Lately, ever since I’ve been out with my baby, people have been striking up conversations with me more often. “How cute!” or “How old are they?” — little micro-exchanges keep happening.
Of course, the baby can’t actually reply, so it naturally turns into a conversation between me and the stranger. I’ve come to realise that the baby works as a wonderfully natural conversation starter.
A well-known British study, “Dogs as catalysts for social interactions: robustness of the effect,” reports that people accompanied by a dog have noticeably more social interactions, and are especially more likely to be approached by strangers.
What’s interesting is that the person themselves hasn’t changed at all — and yet, simply by having a baby or a dog as a “catalyst” for interaction, the barrier to engaging with them drops dramatically.
With that catalyst in place, the person’s communication ability is effectively augmented — as if they had plugged an external hard drive into a PC — regardless of how skilled they are at it on their own.
So even for someone who isn’t naturally good at communication, this hints at the possibility of lifting that ability from the outside in.