By Jonathan Justus | jonnynow.com | 6 July 2026
People are remarkably bad at predicting which conversations will be worth having, according to a new study led by Elizabeth Trinh, a doctoral researcher at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology in April 2026. Across nine experiments involving 1,800 participants in the United States, France and Singapore, people consistently underestimated how much they would enjoy conversations on topics they had rated "not at all interesting" beforehand. The effect held up over Zoom and in person, between strangers and friends, and even when both parties expected to be bored.
The workplace cost of this miscalculation shows up elsewhere too. A 2026 survey of 3,000 Gen Z professionals by the National Society of Leadership and Success found that 60% now actively avoid networking opportunities altogether, and 29% report genuine social anxiety when faced with ordinary workplace small talk. Put the two findings together and a pattern emerges: professionals are skipping precisely the low-stakes conversations most likely to build the relationships their careers depend on, because they have talked themselves out of expecting any value from them.
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The Boredom Miscalculation
Trinh's research points to a specific error in how we forecast our own enjoyment. Before a conversation starts, people fixate on the topic itself as the thing that will determine whether the exchange is worthwhile. But the researchers found the real driver of enjoyment was something else entirely: the mental engagement that comes from actively participating in a back-and-forth exchange with another person. A follow-up experiment with 300 working adults in Singapore isolated this mechanism directly, showing that the act of engaging — regardless of subject matter — was doing most of the work. We are, in short, judging the book by a cover we have not even opened.
What This Costs Us at Work
This is not a trivial quirk of psychology. In most organisations, informal conversation is where trust, visibility and opportunity are actually built. Promotion decisions, cross-team collaborations and new client relationships rarely start with a formal proposal; they start with someone remembering a conversation. When 60% of an entire generation of professionals opts out of the small talk that precedes those bigger moments, the effect compounds over a career. Fewer casual exchanges mean fewer people who know your work, fewer favours asked and returned, and fewer moments where an opportunity finds you because you were simply present and talking. The irony, per Trinh's findings, is that the professionals avoiding these exchanges would likely enjoy them more than they expect — they are just never getting close enough to find out.
How PRO Communicators Turn Small Talk Into Real Connection
The fix is not to force enthusiasm for chit-chat, but to recognise the miscalibration for what it is and act despite it. That means treating the five minutes before a meeting starts, the walk to the coffee machine, or the first message in a new working relationship as a skill to be practised rather than an ordeal to be endured. It means asking one genuine follow-up question instead of retreating to a phone, and noticing that engagement — not the topic — is what makes an exchange land. Organisations that build this capability deliberately, rather than leaving it to individual confidence, see the informal networks that drive real performance strengthen across every level of the business.
Key statistic: People consistently underestimate how much they will enjoy conversations they expect to find boring, an effect that held across nine studies and 1,800 participants in three countries. (Trinh et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2026)
Master Professional Communication with Elevana
Reading the research is one thing; building the instinct to act on it under real workplace pressure is another. Elevana's PRO Communicator programme trains professionals to turn everyday exchanges — small talk included — into the kind of clear, confident communication that builds trust and opens doors, across meetings, negotiations and the countless informal moments in between.
The conversation you're dreading is rarely the one you'll regret having.
