Everyone can find somebody to practice small talk with. The benefit of conversation practice isn’t contingent upon doing so in quick succession, but accumulation of conversation experience over time. You can increase your skills very rapidly even without access to the condensed conversational environment of fraternity/sorority recruitment. I don’t even recommend participating in that if you can avoid it, since it’s a very stressful experience. But it does make you really good at talking to people.
Go to a bar, people are usually there to talk. Interestingness varies considerably, of course. If you work, make small talk with your coworkers. If you’re in school, say hello to the person sitting next to you. Make a habit of doing this wherever you go. That’s the best way to practice.
I already do that, but don’t become better automatically by doing so. (Plus, they’re engineers who, like me, are generally not neurotypical.)
Seriously, have you ever actually been bad at conversation and tried out your own advice? You’re speaking exactly like someone who’s never had a problem with this and so doesn’t know what barrier such a person has to cross.
Until you can specify an actual procedure you can reasonably expect to work, you’re just telling me to eat cake when I’m low on bread. If I could follow your advice, I wouldn’t need it.
You’re speaking exactly like someone who’s never had a problem with this
You’re speaking exactly like someone who intends to keep their problem. It looks like people are trying to give you some advice, and perhaps they’re not doing great at that right off the bat, but maybe you could help them help you?
Your “conversation” here goes something like this—statement, statement, statement, statement, rhetorical question, statement, most of it with an undercurrent of agression. Here is a concrete suggestion: ask a question. “So you’re saying opening a conversation comes easily to you, can you give me some examples of lines you’ve used?”
Or maybe “Here’s what typically happens to me when I try to start a conversation, can you help me figure out what I’m doing wrong or what I should do differently?”
Sorry, you’re right—I’m speaking out of frustration regarding a) people’s inability to explain (remember my upcoming article), and b) the past instances of let-them-eat-cake sociality advice. Vive-ut-Vivas isn’t the first extrovert to do so here, and she won’t be the last. I will try to be more productive with future replies.
I understand your frustration. I should have made it clear that I wasn’t attempting to help people who are trying to get to the barrier of making small talk in the first place; I was directing my advice to those who are interested in making the transition from small talk to interesting conversation. You’re right that I haven’t been particularly helpful in addressing that first point. I think that with some reflection I might be able to give decent advice on that topic, but that will require more introspection.
I haven’t been particularly helpful in addressing that first point. I think that with some reflection I might be able to give decent advice on that topic, but that will require more introspection.
This might sound weird, but: internet chat rooms (is that what “Second Life” is for nowadays?).
I know chat rooms have a reputation, but I’ve read that they’ve been shown to have potential for actually increasing social skills (I’m searching for the relevant article, but I know I read it in a journal over a year ago).
But, you have to be proactive about it. And of course discerning. a. You have to find the right venue
a.1. chat rooms have a reputation for a reason
a.2. you need to go to a venue where everyone is not there to talk about what you typically talk about. b. You have to be conscious about what you are doing: b.1. not talking to people who are into what you are into (somewhat redundant to a.2.)
b.2 you have to be self-aware of the process...what is working, what isn’t
b.3. you have to try to step out of your “comfort zone” in order to learn new approaches, new social skills, as it were
The thing is, people are there to talk...so, seek out those people, and talk.
His most obvious faux pas, if that was Chat Roulette, was not immediately exposing himself—conversants on that forum tend to become suspicious if the expected visual greeting is not performed.
No worries, I was just amused. I’ve chatted on Omegle before. I have actually kept in contact with a couple people, including a young lady from Portugal who sent me YouTube videos of her grandmother and her singing old folk songs.
I’m very late to this party, but just in case: to a mundane, “what ho” doesn’t look like a casual, old-timey greeting, it looks like a typo for “what a ho”. Maybe that’s what went wrong here.
Of course not, with that attitude! ;) I certainly don’t know enough about you to advise you on how you may be sending people the wrong signals in conversation. Do you have any friends that are good conversationalists? Take them with you. That’s actually how I learned! “Shadowing” a popular friend is a great way to pick up conversation skill. I’m sure you know someone who’s good at this, since popular people, by definition, know lots of people!
Seriously, have you ever actually been bad at conversation and tried out your own advice? You’re speaking exactly like someone who’s never had a problem with this and so doesn’t know what barrier such a person has to cross.
Not sure I’ve ever been “bad” at conversation, but I—like everybody else! - have had to work on improving it by practice.
Anyway, I fear we’ve drifted a bit from my original point, which was directed towards people who want to talk to other people in a situation where both parties are already willing to talk. Advising on how to talk to people who aren’t interested in conversation off the bat will require more thought on my part.
I think that one of your main problems may be that you’re thinking of conversation as something it isn’t. There is no procedure for success. Genuine conversation is procedure-less (or at least practically so. I guess with sufficient processing power and knowledge of all the hundreds of variables you could replicate it, but I think such a feat would be beyond the abilities of the conscious mind).
