Enhanced Mood After a Getting-Acquainted Interaction with a Stranger: Do Shy People Benefit Too?

Abstract

People report positive moods and enhanced well-being when they socialize with friends and other close ties. However, because most people routinely have more encounters with acquaintances and strangers (social connections known as weak ties) than with close friends or kin (strong ties), we deemed it important to examine whether interaction with weak ties also enhances happiness and well-being. This investigation, which analyzed data from two laboratory procedures, examined whether participants’ positive affect (PA) increased and negative affect (NA) decreased, from before to after a getting-acquainted interaction with a stranger. We also considered whether any benefits of the interaction were moderated by the participants’ level of shyness. Participants (N = 270; 135 dyads) from a U.S. university completed mood indices before and after a getting-acquainted task. Their PA significantly increased and their NA significantly decreased from before to after the interaction. Shy participants experienced greater NA both before and after the getting-acquainted interaction (relative to less shy participants), but the shyness level of our participants did not moderate the pattern of change in their PA and NA. Shy participants experienced increases in PA and decreases in NA that were similar to those of less shy participants. We discuss implications of the results regarding the important role of weak social connections for increasing one’s daily mood, including for those who are shy.

Keywords

Mood happiness weak ties getting acquainted shyness

Introduction

It has been said that “human beings need social connections just like we need oxygen, food, and water” (Gabriel, 2020). Individual differences exist, of course, but those who enjoy meaningful relationships with others are likely to live longer and healthier lives than those who lack close ties to other people (Sbarra & Coan, 2018). People can be at loss and prone to illness and maladjustment when their connections to others are insufficient. This pattern led Baumeister and Leary (1995) to suggest that humans have a need to belong that motivates them to establish and maintain close relationships with other people. According to this influential (and award-winning) view, stable affection and acceptance from a few select others leads people to experience a sense of belongingness that supports well-being; suffering follows when belongingness is lost.

The importance of belongingness—and the potential benefits of intimacy with others—are now widely known (Miller, 2022). Notably, however, other theorists have recently posited that intimate partnerships are not the only way to feel accepted by and connected to others. Hirsch and Clark (2019) suggested that although close, communal relationships are particularly potent sources of belongingness, (a) approbation and admiration from others, (b) membership in various groups, and even (c) brief, relatively superficial-but-friendly interactions with anyone can support the sense that one belongs. In regard to this last type of connection to others – the minor sociability pathway to belongingness – Hirsch and Clark argued that “merely connecting briefly with others (including mere acquaintances and even strangers), being pleasantly social with them, and receiving pleasant responses from them may be a fourth distinct contributor to a sense of belonging” (p. 242). The purpose of this study was to examine whether people’s positive and negative affect change from before to after a getting-acquainted interaction, and if the changes differ based on the shyness level of the participants.

Benefits of Weak-Tie and Stranger Interactions

The more social interactions people have, the happier they tend to be (Sun et al., 2020), and that seems to be true regardless of with whom they interact. Rich, intimate conversations with trusted partners are especially rewarding and uplifting (Sun et al., 2020), but there is value in more casual and superficial interactions, too. For instance, Sandstrom and Dunn (2014b) found that participants who interacted with more classmates reported greater happiness and belongingness than those who interacted with fewer classmates. In a diary study, the researchers found that college students and community members who had more interactions with weak ties (defined as others who they did not know well and who did not know them well) reported enhanced well-being and belongingness, especially on days when they interacted with more weak ties than usual. Evidently, “we should not underestimate the value of our acquaintances – interactions with weak ties are related to our subjective well-being and feelings of belonging” (Sandstrom & Dunn, 2014b, p. 920).

Subsequent field studies have demonstrated that people who were instructed to have a genuine interaction with a Starbucks barista (e.g., smiling and engaging in a brief interaction as they ordered) enjoyed greater positive affect, reduced negative affect, and a greater sense of belonging than other customers who were asked to interact efficiently and briefly with their barista (Sandstrom & Dunn, 2014a). Similarly, commuters in Turkey who had interactions with their shuttle drivers (either naturally occurring or as directed by the researchers through random assignment) enjoyed more positive affect than those who did not engage with the drivers (Gunaydin et al., 2020). In another study, commuters in London were asked to (a) have a conversation with a fellow passenger during the commute or (b) not to engage in conversation with anyone, or (c) in a control condition were told to do whatever they normally do. Those who conversed with a fellow passenger reported being happier and less sad after the commute than did those who remained quiet or who were in the control condition (Schroeder et al., 2021).

