On a typical day, you experience numerous fleeting exchanges with people you don’t know, often without a word: a quick smile of acknowledgement as someone holds the door, a moment of eye contact to navigate a crowded aisle at the grocery store, or even a brief chat with a total stranger.
Are these interactions with strangers simply an artifact of daily life—pleasant enough, but inconsequential? It can be easy to assume so, especially as people increasingly find ways to avoid casual contact with strangers, from wearing headphones in public (even without anything playing), choosing delivery or self-checkout, or instinctively pulling out their phone when stuck in a line or any public setting that risks an impromptu interaction.
But our current research suggests that these small moments matter deeply. As social psychologists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we work together in the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab led by Barbara Fredrickson. Together, we study everyday micro-moments of positive connection and the wide range of benefits that flow from them. In her 2013 book Love 2.0, Barbara originally introduced the concept of positivity resonance—the shared, positive emotional connection that arises when people feel “in sync”—and subsequently began studying how positivity resonance emerges and produces benefits in close relationships.
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Building on this foundation, since joining the lab in 2019, Taylor has developed an expanding line of research on micro-moments of connection outside close relationships, particularly with strangers. Her work asks whether these micro-moments of positive connection with people we don’t know (or don’t know well) may offer unique benefits for individuals and for society—benefits that differ from those that arise from close relationships.
Taylor’s core argument is that interactions with strangers not only matter, but may actually be among the most transcendent parts of public life. With each fleeting interaction, strangers tie us to the collective, stitching us into the broader fabric of society and subtly shaping our sense of humanity. These easily overlooked moments matter for well-being and provide a sense of belonging. But beyond well-being, these brief moments may play a quiet but powerful role in fostering a kind and cooperative society.
We’ve been working together to test these ideas empirically. Today, as social and technological shifts increasingly isolate us from strangers, understanding the importance of micro-moments of connection in daily life has never felt more urgent. What we’ve uncovered is that connections with strangers do far more than boost our mood—they may be essential for building and repairing social cohesion.
Strangers matter for well-being
In this relatively young area of research, a few studies have already become classics. One well-known field experiment found that commuters in Chicago, later replicated in London, reported a more positive commute when instructed to strike up a conversation with a stranger, compared to those asked to commute as usual or in silence. Another study, conducted in a Starbucks, found that people asked to have a warm, genuine interaction (compared to an “efficient” one) with a barista reported greater positive mood, in part because they felt a greater sense of belonging. Despite people’s fears or expectations, research consistently finds that connecting with a stranger boosts our mood.
More recently, our team argues that it’s not merely interacting or how many interactions you have that matters. It’s the emotional quality of these interactions. When two people share a sense of uplift, mutual warmth, and care, even in a brief moment, those moments accumulate into meaningful psychological benefits. We consider these moments of positivity resonance as the most elemental building block of love. Importantly, such moments can arise between any two people, not just romantic partners or close friends.
To test this idea, we studied 335 young adults and examined whether the quality of their interactions with close others and with non-close others (strangers and acquaintances) related to their well-being. First, we asked them to reflect on the quality of recent interactions and then answer questions such as how much of the time they felt “in sync” with the other. What we found was striking, and frankly exceeded our expectations: The quality of people’s interactions with strangers and acquaintances predicted their reported loneliness, sense of belonging, and mental health symptoms just as strongly as the quality of their close relationships. Quality interactions with strangers and acquaintances didn’t just matter for well-being; they mattered just as much as your inner circle.
If quality interactions with strangers matter just as much as with close others, how often do people actually put themselves in situations where they can interact with strangers? Most in-person encounters with strangers occur when in public spaces. Yet, over the last 20 years, even before COVID-19, people have increasingly spent more time at home. We tested whether this change in behavior mattered for everyday interactions and well-being. Over six weeks, using geotracking data from smartphones and survey responses from 225 young adults, we found that people who visited more locations throughout their day also had more interactions with acquaintances and strangers. Additionally, on days people left the house, they reported less loneliness and greater well-being, compared to people who stayed home. We plan to publish this research after another data collection with more participants.
These findings suggested a surprisingly simple, yet powerful takeaway: One of the easiest ways to boost well-being and have micro-moments of connection is simply leaving the house.
We’d like to underscore that these well-being benefits are not limited to people who feel lonely. A common question we hear is whether interacting with strangers matters for people satisfied with their current relationships—people who aren’t looking for new friends. Our results, and those of other researchers, suggest our fundamental “need to belong” cannot be met by close relationships alone.