I used to be extremely introverted. I found talking to people I didn’t know very awkward. Even moderate acquaintances were tricky. Then I went to university and made some new friends. Went out. And then just decided to talk to people. Alcohol helped. A lot. Now I am what many would call extroverted, though I still feel, in many ways, like an introvert pretending to be an extrovert.
I don’t think there is really such a thing as introverted and extroverted people at all. People are encouraged to think of these things as part of their “essential character” (TM) - or even their biology. And in some medical cases, this is obviously true (such as in autism).
But for most people, it’s not a lack of ability, it’s a lack of will. People think about worst case scenarios. They think about (as you mention somewhere else in these comments) weirding out a load of people. And maybe you would. But the key, I think, is then to disregard your fear and just talk anyway.
The idea of an extroverted social animal who feels no fear is a false ideal, I think. Everyone will have jokes that fail, everyone has conversations that, the moment they start, you know that this person is really not for you at all. What the “extrovert” does that is different is simply to keep talking anyway.
I obviously don’t know about your life, so cannot say anything truly accurate about it. However, from what I see in your posts, I would say than your problem is not ineloquence, but fear of failure.
To be pithy: “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.”
And like I say above, try not to think of it as a procedure or algorithm. Perhaps try what I did: don’t try to be an extrovert, but rather think of it as pretending to be one.
I think that one of your main problems may be that you’re thinking of conversation as something it isn’t. There is no procedure for success.
You can’t create a procedure that maps out every branch in a conversation tree, no. But I think you are underestimating the ritualization and standardization of social activity. There really are patterns in how people do things. There are considerable norms, rules, and constraints. People who are intuitively social (whether they became that way earlier or later in life) may have trouble articulating these patterns.
Within these constraints, there are infinite ways to behave, and you can be as spontaneous as you want. Intuitively social people experience social interaction to be natural and spontaneous because their intuitions keep them within those constraints.
Conversation is “procedureless” in the same sense that musical improvisation is “procedureless.” You can’t map out the rules for improvisation in advance. But there are some chords that work well (or badly) after others that you can know in advance. You can know whether you are in a major or minor key, and if you have the concept of major/minor mode and key, then it will funnel your spontaneity in a direction that will create a harmonious result.
In contrast, a socially unskilled person is like someone improvising with concepts such as “mode” and “key.” Their results are practically guaranteed to violate the constraints of what we consider to be good music. This of what happens when an untrained person plinks away at a piano.
While both conversation and musical improvisation are procedureless, there are procedures for learning those things. Musicians practice scales and etudes. Applying the same kind of process to learning social interaction is looked on as strange, because of the false expectation that people should be able to learn it naturally (even if the reason they haven’t is because they were locked out of social interaction for years due to bullying and exclusion that was no fault of their own).
I don’t think there is really such a thing as introverted and extroverted people at all. People are encouraged to think of these things as part of their “essential character” (TM) - or even their biology. And in some medical cases, this is obviously true (such as in autism).
Actually, introversation is a component of temperament that does seem to have a biological basis.
But for most people, it’s not a lack of ability, it’s a lack of will.
I agree that for most people with low social skills probably aren’t biologically determined to be quite so bad at socializing. Even though people have different levels of potential due to biology, most people probably don’t come anywhere near meeting their potential. But the problem isn’t really their will; it’s their social development and the associations that they have developed with social interaction.
Someone’s present-day social skills are due to an interaction of biological and environmental factors. Temperament on its own generally doesn’t determine social skills; instead, their temperament influences social experiences, which determine what level of social skills are learned. In the case of people with low social skills and different temperaments (e.g. introversion), these people generally got that way because their temperament made them “get off on the wrong foot” with their peers socially, often resulting in bullying, exclusion, or abuse. In another peer environment, even an introverted individual could develop social skills just fine.
The idea of an extroverted social animal who feels no fear is a false ideal, I think.
Actually, there are pretty large individual differences in susceptibility to anxiety. People with lower “anxiety threshold” (i.e. it takes less to make them anxious) really do have things harder. I managed to conquer anxiety at the level of social phobia, but to do I had to recognize certain challenges (and advantages) that my temperament gave me, and learned to cope with them.
To be pithy: “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.”
This works for some people once they have certain prerequisites for learning from their attempts at socializing. The trick is to get them to those prerequisites.
Certainly there are patterns in social interaction.
However, I think that if you go into social interaction aware of these patterns and meaning to act on them, then this very awareness will in fact ruin your social interaction, because one of the rules of genuine social interaction is that it’s free flowing and natural-feeling. If you treat it like a formula, you’ll break it.
However, I think that in this case it isn’t needed. It seems clear that following a conversation by rules and algorithms will be unable to replicate genuine conversation. Very little of a conversation is about what is actually said. You have to read body language, you have to read into what isn’t said, you have to use intuition because you read these things unconsciously, not consciously.
