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Long gaps between turns are awkward for strangers but not for friends

When people feel connected they tend to respond quickly in conversation, creating short gaps between turns. But are long gaps always a sign that things have gone awry? We analysed the frequency and impact of long gaps (greater than 2 s) in conversations between strangers and between friends. As pred...

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Autores principales: Templeton, Emma M., Chang, Luke J., Reynolds, Elizabeth A., Cone LeBeaumont, Marie D., Wheatley, Thalia
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9985966/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36871595
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0471
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author Templeton, Emma M.
Chang, Luke J.
Reynolds, Elizabeth A.
Cone LeBeaumont, Marie D.
Wheatley, Thalia
author_facet Templeton, Emma M.
Chang, Luke J.
Reynolds, Elizabeth A.
Cone LeBeaumont, Marie D.
Wheatley, Thalia
author_sort Templeton, Emma M.
collection PubMed
description When people feel connected they tend to respond quickly in conversation, creating short gaps between turns. But are long gaps always a sign that things have gone awry? We analysed the frequency and impact of long gaps (greater than 2 s) in conversations between strangers and between friends. As predicted, long gaps signalled disconnection between strangers. However, long gaps between friends marked moments of increased connection and friends tended to have more of them. These differences in connection were also perceived by independent raters: only the long gaps between strangers were rated as awkward, and increasingly so the longer they lasted. Finally, we show that, compared to strangers, long gaps between friends include more genuine laughter and are less likely to precede a topic change. This suggests that the gaps of friends may not function as ‘gaps’ at all, but instead allow space for enjoyment and mutual reflection. Together, these findings suggest that the turn-taking dynamics of friends are meaningfully different from those of strangers and may be less bound by social conventions. More broadly, this work illustrates that samples of convenience—pairs of strangers being the modal paradigm for interaction research—may not capture the social dynamics of more familiar relationships. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction’.
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spelling pubmed-99859662023-03-06 Long gaps between turns are awkward for strangers but not for friends Templeton, Emma M. Chang, Luke J. Reynolds, Elizabeth A. Cone LeBeaumont, Marie D. Wheatley, Thalia Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci Articles When people feel connected they tend to respond quickly in conversation, creating short gaps between turns. But are long gaps always a sign that things have gone awry? We analysed the frequency and impact of long gaps (greater than 2 s) in conversations between strangers and between friends. As predicted, long gaps signalled disconnection between strangers. However, long gaps between friends marked moments of increased connection and friends tended to have more of them. These differences in connection were also perceived by independent raters: only the long gaps between strangers were rated as awkward, and increasingly so the longer they lasted. Finally, we show that, compared to strangers, long gaps between friends include more genuine laughter and are less likely to precede a topic change. This suggests that the gaps of friends may not function as ‘gaps’ at all, but instead allow space for enjoyment and mutual reflection. Together, these findings suggest that the turn-taking dynamics of friends are meaningfully different from those of strangers and may be less bound by social conventions. More broadly, this work illustrates that samples of convenience—pairs of strangers being the modal paradigm for interaction research—may not capture the social dynamics of more familiar relationships. This article is part of a discussion meeting issue ‘Face2face: advancing the science of social interaction’. The Royal Society 2023-04-24 2023-03-06 /pmc/articles/PMC9985966/ /pubmed/36871595 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0471 Text en © 2023 The Authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Articles
Templeton, Emma M.
Chang, Luke J.
Reynolds, Elizabeth A.
Cone LeBeaumont, Marie D.
Wheatley, Thalia
Long gaps between turns are awkward for strangers but not for friends
title Long gaps between turns are awkward for strangers but not for friends
title_full Long gaps between turns are awkward for strangers but not for friends
title_fullStr Long gaps between turns are awkward for strangers but not for friends
title_full_unstemmed Long gaps between turns are awkward for strangers but not for friends
title_short Long gaps between turns are awkward for strangers but not for friends
title_sort long gaps between turns are awkward for strangers but not for friends
topic Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9985966/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36871595
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2021.0471
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