Speak Up! Mistaken Beliefs About How Much to Talk in Conversations
Abstract
We hypothesized that people would exhibit a reticence bias, the incorrect belief that they will be more likable if they speak less than half the time in a conversation with a stranger, as well as halo ignorance, the belief that their speaking time should depend on their goal (e.g., to be liked vs. to be found interesting), when in fact, perceivers form global impressions of each other. In Studies 1 and 2, participants forecasted they should speak less than half the time when trying to be liked, but significantly more when trying to be interesting. In Study 3, we tested the accuracy of these forecasts by randomly assigning participants to speak for 30%, 40%, 50%, 60%, or 70% of the time in a dyadic conversation. Contrary to people’s forecasts, they were more likable the more they spoke, and their partners formed global rather than differentiated impressions.
Get full access to this article
View all access and purchase options for this article.
Data availability statement
The raw data from the studies can be found at: https://osf.io/uajw3/
References
Ames D., Maissen L. B., Brockner J. (2012). The role of listening in interpersonal influence. Journal of Research in Personality, 46(3), 345–349. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2012.01.010
Aron A., Melinat E., Aron E. N., Vallone R. D., Bator R. J. (1997). The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness: A procedure and some preliminary findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363–377. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167297234003
Bates D., Maechler M., Bolker B., Walker S. (2021). lme4: Linear mixed-effects models using Eigen and S4 (Version 1.1-27.1) [Computer software]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=lme4
Ben-Shachar M., Makowski D., Lüdecke D. (2021). effectsize: Indices of effect size and standardized parameters (Version 0.4.5) [Computer software]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=effectsize
Blumberg H. H. (1972). Communication of interpersonal evaluations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 23(2), 157–162. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0033027
Boothby E. J., Cooney G., Sandstrom G. M., Clark M. S. (2018). The liking gap in conversations: Do people like us more than we think? Psychological Science, 29(11), 1742–1756. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797618783714
Carlson E., Kenny D. A. (2012). Meta-accuracy: Do we know how others see us? In Vazire S., Wilson T. D. (Eds.), Handbook of self-knowledge (pp. 242–257). Guilford Press.
Carnegie D. (1936). How to win friends and influence people. Simon & Schuster.
Chambers J. R., Epley N., Savitsky K., Windschitl P. D. (2008). Knowing too much: Using private knowledge to predict how one is viewed by others. Psychological Science, 19(6), 542–548. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.1467-9280.2008.02121.x
Cooney G., Gilbert D. T., Wilson T. D. (2017). The novelty penalty: Why do people like talking about new experiences but hearing about old ones? Psychological Science, 28(3), 380–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797616685870
Diener E., Seligman M. E. (2002). Very happy people. Psychological Science, 13(1), 81–84. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9280.00415
Epley N., Eyal T. (2019). Through a looking glass, darkly: Using mechanisms of mind perception to identify accuracy, overconfidence, and underappreciated means for improvement. In Olsen J. (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 60, pp. 65–120). Elsevier.
Epley N., Schroeder J. (2014). Mistakenly seeking solitude. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143(5), 1980–1999. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037323
Faul F., Erdfelder E., Lang A.-G., Buchner A. (2007). G*Power 3: A flexible statistical power analysis program for the social, behavioral, and biomedical sciences. Behavior Research Methods, 39(2), 175–191. https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03193146
Finkel E. J., Norton M. I., Reis H. T., Ariely D., Caprariello P. A., Eastwick P. W., Frost J. H., Maniaci M. R. (2015). When does familiarity promote versus undermine interpersonal attraction? A proposed integrative model from erstwhile adversaries. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(1), 3–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691614561682
Garner D. (2011, October 5). Classic advice: Please, leave well enough alone. The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/books/books-of-the-times-classic-advice-please-leave-well-enough-alone.html
Gordon R. A. (1996). Impact of ingratiation on judgments and evaluations: A meta-analytic investigation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 71(1), 54–70. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.71.1.54
Harvard Medical School. (2007). National Comorbidity Survey (NCS). https://www.hcp.med.harvard.edu/ncs/index.php
Hirschi Q., Wilson T. D., Gilbert D. T. (2020). Forecasts about a naturalistic conversation [Unpublished raw data]. Department of Psychology, University of Virginia.
Huang K., Yeomans M., Brooks A. W., Minson J., Gino F. (2017). It doesn’t hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 430–452. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000097
Ickes W. (2003). Everyday mind reading: Understanding what other people think and feel. Prometheus Books.
Jones E. E. (1964). Ingratiation. Appleton-Century-Crofts.
Jones E. E., Wortman C. B. (1973). Ingratiation: An attributional approach. General Learning Press.
Kardas M., Kumar A., Epley N. (2022). Overly shallow? Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(3), 367–398. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000281
Kassambara A. (2021). rstatix: Pipe-friendly framework for basic statistical tests (Version 0.7.0) [Computer software]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=rstatix
Kenny D. A. (2019). Interpersonal perception: The foundation of social relationships. Guilford Press.
