In other words, asking questions challenges the ossified part of human nature that resists social vulnerability and craves protection from derision, criticism, and discomfort. They think they’ll impress someone by telling great stories and talking about themselves.” People don’t think they will impress anyone by asking questions-which is a cultural misperception. “If we aren’t confident in a situation, then we are afraid to ask questions because it could be seen as a sign of weakness, admitting we don’t know something. “There’s a strong relationship between questioning and confidence,” Berger tells Quartz. It’s a practice that can leave us feeling naked. But so is a fear of asking questions, according to Warren Berger, journalist and author of A More Beautiful Question, a book about the power of queries. After all, curiosity is at the heart of what it means to be human. He’s showing his plumage to signal his worthiness for date number two. On a first date, this instinct may translate into a 90-minute pitch about a guy’s incredible Ivy League education and his swanky apartment. They do this by “exhibiting knowledge and skill, and by holding center stage through verbal performance such as storytelling, joking or imparting information,” Tannen writes. This phenomenon was documented in You Just Don’t Understand!, a 1990 book on language and gender written by Georgetown University sociolinguistics professor Deborah Tannen.įor many men, according to Tannen, the goal of conversation is to negotiate for status in the social hierarchy or to preserve independence. When it does come up, they said, it’s more likely to be because of personality differences than gender biases.)Īll that said, men and women tend to think differently about the purpose of conversation on first dates-and about conversation in general.

(I spoke to two experts on dating in the queer community, both of whom told me that the question conundrum is much less prominent in LGBT relationships.

Before we get into what those differences are, however, a caveat: These theories don’t apply to the behavior of all men or all women, and I am talking specifically about heterosexual dating scenarios.

What men want from women