The Laws of Connection: The Scientific Secrets of Building a Strong Social Network

by David Robson

This groundbreaking study reveals how social connections are far more important than we thought, showing us the steps we can take to build better relationships and improve our lives.Social connection is as essential for our health and happiness as a balanced diet and regular exercise. It reduces our risk of stroke, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s. It enhances our creativity and adds years to our life span. Yet many of us struggle to form strong and meaningful bonds—and the problem lies not with our personalities but with a series of cognitive biases that stop us from fulfilling our social potential. In The Laws of Connection, award-winning science writer David Robson describes the psychological barriers that lead us to keep others at a distance and offers evidence-based strategies to overcome them. Drawing on philosophy, neuroscience, and cutting-edge psychology, Robson introduces readers to new concepts such as the liking gap, the novelty penalty, the fast-friendship procedure, the beautiful mess effect, and the Japanese art of amae. Whether we are shy or confident, introvert or extrovert, we can all build deeper relationships. The Laws of Connection shows us how.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Self Help, Relationships, Business, Sociology, Social

316 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 4, 2024

About the author

I am an award-winning writer and editor, who specialises in writing in-depth articles probing the extremes of the human mind, body and behaviour.

My first book, The Intelligence Trap, examined the reasons that smart people make stupid decisions.

My second book is The Expectation Effect. It examines how our mindset can influence our health, fitness, happiness and longevity.

If you like what you see here, please visit my website www.davidrobson.me.

Reviews

[milica · Rating 5 out of 5]

My main takeaways:

1. do reality sharing activities, ex. music, song, comedy, spicy food
2. ask for details, confirm that they understood your instructions and you understood theirs, express how you feel exactly and not partially
3. ask questions - questions about a topic they brought up increase likability compared to mirror qs (hbu) or switch topic qs
4. when giving compliments, emphasize why its important to the relationship, be specific, emphasize the ongoing apprectiation (i appreciate how you always are willing to help)
5. be open about your vulnerabilities, value honesty over kindness but practice both if possible
6. beautiful mess effect - ppl see flaws as a thing that increases likability
7. to get along better w someone, ask them for a favour (w plenty of opportunities to decline)
8. emotional coaching: 1- ask them to state their emotions related to the event, 2- state that the emotions are valid (even if you disagree - make it clear that you are trying to see things from their point of view), 3- gently encourage them to look for alternative explanations (ex. imagine situation is from 10 years in the future - distances event from us)
9. REACH - recall pain, empathize w offender, act with altruism, commit to forgiveness, holding on to your forgiveness
10. during conflict, think about your top few values and try to see if the conflict at hand really has importance, if not then it might help lessen the conflict

[Mitch Olson · Rating 1 out of 5]

OMG! As dry as a bone. Having read & enjoyed the Expectation effect I was hoping for something useful but this book takes away the will to live, let alone connect.

[Caroline Fitzgerald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Part I of this book is on building social connections and Part II is about maintaining them. Throughout the book Robson has 13 laws of connection that are rooted in different scientific experiments/ research around human connection such as conversations strategies, gratitude, forgiveness, asking for help, and telling the truth vs being kind - he follows each law up with the main points from the chapter as well as actionable tips. I enjoyed the writing, the authors ability to be thorough but brief, and really enjoyed the structure and key messages from the book. I consider one of my strengths to be connecting with others and I had many takeaways and lessons learned from this book.

[Kate Hopkins · Rating 2 out of 5]

I skimmed a lot of this book - I was put off at the start by all the ‘biological’ reasons for making friends. Some of the info was incorrect. The rest of it I think I have probably already learnt over the last 62 years - so, possibly not a book aimed at me.

[George Keith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have read the first bits available on Amazon to get a feel for this book. I will be buying it to read once the mountain of other books I have purchased is down to a low hill. I just wanted to say, when I read books like this, that give the scientific basis of long-lasting and beneficial relationships, I often wonder if the writer has considered pathological types who maintained great relationships, to the horror of the world. I am thinking of creeps like Mao, Hitler, Stalin, to name the worst killers in human history, who remained in power until their deaths, surrounded by adoring supporters most of us can only dream of. It seems to me that these dreadful human beings knew very well all the lessons that Robson is discussing. My thought is this: perhaps, sometimes, it would be better for human history, and the lives of millions, if some creeps just stayed under their rock, lonely, miserable and incapable of making friends. I really would love to read a chapter in a book like this that stressed that if you are a killer inside, that, really, you should stop reading this book and live a life bereft of human support. The world will be a better place.

[Sarah M · Rating 4 out of 5]

So lovely and informative!

[Bonnie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really liked the literary citations for context, as well as the practical steps at each chapter’s end; got at times lost in the many research studies referenced.

