Americans are more likely to say they value being polite, curious, and a good listener than to say they prioritize being persuasive or sounding smart, a new YouGov poll about conversations finds.
YouGov asked U.S. adult citizens a series of a dozen head-to-head choices between two of 12 priorities when interacting with other people. Would Americans prefer being funny or being likable? Sounding smart or avoiding conflict?
We then added up the results from more than 13,000 face-offs; think of it as a league with more than 13,000 games to decide the champion of conversational priorities. We found that Americans really like to think of themselves as good listeners — Americans picked that 75% of the time in matchups against the 11 other priorities. And people were likely to say they prefer just about anything else to sounding smart (25%) or being persuasive (23%).
There are major gender gaps on some conversational priorities. Women are much more likely than men to prefer being polite and being empathetic, while men more often prioritize being accurate and being funny.
Some conversational priorities also show major differences between Democrats and Republicans — and even between men and women of the same party.
For example, Republican women choose being polite over other alternatives 77% of the time, compared to 63% among Republican men — while Democratic men and Democratic women do so at a nearly identical rate (67% vs. 68%).
Democratic and Republican men are equally likely to prioritize being accurate (58% of each). Both groups of men are more likely to prefer being accurate than are Republican women (52%) or Democratic women (44%).
For some conversational priorities, the two parties' gender gaps run in opposite directions. For example, Republican women (65%) are more likely to prioritize being empathetic over other aspects of conversation than are Democratic women (58%). But among men, it's Democrats who are more likely to pick empathy than Republicans (52% vs. 46%).
Likewise, Republican men are more likely than Republican women to prefer speaking their mind to alternatives (54% vs. 38%). But among Democrats, women are slightly more outspoken than men (47% vs. 43%).
— Carl Bialik and Tayor Orth contributed to this article
Methodology: The poll was conducted March 25 - 27, 2025 among 1,117 U.S. adult citizens. Respondents were selected from YouGov’s opt-in panel to be representative of U.S. adult citizens. A random sample (stratified by gender, age, race, education, geographic region, and voter registration) was selected from the 2019 American Community Survey. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, education, 2024 presidential vote, 2020 election turnout and presidential vote, baseline party identification, and current voter registration status. 2024 presidential vote, at time of weighting, was estimated to be 48% Harris and 50% Trump. Demographic weighting targets come from the 2019 American Community Survey. Baseline party identification is the respondent’s most recent answer given around November 8, 2024, and is weighted to the estimated distribution at that time (31% Democratic, 32% Republican). The margin of error for the overall sample is approximately 4%.
Image: Getty (momcilog)
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