#STUDY ENJOY DEEP CONVERSATIONS SERIES#
#STUDY ENJOY DEEP CONVERSATIONS TV#

On average, people consistently underestimated how interested their partners would be in learning about them. In some of the experiments, the researchers asked participants to predict how interested their conversation partner would be in the discussion, and then afterward to indicate how interested their partner actually was in the discussion. If deep conversations are genuinely better and people in these experiments said they wanted to have deep conversations, then why aren't they actually having more of them? The researchers suspected it might be because people underestimate how interested strangers are in learning about their deeper thoughts and feelings.

In one experiment, participants who had a deep conversation with one partner and a shallow conversation with another partner initially expected to prefer the shallow conversation but actually preferred the deep conversation after having both of them. Deep conversations were also more enjoyable and led to a stronger sense of connection. Participants who discussed the deep questions overestimated how awkward the conversation would be significantly more than those who discussed shallow questions. That effect tended to be stronger for deep conversations. Overall, the researchers found that both deep and shallow conversations felt less awkward and led to greater feelings of connectedness and enjoyment than the participants had expected. Afterward, they rated how awkward the conversations actually were, how connected they actually felt and how much enjoyment they actually experienced.

#STUDY ENJOY DEEP CONVERSATIONS TV#

Shallow questions included typical small-talk topics, such as, 'What is the best TV show you've seen in the last month? Tell your partner about it' or 'What do you think about the weather today?' while deep questions elicited more personal and intimate information, such as, 'Can you describe a time you cried in front of another person?' or 'If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, your future, or anything else, what would you want to know?' In other experiments, people generated their own deep and shallow conversation topics.īefore the conversations, participants predicted how awkward they thought the conversations would be, how connected they thought they would feel to their conversation partner and how much they would enjoy the conversation. In some experiments, people received shallow or deep questions to discuss.

The researchers asked pairs of people - mainly strangers - to discuss either relatively deep or shallow topics.

#STUDY ENJOY DEEP CONVERSATIONS SERIES#

To answer that question, Epley and his colleagues designed a series of twelve experiments with more than 1,800 total participants. 'This struck us as an interesting social paradox: If connecting with others in deep and meaningful ways increases well-being, then why aren't people doing it more often in daily life?' He is a co-author of the study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 'Connecting with others in meaningful ways tends to make people happier, and yet people also seem reluctant to engage in deeper and more meaningful conversation,' said Nicholas Epley, PhD, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Study enjoy deep conversations