Even when people aren’t talking, they can still tell you something.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like gaps in conversation. If nobody’s talking, I get anxious and try to fill the silence. I’m hardly alone in this. In fact, this type of discomfort is so common that communication researchers have a term for it: interactional silence anxiety. Conversation has a rhythm to it, and when that rhythm is broken, it’s jarring.

This may be an evolved trait. Evolutionary psychologists speculate that gaps in conversation unconsciously suggest a breakdown in social cohesion. That’s why they make us uneasy.

Discomfiting or not, silence is useful in conversation. Even the bible says so. As a qualitative researcher I have trained myself to make good use of gaps when they occur, despite them making me so uncomfortable. I’ve learned that sometimes the best way to probe what somebody has said is not to probe at all.

By sitting with the stillness and waiting for the other person to fill it, you create an opportunity for interesting things to happen. You might get more detail. You might get an interesting anecdote or metaphor. You might even get a transition to a related topic, or maybe a topic that is seemingly unrelated but turns out to be unexpectedly relevant.

One thing I’ve learned about silence is that we need to be careful about how we interpret it. The fact that somebody’s not talking could mean a wide variety of things, including:

They need some time to process what has been said.

They’re formulating a response.

They’re struggling to find the right language to express their thoughts.

It’s also important to know when to be quiet. As a researcher, I have two guidelines:

If I’m not getting the information I need despite multiple tries.

If somebody’s demeanor clearly indicates a need for time and space to think and process.

Both of those situations suggest it’s time to shut up.

Here’s another valuable thing you can do – call out the silence. Make it a point of discussion: “wow, everything went quiet all of a sudden. I wonder why?”  This creates an opportunity to discuss what the silence might signify, such as disagreement, uncertainty or a loss of interest. Don’t try to interpret silence. Just wait and see where the conversation goes.

Gaps in conversation don’t have to be uncomfortable. If you think of it, the discomfort you feel is entirely created by you. So, learn to push past your own feeling of awkwardness and embrace the gift of silence. It’s a skill worth developing.

During a focus group among foodservice professionals, one participant said to another …

… “your restaurant is never going to make money. I’m just saying.” The second participant neither appreciated nor agreed with this statement. But it started a good, if emotional, conversation.

At one point I quoted what the first participant had said, including the ‘just saying’ part, and asked why he had added that. He thought a bit and admitted that he had included it without thinking about it. Eventually he realized that he was trying to be less harsh. This led to further discussion about the intense emotional commitment restaurant owners make to their businesses, which surfaced important insights for the client, a food manufacturer.

‘Just saying’ is one of those phrases we sometimes use without thinking. It’s what’s technically called a discourse marker – something that indicates how somebody wants a statement to be interpreted. Specifically, it signals that the speaker wants the remark to be heard in a particular way – or to avoid responsibility for how it might be taken. As a qualitative researcher, I pay close attention to these markers, as they can be clues to hidden meaning. I’ve learned that when somebody adds in ‘just saying,’ they’re probably not just saying. While ostensibly it means that somebody is merely making an observation, it usually means more.

Specifically, it might indicate the speaker is trying to:

Soften criticism by making it seem less personal or confrontational.
Create plausible deniability if the remark is challenged or poorly received.
Imply something without stating it outright leaving the listener to connect the dots.

So, by exploring these markers when we encounter them and questioning why the speaker included one in a statement, we can learn more about a person’s true meaning and feelings.  In addition to ‘just saying,’ here are a few more discourse markers that I watch for, as they suggest veiled subtext:

‘For what it’s worth…’ signals modesty while asking the listener to take the opinion seriously.
‘No offense, but…’ acknowledges that offense is likely while attempting to soften it.
‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but…’ is a way to soften criticism.
‘With all due respect…’ marks disagreement while paying deference.
‘Not for nothing…’ suggests a point deserves more attention than it’s getting.
‘I’m just asking the question…’ frames an implication or challenge as mere curiosity.

So, when you notice a discourse marker in the course of conversation, dig in. You’re likely to learn a little more, and maybe even a lot more.

There’s no substitute for experience and expertise.

We have been collaborating on research that combines qualitative methods and advanced technology for about 15 years. However, we’ve never actually told the world about this. So, here goes.

Market research is a team effort. High-quality outcomes require that all participants do excellent work and know how to work together. Today’s evolving landscape often requires the integration of traditional qualitative research with behavioral and emotional measures such as eye tracking and biometrics.  A high degree of experience working with these tools – and working seamlessly – is essential to producing quality results that yield unexpected insights.

Combining advanced technology with qualitative methods is an unbeatable combination. It allows us to uncover what people really notice and respond to – often beyond what they can articulate themselves. But only if everybody involved understands the tools and techniques.

We have worked together dozens of times on this type of research. Bob provides the advanced technology. Tom handles the qualitative research design, execution and analysis. This combination yields outstanding results because IVP is the leading provider of eye tracking and biometric technology to the market research world, and Tom is widely known for combining these tools with qualitative methods.

