So ... why don't we act like it? Why is loneliness rising? Why are we increasingly entombed in echo chambers? What is preventing us from connecting?
Enter Nick Epley, Professor of Behavioral Science at the
University of Chicago Booth School of Business and one of the world's leading researchers on the psychology of social interaction.
Nick grew up in rural Iowa, lives in Chicago with his family, and has spent his career asking a deceptively simple question: Why do the most social creatures on Earth often choose to be less social than they could be?
Nick is the author of '
Mindwise: Why We Misunderstand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want', and his newest book, '
A Little More Social: How Small Choices Create Unexpected Happiness, Health, and Connection'.
His research spans social cognition, perspective-taking, loneliness, anthropomorphism, and why our judgments about people are so often inaccurate. Nick has been featured in
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and on
NPR. His course at Booth, '
Designing a Good Life', is an ethics course exploring how to build lives that are ethical, successful, and genuinely fulfilling, and it's among the school's most sought-after classes.
