And I suddenly felt desperate for a
human connection.
“Sure. My name is Sue,” the woman
replied, smiling warmly. “What brings
you to Boston?” I started to explain
that I was on a business trip. Then the
plane lurched violently, and I blurted
out, “I might need to hold your hand
too.” Sue took my hand in both of
hers, patted it, and held on tight.
Sometimes a stranger can signifi-
cantly improve our day. A pleasant
encounter with someone we don’t
know, even a nonverbal exchange,
can soothe us when no one else is
around. It may get us out of our own
heads—a proven mood booster—and
help broaden our perspective.
“People feel more connected when
they talk to strangers, like they are
part of something bigger,” says Gillian
Sandstrom, a psychologist and senior
lecturer at the University of Essex who
studies interactions between strangers.
In research
studies, Sand-
strom has found
that people’s
moods improve
after they have a
conversation with
a stranger—say, a
Starbucks barista, a
volunteer at a mu-
seum, or the per-
son next to them in
line. Overall, people
report that they are
happier on days when
they have more inter-
actions with acquain-
tances they don’t know well.
And yet most of us resist talking to
people we don’t know or barely know.
We fret about the mechanics of the
conversation—how to start, maintain,
or stop it. We think we will blather on
and disclose too much, or not talk
enough. We worry we will bore the
other person.
We’re typically wrong. Sandstrom’s
research shows that people under-
estimate how much another person
will like them when they talk for the
first time. In a study in which she
asked participants to talk to at least
one stranger a day for five days,
99 percent said they had found at
least one of the exchanges pleasantly
surprising, 82 percent said they’d
learned something from one of the
strangers, 43 percent had exchanged
contact information, and 40 percentrd.com 21