Awkward

by Ty Tashiro

  In modern societies, people still use small social expectations as an important mechanism for evaluating people’s social worth. In fact, minor social expectations may be more important than ever because people have to consistently interact with people they do not know well. In countries like the United States, where over 80 percent of citizens live in urban areas with thousands or millions of people, it’s impossible to know the reputation of each person. The modern urbanite is constantly required to evaluate the trustworthiness of people he or she does not know well, whether it’s at work, on public transportation, or on a dating app.

  TOP THREE EXPECTATIONS IN TWO HIGH-EVALUATION SITUATIONS

  ONLINE DATERS ARE ATTRACTED TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE:

  1.Good teeth (65%)

  2.Good grammar (62%)

  3.Nice clothing (52%)

  EMPLOYERS ARE ATTRACTED TO PEOPLE WHO HAVE:

  1.A positive attitude (84%)

  2.Communication skills (83%)

  3.Teamwork skills (74%)

  Dating results based on a Match.com/USA Today survey of more than 5,000 singles, and employer results from “The Multi-Generational Job Search” survey of 3,000 human resources employees.

  We now know from thousands of social psychology studies that people use split-second observations about others’ style of dress, hygiene, eye contact, and countless other cues to form judgments about whether they would like to include or exclude them from their social groups.

  All of these expectations and the associated ramifications can sound overwhelming, but most people meet the majority of social expectations they face. For example, if you showered within the past two days, brushed your teeth today, and put on a shirt without an offensive odor, then you went three for three on three key expectations for personal hygiene. Even awkward people meet the majority of social expectations during the course of a day, but the hundreds of expectations we meet receive far less attention than the one or two expectations we do not meet. When we do veer from social expectations or suspect that we are about to veer from expectations, we feel that unmistakable feeling of being awkward.

  Although most people have a sense that first impressions are important, social and personality psychologists have shown through hundreds of studies just how critical the first five minutes of an interaction are. Some judgments about a person’s likability are made within the first ten seconds of an interaction based on things like hygiene, posture, eye contact, and tone of voice. Although people revise their judgments, first impressions establish a bias about people as likable versus unlikable or trustworthy versus untrustworthy.

  So deviations from small social expectations inherent in day-to-day interactions have broader implications for one’s belonging. Awkward acts are usually innocuous—poor fashion choices or undone zippers are not going to kill anyone—but small deviations from expectations stir a primal alarm that the awkward act may be a sign that someone is not “one of us.” Judgments based on a few minutes of interaction might sound unfair or irrational, but for thousands of years, humans have relied on these early signals to navigate social life and this tendency will not go away anytime soon.

  All of this can sound discouraging for those of us who are awkward, but it does not have to be that way. The trick for awkward people is not to ask the broad question, “Why am I awkward?” The better question, one that fits with most awkward people’s ability to dissect complex problems, is to ask, “Why do I have awkward moments?”

  We All Have Awkward Moments

  AS A CHILD I had a bad habit of stopping in entryways. I looked like a puppy that had wandered into the middle of a busy intersection and was incapacitated by indecision. The moment I walked through a doorway was the moment I thought about the social interactions I would encounter inside. My uncertainty about how to navigate those pending interactions sparked my instinct to leave, but I knew that I needed to push past my trepidation. As often happens to awkward people, my anxiety about the pending social situation neither led me to flee nor made me fight through my fears, but instead produced immobilization.

  Most kids have an intuitive sense about how to manage routine expectations during a birthday party or a sleepover, but my parents had to repeatedly coach me about basic elements of most social interactions. Well into my teens, they had to remind me to make eye contact when I spoke to people, to shake hands when greeting someone, or to say good-bye when I left. Given that I did not have an intuitive understanding about how to navigate social situations, I had to study interactions like an academic subject, which included a rote memory approach. Before each social event, my parents would engage me in a Socratic dialogue as a way to quiz me about what would be expected of me, but once I entered a building a form of test anxiety overcame me that blocked my access to the social expectations I had memorized.

  My parents realized a new strategy was needed and decided to simplify with a strategy they branded as the “first-three.” Instead of reviewing all of the social expectations I would need to remember during an upcoming social situation, they would review the three expectations I would encounter first. The goal was to make me an expert at the first two minutes of interactions. If I could execute the early niceties that are commonly expected in social interactions, then I would feel less anxious and hopefully pick up the social rhythm of the interaction.

  For example, before I walked into a birthday party, my parents would review the first-three for greeting my friend’s parents: (1) look them in the eye instead of at my shoes, (2) deliver a firm handshake, and (3) confidently say, “Hello, nice to meet you.” Eventually, these clusters of three expectations would become automated, such that simply thinking about the first-three for greetings triggered the triad of behaviors. Once I mastered the first-three, I could move on to another set of three expectations to be met, such as break eye contact every eight to twelve seconds, ask how someone’s week has been, and follow up that response by asking what made it a good or bad week.

