Mistakenly Seeking Solitude: Why Talking to Strangers Is Better Than We Expect

By Noam Shemla · The Studies

TL;DR Epley and Schroeder asked commuters on Chicago trains and buses, travellers in taxis and people in a waiting room to talk to a stranger, keep to themselves, or do as they normally would. Talking was the more positive experience every time, and no less productive. Yet people asked to predict the same situations expected the opposite: that solitude would be better. The reason seems to be that people assume others do not want to talk, so they never find out that they do.

• Paper: Epley, N., & Schroeder, J. (2014). Mistakenly seeking solitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(5), 1980–1999.
• Trains (Exp. 1): Chicago commuters at a station near the start of an express line; 97 did the task, 66 others predicted it.
• Buses (Exp. 2): People travelling to a downtown laboratory by public transport; 75 did the task, 61 predicted it.
• Why (Exp. 3): 64 train and 65 bus commuters estimated their own and others’ interest in talking and imagined a conversation.
• Taxis (Exp. 4): Travellers leaving Midway airport alone; 93 did the task, 43 predicted it.
• Waiting room (Exp. 5): 179 people in pairs during a 10-minute break in a laboratory, with one person instructed and the other not.
• Measures: A positivity index from happiness, sadness and pleasantness, plus productivity, reported at the end of the trip or the wait.

Commuter trains are full of people sitting inches apart in silence. The obvious explanation is that silence is what they prefer. Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder, at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, tested whether that preference is correct.1

What people expect

They began with a survey. Asked whether they would talk to a friend in a waiting room, on a train, on a plane or in a taxi, almost nobody said no. Asked the same about a stranger, most people said they would stay silent.

What actually happens

Then they ran the experiment for real. Commuters were randomly given one of three instructions for their trip: make a connection with a stranger, enjoy your solitude, or commute as normal. At the end they rated how happy, how sad and how pleasant the trip had been, and how productive.

Those ratings were combined into one positivity score, and the difference between conditions is reported as a standardised effect size.

Talking won on every kind of transport, and the predictions got it backwards.

Talking cost nothing in productivity. On trains, buses and in taxis, the connection and solitude groups rated their trips as almost exactly equally productive, while the train and bus commuters asked to predict it expected talking to cost them productivity. On the train, conversations lasted 14 minutes on average and were rated pleasant (5.1 out of 6); the longer the conversation, the better the commute.

Why people get it wrong

If talking is better, why does nobody learn it? The authors tested two explanations. One is that people remember their worst conversations with strangers and expect more of the same. The other is that they assume others are not interested, so they never try, and so never find out.

The second one fits the data. Commuters rated their own interest in talking higher than they thought other people's interest was, and predicted that fewer than half of strangers would be willing to talk. In reality, every participant who tried to start a conversation reported having one. Not one was rebuffed.

Own interest, others’ interest and imagined conversations

The result is a loop that keeps itself going.

Being talked to is just as good

A fair worry is that the benefit belongs only to the person who starts the conversation, while the stranger on the receiving end would rather be left alone. The waiting-room experiment tested it. One person in each pair was told to talk or to keep to themselves; the other was told nothing.

Connection was more positive than solitude for both people, the one who started it and the one who was talked to, and it made no difference whether the instruction was presented as optional or mandatory. People left alone in a room on their own did no better than people sitting in silence next to a stranger (−0.18 against −0.25 on the positivity index), and both did worse than people who were talked to (0.33).

Has it held up?

The core finding has. In a field experiment with London commuters, people assigned to talk to a stranger again had a more positive journey, and reported learning more, than those assigned to solitude or a normal commute.2 One part changed: those London commuters expected talking to be pleasant too. What they mispredicted was the start of the conversation, which they expected to be harder than it was, because they thought others would not be interested.

A mini meta-analysis of seven studies and 2,304 people reached the same place: people's fears about talking to strangers, about not enjoying it, not being liked or lacking the skill, are overblown, and conversations go better than expected.3

What this study cannot tell you

• The experiments lasted one trip. The authors found no lasting effect on how people rated their whole day, so the benefit is real but may be brief.
• Participants were instructed. The waiting-room study addresses this, but a conversation you choose may feel different from one you were asked to have.
• Chicago in the early 2010s is one city and one moment; the London replication helps.
• The prediction groups were different people from the ones who did the task, which is the right design for comparing expectation and experience but means no single person was shown their own error.

What a speaker can take from it

The hardest part of talking to a stranger is the first sentence, and this study says the fear attached to it is miscalibrated. People are more willing to talk than they look, the conversation usually goes well, and the person you talk to tends to enjoy it as much as you do.

That makes the opening line the skill worth practising: a short, easy question about something you are both looking at, said out loud without apology. Once it is said, the evidence suggests the rest mostly takes care of itself.

This article summarises a published paper. The percentages, effect sizes, means and standard deviations are the authors’ own, from the paper’s text and Table 1. The equations restate the paper’s positivity index and the standard definition of d.

Measured

• Self-reported happiness, sadness, pleasantness and productivity after a real trip or wait
• Predicted ratings for the same situations, from separate participants
• Estimates of one’s own and others’ interest in talking

Inferred, not measured

• Pluralistic ignorance as the mechanism: supported by Experiments 3 and 4, but not directly manipulated
• Any effect beyond the trip itself: the authors found none on ratings of the whole day

References

1. Epley, N., & Schroeder, J. (2014). Mistakenly seeking solitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(5), 1980–1999. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037323
2. 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. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001118
3. Sandstrom, G. M., & Boothby, E. J. (2021). Why do people avoid talking to strangers? A mini meta-analysis of predicted fears and actual experiences talking to a stranger. Self and Identity, 20(1), 47–71. https://doi.org/10.1080/15298868.2020.1816568