Deep conversations to have11/9/2023 ![]() Unfortunately, these assumptions likely govern how we interact with people we don’t know well in our day-to-day lives. Throughout the experiments in this study, a simple theme emerged: Our expectations about how conversations with strangers will go often run in a negative direction. Participants who were told beforehand that people tend to underestimate how much strangers will care about each other’s answers selected significantly more of the deeper questions than did participants who were told people tend to overestimate the caring of strangers. For example, in one experiment participants were able to choose from a list of shallower and deeper questions to answer with a stranger. The researchers hypothesized that the reason people have such a tendency to avoid deeper conversations with strangers is because they believe strangers won’t care about their answers or find them interesting.Įxperiments bore this out. ![]() “Not only does having a deep conversation with another person seem to be a surprisingly positive experience, it seems to be more positive than having a shallow conversation,” write the researchers. They also overestimated the awkwardness of the conversation. They underestimated how interested they and their conversation partner would be in each other’s answers, as well as how connected and happy they’d feel afterward. ![]() Overall, participants weren’t very good at predicting how the conversation would go. To feel more connected, skip the small talk and ask these questions instead. After 10 minutes spent discussing the deep questions with their partner, participants answered questions about how the conversation actually went. In the study’s first set of experiments, the researchers told participants that they would answer and discuss four deep questions with a stranger, like, “For what in your life do you feel most grateful?” and “Can you describe a time you cried in front of another person?”Īfter reading the questions, but before meeting their randomly assigned conversation partner, participants predicted how interested they would be in hearing the other person’s answers, how interested they expected the other person would be in hearing their answers, how awkward they would feel during the conversation, how much they would like the other person, and how happy they would feel about the conversation. The study raises a question for all of us: What if we took more chances in connecting with strangers? Asking the big questions Show love and respect to others this month
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