There is a huge selection bias there. People who are very disagreeable and hard to talk to tend to not participate in such a thing. Of course the average participant was open to talk to somebody and connect.

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ngriffiths 7 days ago | parent [-]

Fair, but it's still interesting that people underestimate how much they will enjoy the conversation, even if it's with a random person on a bus who did not volunteer for an experiment.

	▲	popularonion 7 days ago \| parent [-]
		The participants in the train study were essentially given a "job" to talk to strangers, which completely changes the mental framing. People generally try to follow through on a job they promised to do. They'll try to make the best of it so they feel like they made a good decision accepting the job. If the conversations go badly, they can easily rationalize it away with "I didn't want to talk to them anyway, but I didn't have a choice". Many shy and socially anxious people do basically fine in public-facing jobs because of this phenomenon.