Two problems, one system
Three really good conversations with someone from your lab. And yet it doesn’t feel like a friendship, and you can’t tell what’s missing.
Someone you’ve met twice tells you about their parents’ divorce in the café queue, and you don’t know what to say back.
Where we were
Week 6 priced running the protocol. Weeks 8 and 9 are about running it with a particular person — first an institution, now someone you might end up close to.
Friendship costs hours
Adults who had recently moved, asked about a new acquaintance; first-year students followed over nine weeks.
In both: hours spent together were associated with becoming closer. Leisure time predicted closeness, and so did everyday talk.
Hall (2019), Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 36(4)Three good conversations can leave you wanting another.
Make room for one.
What “hours” actually buys
More time together gives you another chance to talk.
The depth model asks a separate question: did either person offer a more personal turn?
Disclosure is the engine
Three effects, all significant:
- People who make more intimate disclosures tend to be liked more
- People disclose more to those they already like
- People come to like those they have disclosed to
Which side gains?
Pairs of unacquainted undergraduates. One randomly assigned to disclose, one to listen. Then they swap and do it again.
After the first interaction: listeners reported more liking than disclosers.
Listening also went with greater perceived similarity.
Sprecher, Treger & Wondra (2013), Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 30(4)Those differences disappeared after participants switched roles.
The scope, said out loud
Strangers. A structured task. Two interactions.
It tells you nothing about how depth paces over months — that’s Hall’s territory, and this course only read his abstract.
Escalation works in steps
Pairs of strangers, 45 minutes of self-disclosure tasks that gradually escalated in intensity, ended up closer than pairs who did small talk.
Aron et al. (1997), Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 23(4)And two things that didn’t help
Making “get close” an explicit goal: no significant difference.
Matching people on attitudes: no significant difference.
Aron et al. (1997)It is not evidence that jumping to depth works outside a lab, where nobody agreed to the steps.
A scale the course invented
The levels below are the course’s model, not a scale validated by the cited studies.
They are a working model, and week 12’s errata says so. Test them in your journal — that is what the journal is for.
The depth scale
| Level | Depth | Sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | logistics, weather, the course | “Busy week?” |
| 1 | low-stakes preferences | “I can’t stand that café.” |
| 2 | experiences, small difficulties | “The stats quiz went badly.” |
| 3 | ongoing struggles, values, family | “Things are hard at home.” |
| 4 | fears, health, things few people know | “I’ve been having panic attacks.” |
The levels are the course’s, not the literature’s. Test them in your journal.
For voluntary escalation, the model suggests their last level, plus or minus one.
Step up one at a time, and wait for them to step before you step again.
No minimum disclosure is owed. Hold lower, step down, change topic or pass, including outside the window.
- Level 4: fears, health, what few people know
- Level 3: ongoing struggles, values, family (inside the suggested window)
- Level 2: experiences, small difficulties (the level their last turn was at)
- Level 1: low-stakes preferences (inside the suggested window)
- Level 0: logistics, weather, the course
Try the model on the openings
Back to the openings.
The café queue: level 0 to level 3 in one turn, with no step from the listener in between.
The three good conversations: did either person offer anything beyond level 1?
In the room: one turn each (9 min)
1 min: “What took longer than you expected this week?” Use a minor real example, or fictional Alex: a late bus, a missed library booking, another place to work. Personal content can be passed; observing is allowed.
3 min: A answers, B listens and may ask questions. Last thirty seconds: each privately notes their own feeling towards the partner — warmer, unchanged, cooler or unsure.
3 min: swap and repeat, including the note.
2 min, privately: compare your own two notes. Do not infer the partner’s rating.
Possible signs of a limit
- Replies get shorter — three words where there were fifteen
- The topic returns to level 0 — “anyway, did you do the reading?”
- A laugh where a response to the content would go
- They physically start to leave — bag, phone, door
The course’s working list. If yours differs, that is a journal entry.
When you’ve overshot
The other person may not say directly that the topic is too personal.
If you notice a possible signal, you can initiate the repair yourself.
The step-down
Week 5’s repair, applied to depth. Name it in one turn and go down a level:
“Sorry, that was a lot for a Tuesday. How was your weekend?”
