Stranger Thoughts ...
Thinking about: Other people
In their comments on my Talk to Strangers! post, readers raise a number of questions. Why, for example, is it easier for some people to strike up conversations than it is for others? It is in large part because of personality differences. We can characterize personalities using the Myers-Briggs assessment or using the arguably more reliable Big Five Model. Extraversion and agreeableness are two of the Big Five traits (the other three being openness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism). The sociability that makes people willing to talk to strangers is an aspect of both extraversion and agreeableness.
And why do people have different personalities? Many factors are at play:
Their genes. Identical twins tend to have strikingly similar personalities. For more insight into this phenomenon, watch this fun and informative five-minute video.
Whether they had siblings and if they did, their birth order.
How they were raised. Any parent who has raised multiple children is likely puzzled by how different their personalities are, despite having been “raised the same.”
The circumstances under which they were raised. Being raised in poverty, for example, can have a profound impact on someone’s personality. So can having a privileged upbringing.
The culture in which they were raised. If they grow up in a culture in which politeness is the norm, they will be rewarded for being deferential and penalized for being brash; the opposite will be the case if they grow up in a culture that rewards aggression. These incentives can shape their personality.
As I explain in my book On Desire: Why We Want What We Want, we are “wired” with a biological incentive system that makes some things feel good—like having sex or eating sweet food—and makes other things feel bad—like getting cut or burned. A psychological incentive system is layered over this biological system and gives rise to our personality.
If you score high on the openness component of the Big Five Model, it is exciting to ride a roller coaster, but if you score low, it is terrifying. If you score high on conscientiousness, it feels great to finish a job ahead of the deadline but feels terrible to miss it. Along similar lines, if you score high on extraversion and agreeableness, the rewards of striking up a conversation with strangers will far outweigh the costs of doing so, but if you score low, they won’t.
Your personality isn’t static. It can change quickly as a result of a traumatic event, and it can change slowly as a result of your accumulated life experience, along with changes in your values. With regard to the latter, in my forties I was reluctant to start conversations with strangers for fear of being rebuffed. At that time, I was quite conscious of my social standing, but I subsequently developed a stronger sense of who and what I am, and as a result, I became less concerned about what other people thought of me. In particular, I concluded that playing the “social status game” was a waste of precious time.
Old age has caused my muscles to atrophy. Muscle mass is harder than ever to acquire, and once acquired, it is quick to flee. Old age has also caused my inhibitions to atrophy, and although I am vexed by my loss of muscle mass, I welcome the fading of my inhibitions. For one thing, it has made me more willing and able to strike up enjoyable conversations with strangers.
Besides affecting my willingness to talk to strangers, the aging process has increased their willingness to talk to me. If I were a young adult male wearing, say, baggy shorts and a torn T-shirt, some people—and especially women—might find me intimidating. I do not meet that description, though. I am instead a septuagenarian. Put me in a flat cap and people not only won’t find me intimidating but will expect me to be a bit eccentric—an expectation, by the way, that I am happy to fulfill. When I advised readers to “talk to strangers!” in my previous post, I didn’t take the intimidation factor into account.
I still advise readers to talk to strangers, but they need to be selective about when and where they attempt to strike up conversations. They should be in circumstances in which their potential conversational partner is unlikely to be intimidated. Ideally, it will be a public space in which other people are present. Standing in line is generally such a place. Under those circumstances, you will have a shared experience—standing in that line. You will also have a shared purpose—getting to the front of that line. It isn’t much, but it is potentially enough material for you to come up with an ice-breaking comment.
I will end with a comment about talk ratios. As I explained in my previous post, when you finish a conversation, you should compare the percentage of time you spent talking with the percentage of time your conversational partner spent. If they talked 90 percent of the time and you talked 10 percent, the conversation had, from your point of view, a 90–10 talk ratio.
Suppose that on monitoring your conversations, you discover that many of them have, from your point of view, a 1–99 talk ratio, meaning that you spoke 99 percent of the time and your partner had trouble getting a word in edgewise. If this is the case, it is misleading to describe what you had as a conversation. You weren’t talking with them; you were talking at them.
