Most people would rather sit in silence next to a stranger than strike up a conversation, and they’re fairly confident that’s the right call. Two studies that actually tested this instinct, rather than just asking people what they expect, suggest that confidence is badly misplaced, and that the small talk people go out of their way to avoid tends to make things better, not worse.
The clearest evidence comes from a 2014 study by Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Before the main experiment, the researchers surveyed people about how they’d behave with a stranger sitting nearby, and the predicted avoidance was striking: 93 percent said they’d rather stay quiet in a waiting room, 76 percent on a train, and 68 percent on a plane, compared to virtually no one who’d avoid talking to a friend in those same settings. Then, in the actual experiment, 97 Chicago-area train commuters were randomly assigned to either strike up a conversation with a stranger, sit in solitude, or commute as they normally would. The commuters instructed to connect with a stranger reported a significantly more positive commute than those told to stay isolated, and the effect was substantial, not marginal. The conversations weren’t rushed either, they averaged over 14 minutes and were rated as genuinely pleasant, and critically, they came at no measurable cost to how productive people felt during the ride.
A second study helps explain what actually makes those conversations land well once people do have them. In a 2017 study by Karen Huang, Michael Yeomans, Alison Wood Brooks, Julia Minson, and Francesca Gino, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 430 participants were randomly assigned to ask either many questions or few during an online conversation, and those instructed to ask more, an average of just over 10 questions versus roughly 4, were liked significantly more by their partners afterward. Strikingly, the people doing the asking had no idea it was working, there was no link between how much they expected their questions to boost likability and how much it actually did. A separate field study followed 110 real speed daters through nearly 2,000 individual four-minute dates, using a question-detection tool to measure how many follow-up questions each person actually asked. Daters who asked more follow-up questions were significantly more likely to be asked on a second date, a real behavioral outcome, not just a self-reported one. Across the studies, the effect traced back to a feeling of being genuinely listened to and understood, not simply to politeness.
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Together, these two studies build a fuller picture of what “the art of small talk” actually involves. Epley and Schroeder’s research shows the first hurdle is really just permission, people wildly overestimate how awkward it will be and underestimate how much better it makes the experience. Huang and colleagues’ research picks up from there, showing that once a conversation starts, the specific habit of asking follow-up questions, rather than filling the silence with talk about yourself, is what actually earns someone’s liking, even though the people doing it rarely realize that’s the lever they’re pulling. Between the two, the case for small talk isn’t just that it’s tolerable, it’s that most people are underestimating it twice, once before it starts and once while they’re doing it wrong.
It’s worth being honest about what these two studies don’t establish. Epley and Schroeder’s train study involved a relatively modest sample of 97 commuters in one city, and while the effect was clear, commuting culture and norms around talking to strangers vary a great deal by place. Huang and colleagues’ speed-dating study captured real behavior, which is a strength, but speed dating is a specific, high-stakes social context, and it’s not guaranteed the same question-asking advantage shows up identically in a grocery store line or a work meeting.
Within those honest limits, the research offers a genuinely useful nudge for anyone who avoids small talk out of dread. The awkwardness people brace for rarely matches the awkwardness that actually happens, and once a conversation is underway, something as simple as asking one more follow-up question, rather than waiting for a turn to talk, appears to be doing more work than most people give it credit for.