Maya Rossignac-Milon 0:00 In Spain. No, no, no, I'm American and French. I grew up French, yeah, okay, yeah, my parents, my parents were both French, but I was born and raised in the US. Tim Houlihan 0:10 Oh, you were, Oh, fantastic. Where did you grow up? Where's home? Maya Rossignac-Milon 0:15 Originally, New York and then Atlanta for most of my childhood. And then I circled back to New York for grad school? Yeah. Tim Houlihan 0:22 Well, you had a lot of years at Columbia. Holy cow, yeah, Maya Rossignac-Milon 0:25 I did almost 10 years. Tim Houlihan 0:27 Yeah, that's like, that's, I mean, it's a lot of degrees and a lot of a lot of years at one university. Maya Rossignac-Milon 0:35 Yeah, yeah. It was interesting that a shift from the from the psych department to the business school, because they do feel like different institutions entirely. Tim Houlihan 0:44 Yeah, for a lot of years, I worked with Ron kivitz in the, I don't know if you know Ron, no, in the r a n kibitz. He's an economist by by training. I think he, I think he got his PhD from Stanford, but he was at Columbia Business School for a long time and and like, he looks at the world so very differently from and Sandra Motts, I think Sandra Mott says at the business school as well. Maya Rossignac-Milon 1:12 Yeah, that's great. Yeah, yeah. She and I have a bunch of projects together. She was basically like my postdoc advisor. Tim Houlihan 1:18 Oh, really, oh yeah. She's just fantastic Maya Rossignac-Milon 1:21 Absolutely, so much. Yeah, she's a role model in so many ways. Tim Houlihan 1:26 Yeah, and anyway, so, but like, they just look at the world so very differently from sort of the rest of Columbia. I've known people in linguistics and and, of course, the psychology, yeah, the, I guess that's to some degree. It's, I guess it's true at just about any university, but I don't know, like, Carnegie Mellon has done a great job of, like their social and Decision Sciences group is all the super interdisciplinary stuff. Maya Rossignac-Milon 1:55 You know? Yeah, it's really integrated, yeah, very integrated. Tim Houlihan 1:59 Yeah. It really kind of breaks things down anyway. Okay, so much for that. Thanks for taking time. And we you've got until the top of the hour. Is that right? Yeah, I can go a little, yeah, a couple, okay, if we, if we go a little longer, that'd be okay, yeah, definitely Maya Rossignac-Milon 2:18 working at 530 so that's an hour and Tim Houlihan 2:23 a half that's when it gets real. Yeah, I got that. But thank you so much for sending along that those papers. And you know, certainly we want to talk about shared reality and instrumentality. You know to be instrumental, interested in getting your thoughts about that and and if it's okay, Would would you mind if we kind of focus on the business applications of those totally I mean, a lot of my work, work relationships and that stuff, Maya Rossignac-Milon 2:54 a lot of my ongoing research is in that space. So now that I'm in a sort of more classic management department. A lot of my research is, is about shared reality in the workplace between close colleagues and collaborators. So yeah, definitely happy to talk about that, and also in professional networking contexts. So there's also, I have some research in that space as well. Tim Houlihan 3:19 Excellent, excellent. Okay, so that that's kind of where we'll focus. I'm really glad that they've introduced us so all. Gratitude to the remarkable networker Dave Nussbaum. He is just amazing. And are you working on a book? Are you in Timo? Maya Rossignac-Milon 3:38 I am in Tim Oh, I'm not yet working on a book. I think I'll probably wait until after tenure, or closer to tenure, from a career standpoint, but, yeah, but it's definitely something I would Tim Houlihan 3:55 love to do. We're, we're doing a retrospective on Bob Cialdini, and we've, we've had 11 hours of interviews with Bob, and he, you know, he said he didn't. He said he thought about influence like and writing the book so much before he got tenure, and he just didn't want to take the bet. He said he was just risk averse, even though, at Arizona State University in the in the, you know, late 70s and early 80s, it wouldn't have mattered. Like, yeah, Maya Rossignac-Milon 4:30 Cialdini wouldn't know guys, right? Yeah, he might have ever been anxious about that, but he Tim Houlihan 4:37 chickened out. He totally chickened out. And then it's so it's but I think it's Maya Rossignac-Milon 4:42 not really valued, you know, by universities that much in like a tenure package, it doesn't really contribute much, and it's so much work to do. And so you really pour your your passion into it. And so I'm excited to get to do that one. When the time is right. Tim Houlihan 5:02 Yeah, okay, okay, terrific. Well, good. Then we'll look forward to talking with you. Then to put a placeholder out there. Okay, I do want to, I need to hear you Maya Rossignac-Milon 5:16 pronounce your name. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it's Maya rossignac, like cognac, rassignac, Milan, Tim Houlihan 5:25 okay, you don't give it Milan, you don't, you don't. Maya Rossignac-Milon 5:29 So technically, because both of them are French, so technically, but I usually anglicize it to raw Signac Milan, Tim Houlihan 5:40 raw Signac Milan, exactly. Okay, all right, well, I'm going to try my best and Maya Rossing, Rossing, rossign, yak, like cognac. Rossignac. Milan, Yep, exactly. Maya rossignac, Milan, good chance I'll screw it up, but I care. I really do. And I'm trying Kurt as you I think I mentioned Kurt will not be joining us, yeah, yeah. I miss him all the time. I miss him every, every time this happens, and we we really like doing this together. Maya Rossignac-Milon 6:19 Yeah, it's amazing that the shared reality that you have together is awesome to listen to. Tim Houlihan 6:27 You know, I'm aware of that and I am. Neither of us take it for granted. Yeah, say that. It's pretty great. Okay, so, okay, just some housekeeping. We'll start with a speed round, you know, for some yes, no questions, a couple of simple, silly things, and then maybe something move into more of your research. Then we'll just talk about your research and focus on shared reality and instrumentality. And then we'll end with talking about music. And, yeah, okay, good. You don't have a scared look on your face there. Good. Do you play an instrument? Just out of curiosity? Maya Rossignac-Milon 7:12 I don't, but, um, but my husband is a musician and composer and so and we went really the music scene that we were both a part of in New York. And so I love music, and I'm always Tim Houlihan 7:25 happy to talk about it. What, what instrument does he play? Maya Rossignac-Milon 7:30 He plays a synthesizer. I mean, he also plays the guitar for fun, but, but his his