Measure Immersion through Brain's Social-Emotional Pathways | Dr. Paul Zak
📑 Chapters
00:00 Intro
03:00 How to Measure Immersion
07:55 Dopamine + Oxytocin + Human Experience
11:53 The Impact of Immersion on Mental Health
14:21 Peak Immersion in a business environment
17:03 Neuro-responses During Persuasion
19:58 Optimizing Information Delivery
22:36 Immersion for Emotional Well-being
24:44 Creating Psychological Safety and Trust
26:15 Immersive Experience + Losing Time
28:09 Importance of Psychological Safety
29:59 Setting Hard but Achievable Goals
32:24 Improving Emotional Health
35:06 Conversation Recap
36:03 The Magic of Curiosity and Making Mistakes
40:41 Building Strong Teams
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MAGICademy Podcast (00:00)
think it is love. I'm unafraid to tell people I love them now. I don't think I was 10 years ago or even maybe five years ago, but now I try to tell as many people as possible. My goal is that every day I tell one person I love them. That's a simple goal, right? I'm a pro-human person and I think we need to protect, love, care for those people. So you can say care. When you greet someone at work, add an adjective.
when you see them. So instead of saying, hi, Johnny, how are you? Good. are you? I say, hi, Johnny, you look happy, sad, worried, tired, upset. And now we have a much more emotional conversation that opens up that sense of connection between us. So just think of using adjectives. It's really easy. Immersion is a one second frequency data stream that we can pull out of your brain and then identify how to create extraordinary experiences that influence people's behaviors. These signals coming out of your brain are
really like a network effect. And guess what? Couple of those pass through your heart. So I'm using a standard called the PPG heart rate sensor. I don't care what heart rate doesn't predict. We tested it, doesn't predict. the immersion in the brain suddenly changes the rhythms of the heart because again, I'm sending information through the peripheral nervous system to affect people. So it took me 20 years to find a way to process them in real time. I have to resist those naysayers around you who tell you how dumb your ideas are.
If they're dumb, you'll find out quick enough if you try to act on them. So I think just try stuff and play. That's the magic. Play is the
Jiani (01:33)
Welcome to MAGICademy podcast. Today with us is Dr. Paul. He's the author of Immerson and he's been leading measuring immersive experiences so great to have you Paul with us today on the podcast.
Paul (01:45)
Thank you, Jiani
professional nerd so I am fascinated by these creatures called humans and I run experiments and create technologies to help them live longer happier and healthier lives.
Jiani (01:56)
Beautiful. And why, why immersion?
Paul (01:59)
immersion, I'm using that in a technical sense with a capital I, which is a data stream that comes out of your brain that we discovered in work funded by the US taxpayers to identify how we can persuade people to take actions. And so, as you know, at least intuitively, the brain's a very lazy organ. We establish habits. Our brain like to do those habits.
And it's difficult to influence people to change what they are prone to doing. And so in this work, we identified how the brain values social emotional experiences. And if that valuation is high enough, then that can influence you. So immersion is a one second frequency data stream that we can pull out of your brain and then identify how to create extraordinary experiences that influence people's behaviors.
Jiani (02:48)
How do you define immersion? Like how do you define when someone is having a real immersive experience from the science and data perspective?
Paul (03:00)
That's
the key question, right? How the heck do you measure it? It's a great question. So we did just 20 years worth of experiments in which we gave people a message or an experience and then gave them the option to do something that we could observe afterwards or not. So, for example, we did a lot of work early on with public service announcements. So initially we actually measured neurochemicals in blood. So I take a blood sample from you. We will show you, say, a short video about kids with cancer.
I take another blood draw and then you get a prompt on your computer screen that says, hey, you just earned $40 for watching this video. If you'd like to donate some money to St. Jude Children's Hospital, you can, but you don't have to. And we compared it with activity for responders versus non -responders. Once we found those neurochemicals, then we can optimize the collection of the electrical signals those neurochemicals induce in the level of the brain and throughout the nervous system. So,
We just looked at people who responded to messages and identified from about 140 different signals, the ones that really told us that these were valued enough that it prompted you to do something we could see. And then we combine these signals into a single, these multiple signals into one overall measure I call immersion that is easy to understand. We've normalized this to run zero to a hundred. So hundreds higher, you know, high and zero is low. and the most important thing is,
since most people don't want me to go around poking their arms with needles all the time. We created a technology that allows us to pull these signals from smartwatches and fitness wearables. Because your brain's connected to a body, we traced out using pharmaceuticals the pathways from the brain to the peripheral nervous system. So we can see these data in real time, which is so cool.
Jiani (04:46)
Wow. And in your book, Immersion, you also mentioned about the EGGs or FMRIs. It feels like there's a lot of data. And in simple languages, what kind of data exactly are you looking at? Are you looking at heart rate and body temperature? What else? Yeah, what else?
Paul (05:07)
Yeah, so yeah,
we had to accurately and consistently predict behavior. We optimize, we use multiple devices from fMRI to high density EEG to measuring the peripheral nervous system to capture these signals. And because this initial work was funded by the Department of Defense, the technology we developed had to be used anywhere. It couldn't just be.
confined to a laboratory. So I don't think the army wants to ship giant MRI scanners to Afghanistan to measure whether their communications are effective or not. So we discovered is that if we pull data from the cranial nerves, we have 12 cranial nerves are like the brain's output file, that these are nice networked level signals. So at the level of the brain, those neurons, those nerve cells in the brain are often multipurpose.
So they're doing multiple things. So they fail to consistently predict behavior. But these signals coming out of your brain are really like a network effect. And guess what? A couple of those pass through your heart. So I'm using a standard called a PPG heart rate sensor. I don't care about heart rate. It doesn't predict. We tested it. It doesn't predict. But the immersion in the brain suddenly changes the rhythms of the heart because, again, I'm sending information through the peripheral nervous system.
to affect people. It took me 20 years to find a way to process them in real time.
