Start a Conversation with Someone You Barely Know

Social Fitness Challenge #10: Have a conversation with someone you don’t usually talk to.

As humans, we tend to unconsciously group people into categories. This can cause us to treat certain people preferentially or with prejudice, without us ever realizing it. Any group of people that we feel that we belong to is considered an ingroup, and they are usually made up of people we feel united with due to a common origin, belief, goal, culture, or situation. People that we do not think of ourselves as being a part of are referred to as outgroups. The people whom we categorize into our outgroups are usually different from us in some fairly obvious (to us) way, such as appearance, culture, or religion. They also tend to be people that we do not know as well. Therefore, a great away to begin to break down outgroup prejudice is by having a conversation with someone you don’t usually interact with.