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Conversations almost never end when both parties want them to: study
- Animats 6y ago“Psychology is just now waking up to the fact that this is a really interesting and fundamental social behavior. This hasn't been studied before? Studying turn-taking in conversation is a recognized field of study.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_analysis#Turn-taking_organization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conversation_analysis#Turn-tak...
- mlyle 6y agoBut what's discussed here isn't turn-taking, but the fact that conversations tend to wrap up usually well after both parties would rather they end, but also sometimes even when both parties would rather see it continue.
- Synaesthesia 6y agoLots of aspects of human psychology and behaviour are not yet well understood. It's a very complex topic!
- chovybizzass 6y ago"What am I going to say?...that my wife two times me?" "Shut up, you're always talking"
- dmingod666 6y agoTries to make massive judgemental claims, doesn't account for basics. How about relative social position of the 2 people to begin with, where is that taken into account? CEO talking to a junior employee who do you think decides when the conversation ends and how long it's going to be? Entrepreneur pitching to a hotshot VC at a packed conference. Who decides when the conversation ends? Context, power dynamic and bunch of other things determine how long the conversation goes on. Keeping a conversation on or not is a social signal of interest - it means I am ready to give you my time (or not) - which itself is communication. There is more nuance than asking 2 parties if the conversation ended at the right time and then proclaiming, "People don't know when to stop talking".
- jordan_curve 6y agoPresumably the subjects in the study had no prior relationship so hierarchical structure shouldn’t have played a significant role.
- leetcrew 6y ago> CEO talking to a junior employee who do you think decides when the conversation ends and how long it's going to be? "glad we talked, but I ought to get back to {work task}." they can overrule you if they still have something important to say, but I haven't met an executive who objected to this one.
- dmingod666 6y agoTrue, but, there are only a limited number of specific things the junior can say and not upset the balance. Whereas the CEO can just casually pickup a call, break conversation and walk away.
- notacoward 6y agoIt's extremely context-dependent in other ways as well. For example, I get this with my brother and used to get it with my mother on the phone but not otherwise. They just hate to hang up. And yes, it became truly comical on calls between the two of them. I get a similar thing in online chats with most people. I get it with my wife, in person, on certain topics but not otherwise. If she starts talking about COVID statistics, I know I'm stuck for at least ten minutes unless I'm willing to have her pissed at me the rest of the day for cutting it short. Topic, medium, relationship, and even external context all affect this. The question I would ask here is: why would we expect people to want to end a conversation at the same time? The article presents this as some sort of failed communication, but maybe an exact match is just naturally unlikely.
- bluedays 6y agoI'll just keep talking until the person gives up. I usually don't have anything else to do. Your move, bucko.
- burrows 6y agoYes, I’ve long since accepted my conversation addiction.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- elil17 6y agoI participated in a similar study (same data collection method, results not yet published) and I think I was in one of the 10% of conversations where both participants didn’t want it to end. My only regret is that I didn’t get the other participants number!
- cheschire 6y agoI've noticed that some people I communicate with over chat have developed habit of actively scuttling my attempts to end chat conversations by dropping ever increasing clickbait headline / tweet style messages. It pulls me back in for a couple messages, or another 20 minutes of chatting, but it's burning me out on these chat apps.
- djmips 6y agoInteresting, I've never seen that. I'm genuinely curious, do you have an example?
- cheschire 6y ago"Ahh yeah sorry nevermind. I can work on this myself. <person known to upset me> will be presenting right before me but I'm pretty sure my presentation will blow theirs out of the water." This is an overly simplified and contrived example. Like I said it's more likely to occur during a longer conversation, not in a quick ping for help like that. It's also typically much more subtle, and it takes many different shapes and sizes. I noticed it got more extreme the higher my position became. For it to be effective, it requires a lot of knowledge about a person's likes, dislikes, hot buttons, etc.
- globular-toast 6y agoI often find that when talking to other slightly autistic people like me the conversation goes on for far too long and we just can't end it. I often find myself making yet another utterance while there's a voice in my head telling me to shut the fuck up because this is tiring. I can tell the same voice is in the head of my conversation partner too---I know it's time to stop and so do they---but we just keep going. It makes me completely avoid starting conversations with these people after I recognise the problem. I had a housemate who just couldn't stop. As far as I can tell if he met his clone they would talk until one of them died. Literally the only way to end the conversation is just to walk out of the room and don't stop for any reason whatsoever. I fully believe that he knew it was awkward to keep a conversation going when the other person has physically left the room, is halfway up the stairs and trying to leave, but he just couldn't. If this sounds like you then try really, really hard to stop it because people will learn to avoid you and that would be a shame.
- dazc 6y agoHad to laugh at this since it resonates with many pointless conversations I seem to feel trapped in. Why can't people just say Hi and keep on moving? No need to reply, btw. :)
- drran 6y agoIntroduce delays: Let me think a bit. Hmm. Interesting. I will respond tomorrow.
- johnday 6y agoHaving had autistic friends for almost my whole life, I learned that it is useful and appropriate to be direct. For example, I have many times said "I'm going to go now" or something to that effect, because it's possible to recognise that conversations do not always have a natural end.
