Search results
Nov 1, 2023 · Pre- and post-surveys indicated that deep conversations felt less awkward and led to more connectedness and happiness than participants expected (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 122, No. 3, 2022). Knowing that deep conversations carry less risk than people imagine could lower the barriers to starting one.
Sep 30, 2021 · Read the journal article. WASHINGTON — People benefit from deep and meaningful conversations that help us forge connections with one another, but we often stick to small talk with strangers because we underestimate how much others are interested in our lives and wrongly believe that deeper conversations will be more awkward and less enjoyable ...
Read on for the top five steps to better conversation. Ask questions. The first step might seem obvious, yet it is often forgotten: if you want to have a meaningful dialogue with someone ...
- Overview
- Small talk vs. substantive conversations
- Deeper conversations, greater happiness
- Small talk: A necessary ‘inactive ingredient?’
We know that being social is good for us, and talking with others can be a great way to relieve stress and improve relationships. But should we favor longer, deeper conversations over small talk? A new study investigates.
A few years ago, Prof. Matthias Mehl — at the University of Arizona in Tucson — and team conducted a study.
That study asked whether we should strive to have deeper, more meaningful conversations with others to improve our own well-being.
At that point, their findings appeared to suggest not only that substantive conversations make us happier, but also that indulging in too much small talk could damage our well-being.
“[H]igher well-being,” the authors wrote, “was associated with having less small talk, […] and more substantive conversation.” They add that the participants who reported being the happiest spent little time on superficial chit-chats, preferring to engage in more meaningful exchanges.
Recently, however, Prof. Mehl and a team of researchers decided to test those results in a larger and more diverse population sample, using more rigorous data analysis methods. And, to their surprise, only part of the initial findings held strong.
In the new study, the researchers collected data from 486 participants — a much larger population sample compared with the 79 participants involved in the previous study.
These participants belonged to four different kinds of categories: college students, breast cancer survivors and their partners, healthy adults in a meditation group, and adults who had recently gone through a divorce.
Information regarding the type and frequency of conversations was collected using Electronically Activated Recording devices, which are programmed to turn on intermittently throughout the day, recording random bits of conversation.
The researchers categorized the interactions thus recorded as either “small talk” or “substantial conversations.”
“We define small talk as a conversation where the two conversation partners walk away still knowing equally as much — or little — about each other and nothing else,” says Prof. Mehl.
“In substantive conversation, there is real, meaningful information exchanged,” he notes, adding that “it could be about any topic — politics, relationships, the weather — it just needs to be at a more than trivial level of depth.”
To determine the volunteers’ state of well-being, the scientists asked them to fill in questionnaires that evaluated their life satisfaction, as well as their personality types.
As before, they found that participants who had more substantive conversations with others reported a greater degree of happiness, overall. This was true both for extroverts and for introverts.
“We expected that personality might make a difference, for example that extroverts might benefit more from social interactions than introverts or that substantive conversations might be more closely linked to well-being for introverts than for extroverts,” says Milek.
She adds that they “were very surprised that this does not seem to be the case.”
The researchers were also able to confirm that the more conversations someone tended to have — that is, the more they were exposed to social interactions — the better they seemed to fare, and vice versa.
“We replicated that people who spend a lot of time alone,” says Prof. Mehl, “are less satisfied with their lives and have lower well-being.”
As for small talk, the new study revealed that it appeared to make no difference to a person’s level of happiness. Therefore, people who tended to engage in small talk are no less happy than those who favored more substantive communication.
Still, Prof. Mehl now believes that small talk does have its place, and it is important in leading up to meaningful conversation.
“I think of it like this: in every pill, there’s an inactive ingredient, […] you cannot have the pill without the inactive ingredient. We all understand that small talk is a necessary component to our social lives. You cannot usually walk up to a stranger and jump right into a deep, existential conversation because of social norms.”
Prof. Matthias Mehl
However, although the study concludes that more substantive conversations are associated with a heightened sense of well-being, it remains unclear whether meaningful interactions make people happier, or whether happy people find it easier to engage in such conversations.
Future research, says Prof. Mehl, should aim to address this question in detail. In the meantime, he urges people not to shy away from taking their conversations further and probing deeper.
Dec 29, 2021 · It seems like fears of awkwardness are a big part of the barrier, but deeper conversations actually tend to feel less awkward. They also lead to stronger bonds, more liking and greater happiness than people anticipate. These miscalibrated expectations of awkwardness and discomfort seemed to stand in the way of digging a little bit deeper.
- Gabe Allen
Sep 30, 2021 · Date: September 30, 2021. Source: American Psychological Association. Summary: People benefit from deep and meaningful conversations that help us forge connections with one another, but we often ...
People also ask
Why are conversations less enjoyable over time?
Are deep conversations a good idea?
Why are conversations so important?
Why do we have deeper conversations with other people?
Why do people want more meaningful conversations?
Why do people avoid deep conversations?
Sep 7, 2021 · Difficult social situations are perceived as cognitively costly, which can motivate us to avoid them. Reducing cognitive load can improve our social emotions. “I’m sorry, I have something ...
