ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN — A study published Monday in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that people consistently underestimate how interesting and enjoyable small talk conversations will be, even when the topic is one they initially considered boring. Researchers at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations and INSEAD conducted nine experiments involving 1,800 participants to examine the gap between how people expect conversations to go and how they actually experience them.

Participants in the study rated their interest in 10 topics, including sports, movies, artificial intelligence, music, books and fitness. They were then randomly assigned to engage in five-minute conversations about topics they had rated either boring or interesting. In some of the experiments, participants selected the conversation topics themselves rather than having them assigned by researchers.

After the conversations concluded, participants reported how much they enjoyed the exchange, how interesting they found it and whether they wanted to have another conversation. Across all nine experiments, participants underestimated how much they would enjoy conversations on topics they had rated as boring. Participants did not, however, underestimate how much they would enjoy conversations on topics they had rated as interesting, suggesting their predictions were closer to their actual experience when they already expected the discussion to be engaging.

In one experiment, researchers tested whether the format of the exchange mattered. Only live conversations were rated as more enjoyable and interesting than participants had predicted. Reading a transcript of a conversation or observing other people's conversations did not produce the same effect. The disparity indicated that active, real-time participation was a factor in the gap between expectations and actual reported enjoyment.

The research intersects with a broader area of behavioral science focused on the role of everyday social interaction in people's lives. Stav Atir, a behavioral scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has said that social connections are predictors of both mental and physical well-being.