Listen to the audio version of this post here.

Our mothers were wrong.

“Don’t talk to strangers,” they warned us.

And, okay, it was undoubtedly a smart lesson for a young child to learn. Now that we’re adults, that conditioning to keep our head down and our mouth shut when we’re with someone we don’t know isn’t doing us any favors.

It turns out that talking to strangers makes us happier than we expect

Nicholas Epley, a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago, stumbled across that proposition sitting next to a woman in a red hat on his commute into Hyde Park. Instead of staring at a screen and scrolling, he told her how cool her hat was.

They wound up chatting all the way into the city. And he started his workday in a surprisingly good mood.

That launched Epley’s research. Which shows that people generally avoid conversation because they wrongly predict it will be awkward, annoying, or uncomfortable — but the actual experience is usually positive.

His best-known studies involved other commuters. They were told to either talk with a stranger, sit quietly alone, or behave as they normally do.

The people who talked to strangers reported having a more enjoyable commute than those who stayed isolated — and they were no less productive. Also, that was true even though most participants predicted the opposite outcome.

Epley’s broader conclusion is that we are systematically bad at forecasting social interactions.

We underestimate how much other people want to connect, how interested strangers will be in us, how enjoyable conversations will become once they start, and how much connection improves our mood and well-being.

Loneliness lasts because of our mistaken assumptions

People avoid interaction for fear of rejection or awkwardness. Yet most strangers respond warmly when approached in ordinary, friendly ways.

And we don’t have to stick with superficial chit-chat.

Once we’re talking, Epley’s research shows that we enjoy deeper conversations than most of us expect. Strangers are more open to meaningful discussion than we thought they would be. And even introverts benefit emotionally from these social connections.

Epley says being sociable is less a personality trait than a habit. And it’s a habit anyone can—and should—develop.

So there I was, at the Starbucks drive-through window.

My own experience prompted me to watch Epley’s Ted Talk. 

A brand new barista was handing me my four-shots-of-blonde-on-ice-with-stevia when she said, “I love your top, by the way. With your red glasses? Super-cute!”

Now, I haven’t been super-cute since I was three years old.

I know that.

And yet, I drove out of that Starbucks lot on top of the world. Happy, bordering on giddy, about the unexpected compliment. And that positive feeling lasted through the day—I was still smiling about it late in the afternoon.

Am I ridiculously needy? Pathetically dependent on outside approval? No, it turns out I’m normal!

Or at least that’s what Epley’s research shows.

The U-of-C researchers concluded that moments of connection — chatting with a commuter, a cashier, someone standing next to us in line … or a barista. Those interactions can meaningfully improve a person’s mood, reduce loneliness, and increase feelings of belonging.

And yet people routinely miss those opportunities because they assume silence will feel safer or better.

What a waste of ordinary, daily interactions!

A couple of other observations.

These ordinary, daily interactions have decreased for most of us.

The cellphone may not have caused social isolation, but it’s certainly sped up the process.

We carry a world’s worth of information around in our pockets.

When I’m in between things, it feels easier, and maybe safer, to pull out my iPhone and check my email or social media than to start a conversation with some stranger.

The pandemic hastened our increasing isolation. Working from home, we don’t connect with fellow commuters, the woman at the coffee shop in the lobby, or the guy in the elevator.

Shopping online eliminates those chats we might have had with the cashier at the grocery store or the salesclerk at Target.

We used to go to networking meetings and association gatherings and mingle before the program started. Now those events happen on Zoom or Teams.

It all adds up to fewer opportunities for face-to-face interaction. Which means we need to go out of our way to create those opportunities, if we’re going to develop the habit of being sociable, as Epley suggests.

And I have a question to explore.

My guess is that as we get older, those face-to-face opportunities become even fewer and farther between.

The kids are grown and gone; we’re no longer chatting with other parents at the school play, the soccer game, or the daddy-daughter dance.

And if we retire from our work, even more interactions disappear from our daily routines. Life can get very lonely, unless we intentionally create conversations to replace those that don’t happen naturally anymore.

Seems we need to work even harder to develop the habit of being sociable … or the settings for putting that habit into practice.

I’m committed to doing that for myself.

And the new program we talked about a couple of weeks ago, about becoming more authentic, comfortable, and confident as we get older. That might very well include developing the sociability habit.