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HBR presents.

Hi everyone, Ulysses 2 after hours. I'm young me. I'm Felix. And we are here with Mike Norton.

If you read about happiness, if you read about consumer behavior, you probably came across this name for super happy you're here with us.

Hi Mike. Hi young me. Hi Felix. So Mike, as a social scientist, when suddenly a pandemic happens in the world locks the hell.

Do you immediately go into observation mode? Like the world is a laboratory.

I think like everybody, social scientist also go into panic mode for some period of time. And then as we start to vaguely surface from that.

Yeah, I do think that social scientists do start to look at things to see what's been lost often.

Yeah. Sometimes we also try to see what's been gained by big changes in either people's individual lives or society at large.

We're sort of trying to take a broad view of when things happen to the humans, when ends up happening to them as a result of that.

Yeah. Well, this is precisely why we wanted to have you on the podcast. We want to talk to you about some of the things you've observed from this very tumultuous year. Sound good?

Sounds great.

So Mike, what are some of the big themes you've been paying attention to over the past year?

I'm a social psychologist by training, which means my heart always goes toward relationships and groups and how people are functioning in those.

And there are certainly negative versions of course about what's been disrupted in our lives.

But there's also been the sense that people have been very creative in coming up with new social groupings and also with new rituals to kind of cement those new social groupings.

Oh, interesting. So what's an example?

For example, you could have lived in the same apartment building or the same house for like a hundred years and never have spoken to your neighbors ever.

You know, you may have grudgingly nodded at them once or twice in a decade or something.

But you never had occasion of any kind to talk to anybody because you could go and do your regular social network.

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