24/02/2026
A new study by Gül Günaydın, a faculty member at Sabancı University's Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, reveals that even brief social interactions, often overlooked in daily life, may be enough to boost our happiness.
For centuries, philosophers have wrestled with the question of life’s meaning. According to the Dalai Lama, the answer is not so complicated: our fundamental purpose is to build good relationships and to help others. Positive connections, he suggests, make us feel better and experience our lives as more meaningful.
Dr. Gül Günaydın and Dr. Emre Selçuk, co-directors of the Social Interactions Research Group at Sabancı University, bring scientific evidence to this widely discussed yet still debated idea. Their research focuses on how interpersonal relationships shape psychological well-being. The findings indicate that even simple interactions with people we barely know or do not know at all can have measurable positive effects.
When I met with Dr. Günaydın to discuss the results of her latest research, we both left the conversation feeling noticeably better. In a small way, I experienced the findings firsthand.
Interpersonal Relationships and Psychological Well-being
“In our lab, we study interpersonal relationships and psychological well-being,” says Dr. Günaydın. Her recent work examines how small, momentary interactions in everyday life contribute to happiness. These include brief chats with strangers, saying “thank you” to a waiter, greeting a bus driver, or exchanging a few words with fellow passengers.
How do such simple behaviors affect our mood? Across studies conducted in different cultural contexts, Dr. Günaydın and her colleagues found that even very brief interactions with strangers or acquaintances are associated with feeling happier and better overall.
She explains the motivation behind their research: “For decades, researchers have examined how close relationships—such as those with family members and close friends—affect happiness. In contrast, interactions with acquaintances and strangers have received far less attention. We wanted to examine whether these minimal interactions also matter for well-being.”
The Psychological Power of Minimal Social Interactions
To address this question, the researchers analyzed two large samples. The first included a nationally representative sample of more than 3,000 adults from 12 regions of Türkiye. Data were collected through face-to-face interviews conducted by the public opinion research company KONDA as part of its March 2022 Barometer survey. The second sample consisted of more than 60,000 adults predominantly from the United Kingdom who participated in “The Kindness Test,” a large-scale project conducted in collaboration with the University of Sussex and BBC Radio 4. Participants reported how often they greeted, thanked, or initiated conversations with people they barely knew or did not know at all. They also rated their life satisfaction.
Is a “hello” or a “thank you” enough to make us happy?
This research was led by Dr. Esra Aşçıgil (a former postdoctoral researcher at Sabancı University) and published in Social Psychological and Personality Science. Results showed that individuals who engaged more frequently in these minimal social interactions reported higher life satisfaction. Importantly, the benefits were observed even for very brief interactions such as saying “hello” or “thank you.”
According to Dr. Aşçıgil, “Although we have samples from two different cultures, it still is an open question whether our findings apply to other countries.” To address this, Dr. Aşçıgil, Dr. Günaydın, and their team have embarked on a large-scale cross-cultural collaboration involving more than 140 laboratories worldwide. Supported by the Sabancı University President’s Office Research Fund, the project aims to examine the role of minimal social interactions on life satisfaction in over 70 countries and to identify potential cultural differences.
Courses on Human Bonding and Applied Social Psychology
In addition to her research, Dr. Günaydın also teaches a course on Human Bonding. In this class, she traces how close relationships and emotional bonds take shape from infancy to adulthood—from the foundations of secure attachment in parent-child relationships to the dynamics of love in adulthood. Along the way, she tackles the questions people are genuinely curious about including infidelity, breakups, and what helps (or harms) relationships as they change over time.
She also teaches Applied Social Psychology, where the emphasis is squarely on practice: how we can translate robust scientific findings about human behavior into concrete tools for navigating everyday life and solving real problems—at home, at work, and in our relationships.
Who is Gül Günaydın?
Gül Günaydın earned her undergraduate degree in Business Administration from Middle East Technical University. Before beginning her doctoral studies, she spent a year as a Fulbright visiting researcher at the University of California, Berkeley. She completed her Ph.D. in social and personality psychology at Cornell University.
After serving on the faculty at Bilkent University Dr. Günaydın joined Sabancı University, where she is now a Professor of Psychology. Her research on interpersonal relationships has been recognized with the Outstanding Young Scientist Award from the Turkish Academy of Sciences, the Young Scientist Award from the Science Academy, Turkey, and the Incentive Award from TÜBİTAK.
Her work has been published in leading journals in social psychology, and she currently serves on the editorial boards of Psychological Science and the Personality and Social Psychology Review. She is also the Interim Director of The Love Consortium (TLC), an international research network focused on the study of social connections, and an elected member of the Science Academy, Turkey.
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=h9Dqor0AAAAJ&hl=en
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=68hIqlZka3g
https://fass.sabanciuniv.edu/tr/faculty_members/detail/3549
https://www.psypost.org/new-study-highlights-the-psychological-power-of-minimal-social-interactions/
https://www.theloveconsortium.org/
https://myweb.sabanciuniv.edu/sustar/
https://kontent.konda.com.tr/report/YToyOntzOjE6InIiO2k6MTI4O3M6MToicyI7aTo2MDI7fQ/preview
https://www.sussex.ac.uk/research/centres/kindness/research/thekindnesstest
