Social Chemistry: Decoding the Patterns of Human Connection

Marissa King

Jan 2021 · Penguin Random House Audio · Narrated by Brittany Pressley

About this audiobook

One of 2021's Most Highly Anticipated New Books—Newsweek 
One of The 20 Leadership Books to Read in 2020—Adam Grant
One of The Best New Wellness Books Hitting Shelves in January 2021—Shape.com 
A Top Business Book for January 2021—Financial Times
A Next Big Idea Club Nominee

Social Chemistry will utterly transform the way you think about “networking.” Understanding the contours of your social network can dramatically enhance personal relationships, work life, and even your global impact. Are you an Expansionist, a Broker, or a Convener? The answer matters more than you think. . . . 

Yale professor Marissa King shows how anyone can build more meaningful and productive relationships based on insights from neuroscience, psychology, and network analytics. Conventional wisdom says it's the size of your network that matters, but social science research has proven there is more to it. King explains that the quality and structure of our relationships has the greatest impact on our personal and professional lives. As she shows, there are three basic types of networks, so readers can see the role they are already playing: Expansionist, Broker, or Convener. This network decoder enables readers to own their network style and modify it for better alignment with their life plans and values.

High-quality connections in your social network strongly predict cognitive functioning, emotional resilience, and satisfaction at work. A well-structured network is likely to boost the quality of your ideas, as well as your pay. Beyond the office, social connections are the lifeblood of our health and happiness. The compiled results from dozens of previous studies found that our social relationships have an effect on our likelihood of dying prematurely—equivalent to obesity or smoking.

Rich stories of Expansionists like Vernon Jordan, Brokers like Yo-Yo Ma, and Conveners like Anna Wintour, as well as personal experiences from King's own world of connections, inform this warm, engaging, revelatory investigation into some of the most consequential decisions we can make about the trajectory of our lives.

About the author

Marissa King is professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, where she developed and teaches a popular course entitled Managing Strategic Networks. Over the past fifteen years, King has studied how people's social networks evolve, what they look like, and why that's significant. Her most recent line of research analyzes the individual and group-level behaviors that are necessary for large-scale organizational change. Known to use wearable sensors to enhance traditional social science data, King's research has been featured in outlets such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, USA Today, U.S. News & World Report, Bloomberg Businessweek, The Atlantic, and on National Public Radio.