  We can visualize the first-three as an equilateral triangle with each corner representing a social expectation. My goal was to try to make my social behavior meet each of the three expectations in the triangle. Let’s consider the first few seconds of an interaction, which usually involves someone making visual contact with you, followed by a greeting, such as a hello, handshake, or hug. Personality psychologists have found that unacquainted people use behaviors like these to form sweeping judgments about each other within seconds of interaction.

  For example, Laura Naumann at the University of California, Berkeley, and colleagues investigated which nonverbal cues research participants might use to judge someone’s likability based solely on a full-length photo. They found that participants based their judgments upon such common social cues as an energetic stance or whether the person was smiling in the photo. In another study, Mitja Back at Johannes Gutenberg University and his colleagues simply asked participants in a classroom to stand up and introduce themselves, then had participants privately rate each other on variables such as likability. Back found participants consistently drew on cues such as a friendly vocal tone and confident nonverbal gestures to form sweeping judgments about whether they might like the other people in the room. These studies and dozens of others suggest that people have strong expectations for how likable people look and behave during the first few seconds of an interaction.

  Awkward moments actually occur when we meet the majority of social expectations, but deviate from one or two small expectations. For example, you might greet someone with a pleasant hello, smile, and confidently extend your hand for a shake, but realize that your hand is still damp from washing it in the restroom, and this slight deviation makes the moment feel awkward. When people meet none of the expectations—say something unpleasant, make no facial expression, and stand with their eyes cast downward—then others do not see them as awkward, but rather as arrogant or with significant psychological issues.

  Awkward moments are simply deviations from minor social expectations and
even the most socially skilled among us know the feeling of an awkward moment. Damp hands or spinach lodged in your teeth do not pose any kind of real threat to you or anyone else, but they are small signals of deviance from social norms. We know that other people use these small deviations to make inferences about our social value and that’s why awkward moments incite such strong emotional reactions. For socially skilled people, the majority of their awkward moments do not pose a serious threat to their belonging, but chronically awkward people have an ominous feeling that too many awkward moments could eventually carry serious social consequences for their social inclusion.

  Figure 1.1 The first-three and second-three to consider during first impressions. The top triangle represents visual cues people use to judge someone’s likability (top triangle) and the bottom triangle shows the cues people use to judge someone’s likability when unacquainted people exchanged introductions.

  Although everyone can feel awkward, there is a difference between awkward moments and being an awkward person. When someone is chronically awkward, then the accumulation of their awkward moments can threaten their social inclusion.

  Squares, Geeks, and Nerds

  AS I ENTERED adolescence, my peers who intuitively grasped 1980s pop culture fell into cool categories. Kids who really loved heavy metal music were stoners, kids who popped the collars of polo shirts were preppies, and those who were good at football were jocks. These social labels were all far more desirable than the category that was the 1980s kiss of social death: nerd.

  The nerd was extremely enthusiastic about esoteric interests like mathematics, Dungeons & Dragons, or clarinet. It didn’t take long for nerds to realize that their tremendous enthusiasm for their unusual interests would not punch their tickets to popularity. Nerds’ esoteric interests also distracted them from attending to things like trending fashions and social graces. Being a nerd meant that you were different. Other kids could feel suspicious about this nonconformity, and suspicion is a powerful anticatalyst to making new friends.

  Some etymological explanations for “nerd” suggest that its origins were not in teenage slang, but rather from a 1950 Dr. Seuss book titled If I Ran the Zoo, which described a comically unpleasant creature called a nerd. “Geek” was originally a term for carnival sideshow freaks known for their behavioral oddities. The John Hughes’ 1985 movie The Breakfast Club included a wider-ranging terminology, such as “weirdos,” “brains,” and “basket cases.” The 2004 movie Mean Girls updated the terminology for fringe groups, with “burnouts,” “desperate wannabes,” and “mathletes.” Although “geek” and “nerd” were terms that originated as insults, they have increasingly assumed positive connotations. It’s as if the nerds and geeks have reclaimed these terms as their own, proudly embracing their atypical identity in the social world.

  In 2011, “awkward” became the term du jour for the socially clumsy. Google tracks search trends from their users and when I looked at the number of people who Googled the question “Why am I so awkward?” I saw a spike in 2011 that remained consistent for the past five years. The sharp rise in people’s interest in awkwardness may partly reflect the trendiness of the word, but may also reflect that more people are feeling socially awkward and wonder why that might be the case.

  Today, it’s kind of cool to be a nerd. For some reason we can’t get enough of awkward physicists on television shows like The Big Bang Theory or awkward millennial sex scenes on Girls. When the Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie opened in December of 2015, fans proudly posted their cosplay photos on social media with self-aware hashtags like #awkward or #cantstop #wontstop.

