Supercommunicators | 2. How to Communicate Without Words
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I heard about the Big Bang Theory and I told my agent, I was like, just please get me a meeting. And I met the showrunner and I told him, you know, I love nerds and I am so passionate about this. This is Dave Goetsch. And these days he's a very successful TV writer. But two decades ago, when he was essentially completely unknown, he was trying to get a job on a sitcom about a group of characters who were very, very awkward.

So, it was helpful that he was a little awkward himself. And then I told the story that when I was in college, I had a costume party dressed up as the Doppler effect. And so I had, I was like an all black and I had these white stripes that got of tape that got farther apart and they ran around the room going, wow. And, and that they were like, okay, you're a nerd.

Whether it was because of this deep nerdiness or because he was, you know, a good writer, Dave got the job. And he became one of the first hires on a brand new sitcom named The Big Bang Theory. And if you've heard of The Big Bang Theory, and it's almost certain you have unless you haven't watched TV in the last two decades, then you know that it is one of the most popular sitcoms in history.

Over its 12-year run, The Big Bang Theory earned 55 Emmy nominations. It was one of the longest-running TV shows in history, lasting longer than Cheers, Friends, or even MASH. When the show finally went off the air in 2019, 25 million people tuned in to watch the last episode. But back in the mid-2000s, when Goetsch and the other writers were trying to figure out how to make the show, they confronted this very basic problem.

The show is about a group of physicists and engineers who are constantly befuddled by how to communicate with anyone who's not a scientist. That's what the humor of the show is built on, this basic conversational awkwardness. They're bad at talking to women. They're incapable of expressing their own emotions. They know everything about the birth of the universe or Schrodinger's cat. They have no idea how to deal with their landlord or talk to a cashier at the grocery store or ask someone out on a date.

I was wondering if you had plans for dinner? Uh, you mean dinner tonight? There is an inherent ambiguity in the word "dinner." Technically, it refers to the largest meal of the day whenever it's consumed. So to clarify here, by dinner, I mean supper. - Supper? - Or dinner. But the problem for the show's writers was that sitcoms like this only work if the audience knows what each character is thinking and feeling the second they appear on screen.

It's essential that characters telegraph their emotions, whether they're feeling happy or sad or frustrated or something else. Their emotional expressions cannot be awkward or muddied in the slightest, or else the audience gets confused about what's going on, about what these characters are feeling. And it's essential that the audience knows when characters are connecting with each other or when they're at odds. I think that for me, emotion...

is the center of it all. Every joke, every scene, every episode is a chance for the audience to fall deeper in love with these characters. And that's the goal. But for the people creating the Big Bang Theory, that created this significant problem. Because how do you write a sitcom where it's clear to the audience what each character is thinking and feeling as soon as they walk onto the screen

when the fundamental idea of the show is that these characters are really, really bad at communicating what they're thinking and feeling. Luckily for the writers, there were some social scientists who had looked at problems like this, and they had found some interesting insights.

When we're communicating with someone, what we say, the words that come out of our mouth, sometimes they matter much less than what we communicate non-verbally. It's really interesting, and I think it's the success of the Big Bang Theory, truly, is the ability to understand these characters without them having to say a word. You see the emotions, and you see the pauses, and you see the inflection in their voices, and that's what changes everything, and it's brilliant.

I'm Charles Duhigg, the author of Super Communicators, and this is the second episode in a special series about the science of communication. Today, we're going to examine nonverbal communication: the noises we make, our gestures, the expressions on our faces, and how quickly or slowly we talk. And we're going to explore how these nonverbal habits influence how we connect with other people.

And we'll learn how they helped a room of awkward, nerdy television writers create the most successful sitcom in history. Stay with us. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. Applying for Apple Card is quick and easy. Apply in the Wallet app today and see a credit limit offer in minutes. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card by Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Salt Lake City branch. Member FDIC. Terms and more at applecard.com.

