How to Overcome Social Anxiety: Small Choices That Build Connection

A major barrier to social connection is not a lack of opportunity. It is the prediction that reaching out will go badly. We assume the stranger beside us does not want to talk, that asking for help will be a burden, or that expressing a kind thought will make things awkward.

Research from behavioral scientist Dr. Nick Epley and his collaborators repeatedly finds that those predictions are too pessimistic. Other people are often more interested in connecting, more willing to help, and more appreciative of kindness than we expect.

That matters because our social lives are not built only from close friendships, romantic relationships, and family bonds. They also include the brief exchanges that make an ordinary day feel more human. A greeting, a genuine compliment, or a conversation during a commute does not have to become a lifelong relationship to have value.

The goal is not to become endlessly outgoing. It is to recognize where misplaced fear is making decisions for you, then test those expectations through small, safe, respectful interactions.

Table of Contents

• Why We Misread Other People
• What Eye Gaze and Voice Reveal About the Mind
• Social Connection Is Not All or Nothing
• Why Loneliness Hurts and Responsiveness Feels Good
• Small Interactions Are Not Trivial
• Why Both People Can Want to Talk and Still Remain Silent
• Introverts Can Benefit From Connection, Too
• How Real-World Experience Can Reduce Social Anxiety
• Be Friendly Without Assuming Closeness
• Connection Extends Beyond Genetics
• What Epley’s Daughter Taught Him About Openness
• Accept People as They Are, Not as a Predetermined Path
• Shared Activities Can Turn Strangers Into Allies
• Turn Social Connection Into a Small Daily Habit
• A More Accurate View of Other People

Why We Misread Other People

We spend much of our lives inferring what other people think and feel. Psychologists sometimes call this mental-state inference or mind reading. It allows us to interpret behavior and anticipate what someone might do next.

If a person reaches for a glass of water and misses, we can infer that they wanted the glass. If someone looks toward a doorway, we may infer that something there has captured their attention. This capacity is essential for navigating a social world, but it is not direct access to another mind.

Epley describes three major sources of information we use, each with its own characteristic errors:

• Our own minds. When we know little about someone, we use ourselves as a guide. If a room feels cold to us, we assume it feels cold to others. This can be useful, but it produces egocentric bias: assuming others think more like us than they actually do.
• Our beliefs about groups. Knowing someone’s profession, political affiliation, or background can inform a prediction. But stereotypes tend to emphasize defining differences between groups and exaggerate how distinct those groups really are.
• Observed behavior. When someone is present, their actions often dominate our judgments. The problem is that we can infer an overly simple intention or personality from behavior whose context we do not understand.

That last mistake is known as correspondence bias. Seeing someone hit another person may lead us to conclude that they are aggressive. Learning that they were defending themselves changes the interpretation completely.

The same problem appears in quieter situations. A person sitting silently beside you might not be uninterested. They might be nervous, uncertain whether you want to talk, or simply waiting for you to begin.

Behavior gives us evidence, not certainty. Treating an interpretation as a hypothesis rather than a fact creates room to discover that we were wrong.

What Eye Gaze and Voice Reveal About the Mind

Human beings are remarkably sensitive to social cues. Eye gaze is one of the clearest examples. We can distinguish whether someone is looking at us or slightly to one side with a precision that would be difficult to reproduce in an abstract geometry problem.

That sensitivity helps us track attention and infer intentions. We tend to look toward things we are thinking about, and think about things we are looking at.

In research comparing young children with chimpanzees and orangutans, the children’s distinctive advantage emerged on social tasks rather than simply reasoning about physical objects. Tasks involving gaze, intention, and another individual’s mental state highlighted an early human capacity for social understanding.

The voice carries more than words

Voice provides another rich stream of information. Changes in pitch, pace, and intonation help communicate excitement, sadness, deliberation, humor, and sarcasm. An email that feels obviously playful to its sender can sound hostile to its recipient because the recipient cannot hear the intended delivery.

Here again, egocentrism creates a problem. Because we know what we mean, we underestimate how much information someone else needs to understand us.