Jiani (06:27)
So it's like the subtle change of the heart rate somehow reflected the immersive experience of the brain.
Paul (06:34)
It's like second
and third order like acceleration deceleration of the heart So it's actually a lot more complicated than that and it's driven by two main components One is if it's gonna be a great experience, you've got to be present right if you're if I'm distracted looking I'm not gonna have a great experience with you. And the second is that experience has to generate Emotional resonance has to make me actually feel something and make me care about what's going on so if I'm attentive I'm present and I
I'm getting value from this emotionally. Emotions are how the brain tags experiences as important. Those two signals we combined into an overall measure. And the higher that is, the more metabolic investment your brain is putting into processing the experience you're having. So if I'm looking for some kind of prop, if I imagine when you lose your phone, you're like, my God, and you find that you're so happy, right? So.
Jiani (07:26)
I'm...
Paul (07:27)
That's your brain going, hey, this thing's important to you. You should hang on to this, right? Where if I lose, I don't know, some plastic bottle, I don't care, it's fine.
Jiani (07:34)
10.
That's very interesting. And you're also in your book, you're talking about like when we are having this like immersive experiences, the level of oxytocin and dopamine was actually being increased. Can you share with us a little bit like, you know, help us understand like why, how?
Paul (07:55)
Yeah, so dopamine is this chemical that does a bunch of things, but in the brain's prefrontal cortex, it focuses our attention. It says, hey, something's interesting happening in your environment, focus. It's the same chemical that drugs for ADD like Adderall and Ritalin increase. That's why it gives you more focus. Those drugs give you more focus. And then the emotional resonance of that experience, we trace back to the action of another neurochemical oxytocin.
And what's interesting is that those two neurochemicals interact with each other in really complicated ways. They sort of reinforce each other. One of the things they do together is not only do they tell you this experience is valuable as you invest a lot of processing power into understanding it, they create a craving to repeat that experience. So from a business perspective, if that business can create a peak immersion experience for a customer, the customer enjoy it. This
You know, they have a great time, but it creates this craving to return and do that experience again. And that's really what you want when you live in the experience economy that we all live in. Right. I don't want to go to dinner and maybe have really good food, but have a crappy server that just treats me badly. That's not great. Conversely, I can have a very plain dinner, but have a great server and it makes it great. So I'll give you a concrete example. I was in the central Valley of California, a very rural area.
for a business trip and I'm driving back to the airport in San Francisco and I stopped in the middle of nowhere at some diner with this lovely 50 year old waitress who was on her feet all day and she's smiling, she called me hun and the food was fine but she was a sweetheart and I just loved her and it just made my day that someone, she truly seemed to care about me as a customer having a great time and so now...
I'm gonna tell you the name of the place. It's called Casa de Frutos. It's in the middle of the Central Valley. Anyone who's listening to this who's traveling through Central Valley, stop there.
the person that did that. So here's a key takeaway for listeners. For any experience you're creating, when you add in a social component, the immersion is always higher, 100 % of the time, right? So again, restaurant or retail or movie,
If I'm going to see a movie and the ticket taker is nasty to me, I'm in a bad mood and I'm like, man, even the movie is great. So again, I think it's that human component that is so important to creating these peak immersion experiences.
We created a software platform six years ago so that anybody can measure what the brain loves in real time using any wearable. I don't care what wearable you have. We'll pull data from it. It goes up to the cloud. We apply all these complicated algorithms. And then you can see second by second. So I'll give you another example.
One of our subscribers to the platform is a very high -end restaurant chain. they want to grow as a restaurant chain and they want to create extraordinary experiences for their customer. The food's already great. They took me to lunch there. It was $200 for two people for lunch. I mean, this is an expensive restaurant. What they're missing, though, is that extraordinary level of customer service. Some of it was good, but when I measured myself and a couple people who went to lunch with me,
What I found was after about half an hour, I wasn't having a great experience, even though the food was great. They didn't send me off. I said $200 for lunch. You should send me off with some extra love. Some, I don't know, take a photo, you know, ask me to come back. They're like, here's your bill. Great. Thanks. It was like, I didn't actually get this nice peak experience at the end. What I really remember people tend to remember the end of experiences a lot. So that was a, that's just a data solution, right? Which is.
Jiani (11:15)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
Mm.
Paul (11:27)
You've got to train your wait staff so that not only are they great on the greeting, great on the serving, but before you leave, make it a great experience. You just spent 200 bucks. You should be really thanking that customer and say, we would love to see you come back. My name is Bob. I was a great time serving you. Hey, you guys must be celebrating something. Would you like a picture? Like that kind of social interaction where you go, just like my wonderful waitress at Casa de Frutos, right?
Jiani (11:53)
curious, like how do we actually get people into the focus to stay? Because as you're saying, in order to have this immersive experience, people really need to get focused into this experience. What makes or breaks that entry point for, you know, the focus?
Paul (12:11)
Yeah, such a great neuroscience question. Thank you again. So I live outside Los Angeles and everybody's connected to the movie industry in one degree of separation. And so in Hollywood, they call us a hot open. So because your brain just wants to save energy and idle, if you can't get me going, if you can't open hot, like, whatever that is, whether it's entertainment, whether it's serving a customer, you've got to actually break out of that.
get me focused on this thing. Hey, this is gonna be awesome. We're gonna have a great time. Hey, so at back of the restaurant, I'm so happy you're here for lunch. My name is Bob. We're gonna have a great time together. We have some wonderful food. The wine is excellent. I can make some suggestions, but once you look at the menu, I'll come back in a couple. you're like, this guy loves working here, right? This is awesome. You gotta open high. You can't go, hi, how are you? Right, then now I'm just like, gosh, okay, well, you know. So there's a real.
