They may be just casual acquaintances, but they are important to you anyway

UNITED STATES – Ms Victoria Tirondola and Mr Lam Gong first struck up a conversation in early 2022 at a dog run in Brookdale Park in Bloomfield, New Jersey, when they realised that each owned a dog named Abby.

Ms Tirondola, 65, an insurance sales representative who lives in Cedar Grove, has a tiny bichon-poodle mix. Mr Gong’s Abby, older and portlier, is a terrier-beagle.

They chatted about dogs at first. Then they learnt that they both cooked, so “we talked about food and restaurants”, said Mr Gong, 67, a retiree living in Clifton.

Ms Tirondola added: “And how much better my cooking is than his.”

They were sitting on a bench, as the dogs dashed around on a warm spring afternoon, with a third member of a growing collection of regulars: Ms Pattie Marsh, dog walker for a miniature Australian shepherd named Ollie.

“All of us live alone,” Ms Tirondola said. “My mum passed away in July, and we were very close. Lam lost his wife a few years ago.”

“It gives us companionship” to meet at the Bark Park, said Ms Marsh, 55. She and Ms Tirondola, who bonded as born-again Christians, come daily. Mr Gong joins them once or twice a week.

So does Ms Lee Geanoules, 69, a part-time restaurant server from Clifton, who soon arrived with Charlie, a pug-and-beagle blend.

Psychologists and sociologists call these connections “weak or peripheral ties”, in contrast to close ties to family members and intimate friends.

Some researchers investigating weak ties include in that category classmates, co-workers, neighbours and fellow religious congregants. Others look into interactions with near-strangers at coffee shops or on transit routes.

People who cross paths at the dog run, for instance, may recognise other regulars without knowing their names (although they probably know their dogs’ names) or anything much about them.

Nevertheless, impromptu chats about pets or the weather often arise, and they are important.

Such seemingly trivial interactions have been shown to boost people’s positive moods and reduce their odds of depressed moods.

“Weak ties matter, not just for our moods but also our health,” said psychologist Gillian Sandstrom at the University of Sussex in England, who has researched their impact.

“If I asked who you confided in, you wouldn’t mention them,” she said. Yet the resulting sense of belonging that weak ties confer is “essential to thriving, feeling connected to other people” – even among introverts, which is how Dr Sandstrom defines herself.

In her early studies, hand-held clickers were distributed to groups of undergraduates and people older than 25 to track how many classmates or others they interacted with, however minimally, over several days.

Those who interacted with more weak ties reported greater happiness and a greater sense of well-being and belonging, than those with fewer interactions.

The researchers found “within-person differences” too, showing that the effects were not a result of personalities. The same individuals reported being happier on days they had more interactions.

Other studies found similar benefits when people smiled and undertook brief conversations with baristas at a Starbucks in Vancouver, British Columbia, or greeted university shuttle bus drivers in Ankara, Turkey.

Most of these participants were quite young, but one study, published in 2020, followed an older sample of more than 800 adults in metropolitan Detroit over 23 years.

The researchers asked subjects, whose average age at the start was 62, to draw three concentric circles, with “you” in the centre and to arrange people in their lives by degree of closeness.

Those in the innermost circle of close ties were almost always family, said psychologist Toni Antonucci at the University of Michigan and senior author of the study. The weak ties in the outermost circle included friends, co-workers and neighbours.

Over time, the number of weak ties more strongly predicted well-being than the number of close ties. Weak ties “provide you with a low-demand opportunity for interaction”, said Dr Antonucci. “It’s cognitively stimulating. It’s engaging.”

The Covid-19 pandemic, striking when social scientists were already raising alarms about the health risks of loneliness and isolation for older adults, suspended many of these everyday exchanges.

Seniors often kept in touch with their families, but where were the waiters who knew their breakfast orders, the bank tellers, crossing guards and dog walkers?

“I hope it made people realise how much weak ties matter,” Dr Sandstrom said. Although they cannot replace close ones, “we missed the novelty and the spontaneity”, she added.

At older ages, when social networks tend to shrink, people may have to work at expanding them. Dr Antonucci said: “Make the effort. You can’t create new children at 70, but you can create new weak ties.”

Mr Toby Gould’s day begins with a 7am visit to Chez Antoine, a bakery and coffee shop in Hyannis, Massachusetts.

The 77-year-old, a retired minister, buys a latte and speaks French, haltingly, with the Belgian proprietor, who bestows a slice of ham on Mr Gould’s Australian shepherd. If the shop closed, “it would leave a hole in my life”, he said.

Weak ties, including those developed online, do not necessarily turn into close ones and do not have to. Close relationships, after all, can involve conflicts, demands for reciprocity and other complications.

But sometimes, weak ties do evolve.

The Brookdale Park dog owners, for instance, have become real friends. They go out to dinner together and see movies and comedy shows. In bad weather, they walk in a local mall.

Mr Gong, who is handy, hung curtains for Ms Tirondola and shellacked cabinets for Ms Geanoules. He gave Ms Marsh a ride home when she left her car at a workshop for repairs.

A bit hesitant at first to exchange phone numbers, “we took a giant step”, said Ms Geanoules, pausing to pat and coo at one of the Abbys. “You can change a lifetime by talking to someone for 10 minutes.” NYTIMES