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Hello, my name is Vanessa,

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and I am a recovering awkward person.

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(Laughter)

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This is me at the peak of
what I like to call my plaid vest phase.

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(Laughter)

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Luckily, my years of social awkwardness

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led me to a fascinating career
trying to figure out how people work.

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So, what I didn't realize
is that many years ago,

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I would do an experiment

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that led me right on this stage
in front of you here today.

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My lab researchers and I
were curious about TED Talks.

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We wanted to know,

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Why do some TED Talks go viral 
and others don't?

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So we embarked on a huge experiment.

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We analyzed thousands of hours 
of TED Talks, looking for patterns.

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I wasn't sure if we would find anything,

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so we were analyzing body language,
hand gestures, vocal variety -

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we even looked at outfit choices,

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which made today 
particularly pressure-filled.

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And very quickly, there was a pattern
in the data that made me curious.

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And after we coded 
more and more TED Talks,

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we realized there was a pattern.

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Now, before I tell you what that is,
I have a personal question for you,

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which is, When you see someone,

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what part of the body
do you look at first?

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You can just call it out.

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What do you look at first 
when you see someone?

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Face, eyes - so most people -

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shoes.

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(Laughter)

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They are very high.

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So most people
say eyes, face or mouth.

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But actually, when we first see someone,

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the first place we look is the hands.

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And this is left over 
from our caveman days.

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Because if we were approached
by a stranger caveman,

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the first place we looked was the hands

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to see if they were
carrying a rock or a spear.

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We wanted to know if we were safe,
if they were friend or foe.

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Now, this actually still remains
from caveman days,

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and when we can't see someone's hands,

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something interesting happens.

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So I just did something 
a little mean to your brain.

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You should start to feel 
just a little bit uncomfortable.

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The reason for that is 
when you can't see my hands,

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you wonder, What is she doing back there?

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(Laughter)

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And then, the longer I leave
my hands behind my back,

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you get more and more distracted
because you can't see them.

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And eventually,
your brain is just screaming,

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Can't she just bring her hands off
from behind her back?

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And the moment I bring them back out,

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it feels so much better.

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And this because our brain knows
that if we can't see hands,

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we can't see intention.

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And we found as we compared
the most viewed TED Talks

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side by side with
the least viewed TED Talks,

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we found a pattern with hand gestures.

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Specifically, on average,

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the most popular TED talkers
use an average of 465 hand gestures

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in 18 minutes.

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Yes, we painstakingly counted
every single one.

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I have 465 prepared for you today.

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(Laughter)

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And the least popular TED talkers 
use an average of 272 hand gestures.

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Almost half.

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What's happening here?

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So when TED speakers take the stage,

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they are showing you first
"Friend, friend, friend."

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You'll notice when I walked
onto the stage, I waved.

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I was saying, "Friend,
friend, friend, friend."

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(Laughter)

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And the other thing that TED speakers do -

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see if this looks familiar.

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So they come onto the red dot,
and they do something like this.

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"Today, I want to talk to you
about a big idea."

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(Laughter)

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"I am going to break it down 
into three different areas

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that are going to change your life."

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Right?

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(Applause)

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So the most viral TED talkers

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seemed to sit in the same way
with these hand gestures

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because what they are doing is
they are showing you,

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"I know my content so well

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that I can speak to you 
on two different tracks.

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I can speak to you with my words,

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but I can also explain
my concepts with my hands."

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And this way, they underline 
their concepts with their words.

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For example, if I were to say,

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"Today, I have a really big idea."

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(Laughter)

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"It's huge."

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(Laughter)

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You laugh, and you are like, "Vanessa,
it's so small, it's not very big,"

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and that is because your brain gives
12.5 times more weight to hand gestures.

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So today I have a really, really big idea,

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and I am going to explain it 
to you in three different ways.

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My big idea is that we are contagious.

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Specifically, as humans,

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we are constantly sending
and decoding body language signals.

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We also do this emotionally
and chemically.

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To explain this,

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I have a rather disgusting
but very fascinating study.

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So, in this study,
researchers collected sweat pads

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from people who ran on a treadmill.

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Then they collected sweat pads

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from skydivers
on their first time skydive.

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Two very different kinds of sweat.

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Here is the disgusting part.

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Then they had poor 
unsuspecting participants -

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(Laughter)

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I know -

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they had unsuspecting 
participants in the lab

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(sniffing)

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smell these sweat pads
while they were in an fMRI machine.

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Here's where it gets interesting.