Thus, it appears that “minor sociability” that involves pleasant interactions with strangers is associated with increases in participants’ moods. However, certainty in this conclusion would be increased by assessments that establish what participants were feeling before, as well as after, their interactions. In a laboratory study that did this, Vittengl and Holt (2000) asked same-sex pairs of college students who did not know each other to complete Watson et al.’s (1988) Positive and Negative Affect scales before and after they engaged in an unstructured 10-minute get-acquainted interaction. The brief conversations had salutary effects. Although they had been strangers to one another, participants experienced both an increase in their positive affect and a decrease in their negative affect during their brief interactions. Other recent studies have also demonstrated that interactions with strangers in structured laboratory interactions can lead to happiness and enjoyment that is typically greater than the participants expected prior to the interaction (Kardas, Kumar, & Epley, 2022, Kardas, Schroeder, & O’Brien, 2022). (However, these recent studies did not specifically examine changes in affect during a getting-acquainted interaction.) Thus, relatively casual, minor sociability may indeed be a pathway to improved well-being, but more research is needed to establish this.

Furthermore, some people may profit from such interactions more than others. There may be influential individual differences in the degree to which mood is enhanced as result of a brief interaction with strangers. Social evaluative anxiety, for instance, may meaningfully shape the direction and degree to which one’s mood changes from such an interaction. We discuss this possibility next.

Does Shyness Matter?

Casual interactions with newly met acquaintances may be more profitable for some people than for others. Shyness, a common personality trait, is a syndrome that combines social reticence and inhibited behavior with nervous discomfort and social anxiety (that is, unease about others’ evaluations) in social settings (Miller, 2009). Shy people typically dread interactions with strangers (Sandstrom & Boothby, 2021) and engage in them reluctantly (Sandstrom et al., 2022). Burdened with doubts about their social skills and fearing rejection (or even simple disinterest) from others, they “tend to be particularly challenged by the prospect of social interaction” (Beer, 2002, p. 1009). These worries are not wholly unfounded. Being reserved and tentative, shy people can make poorer impressions on their conversational partners than do those who are less shy (Heerey & Kring, 2007). They often nod and smile less, speak less, ask bland questions, and tend not to reciprocate the disclosures of others, resulting in more awkward, long silences. In general, shy people “conduct interactions that are less deft and less fulfilling than those enjoyed by people who are less shy” (Miller, 2009, p. 184). This pattern is particularly evident when two shy people are left alone and asked to “get to know” each other. Compared to the conversations shared by those who are not shy, anxious and inhibited dyads conduct clumsy interactions characterized by protracted, painful silences and brief, superficial utterances (Manning & Ray, 1993).

It is not surprising, then, that when research participants provide reports about their naturally occurring interactions with others, those who experience the social anxiety that is typical of shyness judge their conversations to have been of lower quality and experience lower positive affect than those who are less timid and fretful (Vittengl & Holt, 1998). Nevertheless, even people whose fears of social evaluation are crippling and intense—who are not merely shy but who are suffering from a debilitating, clinically diagnosable social anxiety disorder (SAD)—enjoy being with others more than they like being alone. Ecological momentary assessments have found that, compared to peers who do not have SAD, those saddled with SAD experience lower positive affect and higher negative affect during their daily lives but still get a positive boost (though no less negative affect) when others are present (Goodman et al., 2021). Furthermore, when people with SAD engaged in more standardized (and rather ideal) “warm and pleasant” interactions with research assistants in a lab—taking turns answering six questions from Aron et al.’s (1997) closeness-generating task—their reports of anxiety decreased and their feelings of pleasantness and connectedness to the assistant increased (Taylor et al., 2017).

Thus, anxious concern about others’ judgments does not prevent one from gaining benefits from conversations with strangers. Still, when people are shy, their social anxiety is joined with relatively impoverished, inhibited interactive behavior that results in conversations that are less rich and rewarding (Miller, 2009), so questions remain. Shy people may dread conversations with strangers more than others do, but those interactions may be good for them anyway. But to what extent? Do shy people profit from interactions with strangers or acquaintances? If so, is an enhancement of mood attributable to a decrease in negative affect and an increase in positive affect, or from only one of these shifts? Seeking to assess the benefits to be gained from minor sociability, we pursued answers to these questions with laboratory procedures involving a large number of participants who engaged in getting-acquainted conversations with strangers.

