Explicit Signals Enhance Social Engagement Between Strangers

Brief interactions with strangers can enhance well-being, yet people often avoid them. Building on a new theoretical framework-the Stranger Engagement Model-we designed an intervention to promote positive interactions between strangers. In a field experiment with adults on a university campus (N = 563), we enabled individuals to send explicit signals indicating whether or not they were interested in engaging with strangers. Our findings suggest that this simple intervention can increase the frequency, length, and depth of interactions between unacquainted community members, with downstream benefits for social connection and happiness. Our results also suggest that this intervention may enable individuals to meet new people if they wish to do so, without forcing social interactions on those who prefer solitude. More broadly, we argue that the Stranger Engagement Model can provide a framework for identifying when and how to promote interactions between strangers in diverse social contexts.