How Being a Little More Social Can Change Your Life
By Jill Suttie
Most of us probably know by now that our relationships can be the greatest source of health and happiness in life. Whether they are our closest loved ones, colleagues, neighbors, or even strangers, connecting with those around us can be a source of well-being.
But so many of us don’t, especially when it comes to strangers. We pass by opportunities to extend ourselves even a little to people who cross our path, looking away rather than engaging, staying isolated rather than interacting.
In his new book, A Little More Social, Nicholas Epley explains why that happens and how we can overcome our hesitation. In study after study, his research has shown that we consistently underestimate the benefits of connecting with others, which leads us to reach out less often than we should.
Why We Resist Reaching Out
According to Epley, the reason we don’t connect more with others is that we’re afraid of what might happen.
However, Epley has found that once you do seize opportunities to open up to people, even those who seem unapproachable, they will more than likely respond positively to your efforts. But, he writes, three things tend to get in the way of us testing this out.
Exaggerated Uncertainty: Our Tendency to Not Like Uncertainty and Anticipate the Worst Outcome
We can’t predict exactly how an opening salvo will land; the future is always a little uncertain. But these uncertainties are generally exaggerated, writes Epley, because, as humans, we are primed for reciprocity — responding to people the way they respond to us. If you approach someone in a warm, interested way, they are likely to return the favor.
“How a social experience unfolds is… not as uncertain as we might imagine, generally ending up in a way that is consistent with how it began. If you reach out and treat someone like a friend, then they’re likely to reach back and treat you like a friend in return. If you treat someone like a stranger and ignore them, then they’re likely to ignore you right back,” he writes.
His research has found that, over and over again, people worry about conversations with strangers being awkward — but they rarely are as awkward as people anticipate.
Mismatched Perspectives: Judging Ourselves More Harshly Than We Would Others, Thinking We’re Less Competent
People usually judge others by their competence and warmth. But we tend to gravitate toward warm people before learning if they are competent or not, because we assume a likable person can be trusted and has good intentions. Yet, when thinking of starting a conversation with someone new, we can get overly critical of our competence, when that’s less important in that moment.
Confusing Environments: Not Reaching Out Becomes a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
If you let your pessimism become a hindrance to testing out hypotheses about what might happen if you talk to a stranger, you end up concluding it will be a negative experience before even trying. This means you can’t learn and grow from real-world encounters, which would otherwise expand your idea of how warm and friendly people can generally be.
Talking Beats Digital Communication
For many of us, engaging with strangers just doesn’t come naturally, especially now that so many of us work and shop online. We’d rather text with our friends or play on social media than risk meeting someone new.
But using our phones to text or email to socialize is less ideal than you might think, even with friends, writes Epley. That’s because when you communicate with someone through writing, you lose the instant feedback, as well as the emotional tone of someone’s response, that can be best understood by talking — both of which foster more closeness.
For example, in one study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Epley compared communications between friends and between strangers using text- and voice-based ways of connecting and found that people who used voice-based communication felt more connection with friends and with strangers alike, despite their expectations to the contrary.
How We Might Connect More
So how can we learn to be just a little bit more social? Recognizing our hesitancy is ill-founded can help us take the initiative and try reaching out.
Epley’s research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has found that conversations with strangers don’t have to be as shallow as you may think and, in fact, people feel better when they aren’t (despite predictions to the contrary).
How can we take action in the real world? Epley suggests a few approaches. The easiest and simplest way is to just say hello and smile.
There are other prosocial ways to help you initiate conversation with someone. You might try to offer them a compliment (“I like your outfit!”), show a bit of kindness (“Would you like to go in front of me in line?”), or express gratitude (“Thanks for making that coffee just how I like it.”)
Trying to make reaching out habit-forming is good for us, says Epley. You don’t have to jump off the deep end right away and become a social butterfly. You can start by being just a little more open to noticing easy opportunities to engage. Leave your cell phone, earbuds, and other social distractions out of reach, and pay attention to the world outside, he advises. By experimenting with initiating connection often, and sometimes more deeply, you’ll soon see that talking with a stranger is a gift that will bring you more joy in life and create a warmer, friendlier world, besides.
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley. Click here to read the original article.
