the payphone

reaching out · two minutes · the corner

The story

Epley and Schroeder put commuters on Chicago trains and told some of them to talk to a stranger. Everyone predicted it would be unpleasant. It wasn’t; the talkers had the best ride. Sandstrom and Dunn counted people’s daily interactions with acquaintances — the barista, the neighbor — and found that days with more weak-tie contact were happier days, on top of close friends. Then in 2023, Liu and colleagues ran thirteen experiments on reaching out to someone you’ve lost touch with and found the same wall: people badly underestimate how glad the other person will be, and the longer it’s been, the more they underestimate.

What it does to you

A message to an old friend gives two people a small good day for the price of one text. The barrier is a prediction error — you think it’ll be awkward — and the studies say the prediction is wrong.

The receipts

• Liu, Rim, Min & Min (2023), JPSP — 13 experiments, 5,900+ participants: people who reach out underestimate how much the other person appreciates it, and more so the more surprising the contact. APA PDF
• Sandstrom & Dunn (2014), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin — three studies: text prompts after class (n = 242) and six days of clicker counts (n = 58 students; n = 41 adults): days with more weak-tie interactions than usual were happier days with more belonging, over and above close ties. Within-person, correlational. Essex repository
• Epley & Schroeder (2014), JEP: General — nine experiments on Chicago trains, buses, taxis, and a lab: people assigned to talk to a stranger had a more positive trip than those assigned solitude, the opposite of what forecasters predicted. PDF
• Schroeder, Lyons & Epley (2022), JEP: General — two field experiments on London commuter trains: same result, and the reluctance traces to expecting the start of the conversation to go badly. author page

The honest part

How the city does it

Lift the handset and spell their name on the keypad the old way. Dial 0 if nobody comes to mind and the operator suggests one. The message goes out wherever you two actually talk; hanging up ends it.

Try it in the city →