Pink noise linked to enjoyment and second dates — SkimNews
Get the Health newsletter
Daily health & science — research, biotech, public health, the studies worth knowing. Free.
- Dartmouth College researchers analyzed more than 1,000 conversations between strangers and found that more pink noise accompanied greater enjoyment, a stronger desire to continue and a stronger sense of connection.
- Pink noise marked conversations that balanced stability and flexibility: speakers synchronized while exploring a topic, drifted toward fresh ideas and reconverged, unlike disjointed white noise or repetitive red noise.
- Dartmouth College researchers also found more pink noise linked to enjoyment in friends’ conversations about formative experiences, while their speed-dating analysis found that it predicted which pairs met for a second date.
- MPNet scored every conversational turn across 768 criteria, including meaning, tone and context, allowing the team to quantify how each exchange ebbed and flowed over time.
- Kathryn O’Nell said she suspected the skill could be learned, while the study’s analysis of two-host podcasts found their conversations became pinker over the first 50 episodes.
- Emily Finn said being “in sync” can be “incredibly dull,” including when speakers repeat each other’s words and circle a single subject.
- Elizabeth Stokoe praised the move beyond “more similarity is better” but said reducing conversations to enjoyment can be bloodless, pointing to a painful, poignant farewell between a father and a daughter with learning disabilities living in residential care.
Why it matters: For speed-dating participants, the study supplies a measurable account of engagement: across more than 1,000 stranger chats, greater pink noise accompanied enjoyment, connection and a wish to continue, and it predicted second dates in speed dating. The evidence favors conversations that vary while staying coherent, not exchanges that merely mirror one another.
Ask SkimNews
