When we talk to strangers, if we talk to them, we often default to “small talk” or “chit-chat.” We may muse about the weather or a recent movie or what we did over the weekend. This surface-level talk may keep us comfortable, but it’s often unfulfilling. What prevents us from deepening our conversations with strangers? A recent study by Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar, and Nicholas Epley published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology finds that we tend to underestimate how much strangers are interested in and care about our more personal revelations. We also mistakenly assume that conversations with strangers will be uncomfortable and unrewarding. These miscalibrated expectations create a psychological barrier that prevents us from having more “deep talk.” The study raises a question for all of us: What if we took more chances in connecting with strangers? Asking the Big Questions In the study’s first set of experiments, the researchers …