But voice does something deeper than clarifying tone. It helps convey that there is an active, thinking, feeling mind behind the words.

In research Epley conducted with Juliana Schroeder, people evaluated explanations from supporters of opposing political candidates. Hearing a person’s explanation, rather than only reading the same words, made that person seem more thoughtful, rational, and intelligent. Hearing the voice reduced the tendency to dismiss a political opponent as essentially mindless.

A related finding emerged when MBA students delivered job pitches. People, including professional recruiters, judged candidates as more intelligent and more desirable to hire when they could hear them speak. The students themselves did not anticipate the size of that advantage. The study, The Sound of Intellect, illustrates how the medium can change the impression even when the verbal content is held constant.

This does not mean words are unimportant. The popular claim that nearly all communication is nonverbal is an overgeneralization. You cannot explain a scientific argument using tone alone. The useful point is that voice adds information that written words often lack.

More information does not eliminate bias

Access to someone’s voice and behavior does not guarantee an accurate judgment. People remain ambiguous, and our prior beliefs shape what we perceive. Two people can hear the same political statement and interpret it in opposite ways, a pattern often described as my-side bias.

Similarly, increasingly humanlike AI voices may make systems feel more believable or socially present. Epley presents this as a prediction, not evidence that such systems deserve more trust. A convincing voice can encourage anthropomorphism without establishing that the information is accurate.

AI might eventually help people rehearse difficult conversations. But there is an important distinction between using technology to support human connection and using it in ways that replace human connection.

Social Connection Is Not All or Nothing

It is tempting to divide communication into two categories: meaningful, in-person interaction and everything else. That misses an important point. The move from no contact to some contact can be especially consequential.

Epley points to analyses of daily well-being surveys in which spending the previous day entirely alone was associated with a substantial difference in emotional experience. In the comparison he describes, the well-being difference associated with being alone was much larger than the difference between relatively higher- and lower-income groups.

Those are associations, not proof that every day alone is harmful. I sometimes enjoy a day to myself, particularly after spending a lot of time with people. Chosen solitude within a connected life is not the same experience as unwanted isolation.

The practical lesson is not that every interaction must happen in person. Different forms of communication serve different purposes:

• Texting can maintain contact. A brief affectionate message can brighten the day of someone with whom you already have a strong relationship.
• A phone call adds voice. If the goal is to spend meaningful time together or develop a relationship, speaking can offer more than a long exchange of typed messages.
• In-person interaction adds shared presence. It provides additional opportunities for gaze, responsiveness, and coordination.

Texting is not equivalent to isolation. At the same time, if texting becomes the only form of interaction, it can leave opportunities for deeper relationship development unused.

Why Loneliness Hurts and Responsiveness Feels Good

Humans depend on one another. For much of our evolutionary history, separation from a group posed serious survival problems. Our capacity to track relationships, identify trustworthy people, and coordinate behavior reflects the importance of social life.

The social brain hypothesis links aspects of primate brain organization with the complexity of the social groups in which those animals live. It is one way researchers have tried to understand the demands that relationships place on cognition.

Loneliness researcher John Cacioppo emphasized that the unpleasantness of loneliness can function as a signal to reconnect. Persistent loneliness also involves stress-related processes that can affect cardiovascular and immune health. Social connection is therefore not merely a pleasant extra. It is relevant to mental and physical health.

Relationships also help shape our sense of self. The sociological idea of the looking-glass self describes how we come to understand ourselves partly through interactions with other people. Psychological theories similarly connect self-esteem with our perceived relational value.

Severe isolation can disrupt that sense of self. Evidence from solitary confinement is particularly concerning, although ethical constraints prevent researchers from randomly assigning people to prolonged isolation to study its effects.

The value of back-and-forth exchange

Conversation provides something that simply receiving information does not: responsiveness. Someone nods, asks a question, laughs, or acknowledges what we said. We can detect that our thoughts have reached another person.

That reciprocal exchange helps explain why conversation feels different from consuming music, books, or other content alone. Those activities can be valuable, but a responsive person gives us evidence that we are affecting another mind in real time.

