When we tell a novel story, we hope that it will powerfully attract the attention of our audience, but in the end, they have more fun with talks that include anecdotes that are familiar to them . “Conversation is the most common of human social activities, and if we really want to get along, we need to know what our interlocutors want to hear,” says psychologist Daniel T. Gilbert, of Harvard University. In a series of essays published in the journal Psychological Science , Gilbert and his colleagues conclude that “speakers tend to think that listeners like accounts of experiences they have not had more, but our studies suggest just the opposite.”
Gilbert and his team give the following example: “Often times when a friend tells us something about a movie we haven’t seen, we end up confused and overwhelmed. It may even bore us. The truth is that many people find it practically impossible. properly communicate a complex experience . What’s more, when it comes our turn to speak, we do exactly the same thing, which has the same consequences. “
To understand why this occurs, the researchers conducted two experiments. In the first, several groups of three people were formed: one of them was asked to act as a speaker; the other two would be your audience. The idea was for the speaker to describe to them a lecture that they had seen on video before and that some listeners also knew about. The former hoped that his talk would appeal more to those who had not seen the recording, but the opposite happened. Those who did know her were the ones who most valued her experience .
A second trial showed that listeners did the same when trying to anticipate their reactions before hearing the story. They believed that if they did not know her, they would like the talk more, but they were wrong. What is the reason for this? Do speakers narrate things better when their audience knows them? Or is it that he understands them better if they look familiar? In two other works, these psychologists found that between the two options, the second is probably the correct one. In the case of the video to which these studies refer, the public was able to fill in the possible gaps in the story when they knew it, which made everything more entertaining .
“When we relate something we usually leave a lot of relevant information in the pipeline. Our acquaintances would surely like us to describe a picture they do not know, for example, but most of us do not know how to do it well. We try to get them excited, but we do not perceive that In fact, we confuse them. The result is that our interlocutors like to talk more about shared experiences, “says Gilbert.
