New Study Reveals 'The Chat to Improve Your Social Life'
Researchers tested how quick goal-setting conversations influence outcomes of social outings
COLLEGE PARK, Md., May 11, 2018 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Have a first date coming up? Or maybe you're planning an activity with an old friend. Just take a minute at the outset to make sure you're on the same page about what you each hope to get out of the experience. You'll have a better time and you'll be less likely to leave disappointed, according to new research from marketing professor Rebecca Ratner at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.
Ratner studies how people feel when doing things alone and with other people. Her most recent experiments – along with marketing professor Rebecca Hamilton at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and Smith Ph.D. candidates Yuechen Wu and Nicole Kim – tested what happens when two people share a leisure experience. The results are described in a working paper, "Getting the Most from Shared Experiences: Understanding What Your Partner Wants Increases Your Own Ability to Focus on Experience Content and Enjoyment."
The researchers looked at how an experience improves for the participants when they have a quick goal-setting conversation first. But people don't often have those conversations, Ratner says, and they enjoy the experience less because of it. "There's uncertainty. When you are with another person, you don't really know what that person wants to get out of the experience," she says. "People become too worried about how they should act."
Take for example, going to a baseball game with a friend or colleague. If you don't know how interested the other person is in watching the game, you'll sit nine innings worrying about when to be silent or when to initiate conversation, Ratner says.
Ratner and her co-researchers conducted several experiments sending people into art galleries either alone or with a companion to study how well they were able to focus on the art and how much they enjoyed the experience.
When a participant didn't know whether their friend was truly interested in studying the art or was more into casually observing the pieces and chatting for fun, they themselves focused less on the art and socialized less.
"They end up sort of frozen," Ratner says.
A very brief discussion beforehand about what each person wanted to get out of the gallery visit made all the difference: "They each learned more about the art, got more out of the experience overall, and felt better able to socialize," she says.
But in the experiments, when given the option, participants choose not to have an expectation-setting meeting before activities. Ratner says people don't take opportunities to get this clarity because they seem to think the conversation won't help and that it will be uncomfortable – more like work with a goal-setting meeting. In reality, study participants reported the conversation was much less awkward than they feared.
Having that quick conversation benefits both people no matter how well they think they know each other, she says. The effects emerge both when the people are strangers and when they know each other. And having clarity helped even when the partners had different goals.
"It is better for it to be clear that you have different goals than to be not sure whether you have different goals," says Ratner. In some case, you might find you are better off going alone when it's clear that you and your companion are not on the same page, she points out.
Ratner's advice to avoid disappointment and fully enjoy an outing with a companion: Have a quick chat to set expectations. If both parties are on the same page, no one gets disappointed. "You may think it would be awkward to have a discussion about goals, but it's really not," says Ratner. Keep the conversation quick and light-hearted, she suggests, to avoid it feeling like a laborious task.
Visit Smith Brain Trust for related content at http://www.rhsmith.umd.edu/faculty-research/smithbraintrust and follow on Twitter @SmithBrainTrust.
About the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
The Robert H. Smith School of Business is an internationally recognized leader in management education and research. One of 12 colleges and schools at the University of Maryland, College Park, the Smith School offers undergraduate, full-time and part-time MBA, executive MBA, online MBA, specialty masters, PhD and executive education programs, as well as outreach services to the corporate community. The school offers its degree, custom and certification programs in learning locations in North America and Asia.
CONTACT: Greg Muraski, 301-405-5283, [email protected]
SOURCE University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business
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