It also offers a useful lens for thinking about social media. Provocative comments can reliably produce a reaction. One possibility we discussed is that some hostile online behavior reflects a desire to have an effect on others, rather than simple malice. That is a hypothesis, not an explanation for every case.

The broader design question is worthwhile: can online spaces reward constructive responsiveness rather than outrage?

Small Interactions Are Not Trivial

Well-being is not something we permanently acquire through one extraordinary trip, achievement, or conversation. We adapt. Moments pass, and the next day brings its own frustrations.

Epley compares happiness to a tire that gradually loses air. It needs replenishment. From that perspective, brief positive interactions are not an inferior substitute for the “real” sources of happiness. They are one way we maintain well-being throughout ordinary life.

Consider a sincere compliment offered while passing someone in a hotel. You like their hat, say so, receive a warm response, and both continue on. There is no exchange of numbers and no expectation of friendship. The moment is simply better than it would have been.

At the other end of the spectrum, a short interaction can become unexpectedly deep. During a 23-minute ride, Epley spoke with an Iranian driver who shared experiences of imprisonment and the death of his son during a protest. The conversation was painful, but also meaningful and connecting.

This is an important distinction: a valuable conversation does not have to be cheerful, and it does not have to become a lasting relationship.

I was struck by how many memorable experiences fit this category. A passing fist bump or an exchange about a favorite band can create a brief sense of kinship without any transaction or further obligation.

Epley also describes an intriguing, untested possibility: a good encounter with one stranger might improve our feelings about a larger group, or even humanity more generally. After speaking with Gustavo, a young man proudly entering a culinary training program, Epley felt encouraged not only about Gustavo but also about young people finding their way.

That broader effect remains a hypothesis. The concrete lesson is already useful: ordinary life contains more opportunities for meaningful connection than we tend to notice.

Why Both People Can Want to Talk and Still Remain Silent

Imagine two strangers sitting beside one another on a train. Each is open to a conversation. Neither begins.

One thinks, “They are not talking to me, so they probably want to be left alone.” The other makes the same inference. Their shared interest remains invisible because each treats the other’s silence as evidence of disinterest.

Epley and his collaborators have studied this mismatch between expected and actual experiences of connecting with strangers. Their research, including Mistakenly Seeking Solitude, challenges the assumption that keeping to ourselves is always the more pleasant option.

Politeness complicates the situation. Some people think being polite means greeting others. Others think it means not intruding. Norms vary across cultures and settings, so silence should not automatically be interpreted as either rudeness or rejection.

Phones and earbuds add another layer of ambiguity. A person may be occupied and genuinely want privacy. They may also be filling time because nobody is speaking to them.

Epley recalls greeting a stern-looking fellow commuter who was putting in his earbuds. The man immediately smiled, introduced himself as Thibault, and began a conversation. They eventually became friends. The initial interpretation would have missed that possibility.

The useful framing is an invitation: a brief greeting gives someone the option to connect. It is not a demand that they stop what they are doing.

Shared gatherings can make that invitation easier. Religious communities, festivals, conferences, and other social venues provide contexts in which interaction is part of the reason people attend. They can reduce uncertainty without requiring that every person be equally outgoing.

Introverts Can Benefit From Connection, Too

A familiar story says extroverts feel better around people while introverts feel better alone. That is too simple.

Epley describes a substantial association between extraversion and well-being, particularly day-to-day positive emotion. Correlation alone cannot explain why. Perhaps happier people become more outgoing, or another factor influences both.

Experiments help address that question. In studies by William Fleeson and others, participants assigned to behave more extravertedly reported more positive emotion than those assigned to behave more introvertedly. Benefits appeared across participants’ initial personality levels. Longer studies, including work by Sonja Lyubomirsky and colleagues, also examined how changing social behavior affects well-being.

That does not mean introverts should force themselves into constant social activity. It means personality is not a sufficient reason to assume that a positive interaction will offer no benefit.

