Why is small talk so hard for some people?
Small talk is not a skill you are missing. The problem is not the talking. It is what you predict before you start.
People guess badly
Ask people how a conversation with a stranger would go and most say badly. Ask people who have just had one and you get a different answer.
Commuters were assigned to talk to a stranger, to sit alone, or to travel as usual. The ones who talked had a better journey than the ones who sat alone, and got just as much done. A second group, asked to predict how each would feel, picked talking as the worst of the three. It was tried again in London, where nobody talks on trains, and the result held.
Why the guess survives
What this does not promise
The next conversation might still be bad. The studies say the average is better than the average guess, not which one you are about to have. It is not an argument that you should want this either. Plenty of people are happy with few conversations.
All of it was measured out loud, in person, on trains. We think a wrong guess stays wrong when you type it. That is our reasoning, not a result.
What it changes
The diagnosis. If the barrier were skill, you would need better lines. It is a bad guess, so you need something duller. Start more conversations than your guess recommends, and let the results correct it.
If what stops you is the worry that you are dull to talk to, that is wrong in a specific direction.
Where this comes from
People predict that talking to a stranger will be unpleasant, and are reliably wrong about it — the conversation goes better than the forecast, and the forecast is wrong in the same direction for almost everyone.
What the study actually did
Nine experiments, on Chicago-area trains and buses and in a laboratory. In the first, 118 people were recruited at a suburban rail station and randomly assigned to strike up a conversation with a stranger, keep to themselves, or commute as they normally would. Those who talked reported a more positive commute than those who sat alone — a medium-sized difference — and were no less productive. A separate group of 66 commuters, asked to predict how each condition would feel, guessed the exact opposite.
What it doesn't show. That the conversations were good, that the strangers enjoyed them, or that any of this helps with loneliness. It measured how one commute felt. The participants were mostly older commuters in one American city, the conversations were spoken and face to face, and people were told to talk rather than choosing to. We have not found these experiments run on anonymous text chat, so we are extending a finding past the setting it was measured in.
Epley, N., & Schroeder, J. (2014). Mistakenly seeking solitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(5), 1980–1999 ·
10.1037/a0037323
It is not a quirk of one friendly city. The experience turned up again in a place with the opposite reputation — though the mistaken forecast did not.
What the study actually did
More than 400 train commuters travelling in and out of London were asked to talk to a fellow passenger, keep to themselves, or do whatever they normally would. Those who talked reported a more positive commute than those in either of the other two conditions. Their expectations did not repeat the Chicago pattern: these commuters already expected talking to be the better option, and only underestimated how much better it would be.
What it doesn't show. That the misprediction found in Chicago replicates. The authors went looking for it and report plainly that they did not find it: participants did not expect a less positive experience from talking than from sitting alone. What the paper puts in its place is narrower and is about starting rather than talking — commuters expected trying to have a conversation to be less pleasant than having one, because they expected the other person to be uninterested. The authors call it a conceptual replication and extension rather than a direct replication. Still trains, still spoken, still face to face.
Schroeder, J., Lyons, D., & Epley, N. (2022). Hello, stranger? Pleasant conversations are preceded by concerns about starting one. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 151(5), 1141–1153 ·
10.1037/xge0001118
