Psychology Research Shows 'Water Cooler Talk' Can Have Big Benefits
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Whether in the workplace or our personal lives, most people have a strong preference for balanced conversations, where each person is able to get their two cents in." In fact, new research published in Language and Speech shows that people take corrective action to ensure a two-way flow of conversation when situational factors, like defined roles for working together on a task, create an imbalance in how each person is able to contribute.
This corrective behavior had never before been identified or described. The researchers at UC Santa Cruz who discovered it are calling it "reciprocity in conversation." And in settings where people are working together on a task, it's actually associated with higher levels of task enjoyment. This could have fascinating implications for employee morale in work settings, but there's a catch. In order for conversation reciprocity to take place, the people collaborating on a task must make time to incorporate small talk into their work.
[...] "An average workday now is getting the team together into a virtual meeting, where there's a very clear goal and task," Guydish said. "You're not talking to coworkers at their desk or in the hall. Everything is structured, and everything is essentially a task nowadays. So this research highlights the importance of perhaps trying to institute moments throughout the day with unstructured chat time."
It's in those moments that reciprocity works its magic. Typically, when peers are working together on a task that requires one to direct the other, it creates a natural imbalance in the conversation, where the person in the leadership role ends up doing most of the talking. But if the participants also have unstructured time available, the person leading the task-based conversation can use the opportunity to pull back on their contributions, essentially yielding air time during small talk to the other participant.
That's reciprocity. It helps balance the scales of the overall interaction. And the closer participants get to achieving balance, the higher their levels of enjoyment will be related to the task at hand.
Journal Reference:
Andrew J. Guydish, J. Trevor D'Arcey, Jean E. Fox Tree. Reciprocity in Conversation [$], Language and Speech (DOI: 10.1177/0023830920972742)
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