The best conversations I had, measured along the “people getting to know each other better” metric, took place when I was using CouchSurfing to host people at my flat, a few years ago. Having a new person every week for a few days made me conscious of recurring social patterns, which in turn stimulated me to be more mindful and proactive about how I spent my time with these guests. My basic approach was to gradually move from impersonal questions, to questions about what the person is or does, to questions about what the person thinks and feels. There is research in social psychology that suggests that humans develop closeness and intimacy through a process of reciprocal and escalating self-disclosure. (See e.g. Aron et al, The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness, Pers Soc Psychol Bull, vol. 23, no. 4 (April, 1997), pp. 363-377.) More generally, thesetwo blog posts on conversation skills contain some valuable advice.
Thanks for the great links! I agree that getting people to feel comfortable is really important for having good conversations. The list of questions in my post is intended to find personal topics that would be of common interest, but I think it’s much more likely to work if the people involved are already feeling comfortable with each other.
Your CouchSurfing experience reminds me of a class at Burning Man where people were split up into pairs, and tried to take the shortest conversational path to getting to know each other. There was a built-in affordance to ask personal questions about feelings though, since everyone was in the class with that purpose. Did you end up developing patterned ways to ask strangers about they thought and felt without it feeling awkward?
It didn’t feel awkward, probably because my approach was sufficiently coarse-grained: I didn’t rely on any specific “lines” or “routines” to artificially generate closeness, but only on the general principle that the conversations should become progressively more personal and intimate.
I wish I could remind myself of the value of this principle more often, however. I often end up having superficial interactions with people I’d like to know better simply because that’s the default way I relate to others. Recently, I started experimenting with Anki, using one side of the card to describe the relevant situation (e.g. “I find myself in the company of someone I’d like to get to know better”), and the other side to describe what I should do in that situation (“I ask questions that are progressively more personal and intimate”).
The best conversations I had, measured along the “people getting to know each other better” metric, took place when I was using CouchSurfing to host people at my flat, a few years ago. Having a new person every week for a few days made me conscious of recurring social patterns, which in turn stimulated me to be more mindful and proactive about how I spent my time with these guests. My basic approach was to gradually move from impersonal questions, to questions about what the person is or does, to questions about what the person thinks and feels. There is research in social psychology that suggests that humans develop closeness and intimacy through a process of reciprocal and escalating self-disclosure. (See e.g. Aron et al, The experimental generation of interpersonal closeness, Pers Soc Psychol Bull, vol. 23, no. 4 (April, 1997), pp. 363-377.) More generally, these two blog posts on conversation skills contain some valuable advice.
Thanks for the great links! I agree that getting people to feel comfortable is really important for having good conversations. The list of questions in my post is intended to find personal topics that would be of common interest, but I think it’s much more likely to work if the people involved are already feeling comfortable with each other.
Your CouchSurfing experience reminds me of a class at Burning Man where people were split up into pairs, and tried to take the shortest conversational path to getting to know each other. There was a built-in affordance to ask personal questions about feelings though, since everyone was in the class with that purpose. Did you end up developing patterned ways to ask strangers about they thought and felt without it feeling awkward?
It didn’t feel awkward, probably because my approach was sufficiently coarse-grained: I didn’t rely on any specific “lines” or “routines” to artificially generate closeness, but only on the general principle that the conversations should become progressively more personal and intimate.
I wish I could remind myself of the value of this principle more often, however. I often end up having superficial interactions with people I’d like to know better simply because that’s the default way I relate to others. Recently, I started experimenting with Anki, using one side of the card to describe the relevant situation (e.g. “I find myself in the company of someone I’d like to get to know better”), and the other side to describe what I should do in that situation (“I ask questions that are progressively more personal and intimate”).