Jiani (12:54)
haha
Paul (13:05)
I think a sacred duty by businesses to create these peak immersion moments for customers, not only to increase what we call customer lifetime value that return business from the customer, but we have shown in published scientific research that when people have enough of these peak immersion moments a day, actually six or more, you actually improve their mental health. You make them happier, sustained happiness is higher when you have these peak immersion moments. I may get that from talking to my kids, playing with my dog.
watching a movie, but again, that in -person social experience is the most effective way to have a peak immersion moment.
Jiani (13:40)
Yeah, you're making them more present in a moment and connected because as social beings, as humans, we love to connect. So being presently connecting with each other.
Paul (13:52)
perfectly said,
I've got to break through and say, look, this is going to be a great experience. I care about you. I want to make this a wonderful experience for you, but I've got to convince you that it's valuable to you. So it's really about service, right? We're in the service world. All of organizations are in the service world for profit, nonprofit government. They're all about improving your life at some level.
So I think an open heart and convince you that this is going to be an amazing experience. I'm setting those expectations so that you really will enjoy whatever I'm doing. I had to renew my license recently. I'm like, you know, it's going to be awful. They were so nice. I got in early. They had my name. I didn't have to wait. I was in and out in like five minutes. I was like, you guys are the best. Like what happened to here? Now even the government's giving me a peak immersion experience.
Jiani (14:27)
So.
Thank you.
Paul (14:36)
I thanked everyone, it couldn't have been nicer. So sometimes even the government can give you a peak immersion moment.
Jiani (14:41)
Yeah, and also I come into DMVs with an open heart and good vibes, so I would try to cheer them up because I know the work for them every day can be very routine and lack of excitement, so when I'm there I'm like, okay, maybe I can entertain them a little bit.
Paul (15:00)
little bit. And we actually find
that we find people I think like you who are very warm, who are agreeable, they actually tend to have higher immersion for every experience than people who are more tired or neurotic or unhappy. And so you're right, if you can put positive energy into an experience, you can actually elevate that experience, not only for the other person, but for yourself, because then you get this reflection. So I'll give me give you one more concrete example, if I may.
Jiani (15:26)
Exactly. Yes,
yes, yes, yes.
Paul (15:29)
We have some
research that a high -end luxury brand in France, I'm not going to say the name because again, I might be unable to, but they actually measure the immersion of their salespeople using wearables And they're able to predict which customers would buy from the immersion that the salesperson received.
Because immersion is a shared social emotional experience. So if the salesperson is having a great time, almost always the customer is having a great time. Not only could they accurately predict who's going to buy, the more immersed the salesperson was linearly, the more the customer spent. And this is high in luxury, like people are spending thousands of dollars. So it really means that it's a shared experience for humans. I think that's an important point here. It's not about me.
to sell you more stuff you don't want. It's about me creating an experience that's emotionally valuable to you and if you choose to buy more stuff, awesome. Even if you buy some little trinket, you know, something for a couple dollars, it can still be a great experience and I can still remember it. My lunch at Casa de Frutos, I don't know, was 15 bucks. Who knows what it was. It wasn't expensive but it was memorable
Jiani (16:39)
I love that. process of selling is a process of persuasion. And it's basically kind of bringing people from point A to point B or helping people to make a decision, whether it's purchasing a physical item or purchasing a piece of information, which in the case like learning and development. So when we're actually persuading people or when people are being persuaded, what exactly is happening?
What are those neurochemicals doing in terms of immersion for persuasion? Yeah, change.
Paul (17:10)
Right. They're really identifying
that the opportunity that you have, the choice that you are going to make will be sufficiently valuable that you should invest the time, money, resources, energy into doing that thing. So as you know, in my book, there's a whole chapter on the ethics of persuasion. So as long as, so first of all, that's what social creatures like humans do. We're constantly persuading each other. So I've been married 29 years. I'm still trying to persuade my wife to be nice to me. I want to be nice to her. She may figure out I've been faking it this whole time and leave me no.
kidding. But you know, it would be stupid and wrong to all of a sudden become a jerk as a spouse. That would be bad. So we're constantly persuading each other. I'm persuading my kids. I'm trying to persuade my dog to be quiet while I'm here on with you. So, you know, we're always persuading. So if we're going to do that, we should understand how to do this as well as possible. And to do that, that means again, I've got to communicate in a way that
Jiani (17:39)
Hehehehehe
Paul (18:05)
conveys the options that you have. You can say, no, there's no coercion as effectively as possible. And you basically have three dimensions to do that. One is how I structure the information. I'll come back to that in a second. The second is how I convey the information. If I talk in a monotone, then this just tells you it's not important. The third is the delivery of information, right? So.
Let me go through quickly. What we have found measuring over 50 ,000 brains now is that if I structure the information as a story, I can sustain your immersion much better than if I just give you facts. You should buy this phone because it has a 14 gig hard drive. I don't know. Who knows? I'm making stuff up. As opposed to some very small subset, but most people say, look, this phone is in, this is generation 15 and
Jiani (18:37)
Mm.
Some people may really like it. Some people...
Paul (19:03)
We at Apple have learned how to make this experience so wonderful that your life will be better. You can choose to engage in apps or you can tell the phone not to bother you when you're being focused. It'll do all these things. And so if I tell you a story, a human scale story, it's much easier to us to understand that it generates more emotional content, which is the key to persuasion. Right. And then I again want to give you an option.
I've got to deliver it well and I have to chunk it in small pieces. So Accenture, the big professional services company, has used our software for six years to optimize the one billion dollars they spend a year training their employees, upskilling their employees. And they have found that people cannot stay immersed for more than 20 minute segments without a change. So if I'm training somebody, if I'm educating somebody, I've got to think about those 20 minute chunks. I might talk for 15 or 20 minutes and then
show you a film for 15 or 20 or have you worked together with your colleagues at a table on something, right? So again, I've really got to think about shorter intensive learning is much more memorable and actionable than longer, you know, six hours sitting on your butt. We're all overeducated. We've all learned to sit still for six hours. It doesn't mean that our brains work at that speed. So it's really thinking of the short, short, intensive interactions as most impactful.
