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I will confess to being a small-talk hater who constantly small talks. If you find me at a bar or playdate or party surrounded by new people, I will invariably be soft-interviewing whoever I’m talking to, asking about where they’re from, where they live now, what they do, and what they think of the weather we’re having.
Does this make me want to gag? Yes. Do I know how to break out of this cycle? Absolutely not.
Don’t get me wrong, I know all the tricks to “deep talk,” and I write about them in my book. I’ve read approximately 400 nonfiction books that are all titled something like TALK TO PEOPLE: THE POWER OF ACTUALLY LEAVING YOUR HOUSE AND ENGAGING WITH ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. I know about the “36 questions that lead to love” (which are actually just 36 questions that a couple of psychologists have found lead to greater emotional intimacy—not love—in lab settings.) I know about Nick Epley’s research. I know you’re supposed to ask strangers “when is the last time you cried?” instead of where their kids go to school.
Yet I cannot bring myself to do any of this. The reason is that what I hate even more than small talk is when people think I’m weird. And when I try to enter “deep talk” territory, people often react very negatively, in a way that makes me want to retreat back to weather-and-vacations-land.
To name just one example, many years ago I was part of a group of early-career science writers covering a scientific conference in California. For whatever reason, they had all of the writers eat their meals together as a group. One night I broke into the dinnertime conversation with, “Do you guys ever think about how we think we’re helping people with our journalism, but we’re actually not?”
There was about a three minute silence that followed, and then everyone suddenly felt very full and tired and excused themselves. (I realize this was basically the Barbie “do you ever think about dying” scene, but I didn’t go on a fun vision quest afterward. I just remained a weird curmudgeon.)
To help me reconcile my impulse to be a dark, brooding Slavic person with my impulse to have people actually like me, I recently spoke with Harvard Business School professor Leslie John about her new book, Revealing, which is all about the power of sharing more in social settings. She explained why it is that we stick to small talk even when we prefer deep talk, and why negative reactions to oversharing—like everyone wrapping up that dinner quickly—might not actually be as bad as we think. She also explained how to overshare in the right way.
An edited excerpt of the conversation is below, but you can find the entire thing in the video above or wherever you get your podcasts.
Olga Khazan: I think I’m a little bit of an over-sharer, and something I think about a lot is, why does it feel risky to share more than just small talk? So when I’m at the playground, my toddler’s playing, I’m talking to other moms, it’s almost always the weather, where our kids are in daycare, when we move to this area, like very, very surfacey stuff. Why does it feel riskier to go beyond that?
Leslie John: Lots of reasons. One of them is that when we do go a little far, say something a little cringy, we get immediate negative social feedback, like someone cringes. And that really hurts, you know, the negative social feedback we get when we go a little bit past the line. And we remember that, right? We live in fear of that. And because we dread that feeling, we tend to censor ourselves. The tricky thing, though, is that someone can have a cringy reaction, but also admire you for it. They can also feel like they trust you more, and those benefits, you don’t get that visceral social feedback in the way you do the negative ones.
Olga: What are some contexts in which it might be wise to share more than we usually do or might be initially inclined to? And I’m thinking specifically about something like the playground or the office or in a friendship or something. Where are places where you find that saying more is valuable?
Leslie: My gut reaction to your question is almost every context. It wasn’t until I wrote the book that I actually internalized the stuff and started using it myself. And so I would just keep practicing and trying out new things and almost everything I did that was revealing went over well. One of them was that there was a acquaintance of my husband’s and we went out for dinner and I was talking to his wife and I thought, “I really like this woman!” Normally wouldn’t say that, but I just said to her, “I really like you,” and now we’re really good friends. In the past I’d be like, “I seem needy.” Now I kind of go, as my grandmother would say, “nutty noodle” with compliments. I praise people. And in academia, that’s super weird.
Olga: I was wondering if we could talk about the risks of over-disclosure, because you have this example in the book of someone who tells an acquaintance, not a close friend, about a situation where there’s only one first-class ticket and two people are flying somewhere, and so she tells her husband, if you give me the first-class ticket, I’ll give you a blowjob later.
And the acquaintance was really put off by this. I don’t know that that would have bothered me that much. I would have been like, “that’s a weird thing to say,” but I wouldn’t have cut that person off. But can you talk a little bit about why that was too much and what is the line between just enough and too much?
Leslie: I think it was too much because it was out of the blue. It was this giant step. And if you think about, especially in new relationships, people are exquisitely sensitive to the kind of disclosure dance you’re doing, the back and forth.
You don’t want to take too big of a step. So you start off making small talk talking about how good the champagne is and then it’s like blowjobs on an airplane. That’s that’s like giant. The rule of thumb there is when you’re with a new acquaintance is to match their level of disclosure or the next level move is to go a little bit deeper. You want to get deeper, but you want to do it together and gradually.
Olga: Why is small talk so boring? If you think about it, it’s mostly what we do. So like, why do we find it so boring?
Leslie: Well, it’s boring because there’s no risk in it. I think what makes talk interesting and deep and meaningful is the risk. And that’s kind of the paradox because with risk comes reward, but risk sucks. But I do think as a behavioral scientist, I know that there are cognitive biases we have that that make us be overly conservative to make us under share. If we go back to this idea of the overreaction to risk of the negative impact of revealing, we feel that viscerally. We live in fear of it. And so then we we never go deeper, and then so we never get practice going further.
The more negatively valent stuff is inherently more risky, it’s inherently more sensitive, but that’s also where the magic is.
Olga: I want to talk about social reappraisal and why it’s so powerful. I saw a demonstration of this just yesterday. I was having kind of a panicky spiral about something, and I have this friend who I call when I’m in a panicky spiral and you know, she’s always like, “think of it this way” or “here’s another way to look at it.” And I find that so soothing. So first of all, maybe define what it is and talk about why it’s so powerful.
Leslie: Social reappraisal is when you say something that’s bothering you and the person you’re talking to helps you think about it in a different way. And that’s really powerful because having someone else say it to you makes it more credible. It gives you perspective. So studies have looked at what is the best thing for your friend to say in response to you. What is the best kind, most helpful kind of social reappraisal?
The number one thing is simply validation. Is simply saying, “that sucks, I hear you.” “That must’ve been so hard.” Those, they seem kind of fluffy and vacuous and woo woo those statements, but my gosh, they’re so effective.
