4．
To Please Your Friends，Tell Them What They Already Knew
The research emeraged out of some real-life observations shared by Gilbert and co-authors Gus Cooney and Timothy D．Wilson："Conversation is the most common of all human social activities，and doing it well requires that we know what our conversation partners most want to hear．（67）D"says psychological scientist Daniel T，Gilbert of Harvard University．
"When our friends try to tell us about movies we've never seen or albums we've never heard，we usually find ourselves bored，confused，and underwhelmed．（68）E．And yet，as soon as it's our turn to speak，we do exactlly the same thing to our friends-with exactly the same consequences．We wanted to understand why this happens．"Gilbert explains．The researchers decided to do this by conducting a series of experiments．
In their first experiment，the researchers assigned participants to groups of three，with one person acting as the speaker and the other two acting as listeners．Speakers watched a video and then tried do describe it to the listeners．Some of the listeners had seen the video the speakere was describing，and others had not．
（69）A．When the speakers were done speaking，the listeners rated them on these aspects．The results showed that speakers'predictions were exactly backwards．Speakers expected listeners to respond more positively to their stories when the listeners had not seen the video they were describing （70）F．Although speakers expected listeners to enjoy hearing about a novel experience more than a familiar one，it was actually the other way around．
A second study showed that when asked to predict their own reactions before hearing the story，listeners made the same mistake that speakers did．