career as a musician was really, is really synthesizer music. Tim Houlihan 7:40 And what kind of genre does Maya Rossignac-Milon 7:43 he most of his career was really techno, not like necessarily clubby techno, Tim Houlihan 7:52 but EDM, like, um, Maya Rossignac-Milon 7:55 yeah, I guess you could call it EDM, but more like experimental than that. Um, um, yeah, like listening techno, I would say. And then lately, he's been making a lot of like avant garde, like music con Kurt, like a lot of you know, soundscapes with crazy field recordings and layered like he calls it for the ear, and it's sort of an auditory experience that you sit down and and have. And so it's been fun to kind of see him change progress through his his music. Tim Houlihan 8:37 Wow. Can you? Can you send me a link? Does he? Does he have Maya Rossignac-Milon 8:41 any of this stuff? Yeah, yeah, I'll do love that. Thank you. Yeah. Tim Houlihan 8:47 Oh, I love that. That would be terrific. Okay, do you have any questions for me before we get started? Maya Rossignac-Milon 8:54 No, I'm just realizing, though, that there's a little bit of a lag, and I had seen that I'm supposed to, like, quit other applications when I was yes, looking at it. So I'm just gonna go ahead and do that really quickly. I have way too much open and I hope that that will help with, Tim Houlihan 9:18 wow, you're the first academic that that's ever happened to any application. Never. That never happened. Maya Rossignac-Milon 9:30 Okay, great, sorry, I should have done this earlier. I'm always caught off guard by a web based, web based videos, this and this, great. So now I'm hoping it should go faster. Tim Houlihan 9:49 Thank you. Okay, I'm not seeing any delay on this end. Okay, okay, awesome. So, but if you start seeing if it gets uncomfortable. All we can start, we can stop and restart. Maya Rossignac-Milon 10:03 Okay, sounds great. Alrighty, okay. Tim Houlihan 10:06 Alrighty, good. Well, then I'm going to give a count in and we'll go ahead and get started with 321, Maya rossignac, Milon, welcome to behavioral grooves. Maya Rossignac-Milon 10:20 Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be talking Tim Houlihan 10:22 to somebody who's living in Barcelona right now. I guess gotta say Maya Rossignac-Milon 10:26 that's yeah, if I can send some sunny warmth, Tim Houlihan 10:32 if you could, it's a it's a rainy and overcast day here in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but Maya Rossignac-Milon 10:40 by that Blizzard from the northeast. Tim Houlihan 10:43 Fortunately, not that bomb cyclone. No, didn't. It didn't affect, at least it didn't affect us directly. I think we got some rain from it, but not, not terrible stuff. So we're gonna start with a couple of speed round questions. It's our famous speed round that never goes as speedy as we want it to but would you start well, this to start with, would you prefer to learn a new language or a new instrument? Maya Rossignac-Milon 11:08 Oh, I would probably pick a new instrument. I think it'd be really fun to learn which instrument. I'm not sure, but it would be really fun to learn. I feel like it's like learning a new language, but in a whole other way, and it would be a cooler experience, I think, than learning another language. Yeah, yeah. Are something like that? Be cool. Tim Houlihan 11:39 Excellent, excellent. Okay, second question, if you were given a house that cost you nothing to own or maintain, where would you want that house to be? Maya Rossignac-Milon 11:50 Ooh, wow. Um, I mean, I don't know if it would be legal, but the Galapagos pretty cool sea lions every day and chill with iguanas and tortoises. Tim Houlihan 12:18 So there might be some legal issues there, hey, this is a dream. So it wouldn't be a huge mansion. It would be respectful of the environment Exactly. Of course you would Yes. Okay, excellent. Third speed round question, is it true that professional relationships have more in common with personal relationships than we usually think? Maya Rossignac-Milon 12:43 Yeah, I think so. I think we tend to approach professional relationships as if, you know, we kind of put on our tie and get really serious about them, when actually there's a lot of commonality between personal and professional relationships. And I think we would do well to inject a little more of the personal and the playful into those professional interactions. Tim Houlihan 13:06 I'm glad you said that, not only because it's based on your research, but I happen to be reading Brie Goffs new book about how to have a fun day. And, yeah, it's called I had a fun day, and it's about work and and it's about sort of making those relationships at work just really good relationships, period. Not like, Oh, it's a work relationship, like it's a relationship Maya Rossignac-Milon 13:31 and yeah, because even if all we care about is our productivity, at the end of the day, those relationships are going to dictate the productivity. Tim Houlihan 13:42 Oh, yes, okay, so we might have to come back to that maybe, of course, we will. We will definitely talk about that less less speed run question, based on your data, can a shared reality with a romantic partner enhance the meeting of work, even if that partner isn't directly involved the job? Maya Rossignac-Milon 14:00 Yeah. So this is research that was led by my former postdoc, Catalina and estrom, who's now just started as a faculty member at di Tella in Argentina. And yeah, we find these really cool effects where people's romantic partners, it can really matter how much shared reality you have with your romantic partner for your work meaning, even if your romantic partner has nothing to do with your work life. Okay, we Tim Houlihan 14:29 are definitely going to come back to that as well, but we have to get to a couple of central themes here, Maya and so let's, let's, let's discuss shared reality to start with. What? Do you mean by shared reality? Yeah. Maya Rossignac-Milon 14:44 So you know that that feeling when you're with a close friend at an event and someone says something that reminds you both of an inside joke and you exchange a knowing glance across the room, or, yeah, yeah, I do yeah. I think we can all resonate, right? Or the feeling when you meet someone for the first time and you really hit it off, and you're just riffing on each other, you're finishing each other's sentences, you're kind of jumping on the same wavelength immediately, and you feel like you click. So those are both instances of that feeling of shared reality, which is essentially the perception of sharing the same thoughts, feelings, beliefs, concerns with another person about something in the world around you, or about the world at large. Yeah. Tim Houlihan 15:32 So this click feels very real to us, but you're saying it is