Skip the small talk. Overcoming anxiety to have more meaningful conversations is far more rewarding, says psychologist Kumar
So, what’s stopping us from talking about what really matters? DiscoverMagazine.comabout the psychological barriers that stop us from having intimate conversations and how to overcome them.
The expectations that we have to affect our decisions to engage in deeper interactions. Our choice to dive a little deeper is guided by how we think a conversation is going to go, and how much we think that our partner will care about the meaningful details of our life. It just turns out that we're sort of systematically miscalibrated, and we don't recognize this sociality in others.A:
In another experiment, we informed participants of some of our findings — that people tend to underestimate how interested others are in what they share. When we gave people that information, they tended to be more interested in having deeper conversations. So, if we know that other people will care, we choose to engage in those deeper interactions. This is part of why we have deeper, more meaningful conversations with people that we are already close to.