- wombatmobile 6y agoA married couple was in a car when the wife turned to her husband and asked, "Would you like to stop for a coffee?" "No, thanks," he answered truthfully. So they didn't stop. The result? The wife, who had indeed wanted to stop, became annoyed because she felt her preference had not been considered. The husband, seeing his wife was angry, became frustrated. Why didn't she just say what she wanted? Unfortunately, he failed to see that his wife was asking the question not to get an instant decision, but to begin a negotiation. And the woman didn't realize that when her husband said no, he was just expressing his preference, not making a ruling. When a man and woman interpret the same interchange in such conflicting ways, it's no wonder they can find themselves leveling angry charges of selfishness and obstinacy at each other. As a specialist in linguistics, I have studied how the conversational styles of men and women differ. We cannot lump all men or all women into fixed categories. But the seemingly senseless misunderstandings that haunt our relationships can in part be explained by the different conversational rules by which men and women play. -- Deborah Tannen "Can't We Talk?" (condensed from: You Just Don't Understand) https://web.archive.org/web/20090707084209/http://raysweb.net/poems/articles/tannen.html https://web.archive.org/web/20090707084209/http://raysweb.ne...
- everdrive 6y agoThis happens enough in my relationship that I’ve got a standard response for it: Her: “Do you want to stop for coffee?” Me: “Do YOU want to stop for coffee?” Not revolutionary or anything, it was one of the first linguistic quirks we discovered.
- travisjungroth 6y agoBut don't you already know the answer to that question, since that's how she talks? Seems like you could just say "Yes", "No, but we can get coffee if you want." or "No, I'd rather not stop."
- everdrive 6y agoWell, yes, of course. The point is to get her to actually ask.
- anodari 6y agoClubhouse?
- satisfice 6y agoI'm amazed that this article fails to consider an obvious explanation for conversations going past when either party wants them to end-- politeness. It happens that I care about the other guy and he may care about me. Therefore, to end a conversation I need to want it to end AND I need to give the other guy a chance to SIGNAL that he wants it to continue. He may or may not give that signal, but I have to provide that opportunity. If he is using the same strategy, then of course the conversation will go beyond the point either of us "wanted" it to go, because both of us are giving the energy time to wind down. But that's not really a problem... it's the outcome of a heuristic for having a polite conversation. Seems like this article is a covert way of complaining that "hell is other people."
- pdpi 6y agoThe article seems to me to deliberately avoid coming up with an explanation, it’s mostly about the effect itself. There’s a paragraph at the end about the possibility of studying cultural cues and other such factors which would aim at coming up with an explanation
- twelve40 6y agoMaybe not the study, but the article's title is pretty strongly hinting that most people are clueless idiots who ramble without any regard to their surroundings ("don't know when to shut up"). Whereas it's possible you or the other person know exactly when to shut up, but are just trying to politely engage or wind things down. For example, I don't like most small talk and wish it never existed and people got straight to the point with a shorter conversation. But it's a fact of life and I accept that some time will be wasted since it's a "polite thing to do".
- shrikant 6y agoWow interesting, the initial "strong hint" that I got from the title was that most people are too polite to draw a conversation to a close. I guess we truly do bring our biases into intepretation of ambiguities!
- xtiansimon 6y agoI’ve noticed this personally as much more pronounced when online—-chat, text—-where other social clues are not present. I don’t believe this is anything new. This suggests to me the idea that text based conversations give us the volume of materials to analyze. But even that can’t be the whole story. So. What else makes this interesting or timely research now?
- magicroot75 6y agoI'd be curious to see what the percentage of conversations were where at least one of the interlocutors didn't want to be in it for any duration.
- zests 6y agoAsk HN: how old were you when you started noticing this? It took me far too long to develop meta-conversational awareness. I must have been in my 20s before I picked up on it. It feels like a superpower in some ways.
- MattGaiser 6y agoI have been aware of the phenomenon since I was a teenager. I have no idea if I am accurately aware.
- FinanceAnon 6y agoLast year I was thinking about this (I am 26). I came up with the term meta-communication for this (I did feel like a genius for moment), and then I googled it, and found out it actually has been studied by others for a long time.
- Xcelerate 6y agoI always find it weird that people feel compelled to talk to the very end of a scheduled meeting. 30 minutes or one hour is exactly the amount of time you needed to cover the discussion topic? What a coincidence! On the other hand, I also get strange reactions when I end meetings early. "Well, that's all I had to say. Talk to you later!"
- curation 6y agoObject cause of desire and subjectivity is part of analytic philosophy and if one is interested in this topic Lacan, Hegel, Zupančič, Zizek, Dolar and Agamben are useful and, for example the book Sex and the Failed Absolute (Zizek) is a beautifully structured argument connecting quantum physics (mobius, cross cap, klein bottle) to the incompleteness of human subjectivity and the structure of desire.
- mncharity 6y agoNote the "it went too long" evaluations were retrospective. I wonder what was thought during the conversations? For illustration, there's a lot of interest around MIT in improving science and engineering education. A cell biology education VR project, obtaining domain expertise by pulling in researchers for interviews, reported a recurring challenge... of getting them to stop and leave. That fits TFA. But I've had many similar conversations, as I use them for motivation, idea generation and exploration. And in order to reduce harm, I've had to adopt a practice, of asking early on, when do you want to make sure this conversation is over by. Because one interesting richly-interconnected topic easily leads to another. Even as I physically drift myself out the door, and otherwise nudge people towards wrapping up and getting back to their life. Else people risk missing flights, get calls from impatient spouses, and fail to finish work they'd intended to get done. The conversations are wonderful.* But maintaining conversation cost awareness can seemingly be a challenge. * Before covid... a year ago now. If anyone can think of another setting for such conversations, I'd really love to find one.