a real thing, right? Maya Rossignac-Milon 15:38 I mean, it's this experience that you can have where you feel like you have merged minds, in some sense, with the other person. And it's real in the sense that you can see it. It's observable. We can code for it when we watch people's interactions. You can tell when people have it, so it's not just in their heads. If that's what you're asking, yeah, Tim Houlihan 15:58 well, that is because, you know, the work that I've done, and Kurt and I have done in behavioral science, there's a lot of stuff that just happens in our minds that that doesn't necessarily get represented on the outside world or is scientifically observable. But in this case, you're saying it really is, this is observable, that the that when we feel like we click with someone, it's, it's noticeable, correct? Maya Rossignac-Milon 16:24 It's noticeable. Yeah, you can, you can hear it. You can see it. When people are interacting with each other, they tend to, well, obviously they agree with each other a lot. And you can see that saying things like, totally, that's so true. They'll say things like I was just about to say that you read my mind. They'll also finish each other's thoughts and really build on what the other person is saying, and even sometimes say things at the same time. Have these moments of conversational synchrony, Tim Houlihan 16:53 and that can play out at work just as much as it can at, you know, your cousin's wedding, right? Maya Rossignac-Milon 17:00 Yeah, absolutely. So these are integral to any conversation, I think, in any context, and that also goes for people you're just meeting for the first time. So we tend to think of it as something that's really essential in our close relationships, but my research also suggests that it's something that's essential in the very first conversations you have with someone you've just met, whether that's in your personal life, at your cousin's wedding, or, you know, at a professional networking event. Tim Houlihan 17:27 Are there ripple effects from this? I think you're implying that there are some ripple effects. Maybe. Could you talk about those for just a bit? What happens when we have that click moment, we have, that we realize that there is a shared reality, and then we start to expand on it. Where do we go from there, or what can come from there? Maya Rossignac-Milon 17:49 Yeah, thanks for asking that. So my research has found that shared reality has important relational effects and also intrapersonal effects. So in terms of interpersonal effects, we see greater closeness, greater support, greater commitments. And then in terms of intra personal so within the individual, we see ripple effects and downstream consequences, like finding your work more meaningful and your life as a whole, more meaningful and ultimately performing better at the end of the day. That's what some of my yet to be published research is showing in the workplace. Tim Houlihan 18:31 So so if I, if I'm understanding this right, and I'm just going to take one particular element of the things that you talked about there. But if I have this shared reality, if I if I have this click moment with other people at work, it could actually impact my ability to achieve some of my goals at work. Is correctly Maya Rossignac-Milon 18:54 finding in my and again, this is not yet peer reviewed, but in my, my most recent data, I found that when people experience a greater sense of shared reality with their colleagues than the relative to how much shared reality they usually experience with them. So these are within person effects when, when they experience more shared reality, they find their work more meaningful, and in turn, they perform better at work as rated by themselves, but also as rated by their teammates, suggesting that they actually are. It's not just a like a self perception effect, but they are actually performing better in those moments when they feel more shared reality than they usually do. Tim Houlihan 19:35 The implications are pretty significant from this, aren't they? Maya Rossignac-Milon 19:40 I mean, if you know, we haven't really established it causally yet, but you know, if we extrapolate causality, then then it does mean that, you know, boosting shared reality would be a really valuable thing for for companies to be doing to help their employees experience more. Of that shared reality in the workplace, and then ultimately perform better. Tim Houlihan 20:04 So the, this is a, this is a really interesting part of it, if, when I think about that click moment, for me, the click is this very organic, authentic, unscripted kind of experience, right? Right? Is it possible? Because, I mean, in behavioral science, we think a lot about context and environment and how much that influences our decision making. Is it possible that a company's culture could enable or amplify or facilitate the actual click moments that we have with each other. Maya Rossignac-Milon 20:41 Yeah, I love what you just said about going off script and that really authentic feeling, because what my work has shown is that that feeling of authenticity and actually going off script is associated with creating more shared reality, not just for yourself, but also for the other person in the conversation. And so creating a work culture where you encourage people to be more spontaneous, perhaps more playful and more authentic, a little bit more vulnerable. You know, we don't have to ask people to talk about, you know, the last time they cried at work, but just being a little bit more vulnerable than they might otherwise be in the workplace, especially because, like we were talking about earlier, people tend to be really stilted at work, and to think they need to stick to the script at work more so than in the rest of their lives, when actually they might benefit from loosening up a little bit in the workplace and so fostering that kind of culture, I think, could go a long way to facilitate shared reality. Tim Houlihan 21:46 It also, to me, sounds like there's a certain amount of psychological safety required as well in order to have that kind Maya Rossignac-Milon 21:53 of definitely, that's not something that that I've studied yet, or that we really know yet, but my intuition totally aligns with yours, that the more like safety you would feel, the more you can voice your opinions without fear of you know, backlash, the more authentic be, and then the more you can feel like when you're coming to an agreement, that it's A true agreement that you really have a shared reality. Because if you can't trust that, if you yourself aren't being authentic, and you don't trust that the other people are being authentic, you might come to a consensus and conversation, which we tend to do, but you might walk away not being so sure