Purposes of this Study

The first purpose of this study was to replicate past laboratory findings (e.g., Vittengl & Holt, 2000) by examining whether members of stranger dyads who engage in a getting-acquainted interaction experience both an increase in positive affect and a decrease in negative affect from before to after the interaction. We expected shifts in both types of affect. Our second purpose was to determine whether the shyness level of the participants moderated such shifts. Because the existing literature did not provide clear guidance of the moderating role of shyness, we posed a research question.

H1: Dyad members engaged in a getting-acquainted interaction will experience an increase in positive affect and a decrease in negative affect from before to after the interaction.

RQ1: Will change in positive and negative affect from before to after the interaction be the same for participants who differ in level of shyness (i.e., will shy participants benefit from an interaction with a stranger in the same way that non-shy participants do)?

Method

Overview of Data

The sample consisted of 270 college students¹ who participated in one of two prior social interaction procedures conducted by the first author (Sprecher et al., 2015, 2016).² The relevant data from the two prior studies were combined for analyses in the current study. The participants were obtained primarily from a psychology participant pool at a public university in the midwestern U.S. A large proportion (85.6%) of the sample reported their sex as female (14.4% reported male), which was due to the greater number of women at the university and in the subgroup of students who signed up for extra credit opportunities. The mean age of the participants was 19.7 (SD = 2.21); the median age was 19, and the range was 18–36. A majority of the participants identified as White (76%), 13% as Black, 6% as Hispanic/Latino, 1% as Asian, and 4.0% as Other (e.g., mentioning two races).

Procedure

For each study, participants who signed up were scheduled for a session based on their availability. Of the 135 dyads that resulted, 97 consisted of 2 women, 37 consisted of a man and a woman, and one consisted of 2 men. Each participant arrived at their own room within a university building and was greeted by an experimenter. After receiving informed consent material and instructions, the participants completed an online survey that included questions about their background characteristics and measures of pre-interaction affect (described below). Then, the pairs engaged in a getting-acquainted interaction. In one of the studies (Study 1), the dyads interacted face-to-face, whereas in the other study (Study 2), the dyads interacted over Skype-video from separate rooms. In Study 1, the participants were randomly assigned to (a) discuss leisure pursuits, (b) discuss political topics,³ or (c) to “become acquainted” (for a total of 15 minutes). In Study 2, a version of a fast-friends procedure was used that included a combination of items from Aron et al.’s (1997) and Sedikides et al.’s (1999) closeness-generating tasks. The interaction lasted 21 minutes and was divided into three segments of questions. For more detail on the procedures of the two studies, see Online Resource 1 and Sprecher et al. (2015, 2016). Upon completing the getting-acquainted interaction, the dyad members separated and completed another online survey that included measures of post-interaction affect.

Measures

Positive and Negative Affect

Both in the intake survey before the get-acquainted interaction and in the survey after the interaction, the participants completed Watson et al.’s (1988) Positive Affect (PA) and Negative Affect (NA) scales. Ten items referred to positive moods (e.g., interested, excited, strong, enthusiastic) and ten items referred to negative moods (e.g., distressed, upset, jittery, afraid). The items were presented in a matrix format with positive and negative emotion items intermixed in a pre-specified random order, and participants indicated the degree to which they were presently experiencing each emotion. A 7-point response scale for the items was anchored with 1 = slightly or not at all; 4 = moderately, and 7 = extremely. Cronbach’s alpha for PA was .89 pre-interaction and .91 post-interaction. Cronbach’s alpha for NA was .85 pre-interaction and .83 post-interaction.

Shyness

The 13-item revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale (e.g., Cheek, 1983) was used to measure shyness in the pre-interaction survey. Example items included, “It is hard for me to act natural when I am meeting new people” and “I feel inhibited in social situations.” Participants responded to each item on a 7-point response scale that had the anchors 1 = does not describe me; 4 = describes me moderately; and 7 = describes me completely. Four of the items were reverse-scored (e.g., “It does not take me long to overcome my shyness in new situations”) and were recoded before a total shyness score was calculated. Cronbach’s alpha for the total scale was .84.

