Strangers beat chance at reading a person's life satisfaction and positive emotions after a 60-second video.

They were no better than chance at reading negative emotions.

The cues influencing accurate guesses are voice volume and physical attractiveness.

Want to know how someone's really doing? You have to talk to them.

This post is about science that deserves our attention. For example, there is a paper called "Do We Know How Happy Strangers Are? Accuracy in Well-Being Judgments at Zero Acquaintance." It has been referenced fewer than 10 times.

The setup is simple: Adults filled out measures of life satisfaction, frequency of positive emotions, and frequency of negative emotions. Each of them was then videotaped for roughly 60 seconds while introducing themselves and talking freely, the way you would if you were seated next to a stranger at the start of a long night and someone asked, What's the worst hostel story you've got? Four research assistants who never met these people watched the videos and rated each person's well-being using the same measures—excellent use of informant reports and observation methods, by the way. The question: Could strangers, after a one-minute introduction, tell which of these 200 people were doing well?

These Findings Are Not-Obvious

Strangers were significantly better than chance at reading life satisfaction and significantly better than chance at reading positive emotions. But they were terrible at reading negative emotions. That third finding is why this study deserves a big audience, before everyone runs off to babble with Uber drivers.

When the authors looked at which cues were driving the........

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