It tells the other person you noticed — and that they don’t have to match level 3 in a queue.
Did it land?
The ladder tells you how far a turn went. It says nothing about whether the person you said it to felt heard.
A record filled in immediately after every social interaction — one week, then two.
Each time: what you disclosed, what they disclosed, how responsive they seemed, how intimate it felt.
Intimacy = both people’s disclosure, with perceived partner responsiveness as a partial mediator.
Laurenceau, Feldman Barrett & Pietromonaco (1998), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74(5)Break
14:55–15:05
Resume at 15:05.
Emotion outranked facts
Study 2: disclosing emotion predicted intimacy better than disclosing facts and information.
| Facts | The same thing, with the emotion |
|---|---|
| “The stats quiz was 40% of the mark.” | “…and I’ve been sick about it since Tuesday.” |
| “I moved here in February.” | “…and I still don’t know anyone.” |
Same subject, with what it means to the speaker.
That feeling may itself be private.
The move nobody expects to work
Three sets of live conversations between pairs: two online get-acquainted, one field study of speed dating.
People who asked more questions — follow-up questions in particular — were liked more.
Instructed askers were rated higher in responsiveness, and responsiveness explained the effect.
Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson & Gino (2017), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113(3)Follow-up, not switch
Them: “I’ve been trying to get the stats assignment finished all weekend.”
Switch: “Have you chosen your elective yet?”
Follow-up: “Which part of it is taking the time?”
A follow-up picks up what they just said. It can let you respond without a disclosure of your own.
People do not anticipate that question-asking increases interpersonal liking.
In the room: the follow-up (8 min)
Three minutes, alone. A sentence someone said to you this week — dull is fine. Write three follow-up questions to it.
Or use: “I tried finding a quiet place to work, but the library was full.” Remove identifying details from real examples.
Three minutes, in pairs. Read yours out; your partner names which words each one picks up.
Two minutes, the room. At most two examples: which question followed the speaker’s words, and which introduced a new topic?
This finding has a changelog
2025: a published correction. An independent audit found minor errors in how some results were reported; every hypothesis test’s substantive result unchanged; corrected results and audit materials posted publicly.
2019: Kluger and Malloy reanalyse the speed-dating study. A second date is not liking. About a third of the variance in question-asking belongs to the pair, not the person.
2019: the authors reply that the reanalysis tested the wrong variables.
Nobody has ever issued an erratum for “how are you”.
A pass can fit in one turn
Leave room for the answer
Choosing your own rate
Not a speed you’re obliged to reach. You can keep someone at level 1 for a whole semester, on purpose.
High limit, low limit — neither is the correct setting.
Declining escalation costs something, and it belongs in your week 6 ledger: a steady level 1 may be read as distance.
“I’m slow to talk about personal stuff, but I like these conversations.”
A hold token for depth.
In the room: follow, switch or step down? (8 min)
2 min, pairs: “I’m still sorting out the new flat. Anyway, what time is Thursday’s lab?”
- Follow-up: “Which part of the move is taking the time?”
- Switch: “Have you chosen your elective yet?”
- Step-down: “14:05. We can leave the flat stuff there.”
3 min: choose or rewrite. Which words support it? What does it ask of the other person? What is still unknown?
2 min: “Actually, I’d like to talk about the move, if you have time.” Write an acceptance, time limit or decline.
1 min: record what changed your response, or why your own limit stayed.
What this week added to the vocabulary
- the depth scale — five levels, the course’s own
- the rate limit — a ±1 model for voluntary escalation, with holding, stepping down and passing always available
- responsiveness — whether the step landed, which the scale can’t tell you
- the follow-up question — a turn that can leave your own disclosure unchanged
- the step-down — repair, applied to depth
- a hold token for depth — week 4’s move at a new layer
Week 10 asks what happens when the thing you’d be stepping to is a diagnosis.
Thursday: the Interoperation Report begins
You meet your partner. Over weeks 9, 10 and 11 you negotiate a shared protocol and report what each of you conceded.
The rate limit is a good first thing to agree on.
If time remains
How could two people make room for closeness without treating disclosure as a debt the other person has to repay?
Optional discussion. Finish by 15:55.