that you actually have a shared reality about it. Tim Houlihan 22:38 Yeah, wow, that you just said so much there that especially this idea, I think about like the difference between consensus and just obligation to go along to to play, especially in the workplace, especially when the boss is shouting down the ideas that he or she doesn't agree With. I mean, that's, that's not a place where you're going to get the best and brightest Maya Rossignac-Milon 23:04 ideas. Absolutely, Tim Houlihan 23:08 there's another, thank you for that. There's a term that you use in in some of your research about being instrumental, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that, because I think it's a really, first of all, it's, it's cool because it instrument, it also has this meaning as a musical instrument. So I'm drawn to that. Okay, let's just say that, but, but instrumentality, from the perspective that you're studying, can you talk a little bit about what it what it means, and how you bring it into your work? Yeah. Maya Rossignac-Milon 23:41 So this this research was led by my collaborator, Abdo el nicori. He's now a faculty member at the University of Houston and and so in our projects, we've looked at how instrumentality, which is the extent to which someone could be helpful for you in achieving your goals. That predicts the experience of shared reality. So we tend to create more shared reality with people that we view as more instrumental, and then in turn, the more shared reality we have with those instrumental people, over and above, how close we feel to them, how much we like them, even how much we trust them, that sense of shared reality with those individuals. So you can imagine a mentor, or, you know, in many of the contexts we study this, these processes and, you know, study partners at school, that then predicts actual goal success. So we have one really neat study that found that college students who felt more shared reality with instrumental others, then were more had higher GPAs at the end of the of the semester, so they were able to actually achieve their goals to a greater extent because of that shared reality. Tim Houlihan 24:58 That's remarkable. Remarkable that again, I guess this, this relates back to the business discussion we were having earlier about when I have that sense of shared reality, I I'm probably, I'm more apt to be achieving my goals and will have higher goal success, right, higher achievement because of that shared reality. But this is, this is kind of specific. This instrumentality has to do with very specific people. Am I reading that right? Maya, yeah, yeah, that's correct, yeah, yeah. So how, how is it? Is it I'm, on one hand, my brain says, you know, we can be kind of manipulative in this way, like I could, I could actually seek out that person that I want to be a mentor with, that I want to mentor me, because they're really influential in the organization. They have a lot of power. So I want to be in their good side. I want to achieve. I want to have star power within the organization. And so I I work hard to figure out if I can click with them, and I try to set, set this up. Is it possible? I guess it's possible, but I'd like to hear it from your perspective that does that instrumentality work? Does that shared reality work? If it's manufactured? Maya Rossignac-Milon 26:19 Yeah, so I think that what we were just talking about before helps answer that question. So my work showing that authenticity really is so key. And so my sense is a lot of this, these instrumentality effects come up because you're, you know, discovering this shared passion, like you're really excited about this thing, and the other person is as well, and so you're kind of feeding off of each other in this excitement and helping each other towards your goals, or maybe it's a mentor relationship, where you still have that sense of of shared passion and they're helping you. And that's very different from this kind of more manipulative instrumentality. And I think that the research showing that that when we have an inauthentic interaction and say we're trying to make ourselves click with someone by agreeing with things that they're saying, even if we don't actually believe them, what my research suggests is that the other person won't end up feeling a sense of shared reality if they can tell they will Yeah. People are Yeah, yeah, usually attuned to these kinds of signals, yeah. Tim Houlihan 27:28 So, for lack of a more scientific word, we kind of have a bullshit meter that we pay attention to. So I know, I know that that's not terribly scientific, but, but, yeah, so, so that's out there. But when it happens organically, when we, as you said, we go off script and and that thing, those things bubble up authentically, it can lead to very powerful relationships at work and very powerful impacts on your own performance then as well, is that, am I reading that right? Maya Rossignac-Milon 28:03 Yeah, that's right. Yeah. There really are these important ripple effects, as you called them. Tim Houlihan 28:09 That's fantastic. Okay, I'm also interested. If you could, I want to segue back to the you spent a lot of years at Columbia University, and you got to work with some real heavyweights there, Tori Higgins being among them. I mean, for those of people who don't know Tory Higgins is a huge figure in the psychological research and how what's it like? I guess my question is about, what's it like to work with someone who has such a huge and broad base of of review, reviewed papers under their belt. They have a lot of theories and ideas about how the world works and things that are interesting. How do you as a, as a PhD student, come to the table and say, Yeah, but I want to, I want to look at this like, how much individuation Do you have, and how much autonomy do you have in a case where you're working with, you know, this monolithic, you know, character, this, this bigger than life person. Maya Rossignac-Milon 29:16 Yeah, Tori is amazing. I think I had a really unique experience working with Tory in that most of his empirical work until I joined his lab, had really been about regulatory focus and regulatory mode, which you've covered on the pod, and he'd done a little bit of work of shared on shared reality, but really in the the area of memory. And so I came to Columbia with as Tory calls it this burning Pat burning burning passion, the way that you would describe that, for you know, each student would have, would have their own kind of burning passion. And mine was studying shared reality. The in in close relationships and in actual conversations, because it had never been studied in that space before. And so I That's why I tried to work with Tori. Because, you know, I, I felt like there was this big gap in the close relationships