We're back. And before we dive into the Big Bang Theory, we need to talk about what we mean by nonverbal communication. So nonverbal communication is a lot of things. I think what a lot of people think about is body language. This is Dustin York, a professor at Maryville University who studies nonverbal communication. But it's also things like time. If you're late for a meeting, that's nonverbal communication. That one friend that has the huge office furniture,

Dustin got into thinking about nonverbal communication in a kind of unusual way while he was working in politics.

I worked on the 2008 Obama campaign, and that was the first time I got to see some of that media training in the nonverbals, like when to take your blazer off, lighting on the stages of auditoriums, those kind of things, and fell in love with it. I thought it was so cool. I would just stay up at night and read articles. That's where I fell in love. So when I watch a debate on TV or when I see a CEO come out and speak, there's actually all this stuff going on that I'm not even aware of to shape how I view that.

Charles, I'll show you all behind the scenes. So like, not the most glamorous job, but I would have to go in auditoriums, up a ladder, and change light bulbs because certain light bulbs would make your skin look the healthiest.

So there'd be a box for each politician. I'd be up there in like these, you know, university, dirty, dusty rafters changing this. Or I'll give you this one. When a politician or CEO comes out, right, they will tend to pick out two or three people in the audience and they point like, hey, how are you? And wave.

They have no idea who those people are. They've never met those people ever, but they're trained because they make it seem more personal. So all these little tricks help increase credibility, trust, likability across the board. Dustin eventually left politics and he went back to school to work on a PhD in communications. And he kept wondering why all these nonverbal tactics were so powerful. When we think of language, we usually think about the words we say, right?

But this was an aspect of communication that was essentially word-free. It's actually something Dustin had started wondering about when he was in high school. Like, I was a people watcher. Like, I loved people watching. Like, at the mall, I liked people watching. At the restaurants, I was just fascinated by why do some people come in and people gravitate toward them? Probably because I wanted to be cool and, you know, girls to like me.

But at the time, it was just like, how are these people figuring this out? It's kind of an interesting question because I think we tend to say it's charisma, right? Like we tend to look at these people and we say they've got riz. But actually, they're not that charismatic. They're not that much more interesting. They're not that much more attractive. There's something about how they present themselves that makes people feel like they can connect with them.

Yeah, absolutely. And here's the secret. There's certain nonverbal tricks to kind of feel like your personality is a warm personality. That comes across as I want to be around that person more. I like that person. They make me feel good. And there's certain cues that you can use to kind of balance that out. As Dustin starts working on his PhD, he begins studying those cues, the almost subconscious ways that people's bodies and their tone of voice affects whether other people want to get to know them.

Like in a meeting, if you're at a table and it's a sales meetings, et cetera, and your hands are underneath the table, okay? Trust, credibility, likability, they all go down. Anytime we see someone's hands, we trust them more. There's an evolutionary protective element here to trust of seeing someone's hands. So just simply sitting at a table with your hands under the table and

All those subconscious triggers start saying, I don't know what it is. There was something weird. I don't know. We didn't connect as well. But no one says, oh, I couldn't see their hands. No one says that, right? It's that subconscious level. Okay, so let's say I'm having a conversation with a stranger, but it's someone that I really want to connect with. It's a new coworker. It's, yeah, and I'm going to put my hands on the table. What do I want to pay attention to that might tell me what they're feeling?

One is look at the shoulders. Okay, so a pro tip if you want to look confident Look at the distance between your earlobe in your shoulder the farther your shoulder is away from your earlobe The more confident you look anything else that I should be paying attention to or looking for one thing you can actually do to cause the other person to warm up right is what's called a three nods and

So you probably know that the bobblehead person that's just constantly bobbing their head at you, that's too much. But three very slow nods of your head

And what's called an eyebrow flash, basically, it's your eyebrows go up, again, for two seconds. Do this once every couple minutes. Don't be a character out of it. But using those two techniques, the three nods, the eyebrow flash, actually causes the other person to feel more confident and speak more. And why is that? Is that because these...