[Steven · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once finished with this book, you are provided with several 'takeaways': a list of 13 so called 'Laws of Connection' which are softened in their being defined as social strategies 'that will transform your life' apparently. There are also a number of links to websites referred to along the way, such as the REACH Forgiveness Programme, a self-compassion resources hub, and those now notorious set of questions promoted as everything from conversation prompters to a recipe for falling in love - 32 of them I believe.

Speaking of recipes, this book tends toward the sociological 'recipe' sort. Each chapter follows a discernible format, stringing together one study after another, dipping into research papers and projects alike using phrases such as 'participants tended to..., the results revealed..., 6 out of 10 respondents claimed..., and so on. Not a lot of critical evaluation though, just the presentation of clusters of raw data with all the involved scientific, granular detail removed for the benefit of your average punter who, after all, just wants to know why that apparent friend never returns their phone calls.

In other words, making and maintaining friendships, relationships, connections is not an exact science. And no amount of studies, questionnaires, and thought experiments are going to produce anything resembling a formulae that is foolproof and ultimately life transforming.

It occurred to me while reading this, and it was enjoyable I should say, while working on all these social strategies - being consistent with how I treat others, checking my assumptions, being generous with praise and open about my vulnerabilities, asking for help and being civil etc. - what were all the other self-centred narcissists doing to meet me half way?

Is it any wonder I steer clear of social media platforms and will continue to do so. Thanks for the reminder David, a connection is formed between two people, not someone doing all the heavy lifting on their own.

[Kevin Stecyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Helpful Book in Trying Times

Everywhere we turn, there are articles and books extolling the benefits of connecting with others. No one book can teach all there is to know about connecting. The Laws of Connection provides helpful advice that is easy to follow for maintaining your present connections and developing new ones.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5/5

Really enjoyed the experiments in here!

[Isabella · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good book with lots of practical advice on having better connections, some I feel I do, eg ask questions. Others I could do more, listen intently. The book refers to empirical research and sounds compelling. As an audio book I wish you could download a list of the papers they discussed and a summary of the rules.

Fervently states that loneliness is as bad for you as smoking. Not sure about that but certainly not good for your mental health. Maybe there could have been more on making friends in this digital world. Which I can’t believe I am saying as so many books talk about social media and relationships. But from a practical/evidence based perspective that may be useful for some people. I am just glad I got most of my friends before social media or from face to face interactions.

[Peter Wood · Rating 2 out of 5]

P3: “groundbreaking new evidence “..really?

This is written in typical self-help style - undoubtedly this book will help many. I.e. if you like self help books, then you will probably like this book.

I hated the writing style..and gave up after 90 pages

[Bob Connelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. Although I have read several books on human connection and friendship, I found this book easy to read and at the same time full of profound insights on making deep connections. It provided many tools to use in the variety of circumstances that friends find themselves in. I am looking forward to using many of them, going forward.

[Tricia · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book comes at a time when many of us may have retreated from greater interaction with others after the COVID pandemic and/or struggled to navigate polarized beliefs and viewpoints. It's about promoting social warmth--the opposite of social distancing. The book offers plenty of tactics to try out (nicely summarized at the end of each chapter) and loads of studies and statistics to back up what it recommends. A nit: this book might be more consumable with text broken into shorter paragraphs.

I especially liked the "fast friends" questions the author cites. These questions are designed to elicit more in-depth answers from your social contacts--whether new or established--to draw you closer to them. I have used similar tactics in facilitating team-building exercises and can testify to their power to build greater team cohesion or one-on-one interpersonal ties.

Much of the book addresses our tendency to underestimate the impacts of what we do, whether it's offering emotional support or setting aside our fears and initiating a conversation with a stranger. Again, very useful.

[Andy · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author makes a big deal at the beginning that this is not just another book describing crappy irrelevant psych studies. No sir, he is going to give you the super solid science. YAY! But then he doesn't deliver. Social isolation and loneliness can be bad for you. Sure. But don't exaggerate the problem by saying it's as bad as smoking, for example.
A lot of the rest is based on typical psych studies that have little to do with the real world, or on pop psychology like "Mindset" that as far as I know has not been shown in rigorous trials to be helpful.
Something I found weird throughout is that the subject is a social problem, but it's treated mainly as an individual problem of the isolated/lonely person. Maybe population-level factors matter for strengthening or weakening social networks?