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Even though the participants
had no idea what they were smelling,

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the ones that smelled 
the skydiving sweat pads

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had their fear response 
in their brain activated.

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In other words, they caught the fear.

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This means that 
our emotions are contagious.

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Our fear is contagious.
Our confidence is contagious.

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And this begs the big question:

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If our emotions are contagious,

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how do we make sure that we are
infecting people with the right ones?

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So, I believe that we can be
contagious in three different ways.

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The first one is non-verbally.

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Now, to test this idea,

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I did a very simple experiment 
in the streets of Portland, Oregon.

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What I did is I stood in the street,

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and I looked up at nothing.

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And I wanted to see

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if people would catch
or mirror my non-verbal.

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So you can see in this video,

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I stand in the streets looking at nothing,

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and slowly one by one ...

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(Laughter)

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I infect people walking by.

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(Laughter)

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(Laughter)

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we begin to gather a crowd.

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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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And slowly ...

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This poor woman, you know -
she was standing there with me,

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and we are standing there,
and remember, we're looking at nothing.

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And we are standing, and I am going,
How long are we going to stand here?

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Who's going to break first?

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And after about 40 seconds,

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we are looking,
and she leans over and says,

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"Is he going to jump?"

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(Laughter)

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And this experience taught me 
that we catch emotions,

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and then we create rationales
for why we've caught that emotion.

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Now, this is actually a good thing.

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As humans, this keeps us safe.

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Dr. Paul Ekman has studied something
called the microexpression.

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It's a universal facial expression,

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and he's discovered
there are seven of them.

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Across genders and races,

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we all make the same expression
when we feel an intense emotion.

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This is the fear microexpression.

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So, fear is a really important emotion

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because we want to catch it
from someone else

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to warn us if something
is about to go wrong.

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And this facial expression 
also keeps us safe.

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So imagine for a second
that you're walking and you see a snake.

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Your eyelids and your eyebrows
jump out of the way

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so you can take in as much 
of the environment as possible.

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"Is there another snake? 
What is my escape route?"

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Then your mouth - "huh" - opens

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so you can take in oxygen in case 
you have to fight, yell for help, or flee.

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We make this face before 
we consciously realize we've seen a snake.

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Now, what's interesting about it

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is you should be starting
to feel a little bit anxious.

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That's because when we
see other people have fear -

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If we saw this face in the subway,

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we would be like,
What's wrong? What's going on?

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Because it keeps us safe.

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So I want you to try it with me.

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Open your eyes as wide as possible.

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Raise your eyebrows up. Very good.

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Now, take in a short breath.

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(Gasp)

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Perfect.

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Do you feel anxious?

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What's interesting 
about facial expressions

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is they cause our emotions.

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So not only do our emotions
cause our face,

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but our face also causes our emotions.

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It's called the facial
feedback hypothesis.

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So when we see someone with this face,
we catch their emotion,

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and then we are ready to fight, 
flee, or yell for help.

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Luckily, this also works
with positive emotions.

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So one of the faces behind me
is a real happiness microexpression,

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and one of them is fake.

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(Laughter)

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So the real happiness microexpression
is when the smile reaches all the way up

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into these upper crow's feet muscles,
those upper cheek muscles.

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And this is really important

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because, you know,
when you tell a frenemy good news,

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(Laughter)

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and they say they are happy for you,
but you know they are not really.

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It looks like this -
"Oh yeah, I am so happy for you."

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(Laughter)

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So try the fake expression for me first.

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Just try this fake smile, 
only on the bottom half of the face.

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You can even go, "Uh, uh."

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It doesn't feel so good, right?

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It feels inauthentic.

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Now, go all the way up into your eyes.


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So smile all the way up 
to the upper cheek muscles.

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Ah, that one should feel
so much better.

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What is interesting
about this facial expression

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is it causes our own happiness.

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And we also catch it when we see it.

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Researchers of the University of Finland
looked at these two facial expressions.

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They had participants look at photos

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of people with the real happiness 
and fake happiness.

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They found that
when they showed participants

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pictures of the real happiness smile,

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those emotions caught -

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they caught the positive emotions,

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and they themselves
had a positive mood change.

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But when they looked at the face 
with the fake happiness smile,

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they caught nothing.

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In other words, if we show up to events
that we are ambivalent about,

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interact with people 
that we don't really like,

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we become less memorable.

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This doesn't just happen in person,
it also happens on the phone.

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So I worked with
a lot of different clients,

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corporate clients who are
on the phone all the time.

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They said "Vanessa,

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I get being happy in person,
but how about on the phone?"

