The Science-Backed Reason That Friends Don't Enjoy Your Vacation Stories
Did you just get back from an exotic vacation? Or a thrilling skydiving trip? If you did, chances are you’re excited to tell your friends all about it. But unfortunately, they might not be as excited to listen to you.
According to new research, speakers and listeners have different perceptions of what’s enjoyable. To better understand why this is, researchers from Harvard University and the University of Virginia conducted a series of experiments.
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The experiments involved small group activity and discussion. To assess storytelling ability, participants were separated into groups, which included one speaker and two listeners. All of the speakers watched one of two assigned videos. Some of the listeners were assigned to watch one of the videos, while others went into the discussion without ever seeing it.
The speakers made predications about whether the listeners would find the conversation interesting or not. Upon finishing the talk, the listeners rated how much they enjoyed it by answering questions like, "How interesting did you find the presentation video?" and "How do you feel right now?"
Turns out, each member predicted the opposite. The research shows speakers would much rather tell novel stories that the listeners have never experienced, while the listeners would rather hear familiar stories about experiences they have in common. But, why is this?
The study points to three possible reasons why speakers believe they’re telling novel stories with ease, and listeners would rather hear familiar ones.
First, people are often overconfident about their abilities, prior research shows. In this study, published in Psychological Science, speakers often overestimated how well they understood the information they saw in the videos.
Second, despite situations when the speakers genuinely understood the information they were conveying, they were not taking into account the background knowledge of the listener, therefore it’s difficult for the listener to fill in the gaps.
Lastly, since speakers are rarely criticized for their storytelling ability, they may feel as if they’re doing it with ease, the study authors note.
“People are fairly awful storytellers who leave out a lot of important information,” study author Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University, told Medical XPress.
So, next time you’re telling your friend about your exotic trip, think about all the extra details you should include in order for them to relate.
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