Encounter Counting
Log a day of conversations to correct memory's negativity bias with real data
- Difficulty
- Starter
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 83%
Because of negativity bias, out of fifty conversations in a day you'll remember the single worst one far more than the rest — and then generalize from it about people. Encounter counting, inspired by cognitive behavioral therapy, is a one-day audit that replaces this biased memory with real data. You carry a notebook and, after each significant conversation, write down what it was actually like. At the end of the day you compare the actual distribution of your interactions to how you experienced, remembered, and expected them to go. The gap is the point: it reveals how much quiet goodness you routinely ignore. Zaki frames it as treating your life like an experiment — being more observant and noticing more carefully — so the ordinary kindness all around you, which negativity bias filters out, finally comes into focus. It's deliberately lightweight; you don't have to repeat it daily for it to recalibrate your baseline.
Origin
A practice Zaki uses in his own life and recommends to others, inspired by cognitive behavioral therapy and described in his book 'Hope for Cynics'.
Core principles
- 01Negativity bias makes you remember the one worst interaction over all the good ones.
- 02Your memory and expectations are a biased sample of your actual social life.
- 03Treating your life like an experiment surfaces the quiet goodness you ignore.
- 04You don't need to do it forever — one honest day of data recalibrates the story.
How to run it
- 1
Choose one day and a notebook
Pick a single ordinary day. You don't need to do this every day — one is enough to gather the data.
Pro tip Doing it just once lowers the barrier and still corrects the bias.
- 2
Log each conversation as it happens
After every significant conversation, write down what it was actually like — the tone, whether it was good, neutral, or bad.
Pro tip Record right after, before memory re-weights the moment toward the negative.
- 3
Compare data to memory
At the end of the day, compare the real record of your interactions with how you experienced, remembered, and expected them to go.
- 4
Let the goodness come into focus
Notice the quiet positive interactions your mind discarded. This is the recalibration — treating your social life as an experiment reveals the kindness around you that bias hides.
In the wild
Zaki describes driving his kids to school: the thousand motorists who follow the traffic laws and drive politely are lost to him within five minutes, receding into 'the landfill of lost memories'. But the one driver who cuts him off he thinks about for the rest of the day, and feels he has learned something about humanity from that single person. Encounter counting exists to surface the thousand he'd otherwise forget.
→ Written data exposes that the exceptions we fixate on are rare, and the ignored rule is that people are largely kind.
Common mistakes
Trusting memory instead of the log
Without writing it down, you'll recall the one worst conversation and treat it as representative. The whole method depends on capturing data in the moment, not reconstructing the day afterward.
Learning from the tail, not the bell curve
Fixating on the most egregious interactions (or the most outrageous internet stories) trains your worldview on the rarest outcomes and inverts reality. Counting encounters keeps the typical case in view.
Is it for you?
Best for
People whose view of others feels bleaker than their actual daily experience warrants.
Not ideal for
Someone in a genuinely hostile environment where most interactions really are negative.
From the transcript
“I call it encounter counting... write down after each significant conversation you had what it was like and compare the actual data”
“we're going to remember the one worst conversation more than any of the other ones”
From the episode
How To Be More Hopeful In A Cynical World - Dr Jamil Zaki - #841
Dr Jamil Zaki