Alternatives:
The Status Syndrome: How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity
The Broken Ladder: How Inequality Affects the Way We Think, Live, and Die
Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression - and the Unexpected Solutions




Nerd addendum:
He starts out discussing the extraordinary claim about how loneliness is the new smoking. One of the studies he cites for this is a meta-analysis that got a lot of media attention. (https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicin...). I understand if you're a reporter on a deadline just copying what the press release says. But he's writing a whole book on the topic and this is the foundational idea, because without this big bad problem, who cares?
So what should he have clarified about this study?
1) Meta-analysis, schmeta-analysis. Just because you slam a bunch of studies together to get a big sample size doesn't mean you have stronger results. If you pile together a lot of turds, what you get is a huge pile of crap. If you're going to tout this paper, you need to verify that the original studies included were all robust.
2) In good epidemiological research, one of the most basic things is to control for potential confounders. Only some of the studies in the meta-analysis controlled for confounders. In order to smush these together with the ones that did not control, the authors took only unadjusted results from all the studies. This is likely to artificially inflate the effect of isolation/loneliness.
3) Smoking is NOT a variable they controlled for. That is what you might think when you hear that someone did a study and showed that "X was as bad as smoking."
4) What they did do was to use historical data on how bad smoking is as a comparison. Whatever. But the definition they used for smoking was NOT smoking at least a pack a day as one would expect. They used "<15 cigarettes daily." So, 0-14 cigarettes. So, not smoking???? How does this make any sense???? I don't know. It's not for me to explain. It's the onus of the guy building a book on this study to explain its validity.
5) The context to include here is that the increased risk of lung cancer from smoking is like 19 times! (And all-cause mortality is doubled.)
6) I think this paper (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37337...) is a better review of the relevant research on the topic. It includes mostly studies that controlled for other causes of death. The effect is there (32% increased risk for social isolation, 14% for loneliness) but it's not as scary as suggested in the book. It's not good to turn everything into a crisis, or to underplay huge public health issues like smoking.
7) Again, maybe I'm wrong about all this, based on a little bit of looking stuff up. But it smells fishy to me.

[Anthony · Rating 5 out of 5]

David Robson (2024) THE LAWS OF CONNECTION (AUDIOBOOK)
BorrowBox - Canongate Books

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 5 out of 5 stars

BorrowBox writes, "In the early 1960s scientists at the University of California, Berkeley set out to establish the key factors affecting health and longevity. Their results, known as the ‘Alameda 7’, you already know: don’t smoke, drink in moderation, sleep seven to eight hours a night, exercise, eat regular meals, maintain a moderate weight, eat breakfast. Years later, however, the same team discovered an eighth factor, one that proved more important than all the others: social connection.
When we form meaningful bonds with others, our wounds heal faster, we shake off infections more quickly and our blood pressure drops. We are less likely to have Alzheimer’s, heart attacks or strokes. When people feel that they have strong social support, they perform better on tests of mental focus, memory and problem solving. Greater connection can fuel creativity, increase our financial stability and enhance our work productivity. But making friends can also be daunting. In The Laws of Connection, David Robson does two important things: he takes us through the fascinating science behind the effects of social connection and he unpacks the research that shows that we are all better at being social than we might think. We meet ideas such as ‘the liking gap’ and ‘the gratitude gap’, learn to recognise ‘frenemies’ and discover a powerful conversational strategy known as the ‘fast-friends procedure’ that promotes instant rapport. Being social doesn’t have to mean having dozens of friends, it can also mean having one true, deep connection with another person. As Robson shows, we can all benefit from the laws of connection."
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Bloody interesting to be perfectly clear!!!!!! Hiiiiiiighly recommend!
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#DavidRobson #TheLawsOfConnection #Book #Books #Read #Reads #Reading #Review #Reviews #BookReview #BookReviews #GoodReads #Audiobook #Audiobooks #BorrowBox

[Sevgi Aktas · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think this book has a lot of wisdom and valuable insights for everyone.

It really answered a few questions that I would always ask myself but could never come to an conclusion to. Also it revealed some misconceptions, myths, and negative beliefs about certain topics and things that society would be believe in. For example, I would always think that what I talk about would not be interesting to other people. Turns out, this is completely false. Yes, there are some little elements that you should keep in mind to be more interesting and effective in your conversations, yet, it is false that ones stories are not interesting to others on default.

In addition, the book holds many various examples and is completely based on research, without being written on a boring way. I really enjoyed reading all the different evidence and findings from various studies. Next to that it includes examples from real people such as The Beatles, Benjamin Franklin, etc. So it also holds wisdoms and advices from famous people.

I would also like to mention that the book includes many practical instructions on how to behave in certain situations, so it also guides you.

One of the rather down-sides – which is not really one – is that the chapters are a bit long, however the sub-chapters makes you progress quiet quickly through it. It did take for me some time to finish this book, because there is so much information, that I wanted to digest it and give myself time to think for myself about it.

All in all, it is a read that I wouldn't have wanted to have missed.