Jiani (20:19)
for a long time.
Yeah, and you're mentioning about like the 20 20 20 and 20 framework it's like 20 minutes for Kind of a warm opening or the the intro then 20 minutes for delivery and then 20 minute for like kind of brief break I can't remember is that Am I right?
Paul (20:43)
Yeah, so any
20, any three 20 minute segments and then think about it a longer break. So Accenture has found this five or 10 minute break is not enough when I'm asking your brain to really have peak immersion moments to really focus your processing power on this experience. So they've actually put longer breaks in because again, they're trying to work at the speed of the brain, not at what I can force you to do. We're really trying to optimize that so that they can deliver.
effective training in as short a period as possible, but get the biggest return from the organizational perspective.
Jiani (21:18)
beautiful. And how do you measure the change? Like after we've put them through this full attention into the immersion stage and kind of carried them over or nod them over from A to B and going through this persuasion and change. And then how do you actually measure the change? Like...
Paul (21:40)
Yeah, it depends on the outcome you're looking for. So a couple ways in the training space, Accenture has found a strong positive correlation between immersion and training and information recall weeks later, for example, taking a test to see what you remember. We found the same thing in advertising that people remember advertising when it has a peak immersion component to it. In the health realm, what we find is, as I mentioned earlier, when people have enough of these peak immersion moments per day,
six or more per day that they sustain high mood and high energy. So they're avoiding the opposite of that, which are depressive symptoms where I have low mood, low energy. I don't want to do anything. And so we launched last July our first digital health free digital health app so that anybody can measure if they're getting enough social emotional interactions to stay emotionally healthy. People can download it. It's the website's best Tuesday ever dot com.
Version ones. Yeah version ones for iPhone only version two will be out in September if you're an Android person Just put your email in there and we'll let you know and we made a decision to make this free We think it's so important that people have a tool to measure whether they are thriving Emotionally or not and then have a goal just like you have goal for steps as a ring to close every day I want to make sure I'm getting enough social emotional interaction to stay healthy
Jiani (22:36)
That's Tuesday ever, dog -knock -nice.
Paul (23:03)
And the good news is your brain doesn't care so much how you get that interaction. So again, talking in person, seeing someone in person, going to happy hour, always good. But I can get it from a movie. I can get it from this podcast with you. Right. My brain is certainly getting all that social emotional value all the time because we're social creatures and we seek it out. So, yeah, watch watch a movie. You know, as you know, in the book starts with me.
Jiani (23:14)
Hmm.
You
Paul (23:29)
early on on an airplane crying at a movie. And that's really interesting, right? Neurologically, it's not interesting if you're a human being, but as a scientist, I go, man, that's weird. If you know it's a movie, you haven't taken drugs, you don't have a brain injury, why are you crying? Nothing's bad happening to you, but we get immersed in that movie. It's as if what's happening in the movie is happening to us. That's exactly what social creatures do. We connect.
in a real physiologic sense to each other and we get the value of that connection. So I think when we have so many people now working at home and working on the road and digital nomads, we do have to make an effort to connect to others in person at least some of the time so that we get that real value. I don't know if if had this during COVID, Johnny, Jiani, I felt like my social skills declined because I was just living with my family and.
after a year of not leaving the house, you didn't want to see your family anymore. Like, I got to talk to other humans, you know. So I do feel like, you know, I haven't seen scientific research on this, but it seems like if you are not engaging socially, it becomes a little harder over time. So if you force yourself,
Jiani (24:40)
Just like driving,
because after pandemic, people are crazy drivers.
Paul (24:44)
Great example,
yeah. So here's something I started doing about 10 years ago, which is saying hello to people in elevators. I think it's super weird that social humans pretend like the other people in the elevator are not there. You know you're there, say hello. And what I discovered is that for half the people I say hello to, we have a nice 20 second conversation. The other half are kind of freaked out. That also makes me happy for some odd reason. So again, so it's practice. It's almost an experiment on myself.
Jiani (24:52)
you
Is fear an
immersive experience too?
Paul (25:15)
no, well, yes and no. So everything about you is sort of inverted U curve. So fear manifests as a stress response. So actually moderate stress increases immersion. I have a reason. I have something to do. I got to talk to you. I'm a, I'm a salesperson. I got to interact with you. That's, that's a little bit metabolically stressful. but high levels of fear inhibit it and also not having any motivation inhibits immersion.
So if I'm in survival mode holding on with my fingernails, I'm not going to think about connecting to you. I'm just trying to get through the next five minutes. Yeah. And if I'm sitting on the couch playing video games, not talking to anybody, I'm absolutely disconnected and I'm not really engaged with life. So that's not good either. I mean, a little bit, it's okay, sure. But eight hours a day by yourself is not good.
Jiani (25:44)
probably disconnection, yeah.
Yeah,
and sometimes like, I don't know about the audience, probably some may resonate. Like sometimes when you watch a movie and you're like immersed into the storyline of the movie, the emotions and the motions of the characters
Paul (26:15)
Yeah, you kind of lose track of time when you're deeply immersed in something. And at the same time, you find it very enjoyable. You're like, man, I just sat in a three hour movie. How did that happen? Like, you know, it just went away like that. So yeah, so we do need those, those really peak immersion experiences. And we're not running out. They're not making less fewer movies or TV shows or video games, right? We really crave this.
Jiani (26:19)
Yeah.
It happens to me a lot.
Paul (26:39)
but I do think there's a call here for in -person interaction. So again, because the bandwidth hitting my brain if I'm seeing you in person versus seeing you online like I am now, it's just higher.