I can’t be bothered to find it at the moment—or in the foreseeable future—because this topic just doesn’t mean hours of time to me, but I do recall studies in which people’s ability to register body language consciously was compared to our ability to read it by intuition, sub-consciously. The results were something like this: the conscious mind could only spot 2 or 3 body language signs, whereas the unconscious mind was able to pick up on up to 15.
You seem to be denying the possibility of teaching anyone to be better at conversation by explaining various norms, rules and constraints to them and getting them to practice while consciously attending to this information, at least initially.
I don’t think anyone would deny that the ultimate aim of any such instruction would be for the student to internalize the rules to an extent that they were applied largely unconsciously and automatically—most skills make this progression as they are developed. However I’ve seen plenty of people claim that instruction of this kind can be effective at improving conversational skills for people who are not able to ‘just do it’ as you seem to advise. Convincing evidence to the contrary would help save people from fruitless expenditure of time, money and effort trying to develop conversational skills if you were able to provide it.
I think the idea of learning conversational social norms and so forth by practice/instruction is a very different issue to consciously using a decision procedure to dictate your conversation.
The instruction you describe is pretty much a description of what most people experience growing up, through a combination of what their parents teach them and experience/trial and error.
This is not the same thing as standing next to someone and going through a mental flow chart, or list of “dos and don’ts” every time it’s your turn to say something.
The former is genuinely learning conversation, the latter is trying to fake it.
I think the idea of learning conversational social norms and so forth by practice/instruction is a very different issue to consciously using a decision procedure to dictate your conversation.
I’m not sure of this distinction. Why can’t a conscious decision procedure be an element of instruction?
The former is genuinely learning conversation, the latter is trying to fake it.
Conscious decision procedures are a time-honored teaching tool in domains with similar features to social skills: music, sports, and dance. Look at musical or athletic exercises, and dance routines. Why does applying the same heuristics to learning social skills attract disdain?
I think we agree that beginners who are making most of their choices at a conscious level will often produce clunky results. The cause that I am making is that a lot of cognitive systemizing about social interaction can be a valid and productive learning tool to many people. Clunky results can be better than no results, and pave the way to learning how to socialize without so much conscious processing.
In many domains (e.g. music and dance), there is a time-tested process of consciously breaking down knowledge into component pieces, and teaching them to the student at a conscious level. Over time, the student stops needing to consciously attend to that knowledge, and it becomes encoded in intuitions and muscle-memory. See the four stages of competence:
The instruction you describe is pretty much a description of what most people experience growing up, through a combination of what their parents teach them and experience/trial and error.
HughRistik was discussing the possibility of helping people to develop these sorts of skills who for whatever reason failed to acquire them when growing up. Many people claim that explicit instruction can be a valuable tool in developing such skills later in life. If true this is a lot more useful to people suffering from this problem than your ‘advice’.
The former is genuinely learning conversation, the latter is trying to fake it.
To riff on HughRistik’s music analogy, is a guitar player ‘trying to fake it’ by practicing scales and chords and learning musical theory before they have mastered improvisation?
You’re missing my point somewhat. I’m not saying you can’t get better at conversation. Nor am I saying that there aren’t tips/instruction you can give. On this very page you see me do so here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2co/how_to_always_have_interesting_conversations/2a1j?c=1 Further, I just said above that this is exactly how people normally develop their conversational abilities.
My point is simply that decision procedures/algorithms are not the way to go, because they will not produce natural sounding conversation. In fact, using them to teach someone conversation would be counter-productive, because it would give them a false idea of what conversation is like. It represents conversation as mechanical, and if a person approaches a conversation as if it were mechanical then they will not succeed in having a genuine conversation.
My point is simply that decision procedures/algorithms are not the way to go, because they will not produce natural sounding conversation.
And matt and I are asking, what makes you so sure of this? Have you tried this approach? Have you watched other people try it?
My point is simply that decision procedures/algorithms are not the way to go, because they will not produce natural sounding conversation.
In the short term, no. Matt and I agree with you here. But remember, many socially-unskilled people already can’t produce natural sounding conversation. They are wracked with indecision and “analysis paralysis” because they have no way to select a way to behave merely through their intuitions. People experiencing anxiety-provoking analysis paralysis can’t produce natural sounding conversation. Giving them something to say and a set of algorithms or rules can cut down on the amount of analysis they are normally doing, and allow them to make progress.
In fact, using them to teach someone conversation would be counter-productive, because it would give them a false idea of what conversation is like. It represents conversation as mechanical, and if a person approaches a conversation as if it were mechanical then they will not succeed in having a genuine conversation.
Again, I agree, but these problems are actually better than what a lot of socially unskilled people are currently facing. In conversations, they immediately put their feet in their mouths, or they get analysis paralysis and fade into the background. Either way, they don’t learn anything, because they are either getting negative feedback, or no feedback at all.
