You might be waiting for a bus, waiting in a doctor's office or waiting for the elevator. Maybe you’ve just bumped into a neighbor, or an old colleague with whom you’re struggling to find conversational common ground. No matter where you might need small talk, chances are one of the very first things you end up talking about is the weather. In fact, while a staggering 98% of people apparently admit to engaging in small talk at least once a week, almost two-thirds of them claim that the weather is their go-to conversation starter. Why do we like to talk about the weather so much? With the purpose of small talk not being deep conversation, but rather just a means of conveying social cues, we ultimately don’t want to start talking in small-talk situations about anything too complex, too personal, or too meaningful. The weather fits this conversational gap perfectly for a couple of reasons. First, weather is a shared universal experience. The person you’re talking to in person is going to be experiencing exactly the same weather conditions as you. As a result, it’s a subject over which you can bond right away and begin to make the kind of immediate connection that small talk relies on. Weather is also conversationally neutral. It isn’t personal or prying, and unlike more controversial or variable topics that people tend to have different tastes and differences of opinion over — politics, music, sports — it’s unlikely to lead to any clashing disagreements. So, the next time you find yourself in need of small talk, don’t worry about bringing up weather — it’s likely that's the other person was going to bring up anyway.