Epley uses exercise as an analogy. People differ in their habits and preferences, but a habitual preference does not always reveal which behavior would make them feel better.

You do not have to change your identity to experiment with a slightly more connected way of living.

How Real-World Experience Can Reduce Social Anxiety

Social anxiety can be intensely painful. Epley remembers being terrified of public speaking as a graduate student. His current ease did not appear spontaneously. It developed through years of practice and experience.

For people with social anxiety disorder, he emphasizes that clinicians can provide effective help. The central mechanism he highlights is exposure: encountering feared situations in ways that allow mistaken expectations to be updated.

The important distinction is between imagining what might happen and gathering evidence about what actually happens. Rehearsal alone may leave a prediction untouched. A real interaction can reveal that someone is kinder, more receptive, or less judgmental than expected.

Exposure is not simply about developing thicker skin. It can change your beliefs about other people, which in turn changes how anxious you feel.

This is not a recommendation to ignore genuine danger or to jump into overwhelming situations. Epley’s practical advice is to start small and safe. If social anxiety substantially interferes with your life, a qualified clinician can help structure treatment. The National Institute of Mental Health’s overview of social anxiety disorder provides additional information about symptoms and treatment.

What 100 days of rejection actually taught

Entrepreneur Jia Jiang set out to overcome his fear of rejection by making unusual requests for 100 days. He expected repeated refusals to toughen him up.

His first request, asking a stranger to lend him $100, was rejected. But the rejection was much less hostile than he had imagined.

Then something more surprising happened: people began saying yes.

At a Krispy Kreme, Jiang asked for doughnuts arranged and colored like the Olympic rings. Instead of dismissing the request, an employee named Jackie Brown worked out how to make them. Other requests led to permission to play soccer in someone’s backyard, address passengers on an airplane, and plant a rose in a stranger’s yard.

When Epley and his lab manager reviewed the posted requests, acceptance was at least as common as rejection, and overt negativity was rare. Some responses were compromises rather than simple yes-or-no answers.

The precise counts were recalled approximately, and this was an individual’s project, not a controlled clinical trial. Still, its lesson fits the broader research: Jiang’s fear diminished partly because he discovered that people were much kinder than he expected.

Importantly, he was not relentlessly persistent. When someone declined, he generally thanked them and moved on. When they offered an alternative, he could accept it.

Asking for help may benefit the helper

Research by Frank Flynn and Vanessa Bohns documents an underestimation-of-compliance effect: people often overestimate how many strangers they will need to ask to get a certain number to agree to a request.

Epley’s work adds another point. We may also underestimate how good someone will feel after helping us.

Asking a person to take a photograph can feel, from the requester’s side, like imposing a burden. From the helper’s side, it may be a pleasant chance to do something useful.

That is not a license to exploit people’s willingness to agree. It is a reason to reconsider the automatic belief that a reasonable request necessarily makes someone’s day worse.

Be Friendly Without Assuming Closeness

Encouraging connection requires an equally clear discussion of boundaries. Being friendly is not the same as being friends. A warm exchange does not establish intimacy, romantic interest, or an obligation to continue.

I raised the example of someone who interprets a brief interaction as evidence of a much closer relationship than actually exists. That possibility can make people anxious about initiating contact or responding warmly.

There are real safety considerations here, including concerns about unwanted persistence and physical danger. Epley is explicit that his findings do not justify ignoring risk.

The skill is to combine openness with sensitivity:

• Offer rather than demand. Give the other person a genuine choice about participating.
• Pay attention to their response. Do not treat your desire to continue as evidence that they want the same thing.
• Accept a refusal. A no does not require persuasion, and repeated unanswered messages are not an invitation to keep trying.
• Keep the relationship in proportion. Remembering a name or sharing a pleasant exchange does not make someone a close friend.
• Learn to move on. Ending conversations and managing uncomfortable interactions are social skills, too.

Eye contact illustrates how even well-intended behavior can be misread. Looking at someone can communicate attention, while sustained staring can make them uncomfortable. Social competence involves learning these distinctions, not merely increasing the number of interactions.

