The title of the study by Trinh and colleagues sounds almost like a gift for every speaker, teacher, or trainer who has ever given a mediocre session: Conversations About Boring Topics Are More Interesting Than We Think. Done. Case closed. Apparently, boring lessons are allowed again. Except the research doesn’t say that at all.

The researchers actually investigated something else and, frankly, something quite recognisable. It turns out that people systematically underestimate how pleasant and engaging a conversation can become once it is underway, even if the topic seems banal or uninteresting beforehand.

The study consisted of a series of experiments involving approximately 1,800 participants. People were asked to estimate beforehand how interesting or pleasant conversations about certain topics would be and to re-evaluate those same conversations afterwards. Sometimes these involved conversations with strangers, sometimes with friends, online or in person. In some experiments, both conversational partners found the topic boring; in others, only one of them did. Remarkably, the pattern proved to be quite consistent: people expected less from such conversations than they reported afterwards.

They observed this effect multiple times. People expected little from conversations about topics they found boring, but rated them clearly more positively afterwards than expected. This applied to conversations with strangers and friends, both online and in person.

Important: conversations about interesting topics remained, on average, still more interesting. The research therefore does not show that content does not matter. Rather, it shows that people focus too much on the topic itself beforehand and too little on what makes a conversation dynamic.

To this end, the authors distinguish between “static” and “dynamic” elements of conversations. The subject is static. You know that in advance. You can easily form an opinion about it. But a real conversation also contains dynamic elements: responding to each other, building meaning together, listening, improvising, laughing, becoming curious, and making unexpected connections. It is precisely the latter that proves difficult to predict.

Actually, it is not that different in education. Sometimes students think beforehand that a subject will not interest them at all. And honestly, sometimes that is true. Not every lesson turns into magic. But we perhaps sometimes underestimate how much engagement, interaction, and human dynamics can make a difference. Something I also found in my own research.

A good teacher can draw students into something that sounds dry on paper. Not necessarily by turning it into a circus, but through enthusiasm, questions, suspense, examples, or interaction. A captivating history lesson is rarely just “the content.” Neither is a good math lesson.

At the same time, this research is also no excuse for poor teaching methods. Ironically, this is equally evident from the same study. In one experiment, the researchers compared live conversations with reading a transcript or watching a recording. And what did they find? The positive effect lay primarily in the live interaction itself. That feels logical in a way. A monologue that is simply endured is different from actively participating in a conversation or learning process.

The research, therefore, perhaps reminds us above all of something that is sometimes lost in discussions about education: motivation arises not only from “interesting content,” but also from human engagement. Sometimes subjects become interesting when someone else lends them meaning, curiosity, or energy. I recently wrote a blog post about the importance of social; this research therefore underscores that importance.

But that still doesn’t mean that boring lessons are suddenly a good idea.