Small Talk Is Not a Waste of Time

Moments of human connection make us happier

In 2014, researchers asked a group of people on commuter trains and buses in Chicago to do something almost nobody does: strike up a conversation with the stranger next to them. Another group was instructed to keep to themselves. The researchers asked their subjects to guess in advance how it would go.

Almost everyone expected the same thing: talking to a stranger would make the ride worse, and they’d rather sit alone. But the commuters who were assigned to have conversations with riders next to them ended up enjoying their ride more than those who kept to themselves. The researchers repeated the experiment nine different ways, and the result kept coming back the same: people predicted they’d hate talking to strangers, and then they enjoyed it.

Most of us would have made the same false prediction. (I used to proudly brag about hating small talk, as though it made me deep and intellectual.) Somehow we’ve absorbed the idea that connection counts only when it’s deep. Small talk became the junk food of social life: empty, fake, and a waste of time.

And modern life agrees with us. We are told reducing human interaction will make us more productive, so we use self-checkout lines, order everything online, and set our Uber preference to silent (so we can engage in self-care or work!). We feel good about it because it seems like efficiency: we’re just trimming the filler out of the day, the way we skip ads.

But these small interactions do more for us than we give them credit for. In one study, customers at a coffee shop were told either to smile and chat briefly with the barista or to get through the line as efficiently as possible. The ones who chatted left in a better mood. People also report being happier on days when they have exchanges with acquaintances. None of these exchanges matter much on their own. But having them regularly makes you feel like you belong.

When I first learned about this research a couple of years ago, I started testing it out on myself. Every day while I walked my dog around the block, I started searching for moments of connection. Sometimes I smiled; other times I said hello, shared about my dog, asked about theirs. This habit hasn’t changed my life or made me new best friends, but I’ve started thinking of these interactions as gemstones I collect to decorate my day.

And the days I do it, I feel better. I don’t expect to get to know these people or have real conversations with them, and for a long time I would have counted that as a failed interaction. But a 20-second exchange with a neighbor was never supposed to replace a deep conversation with someone I love. The two meet different needs, and that’s okay.

Your version of this will of course be different. This week, try adding one sentence to an interaction that is normally transactional. Maybe it’s saying, “Man, this heat is intense!” to a parent during drop-off, or complimenting the earrings of someone who is delivering a package. You aren’t aiming to become friends with this person. You’re just collecting a friendly moment during the day.

I still wouldn’t call myself someone who loves small talk. But last week the neighbor who walks his cat and dog on leashes waved at me from across the street before I’d even seen him, and I felt connected to my neighborhood in a way I hadn’t felt before.