Having conversations with new people is an important and rewarding part of social life. Yet can also be intimidating anxiety provoking, this makes wonder worry about what their conversation partners really think them. Are accurate in estimates? We found that following interactions, systematically underestimated how much liked them enjoyed company, illusion we call the liking gap. observed gap as strangers got acquainted laboratory, first-year college students to know dorm mates, formerly...

People spend a substantial portion of their lives engaged in conversation, and yet, our scientific understanding conversation is still its infancy. Here, we introduce large, novel, multimodal corpus 1656 conversations recorded spoken English. This 7+ million word, 850-hour totals more than 1 terabyte audio, video, transcripts, with moment-to-moment measures vocal, facial, semantic expression, together an extensive survey speakers' postconversation reflections. By taking advantage the...

People seek extraordinary experiences--from drinking rare wines and taking exotic vacations to jumping from airplanes shaking hands with celebrities. But are such experiences worth having? We found that participants thoroughly enjoyed having were superior those had by their peers, but spoiled subsequent social interactions ultimately left them feeling worse than they would have felt if an ordinary experience instead. Participants able predict the benefits of unable costs. These studies...

Significance Social connection is essential to physical and psychological well-being, conversation the primary means by which it achieved. And yet, scientists know little about it—about how starts, unfolds, or ends. Our studies attempted remedy this deficit, their results were surprising: conversations almost never end when anyone wants them to! At a moment in history billions of people have been forced curtail normal social activities reimagine one, scientific understanding could hardly be timelier.

Although people derive substantial benefit from social connection, they often refrain talking to strangers because have pessimistic expectations about how such conversations will go (e.g., believe be rejected or not know what say). Previous research has attempted but failed get realize that their concerns are overblown. To reduce people's fears, we developed an intervention in which participants played a week-long scavenger hunt game involved repeatedly finding, approaching, and strangers....

Our beliefs about how much we are liked tend to be less positive than liking judgments of others, a finding termed the "liking gap." Because past work has studied gaps at sample level, it overlooked important nuances in these can measured and experienced. We introduce distinction between actual gap (i.e., between-person discrepancy others actually like us think us) perceived within-person us). Across three large first-impression samples (Ntotal = 2,753), use condition-based regression...

Our earliest acquired words tend to reference concrete objects that can be seen, heard, touched, and felt. One hallmark of language maturation involves an ‘abstractness shift’ where is used convey intangible mental states, emotions, ideas. Much our understanding the trajectory concreteness in development ends at early adolescence informed by studies comprehension. We investigated effects production across span adulthood with a focus on conversation. tested two competing hypotheses about...

Much of our understanding language processing has been informed by controlled laboratory experiments abstracted from the real world demands naturalistic communication. Interactive use “in wild” involves synchronizing numerous verbal and non-verbal behaviors between interlocutors. Conversation partners synchronize production through modulations rate, amplitude, lexical-semantic complexity, affective tone, many other dimensions. remains to be learned about how measure linguistic alignment in...

People often tell each other stories about their past experiences. But do they the right ones? Speakers and listeners predicted that would enjoy hearing novel (i.e., experiences had never had) more than familiar already had). In fact, enjoyed much ones (Studies 1 2). This did not happen because differed in content or delivery (Study 3). Rather, it happened human speech is riddled with informational gaps, allow to use own knowledge fill those gaps 4). We discuss reasons why are difficult...

People spend a substantial portion of their lives engaged in conversation, and yet our scientific understanding conversation is still its infancy. In this report we advance an interdisciplinary science with findings from large, novel, multimodal corpus 1,656 recorded conversations spoken English. This 7+ million word, 850-hour totals over 1TB audio, video, transcripts, moment-to-moment measures vocal, facial, semantic expression, along extensive survey speakers' post-conversation...

Do those who allocate resources know how much fairness will matter to receive them? Across seven studies, allocators used either a fair or unfair procedure determine which of two receivers would the most money. Allocators consistently overestimated impact that allocation have on happiness (studies 1-3). This happened because differential procedures is more salient before an made than it afterward 4 and 5). Contrary allocators' predictions, average receiver was happier when allocated money by...

After conversations, people continue to think about their conversation partners. They remember stories, revisit advice, and replay criticisms. But do realize that partners are doing the same? In eight studies, we explored possibility would systematically underestimate how much them following interactions. We found evidence for this thought gap in a variety of contexts, including field conversations dining hall (Study 1), "getting acquainted" lab 2), intimate among friends 3), arguments...

People spend a substantial portion of their lives engaged in conversation, and yet our scientific understanding conversation is still its infancy. In this report we advance an interdisciplinary science with findings from large, novel, multimodal corpus 1,656 recorded conversations spoken English. This 7+ million word, 850 hour totals over 1TB audio, video, transcripts, moment-to-moment measures vocal, facial, semantic expression, along extensive survey speaker post reflections. We leverage...

Conversation is the subject of increasing interest in social, cognitive, and computational sciences. And yet, as conversational datasets continue to increase size complexity, researchers lack scalable methods segment speech-to-text transcripts into turns--the basic building blocks social interaction. We introduce "NaturalTurn," a turn segmentation algorithm designed accurately capture dynamics naturalistic exchange. NaturalTurn operates by distinguishing speakers' primary turns from...

Although people derive substantial benefit from social connection, they often refrain talking to strangers because have pessimistic expectations about how such conversations will go (e.g., believe be rejected or not know what say). Previous research has attempted but failed get realize that their concerns are overblown. To reduce people’s fears, we developed an intervention in which participants played a week-long scavenger hunt game involved repeatedly finding, approaching, and strangers....

Much of employees’ professional success and emotional well-being comes from their social interactions in the workplace. Unfortunately, employees sometimes fail to socialize as effectively they could, reducing capital at work limiting potential benefits could gain building strong connections This symposium demonstrates four new ways that maximize value work, additionally suggests a reason why do so: workers have mistaken forecasts regarding interactions. In particular, showcases distinct...

People commonly hold biases about the impact(s) of aging and age differences on communication. For example, many us anticipate challenges in aligning form, content, emotional coloring our conversations with age-different partners. These expectations can turn lead to communication apprehension avoidance preferences that exacerbate a growing intergenerational gap. Our goal was elucidate patterns word use alignment (affective, lexical, semantic) between speakers (N=1359) different ages engaged...