Hey everyone, Dana here!
Why do Americans spend so much time on small talk that nobody actually cares about?
It’s a total waste of time...or is it?
As I mentioned in my video about the American hi, how are you?
I often get questions about Americans being fake or insincere.
And this often connects into questions about small talk.
So today I’m going to try to explain why small talk the best that I can.
Let’s start by saying that I, personally, usually enjoy a little small talk, but not
all Americans do.
Small talk is more common in the U.S. and more a part of the culture there but that
definitely does not mean that all Americans love small talk.
Okay, so when is small talk used and what should you talk about?
Really good question, and one that is very hard to answer because, from growing up in
the U.S., I just kind of feel when it’s right and intuitively know which topics to
talk about and which are off-limits by reading the situation and the people around me.
Because in the end, small talk topics really, really vary depending on many variables, including
who you're talking to and where and when.
Small talk at a party with someone I’ve met a couple times would go a little deeper
than small talk with the cashier at the grocery store.
There’s surface-level small talk, like about traffic or all that crazy construction going
on around town, and then there’s small talk that makes a bit more of a connection, maybe
where you went on vacation or your plans for an upcoming holiday.
And often, especially at a party, small talk will start out as an ice breaker, so something
more surface level, and then get more personal as the evening moves on and you start to feel
more comfortable with the person you’re talking to.
So in that way, small talk helps get me feeling more comfortable at a party and feeling more comfortable
to talk about other things.
I can often tell from small talk if I have anything in common with the other person or
if maybe I should move along and find someone else to talk to.
But I can at least give you some topics that are not good for small talk: politics, money,
sex, religion, or basically anything too personal.
For example, jumping right away into personal medical problems is not really good for general
small talk.
To answer one particular small talk question that I got: if you’re a cashier at a store
for example, don’t you get bored having the same small talk over and over and over
again so many times every day?
Well, from my own personal experience, no.
I didn’t work in a supermarket, but I did work in a hotel at the reception desk, and
I can tell you that I truly enjoyed making small talk with the people checking in.
They’d often tell me about where they were traveling from, what they had planned for
their vacation; we would chat about local restaurants.
Some people shared more about their trips and others shared less, and it didn’t get boring
because the conversations really changed depending on the people.
And, yeah, I really enjoyed making that connection with them.
Which brings me to the question of why small talk.
Why do people do it?
Isn’t it a waste of time?
For me personally, because it makes a connection with another human being on this planet.
A connection that sometimes is just really, really quick and stays right at the surface,
and other times does lead to more in-depth conversations and maybe even friendship.
Let’s say I’m just not having a great day.
I spill my coffee in the morning, I stub my toe against the door frame, whatever, it's
not going well.
Then I stop by the store and the cashier makes a little small talk with me.
It brings me out of my bad mood.
We laugh about a TV show or something funny that her dog did.
And suddenly I find myself leaving the store with a smile on my face.
The small talk wasn’t a deep ever-lasting connection, but the connection we made did
genuinely put me in a better mood, and then I take that better mood, for example, into
the office, where I’m then kinder to people than I would have been as Grumpy Dana, and
they’re in turn then kinder to other people as well, and on and on and on.
And there’s at least one study to back me up.
In a study published in 2014 in Social Psychological and Personality Science, researchers from
the University of British Columbia found that the study participants who had some kind of
social interaction with the barista at a cafe ended up feeling more of a sense of belonging
and in the end happier than the people who had just tried to be as efficient as possible.
I will put a link to that info down in the description below in case you'd like to check it out.
So my question for you is: What do you think about small talk?
And are there any small talk questions that you’d still like to have answered?
Please let me know in the comments below.
Thanks so much for watching.
I really hope that you enjoyed this video.
And also, thank you so much to our patrons on Patreon, who help make these videos possible.
Thank you very much for your support.
If you would like to check out our page on Patreon, you can find a link to that down
in the description box below.
Until next time, auf Wiedersehen!
Did I get that right? Patrons...yeah, not...yeah, I got it right. I got it right.
Who help make these vid...videos possible.
Talk...talk...
So in that way, small talk helps me...
Let's try that again.