If you have ever asked a friend about their weekend mainly as a runway for your own story, you may have slipped into what researchers call “boomerasking”.
The term describes a familiar conversational habit: posing a question, giving the other person only a brief moment to respond, then answering the same question yourself and snapping the focus back in your direction like a boomerang.
Now, one of the academics behind the label has offered practical guidance on how to avoid this off-putting communication pattern.
Dr Michael Yeomans, of Imperial College London, helped coin “boomerasker” in a study last year. He warns that using a question as a covert way to steer the conversation toward a topic you want to discuss — while barely engaging with the other person’s answer — can come across as calculated and insincere. In fact, he suggests it may make someone seem less likeable than if they had simply talked about themselves from the start.
Writing in an advice article published by Imperial Business School, Dr Yeomans says one way to stop boomerasking is to practise asking questions you cannot answer yourself, helping to weaken the instinct to immediately redirect the exchange back to your own experience.
For instance, that might mean asking someone about their pets when you do not have any pets of your own.
He also recommends making a conscious effort to show genuine curiosity. That could include asking thoughtful follow-up questions or offering comments that make clear you have listened to and understood what the other person has said.
Another strategy is to “stay focused for one more round”. In practice, that means when you feel the urge to pivot to yourself, allow the conversation to continue with the other person for one additional turn before bringing your own perspective into the discussion.
If you’ve ever asked someone how their weekend was, simply so you can launch into a long story about your own, you may be a ‘boomerasker’
Dr Yeomans, professor of behavioural science at Imperial Business School, said: ‘I think boomerasking is eternal and deeply human.
People want to disclose things about themselves, and they’re typically not good at listening.
‘But there are ways to do both of these things, and I think we can all learn to be less of a boomerasker.
‘Boomerasking questions are typically topic starters like “how was your weekend” that you could ask anyone at any time. Follow-up questions require context, and therefore they prove that you were listening to what was said before.’
The study on boomerasking co-authored by Dr Yeomans last year, and published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, surveyed 302 people, finding two-thirds had experienced an example of boomerasking in the previous seven days.
Further surveys of more than 1,800 people, which presented them with examples of boomerasking, found these people generally rated boomeraskers as less sincere and less likeable.
This was the case for three types of boomerasking, including ‘ask-bragging’ – where someone asks a question so they can show off, like asking someone how their day is going so they can tell them they have a promotion.
The other types were ‘ask-complaining’, such as asking how someone is just so you can complain at length how busy and tired you are, and ‘ask-sharing’, which means asking a question so you can share neutral information like a dream you had last night.
Dr Yeomans set out to produce simple tips to help people break the boomerasking habit, in their personal and work lives.
He said: ‘Realising you’re asking questions and then dismissing, or failing to listen to the response, is the first step to improving.
‘It can help to show real interest, so you can practise asking follow-up questions or making comments that show you’ve understood what someone has said.
‘And try to be more curious about other people, so you can learn from them, stop boomerasking, and just start asking people about themselves.’
