Hello, thank you, how are you?… These small everyday interactions improve our well-being.
- Following the Covid-19 pandemic, a researcher decided to focus on the relationships we have on a daily basis with strangers.
- She discovered after several analyzes that these minor social interactions increased our psychological well-being.
- His results were published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science.
A new psychology study indicates that even the simplest forms of social interaction, such as greeting or thanking someone, can significantly increase our well-being. These results, published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Sciencehighlight the often overlooked value of small, everyday social interactions.
Well-being: why study relationships with strangers?
Interactions with acquaintances and strangers – bus drivers, cashiers, joggers, etc. – have never been studied in such depth until now.
“I have been involved in research on social relationships for almost ten years, but focused only on close relationships until recently,” said study author Esra Aşçıgil, a researcher at Sabanci University in Istanbul. “It was the pandemic that made me realize the importance of people outside our close social circle for our well-being,” she adds.
Well-being: how to study relationships with strangers?
To study this question, his team called on two distinct groups of participants. The first group, called sample A, consisted of 3,266 Turkish adults. This sample was representative of the Turkish population and covered the 12 regions of the country.
The second group, Sample B, was much larger, with 60,141 adult participants. This group was primarily made up of people from the United Kingdom, but also included English-speaking participants from various other countries.
In both samples, participants were asked about their interactions with complete strangers, and specifically about the number of conversations they had initiated in the past week.
Their life satisfaction was assessed using a simple question.
In sample A, people who frequently greet, thank or chat with acquaintances report being more satisfied with their lives. This association was also observed in Sample B, where participants who had more conversations with strangers also reported greater life satisfaction.