literature where shared reality, I thought was the answer to, you know, what is that feeling of just clicking with someone immediately, and that feeling of having merged minds with a really, really close partner collaborator. And so that's why I sought out Tori to work on on shared reality together. So it was really, really fun. We definitely had our own shared reality, for sure. And you did great. Tim Houlihan 30:41 That's pretty cool. So you had that click with each other. I think that's fantastic. Maya Rossignac-Milon 30:47 Yeah, Tori is a master I'm sure we'll get into riffing a little bit later, and the importance of that for creating new shared realities, as opposed to just like validating each other's realities. And Tori is a master riffer. Yeah, it was really fun. Tim Houlihan 31:04 Go, there. Go, let's, let's follow that thread, because that is a really interesting aspect of shared reality. Tell, tell us about what what riffing is, and how does it how do you get there, right? Maya Rossignac-Milon 31:15 So I think we tend to think about small talk as sort of this exchange of information about each other, whether that's with someone that we're just meeting, where we're exchanging information about our backgrounds, or that's someone that we already know, and we're exchanging information about like what we did last weekend, and we just kind of trade parallel stories, so we kind of build beside each other, and that's very different from riffing or building on what the other person is saying. Tim Houlihan 31:48 To take, yeah, give us an example. Give us give us an example of what that would sound let's Maya Rossignac-Milon 31:53 imagine that you're at a party and there's standing food, and you know, you're eating some chicken off a skewer, and someone comes up to you and asks you, how's the chicken? So you might, if you were just following the normal social script, say something like, Oh, it's good. How is the Lamb? And you know, they would have this parallel exchange of information, but it would be boring, and you probably would leave without that much connection. But instead you could go off script, and you could say, you know, it's good, but maybe again, this gets back to getting a little vulnerable. You might disclose that I'm kind of having a hard time getting the chicken off the skewer. And so then you might, you know, devolve into joking about how they should really provide protective eyewear at any event with skewers, or, you know, joking about how you should have, like a skewer fencing competition or whatever. It wouldn't need to be funny, but just playful and spontaneous and really riffing off of what the other person is saying to create this little world that you share for a moment that you can then call back to and your subsequent interactions that you wouldn't have had with anyone else, this thing that's unique to the two of you, as opposed to just kind of trading information. Tim Houlihan 33:12 Yeah, I can imagine. There's some of our listeners saying that is totally me. I totally get it. That is exactly what I would do at the party if I had that, that chicken on a skewer that wasn't that's where, exactly where I go. And I can also imagine exactly the opposite, that there are some listeners who are going, I would never say that. That's just crazy talk. Maya, no way would I ever go there. Maya Rossignac-Milon 33:35 Yeah, it's true. It's true. And when you think about it, it's something that we do really naturally as kids, right? Like kids don't engage in small talk. You meet someone, and you just go up to them as like an eight year old, and you say you want to play superheroes, and then you just play superhero. Then you suddenly, or you skip all that stuff, and you're just suddenly in this little world. You have a shared reality off the bat. But as adults, we've learned, we've unlearned that basically, and we've learned all these social scripts that keep us in these kind of caged, closed off interactions. And so it can be really scary, I think, for that reason, to break some of those scripts. But again, what we're finding in, what I've been finding in my research is that actually going off script can facilitate more of that shared reality creation, and, in turn, more of that connection and actual relationship formation. Tim Houlihan 34:32 Yeah, and I think if Nick, Nick Eppley were in on this conversation, he would probably say you should ask when was the last time you cried? It would be okay, because that would be a very off script thing to say that might be vulnerable and revealing and could be really interesting, yeah, but you're not actually advocating going that far off script, especially Maya Rossignac-Milon 34:54 I did run so in among the studies that I ran in grad school, I ran a speed dating study. Three where I basically hosted speed dating events. And one time there was a guy at an event who asked every girl when the last Tim Houlihan 35:09 time she cried was that was like a standard question Maya Rossignac-Milon 35:14 during a five minute speed date. And let me tell you, it did not. It did not roll over. Tim Houlihan 35:20 Well, Oh, really. So what? How? How did the people who were being asked that question, how did they feel Maya Rossignac-Milon 35:30 so far off the script that they felt like they were being asked to be vulnerable? So I think there were sort of two issues. The first is that it was too far off script. So we definitely, we want to be going a little off script without going so far. But more importantly is that he was asking them to be vulnerable as opposed to offering up vulnerability himself. So had he disclosed the last time he had cried, maybe they would have been much more receptive, and maybe they would have reciprocated that vulnerability. But asking someone else to be vulnerable without first offering up your own vulnerability is extremely different. Tim Houlihan 36:09 Yeah, that that's a great that's a great point. Thank you for for sharing that. Because I think we do we I think we have that built in naturally, to want to be reciprocal, to want to reciprocate in conversations. But how that gets set up makes a difference. Yeah, that's what, Maya Rossignac-Milon 36:28 yeah, exactly, first and then. So what worked? What progression like a progression over time? Tim Houlihan 36:37 So what worked in the speed dating? I'm just curious. I went through some speed dating many years ago between the time that I left my first marriage and and found my absolutely fantastic, wonderful wife that I have today, but so, but I did a couple of speed dating things, and I'm curious, what are what were there any great techniques? Was it like? Yeah, you got to make sure you do this, because it wins every time. Maya Rossignac-Milon 37:03 So what we did find so one of the so that speed dating