Key facts
- People enjoyed conversations more and felt stronger connection when chats showed more pink noise, the researchers said.
- The team fed each side of conversations into an AI called MPNet, which scored every turn on 768 criteria.
- Pink noise sits between white noise, where people fail to follow, and red noise, where they mirror each other.
- First author Kathryn O'Nell said she suspected the skill could be learned and developed.
- The team found pinkiness in two-host podcasts increased over the first 50 episodes.
- Prof Elizabeth Stokoe of the London School of Economics praised the work but said judging conversations by enjoyment can miss the point.
Researchers at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire reported on November 6, 2026 that conversations people rated as more enjoyable carried more pink noise, a term from physics describing a state on the edge of chaos where a system stays stable without getting stuck. The study was published in Science Advances.
The team analyzed more than 1,000 conversations between strangers, who answered questions about the chats afterward. People enjoyed conversations more, wanted to continue chatting and felt a stronger sense of connection when the exchanges showed more pink noise, the researchers found. A similar analysis of conversations between friends about formative experiences again linked more pink noise to more enjoyment.
In speed-dating conversations, more pink noise predicted which pairs met up for a second date, the researchers said. First author Kathryn O'Nell said: "In physics, people talk about pink noise as existing on the edge of chaos, where you can stay at a stable point, but you're not stuck there for ever." She added that the concept suits conversation because people can stay on a topic long enough to understand it without it going stale.
To quantify how conversations moved over time, the scientists fed each side of a chat into an AI called MPNet, which scored every turn on 768 criteria covering meaning, tone and context. Conversations show white noise when people fail to follow what was just said, and red noise when they mirror each other's language and fall into a rut. Pink noise lies between the two, with people synchronizing as they explore a topic, drifting apart to pull in fresh ideas and converging again.
Senior author Emily Finn, a neuroscientist, said being in sync can be dull if people repeat each other's words and circle a single subject. O'Nell said she suspected the skill could be learned and developed. The team also analyzed podcasts fronted by two hosts and found the pinkiness of their conversations increased over the first 50 episodes.
Prof Elizabeth Stokoe, a conversation analyst at the London School of Economics, praised the researchers for moving beyond the idea that more similarity is better. She said asking whether a conversation is enjoyable risks missing the point, citing a study of a phone call in which a father and his daughter, a young woman with learning disabilities living in residential care, take a long time to say goodbye.