ARCHIVES: THE CONVERSATION : When meeting someone new, try skirting the small talk and digging a little deeper
Even before fears of a virus compelled most people to stay physically distant, our research suggests that people were already keeping too much social distance from one another.
But our experiments tested the seemingly radical idea that deep conversations between strangers can end up being surprisingly satisfying. In other experiments, we asked people to write down questions they would normally discuss when first getting to know someone – “weird weather we’re having these days, isn’t it?” – and then to write down deeper and more intimate questions than they would normally discuss, like asking whether the other person was happy with their life.
It turns out that, more often than not, strangers do want to hear you talk about more than the weather; they really do care about your fears, feelings, opinions and experiences.