Awkward

by Ty Tashiro

  The other major shift in the social landscape has been the relatively rapid transition to more inclusionary views about diversity. Although millennials have led the way, all age groups are more likely to be open to people of different races, sexual orientations, and more likely to support gender equity. When the Pew Research Center asked randomly sampled adults whether teachers should be fired for being gay, 51 percent agreed in 1987, but by 2007 the agreement rate dropped to 28 percent. Overall support for gay marriage rose over the past decade from 35 percent to 55 percent.

  Pew also reported that racial attitudes have also shifted toward more inclusionary views. When white respondents were asked whether “our country needed to continue making changes to give blacks equal rights with whites,” 36 percent agreed with the statement in 2009, but agreement rose to 53 percent just six years later in a 2015 poll. When Pew asked respondents whether they agreed that “it is all right for blacks and whites to date each other,” 48 percent of respondents agreed in 1985, and by 2010 the rate of agreement jumped to 83 percent.

  These shifts toward more inclusionary societal attitudes have occurred alongside rapid demographic changes, including the racial composition of the United States and the gender composition of the workforce. For example, the U.S. population was 15 percent nonwhite in 1960 and 36 percent nonwhite by 2010, the percentage of interracial marriages more than doubled from 7 percent in 1980 to 15 percent in 2010, and women’s labor force participation rose from 44 percent in 1970 to 57 percent by 2012.

  Some people see this increased willingness to embrace diversity and opportunities for marginalized groups as signs of cultural erosion while others see these shifts as clear signs of cultural progress. I am one of those who strongly believes these social changes, particularly more inclusionary attitudes toward traditionally marginalized groups, have been positive and long overdue. I think it’s important to make clear that I hold a supportive view of these changes because I would also suggest that these societal shifts have come with some societal growing pains. These significant shifts in the social landscape have created a post-institutional social world where traditional expectations have faded away and new expectations have yet to be clearly defined. It’s all right to admit that social progress comes with a little confusion about what to do next.

  Many people are also discovering how much work it takes to truly embrace diversity. It’s one thing for people to say that they support racial diversity, gender equality, or gay marriage, but being fully open to negotiating different attitudes and expectations takes a tremendous amount of social awareness and effort.

  Anyone who has immersed herself in an unfamiliar culture knows how hard it is to learn about hundreds of new social expectations and how easy it is to say something awkward. Even politicians with cadres of aides who specialize in foreign relations can find themselves in some awkward cross-cultural moments. There was the time Richard Nixon flashed the “A-OK” gesture upon his arrival in Brazil, which was essentially like flashing everyone the middle finger by Brazilian standards. Howard Dean inadvertently let out a bobcat-like scream while delivering a speech after the 2004 Iowa caucuses and he became one of the first public figures to experience their awkward moment going viral on social media. President George W. Bush was notorious for misspoken phrases while abroad, including the time he thanked Australian premier John Howard for the Austrian troops in Iraq.

  Curt Clawson, a freshman congressional representative from Florida, found out that you don’t have to travel overseas to experience an awkward multicultural moment. During a hearing with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Clawson and the other committee members were introduced to two U.S. senior officials, Nisha Biswal from the State Department and Arun Kumar from the Commerce Department. Representative Clawson, who is white, must have missed this key social cue because he proceeded to address Biswal and Kumar, who are American-Indian, with well-intentioned phrases such as, “I’m familiar with your country; I love your country,” and “Anything I can do to make the relationship with India better, I’m willing and enthusiastic about doing so.” When Representative Clawson asked for the cooperation of the Indian government, Biswal gracefully replied, “I think your question is to the Indian government. We certainly share your sentiment and we certainly will advocate that on behalf of the U.S.”

  It’s easy to see how well-intentioned people could misunderstand or mishandle minor social expectations when they are unfamiliar with people from diverse cultures. Although it can be uncomfortable when expectations between people are less certain, these growing pains produce people who are more open-minded and enlightened. During the process of people reaching a mutual understanding about how to interact or even how to become friends, they need to be open about learning new expectations, but it is also imperative that minor missteps are met with grace rather than indignation.

