闲聊或深入交谈会让你更快乐吗?

闲聊或深入交谈会让你更快乐吗?

A feeling of social connection is key to happiness for most people. That doesn't mean the same thing for everyone, of course, and many of us also need some alone time every day. In general, though, both introverts and extraverts report feeling happier and more connected when they interact more with other people.

对大多数人来说，社会关系是幸福的关键。当然，这并不意味着每个人都是一样的，我们很多人每天也需要一些独处的时间。不过，总的来说，内向者和外向者都表示，当他们与他人进行更多的互动时，他们会感到更快乐，更有归属感。

Deeper, more personal conversations may be especially rewarding for introverted people. (Photo: Marco Lissoni/Shutterstock)

Halo effects

晕轮效应

"At first glance, it seems that a plethora of studies show that the quality of social experience is related to well-being," the researchers write in the preprint study, which is awaiting publication in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. But most of that research is based on self-reported data from study participants, they explain, which limits how confident we can be about its findings.

“乍一看，似乎有大量的研究表明，社会经验的质量与幸福感有关，”研究人员在预印本研究中写道，该研究正在等待发表在《人格与社会心理学杂志》(Journal of Personality and social Psychology)上。但他们解释说，大多数研究都是基于参与者自我报告的数据，这限制了我们对研究结果的信心。

Our patterns of social interaction may affect our well-being more than we realize. (Photo: pudiq/Shutterstock)

When a study uses self-reported data to measure both well-being and the quality of social interactions, the study's authors add, the nature of the associations is muddled. "Such studies likely produce inflated estimates of the association between the quality of social interactions and well-being," the researchers write.

该研究的作者补充说，当一项研究使用自我报告的数据来衡量幸福感和社会交往的质量时，这种关联的性质就变得混乱了。研究人员写道:“这样的研究可能会夸大社会交往质量与幸福感之间的联系。”

Lend me your EAR

听我说

Meals can provide a good opportunity for deeper conversation. (Photo: Alexandre Rotenberg/Shutterstock)

Instead of relying solely on self reports, the new study also used actual recordings of social interactions. The researchers recruited 256 college students, who first took questionnaires in the lab to measure how introverted or extraverted they were.

这项新研究不仅依靠自我报告，还使用了真实的社会互动记录。研究人员招募了256名大学生，他们首先在实验室里填写问卷，以衡量他们的内向程度或外向程度。

Next came two parallel phases. In one, participants self-reported about their own daily social interactions, via brief surveys they took four times a day for two weeks.

接下来是两个平行的阶段。在一项研究中，参与者在两周的时间里每天进行四次简短的调查，然后自我汇报自己的日常社交活动。

Most participants also wore an electronically activated recorder (EAR), which was programmed to record 30-second audio clips every 9.5 minutes from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. They were encouraged to wear the device as much as possible for about a week, and although they didn't know when it was recording, they were allowed to remove it at any time for any reason. After three to four days, they returned to the lab to upload their data, then wore the EAR for another three to four days before giving it back.

大多数参与者还戴着一个电子激活录音机(EAR)，它被设定为从早上7点到下午2点每隔9.5分钟录制30秒的音频片段。他们被鼓励尽可能多地戴上这个设备大约一周，尽管他们不知道它是什么时候录制的，但他们可以在任何时间以任何理由摘掉它。三到四天之后，他们回到实验室上传他们的数据，然后再戴上耳朵三到四天，然后归还。

Quantity and quality

数量和质量

In general, both introverts and extraverts tend to feel buoyed by even brief chats. (Photo: Doug Pensinger/Getty Images)

The results suggest that, within each individual, "some social interactions feel more rewarding than others, at least in the moment," the researchers write. They also compared results between individuals, hoping to learn if people who consistently have higher-quality interactions feel happier and more connected in general. That is what the self-reported data suggested, although the observer ratings didn't back it up, leaving us without a clear answer for now. (At the least, however, this seems to illustrate the risks of drawing conclusions from self-reported data alone).

研究人员写道，研究结果表明，在每个人体内，“一些社会互动感觉比其他的更有价值，至少在此刻是这样。”他们还比较了不同个体之间的结果，希望了解那些经常进行高质量互动的人是否总体上感觉更快乐、联系更紧密。这是自我报告的数据所暗示的，尽管观察者的评级没有支持它，让我们目前没有一个明确的答案。(然而，这至少说明了仅从自我报告的数据中得出结论的风险)。

Small talk, big talk

闲聊，深谈

Deeper conversations are often built on a foundation that began with small talk. (Photo: Mark Benham/Shutterstock)

Humans are social animals, and small talk seems to be an important tool for navigating the complex social environments we create for ourselves. The new study supports the idea that small talk — while maybe not as fulfilling as deeper conversations overall — is a key part of the human experience, helping us build trust with strangers and develop relationships with acquaintances.

人类是社会性动物，闲聊似乎是我们在为自己创造的复杂社会环境中导航的重要工具。这项新研究支持了这样一种观点，即闲聊——虽然总体上可能不如深入交谈那样令人满足——是人类体验的一个关键部分，它帮助我们与陌生人建立信任，并与熟人发展关系。

Small talk also lets us demonstrate our own friendliness and social skills to others, which can pay off in multiple ways. It may help us win friends, allies and business partners, for example, and it can also help us feel happier and more socially connected — even if we're introverted. That doesn't mean it affects us all equally, of course, or that it makes sense in every context. It just means we shouldn't broadly blame small talk for the occasions when it doesn't go well.

闲聊还能让我们向别人展示自己的友善和社交技巧，这可以通过多种方式得到回报。例如，它可以帮助我们赢得朋友、盟友和商业伙伴，它还可以帮助我们感到更快乐、更有社交联系——即使我们性格内向。当然，这并不意味着它对我们所有人的影响都是平等的，也不意味着它在任何情况下都有意义。这只是意味着，我们不应该在谈话不顺利的情况下泛泛地责怪闲聊。