Greg Bruce tries the talking cure.
In a recent New York Times article discussing people's misconceptions, including her own, about what makes a happy life, Yale University Professor Laurie Santos, teacher of The Science of Well-Being Psychology and the Good Life, the most popular course in Yale history, said: ''One
of the most shocking ones for me is a study looking at how simple interactions with strangers positively affect your wellbeing." Even for introverts, she said, "a simple chat with a stranger can make people feel great".
In my mid-20s, I had lucked into a business class flight to Europe for a work thing. From the time it was booked, months in advance, It was all I could think about. I googled reviews of the lie-flat seat and assorted amenities, planned my food and beverage needs and movie schedule, fantasised about cocooning myself in the seat, then donning my noise-cancelling headphones and taking them off only to order cheeseboards and selections of high-quality liquors I had little interest in drinking.
When I arrived at my seat and was greeted warmly by the elderly German woman seated next to me, who showed no interest in the bag containing her noise-cancelling headphones, my heart sank into the complimentary slippers I had not yet put on. I tried and failed not to resent every minute she shared her life with me. I was unable to focus on the conversation because all I could think about was the least offensive way to extract myself from it. After an hour or two, I had to interrupt and ask if she would excuse me while I put my headphones on, after which I withdrew inside myself for the remainder of the flight. I felt bad about that but apparently not bad enough to not do it.
I have never wanted to talk to strangers, not at conferences or parties, not in elevators or waiting rooms, not while standing at urinals. I understand that for some people it represents a filling of their cup but for me it's an emptying, a draining, a scouring out. At least, that's how I've always perceived it. But if I'm susceptible to having my mind changed by anything, it's evidence-backed ways to improve my wellbeing, documented by a tenured professor at an Ivy League university, then reported in an interview with an internationally venerated newspaper. And so it was that I set out, with a sense of hope, to see if talking to a stranger every day for a month would make me feel great, good, or anything other than extremely anxious.
The first stranger I spoke to was Nicholas Epley, one of the two leading researchers in the field. I had emailed the other one, the University of Sussex's Senior Lecturer in the Psychology of Kindness Gillian Sandstrom, but when she didn't reply, I got in touch with Epley, who is Professor of Behaviour Science at the University of Chicago. Several days later, nine days after I'd first emailed her, Sandstrom replied. She had been away, she wrote, but was happy to talk. I wrote back: "I had assumed you hated me and found my email offensive, so nice to hear that wasn't the case!" She replied, "Gosh – I really hope you're kidding! And I hope Nick told you about research on the liking gap, and how people like you more than you think." He hadn't, but the next day I received an email in which he did: "Recent research suggests that people tend to underestimate how much others like them AFTER they've just finished a conversation, suggesting that the misunderstandings about conversation occur not only before interactions but also after them. This effect has been termed, 'the liking gap'."
I asked Sandstrom what she thought I should be looking for during my experiment. She said: "I think it would be nice for you to keep track of the pro-social aspect. Not only how did it make you feel afterwards, but how do you think it affected other people?" I hadn't thought about that at all, and I felt bad about that.
On the experiment's first real day, a Monday, I drove to the train station, got out of my car and walked only a few steps before I came across a fence on which was written, in a child's hand, in chalk: "Have a great day. Be kind to other people." I don't usually believe in signs but, then again, they're not usually so literal. It didn't make it any easier to get started. Over the coming hour, as I walked to the train, rode the train and walked up Queen St, I nearly talked to many people - the AT workers sitting down in the train station at Britomart, the woman on a bench outside, the worker in the deserted Footlocker store, the man coming down the escalator in the Queen St arcade, the Armourguard worker outside the bank - but whenever I came close to doing it, it just felt too confrontational, too scary, too much of an imposition on people's lives.