For many people, being able to have mechanical conversations is actually a better starting point for learning natural conversation, than the alternatives of “instant foot-in-mouth” or “analysis paralysis.” Being able to get into conversations and have exchanges with people, even at a clunky level, gives you valuable social experience to fuel a more intuitive and spontaneous set of social skills.
Once you get your foot into the door of social interaction, and get responses and feedback from people, then you can start learning on an implicit unconscious level via operant conditioning. Decision procedures and algorithms can be excellent ways to get people to the place where real learning can begin.
Strangely, it actually works pretty well to algorithmically learn a clunky level of social skills to get your foot in the door, gain implicit social knowledge from operant conditioning, and then forget or diminish your reliance on algorithms (there are even algorithms to help you get rid of your old algorithms). I’ve gone through this process and watched a bunch of people do the same. It really does work, and creates results that are pretty indistinguishable from normally socialized people.
It’s seems our main area of disagreement is over whether certain teaching procedures and certain ways of practicing / developing conversational skills can be effective, namely those that frame the issue in more of a rules based / procedural style. I don’t think anyone is claiming that you can simply learn these rules or procedures and you’re done—apply them and be an instant master conversationalist. The claim is merely that these can be an effective means for people who have failed to develop these skills by the ‘normal’ means to become more competent conversationalists.
I don’t have much direct experience in this area and it appears you don’t either so perhaps we should let the discussion rest at this point. I’m still more inclined to believe the reports of people who claim that they have observed these techniques working successfully than the dismissals from people who think they can’t possibly work but settling the issue would require further evidence that I don’t think either of us can provide.
I must confess, I don’t find your advice helpful either.
Whether or not there is a “procedure” for conversation, there a good ways to do it, and bad ways to do it. People can certainly handle it naturally, but that doesn’t tell anything to the non-naturals about how to do it. If you actually find it to be procedureless, this means you’re already a natural and only have Level 1 understanding, and so are unable to articulate where other’s shortcomings are so that they can bridge the gap to reach your skill.
See HughRistik’s great article and in particular this comment about how much of your own knowledge you can be unaware of if you’ve never been without it.
“Try, try again” is insufficient to improve. You can try forever without improvement if you can’t recognize what you were doing right, and what you weren’t. This information doesn’t spontaneously unfold from your DNA as a result of being in social situations. And (see below), I have indeed tried again and again and again (edit: sentence wasn’t completed in original comment).
I’ve already done exactly what you suggest, going out, and drinking, and benefitting form the lower inhibitions to talking that come with alcohol. I’ve done this quite a bit, but I’ve never seen any of the skill carry over to when I’m not intoxicated. Furthermore, I’ve pretended to be an extrovert, but it really makes no difference from the inside or on the outside: it doesn’t automagically allow me to make conversation where I otherwise wouldn’t.
Whatever problems I might have, fear of failure is not among them. It is, at most, fear of that failure cascading into very damaging personal consequences. And given my personal experience, these fears are extremely well-grounded. Nevertheless, I quite often go out to socialize and join groups, actively participate in them, and—suprise surprise—I do fail to form relationships or improve social skills, and I fail quite often, to the point where it’s no longer a big deal.
I hate to be such a nannering nabob of negativity, but most of what I hear really is ignorant of the problems people like me might actually face, because the advice giver can’t conceive of being in that state. I appreciate you trying to help, but, despite your claim to have been an introvert, you advice really sounds like you have not actually been in a position that’s informative about this issue, as that would allow you to say more specifically what one has to do to cross the barrier.
I can teach people calculus and trigonometry. I can say a lot more than just, “try, don’t be afraid of failure, and show some willpower”. Why can’t you?
The choice of setting matters a great deal, and a bar is comparatively difficult. As an introvert who had a similar issue starting conversations myself (though I think to a lesser degree), I’ve found a setting which is much easier: dances, specifically Contra dance but probably any style which has a norm of changing partner after each dance. In that setting, you’re repeatedly forced to initiate conversations with women, on a hard deadline, or else you’ll have to sit out; but those conversations are short, follow extremely predictable paths, and have no bad outcomes (rejections normally come from a standard list of status-neutral answers). There will typically also be breaks and an afterparty for longer conversations, but if your goal is just to get over difficulty in approaching people and initiating conversations, those are optional.
‘Do you want to dance?’ Isn’t much of a conversation.
You can even ask keep the whole process entirely nonverbal by making eye contact and asking for the hand of the girl by offering your own hand.
Loud music also makes it harder to have a good conversation.
This varies by dance style and local custom, but in contra, there are a few minutes of silence for setup and pairing between songs during which there is no music to talk over, and smalltalk is expected.