  Although I am encouraged by the growing freedom awkward people have to embrace their unique interests and identity as such, there remain significant challenges that come along with being awkward. While awkward moments are sometimes uproariously funny, chronic awkwardness can threaten one’s social inclusion and there are few things more troubling than feeling that one is on the outside looking in.

  The American Heritage Dictionary defines “awkward” as a lack of skill or grace, which is a simple and accurate definition of what it means to be an awkward person. The roots of the word come from the Old Norse afgr, which means “facing the wrong way.” Unlike the definition of “awkward” that has to do with what someone is, afgr is more about how someone sees and moves through their social world.

  “Awkward” is a useful and relatively benign term compared to some of the other names kids call each other, but awkward people already know that they see the world differently from most people. What awkward people need is guidance about how to navigate the social world with their unique perspective, and the burgeoning science of relationships that we will review in the chapters to come reveals important social expectations and behaviors that are critical to maintaining gratifying social relationships.

  The imagery inspired by afgr gives us a useful clue for developing a more functional definition of awkward people. Afgr suggests that these people are facing the wrong way, but I like a slightly different view. I like to think that awkward people are simply looking elsewhere.

  But if the awkward are gazing elsewhere, what do they see?

  Seeing the World Through Awkward Eyes

  IMAGINE A BROADWAY theater full of people who have come to see The Lion King. The houselights go down, drumbeats begin to pulse, and a soft red light evenly illuminates the entire stage like an amber sunrise. Dozens of actors operate life-size animal costumes, one actor per lion, four per elephant, and three actors center stage who introduce the play’s protagonist, Simba. The opening procession of The Lion King creates a spectacular effect with dozens of animals weaving effortlessly around center stage, where the Lion King eventually appears. This synchronous choreography creates a whole that is more than the sum of its parts.

  Cut. Take two.

  In a second rendition, the houselights go down, drumbeats begin to pulse, but a spotlight cast to the left replaces the broad, amber light of the first rendition. It’s a brilliant white light and anything that moves into it appears crisp and vivid. It’s the same production, same song, same synchronous choreography, but this is a very different experience. This audience sees a giraffe meander into the spotlight, then disappear into the middle of the stage. An elephant’s backside is seen in the spotlight while her front side is in the dim light beyond the spotlight.

  People know that the action spans the width of the stage, but the sharp contrast between the spotlighted and dim areas of the stage makes it hard for them to pick up on all of the action. If you see a spotlighted version of the story, then you are most likely to look wherever the spotlight shines, and that means that you are more likely to miss key moments that tend to take place at center stage. But what you see is crisply illuminated by the spotlight, which means that you can notice beautiful detailing in the costumes, a bead of sweat running down the left side of an actress’s forehead, or a subtle upturn of her mouth as the audience applauds. You could try to shift your attention to the poorly lit parts of the stage, but it’s a struggle to see the action in these dim areas, and after a while you could tire of straining to make sense of them.

  Imagine how someone seeing a spotlighted version of the play might explain the plot of The Lion King. They would probably have a general sense of the plot, but their summary would be atypical because their perception of the experience is different from that of people who saw the first production with the stage broadly illuminated. While the group who saw the broadly illuminated stage would have a holistic view of the plot, the people who saw the spotlighted version would have a deeper understanding of everything that took place stage left, but they would have missed key information that took place outside of the spotlight.

  In much the same way, awkward people see the vast world before them with a spotlighted view. Awkward people are naturally drawn to the part of their world where their spotlighted attention shines brightest and this creates a narrow, intense focus. It’s similar to what researchers
Francesca Happe at King’s College and Uta Frith at University College London call a “localized processing” style, which describes people who tend to narrowly focus on some of the trees rather than the entire forest. When people are disposed to a localized processing style, they tend to create social narratives that feel fragmented and incomplete. Happe, Frith, and others have found that awkward people are more likely than non-awkward people to process information in a detail-oriented way, which means that they sometimes have trouble seeing the bigger picture.

  Awkward people’s narrow and intense focus tends to fall on parts of the stage other than where other people intuitively look. For example, directors traditionally have critical interactions take place center stage or may begin a scene center stage. Alternatively, directors might start a scene to the audiences’ left because they know that people who read left to right expect that action will begin left and move right. Most people naturally know to look center stage or to their left when a scene is about to start, but by analogy, awkward people are looking elsewhere because their spotlighted attention falls on unusual parts of the stage.

  While the rest of the audience is watching the Lion King’s protagonist Simba being introduced center stage, awkward people are marveling at the mechanics of the giraffe costume on the left side of the stage or enjoy observing the unusually enthusiastic cellist in the orchestra pit. Although awkward people are missing important social information that falls outside of their narrow aperture, what they do see is brilliantly illuminated and this gives them a deep, nuanced perspective about things that no one else takes the time to notice. The parts of the world that they can see are seen with remarkable clarity. They become experts in all things stage left and their clear, focused view on their specialized interests give them a unique view of that part of the world.