The (better than expected) consequences of asking sensitive questions

Hart, Einav; VanEpps, Eric M.; Schweitzer, Maurice E.

doi:10.1016/j.obhdp.2020.10.014

Cited by 29 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Whereas the majority of the questions selected by Listeners (M = 3.06 out of 5, p = .017) were "deep" questions that were more intimate than the median question, and Askers (M = 2.74, p = .320) selected equal numbers of deep and "shallow" questions, Discussants (M = 1.89, p = .003) and Answerers (M = 1.36, p , .001) chose fewer deep questions than shallow questions (see online supplemental materials for the full method and results). This suggests that people are indeed interested in knowing intimate information about others (see also Hart et al, 2021), but are reluctant to reveal intimate information about themselves. A follow-up experiment (N = 144) suggested that this difference did not stem from differences in the perceived difficulty of generating answers to shallow versus deep questions, as participants' choices did not differ between a condition in which they imagined revealing prewritten responses (M intimacy = 3.79) and one in which they imagined generating answers to the questions in real time (M intimacy = 3.83, p = .885).…”

Section: Psychological Barriers To Meaningful Conversationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation.

Kardas¹,

Kumar²,

Epley³

2022

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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People may want deep and meaningful relationships with others, but may also be reluctant to engage in the deep and meaningful conversations with strangers that could create those relationships. We hypothesized that people systematically underestimate how caring and interested distant strangers are in one’s own intimate revelations and that these miscalibrated expectations create a psychological barrier to deeper conversations. As predicted, conversations between strangers felt less awkward, and created more connectedness and happiness, than the participants themselves expected (Experiments 1a–5). Participants were especially prone to overestimate how awkward deep conversations would be compared with shallow conversations (Experiments 2–5). Notably, they also felt more connected to deep conversation partners than shallow conversation partners after having both types of conversations (Experiments 6a–b). Systematic differences between expectations and experiences arose because participants expected others to care less about their disclosures in conversation than others actually did (Experiments 1a, 1b, 4a, 4b, 5, and 6a). As a result, participants more accurately predicted the outcomes of their conversations when speaking with close friends, family, or partners whose care and interest is more clearly known (Experiment 5). Miscalibrated expectations about others matter because they guide decisions about which topics to discuss in conversation, such that more calibrated expectations encourage deeper conversation (Experiments 7a–7b). Misunderstanding others can encourage overly shallow interactions.

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Section: Psychological Barriers To Meaningful Conversationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation.

Kardas¹,

Kumar²,

Epley³

2022

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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“…The fact that so few men asked questions, even in the intervention condition when men were explicitly told the value of question-asking as part of being a good listener, suggests that on average most men need even stronger encouragement to ask questions than provided by the intervention. Perhaps men thought that asking questions would prolong their participation in the study, or perhaps they thought the topic was too sensitive to discuss with a stranger (see Hart et al, 2021). Overall, however, the findings are an initial indication that, as predicted, men can be encouraged to ask questions.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 73%

“…Carl Rogers (1995), for example, characterized active listening as "one of the most potent forces for change that I know" (p. 116). 8 In spite of a growing body of work investigating conversations -especially around misperceptions in conversations (e.g., Boothby et al, 2018;Cooney et al, 2017;Kumar & Epley, 2020;Mastroianni et al, 2021;Zhao & Epley, 2021) and ideological disagreement (Kubin et al, 2021;Yeomans et al, 2020) -listening has been largely overlooked, and it is only recently that social psychologists have turned their attention to it (e.g., see Hart et al, 2021;Huang et al, 2017;. Listening is a channel through which people orient, relate, and connect, and is a fundamentally social psychological phenomenon.…”

Section: Theoretical Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Do You Listen?: The Relationship Between How Men Listen and Women’s Power and Respect in the U.S.

Santoro¹,

Markus²

2021

Preprint

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As American culture confronts the issues raised by #MeToo, some ask, what can men do in interpersonal interactions to become allies and empower women? Building on research in linguistics, communication, sociology, as well as psychology, seven pre-registered studies investigate the relationship between how men listen during troubles talk (i.e., communication about problems) and women’s sense of power and respect. We theorize and compare two styles of effective listening: more other-focused interdependent listening (e.g., asking a question) and more self-focused independent listening (e.g., giving advice). We find that though men are less likely than women to do interdependent listening during troubles talk (Study 1), men can be encouraged to ask questions (Study 2). When investigating the effect on women of how men listen, we found that women anticipate feeling more powerful and respected when listened to by a man friend doing interdependent (vs. independent) listening (Studies 3a – 3c), particularly those women who do not endorse stereotypic gender roles (Study 3c). We partially replicated these findings in two live interaction studies involving strangers communicating over text: women felt more powerful and respected when listened to by men who asked open-ended questions compared to men who gave prescriptive, unsolicited advice (Study 5), though they did not when men simply asked more questions (Study 4). We suggest that listening can assume multiple productive forms, but that compared to independent listening, interdependent listening can serve as an everyday anti-sexist practice to attenuate rather than accentuate the gender hierarchy.

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“…Our work also contributes to research on self/other mispredictions in prosocial gestures. Recent work has found that people underestimate how much others will appreciate prosocial gestures such as compliments (Boothby & Bohns, 2021; Zhao & Epley, 2021), gratitude (Kumar & Epley, 2018), and honesty (Hart et al, 2021; Levine & Cohen, 2018). In some ways, the finding in the current research—that people underestimate others’ desire for feedback—is consistent with these other findings, since constructive feedback can be seen as a type of prosocial gesture.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“Just letting you know … ” Underestimating others’ desire for constructive feedback.

Abi-Esber¹,

Abel²,

Schroeder³

et al. 2022

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

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People sometimes avoid giving feedback to others even when it would help fix others' problems. For example, only 2.6% of individuals in a pilot field study provided feedback to a survey administrator who had food or lipstick on their face. Five experiments (N = 1,984) identify a possible reason for the lack of feedback: People underestimate how much others want to receive constructive feedback. Initial experiments demonstrated this underestimation of others' desire for feedback in hypothetical scenarios (Experiment 1), recalled feedback experiences (Experiment 2), and real-time feedback among friends (Experiment 3). We further examine how people ascertain others' desire for feedback, testing how much they consider the potential consequences of feedback for themselves (e.g., discomfort giving feedback or harm to their relationship with the receiver) or the receiver (e.g., discomfort receiving feedback or value from feedback). While we found evidence that people consider both types of consequences, people particularly underestimated how much receivers value their feedback, a mechanism not extensively tested in prior research. Specifically, in Experiment 4, two interventions-making feedback-givers consider receivers' perspectives (enhancing consideration of receivers' consequences) or imagine someone else providing feedback (reducing consideration of givers' consequences)both improved givers' recognition of others' desire for feedback compared to no intervention, but the perspective-taking intervention was most effective. Finally, Experiment 5 demonstrates the underestimation during a financially incentivized public-speaking contest and shows that giving less constructive feedback resulted in less improvement in feedback-receivers' performances. Overall, people consistently underestimate others' desire for feedback, with potentially negative consequences for feedback-receivers' outcomes.

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The (better than expected) consequences of asking sensitive questions

Cited by 29 publications

References 49 publications

Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation.

Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation.

How Do You Listen?: The Relationship Between How Men Listen and Women’s Power and Respect in the U.S.

“Just letting you know … ” Underestimating others’ desire for constructive feedback.

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