I’m not sure this is perfect advice. For one thing, speaking as a person who enjoys conversation, it can often be deeply uncomfortable when a random stranger tries to start a conversation. I made accidental eye-contact with someone on the subway today and then had to have a conversation about the weather which interrupted mildly productive thoughts.
I agree that in the contexts of school and work this sort of thing might be acceptable. One has to think about the fact that the very worst that happens is that the person indicates they don’t want to talk.
One thing I do use as a conversation starter is if someone is holding a book that I’ve read (in which case I’ll comment) or a book I have not read (in which case I’ll inquire about it).
Everyone can find somebody to practice small talk with. The benefit of conversation practice isn’t contingent upon doing so in quick succession, but accumulation of conversation experience over time. You can increase your skills very rapidly even without access to the condensed conversational environment of fraternity/sorority recruitment. I don’t even recommend participating in that if you can avoid it, since it’s a very stressful experience. But it does make you really good at talking to people.
Go to a bar, people are usually there to talk. Interestingness varies considerably, of course. If you work, make small talk with your coworkers. If you’re in school, say hello to the person sitting next to you. Make a habit of doing this wherever you go. That’s the best way to practice.
Not to me, they aren’t.
I already do that, but don’t become better automatically by doing so. (Plus, they’re engineers who, like me, are generally not neurotypical.)
Seriously, have you ever actually been bad at conversation and tried out your own advice? You’re speaking exactly like someone who’s never had a problem with this and so doesn’t know what barrier such a person has to cross.
Until you can specify an actual procedure you can reasonably expect to work, you’re just telling me to eat cake when I’m low on bread. If I could follow your advice, I wouldn’t need it.
You’re speaking exactly like someone who intends to keep their problem. It looks like people are trying to give you some advice, and perhaps they’re not doing great at that right off the bat, but maybe you could help them help you?
Your “conversation” here goes something like this—statement, statement, statement, statement, rhetorical question, statement, most of it with an undercurrent of agression. Here is a concrete suggestion: ask a question. “So you’re saying opening a conversation comes easily to you, can you give me some examples of lines you’ve used?”
Or maybe “Here’s what typically happens to me when I try to start a conversation, can you help me figure out what I’m doing wrong or what I should do differently?”
Sorry, you’re right—I’m speaking out of frustration regarding a) people’s inability to explain (remember my upcoming article), and b) the past instances of let-them-eat-cake sociality advice. Vive-ut-Vivas isn’t the first extrovert to do so here, and she won’t be the last. I will try to be more productive with future replies.
I understand your frustration. I should have made it clear that I wasn’t attempting to help people who are trying to get to the barrier of making small talk in the first place; I was directing my advice to those who are interested in making the transition from small talk to interesting conversation. You’re right that I haven’t been particularly helpful in addressing that first point. I think that with some reflection I might be able to give decent advice on that topic, but that will require more introspection.
I appreciate your saying this very much.
This might sound weird, but: internet chat rooms (is that what “Second Life” is for nowadays?). I know chat rooms have a reputation, but I’ve read that they’ve been shown to have potential for actually increasing social skills (I’m searching for the relevant article, but I know I read it in a journal over a year ago).
But, you have to be proactive about it. And of course discerning.
a. You have to find the right venue a.1. chat rooms have a reputation for a reason a.2. you need to go to a venue where everyone is not there to talk about what you typically talk about.
b. You have to be conscious about what you are doing:
b.1. not talking to people who are into what you are into (somewhat redundant to a.2.) b.2 you have to be self-aware of the process...what is working, what isn’t b.3. you have to try to step out of your “comfort zone” in order to learn new approaches, new social skills, as it were
The thing is, people are there to talk...so, seek out those people, and talk.
I’m not saying it’s “easy”...it’s just one idea.
Simpler even than an internet chat room are Omegle (text chat with a random stranger) and Chat Roulette (video chat with a random stranger).
Just one social blunder after another.
You’re there to talk, they’re there to talk, you say hi, and they disconnect. Where is the “blunder” and who is making it?
His most obvious faux pas, if that was Chat Roulette, was not immediately exposing himself—conversants on that forum tend to become suspicious if the expected visual greeting is not performed.
No worries, I was just amused. I’ve chatted on Omegle before. I have actually kept in contact with a couple people, including a young lady from Portugal who sent me YouTube videos of her grandmother and her singing old folk songs.
I’m very late to this party, but just in case: to a mundane, “what ho” doesn’t look like a casual, old-timey greeting, it looks like a typo for “what a ho”. Maybe that’s what went wrong here.
Of course not, with that attitude! ;) I certainly don’t know enough about you to advise you on how you may be sending people the wrong signals in conversation. Do you have any friends that are good conversationalists? Take them with you. That’s actually how I learned! “Shadowing” a popular friend is a great way to pick up conversation skill. I’m sure you know someone who’s good at this, since popular people, by definition, know lots of people!
