Talking to strangers: an app adventure

henryaj
Mon, 06 Apr 2026 06:37:47 GMT

Epistemic status: silly

WAIT! Want to talk to strangers more? You might want to take the talking to strangers challenge before you read on, otherwise your results will be biased!

Illustration by the extraordinarily talented Georgia Ray

Do you find it hard to talk to strangers? If you’re like most people, you probably do, at least a bit. This is sad. Talking to strangers is great! You can make new friends, meet a new partner, have a fling, or just enjoy a nice chat.

Most people think 1) people will not want to talk to them, 2) they will be bad at keeping up the conversation, 3) people will not like them.

They’re wrong on all three counts! Sandstrom (2022) did a study on this. People were given a treasure hunt app where they had to go and talk to strangers.[1] The control group just had to observe strangers.

The minimum dose was one conversation per day for five days. That’s nothing! You can totally do that even if you’re a massive strangerphobe! Participants averaged 6.7 interactions over the 5 days, so a little more than one per day. Presumably the more you do the better you get. Go team!

The paper finds that talking to strangers not only disproved the above beliefs, but also improved people's enjoyment and the impressions people thought they'd made on strangers. (However those last two also occurred in the control condition – it’s possible that simply observing strangers might do this.)

Importantly, the effects persisted when participants were surveyed a week later. So it might be a durable way to improve people’s beliefs around talking to strangers.

Crucial point: the paper notes that often people do have positive interactions with strangers, but that doesn’t seem to be enough to unlearn their wrongly negative beliefs about them. So participants had to do this every day for a week, not just once.

Do you want to love talking to strangers too?

Time to crack out Claude Code.

--dangerously-skip-permissions

I reproduced the app from the study, abridging the questionnaires as they’re a bit tedious. It also has an ‘express mode’ so you can do it just for a day – but remember that usually doesn’t work to actually get fix your limiting beliefs around talking to strangers!

I assume the study authors used the same design language

I assembled a small (N=3) study sample, drawn from an extremely unbiased population of nerdy rationalists. They’re a famously friendly bunch but also a bit weird, so this seemed good for testing the hypothesis. We wandered around Berkeley attempting to ruin people’s days with our bad chat.

Scores on the doors:

The results are good: a single conversation with a stranger obliterated nervousness, catapulted conversational confidence, and proved way less scary than predicted – exactly what the literature says will happen, every single time, and yet somehow it’s still a surprise.

We didn’t do the full five days, so we didn’t replicate the study. But we enjoyed it, and even in this single day we directionally confirmed the study’s result.

As the paper notes:

Despite the benefits of social interaction, people seldom strike up conversations with people they do not know. Instead, people wear headphones to avoid talking, stay glued to their smartphones in public places, or pretend not to notice a new coworker they still have not introduced themselves to.

I feel this. I’ve definitely worked at places for years where there were people I just NEVER TALKED TO. Which is insane if you think about it – you spend more time with these people than with your family! your friends! your polycule!

I want more people to challenge themselves and have an excuse to talk to strangers. Go forth and make new friends![2]

1. ^

There were categories like “Al Fresco” (talk to someone outside), “Bossy Pants” (talk to someone who looks like a leader), and the excellent “On Top” (talk to someone with a hat… get your mind out of the gutter).

2. ^

And don’t forget to email me the results!

Discuss