Run Game Conversation

How to be interesting without playing games

5 min read

"Be interesting" is advice that sounds useful and gives you nothing to do on Tuesday. Here's a version you can act on: interesting people tend to be interested. They do a few things they care about, they're curious about the other person's world, and they can tell you something specific about both. None of that needs a mysterious act or a made-up persona.

What the research suggests about curiosity

A 2004 study by Todd Kashdan and John Roberts, in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, paired 104 introductory-psychology students with a trained stranger for a structured task. They took turns asking and answering questions that got more personal over time. Participants who scored higher on trait curiosity were rated by their partners as more attractive and as creating more closeness, even after the researchers accounted for social anxiety and general positive mood. Curiosity felt during the conversation itself also predicted those outcomes, after accounting for mood.

The limits are real. It was a small student sample, a structured question game rather than free conversation, and half the group was picked for high social anxiety. It doesn't show that curiosity makes anyone "interesting" in the way a date would judge it. It does fit a larger pattern: the Harvard research by Karen Huang and colleagues found people who ask more questions, particularly follow-up questions, are better liked by conversation partners, and people didn't expect that asking would help.

Depth tends to go better than you'd guess

In twelve experiments with more than 1,800 participants, Michael Kardas, Amit Kumar and Nicholas Epley found that conversations with strangers, deep ones in particular, felt less awkward and more enjoyable than people predicted. People also underestimated how interested their partner would be in what they shared. Once participants learned about this tendency, they chose deeper questions.

That's useful if you default to safe small talk. You don't have to open with your life story. But a question one step past the usual ("What made you pick that?" instead of "What do you do?") is probably better received than you expect. Most of these studies used strangers paired up in a study, not people at a bar, so test it yourself.

Having something to talk about

You're easier to talk to when you can give a specific, rather than "I'm into a bit of everything." Specifics are things she can grab onto.

Being able to ask about her

Interest in the other person is half of it. Try this three-part loop:

  1. Ask an open question about something she brought up: "You said you started pottery. What got you into it?"
  2. Follow the answer with a detail: "Is it as messy as it looks?"
  3. Share a short, related bit about you, then hand it back: "I tried it once and made a bowl that looked like a hat. What's the hardest part for you?"

The back-and-forth is the point. If you notice you've talked for more than about a minute straight, ask something. If she's said three sentences about herself and you've said nothing, share something. More topics are in what to talk about with a girl, and the same habits apply to friendships: how to make friends as a guy.

Why "mystery" isn't the plan

Some dating advice says to stay vague, hold back or play hard to get so you seem intriguing. Some coaches and writers say it works. We didn't find research testing it for in-person first meetings, so treat it as an untested claim. What it does cost is clear: you have less to talk about, and the other person has less to go on. If your goal is finding someone you connect with, a simple approach is to be clear about who you are and what you like, and let the other person decide. Having a full life means you don't need to perform one. Building a life you like is the longer project behind that.

Common stumbling blocks

Being funny is a separate skill that overlaps, so how to be funnier is a good next read. Warm attention and an unhurried pace, the parts of being charismatic, carry over too.

What to do next

  1. Write down three things you've done or noticed in the past two weeks that you could tell someone in under 30 seconds.
  2. Pick one activity to do weekly for the next month, and put it on your calendar.
  3. In your next three conversations, ask one question that goes one level deeper than usual ("What made you pick that?").
  4. Count your turns: aim for roughly even talking time, and check yourself after a few minutes.
  5. Each week, learn one small thing and tell one person about it.
  6. If you log approaches in Run Game, use the optional note for which topic got the longest, most animated answers. Repeat what worked.

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