The Art of Manliness

#502: Why You Should Talk to Strangers

Share this episode
Anyone with this link can open it.
Share Link
Start at 0:00

This episode isn’t summarized yet

Create a free account and summarize it. In a few minutes you’ll have the key takeaways and a section-by-section summary.

Show notes

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.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Couldn't load the audio. A blocker may be stopping the show's tracking links. Open the file