Talking to strangers as well as friends makes you happier: study

No stranger danger here.

A new study suggests that people who talk to strangers as well as family and friends are happier. 

It’s well known that there is a link between happiness and social connection, but researchers from Harvard University wanted to know which type of relationships and how many interactions with each type is best for one’s well-being. 

“Indeed, the amount of social interaction in an individual’s daily life is one of the most consistent predictors of psychological well-being,” the researchers wrote in the journal PNAS.

They studied the “social portfolio” of more than 50,000 people from eight different countries to find if people with a diverse set of relationships are happier than those who don’t expand their social circles.

The study found that the people who branched out had a greater wellbeing, life satisfaction and quality of life. Talking to a wider range of people turned out to be more important to one’s happiness than total number of interactions or time spent interacting. 

“Recent work suggests that individuals discuss important topics with their weak ties more often than traditional network theory would predict — especially in one-on-one conversation when relational stakes are lower,” the researchers wrote. 

Researchers even found that participants who interacted with a random stranger were just as happy as those who were paired to interact with their significant other. 

“Different types of social support — for example emotional, instrumental, financial and informational — tend to be provided by different social relations, for example your partner, immediate kin, friends or colleagues,” the authors wrote. 

They found that “weak ties,” or people you’re not close to, play a critical role at the network level, providing information and resources that might not be available in your inner circle. 

“Diversity in social portfolios may be associated with greater access to different types of social support, resulting in enhanced well-being,” researchers wrote.

However, they acknowledged that, for some, having these kinds of interactions might be difficult. “People’s time is scarce, such that increasing the number or frequency of social interactions can prove challenging.”

They explained that future research could be done to examine what people intuitively think of the correlation between an expansive social portfolio and well-being. For example, people might believe the results to be true, but don’t have the ability to expand their circles for varying reasons, or people simply might not believe they need to branch out in order to be happier.