Self-Disclosure or Small Talk? Unpacking the Social Explore-Exploit Tradeoff in an Online Chat Room 761 views

Reframing social decisions in terms of exploration and exploitation – the pursuit of novel ties or familiar connections, respectively–is a promising new avenue of research and theory within social psychology. The current work, through a pilot study (n = 170) and a follow-up (n = 100), used group-level manipulations to alter the pursuit of social exploration and exploitation through an online chat room. Participants engaged in 1-on-1 conversations in a Facebook Messenger type chat room with up to 9 other participants for 30 minutes. In the Pilot study, we asked participants to focus on the quality or quantity of connections made to examine how exploration and exploitation influence networking strategies. Network density significantly differed between conditions (t = -9.57, p <.001, df = 8) suggesting that we successfully altered their conversation strategies. Next, the main study manipulated the social risk of conversations by using conversation starters created to elicit small-talk or self-disclosure. Within the main study, the self-disclosure condition was perceived as more meaningful (β = .81, t = 3.12, p = .01) and psychologically rich (β = 2.41, t = 2.05, p < .05) compared with the small-talk condition. However, contrary to our predictions, participants did not adjust their social exploration strategy depending on the condition. This suggests that, at least among strangers, people do not prefer to stick with existing conversation partners more when the conversational context involves intimate self-disclosure. This research line lays the foundation for research on this trade-off within social psychology and aids future researchers designing related experiments.

MA (Master of Arts)

self-disclosure, small talk, group-dynamics, social networks, chat room

English

All rights reserved (no additional license for public reuse)

2022-11-07