Does a conversation end after sending a few rounds of emoticons to each other?

When chatting with friends on WeChat, you obviously have lost interest, but you still send each other several rounds of emojis before ending the conversation; when talking to elders on the phone, you want to hang up long ago, but they keep answering the call. You think you are the only one who is in the middle of the conversation, but in fact, everyone is "blind" in the conversation.

Recently, a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) found that it is almost impossible for a conversation between people to end tacitly when both parties want to end it, and it rarely ends when one party wants to end it. For those who don't want to chat more, they may have given up halfway through the conversation, and the second half of the conversation is a waste of time. An even more unsolvable problem is that we actually can't guess whether the other party wants to continue chatting or wants to leave.

Most people think they are the only one who doesn't want to talk anymore.

When we are chatting, we always feel that the other party wants to continue chatting? Then we have no choice but to chat for a while. But the truth is: the other party may also think so!

The researchers first started with intimate relationships and used an online questionnaire to survey 806 subjects, asking them to recall a conversation that had taken place within the past two days. The person in this conversation could be anyone, but most people recalled conversations with their relatives, friends or lovers.

The researchers collected the actual length of the conversation, the length the subjects expected, and the length they guessed the other party expected. By comparing, they found that there was generally a big gap between the actual length of the conversation and the length the interlocutor expected, which was more than one-third of the actual conversation length.

Moreover, more people tend to think that they want to end the conversation earlier than the other party, but they have to listen to the other party's nagging. On average, people think that they want to end the conversation 3.87 minutes earlier than the other party.

Strangers will talk less nonsense? No

The researchers came to the above conclusion by investigating daily conversations, but this is only the information recalled by one party in the conversation. How accurate is the guess about the other party's expectations? The researchers recruited 252 subjects and conducted a laboratory conversation experiment between strangers. Everyone was asked to chat for at least 1 minute, but not more than 45 minutes.

Would conversations between strangers be more straightforward? Not really.

In conversations between strangers, only a very small number (1.59%) of conversations ended precisely at the moment when both parties wanted to end, and less than a third (29.4%) of conversations ended at the moment when one party wanted to end. In almost half (46.8%) of conversations, both parties did not want to continue the conversation before it ended, but both thought that the other party still wanted to continue chatting and had to continue the awkward conversation.

The other party was so embarrassed that he dug his toes into the ground丨Li Zi Li Zi SMS/Weibo

The study of stranger conversations also found that it is difficult for people to guess how long the other person wants to chat. The expectations of the other person speculated by the interlocutor are very inaccurate. More than half of the people have an expectation deviation of more than 29.4%.

Choose experience or efficiency?

Conversation is a collaborative task that is completed by both parties. When both parties expect different durations of conversation, it is almost impossible for the actual conversation to meet the needs of both parties at the same time. We often misjudge the duration expected by the other party, which leads to more waste of time and energy.

When people want to end a conversation, they tend to follow some "ending etiquette", including a formal ending like "Nice to talk to you", a vague ending like "It's like this" when both parties fall silent, and then one party says "Anyway, that's it", and an external excuse like "I have something to do later, sorry I can only talk here". But almost no one will end a conversation with "I don't want to talk anymore" unless the two parties are arguing.

So why can't humans be more honest in conversation? In theory, one of the main purposes of conversation is to establish social relationships. If you take the initiative to end a conversation at an inappropriate time, it is likely to make the other party unhappy and appear rude. Therefore, everyone will tacitly cover up, and when to end the conversation becomes a secret game between the two parties. In an intimate relationship, this kind of cover-up may be to show concern, while in a conversation with strangers, it is more out of politeness.

But the fact is, people in a conversation cannot accurately understand each other’s inner expectations. Giving each other “false” feedback will also bring more communication costs and reduce the efficiency of the actual conversation.

Daily conversation: Surface vs. inner thoughts | Photo provided by illustrator 77

Perhaps in a conversation, efficiency and feelings cannot be achieved at the same time. But in terms of the situation, you can pursue efficiency more in a serious occasion, and the other party is likely not to want to continue to be polite. If it is in a casual environment, you can do as the researchers say, "Stop trying to guess (you can't guess it anyway), relax and enjoy the conversation."

After reading the research, AI and AI colleagues left after speaking | Guokr AI provided

References

[1]Do conversations end when people want them to?

Adam M. Mastroianni, Daniel T. Gilbert, Gus Cooney, Timothy D. Wilson Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2021, 118 (10) e2011809118; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.201180911

Author: This wood

Editor: Xiao Towel, You Shiyou