Track Changes

The authors of a recent study suggest people want deep and meaningful relationships with others. But are reluctant to initiate and engage in deep and meaningful conversations, particularly with strangers. That could create these relationships.

The study found people consistently underestimate how caring and interested distant strangers are in one’s own intimate revelations. And that these miscalibrated expectations create a psychological barrier to deeper conversations.

Conversations between strangers felt less awkward, and created more connectedness and happiness, than the participants themselves expected.

Participants were especially prone to overestimate how awkward deep conversations would be compared with shallow conversations.

Notably, they also felt more connected to deep conversation partners than shallow conversation partners after having both types of conversations.

Systematic differences between expectations and experiences arose because partici- pants expected others to care less about their disclosures in conversation than others actually did.

Misunderstanding others can encourage overly shallow interactions. 

Get off the phone, yeah.