I’ve had a tendency to ask people a lot of questions. This is probably a combination of my training and curious nature. But I’ve also noticed other people seem much less inclined to do so. In fact, my husband often feels uncomfortable with my inquiries; in his family, asking anything that could be considered a personal question was interpreted as intrusive and rude.
So I found this research interesting and thought you might too.
There are many times we’re in situations of conversing with people we don’t know well. In these situations, we generally have three competing motivations. 1) Our motivation is to get information from the other person; in other words, to connect. 2) To avoid creating discomfort in the other person and 3) To establish a positive impression.
But fear wins out here. We’re more afraid to create discomfort or a negative impression than we are motivated to connect.
Unfortunately, we are alarmingly inaccurate when it comes to accurately predicting our impression of others.
In the latest research across 3 pilot studies and 4 experimental studies, it was clear that individuals consistently avoid asking sensitive questions because they don’t want to take the chance that the other person will feel uncomfortable or have negative thoughts about them. Even when participants were incentivized to ask sensitive questions, participants were still reluctant to do so in both face-to-face and chat conversations remotely by computer. It seems we generally think it’s a bad idea to ask questions that go beyond the weather.
Except that this avoidance is misguided because the research shows we form similar impressions of people regardless of the personal nature of the questions (eg “are you a night person?” (impersonal) or “what are your views on religion?” (personal).
This means that people generally don’t react negatively to more personal questions and it increases the chances of having more meaningful connections with others. So the bottom line is it’s worth the risk.
Here’s the research study if you want to check it out:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/
Until next time,
Julie 
