What is ‘pink noise’ and why do the best talks have it?

By Daniel Johnson-Kim

Ever have a conversation and wonder why it felt so easy?

Scientists at Dartmouth College say the answer may be “pink noise.”

What’s pink noise?

The researchers describe it as a pattern in which two people stay on the same page for a bit, drift apart when something new comes up and then come back together.

Pink noise is not a sound. The term comes from physics and describes a signal that sits between rigid order and randomness, according to the new study published in Science Advances.

In a “red noise” conversation, two people circle the same idea over and over or never reconnect once they split. In a “white noise” conversation, one remark has little to do with the last.

“I think of pink noise as a ‘Goldilocks signal’ between red and white noise,” senior author Emily Finn, an assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences at Dartmouth, said in a news release.

The team used an AI language tool to score how close each remark was in meaning to the one before it. Then it tracked how that closeness rose and fell.

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The researchers studied 1,656 video chats between strangers and found that pairs with more pink noise enjoyed the talk more and felt more connected. Those pairs also kept talking longer past the required 25 minutes.

In 97 conversations between friends, more pink noise came with more enjoyment but not a stronger sense of connection.

The pattern showed up in dating as well. In 31 phone dates recorded for a speed-dating podcast, the 19 pairs who were open to a second date had more pink noise than the 12 who were not.

We may also be able to grow the amount of pink noise in a conversation with practice. Across 25 two-host podcasts examined in the study, pink noise rose over the first 50 episodes of the show. Showing the amount of pink noise can grow over time.

But don’t go pure pink just yet.

No one has tested whether pink noise can be taught. Finn said in the release that more research is needed to learn which strategies bring more pink noise into a conversation.

Still, Finn told The Guardian, the popular idea of being “in sync” misses the point.

“In sync can be incredibly dull,” Finn said.