Talking with strangers is surprisingly informative

Abstract

A meaningful amount of people's knowledge comes from their conversations with others. The amount people expect to learn predicts their interest in having a conversation (pretests 1 and 2), suggesting that the presumed information value of conversations guides decisions of whom to talk with. The results of seven experiments, however, suggest that people may systematically underestimate the informational benefit of conversation, creating a barrier to talking with-and hence learning from-others in daily life. Participants who were asked to talk with another person expected to learn significantly less from the conversation than they actually reported learning afterward, regardless of whether they had conversation prompts and whether they had the goal to learn (experiments 1 and 2). Undervaluing conversation does not stem from having systematically poor opinions of how much others know (experiment 3) but is instead related to the inherent uncertainty involved in conversation itself. Consequently, people underestimate learning to a lesser extent when uncertainty is reduced, as in a nonsocial context (surfing the web, experiment 4); when talking to an acquainted conversation partner (experiment 5); and after knowing the content of the conversation (experiment 6). Underestimating learning in conversation is distinct from underestimating other positive qualities in conversation, such as enjoyment (experiment 7). Misunderstanding how much can be learned in conversation could keep people from learning from others in daily life.

Keywords: conversation; learning; miscalibration.

Fig. 1.

Results of experiments [Exp.] 1 and 2. Participants’ expectations of learning generally underestimated their reported experiences of learning, regardless of the type of conversation prompts (Exp. 1) and conversation goal (Exp. 2). Error bars represent ±1 SE.

Fig. 2.

Results of Exp. 3. Participants underestimated learning across different categories of learning. Participants expected to learn more general information than their partner and expected both parties to learn a similar amount about each other. Error bars represent ±1 SE.

Fig. 3.

Results of Exp. 4 and 5. Participants significantly underestimated learning from a social activity (conversation) but not from a nonsocial activity (web surfing; Exp. 4) and significantly underestimated learning from a conversation with a stranger but not with a person they knew (Exp. 5). Error bars represent ±1 SE.

Fig. 4.

Results of Exp. 7. Participants significantly underestimated the number of items they would learn from a conversation; this underestimation was larger for an open-ended conversation (Left) than for a conversation on a prespecified topic (Right). Error bars represent ±1 SE.