The human aversion to dull experiences was nailed by the author Paulo Coelho when he declared: “I can stand defeats, pain, anger. But I can’t stand boredom.”
But the natural desire to avoid boring conversations comes at a cost, according to researchers, who found that people enjoyed chatting about tedious topics far more than they expected.
The findings, based on conversations among 1,800 volunteers, suggest that by dodging potentially dull exchanges, people miss out on the mood boost and health benefits that connecting with others can bring.
“A lot of people, myself included, cancel small talk, we dread networking events, and we assume that certain topics like the weather or commuting or our daily routines won’t be interesting,” said Elizabeth Trinh, a PhD candidate in management and organisations at the University of Michigan. “But people underestimate how interesting and enjoyable conversations about boring topics will actually be.”
Trinh and her colleagues ran a series of experiments to shed light on how people responded to conversations on boring topics. They started by asking people to predict how much, or how little, they would enjoy talking about topics they considered dull. These ranged from the stock market and vegan diets to Pokémon and onions.
The participants took part in brief conversations about the topic, either online or in person, with strangers or friends. Afterwards, they reported how much they enjoyed the chats.
People consistently found the conversations more enjoyable than they expected, even when both participants had declared the topic to be boring, according to details published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The surprise enjoyment seems to arise because people base their expectations on the static components of the conversation, such as the topic and the other person, and not the dynamic components, such as the conversation itself.
“What’s really more important is the engagement, that sense of connection, that you’re feeling heard, you’re responding to one another, and maybe you’re self-disclosing, or discovering details about someone else’s life,” Trinh said.
Trinh believes we may often miss out on enjoyable connections by misjudging how conversations will feel. “We avoid talking to that co-worker at the coffee machine or that stranger at the event or a neighbour in the elevator,” she said, “But I think people benefit from lowering the bar for what makes a conversation worth having. And one approach is to reframe conversational goals. Instead of thinking, will I enjoy this, maybe think, what will I learn?”
There is a limit though. The researchers do not recommend seeking out endless tedious conversations. “There’s a difference between lowering the bar and agreeing to have any and all boring conversations,” Trinh said. “The benefits may not scale indefinitely.”
Nicholas Epley, a professor of behavioural science at the University of Chicago and the author of the upcoming book Hello: The Unexpected Power of Choosing to Connect, said: “Just because you know where a conversation might start, doesn’t mean you know where it will end, and the process of having a conversation can often make it end up in a more interesting place than you expected.”
“These results definitely suggest that the fear of a boring conversation shouldn’t keep you from starting one,” he added. “After all, if a conversation is boring once you’re in it, you also have a surprising amount of power to make it better!”
Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University, said the paper added to work on the biases we hold about conversations. “We also predict conversations with strangers will be more awkward and uncomfortable than they end up being and we generally underestimate how much others will like us,” he said. “This leads to ‘pluralistic ignorance’ where everyone holds the same misconceptions, which leads to inertia.
“As everyone tends to hold these opinions, people are reluctant to strike up conversations, especially when society and circumstances are not conducive. This is one reason why London commuters tend to travel attending to their devices and avoiding causal conversations but will readily engage when their routines are suddenly and unexpectedly disrupted forcing them out of auto-pilot.”
