Family and friends prefer to hear about familiar things
When we experience something exciting, we can’t wait to tell our family and friends about it. We love to talk about our unique experiences because they are different and we know that our listeners have not had the same experience, making us even more excited to tell them about it.
But researchers say that, when we talk about our exotic holiday trip or celebrity sighting, most likely listeners are not really listening or enjoying the conversation. Speakers feel that their novel topics of conversation will be big crowd pleasers and listeners will enjoy hearing about it – but listeners actually prefer to hear something familiar.
Based on their real life experiences, the researchers decided to conduct four experiments to test this observation.
In the first experiment, researchers divided participants into groups of three. One was assigned as a speaker and two acted as listeners. The speaker was shown a video: either a TED Talk video, one about the intelligence of crows or an interview with the owner of a specialty soda shop. The speakers had to describe what they saw to the listeners. Some of the listeners had already seen the video while others had not.
Before they started talking, the speakers predicted how the listeners would react and enjoy listening to their talk and how interesting and effective they would consider the speaker to be. After the speaker finished talking, the listeners rated them.
Researchers explain that people are not very good storytellers and tend to leave out important information when talking about something.
What researchers found is that the speaker’s predictions were actually backwards. Speakers expected listeners to respond positively to their stories; however, they found that listeners who had not seen the video did not react positively and it was the listeners who had seen the video who actually enjoyed the talk.
In the second experiment, the listeners were asked to predict their own reactions before hearing the story – and they made the same mistake the speakers did.
In the third and fourth experiments, researcher found that speakers are better at telling familiar stories and the listener’s personal experience allows them to relate to familiar stories and thus enjoy it better.
What the scientists is that when listeners had already seen the video that the speaker was describing they could fill the gaps in the story, which made it more enjoyable.
When we hear our family and friends talk to us about their unique experiences, we tend to be bored, confused or overwhelmed. That’s because these experiences are complex and almost impossible for anyone to be able to communicate properly.
Researchers explain that people are not very good storytellers and tend to leave out important bits of information when talking about something. As a result, friends and family enjoy the conversation more when they already know about the topic because then they actually understand better what we’re talking about.
Not to worry though – this study shows that both speakers and listeners will do the same thing once their roles are reversed.
So, how do you make sure your friends and family don’t nod off while you’re talking? Talk about something that they already know about.
Source: Psychological Science