Analytic Plan

We first examined whether the affect and shyness scores of the members of the dyads were related, which would indicate nonindependence of the data within dyads. We began by examining the intraclass correlations (ICCs) of all of the dyads, which were trivial for the pre- and post-interaction affect indices, ranging from −.08 to .10. The ICC for shyness scores was .10, which was also non-significant. We then examined the issue of nonindependence separately for the distinguishable dyads (mixed-gender) and the indistinguishable dyads (same-gender). The ICCs for the indistinguishable dyads ranged from −.04 to .23, and the Pearson correlations for the distinguishable dyads ranged from −.22 to .04. All of these ICCs and rs fell below the level that is generally considered to be consequential nonindependence (Kenny et al., 2006), and therefore the data were analyzed at the individual level.

To test H1, we first conducted paired samples t-tests to compare the mood indices pre-interaction versus post-interaction; Cohen’s d statistics were also calculated to assess the effect sizes of the differences. To address RQ1 and examine whether shy participants benefited from the interaction in the same way as non-shy participants (i.e., whether there were similar increases in positive affect and similar decreases in negative affect), 3 × 2 Mixed ANOVAs were conducted on each affect index. The between-subjects independent variable in this analysis was shyness level (grouped by tertiles) and the within-subjects variable was the time of the affect score (pre-interaction vs. post-interaction). The focus of these analyses was on whether there was a significant interaction between time of the affect measurement (pre-interaction vs. post-interaction) and shyness level. Follow-up analyses included paired samples t-tests for each shyness group comparing pre-interaction and post-interaction affect scores. We also inspected Pearson correlations to explore the associations between shyness and pre- and post-interaction positive and negative affect, overall.

Results

Preliminary Analyses

Participants experienced a greater degree of positive affect (PA) than of negative affect (NA), both pre-interaction (paired-samples t (269) = 27.23, p < .001) and post-interaction (paired-samples t (269) = 34.69, p < .001); see the means in Table 1.⁴ In the pre-interaction survey data, PA and NA were positively correlated (r = .16, p = .01), but the two types of affect were not associated after the dyad members conversed (r = −.05, p = .47). The participants’ shyness scores ranged from 1.00 to 5.92 (on a 7-point scale) with a mean of 2.95 (SD = 0.91). Participants’ shyness was associated with NA before and after the interaction to the same degree (r = .21, p < .001), but was not related to PA, either before (r = −.05, p = .41) or after the conversation (r = −.02, p = .69). A table presenting the inter-correlations among all of the variables is presented in the Online Resource.

Table 1.

Change in positive and negative affect from before to after the getting-acquainted interaction: results of paired-samples t-tests.

Mood index	Before interaction mean (SD)	After interaction mean (SD)	Paired samplest	Cohen’s d
Total sample (N = 270)
Positive mood	3.93 (1.08)	4.21 (1.20)	5.34**	.33
Negative mood	1.86 (0.82)	1.38 (0.54)	12.02**	.73
Subgroups based on shyness
Lowest tertile of shyness (low shyness; n = 91)
Positive mood	4.14 (1.22)	4.40 (1.30)	2.90*	.30
Negative mood	1.63 (0.71)	1.23 (0.41)	7.00**	.73
Second tertile of shyness (average shyness; n = 85)
Positive mood	3.79 (0.99)	4.07 (1.19)	2.86*	.31
Negative mood	1.94 (0.86)	1.41 (0.50)	6.36**	.69
Third tertile of shyness (high shyness; n = 94)
Positive mood	3.85 (0.99)	4.15 (1.10)	3.48**	.36
Negative mood	2.02 (0.84)	1.50 (0.64)	7.74**	.80

Note.*p < .01,**p < .001.

Main Analyses

In support of H1, paired-samples t tests indicated that the total sample had significantly higher scores on PA and significantly lower scores on NA after their interaction than before (see the means in the top portion of Table 1). These results suggest that engaging in a getting-acquainted interaction with a stranger enhanced the participants’ mood.

To determine whether the shyness level of the participants moderated the changes in PA and NA (RQ1), we grouped participants into three levels of shyness of approximately equal numbers: lower (first tertile of shyness, who were those who had a total shyness score of less than 2.54; n = 91), average shyness (second tertile of shyness, who were those who had scores between 2.54 and 3.33; n = 85) and higher shyness (third tertile of shyness, who were those who had shyness scores above 3.33; n = 94). A 3 (between-subjects variable: shyness group) x 2 (within-subject variable: pre- or post-interaction affect score) mixed ANOVA was conducted for each affect index. A significant effect of time of assessment was found for PA (F [1,267] = 28.26, p < .001, partial η² = .10). As noted above, participants’ PA increased from before to after their interaction. However, the between-subjects variable (shyness group) was not significant (F [2,267) = 2.56, p = .08, partial η² = .02), overall (i.e., collapsed over pre- and post-interaction PA); that is, PA did not differ significantly across the three shyness groups. In addition, in the critical test of RQ1, there was not a significant interaction of shyness level and assessment timing for PA (F [2,267] = .045, p = .96, partial η² < .001); the pattern of change in participants’ PA from before to after the getting-acquainted conversation (i.e., an increase) did not differ based on the shyness level of the participants.

