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Boing Boing

Research keeps proving we should talk to strangers more

Ellsworth Toohey
Mar 02, 2026
∙ Paid

Narin Nonthamand/shutterstock.com

Every commuter on every train in every city is running the same miscalculation. They assume sitting in silence will be more pleasant than talking to the person next to them. They are wrong, and psychologists have been proving it for over a decade. In a 2014 study, University of Chicago behavioral scientist Nicholas Epley…

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