Andreas Kluth, Columnist

Should I Stop Talking Now? Why We’re So Bad at Conversation

Being human means chatting with other people, which can be really hard. Now we know why.

March 13, 2021 at 5:00 AM UTC

Andreas Kluth is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering US diplomacy, national security and geopolitics. Previously, he was editor-in-chief of Handelsblatt Global and a writer for the Economist.

Does she want to end this conversation?
Photographer: Sean Gallup/Getty Images Europe

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I’ve always felt that Jean-Paul Sartre narrowly missed the target. Hell is not necessarily other people. More precisely, hell is small talk.

There: I’ve outed myself again as an introvert and curmudgeon. But I’m hardly the only one to find that gabfests can be hard work — and more specifically, that they tend to drone on too long. Now science has backed me up. Only 1.59% of conversations end when both sides want them to, according to a new study. On average, people perceive that their chats are too long, or too short, by half the duration of the exchange. Why?