This tiny social tweak makes your day feel way better, study finds

Here’s the gist: a big new study says most of our everyday activities feel better when we’re not doing them alone.

That’s it. No hacks. No apps. Just add a person.

If you’ve been feeling a little “meh” lately, this is incredibly actionable.

And it’s the kind of tweak you can make today without rearranging your life.

What the study found

The Washington Post just covered a large analysis using the American Time Use Survey, looking at more than 100,000 slices of daily life from over 40,000 people across multiple years.

The researchers asked a simple question: during common activities—commuting, cleaning, reading, running errands—were people interacting with someone or not, and how happy did they feel at that time?

The pattern was striking. Across 80+ activities, people reported higher happiness when they were engaging with someone else instead of going solo.

Eating and drinking with others, walking, running, even errands—better with company.

The effect showed up across very different years, including 2010, 2012, 2013 and 2021.

Elizabeth Dunn, senior author of the new paper, put it plainly: “participants consistently rate every common daily activity as more enjoyable when they’re interacting with somebody else.” That quote comes straight from her interview about the study.

If you like to peek under the hood, the paper’s title is wonderfully on-the-nose: “Everything Is Better Together.” It analyzed 105,766 activity episodes from 41,094 participants and found the “with someone” boost reliably across the activity list.

Why this matters now

This isn’t a revelation that friendship is good. It’s a reminder that the dose and timing of connection matter way more than we think.

We’ve drifted into routines that make solo time our default: headphones on the train, delivery instead of dinner with friends, “I’ll catch up later” texts that turn into weeks.

Behavioral scientists have a term for this blind spot—“undersociality.”

We underestimate how positive other people will be toward our bids for connection, so we don’t make the first move, and we miss out on the lift that even small interactions can deliver. As Nicholas Epley and colleagues note, miscalibrated social instincts can hold us back from low-cost moments that boost well-being.

What’s new here is the scope. This isn’t about “go to more parties.” It’s about micro-social tweaks to the things you already do—precisely the mundane parts of the day that often feel flat.

The Post’s story highlights that even typically solitary tasks like reading or commuting showed a happiness bump when someone else was involved. That suggests there’s low-hanging fruit almost everywhere.

The small tweak that moves the needle

So what’s the tiny social tweak? Pair one everyday activity with a person.

That’s it. Pair, don’t add.

If you’re already grabbing groceries, call a friend while you shop. If you’re doing a neighborhood walk for steps, invite a colleague or neighbor. If you’ve got a recurring admin block (finances, email clean-up), sit across from a friend at a café and work in parallel.

Dunn even described scheduling “parallel play” with friends—each person works on their own thing together in the same place—which still creates a social lift. 

I’ve mentioned this before, but when I edit photos, I sometimes set up a shared work session with a friend who’s writing.

We’re not “hanging out” in the classic sense. We’re just co-existing in a coffee shop and trading a few asides. I leave lighter. The new data suggests that’s not a fluke; it’s how our brains respond to mild, frequent connection layered onto routines.

And yes, in-person tends to be best for mood and a sense of connection. But the study period also counted phone interactions, and those helped too. If distance is a thing, voice is worth more than we give it credit for.

Context and caveats

It’s important to keep the claims honest. This is observational data.

The researchers are careful to say they’re seeing associations, not proving that socializing causes the happiness boost for each activity in every context.

Reading on your couch alone is not the same as reading at a book club, and 2021 (with its pandemic aftershocks) even produced one quirky exception: socializing during kitchen cleanup correlated with slightly lower happiness that year. Real life is messy.

The broader literature, though, gives this finding a strong backbone. Epley—who wasn’t involved in the study—said he was “surprised by the magnitude and extremity of the effects,” and emphasized how often we undervalue small social interactions.

There’s also good evidence that context shapes the emotional payoff of meaningful interactions. In related longitudinal work with students, the setting of an interaction—studying versus resting, for example—changed how much mood improved afterward.

Translation: the “with someone” effect is real, but the backdrop matters. Think of this as a nudge, not a law of physics.

One more nuance: this isn’t about becoming a social maximalist. The Guardian recently covered complementary research from the same university showing that there’s a sweet spot to social hours in a day.

That’s not the point here, but it aligns with a practical idea—sprinkle social contact where it’s easiest to add, don’t force marathon hangouts if your week can’t support them.

How to put it to work today

If you like checklists, here’s a friendlier version—five real-world ways to “pair, don’t add.”

Block it. If your schedule is packed, treat social time like logistics.

Put a 45-minute “co-work” or “walk and talk” slot on the calendar with a recurring invite. Dunn literally blocks time to work in a coffee shop with close friends. The structure makes it stick.

Parallel play your chores. Batch calls with errands. I know someone who cleans the kitchen while on the phone with a sibling. The task gets done, and so does the connection. The study’s core message is that even mundane tasks get a boost with company.

Commute with a voice. Can’t share a ride? Share a call. The commute is often the “unhappiest” slice of a day. Turning it into a quick catch-up (hands-free, please) changes the vibe without extending the timeline.

Piggyback on existing rituals. Weekly takeout with parents. Friday morning coffee with a neighbor before work. A standing lunchtime lap around the block with a coworker. These are small, repeatable, and they reduce coordination costs—exactly the barrier that keeps us undersocial.

Take the tiny risk. This one matters most. Because we underestimate how warmly people will respond, we hold back. As Epley has said for years, our social intuitions are often off by just enough to keep us quiet when reaching out would help.

A single message—“Want to hop on a 10-minute call while I run to the store?”—is the whole intervention.

What this means for your “better day” strategy

If you map your day like a playlist, the goal isn’t to swap every solo track for a duet. It’s to remix the dead air with small, frequent moments of connection.

The study’s scope makes it empowering: you don’t need to change what you do, just how you do it—occasionally with someone else.

As one expert in the Post piece framed it, “happiness is better predicted by the frequency of positive experiences than the intensity of them.” If we buy that, then daily micro-connections are a rational strategy—not fluff—for upgrading how life feels.

I like moves that are both human and efficient. Pairing an existing activity with a person takes almost no extra time but returns a mood dividend. It also builds social compound interest—every little reach-out makes the next one easier.

The bottom line

We’ve spent years optimizing for convenience, and in the process we quietly optimized away the tiny interactions that make days feel good. The new research doesn’t scold us for that; it hands us a fix.

Don’t overhaul your calendar. Just pair something you’re already doing with someone you already like.

Then see how the day feels.