These clues that we send that we're not even aware that we're sending, are they more revealing than what we decide to do in a conversation? 110% yes. As Dustin got deeper and deeper into this research, he found one big lesson that kind of linked together all these different nonverbal cues and findings. There was one kind of nonverbal habit that, more than any other, seemed to help people feel connected to each other.

When people would mirror each other, when they matched their expressions or their gestures or their posture or tone of voice, as long as it was done in a genuine way, it made everyone in a conversation feel like they were in sync, like they were really hearing each other, like they were connecting. So I'll give you an example. If you're

You're buying a new car. You go to the car lot. You're talking to the salesperson and you lean on the car, right? And wait a couple seconds and that salesperson, if they're trained, will also lean on the car, right? So they sort of mirror your nonverbals. That's not comically, so they're not just mining what you're doing. It's wait some time. If you cross your legs, the other person, here's why it's important. This new stranger, if they look similar to me, I trust you more. You're part of my quote unquote tribe.

Humans are wired to trust a tribe because we have thousands of years of needing a tribe to survive. So if you look similar to my tribe, then I trust you more. I'm more open to what you have to say. I'm more, you can be more persuasive. And it's worth noting that this instinct Dustin mentions here, trusting people because they're similar to us, it's been proven again and again in experiments. But of course, there's also a downside to it, right?

Because if I get too caught up in the wrong kinds of similarities, the superficial ones, like whether we look the same or live in the same neighborhood, then this instinct can work against me. I might get duped by someone, or I might feed a harmful bias, the kind of tribalism that keeps us apart, or I might come off as untrustworthy. Let me ask, because there's this prejudice about car salesmen, right? That they mirror you, that it's very manipulative, and it can come off as very phony.

Like, where is the line between me showing you I want to connect with you and me showing you that I'm trying to pull one over on you? It comes back to...

Are you using these communication techniques in a genuine nature? I mean, I think a lot of people have created this filter that we can see through BS much easier now. We know when someone's not being genuine. So am I being genuine with this communication? Am I just trying to sell you this car because I'm trying to get my quota for the month so I mirror your language? That's gonna come across. I'm gonna see through that, but

If I want you in a comfortable situation where you make the best decision, that communication is going to look a lot different. And in order to show someone that we're being genuine with them, what's important is mirroring not just what the other person is doing physically or their tone of voice or their expressions, but rather mirroring what they're feeling. We need to show them that we understand if they're happy or upset or something else entirely.

So what I hear you saying, Dustin, is that sometimes when we're mirroring, we're actually doing what the person across from us is doing. We're trying to show that we're part of the same tribe because we act similar. But sometimes when I'm mirroring, I'm not mirroring actually the person I'm talking to or my audience. I'm mirroring what I think is in their head. Is that right? Absolutely. Absolutely.

Researchers have studied this kind of emotional mirroring, and they found that it's kind of a hack our brains have developed to escape the downsides of our tribal instincts. If I can show you that I understand what emotions you're feeling, if I can prove that I'm trying to see the world from your perspective, then you're more likely to feel like I'm being genuine with you, more likely to trust me. And at that moment, it matters a lot less what specific words I use.

Even if I say things that you disagree with, if we're talking about politics for instance, and we're voting for different candidates, as long as we're emotionally aligned, as long as we're mirroring each other's emotional cues, we'll both feel a sense of connection to each other. And it's hard to fake that. We can usually tell when someone isn't being genuinely empathetic. This kind of emotional matching is so powerful that it can help us understand what people are thinking even if we can't hear any of the words coming out of their mouths.

But hey, it's over now, right? Because you can tell them you know they know, and I can go back to knowing absolutely nothing. Unless... No, not unless. This must end now. There's a theory, it's very famous now, the friends theory. So that research was if you muted an episode of Friends, you would know exactly what's happening.

