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Feeling down? Having a stimulating conversation might help, according to a new study published in Psychological Science.
Researchers at the University of Arizona and Washington University in St. Louis used unobtrusive recording devices to track the conversations of 79 undergraduate students over the course of four days. They then counted the conversations and determined how many were superficial versus substantive, based on whether the information exchanged was banal (“What do you have there? Popcorn?”) or meaningful (“She fell in love with your dad? So, did they get divorced soon after?”). They also assessed subjects’ overall well-being by having them fill out questionnaires and by asking their friends to report on how happy and content with life they seemed.
The happiest subjects spent 70 percent more time talking than the unhappiest subjects, which suggests that “the mere time a person spends in the presence of others is a good predictor of the person’s level of happiness,” says co-author Matthias Mehl, a psychologist at Arizona. The happiest subjects also participated in a third as much small talk and had twice as many in-depth conversations as the most unhappy participants.
Mehl admits that he does not know whether interacting with others in a substantive manner makes people happy or whether happy people tend to engage in more frequent and intellectual conversations. To find out, he and his colleagues are conducting pilot studies in which they ask people to engage in different types of conversations and assess how the exchanges affect well-being. So far, he says, the findings suggest that adding five substantive conversations to your weekly social calendar could boost your spirits dramatically.
This article was originally published with the title Skip the Small Talk.
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15 Comments
Add CommentOr perhaps some people have learned to use conversation to make themselves happy while others are unsuccessful in finding happiness through conversation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThat may be due to the essential existential question of meaning being reinforced by conversation. Those who are developing or have developed an existential sense of peace can use conversation to reinforce it. Those who have not found peace in meaning can hardly use meaningful conversation to enhance their happiness - expect them to be more tight lipped.
This might also explain why people with a satisfactory existential solution find it difficult to have meaningful conversations with those who have found a significantly different existential solution.
Giving our lives meaning is not to be underestimated. Conversation that brings us closer to this will be more likely to inspire this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeaning in life is something each one of us are seeking, whether we realize it or not. Any conversation that brings us closer to this will inspire us to know ourselves better, just like vacant conversations remind us that we need more meaning in life.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps for most, but for some people "meaning" is a dire thing as it dredges up primal fears. Self doubt, trauma, and other forms of insecurity block the pursuit of deeper meaning in some, so they try to avoid meaning and instead focus on the mundane.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese are people who find no joy in meaningful conversation and tend to refrain. Such people rather need to recover their essential sense of belonging, a gift normally bestowed during infancy. Dialog cannot confer this sense because words only confuse in this state. To the insecure person even a compliment is not trusted and deeper forms of verbal bonding can feel terrifying.
The most talkative turned out to be the ones who engaged in more meaningful conversations. Isn't this just a law of proportionality?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI wouldn't headline this "happier people," but "happier undergrads."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs this causation or just correlation. The article implies there is causation but in truth this might be coincidence. Happier people might simply talk more.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNo it didn't. The last few lines explicitly state that this is a state of correlation only. They have no idea if causation is present one way or the other.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAt some point they'll discover that people who are capable of substantive conversation are happier when they have these kind of conversations because they feel valued and finally have a sense of community.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'd speculate that there would be a strong correlation between gender and the substantiveness of the conversation. I suspect that undergraduate males are less likely to discuss personal issues with casual acquaintances or even friends than are females. Just a guess...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisi think the very talk active people ruin the unnecessary and debate conversations due to their habits.But for passive personality and doesnt want to get involved in their debate, its good to ignore whatever their conversation did.Because so many people lie to each others only to get attentions etc.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen, when they get happy they got a big lier issue....on their mind
???
This made sense to me until I read the example "meaningful" conversation, which was relationship-talk. I wouldn't consider most relationship talk substantive conversation. Disappointing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe article says one of the co-authors admits he doesn't know if it is just correlation. However, the suggestion that adding 5 substantive conversations per week could significantly boost your spirits derives straight out of a causative model. If you don't see this, consider the following. There is a strong degree of correlation between the size of one's little finger and the size of one's vocabulary. The correlation coefficient is very high. The reason is that babies have small little fingers and small vocabularies; little children have more of both; adults have larger little fingers and larger vocabularies. However, to be causative, you would have to assert that pulling and stretching on your little finger (getting it longer) would increase the size of your vocabulary.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile it is more plausible to assert that having substantive conversations would increase one's happiness, the converse is also quite plausible, and even a feedback loop model is plausible (both assertions have a causative effect). Only well-designed research, executed well, can help dis-entangle these things.
What if... words are the tool to carve out reality? What if... when we speak we create a reality, an existence to step into? Words,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thistreat them with respect, speak wisely to CREATE the world we live in.
Not in this case. Even though happier people did talk more, their meaningful conversations, as well as shallow ones, are not in proportion to how much more they converse.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this