Conversations with strangers remain enjoyable for much longer than we expect

By Emma Young For such a social species, we are surprisingly bad at judging conversations. Now a new misapprehension can be added to the list: even after striking up a conversation with a stranger, we underestimate how much we’ll continue to enjoy it. There are potentially important implications, point out Michael Kardas at Northwestern University and colleagues: if we mistakenly avoid longer conversations, we could miss out not just on the chance to connect with someone, but even to gain a new friend. In the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Interpersonal Relations and Group Processes, the team reports on five studies involving a total of more than 1,000 participants and almost 1,000 spoken conversations, conducted face-to-face or via private video conferencing. In one study, the team asked pairs of strangers to chat face-to-face for a few minutes and rate their enjoyment of the conversation so far — and predict how much they’d enjoy further conversations with their partner. The researchers found that even though the participants enjoyed the initial conversation, they consistently underestimated how much they’d enjoy continuing to chat, with their actual enjoyment often remaining high in subsequent conversations. Their responses to a questionnaire suggested that this was because they didn’t appreciate how much they’d actually have to talk about. Or, as the researchers put it, “Conversation remained replete with material for longer than pa...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Social Source Type: blogs