It’s one of those childhood memories that still feels oddly close. I must have been about eight, and finally old enough to walk around the neighbourhood by myself. I wasn’t allowed anywhere grand – I usually just walked to and from school, or to the boulangerie – but it felt amazingly freeing.
One day, I came home and mentioned to my mother that the one thing I loved most about these walks was to smile at strangers in the street. She told me, with an obviously heavy heart, that it was a lovely thing for me to do, but I had to stop doing it. Little girls walking around by themselves must, above all, know to keep themselves safe.
I obeyed, even though it made me sad. I really wasn’t a popular child at school and, at that age, spent most of my time being either bullied or ignored by my peers. I was a weird, shy kid, but I did want to be able to think of the world as a friendly place.
It’s quite funny to think about now, as friends and acquaintances clearly assume I came out of the womb chatting away with the nurses delivering me. The truth is, as I’ve tried to explain a number of times, that extroversion never came naturally to me. It was something that took both work and sustained effort.
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For a long time it felt like there were thick walls standing between me and everyone else, and chipping away at them is one of the most consequential things I’ve ever done. It was also incredibly, unbelievably worthwhile. I love being friendly with strangers and I love pointless small talk; I love feeling like I live in a community, even when it often means I must take the first step towards others.
I’m also entirely convinced of the fact that it has made me a happier, better person, and was consequently thrilled to find out about A Little More Social, a new book written by American psychologist Nick Epley.
It opens with him deciding, as an experiment, to try talking to the woman sitting next to him on his commute in Chicago. After some agonising moments spent wondering how to go about it, he eventually complimented her hat, and ended up cheerily talking to her until they both got off the train. The interaction made him feel good, and he decided to look into it further.
One early study he conducted for the book was particularly striking. Epley and a colleague enrolled a number of commuters into a study, and either asked them to use their time on public transport to stay alone and silent, speak to the person sitting next to them, or do whatever they would usually do. Once off the train, they had to fill in a survey on how well the commute had gone for them, how pleasant it was compared to normal, how happy they felt, and so on.
The results were striking. In the end, the people who reported having had the best commute were the ones who’d been made to strike up conversation with a stranger. This is especially interesting as the academics recruited another group afterwards, asking them for their expectations regarding those scenarios, and had found that the one people found the least attractive was the one where they had to speak to someone.
This dynamic is often replicated in Epley’s work: more often than not, people assume that interactions with strangers will go badly when, most of the time, they will end up leaving both parties feeling more fulfilled.
The only way to get rid of this fear, he found, was to… well, to strike up a conversation with someone. Perhaps unsurprisingly, someone who has done it recently is more likely to believe that their next social interaction will go well. This positive effect fades quite quickly, however, meaning that sociability must be exercised frequently, like a muscle.
Though it felt validating to see all this being properly studied, reading it made me keep thinking: well sure, I could have told you that. For years in my twenties and early thirties, I lived alone and worked alone and I was single. My life was, by accident rather than design, quite a lonely one, and it taught me that even mere scraps of social interaction can really make someone’s day.
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I’m not this alone any more, but did keep those hard-earned lessons close to my chest. I chat to my neighbours when we take the lift together and I chat to the owners of the businesses near my building; I know all the regulars in my local cafe and can even be known to have a natter with people at the bus stop. It enriches my life beyond words, and makes me think of a line from John Donne.
People like to say that “no man is an island”, or that “the bell tolls for thee”, but another part of that poem sounds best to me. “I am involved in mankind,” he wrote, and it may not be as grand or beautiful as the other ones, but it will always resonate with me. I’m involved in mankind, and it is my duty to act like it.
