Snippet: Talking to Stranger on a Bus...Transformative!

Snip·pet | ˈsnipit | noun a small piece or brief extract.

Here’s one from an interview with University of Chicago psychologist Nick Epley on the Plain English with Derek Thompson podcast in an episode titled “‘The Anti-Social Century’: America’s Epidemic of Solitude—and How to Fix It.”

He’s talking about his 15 years of studying the transformative effects of talking to people and taking interest in them, from strangers on the bus to deep conversations with friends. We think strangers don’t want to be talked to, but it makes them happier when we do. We think we’ll feel better by not interacting. We’re wrong, even if we’re introverts! Making the wrong choice and keeping to ourselves literally dozens of times a day adds up.

Thompson: “Do you come away from these studies thinking that your natural inclination to keep to yourself should maybe be exploded a little bit and you should open yourself up to people.”

Epley: “So there's no research that I've ever read about or been involved in that's changed the way I've lived my life more than this. … I've now seen 10,000 data points showing these gaps between our pessimistic expectations about what happens when I reach out and take a genuine interest in you and reach out and try to connect to you in a positive meaningful way with good intent. …I've seen so many data points at this point about the size of that gap. that it has changed the way I live my life from top to bottom.”

Photo by Luke Michael on Unsplash.