‘If afterwards I know nothing more about you than I knew before,’ Matthias Mehl from the University of Arizona tells me, ‘then that will be small talk.’
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How to have more meaningful conversations | Psyche Guides social interaction – small talk. The psychologist Matthias Mehl at the University of Arizona studies conversations, and he defines small talk on the basis of how much information is exchanged. <span>‘If afterwards I know nothing more about you than I knew before,’ he tells me, ‘then that will be small talk.’ The vacuousness of small talk helps to explain why it’s often so boring, but it can be worse than that. Thanks to more lift journeys than I care to remember, I can vouch that some small