Practice helps develop that sensitivity. Avoidance may prevent an awkward experience, but it also prevents learning how to navigate one.

Connection Extends Beyond Genetics

Social connection supports cooperation and coordination. Working together allows people to accomplish things no individual could manage alone, from organizing everyday life to pooling resources within large institutions.

One remarkable feature of human social life is how extensively we cooperate with and care for people who are not genetically related to us.

Epley’s experience as an adoptive parent makes that point concrete. He and his wife, Jen, have three adopted children. When they committed to adopting their first two children from Ethiopia, he remembers an immediate change in how he perceived their photographs. The children had not changed. His relationship to them had.

Once they were their children, the distinction between biological and adopted did not describe a difference in parental love. The role of being a parent mattered profoundly.

That is a personal account, not a definitive answer about the biological mechanisms of attachment. It illustrates the power of commitment, context, and relational roles.

Human generosity also challenges a narrow picture of universal self-interest. People donate money, help strangers, and sometimes donate organs to people they do not know. In laboratory allocation tasks, people commonly give another person some of the money even when they could keep it all.

People can be cruel. But a realistic account of human nature has to explain our capacity for care as well.

What Epley’s Daughter Taught Him About Openness

Epley’s youngest daughter, Lindsey, has Down syndrome. His account of how she joined their family brings together uncertainty, grief, and the difficulty of predicting a life we have not lived.

During an earlier pregnancy, Epley and Jen learned that their daughter Sophie had Down syndrome. He initially felt anxious and pessimistic about what raising her would involve. They contacted families raising children with Down syndrome to learn from people with direct experience.

Those families repeatedly described their children as a blessing. They spoke about love, joy, and an expanded understanding of what their family life could be.

Sophie died during the pregnancy in July 2016. Epley describes the loss as devastating. After a period of mourning, he and Jen discussed whether to adopt again. Jen asked whether he would consider adopting a child with Down syndrome.

His uncertainty returned. But so did the lesson of his research: people often make overly pessimistic forecasts about unfamiliar social experiences. That did not settle the decision for him, but it helped him question whether fear was giving him an accurate picture.

He also emphasizes their circumstances. They had resources, a strong marriage, and the capacity to take on substantial caregiving demands. Raising a child with an intellectual disability is hard. His account should not be mistaken for a claim that every family has the same resources or experience.

They eventually traveled to China with their four other children to adopt two-year-old Lindsey.

Today, Epley describes Lindsey as a powerful source of connection within the family. She enthusiastically greets her parents and siblings. In grocery stores, she says hello to people throughout the aisles, often transforming neutral expressions into smiles.

This is Lindsey’s particular personality, not a description of every person with Down syndrome. She also gets frustrated, stubborn, and angry. She loves dolls, stories, Disney characters, the trampoline, an outdoor play kitchen, and time with her neighborhood friends. Her diagnosis influences family life, but it does not define the whole person.

Epley’s broader point is not to prescribe reproductive or adoption decisions. It is to share how much love and meaning his initial predictions failed to capture.

Accept People as They Are, Not as a Predetermined Path

The challenge of seeing another person clearly also appears in parenting children whose interests differ from our expectations.

Epley comes from an academic family. College seemed like the obvious path for his son, even as it became clear that the experience was not engaging him. Epley acknowledges that he and Jen held onto that expectation longer than they should have.

When their son entered trade school, they saw a level of happiness they had not seen before. Letting go of the assumed route allowed them to become more supportive of the person in front of them.

That lesson reaches beyond education. A parent’s concern about what others think can affect how a child experiences their own differences. Acceptance does not mean pretending there are no difficulties. It means refusing to let status, shame, or a narrow picture of success determine whether someone feels valued.

Fulfillment can come through many paths. Helping someone find an engaging path is different from insisting that they follow ours.

Responding to disability with patience

People sometimes feel uncertain about interacting with someone whose speech or behavior differs from what they expect. They do not want to stare, ignore the person, or say something patronizing.

Epley suggests patience as a starting point, using stuttering as an analogy. Give the person time to express themselves without unnecessarily drawing attention to the difficulty.

