Here’s Why You Should Make Small Talk At Starbucks

Even Brief Conversations Boost Feelings of Connection and Happiness

In the fall of 2020 I taught a class in Social Psychology - a class I’d taught each fall for more than 20 years. Although the fundamental theories and research in this class were of course the same, everything else was remarkably different.

I was teaching in a tent outside. I was wearing a mask, as were all the students. We all tried our best to stay six feet away from each other, per the rules for social distancing (even outside).

In a desperate attempt to create some sense of community in this strange new world, I started each class with an exercise I called “high/low” (you may also know this exercise as “rose and thorn”). Before we started covering class content, each student shared either a high or a low they’d experienced in the last week.

Students shared highs of eating birthday cake, going fishing, and receiving a summer internship. They shared lows of losing their sunglasses, feeling overwhelmed with work, and getting COVID.

At the end of the semester, the most frequent comment on my course evaluations related to this exercise. As one student noted, “I loved the high/low exercise because it made me feel like Professor Sanderson cared about me not just as a student, but as a person.”

And of course that’s exactly why I chose to include this exercise - because I felt like we needed to create a sense of community during what was a very unsettling time, on our campus and indeed around the world.

I’m still in touch with a number of the students I taught during that academic year, in part because we all really did get to know each other on a more personal level (and some of those students may even be reading this newsletter). Many of these students frequently came to office hours just to hang out and talk. And those conversations felt good to them - and to me.

Our experience about the benefits of even brief personal exchanges is exactly in line with empirical research in psychology about the benefits of so-called “weak ties.” We often think about relationships as the people we are closest to in our lives. But even brief casual interactions — chatting with a barista at your favorite coffee shop, making small talk with a neighbor, talking about your weekend with a colleague — can make us feel better.

In one study researchers asked college students how many different people in a class they had interacted with on a given day - and whether these conversations were with a friend or with someone they didn’t know very well. Students who reported having more interactions reported higher levels of happiness, even though most of these interactions (64%) were with classmates they considered weak ties. They also reported higher levels of belongingness on these days, suggesting that these casual interactions increase our feelings of connection - just like I hoped my high/low exercise would create within my class.

A problem with interpreting these results, however, is that it’s impossible to tell whether these interactions increase happiness or whether happy students simply choose to interact more with their classmates.

These researchers therefore conducted another study in which people were randomly approached outside a Starbucks and asked to participate in a brief study in exchange for a $5 gift card.

• Some people were told to have an “efficient” interaction with the barista; they were asked to have their money ready to pay and to avoid any unnecessary conversation.

• Other people were told to have a “social” interaction with the barista; they were told to smile, make eye contact, and to have a brief conversation.

After completing their purchase, study participants completed a brief survey assessing their mood. As predicted, people who had a social interaction reported higher levels of happiness and a greater sense of connection than those who had an efficient interaction.

Here’s the simple takeaway from the research: cultivate weak ties! Making small talk is an easy way to boost well-being.

Now a couple of questions for you: How often do you make small talk - and with who? And how does it make you feel? Please share in the comments (which, for the record, is also a way of cultivating weak ties with me and with other readers)!