Dr Gillian Sandstrom was at the opera when she realised how good she had become at talking to strangers. A woman with Parkinson’s was feeling anxious and needed an aisle seat and when Sandstrom noticed what was happening, she asked a whole row of people to move along to make room for the woman and her husband.
“As the couple moved past me the husband said, ‘Thank you so much, I could never have done that,’ and I thought to myself, ‘past-Gillian couldn’t have done that either’,” she says. “But now, it’s not a big deal.”
For Sandstrom, a senior lecturer in the psychology of kindness at the University of Sussex, talking to strangers didn’t always come naturally. But her research looks at the benefits of those small, day-to-day interactions and so, over the course of her career, she has had plenty of practice.
Now, it’s a skill she’s glad she cultivated. “I would feel like a hypocrite if I didn’t talk to strangers, so I do it a lot,” she says. “The biggest benefit is I’m just not nervous about other people anymore.”
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