An article by Derek Thompson, which appeared in a recent issue of The Atlantic, discussed an experiment conducted by Nicholas Epley, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, where he asked commuter-train passengers how they would feel if they were asked to spend the ride talking to a stranger? Most of them said that it would be a better commute if they talked to no one rather than talking to someone they didn’t know. He then instructed some of the passengers to keep to themselves on their next commute while others were instructed to talk with a stranger. When the commute was over, the people who were instructed to talk to strangers reported feeling significantly more positive than those who kept to themselves. The article goes on to quote professor Epley as saying, “No amount of research that I’ve done has changed my life more than this. It’s not that I’m never lonely. It’s that my moment-to-moment experience of life is better because I’ve learned to take the dead spaces of life (standing in line, walking through a store, riding on a commuter-train, sitting at an airport, or riding in an elevator) and make friends in it.”

One Sentence Wisdom

• “You can make more friends in two months by becoming genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.” — Dale Carnegie
• “The shortest distance between two friends is a smile.” — Victor Borge

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