You would know when Joey did something embarrassing and then Monica is getting on to Joey. You may not know every single joke, but you would understand the entire story. So what we're seeing is media is just playing off of society, right? We do this every single day. If your partner, as soon as they come in the door, you understand the vibe, right? You understand there's something wrong, there's something exciting, right?

They're tired, they're stressed. We as humans pick up on those non-verbals. If our entire lives were on mute, we could understand each other. - When we come back, how to take these lessons of non-verbal communication and the lessons from sitcoms and apply them to our own lives. Stay with us.

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Terms and more at applecard.com. So I imagine if you come into the writer's room of The Big Bang Theory on the first day, and this is a show about these scientists. They have trouble communicating with normal people. They have trouble understanding themselves. And yet you have to write scenes that let the audience know exactly what those characters are thinking and feeling, like the second they hit the screen. Is that right? Yeah.

Yeah, that I mean, that's pretty much it. Dave Ketch and the other writers on The Big Bang Theory encountered their biggest problem right away. It had to do with the sitcom's basic premise. There's these two physicists, Sheldon and Leonard, who are very geeky, really socially awkward, and they live together in an apartment. And a new neighbor has moved in across the hall named Penny. And she's this actress who's bubbly and socially graceful. And she's very, very pretty.

So how do you write these two awkward physicists interacting with Penny to show how uncomfortable they are talking to this beautiful woman, but also in a way that the audience knows what everyone is thinking and feeling? You can see the solution they came up with in this scene, the first time that Leonard and Sheldon meet Penny. - New neighbor? - Evidently. - Significant improvement over the old neighbor. - Oh, hi. - Hi. - Hi. - Hi. - Hi.

We don't mean to interrupt. We live across the hall. Oh, that's nice. Oh, no, we don't live together. It's pretty sitcom-y, right? But you know exactly what each character is feeling based on how they say their lines. So can you walk me a little bit through that scene? Because I'm imagining if I was reading it on a piece of paper, the transcript, it would just look like a series of hellos. But that's not what happens. So what is wonderful...

is that you see Penny being sincere and saying hello. And you see Leonard clearly in love and he doesn't want this moment to end. And you have Sheldon who is not clocking any of that and being confused by why this is still going around and he's gonna keep saying hello. And so you have three really clear attitudes.

All the actors are saying the exact same word. Hi, hi, hi, hi. But because each of them are doing it with a different intonation, and most important, because none of those intonations match each other, you, the viewer, you understand what these characters are feeling. You can tell that they aren't connecting with each other, even though they're all saying the exact same word.

And that awkwardness, that lack of connection, that's what makes the scene funny, of course. But it also gives you an insight into who these characters are. You understand what they're feeling, even if they haven't said anything at all about their emotions. You know what they're thinking, even though they're all saying the same word over and over.

Then, a few minutes later, after Leonard and Sheldon leave and they go back to their own apartment, they decide to approach Penny's door again. Should we have invited her for lunch? No, we're going to start season two of Battlestar Galactica. I think we should be good neighbors. Invite her over, make her feel welcome. We'll have a nice meal and chat. Chat? We don't chat, at least not offline. Hi, again. Hi. Hi. Hi. Anyway, um...

We brought home Indian food. And, um, I know that moving can be stressful, and I find that when I'm undergoing stress, that good food and company can have a comforting effect. Oh, you're inviting me over to eat? Uh, yes. Oh, that's so nice. I'd love to. Great. The thing to notice about this scene is something you don't even have to see to understand because you can hear it. But it's not in the words that the characters are using.

In this scene, unlike in the last one, each actor is using the same basic vocal syncopation as each other, the same basic energy and tone of voice. Listen again to the end of that exchange when Leonard, who's usually really nervous and talking fast, when he suddenly slows down to match Penny. Oh, you're inviting me over to eat? Uh, yes. Oh, that's so nice. I'd love to. Great. The actors at that moment are matching each other non-verbally.

