If you're someone who avoids "small talk" because you find it boring – then new research, reported in the Guardian, may encourage you to think again. Academics at the University of Michigan ran a series of experiments to see how people responded to the prospect of a conversation on a topic that they personally considered dull - ranging from stock markets and Vegan diets, to Pokemon and onions. The paper says people consistently found the conversations more interesting than they had predicted - leading one of the researchers to conclude that a sense of connection, rather than the topic of conversation, was the most important thing.