Lance C. E., LaPointe J. A., Fisicaro S. A. (1994). Tests of three causal models of halo rater error. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 57(1), 83–96. https://doi.org/10.1006/obhd.1994.1005
Leary M. R., Rogers P. A., Canfield R. W., Coe C. (1986). Boredom in interpersonal encounters: Antecedents and social implications. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(5), 968–975. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.51.5.968
Lenth R. (2021). emmeans: Estimated marginal means, aka least-squares means (Version 1.6.2-1) [Computer software]. https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=emmeans
Lloyd K. J., Boer D., Kluger A. N., Voelpel S. C. (2015). Building trust and feeling well: Examining intraindividual and interpersonal outcomes and underlying mechanisms of listening. International Journal of Listening, 29(1), 12–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/10904018.2014.928211
Lopez-Rosenfeld M., Calero C. I., Fernandez Slezak D., Garbulsky G., Bergman M., Trevisan M., Sigman M. (2015). Neglect in human communication: Quantifying the cost of cell-phone interruptions in face to face dialogs. PLOS ONE, 10(6), Article e0125772. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0125772
Nisbett R. E., Wilson T. D. (1977). The halo effect: Evidence for unconscious alteration of judgments. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35(4), 250–256. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.35.4.250
Sandstrom G. M., Boothby E., Cooney G. (2021). Talking to strangers—A week-long intervention reduces psychological barriers to social connection. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/29q8j
Sandstrom G. M., Tseng V. W.-S., Costa J., Okeke F., Choudhury T., Dunn E. W. (2016). Talking less during social interactions predicts enjoyment: A mobile sensing pilot study. PLOS ONE, 11(7), Article e0158834. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0158834
Savitsky K., Epley N., Gilovich T. (2001). Do others judge us as harshly as we think? Overestimating the impact of our failures, shortcomings, and mishaps. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(1), 44–56. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.1.44
Schug J., Yuki M., Maddux W. (2010). Relational mobility explains between- and within-culture differences in self-disclosure to close friends. Psychological Science, 21(10), 1471–1478. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610382786
Siedlecki K. L., Salthouse T. A., Oishi S., Jeswani S. (2014). The relationship between social support and subjective well-being across age. Social Indicators Research, 117(2), 561–576. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-013-0361-4
Sprecher S., Treger S., Wondra J. D. (2012). Effects of self-disclosure role on liking, closeness, and other impressions in get-acquainted interactions. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 30(4), 497–514. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407512459033
Stopa L., Clark D. M. (2000). Social phobia and interpretation of social events. Behaviour Research and Therapy, 38(3), 273–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0005-7967(99)00043-1
Swann W. B., Stein-Seroussi A., McNulty S. E. (1992). Outcasts in a white-lie society: The enigmatic worlds of people with negative self-conceptions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62(4), 618–624. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.62.4.618
Van Lange P. A., Columbus S. (2021). Vitamin S: Why is social contact, even with strangers, so important to well-being? Current Directions in Psychological Science, 30(3), 267–273. https://doi.org/10.1177/09637214211002538
Van Quaquebeke N., Felps W. (2018). Respectful inquiry: A motivational account of leading through asking questions and listening. Academy of Management Review, 43(1), 5–27. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2014.0537
Weger H., Castle G. R., Emmett M. C. (2010). Active listening in peer interviews: The influence of message paraphrasing on perceptions of listening skill. International Journal of Listening, 24(1), 34–49. https://doi.org/10.1080/10904010903466311
Welker C., Walker J. T., Boothby E. J., Gilovich T. (2022). Pessimistic assessments of ability in everyday conversation. Cornell University [Unpublished manuscript].
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
Cite article
Cite article
Cite article
OR
Download to reference manager
If you have citation software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice
Information, rights and permissions
Information
Published In
Article first published online: July 11, 2022
Issue published: October 2023
Keywords
Data availability statement
Data is available for this article. View more information
PubMed: 35818304
Authors
Metrics and citations
Metrics
Journals metrics
This article was published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
VIEW ALL JOURNAL METRICSArticle usage*
Total views and downloads: 1857
*Article usage tracking started in December 2016
Altmetric
See the impact this article is making through the number of times it’s been read, and the Altmetric Score.
Learn more about the Altmetric Scores
Articles citing this one
Receive email alerts when this article is cited
Web of Science: 4 view articles Opens in new tab
Crossref: 0
- Listening and the pursuit of communal relationships
- Listening and responsiveness in getting-acquainted processes
- Talking to strangers: Intention, competence, and opportunity
Figures and tables
Figures & Media
Tables
View Options
Get access
Access options
If you have access to journal content via a personal subscription, university, library, employer or society, select from the options below:
loading institutional access options
SPSP members can access this journal content using society membership credentials.
SPSP members can access this journal content using society membership credentials.
Alternatively, view purchase options below:
Purchase 24 hour online access to view and download content.
Access journal content via a DeepDyve subscription or find out more about this option.