[Charles Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

71%

This book has a lot of good content on it, and that's why I'm giving it 71%.
Becauss overall, it's a positive and a good book. However, some of the inferences that the author makes in here are not correct. For example, when we talk about the merits of social media, it is critical, absolutely crucial. To talk about the fact of how damaging it is, especially to young minds. And we have a lot of research on this. On how social media specifically damages the mental health of youth. The more time they spend on the platform, the more ill they become. This is well established at this point. And ending on that note really sours the tone of the book. I love that the book talks about communications. As an expert in communications that has voraciously studied the subject matter. Whenever we get to talk and communicate and say, hey, this is an amazing thing here. These are the specifics, this is how I feel, this is what matters to me, this is who I am. It's like a beautiful data transfer. It's high fidelity, perfect, and it comes across clearly to the receiver. Like message received. I understand it completely. And then you can continue and send back the information perfectly. A beautiful bridge of understanding. However, some of the inferences that the author makes in this book are just incorrect. And that does bring down the value of the writing when it's mixed in with good content. And that does bring down the value of the writing when it's mixed in with good content.

[Alicia · Rating 4 out of 5]

An easy to understand and practical book demonstrating that social connection is an extremely important element to thriving in this world just like food and water. And there are ways to "hack" the connection be it in what and how you ask questions to others, what we do when we approach a new person, or checking our beliefs about social interactions at the door (as studies show, the perception is much different than the reality).

It's lays the foundation for common sense connection that wasn't revelatory for me, but obligatory to write about so people can learn why it's important.

Examples include friendships such as Scalia and Ginsberg (Supreme Court justices that were ideologically on opposite ends but shared a deep appreciation for one another explaining the difference).

Valuable on many levels.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I kind of started to read this on a whim but it was actually really enjoyable and insightful. The studies were interesting and gave me just enough reasoning to back up the rules that the author put forward. It was also a very feel good read, expressing the importance of caring about others and treating people well. It wasn’t like most self-help books that try to sell you a way of living as a means to an end, instead it focussed more how your behaviour can improve other people’s lives for good, and that made me happy.

[Erik Nelson · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the key insights from "The Laws of Connection" is the concept of the Likeness Gap, which reveals a surprising psychological truth: we tend to underestimate how much others like us in social interactions. This phenomenon suggests that most people generally perceive us more positively than we assume, creating an unspoken barrier in forming deeper connections. By understanding and bridging this Likeness Gap, we can foster stronger, more authentic relationships, breaking free from the self-imposed limitations of doubt and insecurity.

[Monty · Rating 5 out of 5]

~ The Laws of Connection by David Robson ~

I went to a talk by David Robson on this book in June and loved it, so I was really looking forward to reading it!

I absolutely loved it! The best part is that the whole book is based on current research findings yet written in a very easy and relatable way!

A great way to make science accessible and give some insights into your own strengths and challenges in building and maintaining relationships in all walks of life :)

It's definitely one to read 📚 

#socialscience #davidrobson #thelawsofconnection

[Catherine Bailey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Squeaking in at just about a 4.
In fact I was definitely going to give it a 3 as the first half of the book seemed to be an endless list of psychology studies and you could get cross eyed trying to keep track of them. (Plus it read just like an undergrad literature review)
However by the second half of the book the author seems to have settled into their stride a bit more and it becomes more engaging.
Not really built for audiobooks either as it keeps referring to a pdf but it was solid enough.

[Rachelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Laws of Connection... providing easy to understand research study findings as backup, the author describes how to best function in social settings and how our behavior affects others and how the words we use affect how people perceive us. Very interesting and helps reader realize how connections make life better and how to improve those links. The text focuses more on a base level of networking, but I would have enjoyed a deeper dive into lasting relationships.

[Podge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Practical, concise, interesting and full of scientific know how, the end summary pages are useful and easily ear marked. The appendix with other information to check out referenced in the pages is good to.
I like to read science based improvement books and at around 240pages this is not too heavy but practical. A good book, I would recommend this to anyone just picked it up in Waterstones and thought it looked interesting. I am going to dip into again as it has helpful tips which we can all use

[Faisal Ghadially · Rating 4 out of 5]

Twelve laws of connecting with people.
I found the perspective on the impression we believe and what others think helpful.
Laws 8 onwards are self-evident.

The pattern of qualifying a theory based on college student studies gets repetitive. It does not build confidence the way the author may have intended.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have no idea who suggested this to me but I did enjoy it. I found the first part more interesting than the second and it could have done with a summary of the laws at the end.

[Miss Syreena]

A literature review of many other studies. Might be interesting to those newer to the topic.

[Mariah Seubert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great tips! It definitely made me feel more comfortable interacting with others, I enjoyed the summaries at the end of each chapter.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent for the most part. Some good pointers for people who struggle with social connection. Some of the middle chapters are dry and less accessible but overall it is worth a punt