Challenge Your Happiness in 2023 - Part 3 Small Talk Has Big Benefits

Often on my daily neighborhood walk, I pass a woman and her dachshund, who used to bark at me frantically. I found it irritating. One day, on a whim, I decided to go beyond our customary nods. I asked her how I could make friends with her dog.

"Oh, Petey gets upset when he sees people wearing hats," the woman said. "It's just too tiring to tell everyone." Because more people wear headgear in winter, she went on, it's a hard season for Petey.

That was enough to make me fall in love with that dachshund. Now, when I spot Petey in the distance, I quickly pull off my hat. It's become a bit of a game for me. I can honestly say that if I'd never chatted up this woman, my daily walk would be a lot less fun.

Today's exercise is to talk to someone you don't know well. Or to a total stranger. Or to both.

Happiness Challenge Day 3: Chat up someone you don't know. As often as you can today, advised Bob Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of the new book "The Good Life," "seek out and notice opportunities for friendly moments of uplift."

Ask your supermarket checkout person how her day is going. Comment on a stranger's cute baby (few people can resist talking about their babies).

Your loose network of casual acquaintances, and even complete strangers, known collectively as "weak ties," might not seem important, but it is. Brief but warm exchanges have a direct effect on happiness, Dr. Waldinger said. These kinds of minute interactions can affect your mood and energy throughout the day, and ongoing research begun in the 1970s has shown that they contribute to a greater sense of well-being.

It's worth it if even if you're uneasy: Yes, making small talk can be awkward. But people tend to like us more than we presume. This is what researchers termed, in a 2018 study, a "liking gap." "Our studies suggest that after people have conversations," they wrote, "they are liked more than they know."

So assume people like you and take the plunge. You may get rejected, "although we found that it's actually pretty rare," said Gillian Sandstrom, a senior lecturer in the psychology of kindness at the University of Sussex, who has led pivotal research on the positive effects of having frequent casual interactions with strangers and acquaintances. "I ask people who say they were rejected, how do you know you were rejected? If someone's looking at their watch, it could be because they're not interested, but it could also be because they're meeting someone in 10 minutes and they need to keep an eye on the clock."

If you try to talk to a stranger today and truly get ignored or rebuffed, she said, "remind yourself that they don't know you, so they're not rejecting you based on who you are." Most people, she added, enjoy these moments of connection, so get back on that horse and talk to someone else.

You might even learn something: Weak ties often have different knowledge from those in our immediate social circle, said Stav Atir, an assistant professor of management at the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr. Atir led a study in 2022 that suggested that people underestimate the potential for learning from these interactions. "In our data, we often see strangers giving each other recommendations such as a new restaurant to check out, a new band to listen to and even a potential place of employment," she said.

Think about times over the past ten years or so when you've been on a plane or train and struck up a conversation with someone you didn't know. Did they say something that stuck with you? Even the most fleeting connection can have an impact, said Alisha Ali, an associate professor of applied psychology at New York University. "It doesn't need to be something that appears deep for it to be deeply felt. You never know what a given encounter will reveal."

"I'm very much an introvert, but I've just found talking to strangers to be so much fun," Dr. Sandstrom said. "I once talked to someone on public transportation and learned that people can ride ostriches. Everybody has a story."