Why would someone do this? They might be extreme narcissists, confident that you will enjoy hearing about them and their exploits, with zero interest in hearing about you and yours. Alternatively, they might be starved for human contact. Such cases are distressing because the person doing the talking could be caught in the social equivalent of a death spiral. Because they are lonely, they talk too much to the people they encounter, and because they talk too much, people start avoiding them, thereby compounding their loneliness.
If you are one of these extreme talkers, a word of advice is in order. If it is loneliness that makes you so talkative, the next time you are in a conversation, you need to take a deep breath and then engage in what I have described as deep listening. Ask them about their life and pay careful attention to what they say. As is appropriate, ask them to clarify what they are saying or maybe commiserate with them. In doing this, you will not only get a healthy infusion of vitamin P, but you will simultaneously be providing it to your conversational partner. With luck, you might make a new friend.
If it is instead narcissism that makes you so talkative, a rather different word of advice is in order. For your own sake, you need to get over yourself, and the sooner, the better.
Need more food for thought? Click here for my past essays, listed by title.
Insightful piece
Your clarification helps, especially where you note that intimidation and setting matter.
But there may be another kind of stranger that tests the framework more sharply.
A beggar.
A homeless person.
A seriously ill patient in a waiting room.
Someone whose presence does not feel light, but heavy.
At that point, the issue is no longer simply who is extraverted, agreeable, or socially confident enough to start a conversation.
The issue becomes whether the encounter still appears as openness at all.
Your model seems to work best where the stranger remains socially manageable. Where the interaction carries little riskk, little burden, and no serious moral claim.
But once the stranger brings discomfort, guilt, fear, helplessness, or obligation into the scene, something changes.
Many people are no longer avoiding “human contact” in the abstract.
They are avoiding the possibility of becoming participants in another person’s condition.
People have always had small defenses against such encounters.
One looks into the distance.
At the sky.
Into a shop window.
A newspaper once served the same function.
Now the screen often does.
As long as one remains an observer, distance is still possible.
One can notice, register, even sympathize, without much being asked in return.
But once the encounter threatens to become a relation, the cost changes.
Time.
Discomfort.
Responsibility.
The possibility that one may have to remain a little longer.
The possibility that one may not leave untouched.
And if the encounter cannot be fully avoided, it is often settled as quickly and cheaply as possible.
A coin is handed over.
Not enough to change the other person’s condition, but often enough to let the passerby continue.
This is why the question may go beyond personality alone.
It is not only about character or goodwill.
It is also about the structure of the situation:
Who can withdraw without cost.
Who must remain polite.
Who carries the risk.
Who carries the burden.
Who gets to experience contact as enrichment, and who must first process it as pressure.
There is another complication here.
A lopsided talk ratio is not always produced by the speaker alone.
It is often sustained by the listener’s shallow cooperation.
The nods and small smiles are not necessarily acts of presence.
They are often lubricants for the sequence.
The listener does not want an encounter.
He wants the speaker to finish.
So he feeds the flow with little signs of encouragement. Not because he is deeply engaged, but because this seems cheaper than interruption.
To interrupt would mean friction.
Offense.
A shift in tone.
A new and less predictable dynamic.
In that sense, the listener is not simply enduring the monologue.
He may be managing it toward a low-cost conclusion.
To cut in is to become an active subject.
To keep nodding is often to remain an operative object.
It is easier to simulate dialogue than to assume responsibility for ending it.
That said, interruption is not always a failure of listening.
Sometimes it is the more honest form of presence.
To interrupt can be to acknowledge the other person as a real interlocutor rather than merely manage him to a convenient end.
At that point, even imbalance may need to be read differently.
The speaker may be self-involved.
But the listener may also be running a predictive calculation:
If I let him finish, this may be over in three minutes.
If I interrupt, I may trigger a longer and more uncertain sequence.
The path of least resistance then presents itself as politeness.
But often it is only anticipatory compliance.
Conversation with strangers can look like a virtue as long as the stranger does not carry weight.
That may be where a deeper asymmetry appears.