this is, I think, my seventh book. I hope by now anybody who comes to a book of mine knows that if anything, they're going to complain that there were too many studies cited, there are too many meta-analyses, there are too many randomized controlled experiments and longitudinal studies, and I didn't relegate enough of them to the footnotes or references. And I will always prefer to air on that side as opposed to the other.

I think secondly, I think the part of the fun of being academic is to try to elicit the same enthusiasm in readers and listeners that we do in the classroom when students are really sitting there.

And I know that for me, my favorite moments as a student were when a professor said, hey, here's a concept that you have talked about in your everyday life that you've experienced. Let me give you some data for it. Let me help you use the scientific method to try to understand it. And so that's really what I sat down to do with Vibe. I wanted to try to figure out, what do we know about how to spark, strengthen, sustain, and scale connections between people and eventually into groups and communities? And the good news is there's now about a century of evidence on how to do that more effectively. Starting point is always to say, you know, what findings have been replicated independently and transparently and cumulated ideally in a meta-analysis. I rely on those where I can. When we don't have that, let's try to look at the best individual studies and say, what do they teach us about how we can build more durable connections?