Why are late night conversations better?
5 explanations
Some of the most important, intellectually interesting, and emotionally fulfilling conversations I've had in the past few years have occurred late at night. A few of these late night conversations turned to early morning conversations as they stretched until sunrise the next day.
Whenever I mention this phenomenon to friends, they overwhelmingly agree. Almost all of the canonical conversations that defined our relationship – the ones that we still reference years later – occurred late at night.
In this post, I provide five explanations for what makes late night conversations better, in order of explanatory power.
- Late night conversations serve as a multidimensional commitment filter, leading to less ambiguity around intentionality.
Late nights are socially understood to be personal time. All parties are signaling that they're willing to use their non-work hours to be present at that moment. This creates a peer-to-peer context with far less ambiguity around whether any networking motives are in play.
Because the discussion is happening late into the night, anyone can decide to leave whenever they want with a legitimate reason to go to sleep. When people elect to stay, they are collectively demonstrating their willingness to sacrifice their sleep to participate in the late night conversation.
- Late night conversations typically occur with people we genuinely enjoy being around.
The people we have late night conversations with tend to be those we naturally get along with better. These can be old friends with pre-existing context or new friends that all parties expect they might get along with.
- Late night conversations are better because they are longer and more focused.
Most conversations during the day are time-constrained and littered with distracting messages we feel obligated to respond to. Good conversations are a series of doorknobs, and the most interesting parts of a conversation occur at the second or third hour mark. Additionally, people are more mentally engaged at night, as there is less of an expectation to respond to messages. This allows people to detach from their phones, a major source of distraction.
While conversations don't end when people actually want them to, longer conversations also lead to higher satisfaction that people got what they want. On average, people's desired conversation time differed from their partner's desired time by seven minutes. As conversations get longer, the seven-minute preference gap effectively shrinks to zero as a percentage of the total conversation.
- Late night conversations are better because people are more honest.
People's inhibition levels are lower due to fatigue and possible inebriation effects from other late night activities such as alcohol. This weakens our mental filters and leads to more direct communication, as people say what they actually think rather than a coded version they would say with all their mental faculties.
Lower inhibition levels also lead to faster response times, which are correlated with signaling social connection in conversation. When we're saying what we think without processing second and third order effects, people respond quickly (< 250 ms) and the conversation flows.
Furthermore, our willingness to be honest creates a virtuous cycle where people are continually willing to ask more personal questions, allowing us to connect on a deeper level with others.
- Late night conversations tap into an evolutionary trust window tied to intimacy and vigilance.
For most of human history, the only people awake with you after dark were tribe-mates you trusted with your life. This created a predictable context: low light, fewer interruptions, and a small circle of familiar faces.
The hours associated with sex, whispering, and shared vulnerability naturally manifest into a rich late night conversation. They shift our minds from performance mode to connection mode.
It's also worth playing devil's advocate here. It's possible that late night conversations aren't objectively any better, but rather a combination of being tired, inebriated, or some other mechanism that alters our recollection of the conversation.
Whether the effect is causal or retrospective, remembering these conversations as unusually better is itself evidence that something notable is happening.
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Thanks to Ben Pace for posing this question in a discussion and sparking this blog post.