Probably because I've always seen it as a place of refuge, I ended up in the library. A librarian was standing by herself at the counter, but instead of talking to her, I sat down and checked my email, opening a press release of no use nor interest to me, about Australian football, reading it right to the end, googling one of the people in it, who I'd never heard of, then googling his family members. Returning to reality several minutes later, I found my desire to speak to anyone had dulled. I sat for a couple more minutes, gathering my courage, then stood up, walked towards the librarian, past the librarian, and out of the library.
I had decided I wouldn't arrive at the office without having first spoken to a stranger so I was disappointed and deflated to find myself having done so. I gathered my courage once more and went across the road to order a coffee, where I knew the barista would have no choice but to talk to me. This may sound like a cop-out but, firstly, it had been suggested to me by Sandstrom and, secondly, you don't get to make the rules for my experiment.
I started with some small talk about the lockdown, then the barista mentioned one of the cafe's staff had Covid, then I launched into a story about someone I knew who'd had it twice, followed by a story about a guy in Britain who'd had it five times. I told her that my kids had all had it, but my wife and I hadn't, so maybe we were immune, haha, and I concluded with the observation that everyone now seemed to know someone who'd had it. I made one unsuccessful joke about the morning rush and another after I'd failed to paywave successfully, ("Maybe I've run out of money haha!") As I walked away, I felt great at having completed day one, but that feeling was accompanied by an underlying awareness that I'd done all the talking, all of it inane, and while I may have felt better afterwards, it's unlikely the barista felt anything other than bored.
I began day two deeply uninspired about the 29 remaining days, so was flooded with positive feeling when a woman came and sat next to me at the train station, saying, by way of explanation, "The seat looks a bit wet over there."
I was so excited. I exclaimed: "You don't want to sit on a wet seat!"
There was a pause in which I became aware I had overreacted, and that, as a result, she probably thought I was crazy, so I dialled things back a bit, asking, "Did it rain last night?" which obviously it had because everything around us was wet. Also, I'd lain awake in the middle of the night listening to it. It was quite scary.
"Oh yes," she said, "A big downpour."
"I guess I sleep too soundly to notice," I lied.
"Well, enjoy it," she said. "Wait until you're too old and your bladder wakes you up all night."
I said: "I've got small kids and they've just got past the stage where they keep me up all night."
She said something platitudinous and took a book out of her bag. I thought about asking her what it was but I know how to read a signal.
The next day, Wednesday, I was walking to work when I came across the following graffiti written on the bus stop timetable on Victoria St: "F*** AT. F***ing useless. Stuck in town. Last bus never came." Does this count? Yes, it does. What is a conversation if not one person expressing real human feeling and another person hearing and acknowledging the truth of that feeling?
Walking up Queen St on Thursday morning, I saw a solitary Hare Krishna with a book in his hand. He was looking directly at me. I thought about all the times I had ignored his colleagues over the years and, while I didn't feel bad about that exactly, I definitely felt an empathy towards him and them that I hadn't felt before. "Hi, how are you!" I said, but he walked straight past me. At first, I was stung by the rejection, but then I was struck by the lovely symmetry of it all. I wouldn't say I felt good about it, but I definitely appreciated it in an artistic sense.
I found myself starting many conversations only for them to be cut short by the limited social expectations of the situations in which I started them. One afternoon, I bought some socks at Farmers Queen St.
"Quiet in here today," I said to the salesperson.
"Yeah, it was busy earlier this morning but it's quiet now," he said.
"The city's crazy at the moment isn't it?" I said.
"Yes", he said.
Another afternoon, at football practice, I saw a woman walking across the field with two cats and a dog.
"Hi," I said.
"Hi," she replied.
I tried to think of a question to ask her, but by the time it came to me ("What kind of dog is that?") she was already past me, and it would have been weird to call after her.
Another day, I called Waitematā Rugby Club to ask if I could use their grandstand to shoot the cover photo for my upcoming book, Rugby Head, being published by Penguin Random House and available on August 30, just in time for Father's Day.
"Hello, Greg speaking," the man said.
"Did you say 'Greg'?" I said.
"Yep," he said.
