Why We Tell Strangers Things We’d Never Tell Our Best Friend

You’re on a long flight, or a night train, or stuck next to someone in a waiting room. Twenty minutes in, you’re describing your divorce, your father’s illness, or a secret you’ve never said out loud, to a person whose name you’ll forget by tomorrow. It happens to almost everyone at some point, and it happens specifically with strangers, not with the people who actually know us.

Psychologists have a name for this, and it turns out to explain a lot more about human connection than the awkward small talk we usually settle for instead.

The Phenomenon Has a Name

Psychologist Zick Rubin coined the term for exactly this pattern: the “stranger on a train” phenomenon, describing the way people disclose deeply personal information to someone they don’t know and will likely never see again. Rubin also ran studies in bus terminals and airport lounges and found something else interesting, that people were far more likely to open up about their troubles if the other person opened up first, a kind of unspoken reciprocity that speeds up intimacy between two people who have no real relationship at all.

“We have no shared past and no future together.”

That absence of history is exactly what makes it work. With a stranger, there’s no risk that today’s confession becomes tomorrow’s gossip, no fear that this version of you will be held against the version everyone already expects you to be.

Why Strangers Feel Safer Than Friends

It sounds backwards on the surface. Shouldn’t the people who know us best be the safest people to be honest with? Not necessarily, according to relationship researchers, who point out that we’re actually more inclined to reveal private things about ourselves specifically when we feel a bit set apart from our usual social circle, when we feel safe in that isolation, and when we know we can walk away from the conversation whenever we choose.

A stranger carries no accumulated judgments about who you are. They don’t remember what you said last year, don’t compare today’s version of you to some earlier one, and won’t bring it up again next week over dinner with people who know you both. Talking to someone with zero stake in your ongoing life removes an entire layer of self-editing that we don’t even realise we’re doing around the people closest to us.

The Study That Surprised the Researchers Themselves

In 2014, behavioural scientists Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder ran a series of nine separate experiments with commuters travelling into downtown Chicago on trains and buses. Some commuters were asked to strike up a conversation with a stranger, some were told to sit in complete solitude, and others were simply left to commute as they normally would.

Before the experiment even started, the commuters were asked to predict how each scenario would feel. Almost everyone predicted that talking to a stranger would be the least enjoyable option of the three.

They were wrong, and not by a small margin.

“Connecting with strangers on a train may not bring the same long-term benefits as connecting with friends, but commuters on a train into downtown Chicago reported a significantly more positive commute when they connected with a stranger than when they sat in solitude.”

That’s Epley himself, one of the study’s lead authors, describing a result that directly contradicted what his own participants expected going in. Solitude, the option most people assume is the safest, most comfortable choice on a crowded commute, actually scored as the least enjoyable of the three.

We’re Bad at Predicting Our Own Social Needs

The more interesting question the researchers pursued wasn’t just that people enjoyed talking to strangers, it was why almost nobody predicted they would. Their findings pointed to what they called a fairly serious misjudgment of how social interaction actually affects us. People consistently underestimated how interested a stranger would be in talking to them in the first place, which becomes a kind of quiet, self-fulfilling loop: we assume the person next to us doesn’t want to be bothered, so we say nothing, and they, operating under the exact same assumption, say nothing back. Two people who might have genuinely enjoyed the exchange spend the whole journey in mutual, unnecessary silence.

Epley pointed out just how consequential this misunderstanding is, given how commuting is already one of the least enjoyable parts of most people’s day. His research suggests that the fix for an otherwise miserable stretch of the day might be sitting right next to us the entire time.

Highlights

• Psychologist Zick Rubin named this the “stranger on a train” phenomenon, describing deep disclosure to people we’ll likely never see again
• Reciprocity speeds it up: we open up faster if the other person shares something personal first
• Anonymity removes the fear of judgment carrying into tomorrow, which is part of why it feels safer than talking to people who know us
• A 2014 University of Chicago study found commuters who talked to a stranger had a more enjoyable commute than those who sat in solitude
• Commuters wrongly predicted that talking to a stranger would be their least enjoyable option, before the experiment even began
• Researchers called this a “severe misunderstanding of the psychological consequences of social engagement”

Suggested Reading

• Why We Keep Rereading Conversations With People We’ve Lost
• Why Your Brain Can’t Stop Thinking About Someone
• 35 Signs of Burnout Before It Becomes a Breakdown