To improve your conversation skills, ditch ‘boomerasking’
People who ask questions then answer them themselves are seen as disinterested in conversation partners, and liked less as a result, according to new research.
12 March 2025
Person A: "What's the craziest thing you've ever swum with?"
Person B: "Umm. I haven't really swum with anything crazy. Probably just fish?"
Person A: "Yeah… Last year, I swam with a giant manta ray. It was incredible."
Many of us will have the experience of being Person B in this type of conversation. If you know you have a tendency to be like Person A, though, this makes you a 'boomerasker' — someone who asks a question, lets the other person respond, but then lets the question immediately return to them like a boomerang. According to a new paper in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, which documents the phenomenon, boomeraskers think they're leaving a good impression on the person they're talking to — but they're mistaken.
Alison Wood Brooks at Harvard Business School and Michael Yeomans at Imperial College London ran a total of eight studies that explored people's experiences of boomerasking. In the first, 302 online participants reported on whether they had ever asked or been asked a boomerasker-type question — and more than 90% said 'yes' on both counts. They were then asked to write down the content of some of these interactions, and to answer other questions about this type of conversation.
Based on their answers, the team identified three main categories of 'boomerasks': 'ask-bragging' (which involves a positive self-disclosure), 'ask-complaining' (which involves a negative self-disclosure), and 'ask-sharing' (which involves a neutral disclosure).
To give some examples of each, of an 'ask-brag' was: Person A: 'How was your weekend? Person B: It was fine, I didn't do much. Just watched Netflix. Person A: Oh, that's cool. I went for a long hike of ten miles. It was so much fun!' Ask-complaints followed a pattern that many of us will no doubt also be familiar with. For example, Person A: 'How was your day?' Person B: 'It was exhausting.' Person A: 'Tell me about it. All I did today was clients and kids!' Ask-sharing involved asking a question, ignoring the response, and then sharing their own opinion. For example: 'What should we eat for supper tonight?' 'Maybe we should have Subway?' 'Let's eat tacos. I'll make some now.'
The participants' answers also revealed that most boomerasks happened between friends (with just under 30% falling into this category), while about a quarter were between romantic partners, another quarter were between co-workers, and 17% were between family members. Relatively few were reported as happening during conversations with an acquaintance or other relationship.
The results also showed that when people were on the receiving end of a boomerask, they reported having a less pleasant, more irritating, and less enjoyable conversation than when they were guilty of boomerasking themselves. However, the researchers report, boomeraskers also mistakenly believed that both partners had an equally enjoyable interaction.
The team then ran a series of online studies featuring hypothetical vignettes, in which participants were asked to imagine conversations by reading them or watching them, and to predict how they would feel. The results (some of which came from participants in Hong Kong as well as in the US), revealed that people perceive boomeraskers to be less sincere than communicators who disclose personal information in a straightforward way — and they also like boomeraskers less. Participants were also less likely to want to interact with a boomerasker in the future. However, they felt that their own boomerasks would be received more favourably than straightforward disclosures.
In a final study, the researchers analysed live conversations between 98 pairs of strangers, who had been asked to chat about any of 12 different topics. The team rated these conversations for boomerasking, and also looked at ratings given after the conversations by both speakers on their preferences for each of the topics.
Analyses revealed that, in these natural conversations, in which the partners could talk about any topic in any order with the simple goal of having fun, when their partner boomerasked about a particular topic, they reported liking that topic less. "In free-flowing conversation, too, it seems that people dislike boomeraskers," the team writes.
While we tend to think that other people will prefer a boomerask to a straightforward disclosure, because a boomerask appears to signal an interest in the other person, we're wrong on this, the team notes. In fact, we perceive boomeraskers to be more egocentric and less interested in their partner's perspective. As a result, we think of them as being insincere.
The team has some advice, given all their findings, for how to become a better conversationalist. "Communicators who ask sincere questions and listen to their partners' answers can uncover deeper, more supportive conversations and relationships," they write, "but people should avoid turning the focus of a conversation back to themselves before showing interest in their partner's answer."
Read the paper in full:
Brooks, A. W., & Yeomans, M. (2025). Boomerasking: Answering your own questions. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 154(3), 864–893. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001693
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