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). Undervaluin

SUBMITTER: Atir S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9407669 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature