Mistakenly seeking solitude
Epley and Schroeder assigned commuters on inbound morning trains at a station in Homewood, Illinois to talk to a stranger, keep to themselves or commute as usual. Of 118 who agreed, 97 were analysed, with a mean age of 49 and 61 per cent women. Those told to connect reported a more positive commute than those told to keep to themselves, and productivity did not differ across conditions. A separate group of 66 commuters who completed a prediction survey expected talking to make the journey less positive and less productive. A second pair of studies used public transit commuters from a downtown Chicago laboratory pool: 75 completed the bus study, with a mean age of 27 and instructions given by phone, and connecting again rated more positive than solitude with no productivity difference, while 61 people surveyed online predicted that talking would be worse. The authors attribute part of the misprediction to underestimating how interested others are in talking. In a laboratory waiting room, people who were talked to enjoyed the interaction as much as people who were told to talk.
Epley and Schroeder assigned commuters on inbound morning trains at a station in Homewood, Illinois to talk to a stranger, keep to themselves or commute as usual. Of 118 who agreed, 97 were analysed, with a mean age of 49 and 61 per cent women. Those told to connect reported a more positive commute than those told to keep to themselves, and productivity did not differ across conditions. A separate group of 66 commuters who completed a prediction survey expected talking to make the journey less positive and less productive. A second pair of studies used public transit commuters from a downtown Chicago laboratory pool: 75 completed the bus study, with a mean age of 27 and instructions given by phone, and connecting again rated more positive than solitude with no productivity difference, while 61 people surveyed online predicted that talking would be worse. The authors attribute part of the misprediction to underestimating how interested others are in talking. In a laboratory waiting room, people who were talked to enjoyed the interaction as much as people who were told to talk.
Written from the journal abstract and the full text of the author-hosted copy through the first two experiment sets (train and bus field studies and their prediction surveys); the final laboratory study read at abstract level, 2026-11-03.
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Epley, N., & Schroeder, J. (2014). “Mistakenly seeking solitude.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(5). doi:10.1037/a0037323 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037323