Jiani (26:39)
Actually, more.
Hmm.
It's different.
Yeah. Yes. Yes. And I still remember when I was going to school and there was like an online version, but I always picked the in -person because the vibes in reality, it's just so, so, so different. You know, it's online.
Paul (27:03)
If you remember from the book,
we have a lot of subscribers to our, the emerging neuroscience platform who are in the education and training space. And they have shown that the same class online versus in -person, the in -person has much higher immersion. If you're just sitting shoulder to shoulder, first of all, it's hard to goof off. You can't just, you know, goof around on the internet and there's just kind of more shared energy. So immersion is contagious. So.
The person next to me immersed, I tend to get immersed too. This is the same reason why people laugh and cry more at a movie theater than they do watching at home. Yeah, I guess kind of contagion effect. We're weird creatures. We're super weird.
Jiani (27:35)
in groups.
Yeah, like mirror, we mirror each other. And that brings to like a topic like trust or environment of safety. I feel like that's kind of the foundational piece for us to even start to pay attention or start to immerse. What are based on your research? What are some? How do people feel or how does the neuro chemical chemicals like respond when we feel?
this environment is safe like I feel there's a lot of trust I trust this the presenter I trust the teacher the instructor I trust my classmates I feel safe like what is going like how and yeah
Paul (28:21)
Yeah. So you're
exactly right. The precursor to trust, to having a great peak immersion experience is I've got to feel psychologically safe. I developed a physiologic measure of psychological safety. Am I comfortable around these other humans? If I'm not, I got to work on the safety issue first, and then maybe I'll have a great experience. Maybe I won't. And so particularly in this sort of
experience, organizational culture practice, If they're not safe, they're not going to be productive. They're not going to feel satisfied with their work. They're just going to feel stressed out. So the first thing is to create that psychologically safe environment. And the second is really to give them the opportunity to kind of flex their immersion muscles, muscles, if you will, give them the autonomy to really execute as they see fit. So what we find is low immersion in.
environments in which you're kind of being micromanage. You're told what step to do and someone's watching all the time. But if you say, look, you're trained, you know, I did this job, go for it, do it. And then you can modify it as you see fit and you become much more immersed in that experience. And because high immersion feels valuable, then you feel like, I enjoy my job because I got to do this super cool thing that took some energy, but.
felt like it was really important. So again, from a leadership perspective, we want hard but achievable goals, right? So we like hard but achievable. That's one reason that people are more immersed often at work than they are in recreation. In recreation, we always have those hard but achievable goals, right? Maybe you're playing tennis or golf and you're trying to get better. But at work, you're like, holy crap, I got a deadline on Friday. I got to get this project done for my.
customer or whatever it is and you're like, man, I made it Friday, five o 'clock. I did it. You have that sense of relief, you know, like, I really did it. And then you can tell your friends like, how's your week? my God, I had the worst week and then I did it. I pulled it out. You know, I've never thought I could finish this hard project and you feel so good versus. Yeah.
Jiani (30:04)
Yes.
That's great. And then let's dial back to the safety
part. So based on your research, are there any key factors that helped contribute to the feeling of safety and trust?
Paul (30:28)
Yeah, I think there's a now kind of older fashion view that you've sort of taught in business schools from a leadership perspective that you shouldn't fraternize with the people that report to you. You know, they'll lose respect for you. That's all bogus, right? So we have a shortage of humans now, right? We have record low unemployment. We, you know, the birth rates are in the toilet. We're shrinking. Every continent is shrinking except Africa and they'll start to shrink maybe 2040. So we're going to start running out of humans. So.
If you have a job, you have a lot of power. And so one of the real takeaways is that from a leadership perspective, you need to actually build caring relationships with the people who report to you because you work harder for someone you care about someone you like. And I think that's a real change from the old fashioned like hierarchical structure. It's much more horizontal. Most workplaces are much more horizontal. We want to give people autonomy.
create an open environment and create opportunities to get to know each other. So as you know, Jiani, you know, many workplaces now have open workspaces with wifi, have cafes, have a ping pong table. And that's not about recreation. It's really about social connection. I want to get to know the people I work with. So anytime you put people together, you're going to have a little bit of friction. But if I get to know you, because we got a happy hour or we play ping pong or whatever, or we hang out on the couch for 10 minutes having coffee.
then next time I have to talk to you, I've got less friction. So I think of trust as like a lubricant, a social lubricant. If I know you, if I trust you, fine, I don't have to bug you to get something done. You're reliable. You'll do what you're supposed to do and you'll help me when I need help.
Jiani (32:02)
That's beautiful. I would actually bring our conversation a little bit into kind of the future, the bigger picture. So as we move into the future of super hyper technology development, like artificial intelligence, virtual realities, Web3 or Neuralink, you name it.
What would the best future look like through your lens of immersion?
Paul (32:24)
For me, I am super passionate about improving emotional health. So we have just a explosion of mental health disorders. And by having a free tool that lets you measure your unconscious emotional responses and guides you using AI to engage in activities that build up your emotional health, I think we can, for the first time, get ahead of the curve for mental health disorders, help people avoid things like depression, suicide.
or Atlas, you form social groups. So we socially, emotionally regulate, right? If, if I get a notice that one of my friends is not doing so well neurologically, I can send him or her a message or a heart or a thumbs up or whatever that is. So I just think, you know, what has been missing from psychology and psychiatry is true bioassay. It's like, how do we measure your underlying emotional state? So we have that now as a company, we've decided to make this free.
Jiani (33:14)
I always do.
Paul (33:20)
And I think it's super important. So what I'm passionate about is getting this into healthcare systems, corporate wellness programs, as we can use to grow in those areas. Not only do we create better customer experiences and better movies and better education training, but we actually improve the mental health of everybody in society because you can even use a cheap, you know, $30 wearable and get this data. And so anyway, I'm very passionate about that. I think we can really now help people live.
