SPEAKING.APP

Hello. My name is Vanessa, and I am a recovering awkward person. This is me at the peak of what I like to call my plaid vest phase. Luckily, my years of social awkwardness led me to a fascinating career trying to figure out how people work. A few years ago, my lab and I got curious about TED Talks. Why do some TED Talks go viral and others do not? So we ran a huge experiment. We analyzed thousands of hours of TED Talks looking for patterns in body language, hand gestures, vocal variety, and yes, even outfit choices, which makes today feel particularly pressure-filled. And we did find a pattern. But before I tell you what it is, I have a personal question. When you see someone for the first time, what part of the body do you look at first? Most people say eyes, face, or mouth. But research shows the first place we look is the hands. It is left over from our caveman days. If a stranger approached you, you looked at their hands to see if they were carrying a rock or a spear. In other words, are they safe? Are they friend or foe? That instinct is still in us. When we cannot see someone’s hands, something strange happens in our brain. You start to feel a little uncomfortable. You get distracted. Your brain wants to know their intention. And when we compared the most viewed TED Talks side by side with the least viewed TED Talks, we found a major difference. On average, the most popular TED speakers use about four hundred and sixty-five hand gestures in eighteen minutes. The least popular use about two hundred and seventy-two, almost half. Why? Because gestures are a signal. They are saying, friend, friend, friend. Here is the bigger idea underneath all of this. We are contagious. As humans, we are constantly sending and decoding signals. We do it with our body language. We do it with our words. We do it with our emotions, and even with our chemistry. First, we are contagious nonverbally. This is not just a metaphor. Here is a rather disgusting, but fascinating study. Researchers collected sweat pads from people who ran on a treadmill. Then they collected sweat pads from skydivers on their first skydive. Two very different kinds of sweat. Then they had unsuspecting participants smell those pads while they were in an fMRI machine. The participants had no idea what they were smelling. But the ones who smelled the skydiving sweat had their fear response activated. In other words, they caught the fear. That is what nonverbal contagion looks like. Our emotions are contagious. Our fear is contagious. Our confidence is contagious. I tested this in a very simple way on the streets of Portland, Oregon. I stood on the sidewalk and looked up at nothing. And slowly, one by one, people walking by caught it. They mirrored me. A crowd gathered, all staring at nothing. And after about forty seconds, a woman leaned over and whispered, “Is he gonna jump?” That moment taught me something important. We catch emotions first, and then we build a rationale for why we caught them. This is also why facial expressions matter so much. Dr. Paul Ekman studied what he calls microexpressions, universal facial expressions that show up across genders and cultures. Fear is one of them, and it keeps us safe. Think about what your face does when you see a snake. Your eyelids and eyebrows open wide so you can scan the environment. Your mouth opens so you can take in oxygen in case you need to fight, yell for help, or flee. We make that face before we consciously realize we are afraid. And when we see that face on someone else, we feel it too. Try it with me. Open your eyes as wide as possible. Raise your eyebrows. Take in a sharp breath. You should feel a little anxious. That is because facial expressions do not only reflect emotion. They can create it. It is called the facial feedback hypothesis. The good news is this works with positive emotions too. A real happiness microexpression is when the smile reaches up into the upper cheek muscles, into those crow’s-feet areas around the eyes. A fake smile stays in the bottom half of the face. You can feel the difference. Researchers at the University of Finland showed participants photos of real happiness smiles and fake smiles. When participants saw the real smile, they caught the positive emotion and their mood improved. When they saw the fake smile, they caught nothing. And it is not only in person. It also happens on the phone. In our lab, we recorded different versions of one word, “hello,” with different emotional expressions. People could hear the happiness. Then we had listeners rate likability. The happiness versions were consistently rated as more likable. So when your confidence is contagious, there is a happy side effect. You become more likable too. Second, we are contagious verbally, and we can use words to trigger excitement. We ran a study in Portland, Oregon with five hundred speed networkers. Each person did eight short conversation rounds with strangers. We assigned conversation starters, set up cameras around the room, and analyzed the interactions for patterns like smiles, nods, leans, volume changes, and overall ease. We also asked participants to rate the quality of the conversation starters. What we found was surprising. The worst-rated conversation starters were the ones we use the most. “What do you do?” “How are you?” “Where are you from?” From a physiological perspective, they create almost no pleasure. They keep the brain on autopilot. The best conversation starters centered on dopamine. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter we produce when we anticipate a reward or feel pleasure. So we tested a simple idea. Can you verbally trigger dopamine? Yes. The brain is wired to answer questions by looking for hits and not misses. If you ask someone, “Been busy lately?” their brain searches for evidence of stress and overload. But if you ask, “Working on anything exciting recently?” their brain searches for evidence of excitement. They borrow that positive emotion from their own life and bring it into the conversation with you. It also makes you more memorable. Dr. John Medina found that when dopamine is triggered in conversation, it is like the brain makes a mental Post-it Note. So here is a practical shift. Instead of defaulting to autopilot questions, ask dopamine-worthy questions. “Working on anything exciting these days?” “Have any vacations coming up?” “Anything good happen today?” You are not just making small talk. You are helping someone flip into optimism. Third, we are contagious emotionally, and one of the fastest ways to choose what you spread is to reframe what you are feeling. One of my favorite experiments tested this with students singing “Don’t Stop Believing” into accuracy software. It is nerve-wracking. They are graded on vocal tone and words, with no preparation. There were three trials. One group walked in and sang. Another group walked in and said out loud, “I’m nervous.” The last group walked in and said, “I’m excited.” The results were striking. The nervous group got fifty-three percent accuracy. The control group got sixty-nine percent. The “I’m excited” group got eighty percent. Why? Anxiety and excitement are very similar emotions. The difference is mindset. When you choose excitement, you change what you broadcast, and other people catch it. So this is my challenge for you. Decide what you want to infect people with. Use nonverbal signals that show intention and warmth. Use real smiles, and remember that even your “hello” carries emotion. Use verbal cues that trigger dopamine, so your conversations pull people off autopilot and into optimism. And when you feel nerves rising, try a simple reframe. Say, “I’m excited,” and let that be what you spread. I want to end on a note of excitement and make this room really infectious. On the count of three, with all the energy you can muster, I want you to yell out, “I’m excited.” Are you ready? One, two, three. I’m excited. You rock, TED.