How do you get past small talk?
Most people have sat through an hour of surface talk when both of them would rather have gone deeper. That is not an accident of manners. People are simply wrong about how the deeper version would go, and that has been measured about as thoroughly as anything in this guide.
The finding
Strangers were given either shallow questions or deep ones, like "what is one of the more embarrassing moments in your life?" Beforehand they expected the deep conversations to be awkward. Afterwards they reported less awkwardness than expected, and felt more connected and happier than they had predicted. Allowed to choose, they picked the shallow ones. They chose the conversation they enjoyed less.
Why the error happens
People underestimate how much a stranger will care about what they say.
Telling somebody something real is only awkward if they are indifferent to it. So the private calculation makes sense: they won't care, and I will have said it anyway. The input is simply wrong. Listeners cared considerably more than speakers assumed.
Doing it without it being strange
What this does not claim
Not that deep conversations are always better. The average moved; some were middling. And the participants were strangers who had agreed to be in a study and would never meet again, sitting in front of each other, with their names given to a university.
What happens when it is typed
286 pairs were given either an intimate conversation or small talk, by text or face to face. Going deep beat small talk in both, so the effect survives being typed. But the typing pairs disclosed less, their partner therefore seemed less responsive, and they ended up feeling less close.
One direction of depth is different here. Personal history is fine; identifying detail is not. Where you grew up, what you do, what your face looks like — those are not depth, they are what anonymity is protecting.
Where this comes from
People expect deep conversations with strangers to be awkward. They are consistently less awkward, and leave people feeling more connected and happier, than the people having them predicted.
What the study actually did
A long series of experiments — in laboratories, on university campuses, in public parks, at a management conference and over video — in which strangers discussed either shallow questions or deep ones such as "what is one of the more embarrassing moments in your life?" Participants overestimated the awkwardness of the deep conversations in particular. People who had both kinds felt more connected to the deep partner. Given a choice, they picked the shallow questions anyway. The proposed explanation, tested repeatedly, is that people underestimate how much others care about what they disclose.
What it doesn't show. That deep conversations are always better — the finding is about the average gap between expectation and outcome, not about every case. Participants were strangers who had agreed to be in a study, would not meet again, and in most experiments were sitting in front of each other having given their names to a university. What happens when the same thing is done over text is the next claim, and it is not simply the same result again.
Kardas, M., Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2022). Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(3), 367–398 ·
10.1037/pspa0000281
Over text it still beats small talk — but people give away less of themselves in text, and end up feeling less close than the same conversation in person.
What the study actually did
286 pairs of strangers were given either an intimate conversation — taking turns to disclose something personal and respond to what the other said — or small talk, and had it either by text message or face to face. The intimate conversation produced more connection than small talk, and did so in both media. Comparing the two media, texting lowered how much people disclosed, which lowered how responsive their partner seemed, which lowered how close they felt at the end.
What it doesn't show. That the drop is a property of typing. What was measured is what people did over text, not what text makes impossible. The pairs were assigned by a study rather than chosen off a roster, they were not anonymous to each other, and the conversation was as long as the task made it — none of which is this site.
Leckfor, C. M., Wood, N. R., Slatcher, R. B., & Orehek, E. (2025). Not such fast friends? The effect of intimate conversation on social connection in text-based getting acquainted interactions. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 42(11), 3272–3294 ·
10.1177/02654075251367137
Read from the abstract. We have not read this paper in full, so what is above is what its own summary says and no more. A paper states its sharpest limits in its discussion, and we have not seen them.