A similar mixed ANOVA examined participants’ reports of negative affect. A significant effect emerged for time of assessment (F [1,267] = 144.91, p < .001, partial η² = .35), and, as already noted, participants’ NA decreased from before to after the interaction. In addition, a significant effect was found for the between-subjects variable, shyness group (F [2,267) = 7.72, p < .001, partial η² = .06). The highest tertile shyness group experienced the greatest NA, whereas the lowest tertile of shyness experienced the least NA. However, once again, in the critical test of RQ1, there was not a significant interaction between the shyness tertile and assessment timing (F [2,267] = 1.12, p = .328, partial η² = .01). The participants enjoyed similar decreases in their NA from before to after their conversation whether or not they were shy.

Separate pair-wise t-test comparisons of the two mood indices over time for each level of shyness (shown in Table 1) found significant increases in PA and significant decreases in NA, on average, for the participants in our studies regardless of their shyness level. Thus, even those highest in shyness experienced an increase in positive mood and a decrease in negative mood after a getting-acquainted interaction with a stranger. Indeed, the effect sizes (Cohen’s d) suggested that the group that was highest in shyness benefited from these conversations at least as much, if not slightly more, than those who were less shy. (See the Online Resource.)

Because the two studies that were combined for the analyses had different design elements (i.e., the getting-acquainted task and the mode of communication), we conducted the main analyses that test H1 and RQ1 with each sample separately. These results (which are presented in Online Resource), were generally similar for both studies. In each study, participants experienced an increase in positive mood and a decrease in negative mood during the interaction with a stranger, regardless of their level of shyness.⁵

Discussion

Relationship science has generally focused on the connections between our close ties to others and our well-being and happiness (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010; Proulx et al., 2007; Reis et al., 2000). Less attention has been given to the potential benefits of the weak-tie interactions that are commonplace in our daily lives. In this study, we turned the spotlight on the getting-acquainted stage of people’s weak ties and the emotional impact of these interactions. In analyses based on 270 participants (135 dyads), we found that a laboratory interaction with a stranger influenced participants’ moods, with significant increases in positive affect and significant decreases in negative affect resulting from a getting-acquainted task. When we considered whether the enhancement of mood was moderated by the participants’ level of shyness, we found that—just like those with lower levels of social evaluative anxiety—shy participants experienced elevated positive affect and diminished negative affect following an interaction with someone they were meeting for the first time. Both before and after their conversations, shy participants reported higher levels of negative affect than those who were less shy, but they nevertheless experienced similar levels of mood enhancement from their interactions.

Our study builds on and extends a small body of recent work showing that interactions with strangers can improve one’s mood. Interactions with strangers and weak ties in classrooms, coffee shops, and commuter trains are all associated with perceptions of well-being and belonging (Sandstrom & Dunn, 2014a, 2014b; Schroeder et al., 2021) Furthermore, limited evidence from laboratory studies indicates that participants’ positive affect increases when they engage with strangers in getting-acquainted interactions (Taylor et al., 2017; Vittengl & Holt, 2000). We bolstered these findings by using a relatively large sample (N = 270), and by showing (in one variation) that even a video communication with a previously unknown person can enhance one’s mood. Overall, the results of our study are consistent with Hirsch and Clark’s (2019) presumption that even minor sociability is a path to belongingness.

Ours was also the first study to examine how a potentially potent individual difference, shyness, was associated with the outcomes of weak-tie interactions. Notably, despite their typical trepidation, shy participants benefited from these conversations, experiencing increases in positive affect and decreases in negative affect that were just like those enjoyed by others who were more comfortable in such situations. Shy people may dread meetings with strangers and conduct them less deftly (see Miller, 2009) and so avoid them whenever they can, but their reluctance to engage in casual conversations may routinely be counterproductive: Such interactions may typically be more rewarding than they expect.