Not sure I’ve ever been “bad” at conversation, but I—like everybody else! - have had to work on improving it by practice.
Anyway, I fear we’ve drifted a bit from my original point, which was directed towards people who want to talk to other people in a situation where both parties are already willing to talk. Advising on how to talk to people who aren’t interested in conversation off the bat will require more thought on my part.
ETA: Hit “comment” too early.
I think that one of your main problems may be that you’re thinking of conversation as something it isn’t. There is no procedure for success. Genuine conversation is procedure-less (or at least practically so. I guess with sufficient processing power and knowledge of all the hundreds of variables you could replicate it, but I think such a feat would be beyond the abilities of the conscious mind).
I used to be extremely introverted. I found talking to people I didn’t know very awkward. Even moderate acquaintances were tricky. Then I went to university and made some new friends. Went out. And then just decided to talk to people. Alcohol helped. A lot. Now I am what many would call extroverted, though I still feel, in many ways, like an introvert pretending to be an extrovert.
I don’t think there is really such a thing as introverted and extroverted people at all. People are encouraged to think of these things as part of their “essential character” (TM) - or even their biology. And in some medical cases, this is obviously true (such as in autism).
But for most people, it’s not a lack of ability, it’s a lack of will. People think about worst case scenarios. They think about (as you mention somewhere else in these comments) weirding out a load of people. And maybe you would. But the key, I think, is then to disregard your fear and just talk anyway.
The idea of an extroverted social animal who feels no fear is a false ideal, I think. Everyone will have jokes that fail, everyone has conversations that, the moment they start, you know that this person is really not for you at all. What the “extrovert” does that is different is simply to keep talking anyway.
I obviously don’t know about your life, so cannot say anything truly accurate about it. However, from what I see in your posts, I would say than your problem is not ineloquence, but fear of failure.
To be pithy: “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.”
And like I say above, try not to think of it as a procedure or algorithm. Perhaps try what I did: don’t try to be an extrovert, but rather think of it as pretending to be one.
You can’t create a procedure that maps out every branch in a conversation tree, no. But I think you are underestimating the ritualization and standardization of social activity. There really are patterns in how people do things. There are considerable norms, rules, and constraints. People who are intuitively social (whether they became that way earlier or later in life) may have trouble articulating these patterns.
Within these constraints, there are infinite ways to behave, and you can be as spontaneous as you want. Intuitively social people experience social interaction to be natural and spontaneous because their intuitions keep them within those constraints.
Conversation is “procedureless” in the same sense that musical improvisation is “procedureless.” You can’t map out the rules for improvisation in advance. But there are some chords that work well (or badly) after others that you can know in advance. You can know whether you are in a major or minor key, and if you have the concept of major/minor mode and key, then it will funnel your spontaneity in a direction that will create a harmonious result.
In contrast, a socially unskilled person is like someone improvising with concepts such as “mode” and “key.” Their results are practically guaranteed to violate the constraints of what we consider to be good music. This of what happens when an untrained person plinks away at a piano.
While both conversation and musical improvisation are procedureless, there are procedures for learning those things. Musicians practice scales and etudes. Applying the same kind of process to learning social interaction is looked on as strange, because of the false expectation that people should be able to learn it naturally (even if the reason they haven’t is because they were locked out of social interaction for years due to bullying and exclusion that was no fault of their own).
Actually, introversation is a component of temperament that does seem to have a biological basis.
I agree that for most people with low social skills probably aren’t biologically determined to be quite so bad at socializing. Even though people have different levels of potential due to biology, most people probably don’t come anywhere near meeting their potential. But the problem isn’t really their will; it’s their social development and the associations that they have developed with social interaction.
Someone’s present-day social skills are due to an interaction of biological and environmental factors. Temperament on its own generally doesn’t determine social skills; instead, their temperament influences social experiences, which determine what level of social skills are learned. In the case of people with low social skills and different temperaments (e.g. introversion), these people generally got that way because their temperament made them “get off on the wrong foot” with their peers socially, often resulting in bullying, exclusion, or abuse. In another peer environment, even an introverted individual could develop social skills just fine.
Actually, there are pretty large individual differences in susceptibility to anxiety. People with lower “anxiety threshold” (i.e. it takes less to make them anxious) really do have things harder. I managed to conquer anxiety at the level of social phobia, but to do I had to recognize certain challenges (and advantages) that my temperament gave me, and learned to cope with them.
This works for some people once they have certain prerequisites for learning from their attempts at socializing. The trick is to get them to those prerequisites.
Certainly there are patterns in social interaction.
However, I think that if you go into social interaction aware of these patterns and meaning to act on them, then this very awareness will in fact ruin your social interaction, because one of the rules of genuine social interaction is that it’s free flowing and natural-feeling. If you treat it like a formula, you’ll break it.
What evidence do you have for your theory?
Which bit of it?
The second paragraph.
