Heart-to-heart talks with strangers could be therapeutic, study says
Heart-to-heart talks are conversations usually reserved for people you’ve known for quite a long time. But according to a study from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, having deep discussions with strangers could benefit one’s well-being.
‘Connecting with others in meaningful ways tends to make people happier, and yet people also seem reluctant to engage in deeper and more meaningful conversation,’ said Nicholas Epley, Ph.D., a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and the study’s co-author. ‘This struck us as an interesting social paradox: If connecting with others in deep and meaningful ways increases well-being, then why aren’t people doing it more often in daily life?’
Remember when “don’t talk to strangers” was a reminder that parents would tell their kids? Well, the study’s researchers did the complete opposite and conducted an experiment with a total of 1,800 participants. They paired people who never met before, and asked them to discuss relatively deep or shallow topics.
The participants were asked to predict how awkward their conversation with their partner would be. Afterward, they were asked to have shallow small-talk topics like “What do you think about the weather today?” and more personal questions like “Can you describe a time you cried in front of another person?”
The results showed that both deep and shallow talks felt less awkward and led to stronger feelings of connectedness than the participants had assumed. In fact, it showed that the deep conversations they had were also “more enjoyable”. The researchers suspected that people hold back on engaging in more intimate talks because they underestimate how strangers are interested in their lives.
‘People seemed to imagine that revealing something meaningful or important about themselves in conversation would be met with blank stares and silence, only to find this wasn’t true in the actual conversation,’ Epley explained. ‘Human beings are deeply social and tend to reciprocate in conversation. If you share something meaningful and important, you are likely to get something meaningful and important exchanged in return, leading to a considerably better conversation.’
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