The Upside of Talking About Boring Topics |
People often underestimate the enjoyment of "boring" conversations.
Engagement, not topic, drives enjoyment in live conversations.
Conversations connect us, even when topics seem mundane.
Although conversations are such a normal and mundane part of our social lives, we are often surprisingly anxious around them. People tend to believe that others like them less than they actually do, and that they have talked for longer than the other person wanted. Yet conversations are such an integral part of how we get to know others, relate to others, and connect with them that we want to make sure to get these conversations right. After all, an awkward or stilted conversation can make human connection quite difficult.
New research focuses on one particular worry that people have around conversations: the idea that some topics are too boring to make for a good conversation. A paper by Elizabeth Trinh from the University of Michigan and colleagues examined whether people misjudge conversations about seemingly boring topics. In nine experiments with almost 2,000 total participants, the researchers show that people consistently underestimate how interesting and enjoyable these conversations will be. For instance, participants who predicted that a conversation about history would be boring found the conversation more interesting than expected when they actually engaged in this conversation. This was true for conversations with friends as well as with strangers.
The authors explain this mismatch by highlighting that conversations consist of much more than just the topic itself. The enjoyment people get from conversations is driven more by engagement, which they describe as a dynamic process that emerges only during conversation (e.g., listening, responding, gesturing). Because engagement is hard to anticipate, people undervalue discussing boring topics. One experiment with 300 participants in Singapore directly tested this logic. Participants either (1) had a live conversation, (2) read a transcript, or (3) watched a recording of the same conversation. In this setup, only live conversations require active participation, which is engaging and enjoyable. The researchers found that the gap between predicted and actual enjoyment appears mainly in live conversations, not in passive conditions like reading or watching. This shows that it’s not the topic itself that drives enjoyment, but the interactive and engaging part of having a real conversation. Thus, people don’t fully anticipate how engaging talking to another person becomes once they actually do it.
Many conversations in our daily lives revolve around predictable and superficial topics. We discuss the lunch offering with a colleague, the weather with an acquaintance we ran into, or the road work with a neighbor. On the one hand, we might view these as boring topics that should be avoided. On the other hand, these are the conversations that connect us to that person in that moment. If we shy away from seemingly boring topics, we might miss out on a fun connection.
Boothby, E. J., Cooney, G., Sandstrom, G. M., & Clark, M. S. (2018). The liking gap in conversations: Do people like us more than we think? Psychological Science, 29(11), 1742-1756.
Mastroianni, A. M., Gilbert, D. T., Cooney, G., & Wilson, T. D. (2021). Do conversations end when people want them to? Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118(10), e2011809118.
Trinh, E. N., Thio, N., & Klein, N. (2026). Conversations about boring topics are more interesting than we think. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
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