The measure we employed assessed trait shyness. It is possible, however, that some of our participants who did not score highly on the trait shyness scale (administered before the interaction) became somewhat shy during the interaction, experiencing a degree of temporary state shyness. Future investigations may wish to determine how passing states of shyness affect participants’ outcomes in such getting-acquainted interactions, but we doubt that they affected our present results; similar changes in NA in particular occurred among our participants whether their trait shyness was lower or higher.

Implications

An important finding from our study is that interacting with a stranger improved people’s moods (both increasing positive emotions and decreasing negative emotions). There is a growing recognition that social interactions with strangers and weak ties are important and can increase well-being (e.g., Sandstrom & Dunn, 2014a, 2014b). In fact, in a recent meta-analysis of several studies, Sandstrom and Boothby (2021) determined that people routinely underestimate how much they will enjoy interacting with strangers; such conversations routinely go better and are more rewarding than they expect. Indeed, Sandstrom and Boothby developed interventions for community workshops that were designed to decrease people’s fears of interacting with strangers and found that when participants had one (pleasant) conversation with a stranger and then made predictions for a future conversation with a different stranger, their worries for the next conversation were significantly reduced.

In another study, Sandstrom et al. (2022) recruited participants at two universities to engage in a week-long scavenger hunt game. Each day, players were instructed to find another player with certain characteristics (e.g., “interesting shoes”). Participants in the intervention condition were instructed to talk to that person, whereas participants in a control condition were instructed to simply observe the person from afar. At the end of the study as well as a week later, compared to those who had merely observed their fellow players, participants who had talked with others anticipated less rejection, reported less negative affect, and felt more confident in their conversational ability. Simply talking with strangers changed people’s expectations about such interactions, making them more realistic (i.e., less negative), and their daily interactions with strangers increased as a result. Thus, any interventions that provide structured interactions among strangers may not only allow for temporary boosts in mood (as demonstrated in our study) but also may have beneficial consequences for subsequent interactions.

Such interventions may be especially important for shy people, who may try to avoid interactions with strangers. The finding from our study that shy people benefit with a boost of good mood from an interaction with a stranger (in a manner that is similar to those who are less shy) suggests that shy people could be particularly targeted for such interventions, assuming that they wish to alter their behavior. The good news from the current study is that even if shy individuals interact less skillfully, they profit from friendly, structured interactions with strangers. Thus, these data suggest an emphasis could be placed on encouraging shy individuals to engage in casual interactions and to focus on the enjoyment they derive from such interactions. Apropos of this goal, systematic desensitization is a classic approach that combines relaxation techniques with gradual exposure to help targeted shy individuals overcome their anxieties regarding interacting with strangers (Pilkonis, 1986). Another cognitive approach aims at restructuring shy individuals’ negative self-image and expectancies regarding social interaction (Haemmerlie & Montgomery, 1986).

Indeed, interactions with weak ties may even be an ideal way to improve the moods of shy people: The potential negative consequences of such casual contacts are modest—with disinterest from others being less consequential than is the case in more meaningful interactions (and outright rejection seeming unlikely)—and genuine benefits usually result. To the extent that shyness is associated with introversion-extraversion (e.g., Ebeling-Witte et al., 2007), multiple studies have found that acting in an extraverted manner lifts the positive affect of participants by comparable amounts regardless of their position on trait measures of introversion-extraversion (Fleeson et al., 2002; Margolis & Lyubomirsky, 2020; McNiel et al., 2010; with one exception, Jacques-Hamilton et al., 2019).

The trick, then, may be in getting those who are shy to engage in these casual interactions in the first place; if they try them, they will probably like them. For example, in the Margolis and Lyubomirsky (2020) study, research participants were induced to be either as talkative and spontaneous or as quiet and reserved as they could be for a week; those who tried to be extraverted enjoyed noteworthy increases in positive affect whereas those who were introverted experienced declines in their joie de vivre. Thus, we hope that shy readers who are concerned about their interactions and mood (and counselors who advise clients suffering from shyness) will be encouraged by our results. The implications extend to those who are not shy as well, and could be important for a variety of individuals who wish to improve their affect by engaging in relatively simple steps.

Strengths, Limitations, and Future Research Directions

The current study had several strengths, including a laboratory-based design with pre- and post-interaction measures of both negative and positive affect that contributed to the limited literature regarding the emotional sequelae of interactions with weak ties. In addition, the current study examined an individual difference variable (i.e., shyness) that may influence interactions and demonstrated that shy individuals benefit in a similar way as non-shy individuals from casual interactions with others.

