A guideline to master
Whenever we meet with a friend, we swap some of the stories of our lives—the banal and the sublime Every time we swap stories — and in particular, secrets — we create a friendship, or we take a role in creating one. And now research is revealing some interesting nuances about how to get the process started, and keep it going — about what to say, and how to say it, in order to transform an acquaintance or even a stranger into a new friend, and a new friend into a lifetime friend.
When talking to strangers
That is precisely what a pair of psychologists did when they published another classic study in an equally press-grabbing article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences back in 2014.
The study shows that:
Like most previous studies, it found that we’re generally bad at talking to strangers. But I also found something else interesting: we’re happier when we do. Crucially, this was true for both extroverts and introverts.
personal space
Our preferred individual space — that is, how far away from another interacting person we want to be — depends on sex, culture, context, and familiarity, but the COVID-19 pandemic is starting to matter too.
One study of nearly 9,000 people from 42 countries back in 2017 found some huge geographical differences, particularly between so-called ‘contact cultures’ (South America, the Middle East, and Southern Europe) as opposed to ‘non-contact cultures’ (Northern Europe, North America, and Asia), where people want to stand farther away. So, yes, the cultural background of the person with whom you’re talking is definitely worth bearing in mind, if you don’t want to make them uncomfortable. Research showed that, across most countries, women need more personal space than men. And, in 2021, a small study in the US found that the preferred personal distances these participants had reported even before the pandemic was, during it, significantly increased, both in reality and virtually.
We’d become accustomed to all the other people in our vicinity having a much greater amount of space allotted to them. Research suggests that, with COVID-19 infections continuing, we want this still.
Shallow/Deep
We seek richly personal relationships with others, and we know from experience that the sharing of intimate stories can create them.
But how quickly, after meeting someone, can we move past the trite pleasantries?
A 2021 study found that answers to the questions above were given the same way the earlier team did: participants overestimated how awkward a deep conversation with a new person would be, and they underestimated how interested a new person would be in their revelations. And though they expected to prefer a shallow conversation over a deep one with a new person, the opposite was true.
Deep conversations left them feeling more connected.
Be sure to offer praise
Do you worry that an ‘Oh, I love your dress!’ or even an award for ‘You’ve got a great sense of humor!’ might sound hollow or too intrusive, and create a feeling of awkwardness rather than a mutual feeling? Not true. a new study, also published in 2021 has shown how well compliments enable strangers and friends to draw together, how free they are in cost — they don’t require spending money or effort, and yet this work, showed consistently that pairs of friends undervalued the positive impact of compliments made by one to the other, underestimating the level of warmth the recipient felt, and overestimating how awkward they would feel as a result. That view appeared to carry over into the real world: the participants also reported generally giving fewer compliments than they felt they should give, or even would like to give.
What if you don’t really sincerely mean what you’re saying in the compliment?
‘People might be hesitant to pay targeted flattery to others with inauthentic compliments because they overestimate the probability that their inauthenticity will be detected.
The researchers write. In other words, do it. Odds are, they’ll take you at your word.
Don’t worry after a discussion
One of the most gloriously upbeat findings was this: others like us more than we think.
This was the outcome of a study that paired up complete strangers and got them chatting for several minutes. In the end, they rated how much they liked their partner and how much they thought their partner liked them. And they continually underestimated how much they liked each other. They’d made a better first impression than they thought. Crucially, the more reserved you are, the larger your ‘affection’ disparity.
So don’t worry about how you might have come across to a new contact, you’re probably surer than they are that you didn’t make much of an impression, and they’re probably keener to talk again than you think.
In a study called The Thought Gap After Conversation. After being talked to, we subsequently tend to think about the person that we’ve been having the conversation with. But since we do so ourselves, their participants reacted with astonishment when the team told them that, in fact, afterward, their conversation partner had also thought significantly more about the other person’s topic. ‘Together, these studies show that despite what people think, they remain on their conversation, partners’ minds more than they know,’ the team writes.
One value of this message is that learning exactly how much the other person is really thinking about us can influence our receptivity to reconciliation after an argument. In one study
After all, for such a gregarious species, we’re terrible at assessing how conversation, maybe even its content, impacts our relationships and our health. To sum up, then, it is all much better than you might imagine, so stop worrying and start talking.