study was actually included in one of the papers that we've been discussing. So we did find that people who were more authentic were more likely to hit it off because the other person felt like they were creating more shared reality, and also really riffing and and being able to signal to the other person that, you know, we're creating this shared world together, even though it's only a five minute speed date, they were then more likely to put each other down as a match to get each other's contact information. Tim Houlihan 37:44 I think that's that's so interesting. And just as a note to our listeners, we will be linking to these papers in the show notes, so that if you'd like to check out any of these three papers that we've been talking about, you are welcome to do that. So Maya, let's, let's get back to implications of shared reality at work. So if I have this, I have this happening. I have this, this click moment with a co worker, and this is a person that, maybe not on my team, but someone that I expect to be working with, and I have this, this little bit of maybe a little bit of riffing, it's like, oh yeah. Like, we've just merged minds. We just had this little moment, but then I don't see them for months. How do I keep that going? You know? How do I, how do I think about, about the the the kernel of this shared reality, and how do I, you know, sprinkle a little bit of pixie dust on it to keep it going? Maya Rossignac-Milon 38:47 Yeah, that's such a good question. And so often we're focused on on the conversation at hand, and then we can kind of forget about, about keeping those shared realities alive. So there's some, some cool work on callbacks. This is work by Mike Yeomans. It's also not yet published, but he's found that that callbacks are a really powerful way of circling back, either within a conversation or after the fact, and a callback is basically where you pick a particular topic, and, you know, I would say they're probably the the moments of shared reality in the conversation that you then call back to either later in the conversation or or as your question is asking even months later. You know, instead of just checking in with them and saying, Hey, how's it going? You know, if they were the person that you had the skewer conversation with. You might say, hey, you know, any skewer competitions lately, or whatever it might be, just to, kind of, you know, wink at that conversation that you had and remind them. Remember, we had this little world we made together. I don't, I remember it. I haven't forgotten it. And you can, kind of, it's more personal. And. Are unique to the two of you, as opposed to sending a generic message that you could send to anyone. Tim Houlihan 40:06 Yeah, so you get to play on whatever that that hook was right at some point in the future, just as a reminder and and hopefully the idea is that that that re connects through that connective tissue that rebuilds right? Maya Rossignac-Milon 40:25 Yeah, exactly that thread through your conversations. Tim Houlihan 40:29 Yeah, yeah. I I think about all of the wonderful business relationships I've had, and some that just worked so well, and some that I really wanted to work so well that just didn't. And I don't, I certainly don't understand why those that didn't work didn't, but your work on shared reality certainly makes sense that I know that that sense of shared, shared mind, that that like we, like we had that little mind meld thing for just a second, and it was enough to propel us forward for for future business things. I think that there is def you know, I, I know that in my own life, and sometimes it's not been about work things at all. Maya Rossignac-Milon 41:15 Yes, yeah, my current research with with Catalina and estrom that I mentioned earlier, we're now looking at how both shared reality about work topics and shared reality about non work topics independently predict these outcomes in the workplace. So it does actually, really matter how much you have a shared reality about music or whatever it might be with your colleagues, over and above, just having a shared reality about the thing you know, the project that you're working on together, yeah, Tim Houlihan 41:49 that gets me back to one of the speed run questions was, was a little bit about how your shared reality with your romantic partner can end up influencing Your work relationships. Can you tell us more about that? Because, because this is still a bit mysterious to me. Yeah. Maya Rossignac-Milon 42:07 So this, I'll tell you about the study in particular that really examined this, that Catalina LED. So this was a study conducted during the first six months, it six months ish of of covid, and it was affected among frontline healthcare workers whose romantic partner was not a frontline healthcare worker, so they were going to the workplace experiencing this, You know, totally unprecedented stress, this absolute crazy situation, and then coming home and discussing it with their romantic partner. And what we found is that the more shared reality they had with their romantic partner, even though, again, their romantic partner was not part of that workplace, the more they found their work meaningful, and this was over time, so the more shared reality they experienced during the first wave of the pandemic, the more they found their work meaningful six months later, you know, in October of 2020, and what we found that the mechanism was a reduced uncertainty. So especially during that time, you know what was happening with covid, all of that was extremely uncertain. And so creating that sense of shared reality about the world at large, not even about their work, but just about the world at large, with their romantic partner helped them feel more certain of what was really going on in the world. And in turn, they found found their work more important and meaningful. Tim Houlihan 43:43 That is fascinating. That is really Yeah, talk about ripple effects, and to have this, this tumultuous time when the study was being conducted, is a great exemplar of how powerful this could be when we're not in a global pandemic. Yeah, we are less businesses usable, Maya Rossignac-Milon 44:06 yeah, yeah. And we always have this, what we call this epistemic need, right? This need to understand and make sense of the world around us, figure out what's true, what's real, whether or not there is a pandemic ongoing. And so it we always need to turn to other people to satisfy that epistemic need, and and the extent to which we're able to do so has these important downstream effects on how much we feel like we really do understand and make sense of the world. Tim Houlihan 44:38 We are an affiliative species, aren't we? Yeah, we just need each other. We need to collaborate, we need to cooperate. We just need