# On a first date, ask about what they just said

"I'm planning a trip to Canada."

There are two easy ways to answer that. You can say "Oh, cool. Have you ever been there before?" Or you can nod and ask what they do for fun.

The first one is a follow-up question. It picks up the thing the other person just said and asks for more of it. In a set of studies from Harvard researchers, that small habit went with being liked more, and with more people saying yes to a second date.

## Three studies, one pattern

Karen Huang, Michael Yeomans, Alison Wood Brooks, Julia Minson, and Francesca Gino published the work in 2017 as [It doesn't hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking](https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000097), in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The example about Canada comes from their own transcripts.

In the first study, pairs of strangers in a university lab chatted online for 15 minutes. One person in each pair was told to ask at least nine questions, or at most four. The partners of the people who asked more questions liked them more afterward. A second study, run online, gave both partners instructions and found the same thing.

Then research assistants hand-labeled every question in the online chats by type, and the researchers used those labels to train an algorithm that sorted the questions in a later set of speed dates. Follow-up questions were the ones that mattered. Questions that switched to a new topic, opening small talk, and "how about you?" questions that bounced the other person's question back did not do the same work.

The third study left the lab. The team went back to recordings from speed-dating events, where 110 people went on 15 to 19 four-minute dates each and then marked whether they wanted to see each partner again. Across those decisions, people who asked a higher share of follow-up questions got more partners saying yes to a second date. Other kinds of questions were unrelated to it, and the pattern held for men and for women. The link was modest, and the paper gives its size.

:::pullquote
A follow-up question is hard to ask without listening, and it can show the other person you were paying attention.
:::

## Why it works

The researchers' explanation is responsiveness, the sense that someone is listening, understands you, and cares about what you said. A follow-up question is hard to fake. You cannot ask about the Canada trip unless you heard about the Canada trip.

One detail makes the point. When the researchers showed transcripts of the online chats to outside readers, those readers did not like the people who asked many questions any more than the people who asked few. The extra liking only showed up in the person being asked. So the effect is not about looking charming to a crowd. Being asked about yourself, by someone who clearly heard you, feels good.

The other detail is the reason this is advice at all. Across the studies, people who were told to ask lots of questions did not expect to be liked any more for it, and outside readers who saw the chats did not predict it either. Most of us walk into a first date thinking about what to say about ourselves. The research says the better use of that energy is the next question.

The evidence has edges. The lab studies were text chats between strangers, not dates, and the speed-dating recordings came from [heterosexual speed dates among graduate students at one university in 2005](https://doi.org/10.1086/670240), meeting for four minutes at a time. That part was correlational, so people who ask follow-ups may differ from other daters in ways the study did not measure. And a yes on a scorecard says someone wanted to meet again, not that a second date or a relationship followed.

## How to ask one without it turning into an interview

A follow-up question does not need to be clever. "What made you pick Canada?" works. So does "Wait, how did that happen?" The only rule is that it has to come from what they just told you.

Listen for the detail people add when they did not have to. If someone says they moved here for a job "and then stayed," ask what made them stay. If they mention a sister twice, ask about the sister.

Answer when they ask you something back. The authors raise the possibility that someone who only asks, and never shares, could start to feel like an interviewer, and earlier research on [taking turns with questions](/blog/the-36-questions-what-the-study-actually-asks) points the same way. A first date where both people follow up on each other is the version to aim for.

Go easy on the topic switches. Some are needed when a thread runs out. But if every answer you get is met with a fresh, unrelated question, the other person ends the night feeling surveyed rather than heard.

It also starts before you meet. A profile with something specific in it gives the other person a real first question, and you can do the same for them by reading their profile closely enough to follow up on something they wrote, instead of opening with a line you send everyone.