There’s nothing more awkward than a conversation that can’t quite come to an end organically.
And it turns out there’s an interesting reason why this happens.
Researchers in the US have analysed thousands of conversations and found that they almost never end at the moment each individual participant wants them to.
Some go a little longer, others way shorter.
The research, published in the journal Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences, says the difference in conversation length can be as long as half a conversation.
“How much communion and connection does the world forgo each day simply because hundreds of millions of people who want to keep talking to each other don’t recognise the fact and so terminate their interactions prematurely,” the paper asks.
“And how many people live lives of quiet desperation simply because they tend to alienate their conversation partners by never quite knowing when it’s time to say goodbye.”
Inorganically prolonged conversations are often a matter of people being too polite to ‘strangers’ or too kind to their ‘close contacts’.
So how do we get to the point?
Paul Dolan, professor of behavioural sciences at the London School of Economics, says managing expectations – by saying you only have 20 minutes to talk for example – could be a way to drive better conversations.
“I think people value that honesty, more than we think they do,” he said.
