In order to make a good impression on someone you are meeting for the first time, it is better to talk so much that you feel like you are talking too much.



When you meet someone for the first time, you may have the experience of deliberately speaking less, thinking, ``I'd be more likely to get a good impression if I didn't talk too much.'' However, a new study has shown that people are more likely to be liked if they talk more than they think.

Speak Up! Mistaken Beliefs About How Much to Talk in Conversations - Quinn Hirschi, Timothy D. Wilson, Daniel T. Gilbert, 2022

https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221104927

People think they should talk less to be liked, but new research suggests you should speak up in conversations with strangers
https://theconversation.com/people-think-they-should-talk-less-to-be-liked-but-new-research-suggests-you-should-speak-up-in-conversations-with-strangers- 188196

A research team led by Quinn Hirschi, a senior researcher at the Decision Research Center at the University of Chicago, conducted a study on how much people think is appropriate to say when talking to someone they meet for the first time, and the impression they have of the person they actually talk to. I did some research.

First, the research team asked, ``When talking one-on-one with someone for the first time, how much should you talk in order to gain a good impression from them?'' Generally, the answer was ``about 45% of the entire conversation,'' which was a rather modest answer. There was a tendency to cite numbers. In other words, many people think that it will be easier to be liked if you don't talk too much.

After that, we recreated a conversation between people meeting for the first time, and randomly assigned 116 subjects to speak at a rate of ``30%'', ``40%'', ``50%'', ``60%'', and ``70%'' of the total conversation. We conducted an experiment to find out how much a person likes the other person depending on how often they talk.

As a result of experiments, it was found that the more people talk to someone for the first time, the more they like them, and it became clear that people tend to be more likable when they talk more than they think. Hirschi says, ``The false belief that the quieter we are, the more likable we are, is called reticence bias.''



The results of this experiment are consistent with other related previous studies. In a 2012

study , one person in a pair was randomly assigned to be a 'speaker' and the other to be a 'listener,' and the listener listened to the speaker's words for 12 minutes. As a result, it was confirmed that the favorability that a listener has toward a speaker is greater than the favorability that a speaker has on a listener.

In this experiment, the level of favorability felt by the listeners was influenced by the amount of ``commonality'' they felt with the speaker. 'These results suggest one reason why people like people who talk a lot,' Hirschi said. 'The more we get to know a new conversation partner, the more we feel like we have more in common with them.' ” states.

Furthermore, Hirschi points out that people are less likely to have a negative impression of someone they meet for the first time, such as ``This person is interesting, but I don't like them,'' and are more likely to have a generally positive impression. 'For these reasons, our findings suggest that if you want to create a positive first impression when you're meeting someone for the first time, it's better to speak more than usual.' said.

In addition, in this experiment, the subjects were asked to talk with the other person for a certain amount of time, but in the real world, if they get tired of the conversation, they can stop the conversation midway through, or conversely, it is possible to talk for a longer time than expected. Therefore, Hirschi points out that future research will need to examine whether the tendency that ``talking a lot is more likely to be liked'' becomes generalized through more natural interactions. Also, in this experiment, participants were instructed to speak at most ``70% of the conversation,'' so controlling more of the conversation than that may not be the optimal strategy.



in Science,   , Posted by log1h_ik