Socializing The first person to end the conversation is usually "higher value"?

[Skippy]

One of my roommates mentioned an interaction he had with a mutual friend. My roommate is someone with incredibly high social intuition... I guess you could also say he's a "natural".

Anyways, he joked about how after talking for a bit, he was the quicker of the two to say "well, it was great seeing you man!", thus ending the conversation. His observation was that the person who ends the conversation is generally the one with more control over the interaction. Now, I don't think he knows about terms such as "frame", but I think that's what he was getting at-- the person who ended the conversation had the more dominant frame. or at least something along that lines.

I've noticed a similar pattern. In general, the more socially dominant individual is the one who ends the conversation first, but I think this "law" could be stated more precisely. also, I don't know if this is a chicken vs egg question--(does ending a conversation earlier make you more dominant/high value? or is it a natural consequence?)

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this phenomenon and whether anyone has a more refined statement than the one in the thread title. Of course, exceptions dont count, such as one person running late for a meeting and thus artificially cutting short the conversation.(or maybe they factor into it somehow!)

 

[Skippy]

Okay I just realized there's a little bit more going on:

1. Suppose you are talking to a girl and there's a lull in the conversation. Sometimes, I just stare off into the distance and this forces her to pick up the conversation. Sometimes it works, but other times, she'll say something like "okay, I'm going to go get some more water/food etc.." She leaves in order to diffuse the awkward tension.(This kind of exit generalizes to conversations with anyone, really)

2. Another time I remember was when I was getting lunch at the dining hall and I was sitting with a group of friends. In that group there was a girl who I was pretty sure liked me. The other two guys left together for some reason so it was just me and the girl. A couple seconds after they leave she nervously says "I uh gotta go too".

In these two examples, the exits are coming from a place of nervousness. I think example 1 is a bit more ambiguous because if you are talking to someone at a party(maybe a dude?) and the conversation runs stale, it's not a bad idea to gracefully exit with something like "Alright, I'm going to go check on so-and-so over there, but it was great seeing you again!" since you can't be expected to hang around the same person the entire night. but then it goes back to the situation that the person ending the conversation is possibly the more "socially dominant".

So I'm going to revise my theory--the manner in which the conversation ended will tell you who is "higher value",but I still have no idea about the chicken/egg part.