Networking for Nerds

A Professor's Guide to Conference Season Survival

Conference season is here, and I can feel the electric buzz of anticipation in academia's virtual hallways.

I’m heading to Denver for the annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP), where I’ll be talking about empathic AI at the Emotion preconference. If you’re there, come say hi! Whether it’s SPSP, APS, CNS, SAS, or any other acronym-filled gathering, conferences can be overwhelming. For junior researchers, especially, the experience of seeing your academic heroes stroll by—knowing you should strike up a conversation but feeling too anxious to—is all too familiar. You wonder: Why would she even want to talk to me?

Here’s the thing: that anxious knot in your stomach? It’s likely tricking you into overestimating how awkward those interactions will be. Research by Nick Epley and Juliana Schroeder shows we chronically underestimate how much others enjoy talking to us; and how much we’ll enjoy those conversations, too. Small talk may have a bad reputation, bu…