#502: Why You Should Talk to Strangers

The Art of Manliness

Society & Culture, Education, Philosophy

4.7 • 14.5K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2019

⏱️ 30 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Talking to new people can lead to making new connections and learning interesting things, and simply makes both you and the person you talk with happier. Yet many of us have a very difficult time striking up a conversation with strangers. Why is this? My guest today has done studies to find out. Her name is Gillian Sandstrom and she's a professor of social psychology at the University of Essex. Gillian's research has explored both why people have such a hard time talking to strangers, and why it's beneficial to do so. Today we dig into common barriers to talking to new people, including the "liking gap," where we believe people find us less interesting than they do. We then talk discuss the benefits of talking to strangers (which go for both introverts and extroverts), and Gillian's best tips for getting better at it. Get the show notes at aom.is/talktostrangers.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're at McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness Podcast.
0:11.3	Talking to new people can lead to making new connections and learning interesting things
0:14.9	and simply makes both you and the person you talk with happier.
0:17.5	Yet many of us have a very difficult time striking up conversation with strangers.
0:21.4	Why is this?
0:22.4	I guess they have done studies to find out.
0:23.7	Her name is Jillian Sandstrom and she's a professor of social psychology at the University
0:27.1	of Essex.
0:28.1	Jillian's research has explored both why people have such a hard time talking to strangers
0:31.4	and why it's beneficial to do so.
0:33.2	Today we dig into common barriers to talking to new people, including the liking gap where
0:37.2	we believe people find it's less interesting than they really do.
0:40.0	We then discuss the benefits of talking to strangers which go both for introverts and
0:43.6	extroverts and Jillian's best tips for getting better at it.
0:46.4	After the show's over, check out the show notes at aam.is slash talk to strangers.
0:58.1	Jillian Sandstrom, welcome to the show.
1:03.0	Thanks for having me.
1:04.8	You are a psychologist and you've done a lot of research on the topic of talking with
1:09.3	strangers.
1:10.6	How did that happen?
1:11.6	A bit of a long story.
1:14.1	I started doing a master's degree in psychology and it had nothing to do with this topic.
	...

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