How to Get More Second Dates — and Yes, It's a Harvard Study
Before a first date, most people worry about the same few things.
What am I going to talk about?
How do I come across as fun?
How do I show my good side without it looking forced?
But it turns out the person people want to see again isn't the one who's best at talking about themselves.
It's the one who catches what the other person just said and asks one more question about it.
And this isn't just dating advice. A team of Harvard researchers found this pattern by analyzing real speed-dating conversations.
A surprisingly common first-date mistake
The mistake many people make on a first date is getting ready to say your next thing while the other person is still talking, instead of actually listening to them.
Hardly anyone sits through a first date saying nothing at all. The real problem is that even while the other person is talking, you're already lining up your turn.
They say:
"I just started rock climbing."
And right away your mind gets going.
Oh, we're talking about exercise.
I should mention the gym.
I could tell that story about my hiking trip.
And the moment they finish:
"Oh, I love working out too. I've been going to the gym a lot lately…"
Then you launch into your own story.
The conversation hasn't stalled. The mood is fine.
But something important just disappeared.
What the other person just said.
What people who more often got a yes to seeing them again had in common
Harvard researchers analyzed speed-dating conversations and found that the more follow-up questions someone asked — questions that pick up on what the other person just said — the more often they got a yes to seeing them again.
In the study, published in 2017 in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, the researchers looked at what kinds of questions people ask in conversation. The most interesting part was the real speed-dating data.
110 men and women each talked with 15 to 19 people for about four minutes at a time. After each date, they answered one question:
"Would you like to see this person again?"
When the researchers analyzed about 2,000 of those answers alongside the conversation records, a pattern showed up.
The more follow-up questions someone asked, the more often they got a yes to seeing them again. It held for both men and women, and other kinds of questions didn't have much to do with it.
So it's specifically the follow-up questions that count.
Huang, Yeomans, Brooks, Minson & Gino (2017), "It Doesn't Hurt to Ask: Question-Asking Increases Liking," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The speed-dating result is an association observed in real conversations, so rather than reading it as "ask follow-up questions and you're guaranteed a yes to seeing you again," it's more accurate to read it as a tendency: people who asked more follow-up questions were more likely to get a yes to seeing them again.
A follow-up question is completely different from a question that opens a new topic
A follow-up question doesn't bring up a new topic. It takes what the other person just said and asks one more thing about it. That's why a follow-up question tells the other person, "I was listening to what you just said."
Say your date tells you, "I just started rock climbing."
Instead of jumping to a new topic, like
"What do you do for fun?"
"Where do you live?"
"Do you like to travel?"
you ask:
"How did you get into climbing?"
If they say, "A friend dragged me along and it was more fun than I expected, so I kept going,"
you can keep it going:
"What was it that made it so fun?"
Doesn't seem like much. But a question like that carries an important message.
"I was listening to what you just said."
The researchers explain this with an idea called responsiveness. It's behavior that makes the other person feel you're listening, understanding, and interested.
What people warm to is the feeling behind the question:
"This person actually cares about what I'm saying."
Why follow-up questions don't come out on a real date, even when you know they work
Knowing that follow-up questions (questions that pick up on what the other person just said) work doesn't make them easy on a real date, because while the other person is talking, what you'll say next comes to mind almost automatically, and you get caught up in that thought.
By now you already know the trick: listen, then ask a follow-up. But it gets harder once you're actually sitting across from someone.
Why? It's not that you lack willpower, and it's not that you're bad at conversation.
While the other person is talking, what you'll say next pops into your head almost on its own.
The moment your date says, "Last month I took a trip to Colorado by myself,"
I've been to Colorado too.
Should I bring up that hike near Boulder?
Should I ask if they like traveling alone?
Then I can segue into my own road trip.
One thought after another.
The problem isn't that the thoughts show up.
The problem is that the moment you get caught up in them, you lose what the person in front of you was saying.
You're sitting at the table, but in your head you're already having the next conversation.
One thing to try in your next conversation: check whether you're listening right now
In your next conversation, instead of forcing yourself to come up with follow-up questions, first check whether you're listening to the other person right now or thinking about what to say next. If you were thinking about what to say, go back to the last thing they said and ask about one thing you're curious about. That's a follow-up question.
"Am I listening to them right now?"
Or
"Am I thinking about what I'm going to say next?"
If it's the second one, set aside what you were about to say and ask about their last sentence.
At first it takes a bit of conscious effort. But the more you do it, the more your conversations change.
You don't have to drag the conversation along as much, and the other person's story naturally goes deeper. And since you're not constantly racking your brain for what to say, the conversation gets a lot easier for you too.
And most of all,
you actually meet the person.
Firing off question after question on a date can backfire
Asking more questions isn't always better. The authors of the Harvard speed-dating study wrote in their paper that asking question after question without sharing anything about yourself could actually make people like you less.
If you're thinking, "So the more questions the better, right?", there's a catch. If all you do is fire off questions and never share anything about yourself, the other person can start to feel uncomfortable.
A date isn't a job interview, after all.
What counts is hearing what the other person said and responding to it.
Coming back to what the other person said isn't just a dating skill
Noticing that you got lost in your own thoughts and missed what someone said, then coming back, is a skill you need just as much in meetings, with friends, and with family as you do on a date. Mindfulness meditation is a way to practice that skill on its own, over and over.
It happens in meetings. It happens when you're talking with friends. It happens when you're talking with family.
You probably spend more of your life than you realize not watching what's actually happening, but inside thoughts that come up in your head on their own.
And every now and then, there's a moment when you notice.
Oh, my mind was somewhere else.
Right then, you can step out of the thought and come back to the present.
There's a very old way to practice that, over and over.
Mindfulness meditation.
The idea behind mindfulness meditation is surprisingly simple, too. You pay attention to your breathing, at some point you notice you've drifted into a thought, and you come back to the breath happening now.
It isn't practice in getting rid of thoughts. It's practice in noticing you've been caught up in a thought and coming back to the present.
It works a lot like being on a date, noticing you're planning what to say next while they're talking, and coming back to what they're saying.
If you have a date coming up, instead of telling yourself you need to be a great talker this time, try remembering just one thing.
Less "What do I say next?" and more "What did this person just say?"
Honestly, that might matter more than having something clever to say.
And if you'd like to practice noticing your own thoughts and coming back to the present like this, our app, True Meditation, helps you start mindfulness meditation and keep it up.
In short
On first dates, the people who more often got a yes to seeing them again were the ones who asked more follow-up questions, picking up on what the other person had just said. Harvard researchers found this in 2017 by analyzing speed-dating conversations among 110 people, and a follow-up question signals to the other person, "I'm listening to you." Follow-up questions are hard to ask in real conversations because, while the other person is talking, what you'll say next comes up automatically and you get caught up in it. In your next conversation, notice whether you're listening or planning what to say, then go back to the last thing the other person said and ask about one thing you're curious about.
True Meditation isn't an app you listen to. It's an app for doing mindfulness meditation yourself — practice in noticing your own thoughts, built into an app. It's free on the App Store and Google Play.
Related reading
- What's Going On in Your Head When You're Trying to Impress — why you don't notice the moment the urge to look good kicks in
- Why I Stopped Worrying What Other People Think — letting go of the "what would everyone else do?" thought