Are you guilty of 'boomerasking'? Why this common conversation faux pas makes you less likeable
And no, it has nothing to do with boomers.
A hand coming through a blue wall holding a boomerang.
You might have never heard the term “boomerasking” until now, but you’ve almost certainly experienced it…and might have even done it yourself. And no, this has nothing to do with boomers asking why folks can’t pick themselves up by the bootstraps. In fact, this conversation faux pas can be committed by any age group.
Boomerasking is when someone asks a question, only to bring the focus back onto themselves, ala a boomerang.
Example: you ask “how was your day?” to a friend. Your friend responds, “fine, I got some deals at Costco,” and you reply, “well my day was great, I found $100 on the sidewalk, and someone complimented my new shoes!”
Essentially, you didn’t pose the question to really listen to your friend’s answer, but rather to talk about yourself. That’s boomerasking in a nutshell.
Two people talking.Photo credit: Canva
But according to new research from the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, there’s a bit more to glean from this. For starters, researchers broke boomerasking down into three categories:
- “Ask-bragging” - when someone asks a question only so that they can one-up the answerer and brag about themselves
- “Ask-complaining” - when someone asks a question for the sole purpose of venting their story of a negative experience onto who they asked
- “Ask-sharing” - when someone asks a question followed by sharing something neutral that probably only the asker finds interesting, i.e. weird dream
The study also found that most participants admitted they had both experienced boomerasking and had been guilty of it themselves, so it’s likely that we’ve all done our fair share of asking only to share a bit about ourselves.
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And granted, this impulse isn’t completely self-serving. Researchers noted that really, it’s simply the result of two conflicting natural human desires: one, to be responsive to others, and the other, to share individual experiences. They also shared that some participants thought prefacing a long conversation about themselves with a question posed to another person was the considerate way of making conversation feel more balanced, since it’s not entirely about them.
In all these cases, boomerasking backfires, and instead only makes the question asked seem insincere, according to the study. To combat this urge, researchers suggest two main things:
1. Ask questions that you are unable to answer yourself, which prevents the possibility of boomerasking, because you have nothing to contribute.
2 Use responsive listening techniques, with verbal cues like affirmation, validation, and repeating and/or reformulating what a partner has said. You can still ask questions, just make sure not to shift the focus away from the other person.
Healthy conversations, which are vital to us all, require a bit of give-and-take. Plus, appearing polite doesn’t have nearly as much weight as showing genuine interest in someone else. So the next time you find yourself wanting to share something, maybe just be clear about that. And if you do ask someone about their day, listen.