Run Game Conversation

How to make small talk with people you don't know

6 min read

Small talk has one job: to find out whether there's something worth talking about. It's the bridge between "we're standing near each other" and an actual conversation. The weather, the line, the venue and the food are all fair openings, and they're meant to be replaced within a minute or two by something more specific.

This isn't about dating. It covers queues, work gatherings, weddings, classes and any event where you're next to people you don't know. If you want the first line itself, see how to start a conversation with a stranger. This post is about staying in a light chat once it has started, and leaving it comfortably.

Why it's worth doing, and what the research does and doesn't show

Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder ran nine experiments (published 2014 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General) with commuters on trains and buses. Riders told to talk to a stranger reported a more positive trip than riders told to sit alone, even though most had predicted solitude would feel better. The results rely on self-report about a commute, so they may not carry to every setting, and Epley noted that chats with strangers on a train may not bring the lasting benefits of time with friends.

In twelve experiments with more than 1,800 participants, Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar and Epley found that conversations with strangers went better than people expected, and that deeper conversations went better than expected by a bigger margin than shallow ones. Most people predicted they'd prefer the shallow chat and ended up preferring the deep one. Those were lab setups with prompts the researchers supplied, so they say more about expectations than about what you should say at a work party.

Erica Boothby and colleagues (2018, Psychological Science) ran five studies, with samples from 34 students up to 100 workshop participants, and found that people consistently underestimated how much their conversation partner liked them. It held for chats of 2 to 45 minutes. If you walk away thinking it went badly, the other person may feel better about it than you do.

And on how much small talk matters for wellbeing, the evidence is mixed. A 2010 study by Matthias Mehl and colleagues had volunteers wear a small recorder for four days and found that happier people had more substantive conversations and less small talk, but it couldn't show which caused which. A 2018 follow-up pooling several samples found no reliable link between small talk and life satisfaction. So the research doesn't say small talk is good for you or bad for you. It says conversation with others, in general, tends to go better than people predict.

The steps from the weather to something real

A common way to think about it is a ladder with four rungs. Toastmasters' magazine describes a similar four-step pattern: a positive comment, an easy open question, reflecting back what they said, and adding something of your own.

  1. The shared situation. "This line's moving faster than I thought." "Have you been to this venue before?" Anything you can both see.
  2. Their connection to it. "How do you know the host?" "What brought you to the event?" "Which session did you pick?" It tells you about the person without being personal.
  3. A tangent into their interests. Follow whatever they gave you. If they say they came for the talk on bike lanes, "Do you cycle to work?" is a natural next step.
  4. A specific, shared detail. Add something of yours. "I commute by bike too, but I gave up on the hill route." Now you're both talking, not one person answering questions.

Open questions help. "What did you think of the talk?" gets more than "Did you like the talk?" The Toastmasters piece suggests prompts that start with "tell me about" and says specific questions give people more to work with than vague ones.

Topics that usually work, and ones that don't

Toastmasters lists the event or venue, hobbies, weekend plans and people's work interests as good subjects, and suggests avoiding health, private matters, controversial subjects and risky jokes with people you don't know well. That's advice from one organization, but it matches what most guides say. Pay attention to the setting too: gossip about a mutual colleague can go sideways fast.

Signs the other person wants to keep going, or wrap up

Behaviors, not verdicts:

Nothing in that list is certain. Someone with a short answer might be nervous, not uninterested, and the liking gap research suggests people often read their own conversations more harshly than the other person does. If you're unsure, ask one more open question. If you still get little, you have your answer.

Joining a group that's already talking

Adam Kendon's work on how people arrange themselves when they talk suggests groups form a shared space that can be closed to outsiders, and that newcomers can step in and greet people. In practice: stand near the edge, wait for a pause, make brief eye contact, and say a short line that connects to what's being discussed ("Sorry to jump in, are you talking about the new office?"). If nobody opens the circle, move on without fuss.

Easy exits

A clean exit lets you start the next conversation, and it makes the first one feel good. The how to end a conversation guide goes deeper. A few lines that are honest and easy:

Say it with a smile, say something specific from the chat, then actually leave. Don't make up an emergency. A plain "good to meet you" is enough.

When you just don't like small talk

Plenty of people find it tiring. That's fine. A reasonable approach is to keep it short and aim at one thing you're curious about. You don't need to do eight chats at an event. Two or three decent ones count.

What to do next

  1. This week, have three small talk exchanges of under three minutes each, with a cashier, a neighbor, a coworker or someone in a queue.
  2. In each one, go up one rung: ask about their connection to the place, then follow what they said.
  3. Prepare three open questions for an event you've got coming up, such as "What brought you here?" or "What are you working on lately?"
  4. Practice one exit line out loud until it comes out smoothly, then use it.
  5. After the event, write down one thing you learned about someone. If you can't remember anything, ask more follow-up questions next time.

For more on keeping the thread, see how to keep a conversation going, conversation threading, how to be a better listener and how to not be awkward.

For a related read, see building rapport in the first ten minutes.

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