Rung 7 · Graded exposure
Ask the second question
In one conversation today, ask a second question about the same thing they just told you — before you say anything about yourself.
Your attempts
Nothing is recorded against this rung. The dread you feel next time will be a guess, and you will have nothing to check it against.
Why this one
The first question is a formality anybody can manage. The second one is the one that says you were listening rather than waiting, and it is the one people skip because their turn is coming.
What it buys — Staying in a conversation is a skill separate from starting one. This is the smallest possible version of staying.
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.
What it cannot 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.
When to climb
Three logged attempts running at 2 or under, each with a real second question in it rather than a change of subject.
Those two numbers are ours, not a finding. Graded exposure is clinical; where the line sits is our judgement.
Rung 8 — Let three seconds passSource
Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson & Gino (2017). It Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3).
The full version of this rung, with the rest of its topic, is exercise 01 of that lesson.