{"id":104229,"date":"2019-04-24T11:26:29","date_gmt":"2019-04-24T16:26:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/?p=104229"},"modified":"2026-09-24T20:52:39","modified_gmt":"2026-09-25T01:52:39","slug":"why-you-should-talk-to-strangers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/social\/social-skills\/why-you-should-talk-to-strangers\/","title":{"rendered":"Podcast #502: Why You Should Talk to Strangers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>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&nbsp;strangers. Why is this?<\/p>\n<p>My guest today has done studies to find out. Her name is <a href=\"https:\/\/gilliansandstrom.com\/\">Gillian Sandstrom<\/a> and she&#8217;s a professor of social psychology at the University of Essex. Gillian&#8217;s research has explored both why people have such a hard time talking to&nbsp;strangers, and why it&#8217;s beneficial to do so. Today we dig into common barriers to talking to new people, including the &#8220;liking gap,&#8221; where we believe people find us less interesting than they do. We then talk discuss the benefits of talking to&nbsp;strangers&nbsp;(which go for both introverts and extroverts), and Gillian&#8217;s best tips for getting better at it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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&nbsp;strangers. Why is this? My guest today has done studies to find out. Her name is [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":195338,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[156,42379,42293],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcast","category-social","category-social-skills"],"featured_image_urls":{"large":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/502-538x280.png","medium_large":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/502-768x432.png","aom":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/502-372x230.png","reactor-320":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/502-320x180.png","reactor-640":"https:\/\/www.artofmanliness.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/502-640x360.png"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v28.4 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