Circling Science

Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation.

Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley · 2022 (online 2021)

Evidence
Experiment
Kind
Journal article
peer-reviewed
Method
Twelve experiments comparing expected and experienced conversations and testing beliefs about deeper talk
Sample
Students, working adults, community volunteers and online participants across the experiments
Published
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(3), 367–398

Adjacent

Studies a related practice or mechanism, without testing Circling.

Across twelve experiments, people expected deeper conversations to be more awkward and less rewarding than they turned out to be.

What it doesn’t show

The studies mainly concern structured encounters with unfamiliar people. They do not establish that more disclosure is always better, that it is welcome in every setting, or that a brief conversation produces lasting closeness.

Summary based on the abstract and selected methods and discussion sections of the author-hosted full text.

Links

Cite

Kardas, M., Kumar, A., & Epley, N. (2022). Overly shallow?: Miscalibrated expectations create a barrier to deeper conversation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 122(3), 367–398. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspa0000281