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So we decided to do an experiment.

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We had participants in our lab
record different versions of their hello,

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the first impression on the phone.

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We wanted to know

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if people could hear
happiness, sadness or anger.

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So we had people record
different versions of their hello

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with happiness, sadness, anger
and while power posing.

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We wanted to see 
if they would sound different.

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So I wanna play you
two different versions of hello

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and see if you can guess
which one is the happy hello.

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Are you ready? Alright.

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Same person. Here is a).

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(Sound recording) Hello.

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Here is b).

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(Sound recording) Hello.

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00:11:35,543 --> 00:11:37,662
How many people
think a) is the happy hello?

252
00:11:37,662 --> 00:11:39,545
How many think b) is the happy hello?

253
00:11:39,646 --> 00:11:40,672
Very good.

254
00:11:40,765 --> 00:11:43,277
We can hear this difference. 


255
00:11:43,281 --> 00:11:45,333
We can hear this microexpression.

256
00:11:45,333 --> 00:11:48,942
Now, I thought this was interesting,
but I wanted to take it a step further.

257
00:11:48,955 --> 00:11:51,087
So we devised a second part
of our experiment

258
00:11:51,091 --> 00:11:55,283
where we had participants in our lab
listen to these recordings

259
00:11:55,283 --> 00:11:57,947
and rate that person on likeability.

260
00:11:58,896 --> 00:12:00,010
We wanted to see

261
00:12:00,010 --> 00:12:02,870
if the happiness microexpressions
or the anger microexpressions

262
00:12:02,870 --> 00:12:05,065
or the power posing expression did better.

263
00:12:05,346 --> 00:12:06,372
Here's what happened.

264
00:12:06,393 --> 00:12:08,023
After we asked people,

265
00:12:08,637 --> 00:12:10,639
"I do like this person a lot,"

266
00:12:10,902 --> 00:12:14,007
"I like this person a little,"
or "I do not like this person,"

267
00:12:14,176 --> 00:12:16,229
we found that the
happiness microexpressions

268
00:12:16,229 --> 00:12:18,699
across all trials for both men and women,

269
00:12:18,869 --> 00:12:20,959
they became more likeable.

270
00:12:21,327 --> 00:12:25,639
Whereas the same persons who baited
the anger or sadness microexpression

271
00:12:25,639 --> 00:12:27,119
were less likeable.

272
00:12:27,779 --> 00:12:32,302
This is the happy side effect 
of having your confidence be contagious.

273
00:12:32,531 --> 00:12:35,542
Not only do you infect someone else
with that happiness,

274
00:12:35,542 --> 00:12:37,992
you also become more likeable.

275
00:12:38,456 --> 00:12:39,791
We talked about non verbal,

276
00:12:39,792 --> 00:12:42,578
and I have to talk about
what comes after the hello.

277
00:12:42,671 --> 00:12:45,731
How do we infect confidence verbally?

278
00:12:46,394 --> 00:12:48,727
So in this study
we did in Portland, Oregon,

279
00:12:48,727 --> 00:12:51,437
we took 500 Speed-Networkers,

280
00:12:51,774 --> 00:12:53,817
and we asked each
of these Speed-Networkers

281
00:12:53,817 --> 00:12:56,297
to go through a
conversation starter round -

282
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eight of these rounds.

283
00:12:57,751 --> 00:12:59,983
So we assigned each participant 


284
00:12:59,983 --> 00:13:02,213
a conversation starter
to have with a stranger.

285
00:13:02,483 --> 00:13:05,629
Then we set up cameras
in all corners of the room,

286
00:13:05,629 --> 00:13:09,299
and we analyzed each
of these speed rounds for patterns.

287
00:13:09,461 --> 00:13:11,801
We were looking
for body language patterns:

288
00:13:11,931 --> 00:13:14,971
leans, nods, laughs, 
smiles, confidence.

289
00:13:15,033 --> 00:13:17,623
We were also looking 
for volume differences.

290
00:13:17,730 --> 00:13:20,870
In a really good conversation, 
usually the volume goes up.

291
00:13:20,874 --> 00:13:22,688
In a really awkward bad conversation,

292
00:13:22,688 --> 00:13:24,988
there are lots of silences,
the volume goes down.

293
00:13:25,186 --> 00:13:29,846
And we also asked each of the participants
to rate the conversation starters.

294
00:13:30,107 --> 00:13:34,406
We wanted to know which ones produced
the highest quality of conversation.

