Ask a question just to talk about you? You are “boomerasking”.

Asking someone to ask you just so that you can talk about you is a conversational tip as boring as they are old.

Now he has a name: Boomerasking.

Not booming like in “Ok boomer” – think more like a conversational boomerang, where you are constantly going back.

The Alison Wood Brooks behavioral researchers from Harvard and Michael Yeomans of the Imperial College School invented the term in their article published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General this year.

It is when someone pretends the interest by asking a question but is not really paying attention to the answer. Instead, they use it as a way to dip in their own history or anecdote. It is a trick to make someone selfish and self -centered claims that he is really a good listener.

It turns out that nobody really falls in love.

In their research, Wood Brooks and Yeomans have studied the responses of more than 3,000 people in surveys on their own boomerasking habits and those of others. Wood Brooks told Business Insider that they would like to see boomerasking becoming the word of the year.

The study revealed a striking disparity between what boomeras think they are doing and how they are perceived. Although those who do it think they are engaging and pleasant, they appear rather as impolis and not sincere.

Yeomans told Bi that, while while being, each boomerask is a little discomfort for someone. If that is part of a wider diagram of little sincere concern for others, “you will lose their patience”.

The problem is that people think that a chronic boomeras is only interested in themselves, said Yeomans.

“Questions can be windows in the minds of others,” he said. “If you use these opportunities to talk more about you, you lack real chances of learning and connecting yourself.”

Wood Brooks and Yeomans have found three ways in which people Boomerask after asking a question:

• Ask-Braging, when he is followed with something positive to boast;
• Ask you complain, which generally concerns something negative;
• Ask for sharing, which is more neutral, as described the dream of last night.

While boomeras are perceived as non -sincere, Yeomans think they probably don’t want to be.

“I suspect that when we want to disclose something, we can be shy at the idea of ​​doing it directly,” he said. “A question works to open the door. But trying to be polished, we induce others by inducing that we care about them.”

“ Hepeating ” and “biting”

Boomerasking is up there with other boring conversation habits, such as names and offer advice when it has not been requested.

In the workplace, women have invented several terms to describe the irritating ways that some of the men they meet communicate, including the widely used “msplainage”.

There is also “hepening”, which describes when a man appropriates the comments or ideas of a woman and is then rented for them, and “biting”, that is to say when he speaks on her.

Wood Brooks and Yeomans have also studied all the complicated conversational objectives that we must balance, as understand each other, make a good impression, have fun and give or receive information.

Yeomans said that if a boomersker wanted to change in a way, he can train to ask questions that they do not know.

“Ask follow-up questions that rely on what the other person has just said,” he said. “If you pay sincere attention, it can buy you confidence and space to make a little disclosure of yours later – if you have to.”