How Much Should You Disclose to Someone New?

The authors of First Impressions use the analogy of a game of strip poker: you don’t want to be sitting there naked, while everyone else is fully clothed.

The next two principles below will help you understand how to go about keeping your rate of disclosure symmetrical.

Gradually Deepen the Conversation in Stages

In Conversationally Speaking, communications expert Alan Garner delineates the 4 stages through which a conversation proceeds and becomes more meaningful and significant:

• Clichés. These are the little rituals of sociality that mean little, but open up interactions: “Hi, how are you?” and “Nice to meet you.”
• Facts. After the opening salvos have been launched, people exchange basic information. Where they’re from. What they do for work. As Garner notes, at this stage, “Each person tries to find out whether there is enough to share to make a relationship worthwhile.”
• Opinions. Once folks have gotten to know each other a bit, they begin to introduce their views on current events, sports, money, love, etc.
• Feelings. “Feelings differ from facts and opinions,” Garner says, “in that they go beyond describing what happened and how you view what happened and convey your emotional reaction to what happened.” Just sharing facts and opinions keeps the conversation relatively shallow and dry; feelings reveal your heart — and that’s what really gets people interested and intrigued.

Feelings may be conversation’s most potent hook, but you don’t want to skip right into sharing them; doing so generally shows a lack of self-awareness, and provokes a “Whoa! Easy there fella!” response from the other person. Rather, you should proceed through each of these stages gradually, building an on-ramp from more shallow small talk to deeper conversation. Move topics from mild to strong, lighter to heavier, neutral to charged.