Jiani (33:27)
you
I know.
Paul (33:48)
happier, healthier, healthier and longer lives. And as you know, people who are socially connected, they're healthier and they're happier and they live longer. So it's really about social connection. And that's what most of my professional work is focused on.
Jiani (34:00)
I would really want to step into that future with our audience in a world where our bio assets are being taken good care of, people don't wait until we're sick to seek care.
we proactively manage our energies, our emotional state, mental state, and our social lives. And there are devices and data to help us stay informed and help us to kind of nudge us whenever we need.
Paul (34:31)
Here's
my data right now. Look at that big smile. it's going now. So well, and I was going negative because I had a big peak immersion moments after peak immersion moment. You always have a trough, but that's my life data. So that frown means I'm a little below baseline now, but my background is my psychological safety. I'm totally comfortable talking to you, getting a lot of value from this. So thank you for the gift of a peak immersion experience that you just gave to me. So it's really wonderful that you did that.
Jiani (34:47)
you
that I think maybe I can maybe there's a collaboration to measure immersion for the podcast or in the future for our audiences. It's free. Yeah. And so let me give a recap for our audiences. So, so far we've talked about the story of Paul, the underlying motivation of why he decided to stay focused on the immersive experiences and also explored.
Paul (35:04)
It's free. You can do it.
Jiani (35:22)
What does the neurochemicals really doing when we're being focused, when we are actually doing persuasion, and when we are feeling trust and feel safety, and how important the role of social connections really are, and how we can actually measure everything in just one simple device through physiological data that's easily accessible.
Thank you very much, Paul. And let's kind of talk about your magic a little bit. When you were around 11 or 16, whichever age group you wanted to remember, what did you enjoy creating and playing so much that time disappeared for you?
Paul (36:04)
I really like physical devices. So I like building things. My father's an engineer. I was the only son. And so I would escape all my sisters and my mother. Do I go to my dad in the garage and build computers and build car engines? And so I'm, I'm very mechanically oriented. And one of the sort of secrets of the success of my lab is that we built, we built a lot of devices. We just, they didn't exist. So we just build stuff. So I think there's a real play.
and curiosity that seems like magic, but it's basically a lot of, let's just play, just try things. Hey, if you break something, well, you can fix it, right? So no big deal.
Jiani (36:42)
Yeah, and I'm curious, like when we are actually in that childlike wonder state as adults, what would the neurochemicals be doing? Like, can we actually measure?
Paul (36:53)
It's a great question. We
had a multi -year research program on awe. Like what happens when you like, this it's very hard to induce that sense of awe consistently. So I don't have a good answer for you, nor do I think am I convinced by anything I've seen published. But I do think it's a whole brain effect. It's not one area, one neurochemical is it's almost a letting go of just allowing something to happen. You know, when you if you ever written something and then you go back and read it, go.
man, this was good. Who created this? Like, I don't even remember doing that. It's that kind of whole brain where you're just almost checked out and it's as if your brain's working without you, without you being consciously aware. So I don't have a good sense of what that is, but I think it's a deep, unconscious desire to create. And I think we all have that to a greater or lesser degree. And so this is why we get great thoughts in the shower or whatever, or taking a walk. So, you know, it's like you're just letting go. And then all of a sudden you go,
Jiani (37:46)
yes, yes.
Paul (37:50)
here's a solution to this thing that's been bugging me for a week. And so I think if we create those environments for ourselves, we can just play and not have goals. Solutions come to us, or even dreaming, right? You ever dreamed a solution? It's wonderful when you wake up, you go, my God, my brain just solved this problem.
Jiani (38:01)
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like it's a reason you have to work like really really really really really hard using a lot of disciplinary energies and then then you let go and then you work really hard and then you let go. Maybe that's my hypothesis. Yeah, so what role does Childlike Wonder play in your personal life?
Paul (38:19)
I love it. No, I think you're exactly right.
You know, I think one of the successes I've had as a scientist is the childlike inability to be wrong. I love to be wrong. Being wrong means I've learned something. And I don't mind if people think I'm dumb or naive. I'd love to be in situations where I know nothing and I can hang around people who are more informed than I am. And so I think...
making mistakes is a big plus in most of life. And yet I think as adults we're told, well, we have to live in a no mistake world and no, just try experiment, try stuff. And so I think that's really been a secret to my success is I'm willing to do, not unsafe things, but weird things that people haven't thought about and connect weird dots and just see what happens. And a lot of times it fails by the way. A lot of, I'm talking to you as if,
I knew what I was doing for the last 25 years. No, I've made a ton of mistakes. We could do three hours on the mistakes I've made, but it's those mistakes that guide you towards a solution.
Jiani (39:31)
Yeah, and sometimes people kind of disassociate with like the curiosity, the ability to make mistakes, with like reaching the outcome and predictability and consistency. And you're able to actually weave that gracefully, like the wonder, the open mindedness, the, you know, like, crazy.
Paul (39:49)
Exposed it looks graceful. No, I think in going forward it looks stupid I when I started doing the
oxytocin work, One of my colleagues was a medical doctor said there was a dumbest idea ever heard of the oxytocin would affect any behavior Why would you think that is just for women given birth and I was like, yeah, but the brains making oxytocin It's got to be doing something in the brain. That's irrelevant just for women And so I can't it to me that's just small -minded right now. Maybe he didn't read all the literature I read and all that but I think I
You know, you have to resist those naysayers around you who tell you how dumb your ideas are. If they're dumb, you'll find out quick enough if you try to act on them. So I think just try stuff and play. That's the magic. Play is the magic.
Jiani (40:27)
That's beautiful. That's the magic.
Excellent! We're actually expediting our last question. And before that, are there any particular challenges? Aside from like mistakes? Are there any major...
Paul (40:39)
Well, sure.
