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Research

It Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking

Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson & Gino (2017) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3)

Relied on in 15 places across the academy · 5 stated limits

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What it found

Across two online-chat studies of 600+ people and a speed-dating study of 110 people across roughly a thousand four-minute dates, those who asked more questions — follow-ups in particular — were better liked, and speed daters who asked more questions were more likely to be granted a second date.

Question-asking increased liking in every study, and the mechanism the authors identify is perceived responsiveness — listening, understanding and care, made visible.

Follow-up questions specifically — not questions in general — drove the increase in liking. They were also the most common type people asked, so the skill is not inventing the move but doing it deliberately.

Follow-up questions increased liking with conversation partners across the studies — the effect sat in the person being asked, not in observers reading the transcript later.

8 more phrasings of the same finding

Asking questions — follow-ups especially — increased liking across chat studies and speed dating, and the mechanism the authors identify is perceived responsiveness.

Across chat studies and a speed-dating study of 110 people, follow-up questions specifically increased liking, and speed daters who asked more questions were more likely to be granted a second date.

Asking questions — follow-ups especially — increased how much conversation partners liked the asker, across chat studies and speed dating.

Question-asking, and follow-up questions in particular, increased liking across chat studies and a speed-dating field study.

Follow-up questions — ones that build on what the other person just said — were the question type that carried the increase in liking in the chat studies, and speed daters who asked more of them were more often offered a second date.

In a speed-dating field study of 110 people across roughly a thousand four-minute dates, those who asked more follow-up questions were more likely to be offered a second date; in the chat studies, follow-ups were the question type that carried the liking effect.

Across chat studies and a speed-dating field study, people who asked more questions were better liked, and speed daters who asked more were more likely to be offered a second date.

Asking questions — follow-up questions in particular — increased how much conversation partners liked the asker, across chat studies and a speed-dating field study.

What it does not show

Chat studies and a speed-dating field study, between people meeting for the first time. Nothing in it tests what happens between people who already know each other well.

And where we carry it further

Tested in live conversation and speed dating, not in messaging apps.

Tested between strangers, not long-term partners.

Live conversation rather than messaging. The direction is suggestive.

Follow-ups within one conversation, between people meeting for the first time. A follow-up a week later is our extension.

Live and chat conversation between people meeting for the first time, not a first text. That the same night is the right night is our reading.

Where we rely on it

15 places in the academy. If this paper turned out to be wrong, this is the list that would have to change. Some of the instructions below are part of Gold; none of the findings are.

Cited alongside it

Papers that sit under the same topics and films. Not a claim that they agree with each other — only that the same exercises lean on both.

Research

A real study. We tell you what it found, how many people were in it, and what it can't prove.

Free to read, link to and quote. If we have carried this paper further than it goes, say so at contact@suaviq.com — corrections to this registry are the most useful mail we get.