“When you show curiosity and you ask questions, and find out something interesting about another person, people disclose more, share more, and they return the favor, asking questions of you,” says Kashdan. After actually engaging in these types of conversations, the more curious people felt closer to their partner in both situations, while less curious people did not. In another study by Kashdan, participants were prompted to have intimate conversation or small talk with other participants they hadn’t met before. “It’s the secret juice of relationships.”Īnd the benefits seem to go both ways. “Being interested is more important in cultivating a relationship and maintaining a relationship than being interesting that’s what gets the dialogue going,” he says. Even when considering how much positive and negative emotion and social anxiety the participants felt-all factors assumed to impact social interactions-curiosity still had a unique link to intimacy scores, suggesting curiosity is a trait that might aid social closeness. In addition, curious participants better predicted how well they were received by confederates. Results showed that the confederates were more attracted and felt closer to curious participants than those who were less curious. Afterward, the confederates rated how attracted and how close they felt to their conversation partners, and participants tried to predict how well they came across. Participants filled out questionnaires before and after the conversation that measured curiosity, positive and negative emotion, and social anxiety levels (how comfortable they were in social situations). The pairs took turns asking and answering a series of questions that moved from less to more intimate in nature-e.g., If you could invite anyone, living or dead, for dinner and conversation, who would it be and why? When did you last cry in front of another person? (The confederate was trained to respond with the same answers, regardless of the participants’ answers.) In one study by Todd Kashdan of George Mason University and his colleagues, participants were paired with a trained “confederate” (someone working with the researcher, unbeknownst to the participant) to engage in an intimacy-building conversation. Given that curiosity involves the motivation to experience novelty, it makes intuitive sense that someone who is curious might be better at connecting with strangers.
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