Psychology of Conversation

Conversation is a fundamental part of the human experience. To share our ideas, information, and feelings with each other, we converse constantly and in every mode imaginable: face to face, phone, email, text message, video chat, online comment boards, contracts, and on and on. Conversations form the bedrock of our relationships and, often, function as the vehicle of productivity at work: few relationships or businesses survive in the absence of conversation. Though prior work in psychology and conflict management has explored the aspects and consequences of one conversational turn at a time, and prior work has examined the demographics, perceptions, and behaviors surrounding whole conversations (all conversational turns) at once, with the help of new tools for conversation capture and analysis, emerging research has begun to explore the cognitive and behavioral phenomena that influence many turns of many conversations—complex interactions that unfold over time—and how the goals that underlie our conversations (e.g., competitive versus cooperative goals) influence the way people tend to converse (and the strategies they should use to converse more effectively). In this symposium, several leading scholars in the field will share their work on a diverse array of topics related to the psychology of conversation, including: the motives and effects of giving backhanded compliments, how people select and switch topics in conversation, why people have a propensity to argue (without persuading), why people often say honest things with the intent to mislead (paltering), why women laugh more often than men, and the risks of saying “thank you” in competitive interactions.