303. The Science of Getting Past Small Talk (And What To Share on Dates) w/ Vanessa Bohns

I am obsessed with advice columns.

I don't know about you, but I-

I basically have one [chuckles] in audio form.

Yeah.

[chuckles]

So, yes, I'm obsessed.

Good point.

Um, so I read them all the time, you know, the Ethicist and Social Cues and just any, you know, magazine advice column.

And there's a couple things that made me want to write this book.

So one is that I started to notice that so many of the questions, I'd say the majority of the questions, were about whether to say something to somebody.

Um, so, you know, it wasn't like people were writing in for advice on, like, how to phrase something delicately.

It was like, "Should I say it at all? Should I tell my friend I got the promotion that she wanted?" Um, you know, "Should I tell my husband about, uh, my ex?" You know? It was all these kinds of...

Th- these were the questions that people really wanted advice on, was like, "Should I say something at all?" And then the other piece is that I am an experimental social psychologist, and so whenever I read advice columns, m- I immediately go to, like, "Okay, what does the research say about this?" And so I wanted to kind of unpack the most common questions people seem to have and look at whether we could use any sort of insights from the research to see if there's, like, broad takeaways to help us answer them.

Wow, your role sounds amazing.

Just experimental social psychologist and like that is so cool.

And yeah, I find this fascinating too.

Again, so glad we're getting into this.

And when I was reading your book, "Should I Say Something?" One of the things that came up is a recent conversation I had with my friends, and we were all talking about what to share if you have problems in a relationship without making everyone else think you are only complaining.

And this is like, it's like you wanna talk with your friends about the struggles 'cause it's just like in your book you happen to see, like, it feels good to share sometimes and disclose things.

But then if you're only sharing negative things, there are some consequences to that.

What do you think about this?

Yeah, that's a great question.

Um, there's, there's some interesting work on, like, co-rumination that I think-

Yeah

... is applicable, where you say something that is bothering you, and, you know, your friends validate you because they're good friends, and they tell you about all the things that they see that confirm what you're saying, and then maybe they talk about, you know, all the things that have happened to them that confirm this interpretation.