In the startup world, money, time, team. I think the solution I found around those challenges, both in my academic lab and my company, is to build really good teams. And I think I've been either lucky or good at doing that and have people who I've had the privilege of work with for 15 or 20 years who are just brilliant and innovative But honestly, so many people...
have and still support all the work I do and not to mention my family and all that. So have a great support system around you and you'll be much more successful. But I want to make them successful, right? I want them, they have shares in the company, they have publications in my lab. And I think it's really shared success is the key.
Jiani (41:22)
And it's also a social immersive experience with your team as well. I love that.
Paul (41:28)
for sure. It's love. Let's put a point on it. You have
this is this chemical of love. So, you know, I'm old enough that I tell the people that work with me, I love them all the time. And from the friendship perspective, they know what it means. It's not weird. And so yeah, you got to love the people around you. If you don't love the people around you, maybe you shouldn't be around them.
Jiani (41:47)
I say that to people as well. Beautiful. What do you think is your magic then?
Paul (41:54)
Maybe I think it is love.
I'm unafraid to tell people I love them.
Now, I don't think I was 10 years ago or even maybe five years ago, but now I try to tell as many people as possible My goal is that every day I tell one person I love them. That's a simple goal, right? And better if it's not if it's in your family kind of doesn't count but even that I think it's important
Jiani (42:15)
It's important. It's
kind of a big topic, but how do you define love in the workplace?
Paul (42:24)
In the, in the philia sense, right? In the, in the sense that I really care, you could say care if love's too weird, but I really care about you as a human being. So I have many people that have worked for me that have said, you know, at some point, Hey, I'd like to go work for Google or Facebook, whatever. I'm like, awesome. I know people there. Like I'm invested in you as a human being, as a friend. I don't care if you work for me or not. And by the way, then I got a guy working at Google. I can call up if I want to do a project with Google. So it also helps me too, but you know, I want to be invested in people.
number one, so I'm a pro -human person and I think we need to protect, love, care for those people. So you can say care. By the way, here's a trick for listeners. When you greet someone at work, add an adjective when you see them. So instead of saying, hi, Jiani, how are you? I say, hi, Jiani, you look happy, sad, worried, tired, upset. And now we have a much more emotional conversation that opens up that sense of connection between us. So just think of using adjectives. It's really easy.
Jiani (43:21)
I love that. It's so simple to do yet so impactful. That's beautiful. Thank you, Paul, for sharing your wisdom, your research, your stories with us today.
And for anybody who wants to connect with Paul and build future collaborative projects together or just experience collaborative immersion together, his information is in the show note below. So we strongly encourage you to get connected and create new stories of immersion, of love, of deep caring, of what...
needs to be human after all. Thank you, Paul.
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💕 Story Overview
In this MAGICademy podcast episode, neuroscientist Dr. Paul discusses his research on "immersion" - a measurable data stream from the brain that indicates how we value social-emotional experiences. He explains how immersion happens when we're both present and emotionally engaged, revealing that our brains process immersive moments through neurochemicals like dopamine and oxytocin.
The conversation explores how peak immersive experiences influence behavior, from consumer decisions to learning retention, and how they contribute to psychological well-being. Dr. Paul shares research findings from real-world applications, including restaurant experiences, training programs, and sales interactions, demonstrating how immersion is fundamentally a shared human experience. The discussion extends to the physiological aspects of persuasion, the importance of psychological safety, and how measuring immersion through wearable technology might help improve mental health in an increasingly disconnected world.
MAGICal Insights
Peak immersive experiences are scientifically measurable through peripheral nervous system data collected via wearable devices, not just through self-reporting. Dr. Paul's research identified specific neurochemical patterns in blood samples that correlate with behavioral responses, allowing his team to trace pathways from the brain to peripheral systems and develop algorithms that predict when people are genuinely immersed in an experience.
Social connections enhance immersion levels, with data showing that in-person experiences tend to generate higher immersion than digital alternatives. Research demonstrated this effect across multiple contexts, from educational settings where in-person classes showed higher immersion than identical online versions, to movie theaters where emotional responses are amplified compared to at-home viewing.
Episodes of high Mood and high Energy were positively and linearly related to the number of peak Immersion events. This finding suggests that regular meaningful peak immersions serve as a preventative measure against depressive symptoms, providing quantifiable evidence for the relationship between quality social experiences and psychological well-being.
What is immersion, and why does it matter?
At the heart of human experience lies a measurable phenomenon Dr. Paul calls "immersion" (Zak & Barraza, 2018)– a data stream emerging from our brains that reveals how we value social-emotional experiences. This research began with a fundamental question: how can we persuade people to take actions when the brain naturally resists change?
"The brain's a very lazy organ," Dr. Paul explains. "We establish habits. Our brain likes to do those habits. And it's difficult to influence people to change what they are prone to doing."
Through experiments funded by the Department of Defense, Dr. Paul's team discovered that when our brains highly value social-emotional experiences, this valuation can influence behavior. They developed methods to capture this data stream in real-time, allowing them to identify patterns that predict when someone will take action after an experience.
How do we measure and understand immersion?
The research journey began with direct physiological measurements – taking blood samples before and after emotional stimuli and observing which neurochemical changes correlated with subsequent actions. This led to identifying specific electrical signals these neurochemicals induce in the brain and throughout the nervous system.
"We just looked at people who responded to messages and identified from about 140 different signals the ones that really told us that these were valued enough that it prompted you to do something we could see," Dr. Paul shares.
The breakthrough came when they traced pathways from the brain to the peripheral nervous system, discovering that similar signals could be captured using everyday wearables (Zak, 2022). The technology analyzes subtle patterns in heart rhythms – not simple heart rate, but complex second and third-order changes reflecting the brain's engagement.
What creates a truly immersive experience?
