UC Santa Cruz

Every day, we have many conversations with others. What makes you consider these conversations as being good or bad? Three studies explored subjective conversational experience, or how people feel about conversations. Study 1 focuses on the replication of the reciprocity in conversation effect as well as the influence of off-task conversation on conversational perception (Guydish et al., 2021; Guydish & Fox Tree, 2022) by having individuals converse over videoconferencing software. This study showed that having an opportunity to engage in off-task conversation improves both conversation enjoyment but also perceptions of conversational partners. Study 2 focused on the influence of discourse markers on subjective conversational experience by analyzing their use in three corpora. While no relationship between discourse marker use and subjective conversational experience was observed, differing use of discourse markers between on-task and off-task conversation across corpora was observed. Study 3 focused on how memory plays a role in making distinctions between good and bad conversations by having individuals read and answer questions about previously transcribed conversational snippets. Study 3 showed the importance of contribution balance in making distinctions between good and bad conversations. These studies provide a more holistic picture of how we make determinations between good and bad conversations. In a world that is increasingly polarized, learning what and why our behaviors influence our subjective conversational experiences becomes increasingly important.