It Doesn't Hurt to Ask

K.  Huang; M.  Yeomans; A.W.  Brooks; J.  Minson; F.  Gino

Article | Journal of Personality and Social Psychology | September 2017

It Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Question-asking Increases Liking

by K. Huang, M. Yeomans, A.W. Brooks, J. Minson and F. Gino

Abstract

Conversation is a fundamental human experience, one that is necessary to pursue intrapersonal and interpersonal goals across myriad contexts, relationships, and modes of communication. In the current research, we isolate the role of an understudied conversational behavior: question-asking. Across three studies of live dyadic conversations, we identify a robust and consistent relationship between question-asking and liking: people who ask more questions are better liked by their conversation partners. When people are instructed to ask more questions, they are perceived as higher in responsiveness, an interpersonal construct that captures listening, understanding, validation, and care. We measure responsiveness with an attitudinal measure from previous research as well as a novel behavioral measure: the number of follow-up questions one asks. In both cases, responsiveness explains the effect of question-asking on liking. In addition to analyzing live get-to-know-you conversations online, we also studied face-to-face speed-dating conversations. We find that speed daters who ask more questions during their dates are more likely to elicit agreement for second dates from their partners, a behavioral indicator of liking. We trained a natural language processing algorithm as a “follow-up question detector” that we applied to our speed-dating data (and can be applied to any text data to more deeply understand question-asking dynamics). The follow-up question rate established by the algorithm explained why question-asking led to speed-dating success. We also find that, despite the persistent and beneficial effects of asking questions, people do not anticipate that question-asking increases interpersonal liking.

Keywords: question-asking; liking; responsiveness; Conversation; natural language processing; Interpersonal Communication; Behavior;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Huang, K., M. Yeomans, A.W. Brooks, J. Minson, and F. Gino. "It Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Question-asking Increases Liking." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113, no. 3 (September 2017): 430–452.

In the spring of 2019, Lt. Col. Matthew 'Chaos' Nussbaum is nearing the end of his two-year term as commander of the U.S. Air Force's 99th Reconnaissance Squadron. In this position, he has focused the majority of his energy on finding new ways to organize, train and equip the unit, whose mission is to execute and sustain U-2 operations globally. Nussbaum's methods empowered individuals within the squadron, and enabled them to achieve much that people familiar with the Department of Defense previously considered impossible. Yet with progress came risk, and costs. This case considers how breakthroughs were made, examines the role leadership played, and asks how Nussbaum's approach can both be sustained in the 99th and more widely applied throughout the Air Force.

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It Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Question-asking Increases Liking

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