it. Maya Rossignac-Milon 44:47 Yeah, and, and what I think is really ironic is, you know, when you Google something like meaning in life, Google Images, what will come up are pictures of people standing a. Alone at the top of a mountain. You know, it's really portrayed as this intra psychic phenomenon, so really within the individual, when, in fact, it's an interpersonal process. And there's a growing body of research really suggesting that, you know, we find meaning through our interactions, through our relationships. And what this work with with Catalina has shown is that it's really the shared reality more so than just feeling happy in your relationship or loving your partner, even just feeling satisfied, it's more that sense of shared reality that's really driving these effects on meaning at work and in life. Tim Houlihan 45:39 So we should get rid of the the lone persons that standing on top of the mountain, or basically the Marlboro Man independent it's all about me conquering the world kind of stuff, and just focus on something so simple as having a really, having really healthy relationships with people that we love. Maya Rossignac-Milon 46:00 Yeah, yeah. Tim Houlihan 46:04 I just, I just love that. I absolutely love that. Why do we get it wrong? Why do you think we get this wrong? Yeah. Maya Rossignac-Milon 46:11 I mean, I think we have this sort of cult of individualism, and, you know, especially in the US, I think we have that we kind of glorify, sort of, like you were saying, the image of the Marlboro Man, we kind of glorify the lone cowboy when, you know, as you were saying, We've never been like that. Humans are deeply social species, and that's a total myth and and also extremely unhealthy, just from, like, a basic, you know, mortality perspective, all the data shows that's that not having those deep interpersonal relationships is, is like smoking, you know, 15 cigarettes a day, or I forgot what the exact statistic is. Or, you know, never exercising. Tim Houlihan 46:58 No, that's it, that. That is, the statistics, 15 cigarettes a day is basically the equivalent of being lonely. That's how bad it is. Well, if Kurt were here, my guess is that he would would bring up one of his favorite comments about the Marlboro Man, and that is that at the end of the day, the Marlboro Man still goes back to work with the other cowboys. He goes back to the campfire and sits around and sing songs and, you know, eat beans and do all the things that cowboys do with other cowboys that that isn't glorified or heralded in the image. And it seems, it seems kind of silly that we miss out on the on that bigger picture. Okay, I'm just editorializing just Maya Rossignac-Milon 47:47 like I completely agree. Tim Houlihan 47:50 I want to go. There's one other Speed Round question that we talked about about this. We tend to not think that we have as much shared reality with people as as we actually do, is that a fair statement to say that that we underestimate or undervalue the potential for that shared reality? Maya Rossignac-Milon 48:11 Oh, yes, I would say we undervalue it. I'm not totally I think we right the potential. Yes, I think we, I think we probably do underestimate the potential for it, and that we especially in certain contexts where we, you know, think we need to stick closer to the script, whether it's the workplace or just any kind of social events where we want to stick to small talk, we might not give the other person as much credit as they deserve in terms of being someone that we could actually really hit it off with if we were to stray just a little bit off that script. Tim Houlihan 48:50 Why do you think that is? Maya Rossignac-Milon 48:53 Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I think we just are taught, yeah, we're taught that we should stay play it safe. We're also afraid, I think, of of disclosing a little bit more about ourselves. We Yeah, I think, I think that we fear rejection as well, and so it can be difficult to make that leap, and then I think we can also get really hung up on differences between ourselves and other people. And so much of I think we tend to assume that we will hit it off with people who are the same as we are on paper, and that we won't be able to connect with people who are different, who have different backgrounds, who look different, who speak differently, who think differently than than than we do, when in fact, it's not that much about how similar or different you are on paper, and it's much more about what you can create together in that moment. Um, that you wouldn't be able to predict from just looking at person A and person B on paper. And so that that co creation of reality is something that we forget is possible, even with people who are very different from us. Tim Houlihan 50:15 I just want to let the air hang around that that was just so beautifully said. Thank you for that. That was great. That was a great comment in when I was looking at your CV, you got a couple of master's degrees at Columbia. One of them, right? Maya Rossignac-Milon 50:34 They kind of automatically gave us the like the MPhil. I don't know why they do that, but Tim Houlihan 50:41 we just, Oh, really. So you weren't, like, a philosophy major. Maya Rossignac-Milon 50:46 I wish that would be so cool. Columbia, you get, like, when you just do the five year, six year, in my case, PhD, you get the Masters after tool, you do a master's thesis, and then you get, you know, the MPhil, but you don't really submit anything for it. So it's very odd Tim Houlihan 51:06 that's good to know, because I was wondering about to what degree philosophy as a field of study might have influenced your current work. I mean, I love that's really not a relevant question inter Maya Rossignac-Milon 51:20 subjectivity and the work of Merleau Ponty in that space you know, the double being, I think, is really fascinating. But to be honest, I've, I have nothing close to a Masters, Tim Houlihan 51:36 okay, okay, fair enough. Maya Kurt and I talk a lot about finding your groove. We think that it's really important for people to be in their groove, in their personal life and at work. Think that it's a really valuable thing. And first of all, does that concept? Does the idea of being in a groove, in a good groove, make sense to you? I don't want to assault you with a crazy idea here, Maya Rossignac-Milon 52:03 we also tend to think of as something individual, but really, people groove together, right? More than anything, whether it's music or dancing together, when you're grooving, it's an interpersonal who's grooving by themselves, right? It's something you do together. And so, yes, 100% Tim Houlihan 52:27 that was beautifully said, that's, I'm going to steal all that actually, because that was fantastic. What To what degree can