People often view biometrics as a plug-and-play solution. But success depends upon more than sophisticated equipment. If the qualitative researcher moderating the study doesn’t understand eye tracking or biometrics, important opportunities will be missed. The study design could be flawed, important questions might not be asked, perceptions might not be probed, and valuable insights will never surface.

What’s more, collecting and analyzing biometric data is both art and science. If the people responsible for the technology aren’t experienced, you could easily end up with useless data and wasted time and money.

The same principle applies on the back end. Biometric data has little value unless those responsible for its analysis understand marketing strategy, motivation, and decision-making. This allows data to be translated into meaningful stories and actionable insights.

That’s why collaboration matters. Successful studies occur when all parties understand one another’s disciplines. The difference between a good study and a great one is ensuring that every link in the chain is strong from the beginning to the end.

Remember when we all thought the world was flat?   

We don’t believe things because they’re true. We believe them because they’re easy to believe.  As a qualitative researcher, one of the main things I do is help my clients understand how people form opinions and make decisions. Do this long enough and you’ll notice that people believe some crazy stuff. So, I regularly need to figure out why people believe things that are demonstrably untrue.

We live in a world inundated with information. What’s more – newsflash! – a lot of the information we encounter is incorrect. Sometimes this inaccuracy is inadvertent, sometimes it’s deliberate. Figuring out what’s true is increasingly important. And one thing that can make this particularly challenging is that sometimes things that aren’t true just sound like they are.

Cognitive psychologists have a term for this: ‘the illusory truth effect.’ It’s our tendency to believe something simply because it’s familiar – we’ve heard it repeated many times over a long period. This repetition increases what’s called ‘processing fluency,’ which is a fancy way of saying that something is easy to think about. Our brains then mistake that ease for accuracy. If you’ve been told your entire life that the earth is flat, that doesn’t just sound true, it sounds obvious.

I see this as being a problem. When something intuitively sounds true, we’re likely to take it at face value and not challenge it. And this is how lies spread virally. I’m reminded of that remark attributed to Mark Twain about how a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can put its pants on. (Actually, there’s no proof he ever said that, so maybe this is illustrative of my point.)

The increasing importance of social media and artificial intelligence makes this a particularly urgent issue, as these tools play a significant role in perpetuating untruths. Social media algorithms amplify repetition, and repetition drives the illusory truth effect. These algorithms also magnify saliency – they make things seem more significant than they are. These factors put a lot of responsibility on each of us individually to vet information.

This isn’t something for which any of us has the power to effect broad change. We need to focus on our own thinking patterns.  This means getting in the habit of questioning conventional wisdom. Because  a lot of conventional wisdom out there is complete nonsense.

So, when something is easy to believe, be suspicious. The fact that it’s easy doesn’t make it true.

Probability Isn’t Intelligence. 

If you’ve been to a marketing or market research conference recently, you’ll have noticed that most of the content is either expressly or indirectly about artificial intelligence and how it applies to our field. Same for the trade press – it’s heavily focused on AI.

As with pretty much every other profession, AI tools have significantly changed market research. From writing a first draft of a questionnaire to streamlining analysis, they can be extremely valuable. As a qualitative researcher, I’ve found them to be quite helpful in certain, specific situations. For instance, they’re great for automating repetitive tasks and are also very good (probably better than humans) at identifying latent themes in qualitative data.

As indispensable as these tools are, it’s important to remember what they can and can’t do. AI pioneers like Judea Pearl and Gary Marcus have pointed out that the term ‘AI’ is something of a misnomer, as artificial intelligence isn’t truly ‘intelligent’ in the most commonly understood senses of the word.

Rather, AI tools are high-dimensional probability calculators. They are good at yielding output that eerily resembles intelligence and are amazingly good at finding correlations and hidden patterns. As such, these tools can help us come up with new, unexpected hypotheses for further investigation.  However, it’s essential not to skip that ‘further investigation’ part.

Using technology to automate tedious, recurring tasks or to sift through a huge, disorganized dataset is a smart practice. But, if you let a microchip think for you, not only are you asking for something it can’t actually do, but you are making yourself – as a carbon-based life form – superfluous.

Drawing new insights from data requires thinking. Managing a conversation in a spontaneous manner that leads to unexpected, insightful findings requires thinking. For now, at least, people will need to continue to do these jobs. So, if we want to stay relevant as humans, we need to lean into some uniquely human skills: critical thinking, inference, and nonlinear reasoning. Remember, probability and insight are not the same thing. True wisdom comes from things like intuition and lived experience.

When it comes to AI, a lot of the conversation seems to focus on efficiency. I like saving time and money as much as the next guy, but truly transformative qualitative research isn’t about efficiency, it’s about inference and insight in the face of uncertainty. For now, at least, that’s what the human mind is for.