For example, research has found that people report the highest well-being when they interact with a diverse range of relationship partners, be it friends, coworkers, neighbors, or strangers, as compared to people who interact with relatively fewer relationship types. And realistically, no one’s close relationships meet their needs every single day. Some days we don’t get the support we need, or people are unavailable. When that happens, recent research finds that on days when close relationships fall short, brief interactions with strangers play an important role in sustaining well-being. But although most of the research so far has focused on individual benefits, the potential impact of interacting with strangers reaches far beyond personal well-being.
Strangers bind us to our community
One intriguing thing about strangers is that they are a source of novelty. Because strangers are often different from us and the people we regularly interact with in age, ethnicity, culture, life experience, or social class, conversations with them can be surprisingly perspective-changing. Even in a 10-minute chat with an Uber driver on the way to the airport, you can leave with a transformative lesson in the variety of human experience.
This is backed by research. Research has found that people report learning more new information following a conversation with a stranger, compared to a conversation with a close other. This raises an intriguing possibility: When we have positive interactions with strangers, especially those different from us, does that dissimilarity become less of a threat? Could these connections help us maintain or even expand our belief in other people’s goodwill? Might they remind us that people with different backgrounds or political views may carry insights shaped by life experiences we haven’t had—and that we may have something to learn from them?
This line of inquiry led to the development of a series of studies that ultimately formed Taylor’s dissertation. In the first study, we collected views on a range of political topics from 399 participants, along with how they felt about the last interaction they had with a stranger or acquaintance, and separately with a close other. We then showed them a series of 26 profiles of people with varying political stances, some of which were similar to the participants’ and some of which were in opposition. We found that people who had a recent higher-quality interaction, or positivity resonance, with a stranger or acquaintance also reported greater beliefs they could learn from strangers, whether they had similar or opposing political views. In contrast, higher-quality interactions with a close other only predicted such beliefs toward people who had similar political views.
In a subsequent experiment in which people were either recalled a past positive interaction with a stranger or a close other, and in a brief intervention to connect with strangers over 24 hours, we largely found consistent results: People who had positive interactions with strangers and acquaintances, but not close others, were more open to and willing to learn from people with different political views.
These findings suggest that connecting with strangers may play an important and underappreciated role in fostering more open and cohesive communities. Which led us to wonder: What else might these everyday connections be doing for broader community and civic life?
Building on this work, in collaboration with Gillian Sandstrom, an expert in talking to strangers and a professor in the psychology of kindness at the University of Sussex, we are now investigating the many ways that connecting with strangers uniquely builds beliefs and behaviors that serve the common good. With support from the Templeton World Charity Foundation, we recently conducted a large three-week intervention in both the U.S. and the U.K. in which nearly 600 people were randomized to connect with strangers or with close others, or were assigned to a control group. A few early insights are already clear.
First, people who spent three weeks connecting with strangers showed meaningful increases in intellectual humility—or respect for and openness toward people with different views. Those who connected with close others or were in the control group showed no such improvements. Put simply, when we connect with strangers, we are more open to difference.
Second, connecting with strangers strengthened people’s belief that people are generally kind and helpful, compared to those who connected with close others or the control group. These small interactions can shape, and perhaps restore, our faith in humanity.
Third, connecting with strangers may fuel social change. After three weeks, only people who connected with strangers had increased collective efficacy, or the belief that their community could come together to enact change against harmful policies. This belief is an important predictor of civic engagement. In other words, connecting with strangers isn’t just a feel-good, it may be foundational to democracy and civic life—a societal good.
We’ll have much more to share from this line of work in the coming year. In the meantime, here is the core insight we hope stays with you:
Our loneliness epidemic will not be solved solely by having deeper friendships or finding a romantic partner, but by being integrated with community and society. Our social divisions will not be resolved by avoiding strangers, but being open to and connecting with them. The remedy begins with the fleeting interactions you have every day.
So, those seemingly inconsequential interactions you have throughout the day? They matter. They are consequential, more than you may know. Each smile, shared glance, or kind exchange knits us into something larger than ourselves. These micro-moments of connection, however ordinary or brief, in cumulation, are powerful shapers of belonging and of our belief in the goodness of humanity. In many ways, they are the building blocks of a kinder and more cooperative society many of us hope for.
Each small interaction with a stranger is a step toward the kind of society we say we want. So when the moment arises, choose connection.
