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The QUICK Formula Will Make You Great at Talking to Strangers
This article will give you a handy acronym developed by a psychology researcher that you can use to start and sustain conversations with nearly anyone. But before we get to that advice we have to answer a more fundamental question.
Why would you want to talk to a bunch of random strangers anyway?
Science says you really should talk to strangers more
A quick look at how we have designed the modern world suggests that most people would prefer not talking to strangers.
We order our food via apps to avoid talking to a restaurant employee or cashier. Employees battle for the right to continue working from their couch where they will definitely not have to make elevator chit chat. Studies show the amount of time we spend in the company of screens rather than other humans has skyrocketed.
Clearly, a lot of us find talking to strangers unpleasant and anxiety-inducing. But a boatload of science suggests that’s a big mistake.
First, research has found that people radically overestimate how likely strangers are to reject or be annoyed at their conversational overtures. People like talking to us more than we think they do. And we like talking to them more than we expect. An equally large…
