How to talk to strangers when you are not naturally good at it

There is a familiar moment. You're at a coffee shop, a bookstore, a bus stop, and you notice someone you might speak to. There's a natural pretext, they're reading a book you know, they have an interesting dog, you're both waiting for the same delayed bus. For a second or two you consider approaching. Then a lot of things happen very fast. You look away. You check your phone. You tell yourself you didn't really want to talk to them anyway.

Later you'll walk past that location and know you missed the moment.

You may worry that a stranger would rather be left alone, or that approaching them would be intrusive. Staying quiet can feel like the considerate choice.

The research shows otherwise.

Fear of rejection: what happened when people approached strangers

Gillian Sandstrom, a researcher at the University of Sussex, has spent years studying what actually happens when people talk to strangers. In a study she published in 2022, she and her colleagues had nearly 300 participants play a week-long scavenger hunt. The task each day: find and talk to a specific kind of stranger. Find someone drinking coffee. Find someone wearing a hat. Approach them, say something.

Across approximately 1,300 real conversations, they tracked how often people were actually rejected.

The answer: about 13% of the time. Which means roughly 87% of the time, the stranger was happy to talk.

Roughly nine in ten attempts land well. One does not.

In this study, rejection was much less common than participants expected. That is encouraging if fear of bothering someone keeps you from saying hello.

Participants who spoke to strangers every day for a week also became less pessimistic about rejection and more confident in their conversational ability. Those changes were still present at least a week after the study ended. Repeated experience helped them adjust their expectations.

Why starting a conversation with a stranger feels difficult

There is a second finding worth knowing. In a 2023 paper, researcher Stav Atir and her colleagues proposed a framework of three obstacles that stop people from talking to strangers: intention (underestimating how good the conversation would be), competence (worrying you don't know how to seem likeable), and opportunity (not being in situations where it's possible).

Conversation advice often concentrates on what to say, how to open and which questions to ask. But this framework also asks whether you expect a conversation to be enjoyable and whether you have opportunities to start one.

Sometimes you already have an opening in mind but hesitate to use it. In that case, practising the decision to speak may help more than collecting more opening lines.

A prepared line can be useful. It helps less, though, if you keep deciding not to say it. Start with a small, ordinary exchange where little depends on the outcome.

Start a conversation in five phases with REACH

REACH breaks the beginning of a conversation into five phases, from noticing an opening to deciding whether to keep talking. It can help you see where you tend to hesitate.

Five phases. The acronym is REACH.

Five phases, five places where a conversation can quietly stop.

R, Read. Notice the person and assess the situation. Do they seem available? Is there a natural opening? Does the setting allow a conversation? If the moment seems suitable, try a greeting or a small comment. You may find that recognising an opening is easier than acting on it.

E, Engage. Brief eye contact and turning slightly towards someone can make your intention clear before you speak. Move within comfortable speaking distance, and smile if it feels natural. This gives the other person a moment to notice you before you begin.

A, Ask. You say the thing. One clean sentence. A comment about the shared situation, a small question, a direct hello. Nothing overloaded, nothing apologetic.

C, Continue. After they answer, ask about a specific detail or share something related about yourself. An opening can stall if neither person follows up. One more exchange gives you both a chance to find something you want to talk about.

H, Hold. A pause can mean the conversation is ending, but it can also mean someone is thinking. If the other person still seems engaged, give it a moment or ask one more question. If they turn away or clearly want to leave, let the conversation end.

In short: notice an opening, make contact, speak, follow up and allow a pause.

Find where you hesitate when talking to strangers

The most useful thing about this model is that different people get stuck at different phases. And once you know which phase you usually bail at, you know exactly what to practice.

If you hesitate at Read, practise deciding to speak in low-stakes situations. Sandstrom's study offers an example of how repeated attempts can make that decision feel easier.

Someone who bails at Engage needs to practice the physical approach without any conversational pressure. Eye contact, body orientation, closing distance. Their opener isn't the issue.

Someone who bails at Continue is doing all the hard parts and stopping too soon. Their practice is the follow-up question, specifically. One more exchange every time.

If you tend to leave at the first pause, try waiting a few seconds before deciding that the conversation is over. Pay attention to whether the other person still wants to talk.

You are not meant to walk through five steps each time you talk to someone. The model just gives you five specific places to check when you are stuck.

Use REACH to choose one thing to practise

Real conversations do not follow five tidy steps. Read and Engage often happen together, and Continue and Hold can overlap. Use the model to look back on an exchange: did you hesitate to approach, miss a follow-up, or leave at a pause? Pick the part that helps you practise and leave the rest.

Further reading and practice

Keep putting off that first exchange? Read how to start with one small conversation. Once someone answers, CARE helps you respond and keep talking.

Want to explore where you tend to get stuck in conversations? Take the free social conversation test (3 minutes). For further practice in starting conversations, listening and sharing something about yourself, see the Talking with People course.