your work, or what degree does your work contribute to the idea of helping people find their groove and stay in their groove. Yeah? Maya Rossignac-Milon 52:45 I mean, yeah, that's such a great question. I feel like it is such an important feeling to be to feel like you're in a good groove, and I do think feeling like you're grooving with other people will help make that feeling of being in a groove stronger and so shared reality by allowing you to create that feeling of grooving with someone else, mentally grooving in some sense, and emotionally grooving together can be a really powerful way to feel like you're in your groove, like you're Moving towards your goals, that your life is meaningful and that you're you're contributing to some important purpose. Tim Houlihan 53:27 Yeah, thank you. That that's really beautifully said, that really is we have come to that point in the conversation where we have to talk about music. And Kurt would always blame me for always wanting to talk about it. But the fact is, if he was here, he here, he'd like to talk about it as well. So let's start with this classic question of, if you were stranded on a desert island, you had a year that you only had one listening device and only two musical artists on that listening device. You get everything. You get their whole catalog. It's not like you just get one song or one record. You get everything. And Maya, this is not a go to your grave question, it's just today. It's this beautiful sunny day in Barcelona and this kind of overcast day here in Chapel Hill. But today, what two artists would you choose to take along with you? Maya Rossignac-Milon 54:23 This is by far the most difficult of the question today. Tim Houlihan 54:31 Your husband's not listening well. Maya Rossignac-Milon 54:35 He would probably be one of them. I think I would have to pick as my first the first sets of the first discography that I would have accessible would be basic channel, the the the techno duo from from the 90s. They released a ton of work, and. The 90s that, like, completely changed the landscape of electronic music. They had a huge influence really opening up the space of not just like clubby techno, but listening techno. So they are known for these really hypnotic, kind of stripped down just a kick drum, a like, really deep bass line, and these really echoey, hazy chords that really slowly shift. So speaking of being in a groove, listening to them, you're just like entering a groove. It's extremely immersive, and that groove is like slowly changing over time. So it's very hypnotic, really beautiful. And I could on a desert island, I could spend hours listening, wow. Tim Houlihan 55:48 And that's basic duo, Maya Rossignac-Milon 55:51 basic channel, basic, basic channel. Tim Houlihan 55:55 I love being introduced to new ideas that even if it's 30 years old, okay, okay, so that's one, that's one. Who's your number two? Maya Rossignac-Milon 56:05 So I think I would have to pick my husband. I don't, I don't admit to him how much I listen to his music, but, um, but he's a, also a techno artist who makes experimental electronic music of many genres, actually. And his moniker is gunner Haslam. And he makes very, I would describe it as very kaleidoscopic kind of psychedelic techno with lots of like twisting synth lines and, you know, polyrhythms. It's very layered. And I I, as I said, I listen to his music more than I admit to him. So I want to be able to listen to that if I was stuck on a desert island. Tim Houlihan 56:55 Are they long tracks? Are they when you use the word hypnotic? I started to think about songs that aren't just three minutes and five Maya Rossignac-Milon 57:01 seconds, oh yeah, oh yeah. Like yeah, seven or even 10 minutes. He has 117 minute track, Tim Houlihan 57:10 yeah, wow. Okay, and you'll give us links so that we can actually put put these in the show notes. Is that I would love to, okay, good. That's, that's very good. Is there, let me ask you this before we sign off. Is there anything that we missed that we should have talked about here, that that is on your mind, like, oh, man, gotta make sure that we say this. Maya Rossignac-Milon 57:38 No, I think we hit. Thank you for the wonderful questions. I think we really hit on everything that, yeah, I've been thinking about lately. And thanks so much for asking about my ongoing research. It was really fun to talk about that too. Tim Houlihan 57:52 It is because that's what's next, right? I mean, we, we. It's like, Oh, I love my I love my kids, but I love my new baby. I'll just more than the older ones, right? Yeah, we can't help that. Okay, Maya, thank you so much for being a guest on behavioral grooves today. We really have enjoyed this conversation. And again, thanks for being a guest. Maya Rossignac-Milon 58:14 Thanks so much for having me. This was so so lovely. Tim Houlihan 58:19 I'm gonna make a timestamp, and we'll end there. I'm glad that we covered all that range. It's a lot to get into one conversation. Maya Rossignac-Milon 58:31 Yeah, thank you for hitting on all of that. I Tim Houlihan 58:34 hope, I hope it was covered adequately for you. It's, it is these are your babies. Yeah, I remember the I mentioned Ron kivitz from from Columbia, because I did work with him for a bunch of years, and he was giving a talk, and it was he did a lot of work on goal, on Goal, goal attainment, goal striving and goal setting. And somebody asked a question like, you know, why do people set goals or something? And and he, he, he told me later. He said, What flash through his mind is like, I've just spent the last 25 years researching goals, and you're asking me this, this, this question you think is really simple, but in my mind, it's based on 25 years, and I'm going to boil all that down to a sentence, like you're 25 years worth of research into one sentence or two sentences, and I think it was hard. I think it was hard on him, and I've seen that with other researchers, and so we Kurt, and I always want to be respectful of the fact that we know that you put a lot of time and effort into this and and it means a lot. It means a lot to us. So we hope we do it justice. I guess that's yeah. Maya Rossignac-Milon 59:53 I know I feel like you all having listened to to your show for a while. I feel like you have a. Really nice way of of translating, you know, different concepts and introducing different concepts in a way that's very seamless and easy to follow for listeners and accessible. Tim Houlihan 1:00:13 So that's kind of you to say thank you that that's very kind. We we appreciate that. Okay, so we're a month or so out actually, on getting this this done. We've got a bunch of production, but it's Friday evening in Barcelona, and we hope that you and your family have a wonderful. Transcribed by https://otter.ai