In our contemporary culture, the prospect of communicating with — or even looking at — a stranger is virtually unbearable. Everyone around us seems to agree by the way they fiddle with their phones, even without a（1）____ underground.
It's a sad reality — our desire to avoid interacting with other human beings — because there's（2）____ to be gained from talking to the stranger standing by you. But you wouldn't know it,（3）____ into your phone. This universal armor sends the（4）____ :"Please don't approach me."
What is it that makes us feel we need to hide（5）____ our screens?
One answer is fear, according to Jon Wortmann, executive mental coach. We fear rejection, or that our innocent social advances will be（6）____ as "creepy,". We fear we'll be（7）____. We fear we'll be disruptive. Strangers are inherently（8）____ to us, so we are more likely to feel（9）____ when communicating with them compared with our friends and acquaintances. To avoid this anxiety, we（10）____ to our phones. “Phones become our security blanket," Wortmann says. "They are our happy glasses that protect us from what we perceive is going to be more（11）____."
But once we rip off the bandaid, tuck our smart phones in our pockets and look up, it doesn't（12）____ so bad. In one 2011 experiment, behavioral scientists Nicholas Epley and Juliana Schroeder asked commuters to do the unthinkable:Start a（13）____. They had Chicago train commuters talk to their fellow（14）____. “When Dr. Epley and Ms. Schroeder asked other people in the same train station to（15）____ how they would feel after talking to a stranger, the commuters thought their（16）____ would be more pleasant if they sat on their own," the New York Times summarizes. Though the participants didn't expect a positive experience, after they（17）____ with the experiment, "not a single person reported having been snubbed."
（18）____, these commutes were reportedly more enjoyable compared with those sans communication, which makes absolute sense,（19）____ human beings thrive off of social connections. It's that（20）_____:Talking to strangers can make you feel connected.