295
00:13:35,382 --> 00:13:39,069
What we found was that
the conversation starters that worked

296
00:13:39,455 --> 00:13:42,255
centered on this little chemical
called dopamine.

297
00:13:42,613 --> 00:13:46,641
So dopamine is the neurotransmitter 
that we produce when we feel pleasure

298
00:13:46,642 --> 00:13:48,542
or when we get a reward.

299
00:13:48,706 --> 00:13:50,991
And I noticed that most of our chit-chat


300
00:13:50,991 --> 00:13:53,821
that we have at parties
or networking events is the same.

301
00:13:53,857 --> 00:13:55,087
It sounds like this.

302
00:13:55,920 --> 00:13:57,890
"So, what do you do?"


303
00:13:59,197 --> 00:14:00,747
"Where are you from?"

304
00:14:01,195 --> 00:14:02,905
"Live around here? Huh?"

305
00:14:03,101 --> 00:14:05,116
"Well, I am going to go get
some more wine.

306
00:14:05,116 --> 00:14:06,631
It was great talking to you."

307
00:14:07,528 --> 00:14:10,578
Those conversations happened
over and over again.

308
00:14:10,662 --> 00:14:13,362
It was almost as if 
they were socially scripted.

309
00:14:13,826 --> 00:14:15,666
My brain was on autopilot.

310
00:14:15,742 --> 00:14:16,747
What we found was

311
00:14:16,747 --> 00:14:18,972
is that the worst ranked
conversation starters,

312
00:14:18,979 --> 00:14:20,939
the ones that got the lowest ratings,

313
00:14:20,949 --> 00:14:23,019
the ones that produced the lowest volume,


314
00:14:23,036 --> 00:14:27,786
the ones that got the most leans away, 
worst head nods, worst microexpressions,

315
00:14:28,074 --> 00:14:30,514
those were the ones that we use the most.

316
00:14:30,993 --> 00:14:32,795
"What do you do?"
"How are you?"

317
00:14:32,795 --> 00:14:34,095
"Where are you from?"

318
00:14:34,095 --> 00:14:37,345
from a physiological perspective, 
have no effect.

319
00:14:37,636 --> 00:14:38,766
No pleasure.

320
00:14:39,358 --> 00:14:42,117
So what we tried was to find
conversation starters

321
00:14:42,117 --> 00:14:45,711
that could spark or create
some kind of excitement.

322
00:14:45,918 --> 00:14:48,618
Can you verbally trigger dopamine?

323
00:14:48,990 --> 00:14:51,296
We found that the brain
is really interesting.

324
00:14:51,614 --> 00:14:55,503
If you ask somebody a question,
it tends to look for hits and not misses.

325
00:14:55,693 --> 00:14:57,749
What I mean by this
is if you ask someone

326
00:14:58,110 --> 00:14:59,404
"Been busy lately?"

327
00:15:00,071 --> 00:15:03,027
their brain immediately looks 
for all the hits of "been busy."

328
00:15:03,027 --> 00:15:05,503
They think about negative things
that have happened -

329
00:15:05,503 --> 00:15:08,607
the stress, the busyness, 
all the bad things in their life.

330
00:15:08,767 --> 00:15:12,051
Whereas if you ask someone,
"Working on any exciting recently?"

331
00:15:12,727 --> 00:15:16,517
their brain immediately begins to look
for all the hits of "excitement."

332
00:15:16,965 --> 00:15:19,464
It starts to think about 
the good and happy things,

333
00:15:19,464 --> 00:15:21,974
all the excitement
that's going on in their own life.

334
00:15:21,974 --> 00:15:23,466
And that does two things.

335
00:15:23,466 --> 00:15:26,041
One, it creates pleasure for them.

336
00:15:26,436 --> 00:15:27,863
You are literally asking them

337
00:15:27,863 --> 00:15:30,684
to borrow excitement 
from other places in their life

338
00:15:30,684 --> 00:15:32,824
and bring it to the situation
that you're in.

339
00:15:33,202 --> 00:15:36,332
And the other thing that it does
is it makes you more memorable.

340
00:15:36,612 --> 00:15:39,025
Dr. John Medina found that dopamine,

341
00:15:39,025 --> 00:15:41,139
when it's triggered
in a verbal conversation,

342
00:15:41,139 --> 00:15:43,199
makes a mental post-it note.

343
00:15:43,645 --> 00:15:47,810
In other words, when you ask someone else
to think of what's exciting in their life,

344
00:15:47,976 --> 00:15:51,669
the happy side effect
is that you become more memorable.

