How Daily Small Talk Can Improve Well-Being

Photo by Kampus Production

A large body of research shows that people with good social relationships tend to be happier than those who are more isolated. But what about smaller, more casual social interactions—even fleeting interactions, like a brief exchange with a grocery store clerk? New research by Esra Ascigil and colleagues just published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science explores how even the briefest everyday social exchanges could affect well-being.

Most of the research on social relationships and well-being has focused on close relationships, such as those with family and friends. While these relationships are important, they are far from our only social connections. In addition to these strong ties, we also have many more of what sociologists call weak ties. These weak ties can include co-workers you occasionally chat with by the water cooler, the neighbor you talk to when out walking the dog in the morning, or your hair stylist you see once a month. Other social ties can be weaker, such as a chat with a cashier at a grocery store.

A small set of studies on this topic has found that interacting with weak ties is associated with greater well-being. For example, in one clever field experiment, London train commuters instructed by experimenters to chat with a stranger during their ride reported more enjoyment than those who were asked to keep to themselves or given no instructions. In another experiment, coffee shop patrons who were directed to have a genuine interaction with the barista reported more positive mood than those who were told to be as efficient as possible in their interaction.

To get a more comprehensive look at how a variety of different types of casual social interactions could affect happiness, Ascigil and colleagues asked people about all of their interactions with weak ties and strangers, including not just conversations, but even small gestures like greeting and thanking. Two studies, one conducted in Turkey and the other in the United Kingdom, surveyed thousands of respondents about their daily social interactions. All respondents rated their overall life satisfaction and reported how many strangers they had started a conversation with in the past week. In addition, to examine interactions with weak ties, the respondents from Turkey also rated how often they greeted, thanked, or initiated conversations with those they knew but were not close to.

The researchers examined how both weak ties and stranger interactions related to life satisfaction. One challenge in examining this kind of data is that it can be difficult to determine cause-and-effect relationships. Small talk with strangers may cause people to be happier, as the researchers hypothesized. However, it is also possible that people who are happier in the first place tend to be friendlier and more open, and this causes them to interact with strangers more frequently. To address this, the researchers used specialized statistical techniques designed to increase their confidence that any relationship between these interactions and life satisfaction was cause and effect.

Their results showed that having more frequent conversations with both weak ties and strangers was related to greater levels of well-being. While it is possible that people didn't accurately remember how often they interacted with others, this study nonetheless provides intriguing evidence that even the smallest and most superficial small talk could improve our well-being.