However, this study is not without limitations. Constraining the generalizability of the results, the sample was relatively homogenous (being primarily composed of white, female collegians) and therefore most of the conversations involved two women. Whether pairs of shy men would profit in a similar manner from a comparable conversation, for instance, is an open question. Also, our participants were young adults, who are still typically expanding their social networks. Would older adults, who tend to be focused on smaller, emotionally close networks of friends (Carstensen, 1992; Rook & Charles, 2017), also gain the same benefits of enhanced mood from brief interactions with new weak ties?

In addition, although our experimental design allowed us to employ different modes of interaction and different topics of discussion – which we judge to be a strength of our procedures – the laboratory context of our findings may also limit their generalizability. Here, shy people benefited from interactions that were arranged by others and had a structured agenda. Outside the lab, the usual reticence of shy people could conceivably reduce the emotional benefits they gain from real-world interactions that are less structured or that they would need to initiate themselves. In addition, our sample included only a few participants who scored at the high end of the shyness scale. Although we are reasonably confident that our findings apply to most young adults, the generalizability of these results to those with very high levels of shyness is uncertain. Last, although we did not directly assess belonginess, the results of the current study align with prior theoretical and empirical scholarship on the importance of belonginess across relationships (Baumeister & Leary, 1995).

Thus, there are many possible avenues for future research. From Hirsch and Clark’s (2019) conceptual perspective, we could examine when minor sociability works together with, or substitutes for, other paths that increase well-being and belongingness. Second, we did not consider the potential for romantic attraction in the dyads, and future research could examine changes in mood in get-acquainted interactions involving strangers matched for sexual orientation who are seeking partners and who vary in shyness. Self-disclosure, for instance, may differ based on attraction to a partner and may influence the benefits to be gained from getting-acquainted interactions, and shyness may have a more profound moderating influence on mood change in such situations. Third, future research should examine if these findings differ for dyads who have at least a minimal history of interaction (i.e., true acquaintances) prior to participating in the study. Fourth, various characteristics were not assessed in the current study (e.g., gender identity, sexual orientation, income) that may also influence individuals’ experiences interacting with weak ties.

Moreover, studies that involve additional interactions and assessments over a longer period could allow the examination of the roles of novelty and the compatibility of the partners in shaping participants’ outcomes. Earlier assessments of affect from the participants (at least a few days before they arrive for the study) could also provide researchers with a baseline measure of individual well-being. It is plausible that the pre-interaction assessment was not representative of general affect, especially for shy individuals as they awaited the interaction. Additional data could help identify characteristics of the partners and their conversation that mediate changes in their affect, such as feelings of rejection as the conversation progresses. Future researchers may also consider naturalistic observations that can improve the ecological validity of this work and assist in recruiting individuals with higher levels of shyness who may have avoided signing up for a laboratory-based project.

Conclusion

Extensive past scholarship has emphasized the importance of having diverse social ties, both strong ties (family, partners, and friends) and weak ties such as mere acquaintances (Farrell et al., 2022; Fingerman, 2009). However, only recently has attention turned to the mood enhancement benefits of weak tie interactions (e.g., Fredrickson, 2013; Sandstrom & Dunn, 2014a, 2014b). This study focused on the mood-enhancement benefits of a first interaction between strangers. We learned that a casual, brief meeting with a new person contributes to positive mood and reduces negative feelings. The larger lesson, perhaps, is that all of us should not take for granted the everyday, relatively minor and transitory relationships in which we engage. They, too, can play a part in shaping our well-being, even among those of us who are shy.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental Material - Enhanced Mood After a Getting-Acquainted Interaction with a Stranger: Do Shy People Benefit Too?

Supplemental Material for Enhanced Mood After a Getting-Acquainted Interaction with a Stranger: Do Shy People Benefit Too? by Susan Sprecher, Rowland Miller, Beverley Fehr, Jeremy Kanter, Daniel Perlman and Diane Felmlee in Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iDs

Susan Sprecher

Jeremy Kanter

Open research statement

As part of IARR’s encouragement of open research practices, the authors have provided the following information: This research was not pre-registered. The materials (e.g., measures) for the study are available by writing the first author at sprecher@ilstu.edu. The data are available, upon reasonable request, by also writing the first author.

Supplemental Material

Supplemental material for this article is available online.

Notes

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