It was a straightforward telephone survey of New Yorkers, a series of questions about the effects of the coronavirus crisis, and it was meant to take just a few minutes. But a strange thing kept happening. Many of the people who answered the phone wanted to keep talking — about their loneliness, about their sadness, about their fears for the future — even after the questions had stopped.

“People are dealing with anxiety, and they haven’t seen their family and friends,” said Ayala Mitchell, one of the interviewers for the survey conducted earlier this month by the Siena College Research Institute. “They just want to talk to someone.”

The one that really got to her, Ms. Mitchell said, was her conversation with an older woman who said the only good thing about her day had been venturing outside and seeing a single flower blooming. It was hard not to cry, Ms. Mitchell said. “You have to be very careful because you don’t want to come across as biased, but I said, ‘I understand how you’re feeling. We all have to get through this.’”

As the coronavirus has swept across the country, it has stolen millions of jobs and thrust people everywhere into acute financial insecurity. It has also forced the majority of the population to shelter in place. But in an industry where rejection is a normal part of a day’s work pollsters are finding that many people are suddenly willing, even grateful, to talk. In some cases they are treating the anonymous questioners as lifelines to the world, almost as therapists, in the absence of other people to talk to.