And so as the audience, we know that these characters are starting to connect. And this was something that the writers and actors did very deliberately. Jessica Radloff, the senior editor at Glamour magazine, wrote a book about the Bigby, and she talked to almost everyone who worked on the show.

Sometimes something wasn't even written in the script, but the actors would find a way to bring an emotion to life because they recognized it in the moment. Like, okay, I see what you're doing, and I'm going to do the yes and technique, which is what is used in improv to be like, okay, let's take this to the next level. And they did that. And the same tactic can also be used in reverse, such as when the writers and the actors want to show that characters are very much not connecting with each other.

For instance, a few minutes later in that same episode, Penny comes over to Leonard's and Sheldon's apartment to eat with them. And she sits down in Sheldon's special place on the couch. As you listen to this scene, notice how differently Sheldon and Penny are speaking from each other. How different their voices sound. How the actors are purposely refusing to match each other. Um, Penny, that's where I sit. Sit next to me. No, I sit there. There I am.

What's the difference? What's the difference? Here we go. In the winter, that seed is close enough to the radiator to remain warm and yet not so close as to cause perspiration. Just by listening, you know exactly what's going on, right? You know what each character is thinking and feeling. That Sheldon's annoyed and Penny doesn't understand what's happening and Leonard is completely exasperated. And you know all of that, not because of what they're saying to each other. Because on the face of it, they're not really disagreeing with each other.

Rather, you know what they're thinking and feeling because of their tone of voice and the speed at which they speak. There's a basic lesson here for not only writing sitcoms, but for having better conversations in everyday life.

As Destin York pointed out, our brains have evolved to look for similarities. And sometimes that instinct can nudge us to focus on superficial similarities, like do we look alike? And so our subconscious feeds prejudice and a divisive form of tribalism. But there's another way to use this instinct, to make it into a tool for connection. By searching for deeper similarities, like emotions we have in common, we show that we want to connect with each other.

We can show through our gestures or our tone of voice or how quickly or slowly we speak that we're trying to connect with another person by showing that we want to understand how they feel. So show that you're really excited for someone or that you hear their sadness or both of you are kind of amused. When we prove that we want to understand what's going on inside someone else's head, it brings us together. It creates the right kind of tribe.

And we communicate our emotions not with words alone, but through everything that surrounds them. When we allow ourselves to show our emotions and listen for others' feelings, we invite them to trust us, to feel closer, to connect. And that's when we start to really understand the other person. So if someone came to you and they said, "Explain to me what we have learned about nonverbal communication from the Big Bang Theory," what would you say?

I would say we need to lean into it more. These characters allowed themselves to let their emotions breathe and speak. And I think there's something really special in that that is why this show was so damn good. Thank you to Jessica Radloff, Dustin York, and Dave Ketch for their help with this episode.

Jessica's book, if you're interested, is called The Big Bang Theory, the definitive inside story of the epic hit series. And you can read more about nonverbal communication and so many other things in my book, Super Communicators, How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection, which you can find on Amazon or Audible or Best Yet at your local bookstore.

And you can find me at my website charlesduhigg.com, that's D-U-H-I-G-G, or on Substack where I have a newsletter named The Science of Better. Next time on the podcast, how to have the hardest conversations. Whether it's delivering tough feedback or disappointing news, or talking about a topic that itself is pretty hard, like race or religion or politics.

They're conversations that are worth having. And so we'll learn some techniques that make them easier and more successful. If you're enjoying this series, why not share it with a friend? Or better yet, rate and review us. That will help introduce the show to even more people. Super Communicators was produced by Sophie Summergrad and Derek John, who also did the sound design. We had mixing help from Kevin Bendis. Our technical director is Merritt Jacob. Joel Meyer is our supervising producer.

I'm Charles Duhigg. See you next time.