Researchers at Dartmouth College and Cornell University in the United States investigated whether people tend to underestimate their conversational abilities, and the reasons that might underlie this behaviour.

The participants were surveyed about how proficient they believed themselves to be in conversation compared to their peers, and were also asked to evaluate how they performed in other activities.

The researchers then investigated whether negative assessment of conversational skills might present a deviation from ‘self-serving bias’, which is the tendency to attribute our success to personal factors, and blame failures or shortcomings on other, external factors.

They ultimately discovered that participants tended to blame awkward moments or lulls in the conversation on themselves, and put successes down to external factors.

It’s not just you: people are more likely to blame themselves when small talk goes wrong