The Science of Talking Too Much
Know someone who won’t stop talking? Or do you often find yourself rambling on and on? Psychology can help explain why we sometimes overtalk and what to do about it.
In the 1995 film Dumb and Dumber, Harry Dunn (played by Jeff Daniels) meets a nice woman about his age named Vicky (played by Victoria Rowell) at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, where they’ve both stopped on long journeys across the U.S. Despite some bungling of the conversation (including Harry accidentally damaging her car and Vicky revealing she has a boyfriend), they seem charmed with each other.
Before they part, Vicky, inside her car and ready to go, places a cigarette in her mouth, which Harry promptly offers to light for her. He does so, and with a dramatic flair of his arm, throws the match on the ground. But there’s a problem: he forgot that he earlier spilled gasoline on his leg, and the match immediately enflames his pants.
Harry has asked Vicky for her phone number since, coincidentally, they’re both headed to Aspen, Colorado. Harry’s pants are on fire, so he needs the number immediately, but he’s too embarrassed to reveal his conundrum. Vicky gives a number, says it’s an old number, rambles a bit, then starts to make a joke. Harry explodes, “for God’s sake, just give me the damn number!” Vicky, rightfully offended, leaves, and Harry runs for water (which he finds in the worst place, but we don’t need to get into that here).
We’ve all felt Harry’s palpable frustration with someone who won’t get to the point when they’re speaking (though hopefully we don’t scream in anger and we’re not on fire).
We often encounter people who talk a lot. Whether you’re on a Zoom meeting for work or at a gathering with friends or acquaintances, interacting with people who continuously talk and won’t let you get a word in can make you dread interacting with them.
Or maybe you’re the person who rambles on. When you’re upset, nervous, or excited, you may talk for minutes at a time. You may have noticed that the person you’re talking to becomes fidgety or their eyes glaze over.
Talking at length can be part of a rich, two-sided, enlightening conversation. But in certain situations, we need to get to the point. What can we do to be brief while maintaining clarity?
The Traffic Light Rule
Mark Goulston, MD, a business psychiatrist and Marty Nemko, PhD, an educational psychologist, came up with a system to help people who overindulge in their speech: the traffic light rule.
It works — you guessed it — like a traffic light. During the first 20 seconds you’re speaking, the light is green, and you speak freely. During the next 20 seconds, the light turns yellow and it’s time to consider wrapping up. After 40 seconds, the light is red — it’s time to stop.
You may be thinking, “40 seconds? That’s way too short.” But in conversations, according to Goulston, “people who talk for more than half a minute at a time are…often perceived as too chatty.” That may not be the case in every instance, but he has a point.
Of course, there are exceptions. People sometimes need a few minutes to tell a story or describe an event (but it’s good to notice when you’re including unnecessary details).
The next time you have a conversation, try the traffic light rule and see what happens. If you find yourself constantly breaking the 40 second mark and it seems way too short, you can ask yourself a few questions about why it’s hard for you to stop talking.
Robert Kraft, PhD, a professor of cognitive psychology at Otterbein University in Ohio, outlines some reasons why people overtalk, including:
- Social anxiety — feelings of anxiety can cause a person to keep talking to combat nervousness.
- Using conversations as self-talk instead of communication — thinking aloud instead of conversating, thus providing unnecessary details.
- Frustration with unexpressed thoughts — being afraid of losing what you wanted to say if you don’t interrupt.
- A need to maintain control — the speaker maintains power over others by not letting them talk.
- Not trusting other people’s knowledge — adding extraneous details and not recognizing that others can often make inferences without them.
Other reasons given by Nemko why someone might overtalk are that they feel insecure, so they talk a lot to impress others, or they simply don’t have a sense of the passage of time. If you find yourself talking too much in conversations, the traffic light rule can help you discover the reason why you feel the need to keep yammering.
A colleague recently held interviews for a job opening at her organization. She was surprised to find that candidates routinely gave 5–7-minute answers to interview questions. She said that they could have gotten to the point in 1–2 minutes, and that talking too long hurt their chances of getting the job because they didn’t stay focused on the question. Being concise can be beneficial.
A pair of studies at Harvard University have amplified how much we talk about ourselves, why it can be a problem, and what we can do to have better conversations.
The first study showed that on average, 30–40% of our everyday speech is focused on talking about ourselves. We place a high value on discussing our subjective experiences, and doing so activates the brain’s reward systems. Some people value talking about themselves even more than they value money: many in the study were willing to forfeit being paid so they could continue discussing their personal experiences.
The other study tested the effect of question-asking on likability. Like the previous study, this one found that “people spend most of their time during conversations talking about their own viewpoints and tend to self-promote when meeting people for the first time.”
The experimenters set up a scenario where two people engaged in conversation, but one of them was instructed by researchers to ask follow-up questions and not talk about themselves as much. The study also included a third person who simply observed the conversation.
The authors concluded that in these conversations, “we identify an important psychological mechanism — the effect of question-asking is driven by an increase in perceived responsiveness, which leads question-recipients to like their partners more.” People who self-promoted and talked a lot weren’t the most well-received — it was the people who asked the most follow-up questions that were perceived as better conversationalists, both by the question-recipient and the observer.
If you ask someone what makes a good conversationalist, they might say someone who’s funny or who listens well. It’s rare that we say it’s someone who asks a lot of follow-up questions: “people do not anticipate the effect of question-asking on liking…it seems that people are largely unaware that question-asking has social benefits,” say the authors.
Why is question-asking (specifically, follow-up questioning) so powerful? It shows the other person that you’re taking an interest in them, that you’re invested in learning more about them, and that you’re a good listener — you can’t ask follow-up questions about something if you’re not listening in the first place.
To summarize, we can cut down on our conversational rambling by:
1. Becoming aware of how long we tend to talk and cutting it down if it’s consistently too long.
2. Becoming active listeners and asking follow-up questions.
And what about when you get caught in a conversation with someone else who won’t stop talking? You might think that simply agreeing with the person or interrupting them will cue them to cut it short and stop.
This isn’t the case. A study on verbal behavior by psychology professors Carsta Simon and William Baum found that the best way to get someone to stop talking is not to interrupt them, but to simply be quiet. They found that when one person is unusually quiet, it signals the other person that it’s time to quit talking.
Next time you’re communicating, try these techniques. You may find yourself more satisfied with the chat, and others will be pleased with your conversational skills.
