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(Mis)understanding the hedonic trajectory of conversation

Datos Bibliográficos

ID6205276
AutoresMichael Kardas (0000-0003-3486-1557, Kellogg's (Canada)), Jonathan Schroeder (0000-0002-0538-0730), Ed O''Brien (0000-0002-4481-8408, Booth University College)
Año2022
Volumen123
Número4
Páginas717-740
Fecha de publicación2022-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315
EditorialAmerican Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1037/pspi0000379
PMID34941334
OpenAlexW3182644214
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8

1,093 participants, including 966 spoken conversations) address these gaps. We find that people misunderstand the hedonic trajectory of conversation: After enjoying the initial minutes of conversation with a new acquaintance, participants expected their enjoyment to decline as their conversations continued, but experienced stable or increasing enjoyment in reality. This miscalibration arose at least partly because participants underestimated how much they would have to discuss. Thus, instructing participants to mentally simulate the conversation in detail drew their attention to the conversation material they could discuss and helped to calibrate their enjoyment predictions. When left uncorrected, misunderstanding the hedonic trajectory of conversation can undermine well-being. In one study, participants preferred to spend less time in conversation and more time alone than was optimal for their enjoyment-a finding that emerged even among participants who reported wanting to enjoy themselves. Throughout our experiments we assessed various conversational contexts (including whether participants had one long conversation with a single partner or several short conversations with different partners), and features of conversation (including participants' perceived and actual interest in talking to each other, fatigue, and the intimacy of conversation), thus shining novel light on conversational dynamics more broadly. People hold incorrect assumptions about how social interaction changes over time and, consequently, may avoid longer-lasting conversations that would forge closer connections. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Cognitive psychology · Conversation · PsycINFO · Attachment and Relationship Dynamics · Behavioral Health and Interventions · Communication · Mental Health Research Topics · Psychology · Social Psychology