Psychology Commons^™

What Makes Conversation Good? How Responsivity, Topics, And Insider Language Predict Feelings Of Connection, Emma M. Templeton

Dartmouth College Ph.D Dissertations

We spend our lives having conversations, and some inevitably go better than others. What happens in conversation that makes people feel connected? To explore this question, I recorded pairs of strangers and friends having unstructured conversations. In Chapter 1, I show that people who feel connected tend to respond quickly, creating short gaps between turns. However, long gaps are not necessarily bad. Although long gaps signal moments of disconnection and awkwardness for strangers, they mark moments of heightened connection for friends by providing space for enjoyment and mutual reflection. In Chapter 2, I examine how people start their conversations. Specifically, …