A recent study shows that greeting a stranger can really help make you feel happier. Although previous research showed that conversations with strangers can have the same effect, it now appears that you don’t even have to go that far: a simple greeting will do you good.
Recently, the World Health Organization (WHO) highlighted that loneliness can be considered a serious health risk worldwide. And not just any one: they compare it to the harmful effect of smoking 15 cigarettes every day. Many people in Western, modern societies in particular appear to be lonely. And while the solution according to a new study in some cases it can be very simple.
Health hazard
In today’s time we are often focused on ourselves. We don’t often talk to strangers, but mainly to acquaintances. Yet this distance makes people less happy than in the past, when people were more likely to talk to strangers. “The lack of social connections with others is an important health risk,” says researcher Esra Aşçıgil in conversation with Scientias.nl. “Previous research has already shown that loneliness is not only bad for your happiness, but can also be very harmful to your physical health. It is therefore important to study the link between minimal social interactions and low life satisfaction.”
Study
For this study, the researchers sent questionnaires to people in both Turkey and the United Kingdom. They inquired about recent brief encounters or even conversations with strangers. In addition, they asked each participant to rate their personal level of life satisfaction or general happiness. In the first phase, the researchers received 3,266 responses, and in the second phase there were 60,141.
Strangers
The research team noticed a striking pattern: The people who reported having brief interactions or conversations with strangers were generally happier than those who avoided conversations with strangers. “The main takeaway is that greeting strangers can be an easy way to feel happier,” says Aşçıgil.
Greetings and thanks
These findings are not very surprising. “Previous studies have also shown that talking to strangers can increase feelings of well-being,” Aşçıgil said. “We have now repeated these results, and it confirmed that talking to strangers is really good for our well-being. In this study we even went a step further and looked at the effect of simply saying ‘hello’ and thanking people we don’t know well. And we discovered that even these small gestures can make us happier. This means that the beneficial effects of contact with strangers come not only from conversations, but also from simple greetings and thanks.”
Chicken and egg problem
However, the question remains whether more contact with strangers leads to more happiness in life, or whether more happiness in life ensures that you seek out more contact with others. “It could be both,” Aşçıgil speculates. “People who are already satisfied with their lives may talk to strangers more often, and those who interact with strangers more may actually become more satisfied with their lives. We did take this chicken-egg problem into account in our research by setting up our statistical models in such a way that we could avoid this problem. And we found evidence that talking to strangers resulted in higher life satisfaction.”
Why?
Another pressing question is why simply greeting strangers leads to greater happiness in life. “Possibly a stronger sense of connection could explain the discovered link between interactions with strangers and greater life satisfaction,” Aşçıgil suggests. “Experiencing connection is something that is seen as an essential human need. It means that you feel accepted and appreciated by others. Interactions with strangers can contribute to this sense of connection, which can then lead to increased life satisfaction.”
saying hello
The study shows that it does not have to be difficult to feel less lonely and happier. You really don’t have to have entire conversations with a stranger for this, as previous studies suggested. That is something that is not easy for everyone. “People are often afraid that the person they are talking to will not like them or that the conversation will be awkward,” says Aşçıgil. “They also sometimes don’t know what to say. But now we’ve discovered that simply saying “hello” or “thank you” can increase our life satisfaction. This is important because anyone can easily do this.”
Although our close relationships are particularly important for happiness in life, it is still worth going a step further than just the people you know. The next time you feel a little sad, it can really help to reach out to strangers. And because an interaction always takes place between at least two people, you are guaranteed to make someone else a little happier at the same time.
2023-12-28 10:43:03
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