345
00:15:52,177 --> 00:15:54,345
So here's my big challenge for today.

346
00:15:55,223 --> 00:15:58,093
Instead of using the typical

347
00:15:58,093 --> 00:15:59,195
"What do you do?"

348
00:15:59,195 --> 00:16:01,109
"How are you?" and "Where are you from?"

349
00:16:01,111 --> 00:16:04,114
let's banish those 
conversation starters forever,

350
00:16:04,114 --> 00:16:08,262
and let's try ones that ask the brain
to look for hits of excitement.

351
00:16:08,732 --> 00:16:11,922
Try "Working on anything
exciting these days?"

352
00:16:11,922 --> 00:16:13,718
"Have any vacations coming up?"

353
00:16:13,796 --> 00:16:15,802
"Anything good happen today?"

354
00:16:15,909 --> 00:16:20,612
I think this is the greatest gift
we can give our fellow human beings.

355
00:16:20,685 --> 00:16:23,825
We are asking them to flip into optimism.

356
00:16:24,121 --> 00:16:28,731
We are triggering dopamine and excitement
and getting them off autopilot.

357
00:16:29,662 --> 00:16:32,841
The last way that we
are contagious is emotionally.

358
00:16:33,234 --> 00:16:35,619
So, this study is one of my favorites.

359
00:16:35,901 --> 00:16:39,682
In this experiment, they asked
students to sing the song

360
00:16:39,702 --> 00:16:41,372
"Don't Stop Believing"

361
00:16:41,722 --> 00:16:43,505
into an accuracy software.

362
00:16:43,505 --> 00:16:45,509
Now, this a very nerve-racking experiment.

363
00:16:45,509 --> 00:16:48,538
They are rated on vocal tone, words,


364
00:16:48,538 --> 00:16:50,288
and they are given no preparation.

365
00:16:50,288 --> 00:16:52,871
But they did three different trials
of this experiment.

366
00:16:52,871 --> 00:16:55,204
First, they had them
just walk into the room

367
00:16:55,204 --> 00:16:57,144
and sing into an accuracy software.

368
00:16:57,174 --> 00:17:00,752
The second group got into the room
and had to say out loud,

369
00:17:01,052 --> 00:17:02,382
"I'm nervous."

370
00:17:02,572 --> 00:17:05,050
And the last group had to walk
into the room and say,

371
00:17:05,070 --> 00:17:06,740
"I'm excited."

372
00:17:07,260 --> 00:17:10,341
They found with this simple reframe

373
00:17:10,974 --> 00:17:13,665
the nervous group got 53% accuracy,

374
00:17:14,025 --> 00:17:15,918
the control group got 69%,

375
00:17:15,918 --> 00:17:20,486
but the "I'm excited" group 
got 80% accuracy.

376
00:17:21,089 --> 00:17:22,086
Why?

377
00:17:22,086 --> 00:17:25,685
Anxiety and excitement 
are very similar emotions.

378
00:17:25,855 --> 00:17:28,005
The only difference is mindset.

379
00:17:28,966 --> 00:17:30,701
So my challenge for you today

380
00:17:30,703 --> 00:17:33,785
is to think about
how you want to infect people.

381
00:17:34,350 --> 00:17:37,638
When you want harness incitement
or trigger excitement:

382
00:17:37,638 --> 00:17:40,541
ask dopamine-worthy conversation starters;

383
00:17:40,541 --> 00:17:42,324
use more hand gestures;

384
00:17:42,324 --> 00:17:43,966
make authentic smiles;

385
00:17:43,966 --> 00:17:46,476
and never pick up the phone in a bad mood.

386
00:17:46,476 --> 00:17:47,903
(Laughter)

387
00:17:47,903 --> 00:17:51,382
And the last thing I want to do
is I want to end on a note of excitement.

388
00:17:51,382 --> 00:17:53,359
I want to make you really infectious.

389
00:17:53,359 --> 00:17:55,367
So what we are going to do
to end this talk

390
00:17:55,367 --> 00:17:58,279
is on the count of three,
with all the energy you can muster,

391
00:17:58,279 --> 00:18:01,169
I want you to yell out "I'm excited."

392
00:18:01,261 --> 00:18:02,321
Are you ready?

393
00:18:02,401 --> 00:18:03,990
One, two, three!

394
00:18:04,050 --> 00:18:06,596
"I'm excited."

395
00:18:06,596 --> 00:18:07,841
You rocked it.

396
00:18:07,841 --> 00:18:11,751
(Applause)