While there’s never any shortage of advice for individuals planning to throw a party — Martha Stewart’s seminal 1982 book, “Entertaining,” devotes more than 300 pages to the topic — comparatively less attention is paid to the art of being a guest. But it is indeed an art, or at the very least a skill, one that’s apparently being honed more infrequently, as research suggests that the tendency to socialize is in decline in the United States. Still, we probably all know people who are delightful at a dinner party. Hoping to learn their ways, we asked six experts with roots in New York City — a chef, a writer and a singer among them — for their dos and don’ts.

R.S.V.P. With Intention

First, decide if you want to be a guest at all. That means being realistic about your time and energy. The writer and chef Andy Baraghani, 36, admits that with age he’s grown “a bit more selective” about what he commits to, though if the event in question is a friend’s dinner party, he says, “I’m likely to go.” The stylist Beverly Nguyen, 35, founder of Beverly 1975, a home goods store in Lower Manhattan, considers how much her presence would mean to the person who invited her, and what she could contribute to the proceedings. If at this stage you already don’t think you’ll be good company, says the author and T writer at large Aatish Taseer, 45, it might be best to stay home: “To go to a party and be a bore is a crime.” Whatever you do when weighing an invite, says Hamilton South, age withheld, a vice chairman of Standard Industries, just don’t ask who the other guests will be. “It’s a New York habit,” he says, “and the worst possible kind of manners.” If you do say you’ll attend, build trust by keeping your word. “It’s like a show,” says the singer and visual artist Vivian Bond, 63. “I wouldn’t cancel unless I was too sick to go on.”

Be Reasonably On Time, But Never Early

When it comes to intimate gatherings, the window for being “fashionably late” is shorter than you might think. “If somebody says [to come at] 8, I’m there at 8:05,” says South. Baraghani thinks you should be “10 minutes late, max” to a dinner, though a large, unseated party offers more flexibility. But don’t arrive early, either, or even right on time. “Give your host a moment to brush their hair,” says Nguyen. If you’re the first to arrive, says Bond, look around for opportunities to help, and if the host doesn’t want any assistance, “get yourself a drink and charmingly stay out of the way without turning into a zombie.” The artist Chloe Wise, 35, sometimes takes this thinking a step further by asking if the host needs anything from the store. “Leave and come back,” she says. “Ideally someone else is there by then, and the two of you fall in love.”