On June 15, 2026, psychologist Amit Kumar's research on human connection took center stage on Hidden Brain. Host Shankar Vedantam introduced the psychologist's early career, recalling, "When psychologist Amit Kumar was in graduate school, he became close friends with another student."
The episode highlights how small, overlooked gestures build profound social trust. Sharing his own transition back to academic life after lockdown, Amit Kumar recalled expecting "to kind of find a half-eaten [chuckles] sandwich from a past life and a bunch of dead plants in, in my office" only to discover a colleague had quietly kept his plants thriving. This simple act of prosociality anchors his broader research into why we routinely underestimate how much others appreciate our kindness.
To bridge the gap between how we think people will react and how they actually do, Shankar Vedantam explained that "Amit and his colleagues have started to ask how they can help people overcome the prosociality paradox," pointing to experiments conducted alongside Nick Epley at the University of Chicago regarding the surprising power of writing gratitude letters.
While the episode paints an optimistic picture of human connection, the real challenge is translating these findings into everyday habits. As social anxiety remains high, future research will likely focus on whether structured gratitude interventions can scale to heal our fractured public spaces.