Why do we feel awkward?
How a broken conversational rhythm, a four-second silence and the reading of standing produce the awkward feeling, and what research says helps it pass.
Answer to the question
Why do we feel awkward?
People feel awkward when the shared rhythm of a conversation breaks and the break is read as a sign about their standing. In one experiment, a four-second silence lowered ratings of belonging and raised feelings of rejection. Visible embarrassment and follow-up questions are the two behaviours that research links to goodwill and liking afterwards.
Key takeaways
- In a comparison across ten languages, speakers avoided overlapping talk and kept the pause between turns short, with average gaps within about 250 milliseconds of the cross-language mean (Stivers and colleagues, 2009).
- In a filmed group conversation, a four-second silence led viewers to report more rejection and lower belonging, self-esteem, validation and perceived consensus, although they did not consciously notice it (Koudenburg and colleagues, 2011).
- Across five studies, observers rated embarrassed people as more prosocial and wanted to affiliate with them more (Feinberg and colleagues, 2012).
- In three studies of live conversations, people who asked more questions, and especially follow-up questions, were better liked (Huang and colleagues, 2017).
- Will Storr's The Status Game supplies the reason a small break matters: people need to get along and get ahead in a group, and keep track of their standing.
This article is general information about research on conversation timing and social feelings. It is not medical advice, and nothing in it is a reason to change any treatment or to stop seeking care. Speak to a GP or another clinician about your own health. Medical review: Reja Batool.
A reply that comes a beat late, or a remark that lands on nothing, is registered before it is understood. Talk between people runs on a rhythm that nobody sets and almost everybody follows, and feeling awkward is what it is like when that rhythm breaks. Will Storr's The Status Game explains why such a small break matters: people keep track of their standing in a group all the time.
A shared clock under talk
In ten languages, from small traditional communities to widely spoken ones, speakers avoided talking over each other and kept the pause between turns short, according to a comparison led by Tanya Stivers. Average gaps differed from one language to the next, but only within about a quarter of a second of the cross-language mean. The authors suggest that people are so sensitive to these small differences in tempo that they can feel like large differences in manner.
That result turns timing into a shared expectation and not a personal style. Both people are running the same clock, so an awkward pause is felt by each of them, and neither has to have done anything wrong for the beat to be missed.
Storr's argument gives the missed beat its weight. In The Status Game, humans need first to get along with a group and then to get ahead within it, and a part of the mind scans for signs of standing without being asked. A late reply is a cheap sign to read, and the reading is quick and easily taken as a comment on the self, which is the point at which an awkward moment begins to feel personal. The same drive sits behind the comparisons covered in Why do we compare ourselves to others, and it is one reason the need described in Why Do We Need to Belong shows up even in small exchanges.
Four seconds that feel awkward
A group of undergraduate students watched a six-minute video of three women talking about relationships. For some viewers a silence of four seconds had been edited in, and for others the talk ran on without it. Those who saw the silence reported more feelings of rejection and more negative emotion, and they rated belonging, self-esteem, social validation and perceived consensus lower. A comparison group given only the script and photographs rated the situation like the viewers who saw the flowing version.
| Measure rated by viewers | After the four-second silence |
|---|---|
| Feelings of rejection | Higher |
| Negative emotion | Higher |
| Belonging | Lower |
| Self-esteem | Lower |
| Social validation | Lower |
| Perceived consensus | Lower |
| Sense of control | No change |
The study was led by Namkje Koudenburg, and an earlier experiment in the same paper, built on a written scenario with a brief silence after a mildly controversial remark, found the same direction of effect. A sense of control did not change in either.
The viewers in the video experiment did not consciously notice the silence, yet their ratings moved. The authors read fluent talk as an implicit route to social validation: when people speak without a break, each of them infers that the others agree. A gap removes that inference without announcing that it has done so, which may be why an awkward moment is so often felt before it can be explained.
The awkward feeling also belongs to the person who believes the gap is theirs. A silence that only a few notice can seem to fill a whole room to the one who thinks they caused it, which links this pattern to the overestimate of notice described in What is the spotlight effect. What the four seconds show is that the cost is real at the level of belonging, even when it is invisible at the level of attention.
Repair through embarrassment and questions
The flush and the fumble that follow an awkward break have a use. Matthew Feinberg, Robb Willer and Dacher Keltner ran five studies on embarrassment as a signal. People who were more easily embarrassed reported more prosocial tendencies and behaved more generously than people who blushed less. In the other studies, observers rated embarrassed people as more prosocial and less antisocial than people showing another emotion or none, gave them more resources and said they wanted to affiliate with them more, and the observers' sense that the person was prosocial explained those effects. On this evidence the discomfort that comes with an awkward moment is read by observers as a sign of goodwill.
Repair of an awkward moment can also be active. Karen Huang and colleagues studied live two-person conversations in three studies, some online get-to-know-you chats and some face-to-face speed dates. People who asked more questions were better liked by their partners, and follow-up questions, which build on what the partner has just said, had the strongest link to liking. When people were told to ask more questions, their partners saw them as more responsive, meaning they seemed to listen, understand, validate and care, and that perceived responsiveness helped explain the rise in liking. People did not expect questions to raise liking before they were tested.
A follow-up question eases an awkward stretch by restarting the rhythm at the exact point where it broke, because it takes the last thing the other person said and hands the turn back. In speed dating, more follow-up questions meant more second dates, which is a long way from the social cost that a four-second silence carried in the video study.
Common questions
Why do we feel awkward?
Awkwardness arrives when the shared tempo of a conversation breaks and the break is read as a sign about standing in the group. In one experiment a four-second silence lowered ratings of belonging and raised feelings of rejection.
Is feeling awkward the same as feeling embarrassed?
They are close but not identical. Awkwardness describes the moment when the flow breaks, and embarrassment is a common reaction to it. In five studies, embarrassed people were rated as more prosocial by observers.
Is conversation timing the same across languages?
Research on ten languages found a shared pattern of avoiding overlap and keeping the gap between turns short. Average gaps differed by language, within about a quarter of a second of the cross-language mean.
What helps a conversation recover?
Studies of live conversations link asking more questions, and especially follow-up questions, to being better liked, because partners see the asker as more responsive.
Sources
Storr, W. The Status Game. Seed book; vault hub Books/The Status Game.
Stivers, T., Enfield, N. J., Brown, P., Englert, C., Hayashi, M., Heinemann, T., Hoymann, G., Rossano, F., de Ruiter, J. P., Yoon, K.-E., & Levinson, S. C. (2009). Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(26), 10587-10592. doi:10.1073/pnas.0903616106 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0903616106
Koudenburg, N., Postmes, T., & Gordijn, E. H. (2011). Disrupting the flow: How brief silences in group conversations affect social needs. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47(2), 512-515. doi:10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.12.006
Feinberg, M., Willer, R., & Keltner, D. (2012). Flustered and faithful: Embarrassment as a signal of prosociality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102(1), 81-97. doi:10.1037/a0025403 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0025403
Huang, K., Yeomans, M., Brooks, A. W., Minson, J., & Gino, F. (2017). It doesn't hurt to ask: Question-asking increases liking. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 430-452. doi:10.1037/pspi0000097 https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000097