Harvard researchers just identified why most conversations are awkward

There’s nothing worse than being stuck in conversation for too long or having one cut too short. And with the addition of Zoom to all our conversations, it seems finding the cutoff point has become even more of a quest. However, a new study assures us that the other party is facing the same exact battle as you.

The never-ending conversation

Whether at the office or virtually on Zoom, workers often are left wondering whether they got everything from the brief message from their boss, or that they had forgotten the meat of something said because a conversation went on for too long.

Either way, you don’t have to work in an office to understand there’s no perfect time limit to conversations — and it’s important to know no one really knows.

That’s according to a new study landed by researchers at Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia. Together, the schools researched nearly 1,000 conversations (932 in total) finding that most conversations don’t end when participants want them to. Only about 2% of conversations actually end when both parties intended it to, according to researchers.

The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, ran two smaller studies focusing on the differences between how long conversations extend for compared to how long participants intended them to go on for.

“A lot of people read this and assume that the finding is that people want to go before it ends because I think that’s the most normal experience that people have,” Adam Mastroianni, a Ph.D. student from the Harvard Psychology Department and lead on the study, said in a press statement. “A majority of people do say that, but plenty of people say the opposite: that they want it to continue. In fact, if you just look at the average, between the people who want to go [from the conversation] soon and people who want to go later, they actually cancel each other out.”

In one of the studies, researchers had 252 strangers divided and told them to talk for at least a minute and up to 45 minutes. Participants said that they hoped conversations would extend for nearly a minute longer than they actually were.

To break it down, nearly 69% of participants said that they felt the conversation was ready to end, but 31% said they didn’t have the same reaction. A grand total of just 2% of conversations ended with both parties satisfied, while 30% of conversations ended too soon for at least one participant.

The second study dealt with people who knew each other before. Researchers had more than 800 participants complete online surveys about their most recent conversation and describe how long it lasted, with many conversations having been with a spouse, family member, or even a friend.

Brace yourself if you thought that long conversation you had with your friend was a life-changed: 66% of participants said they felt their conversation was ready to end. The average participant said they wished their conversation lasted two minutes longer, but acknowledged that the other person on the opposite end wanted to keep talking for an additional six to eight minutes longer than the conversation went on for.

“This happens for two reasons. One is that people don’t want to talk for the same amount of time so they have that coordination problem to solve. Two, they don’t know what the other person wants, so however they want to solve that problem, they can’t do it because to do it you need to know what the other person wanted and they would have to know what you wanted,” said Mastroianni. “You don’t abruptly stop talking to somebody and walk away because it’s not kind.”

Maybe it’s time for everyone to agree on a time limit for your next conversation.