Adam Grant Organizational psychologist at Wharton, #1 NYT bestselling author of THINK AGAIN, host of the Re:Thinking podcast.

“People are almost using your history on social media as a reference check. And they're trying to pre-cancel you. They're looking for a reason to already conclude we're not a fit. … Everybody is more than the most unpleasant opinion that they've shared.”

The Rich Roll Podcast · Health & Longevity · November 2026

Context

Rich Roll said we can now scroll through someone's old posts and judge them before ever meeting. Grant built on it, arguing we give ourselves grace for who we used to be but rarely extend it to others.

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Transcript

The Rich Roll Podcast Around 48:20 into the episode

Adam Grant

…Elizabeth Holmes from this extended observation of somebody who seems to believe her own lies? You and I get fascinated about that together and we go deep on it together. And all of a sudden, now we've created a sense of similarity, but it doesn't matter whether we were objectively similar or not.

Rich Roll

…them. Before all of this, obviously, we could meet people the way that they are. We didn't know what every like everybody's opinion on every single thing before we met them. And so now we have to contend with that and overcome this thing just to do what we did naturally prior to all this nonsense.

Adam Grant

That's so true. I, you know, I haven't, I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about this, but I think you, you just captured something really important, which is people are almost using your history on social media as a reference check. And they're trying to pre-cancel you. They're looking for a reason to already conclude we're not a fit. We're not going to match. As opposed to saying, you know what, everybody is more than the most unpleasant opinion that they've shared. And some people have even left their old opinions out there because they want to remind themselves that they're not proud of every thought they've had and they shouldn't internalize every idea that comes into their head, nor should they necessarily believe every emotion that enters their heart. And I think we're pretty good at giving ourselves that grace and saying, oh, yeah, I was, you know, I was much less mature then, or I've grown a lot since then. But we don't extend that same grace to others. And I think we do that at our own peril.

Rich Roll

I think we also, and you get into this in the book as well, we look at that and we say, all right, well, this is the way this person sees the world. This is what they think. And we then make the leap to say that this is how they're going to behave. There's this whole thing in the book about…

Adam Grant

That was an aha moment for me when I met my favorite basketball player, Joe Dumars. I'd grown up. He was my favorite player on the bad boys. He was the good guy on the bad boys. And Joe D had the really interesting experience of having to corral Dennis Rodman, not an easy task. And then later, when…

Rich Roll

There's also a lot that goes into how you communicate that message so that it can be received and accepted by the person who's hearing it, right?

Speaker names come from our own diarization. The position is estimated from where the line sits in the episode.

More from The Rich Roll Podcast

“Compatibility is not something you have to select on in advance. It's something you build. And if you have just that little bit of motivation to go and meet somebody, you can find common ground with almost anybody.” — Adam Grant, The Rich Roll Podcast

“Several decades of evidence show that when it comes to both your happiness and your physical health, frenemies are actually worse than enemies. … Ambivalent relationships where you have mixed feelings toward other people are actually worse for your well-being because they're unpredictable. You don't know whether Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hyde is going to show up. You don't know whether you should move in for a hug or brace yourself for a brawl.” — Adam Grant, The Rich Roll Podcast