"Ha!" I said. "My name is also Greg! Bit of a coincidence there to start the conversation."
He didn't reply.
"I've got a bit of a strange request," I said, and launched into my pitch, which I had rehearsed ahead of time, describing to him the book, which tells the story of my search for meaning and happiness in a culture soaked in, and shaped by, rugby. I explained to him what the photos would look like, who would be in them, how long we would need, what the book was about and ...
Yep, that's fine," he said.
"Do I need to talk to anyone when I arrive?"
"Nah," he said.
Sometimes, the interactions flourished unexpectedly. While having lunch at a city eatery, I had a long and deeply empathetic conversation with a waiter about the highly restrictive low FODMAP diet I was following, which she had also tried. On another day, when I was paying for my gas, the nice cashier said, "Pump 6?" and because mine was just one of many cars on the crowded forecourt, I said, "Wow! You're on to it to know that."
She said, "It's my job to keep an eye on it." Then she added, "Sometimes I think it might come across as a bit stalker."
"No, not at all," I said. "It just seems very professional."
She said, "Oh thank you!" and smiled. I could see she felt good and I felt good about the fact she felt good.
"Have a nice night," she said, and I could tell she really meant it.
On another day, I saw a guy washing a silicon bowl in the sink at work.
"Those things are so hard to clean!" I said. "I know because I've got one."
He didn't reply and didn't even look up and I started to feel a bit silly, but as I was walking away, he said, "The grease never comes off!" Instantly, my shame was transformed into delight. Shared disappointment: That most human of connections.
I met a man who had moved here from Tajikstan as a child, who told me that the sound of gunfire was nothing, but that rockets were always something. I met a man called Ringo, who had moved here from China as a child, and whose mother had picked his name from a book. "Was it a book about The Beatles?" I said and he laughed, probably because he was trying to sell me a car. I talked with a lot of parents: parents on playgrounds, parents on the sports field, parents at McDonald's. I talked with a lot of customer service people. At Life Pharmacy one Sunday morning, I had a little joke with the salesperson about how happy my wife would be that I'd remembered to use her Living Rewards card. She said, "Do you want me to print the receipt so you can see the points you have?" I said, "Yes, and that should earn me some points at home as well!" and she laughed, probably because I'd just bought $100 worth of cold and flu medicines.
On the final day, a Friday, I spent 10 minutes talking with a thoughtful and engaging promotional person at Liquorland who gave me free tequila, after which I spent three times more than intended on a bottle of wine. I left that shop feeling so good and can't say for sure how much of that was down to the quality of the conversation and how much was because it was the last one.
I had intended to approach this experiment rigorously and scientifically, measuring my wellbeing before, during and after each interaction, but I quickly realised my feelings were too complicated for that to prove useful or revealing. Yes, there was a fairly predictable narrative arc to my conversations: anxiety beforehand and sometimes during, giving way to a warmth and even a sort of thrill when things went well, as they usually did, and always followed by relief. But underlying and impacting the extent and intensity of these feelings were many, many variables: the rise and fall of deadlines and other responsibilities, existential dread, bodily aches and pains and seemingly endless family sickness.
Epley had told me: "We are social creatures. We're built to connect. Usually these conversations are pleasant. You learn something that you didn't expect. People are generally friendly when you try talking with them."
That had all proved true. Overwhelmingly, I found the experiment to be a positive experience. It made me feel good. I can't say it changed my life, nor even my underlying emotional state, and I was relieved when it ended, but it did reinforce to me something I'd long suspected but, as an introvert, had mostly tried to ignore - that happiness is other people. How was it for the people I talked to? I can't say. I never asked.
WHERE TO GET HELP:
If it is an emergency and you feel you or someone else is at risk, call 111. Otherwise talk to your GP or mental health provider or try these numbers:
• Lifeline: 0800 543 354 (available 24/7)
• Suicide Crisis Helpline: 0508 828 865 (0508 TAUTOKO) (available 24/7)
• Youthline: 0800 376 633