The secret to successful conversations with strangers

You may generally disregard unfamiliar faces as background characters in the movie that is your life, but almost everyone you care about was once a stranger. Aside from the people who have been in your life since you were born, every relationship has a getting-to-know you process where you transition from unknowns to knowns. 

Strangers can bring so much meaning to everyday moments, in big ways and small ones. In her new book Once Upon A Stranger: The Science of How “Small” Talk Can Add Up to a Big Life, Gillian Sandstrom, an associate professor in the psychology of kindness at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, makes the case for why we should make more attempts to connect with unknowns. Sandstrom draws on research that both extols the virtues of interacting with strangers (talking with them improves well-being) and helps quell your fears (people enjoy talking to us more than we think).

Among the most nerve-wracking of stranger encounters are ones where you’re the unknown entity in a group: at a new job, a knitting club, or on the block. Everyone is unfamiliar to you, but to them, you’re the sole stranger. Here, Sandstrom offers some advice on how to integrate into the unit, and why you probably aren’t as embarrassing as you think.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Is there a difference between talking to a stranger on the street versus going into a new a cappella group and they all know each other and you don’t? Is the stranger scenario different for each of those contexts? 

There is something different when you know that you might see the person again, because you probably worry more about their judgment. You want them to like you, so that when you see them again, you might want to talk again. Sometimes people worry [the other person doesn’t] want that. So you might think, I see the same person at the bus stop every day and I could say hi. But what if I do and then I don’t like them? Or if they’re boring and then I’m going to have to talk to them every single time I go to the bus stop? So it’s better to just not talk at all. It’s definitely scarier when you know that there’s the potential to see people again; you really want to make a good impression. It feels higher stakes. 

Would this type of conversation fall under the umbrella of small talk?

The way you start a conversation works the same way whenever you’re talking to someone that you haven’t met before, regardless of what’s going to happen in the future, if you’re going to see them again or not. You have to figure out, What are we going to talk about? I don’t know you, so I don’t know which topics are good and which topics are not good, and we have to fumble our way to finding some common ground. The choir [you just joined] is a good conversation starter. You’ve chosen the same thing to do. Or you’re working for the same employer. You have something in common, which could be an easier conversation starter. 

What stuck out to me in the book was what you call Sid, this insidious voice in your head who’s telling you not to talk to strangers, and that you’re not interesting and nobody likes you. That voice is even stronger in situations where everybody knows each other and you are the new person. What advice would you have to quiet that voice? 

That voice in our head that’s like, “You suck, you don’t know what you’re doing, nobody likes you” — part of that comes from always comparing ourselves to others. There’s research showing that we generally think we’re better than average at almost everything, but not at social stuff. This is almost the only thing where we think we’re not better than average. Who are you comparing yourself to? We compare ourselves to highly social people, the people who are really good at this. That’s partly why we think that we’re not any good, because we’re comparing ourselves to the best of the best. 

We have to be better at realizing, yes, there are some people like that, but we don’t have to compare ourselves to those people who are really good. If you look around the room, probably more people are like you desperately trying to figure it out and have a decent conversation. 

I am a researcher, so I’m all about the data. Okay, Sid, what data do you have? Show me the receipts. We don’t talk to strangers very often, and when we don’t have enough data, we can’t [easily] be like, “Oh yeah, I remember that great conversation I had.” We remember the really bad stuff. If you ever had a conversation with a stranger that didn’t go well, or you tried to talk to someone and it was a bit awkward or they didn’t want to talk, that’s what you’re going to remember. For me, what helps quiet Sid is to be able to say, “No, you have no basis for what you’re telling me. You have no data.” 

I was really struck by your study that showed most conversations with strangers go well; there are very few that are total trainwrecks. That speaks to the idea that we’re making this up. It’s not that bad.

When we don’t have data, we have to imagine stuff, and it’s easier to imagine those trainwrecks. That’s the stuff we remember. It’s the drama.

It also ups the stakes, especially if you’re the new person at work and thinking, “I’m going to say something stupid, and they’re going to see me every day and think I’m an idiot for the rest of the time that we work together.”

There’s this research on who we’re willing to confide in. People, in certain situations, would rather share something with someone they don’t know, because if they share it with someone they do know, every time they see that person they’re going to be reminded of the fact that they shared that thing. The same is true here. If you tell a joke that nobody laughs at, you might think that every time you see them, you’ll be reminded of that joke and it didn’t go over well. They’re probably not thinking of it. The spotlight effect is when we feel like other people are noticing all our flaws more than they actually do, and then, that changes how you act, and it makes things more awkward. There’s a self-fulfilling prophecy going on. 

What if you said something stupid and everyone laughed. How do you move on?

If it was me, I’d try to make a joke about it. There have been so many times where I have continued to feel bad about something, and every once in a while, I bring it up and people are like, “I don’t even remember that.” What you could do is say, “I’m still thinking about that horrible joke I told last time.” Guaranteed, they’ll be like, “What joke? I don’t even remember.”

Why is it worth talking to strangers, especially the ones that you are going to see regularly? 

It does not feel the same if you’re on a dodgeball team and you’re not talking to anybody on your team. The fun comes from being able to joke around and trash talk the opponents together and have a cup of tea afterwards. What would it feel like if you didn’t have any of that? It would be empty.

A lot of people join a group, and then, they find a couple people, and then, anytime they go to the group, they talk to those few people, and that’s it. I try really hard not to do that. I try to meet lots of people. I play in an amateur orchestra. How do you turn a chat at the orchestra to something outside of the orchestra? If you did want to turn it into something lasting, you need that repeated contact. If you’re seeing the same people every week, that’s a good start. But then, you also have to be willing and brave enough to say, “Let’s grab a coffee afterwards.” 

What if you don’t want to take these relationships further?

That’s fine. You shouldn’t feel like you have to get their name and their contact info and do something, but you can if you want to. There’s research on how having a diversity of interaction partners is important. You learn different things from different people.

What misconceptions do you think people have about the value of interacting with strangers? 

People start by thinking, I’m not going to have anything in common with them. Why would I? What’s in it for me? One of the reasons that we connect with other people is because we can do more together, and we feel safer when we’re in a group. We’re going to thrive. The workplace is going to be able to produce more, because we’re going to be better at teamwork, and we’re going to trust each other more. But for that to happen, someone has to go first. You have to be thinking about the “we.”

I like the way you put it: Someone has to go first. It almost feels like we’re at a school dance, and we’re all standing on the sidelines, but we want the same thing.

That’s the biggest misconception in terms of talking to strangers, period: We walk around thinking we’re the only ones who are anxious and that we don’t know what to do and that they don’t want to talk to us. But everybody’s feeling that way. It takes one person to be brave, to figure out how to ignore Sid’s voice in their head and just do it anyway.