Kelsey Borresen is a senior reporter at HuffPost Life, covering love, sex and relationships. She is a graduate of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and lives in Los Angeles.
The close relationships we have with romantic partners, family, friends and even co-workers enrich our lives in countless ways. But there’s another type of connection that’s meaningful but often overlooked: the interactions we share with strangers.
“We wanted to understand which portfolio of interactions — with which types of relationship partners, and how many interactions with each type — is most predictive of well-being,” she said.In the study, relational diversity was measured across two metrics: richness and evenness. Richness is the number of relationship categories you converse with , and evenness refers to how those conversations are distributed across different relationship categories, Collins explained.
“We find that individuals with the more diverse social portfolio — people who are talking to a more varied set of relationship partners and doing so relatively evenly — experience greater well-being in terms of life satisfaction, quality of lifepositive emotion,” Collins said. “These results suggest that talking to strangers is a critical part of a rich and diverse social life.”
Being more aware of the consequential strangers who populate your life and engaging with them helps you feel less lonely and “understand the value of all people and all kinds of social interactions,” Blau said.“You’re more likely to look at a name tag and call a stranger by name or introduce yourself, more likely to tune in and be present,” she said.
“They round out your life. Simply put, each one is an intermittent, sometimes unplanned, and usually enjoyable social encounter,” she said.in terms of age, race, political affiliation and other demographic categories.
Of course, it’s always useful to pay attention to other people’s energy and body language before approaching them.
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