I was at a friend’s birthday party recently when I found myself sitting next to a writer I didn’t know. Oh good, I thought optimistically, we might be able to bond over the joys and pains of the job. Two hours later, I knew the ins and outs of the surrealist novel he was writing, but he found out very little about me, since he didn’t ask a single question in return.
I am sure this will be familiar to many readers, so I was delighted to come across some new work on “interpersonal curiosity” by Niobe Way, a professor of applied psychology at New York University. She suggests that, from a young age, Western patriarchal culture subtly discourages us from demonstrating an interest in others – an idea reinforced by masculine stereotypes. Fortunately, she has plenty of suggestions for ways to cultivate it in ourselves and our children.
How to sparkle in conversation with strangers Way tells me that she was inspired by her personal experience of moving to Shanghai for a few months with her young children in 2007. It was, she says, “a transformative experience”. When she returned to the US, however, she tried to talk to her friends about the amazing time that she’d had, with little success.
Previous research on curiosity, she says, had mostly focused on intellectual interests in the physical, material and natural world, while largely neglecting to measure people’s inquisitiveness about others’ lives and its consequences. As a developmental psychologist, Way has so far focused her efforts on children and adolescents. She and her colleagues asked 389 school students aged 11-13 to describe the two questions that they would most like to ask their closest friend, teacher and primary caregivers.
They received a wide variety of responses. Some of the participants reported having no questions at all, while others opted for simple information-seeking (such as “When is dinner?” or “What is the point of this work?”). Those who wished to probe others’ personal lives and relationships, however, had better friendships and greater overall wellbeing.
Such findings are perhaps unsurprising: supportive relationships are known to be central to our health and happiness, and asking others questions about their lives is surely one of the best ways to build those bonds. The big question, then, is why we don’t do it more often. Way suggests that we have been conditioned to think that it is rude to pry into others’ lives, and the rise of individualism means that we also simply care less about the people around us.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
