Overly Shallow?: Miscalibrated Expectations Create a Barrier to Deeper Conversation
Kardas, Kumar & Epley (2022) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(3)
Relied on in 5 places across the academy · 1 stated limit
What it found
Across a series of experiments, conversations went better than people predicted, and participants especially overestimated how awkward a deeper conversation would be relative to a shallow one.
People consistently expect conversations — especially substantial ones — to be more awkward than they turn out to be, which is why this feels riskier than it is.
Across a dozen experiments, people expected deep conversations with strangers to be more awkward and less enjoyable than they proved to be, and consistently chose shallower topics than would have served them.
Deep conversations between strangers felt less awkward and created more connection and happiness than participants predicted, and the misprediction was larger for deep conversations than shallow ones.
What it does not show
Strangers, in the laboratory and in field settings, largely in the United States. It measures the gap between expected and actual awkwardness, not the longer-run effect of deeper conversation.
And where we carry it further
Largely laboratory pairs given assigned questions. The direction of the error is robust; the exact size in a bus queue is not established.
Where we rely on it
5 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.
In the curriculum · 3
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.
It Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking
Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson & Gino (2017)The Liking Gap in Conversations: Do People Like Us More Than We Think?
Boothby, Cooney, Sandstrom & Clark (2018)Mistakenly Seeking Solitude
Epley & Schroeder (2014)Perceived Partner Responsiveness as an Organizing Construct in the Study of Intimacy and Closeness
Reis, Clark & Holmes (2004)Beautiful Mess Effect: Self–Other Differences in Evaluation of Showing Vulnerability
Bruk, Scholl & Bless (2018)A Cognitive Model of Social Phobia
Clark & Wells (1995)Research
A real study. We tell you what it found, how many people were in it, and what it can't prove.
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