I assume you mean of my reply to HughRistik.
No statistical data, if that’s what you want.
However, I think that in this case it isn’t needed. It seems clear that following a conversation by rules and algorithms will be unable to replicate genuine conversation. Very little of a conversation is about what is actually said. You have to read body language, you have to read into what isn’t said, you have to use intuition because you read these things unconsciously, not consciously.
I can’t be bothered to find it at the moment—or in the foreseeable future—because this topic just doesn’t mean hours of time to me, but I do recall studies in which people’s ability to register body language consciously was compared to our ability to read it by intuition, sub-consciously. The results were something like this: the conscious mind could only spot 2 or 3 body language signs, whereas the unconscious mind was able to pick up on up to 15.
You seem to be denying the possibility of teaching anyone to be better at conversation by explaining various norms, rules and constraints to them and getting them to practice while consciously attending to this information, at least initially.
I don’t think anyone would deny that the ultimate aim of any such instruction would be for the student to internalize the rules to an extent that they were applied largely unconsciously and automatically—most skills make this progression as they are developed. However I’ve seen plenty of people claim that instruction of this kind can be effective at improving conversational skills for people who are not able to ‘just do it’ as you seem to advise. Convincing evidence to the contrary would help save people from fruitless expenditure of time, money and effort trying to develop conversational skills if you were able to provide it.
I think the idea of learning conversational social norms and so forth by practice/instruction is a very different issue to consciously using a decision procedure to dictate your conversation.
The instruction you describe is pretty much a description of what most people experience growing up, through a combination of what their parents teach them and experience/trial and error.
This is not the same thing as standing next to someone and going through a mental flow chart, or list of “dos and don’ts” every time it’s your turn to say something.
The former is genuinely learning conversation, the latter is trying to fake it.
I’m not sure of this distinction. Why can’t a conscious decision procedure be an element of instruction?
Conscious decision procedures are a time-honored teaching tool in domains with similar features to social skills: music, sports, and dance. Look at musical or athletic exercises, and dance routines. Why does applying the same heuristics to learning social skills attract disdain?
I think we agree that beginners who are making most of their choices at a conscious level will often produce clunky results. The cause that I am making is that a lot of cognitive systemizing about social interaction can be a valid and productive learning tool to many people. Clunky results can be better than no results, and pave the way to learning how to socialize without so much conscious processing.
In many domains (e.g. music and dance), there is a time-tested process of consciously breaking down knowledge into component pieces, and teaching them to the student at a conscious level. Over time, the student stops needing to consciously attend to that knowledge, and it becomes encoded in intuitions and muscle-memory. See the four stages of competence:
unconscious incompetence
conscious incompetence
conscious competence
unconscious competence
HughRistik was discussing the possibility of helping people to develop these sorts of skills who for whatever reason failed to acquire them when growing up. Many people claim that explicit instruction can be a valuable tool in developing such skills later in life. If true this is a lot more useful to people suffering from this problem than your ‘advice’.
To riff on HughRistik’s music analogy, is a guitar player ‘trying to fake it’ by practicing scales and chords and learning musical theory before they have mastered improvisation?
You’re missing my point somewhat. I’m not saying you can’t get better at conversation. Nor am I saying that there aren’t tips/instruction you can give. On this very page you see me do so here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2co/how_to_always_have_interesting_conversations/2a1j?c=1 Further, I just said above that this is exactly how people normally develop their conversational abilities.
My point is simply that decision procedures/algorithms are not the way to go, because they will not produce natural sounding conversation. In fact, using them to teach someone conversation would be counter-productive, because it would give them a false idea of what conversation is like. It represents conversation as mechanical, and if a person approaches a conversation as if it were mechanical then they will not succeed in having a genuine conversation.
And matt and I are asking, what makes you so sure of this? Have you tried this approach? Have you watched other people try it?
In the short term, no. Matt and I agree with you here. But remember, many socially-unskilled people already can’t produce natural sounding conversation. They are wracked with indecision and “analysis paralysis” because they have no way to select a way to behave merely through their intuitions. People experiencing anxiety-provoking analysis paralysis can’t produce natural sounding conversation. Giving them something to say and a set of algorithms or rules can cut down on the amount of analysis they are normally doing, and allow them to make progress.
Again, I agree, but these problems are actually better than what a lot of socially unskilled people are currently facing. In conversations, they immediately put their feet in their mouths, or they get analysis paralysis and fade into the background. Either way, they don’t learn anything, because they are either getting negative feedback, or no feedback at all.
For many people, being able to have mechanical conversations is actually a better starting point for learning natural conversation, than the alternatives of “instant foot-in-mouth” or “analysis paralysis.” Being able to get into conversations and have exchanges with people, even at a clunky level, gives you valuable social experience to fuel a more intuitive and spontaneous set of social skills.
