how connection developsCommuters who were asked to talk with a stranger on a train reported a more positive journey than commuters asked to keep to themselves. A separate group predicting those experiences expected the opposite. They thought a conversation would make the journey less pleasant.
That difference between expectation and experience was the starting point for Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder's 2014 paper, Mistakenly seeking solitude. Across studies on trains, buses, and in taxis and a laboratory waiting room, the researchers examined the possibilities within an ordinary encounter. They asked what people experienced, what they anticipated, and what might account for the difference.
A conversation during the journey
In the train study, participants were randomly assigned to talk with a nearby stranger, remain in solitude, or commute as they normally would. Those asked to talk were encouraged to get to know something about the other person and share something about themselves. The analysis included 97 commuters who returned the survey and followed their assigned instruction. After the journey, participants reported their mood and how pleasant and productive the commute had been. The researchers combined mood and pleasantness into their measure of a positive experience. They were studying how the journey felt, rather than whether a friendship had begun.
The conversation group had a more positive experience than the solitude group. The usual-commute group fell between them, with no statistically significant difference from either. That middle group included different activities, including some conversations with friends, so it was a mixed comparison.
A similar experiment, with 75 people completing a public-transport journey to a laboratory, found that those asked to talk had a more positive journey than both those asked to remain alone and those traveling as usual. The train conversations averaged about fourteen minutes and the bus conversations about ten. These were brief exchanges within an existing part of the day.
Participants did not report a significant loss of productivity from talking in either setting. This was their own appraisal of the journey, rather than an objective count of work completed. They left the conversation without generally regarding the time as wasted.
Anticipating the other person's interest
Other participants imagined the same commuting conditions. They expected conversation to be less pleasant and less productive than keeping to themselves. The researchers then examined a possible source of that prediction by asking about willingness to talk.
People described themselves as more interested in conversation than they thought other commuters would be. On average, they estimated that fewer than half of the people around them would agree to talk. Starting the conversation seemed difficult before it happened.
In the earlier field experiments, participants who completed the follow-up reported that the people they approached had talked with them. The train participants who said they could not follow the instruction reported that nobody had sat beside them. These reports give a reason to question the estimates of low willingness in those settings. They do not guarantee a welcome from every stranger someone might approach.
The researchers also asked participants to imagine conversations with especially interesting or uninteresting people. Their ordinary predictions did not simply resemble the deliberately negative scenarios. Once participants imagined a conversation already taking place, the unspecified exchange seemed more positive than one with an especially uninteresting person. Anticipating an attempt to begin talking and imagining an established conversation brought different concerns into view. The authors interpreted this as evidence that uncertainty about getting a conversation started helped account for the mistaken predictions.
Silence leaves considerable room for interpretation. Two people might each remain quiet out of consideration while taking the other's quietness as a preference to be left alone. The researchers proposed this kind of shared misunderstanding as one explanation for the interest gap. Someone who has not begun talking has supplied little evidence about how they would respond to an invitation. The study distinguishes that uncertainty from a clear expression of disinterest.
The beginnings people later recalled were often ordinary. In a follow-up inquiry, 31 of 62 participants contacted from the field conversation groups responded. Those who remembered described openings about current events, questions about the other person, and other everyday remarks. None reported introducing the conversation by mentioning the experiment. These were delayed memories from only part of the sample, but they suggest that the exchanges did not all depend on an unusual explanation for speaking. An ordinary remark had sometimes been enough for another person to answer.
Conversational habits and the predictions we make
Taxi rides offered a useful further comparison because some travelers routinely talked with their drivers and others did not. A passenger already has a reason to speak when giving the destination. The first exchange is part of the journey, even if neither person takes it further. As in the other field studies, travelers assigned to converse reported a more positive ride than those assigned to solitude. This difference appeared whether or not they said conversation was their usual habit.
Their predictions showed a different pattern. People who normally talked with drivers expected conversation to be more pleasant. People who normally remained quiet expected solitude to be more pleasant. The first group anticipated the experience more accurately.
The authors interpreted this as evidence that ordinary experience can help calibrate expectations. The habitual talkers had opportunities to discover what these exchanges were like. Because people were not randomly assigned to acquire those different histories, the study does not isolate learning from every other difference between the groups. It does show that predictions varied with prior habits while the immediate benefit of the assigned conversation did not follow that same divide.
Personality measures did not consistently explain who enjoyed the conversations or who predicted them accurately across the studies. This does not mean that personality never matters. It does mean that the findings cannot be reduced to a result found only among people who were already more extraverted.
The experience of being approached
A pleasant conversation for the person who starts it is only part of the story. The field experiments did not collect equivalent reports from the strangers they approached. To examine the other side, the researchers brought pairs of unfamiliar people into a laboratory waiting-room setting.
One person received instructions to talk or remain quiet during a ten-minute break. The other received no behavioral instruction. In some pairs, the instruction was presented as optional, while in others it was presented as required. A further comparison group waited alone.
People reported a more positive experience when conversation occurred, including those who had simply been approached by their partner. There was no significant difference in that pattern according to whether the initiator had been told that following the instruction was optional. Both versions still involved a researcher's request, and almost every pair followed it, so this was a limited test of choice. Waiting entirely alone was also less pleasant than the conversational condition.
That result gives the encounter a mutual dimension. The enjoyment did not belong only to someone completing an assigned social task. In this setting, the person receiving the invitation also reported a more positive break.
An additional question captured something recognizable about that experience. People in the conversation condition rated the time as passing faster than those in the silent condition. Yet conversation did not significantly change their estimate of how many minutes had elapsed. The ten-minute wait felt different without being judged shorter. Attention to another person could change the character of a period that otherwise consisted largely of waiting.
A particular opportunity within an ordinary day
The studies concern short interactions in particular settings, largely in and around Chicago. They do not compare conversation with every valuable use of time alone. In the bus study, the more pleasant morning commute also did not translate into a significant difference in participants' evaluations of their entire day. Repeated encounters and lasting changes in relationships were not tested. The immediate pleasure of an exchange can be understood on its own terms, without asking it to stand for a friendship or a different social life.
The useful possibility is correspondingly concrete. A brief conversation can be more enjoyable for both people than the prospective initiator expects. Whether a particular encounter is welcome remains something to learn from the other person's response and the circumstances.
The taxi studies show why that distinction matters. People with different conversational habits anticipated different experiences, yet those assigned to talk generally enjoyed the ride more. Their expectations were one source of information. The encounter supplied another.
Sources
Epley, N., & Schroeder, J. (2014). Mistakenly seeking solitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(5), 1980–1999. Read the advance online version.