When appropriate, especially as a relationship develops, ask the person or caregiver how they would like you to respond and whether assistance would be useful. Direct, respectful questions can be more helpful than guessing.

Shared Activities Can Turn Strangers Into Allies

Connection does not require a setting that looks explicitly social. Epley grew up hunting and fishing in rural Iowa, and those experiences were deeply connected to time with his father and a broader community.

His interest in the outdoors also includes conservation. He describes removing invasive plants, enrolling 40 acres in a conservation program, and planting 9,000 trees. For him, caring for people and caring for the landscape are related parts of life.

On an elk-hunting trip in Oregon with his oldest son, Ben, they encountered a group of hunters approaching through a remote valley. They could have avoided the group or treated them as competitors. Instead, Epley suggested staying to talk.

The other hunters shared local knowledge, helped them identify places to hunt, and coordinated plans. They invited father and son into a heated camp for dinner, a welcome change from their own cold, less comfortable setup.

The help became reciprocal. Epley’s experience butchering deer allowed him to help one of the hunters process an elk. The relationship continued afterward through messages and an invitation to return.

The story illustrates coordination in an ordinary, tangible form: approaching strangers with openness made the experience better, and each person had something to contribute.

It also challenges a simplistic stereotype of hunters. Epley emphasizes conservation, responsible harvest, and choosing equipment with which he can be more accurate. The social and ecological context matters to understanding why he participates.

Turn Social Connection Into a Small Daily Habit

Understanding the research is not the same as changing behavior. The bridge is a repeatable habit.

Epley noticed that he often walked from the entrance of his office building to his office with his head down, focused on getting to work. Along the way, he passed many people without acknowledging them.

He began treating that route as a “hello walk.” He kept his head up, smiled, and greeted people when he could. Over time, the practice became automatic. He arrived at his office feeling a little brighter, and the habit extended beyond that particular walk.

A simple way to apply the same principle is:

1. Choose a familiar, low-risk opportunity. Start with a colleague you regularly pass but have never introduced yourself to.
2. Make one small invitation. Offer a greeting, introduce yourself, or share a genuine kind observation.
3. Let the response guide you. Continue when there is mutual interest and allow the interaction to remain brief when there is not.
4. Notice whether your expectation was accurate. Give real experience a chance to correct an overly negative prediction.
5. Repeat in the same everyday context. Aim for a useful habit rather than a dramatic personality change.

Shared interests, pets, and activities can make starting easier by providing a natural subject. They are helpful bridges, not prerequisites for connection.

Model the behavior you want others to learn

Children and younger people learn social behavior partly through the ordinary conduct of adults. How we greet staff, respond to frustration, include someone new, and end an interaction all communicate what is normal.

Epley is candid about his own quick temper. One habit he tries to cultivate is stepping away when frustrated rather than attempting to correct everything in the moment. Modeling connection includes regulating the behaviors that can damage it.

The same principle applies online. I use classroom standards as a guide: disagreement can be vigorous, but personal attacks and hostile exchanges do not have to become the accepted tone. Maintaining respectful boundaries is compatible with education and criticism.

These are not enormous interventions. They are small behaviors repeated often enough to become part of how other people experience us.

A More Accurate View of Other People

The science of social connection does not say that everyone is kind, every stranger is safe, or every conversation will be rewarding. It suggests that our predictions often lean too far toward rejection, inconvenience, and indifference.

That pessimism has a hidden cost. When it prevents an interaction, it also prevents us from discovering that the interaction might have gone well.

Overcoming social anxiety, in the sense Epley emphasizes, involves more than persuading yourself to feel confident. It involves learning from real people, in manageable situations, that some of your feared outcomes are less likely than you thought.

You can remain thoughtful about risk, respect boundaries, enjoy solitude, and still become a little more open. A brief greeting does not need to produce a friendship. A compliment does not need a follow-up. A good conversation can matter for the time it lasts.

A more connected life can begin with one small invitation, followed by the willingness to discover how another person actually responds.