3 Science-Backed Ways to Build Trust and Connection at Events

Psychology professor Jamil Zaki said he has asked attendees at his conference sessions to engage with the person sitting next to them in a specific way to help build trust and connection at the event. (Whatever Media Group)

Jamil Zaki, a psychology professor at Stanford University, makes a case against cynicism in his most recent book, Hope for Cynics: The Surprising Science of Human Goodness. Cynicism “wears away the psychological glue” that holds us together and is a thread that runs through “vast and varied” problems, he wrote, including loneliness. We think that mistrusting others is smart and keeps us safe, Zaki told Convene, but in fact it shuts off possibilities and keeps us isolated from one another. A study conducted in 2022 found that in 24 of 28 nations, most people said that their tendency is to distrust others. Meanwhile, Zaki wrote in his book, “study after study shows that most people fail to realize how generous, trustworthy, and open-minded others really are.”

Jamil Zaki

Among the antidotes to cynicism that he recommended to Convene are conferences, which he said have been a valuable source of connection and professional collaborations for him. Zaki, who speaks to audiences around the world about building trust, offered three suggestions for how conference organizers could intentionally build connection between participants at their events:

1. Go deep. “One of my favorite things to do as a speaker is to challenge people in my audiences to turn to the person next to them and have a conversation they might not expect — for instance, asking each other, ‘When is the last time you cried in front of somebody?’” The experience is daunting, Zaki said. “People do not think that they want to go that deep with a stranger next to them. But it turns out that when you prompt people to go deep, especially at a conference where they know that they’re already surrounded by their own community, it breaks the ice and allows for that trust and community to build naturally.”
2. Make up a memory. Connection also can be built through engaging in “one of the things we lack so much in an adult culture — a sense of spontaneity and play and imagination,” Zaki said. He recently spoke at an alumni reunion at Stanford, where a co-presenter did improv exercises with a crowd of 1,800 people. In one, she invited those in the audience to turn to someone they didn’t know and make up a memory together, Zaki said. It went like: “‘So remember that time we went to the baseball game?’ And this person is a complete stranger, and they’re supposed to say, ‘Yeah, that game between the Cardinals and the Dodgers?’” Zaki said. The presenter called the exercise “one of the most connecting things that people can do, because people never have a chance to imagine together — at least not in their adult lives,” he said. “Giving people a chance to come together in their imaginations can be an enormously powerful way to make them feel connected.”
3. Spread gossip. Citing the work of UC Berkeley professor of psychology Dacher Keltner, Zaki recommends that conference organizers could lean into the sense of awe that witnessing what Keltner called “moral beauty” creates. Everyday goodness, Zaki said, reminds us that “we’re part of something bigger than ourselves in the human race. And it inspires us to do better as well.”

If you want to generate awe, Zaki asked, how about instilling a practice during the conference of positive gossip? That is: “Ask everybody at the conference to notice one act of kindness or goodness or generosity or warmth that they see each day. And then write them down and either send them to the conference organizer through an app or write them down on a piece of paper and put them in a fishbowl — whatever the [conference] has the capacity for.

“And then at the end of each day, read a series of those positive gossip notes. Collecting positive gossip will not just be great in those moments where people as a group are sharing the notes that people have offered,” he said, “but it will help people notice each other’s goodness all day long. It pops up the antenna in our minds through which to see the very good things that other people are typically always doing.”

COMING SOON

Look for a deeper dive into Zaki’s work and more stories about building trust, belonging, and connection in the December issue of Convene.

Barbara Palmer is deputy editor of Convene.