No forced office karaoke, no awkward hallway chats with the strange neighbor in your apartment building — 2020 has done away with most interactions with people we hardly know. Even if these encounters made you cringe before the pandemic, they likely had more value than you realize.
“From a scientific perspective, we know that close relationships are the most important ones,” says Timon Elmer, a psychologist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. "It's good to focus on those. But there is merit in talking to strangers, if that is in your personality.”