Once you get your foot into the door of social interaction, and get responses and feedback from people, then you can start learning on an implicit unconscious level via operant conditioning. Decision procedures and algorithms can be excellent ways to get people to the place where real learning can begin.
Strangely, it actually works pretty well to algorithmically learn a clunky level of social skills to get your foot in the door, gain implicit social knowledge from operant conditioning, and then forget or diminish your reliance on algorithms (there are even algorithms to help you get rid of your old algorithms). I’ve gone through this process and watched a bunch of people do the same. It really does work, and creates results that are pretty indistinguishable from normally socialized people.
It’s seems our main area of disagreement is over whether certain teaching procedures and certain ways of practicing / developing conversational skills can be effective, namely those that frame the issue in more of a rules based / procedural style. I don’t think anyone is claiming that you can simply learn these rules or procedures and you’re done—apply them and be an instant master conversationalist. The claim is merely that these can be an effective means for people who have failed to develop these skills by the ‘normal’ means to become more competent conversationalists.
I don’t have much direct experience in this area and it appears you don’t either so perhaps we should let the discussion rest at this point. I’m still more inclined to believe the reports of people who claim that they have observed these techniques working successfully than the dismissals from people who think they can’t possibly work but settling the issue would require further evidence that I don’t think either of us can provide.
I must confess, I don’t find your advice helpful either.
Whether or not there is a “procedure” for conversation, there a good ways to do it, and bad ways to do it. People can certainly handle it naturally, but that doesn’t tell anything to the non-naturals about how to do it. If you actually find it to be procedureless, this means you’re already a natural and only have Level 1 understanding, and so are unable to articulate where other’s shortcomings are so that they can bridge the gap to reach your skill.
See HughRistik’s great article and in particular this comment about how much of your own knowledge you can be unaware of if you’ve never been without it.
“Try, try again” is insufficient to improve. You can try forever without improvement if you can’t recognize what you were doing right, and what you weren’t. This information doesn’t spontaneously unfold from your DNA as a result of being in social situations. And (see below), I have indeed tried again and again and again (edit: sentence wasn’t completed in original comment).
I’ve already done exactly what you suggest, going out, and drinking, and benefitting form the lower inhibitions to talking that come with alcohol. I’ve done this quite a bit, but I’ve never seen any of the skill carry over to when I’m not intoxicated. Furthermore, I’ve pretended to be an extrovert, but it really makes no difference from the inside or on the outside: it doesn’t automagically allow me to make conversation where I otherwise wouldn’t.
Whatever problems I might have, fear of failure is not among them. It is, at most, fear of that failure cascading into very damaging personal consequences. And given my personal experience, these fears are extremely well-grounded. Nevertheless, I quite often go out to socialize and join groups, actively participate in them, and—suprise surprise—I do fail to form relationships or improve social skills, and I fail quite often, to the point where it’s no longer a big deal.
I hate to be such a nannering nabob of negativity, but most of what I hear really is ignorant of the problems people like me might actually face, because the advice giver can’t conceive of being in that state. I appreciate you trying to help, but, despite your claim to have been an introvert, you advice really sounds like you have not actually been in a position that’s informative about this issue, as that would allow you to say more specifically what one has to do to cross the barrier.
I can teach people calculus and trigonometry. I can say a lot more than just, “try, don’t be afraid of failure, and show some willpower”. Why can’t you?
The choice of setting matters a great deal, and a bar is comparatively difficult. As an introvert who had a similar issue starting conversations myself (though I think to a lesser degree), I’ve found a setting which is much easier: dances, specifically Contra dance but probably any style which has a norm of changing partner after each dance. In that setting, you’re repeatedly forced to initiate conversations with women, on a hard deadline, or else you’ll have to sit out; but those conversations are short, follow extremely predictable paths, and have no bad outcomes (rejections normally come from a standard list of status-neutral answers). There will typically also be breaks and an afterparty for longer conversations, but if your goal is just to get over difficulty in approaching people and initiating conversations, those are optional.
‘Do you want to dance?’ Isn’t much of a conversation. You can even ask keep the whole process entirely nonverbal by making eye contact and asking for the hand of the girl by offering your own hand.
Loud music also makes it harder to have a good conversation.
This varies by dance style and local custom, but in contra, there are a few minutes of silence for setup and pairing between songs during which there is no music to talk over, and smalltalk is expected.
I’m not sure this is perfect advice. For one thing, speaking as a person who enjoys conversation, it can often be deeply uncomfortable when a random stranger tries to start a conversation. I made accidental eye-contact with someone on the subway today and then had to have a conversation about the weather which interrupted mildly productive thoughts.
I agree that in the contexts of school and work this sort of thing might be acceptable. One has to think about the fact that the very worst that happens is that the person indicates they don’t want to talk.
One thing I do use as a conversation starter is if someone is holding a book that I’ve read (in which case I’ll comment) or a book I have not read (in which case I’ll inquire about it).