Two key components drive immersion: presence (focused attention) and emotional resonance. When combined, these signals indicate how much metabolic investment your brain is making in processing an experience.
Dr. Paul emphasizes that social components dramatically enhance immersion: "For any experience you're creating, when you add in a social component, the immersion is always higher."
This explains why restaurants with outstanding service can outperform those with merely excellent food, and why in-person learning consistently generates higher immersion than identical online content. It's the human connection that elevates experiences from good to transformative.
How does immersion influence persuasion and change?
When we're being persuaded, our neurochemicals are essentially evaluating whether an opportunity is valuable enough to invest our resources. Dr. Paul's research revealed that information structured as stories (Zak, 2015) sustains immersion better than isolated facts, and that content delivered in 20-minute segments optimizes learning retention (Thompson, Xiu, Tsotsoros & Robertson, 2021).
"People cannot stay immersed for more than 20-minute segments without a change," he explains, drawing from Accenture's findings after using his software to optimize their billion-dollar training programs.
The most effective persuasion combines well-structured information, engaging delivery, and appropriate timing – all built on a foundation of psychological safety.
What role does psychological safety play in immersion?
Before people can become immersed in an experience, they need to feel psychologically safe. Dr. Paul has developed physiological measures of this safety, revealing that environments where people feel micromanaged show consistently lower immersion.
"If they're not safe, they're not going to be productive. They're not going to feel satisfied with their work," he notes. The remedy? Building genuine, caring relationships that reduce social friction and create environments where people have autonomy to execute their work as they see fit.
How might immersion technology shape our future?
Dr. Paul envisions a future where measuring immersion helps address the growing mental health crisis. His research shows that episodes of high Mood and high Energy were positively and linearly related to the number of peak Immersion events (Merritt & Zak, 2024).
"By having a free tool that lets you measure your unconscious emotional responses and guides you using AI to engage in activities that build up your emotional health, I think we can, for the first time, get ahead of the curve for mental health disorders," he explains.
This approach creates possibilities for proactive emotional health management, where people don't wait until they're sick to seek care, but instead regularly monitor their social-emotional well-being just as they might track their physical activity.
What deeper wisdom emerges from studying immersion?
Throughout the conversation, Dr. Paul returns to a fundamental insight: human connection lies at the core of immersion. Whether in business, education, or healthcare, creating meaningful connections generates the immersive experiences that make life fulfilling.
Perhaps most poignantly, when asked about his personal "magic," Dr. Paul answers simply: "Maybe I think it is love. I'm unafraid to tell people I love them."
In this response lies a profound connection between the scientific and the personal – that the neurochemistry of immersion might ultimately be pointing us toward our fundamental human need for genuine connection, care, and love.
Conclusion
The concept of immersion, defined as a quantifiable data stream reflecting the brain's valuation of social-emotional experiences, presents a powerful framework for understanding and influencing human behavior. Measuring attention and emotional resonance through physiological signals offers insights into how experiences, especially those with a social component, can be optimized to enhance customer value, foster loyalty, and improve mental well-being. The key lies in creating peak immersion moments, characterized by heightened focus, emotional connection, and a sense of presence, which drive engagement, create cravings for repetition, and ultimately lead to more fulfilling and impactful experiences for individuals and organizations alike.
Reference
Merritt, S. H., & Zak, P. J. (2024). Continuous remote monitoring of neurophysiologic Immersion accurately predicts mood. Frontiers in Digital Health, 6, 1397557.
Thompson, P., Xiu, Y., Tsotsoros, J. D., & Robertson, M. A. (2021). The effect of designing and segmenting instructional video. Journal of Information Technology Education: Research, 20.
Zak, P. J., & Barraza, J. A. (2018, January). Measuring immersion in experiences with biosensors. In Proceedings of the 11th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, Funchal, Portugal (pp. 19-21).
Zak, P. J. (2015, February). Why inspiring stories make us react: The neuroscience of narrative. In Cerebrum: the Dana forum on brain science (Vol. 2015, p. 2).
Zak, P. J. (2022). Immersion: the science of the extraordinary and the source of happiness.
⭐Paul’s MAGIC
Paul Zak believes his "magic" lies in creating love by designing intentional, immersive experiences. All organizations, regardless of their nature, are in the service of improving lives. To achieve this, businesses should focus on generating "peak immersion moments" by surpassing routine interactions and conveying genuine care. Combining attentiveness and emotional resonance, these experiences can foster connection and presence, enhancing customer lifetime value, individual happiness, and mental well-being—essentially, infusing interactions with love for a lasting positive impact.
Connect with Guest
Paul J. Zak is a scientist, author, and speaker driven by a quest to understand the neuroscience of human connection, human happiness, and effective teamwork. Through his academic lab and the companies he has founded, Paul develops and implements neuroscience technologies to address real-world challenges. His book, "Immersion," distills 20 years of research into a framework for creating extraordinary experiences in various settings. Paul's group uses neuroscience to quantify the impact of movies, advertising, stories, and consumer experiences, contributing to the development of fields like neuroeconomics and neuromarketing.
Immersion: https://www.getimmersion.com/
SIX Website: https://www.your6.com
SIX App Store: https://uos8w.app.link/O8HOF6MTHRb
Credits & Revisions:
Guest: Dr. Paul Zak
Story Writer/Editor: Dr. Jiani Wu
AI Partner: Perplexity, Claude
Initial Publication: Mar 14, 2025
Revisions
Mar 19, 2025: Added a reference to show that “Episodes of high Mood and high Energy were positively and linearly related to the number of peak Immersion events.”
Mar 24, 2025: Added an engaging workbook to help each of us practice immersion in daily life.
Disclaimer:
The content shared is to highlight guests’ passion & wonder. Please read evidence-based research to help you develop your unique understanding.
AI technologies are harnessed to create initial content derived from genuine conversations. Human review is used to ensure accuracy, relevance & quality.
