They were wrong. In the 2014 study by Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder, people who talked to a stranger reported a more pleasant journey, and no less productive. The researchers' summary of why we avoid it was sharp: we underestimate how interested other people are in connecting with us.
Small talk has a terrible reputation. It's called shallow, fake, a waste of time. The research says something different: small talk isn't the opposite of real connection. It's the doorway to it, and most of us leave that door shut out of misplaced fear.
Three things we get wrong
We think strangers won't want to talk. That's the commuter finding. When the researchers asked why people stayed silent, the answer was a mistaken belief that the other person wasn't interested.
We think people like us less than they do. In 2018, Erica Boothby and colleagues found that after conversations, people consistently underestimated how much their partner liked them and enjoyed their company. They called it the liking gap, and it showed up between strangers in a lab, between new university housemates over several months, and among adults at a workshop. After a chat, you're probably liked more than you think.
We think deep conversation will be awkward. A set of experiments published in 2021 by Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley paired strangers to discuss either shallow or deep questions. People expected the deep ones to be much more awkward. In practice those conversations felt less awkward than expected and left people feeling more connected and happier. The reason for the mistake: we assume strangers will care less about what we share than they actually do.
Small talk feels risky because we misjudge the other person. They're usually more interested, and kinder, than our fear suggests.
Even "weak ties" matter
It's not only about turning strangers into friends. In 2014, Gillian Sandstrom and Elizabeth Dunn found that students felt happier and more of a sense of belonging on days when they interacted with more classmates than usual, people they knew only casually. The barista, the neighbour, the regular at the gym: those brief exchanges add up.
How to make small talk less small
Ask, then follow up. A 2017 study by Karen Huang and colleagues at Harvard found that people who asked more questions were better liked, especially follow-up questions, the ones that build on what the other person just said. In speed-dating data, people who asked more follow-ups got more second dates. Yet participants didn't predict that asking questions would make them more likeable.
| Dead-end | Follow-up |
|---|---|
| "What do you do?" … "Cool." | "What do you do?" … "What's the part of it nobody outside your job understands?" |
| "Busy weekend?" … "Nice." | "Busy weekend?" … "Wait, you went climbing? How did you get into that?" |
Go one level deeper than feels safe. Swap a stock question for a slightly more personal one: not "Where are you from?" but "What do you miss about where you grew up?" Kardas's research suggests the other person will usually welcome it more than you expect.
Offer something too. Conversation is an exchange. A small, real detail about yourself ("I'm terrible at this, I've just moved here") gives the other person something to respond to and signals that it's safe to share.
Escalate gradually. In a well-known 1997 study, the psychologist Arthur Aron and colleagues had pairs of strangers spend 45 minutes on a series of self-disclosure tasks that slowly grew more personal. The pairs felt closer afterwards than pairs who spent the same time on small talk. You don't need the full set of "36 questions," but the principle works in everyday life: start light, go a little deeper each time it feels welcome.
Read the room. None of this means forcing intimacy on someone who's busy, tired or wearing headphones. A short, friendly exchange that ends warmly is a success too (see Reading a Room).
The takeaway
We avoid small talk because we underestimate how much strangers want to connect, how much they'll like us, and how warmly they'll respond to deeper questions. In study after study, talking turns out better than people predict, and even brief chats with casual acquaintances lift mood and belonging. Ask questions, especially follow-ups, share something real, and go one step deeper than feels comfortable.
Try this: in your next ordinary encounter, at a shop counter, in a lift, at the school gate, ask one follow-up question about whatever the other person says first. Then notice whether it went worse or better than you expected.
Sources & Further Reading
Sources
- Epley, N. & Schroeder, J. "Mistakenly seeking solitude." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2014.
- Boothby, E.J., Cooney, G., Sandstrom, G.M. & Clark, M.S. "The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?" Psychological Science, 2018.
- Kardas, M., Kumar, A. & Epley, N. "Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2022 (online 2021).
- Sandstrom, G.M. & Dunn, E.W. "Social Interactions and Well-Being: The Surprising Power of Weak Ties." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2014.
- Huang, K. et al. "It doesn't hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2017.
- Aron, A. et al. "The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1997.
Go deeper
- 📘 Mindwise — Nicholas Epley (why we misread other minds, and what to do about it)
- 📘 Supercommunicators — Charles Duhigg (on asking deeper questions and matching the other person)
- 🌐 Greater Good in Action — 36 Questions for Increasing Closeness (the Aron questions, for the brave)