Mistaken for Strangers

Why do we avoid talking to strangers??

As the author of this article in The Atlantic puts it: "We don’t expect strangers to like us, and we don’t expect to like them either."?

And the result is that we ignore each other's humanity: "It is fundamentally dehumanizing to be surrounded by people and then never interact and engage with them [...] it’s dehumanizing to the stranger because I never experience more than a superficial glimpse of their full humanity."

Yet while the benefits of chatting up random people on the subway are legion, the ability or willingness to do so is shockingly low, something attributed partly to what has been called "the lesser minds problem." As a result of not having access to what's happening in other people's heads, we have, as the author explains, “what appears to be a universal tendency to assume that others’ minds are less sophisticated and more superficial than one’s own."?

In other words (and I’m simplifying this a lot to keep this short): We privilege our own perspective and experiences as being somehow more important, and more real.?

Oh — and it turns out that most people just don't know how to strike up a conversation with the person next to them in line at the bank.?

The antidote??

One researcher who formulated an approach to overcoming stranger danger fear (not really), "tells people to follow their curiosity — notice something, compliment a person, or ask them a question."?

Fancy that!?

Curiosity as a starting point to help us connect with a stranger's humanity. But we already knew that, of course. :)

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Dr. Shannon Minifie is the CEO of Box of Crayons, a learning and development company based in Toronto, ON that helps organizations transform from advice-driven to curiosity-led.

#Curiosity #StayCuriousLonger #Perspective #Openness #Questions