  The real work of embracing diversity will be easier if people look toward the intent behind actions instead of reflexively acting offended by what they perceive as someone’s ignorance. Representative Clawson’s awkward moment was probably not his finest, but he sounded like someone trying to convey respect and a cooperative spirit, even if his read of the interaction was off from the start. Biswal could have said that she was offended, but it seems to me that much more was achieved with her graceful reply. In fact, it may be our decency and social graces that are our best bet for navigating the uncharted social landscape ahead of us. Manners and etiquette can provide solid footing when you are unsure of other people’s expectations.

  Never Mind My P’s and Q’s

  SOMETHING UNEXPECTED BEGAN to happen as these societal shifts occurred, which was that teenagers began to actively search for people who could teach them manners. While Boomers and Gen X teens rolled their eyes at parents who tried to impose social graces, millennials appear hungry for some guidance about how to handle common social situations. During the past few decades, people have also begun to take a more casual approach toward manners, and somewhere along the way some caregivers forgot to teach their kids how to tie a tie, which fork to use at a nice restaurant, or what to bring to a dinner party. While this casualness works at home, adolescents begin to encounter situations where they find themselves poorly prepared to engage in appropriate behavior and that can lead to some awkward moments.

  In a 2013 New York Times article, Alex Williams reported about a curious case of millennials and manners. Williams found a viral genre of YouTube videos that were how-to tutorials about manners, and discovered that millennials were the demographic most interested in viewing these videos. If you search on YouTube you will find hundreds of manners videos that include how to punctuate a business-related email, what to do when you fart in a crowded yoga class, and how to use appropriate table manners. There has also been a surge in companies who pay manners consultants to teach their young-adult employees about proper business etiquette and a renewed demand for books about social etiquette.

  One of my favorite books about manners is Amy Alkon’s Good Manners for Nice People Who Sometimes Say F*ck. It’s a modern guide for people who want some advice about modern conundrums such as whether it’s all right to leave a voice mail or how to politely deal with people talking loudly on their cell phones at a quiet coffee shop. Alkon provides a number of tips about how to manage specific social expectations that are newly created due to technology or casual attitudes, but even more useful is what she says about why we use manners in the first place. Her core message is that good manners are important because they are a mechanism for showing other people empathy and respect.

  For example, when you go outside to take a phone call you convey to the other people that you respect their work and privacy. When you leave a text instead of a voice mail it’s a subtle convenience that says you value someone’s time. Most manners are actions that convey your understanding and respect of what other people value and that you are invested in people getting what they need. Some awkward people tend to view manners as n
uisances or pointless routines, but manners are important social signals while unacquainted individuals form impressions about each other. When people are perceived as ill-mannered, people can assume that they are unlikely to be cooperative and fair in a friendship or social group.

  Manners are like the secret code word or secret handshake to gain provisional entry to the clubhouse. Once inside, there are certainly other expectations to be managed, but manners can be enough to get your foot in the door and generate some positive momentum. When people are well-mannered, it suggests they share the social values or morals of the group. Jonathan Haidt, a leading morality researcher, suggests that “morality binds and builds” people together. Haidt finds that people make split-second judgments about other people’s moral behavior or moral character based on intuitive reactions to whether people meet or deviate from social expectations.

  Most manners are related to five broad categories of morality, which in plain terms are: do no harm, be fair, support your friends or group, respect authority, and don’t be gross. With these categories in mind, it’s easier to see the rationale behind various social expectations. For example, when people gossip negatively about someone, the commiseration with others may forge a temporary bond, but gossip also sends an unspoken signal that they are willing to harm another person’s reputation among group members and threaten the integrity of the group.

  When people show up on schedule, dress appropriately for an event, or bring flowers to a friend’s recital, they can usually count on these behaviors meeting expectations and know that the behaviors convey respect for other people. This premeditated effort shows other people that you are thoughtful and willing to act in ways that support and facilitate the efforts of other people, which is the kind of message that is particularly helpful for awkward people to send.

  Manners provide a way for awkward people to anticipate some of the early moves in an interaction and the systematic nature of social graces are well-suited to their structured style of thought. This makes manners a promising foothold, but for awkward people to gain mastery over these subtle rules of social engagement, they need to make concerted efforts to shift their attention.

  Making Friends While Awkward

  MANNERS ARE SUBTLE and usually fall outside of awkward people’s spotlighted attention. Awkward people are less likely to attend to fashion rules, table manners, or the caveats necessary to temper the bluntness of their comments. In some situations, awkward people may consciously disregard etiquette or niceties because they see them as impediments to achieving a more important outcome. But in many instances awkward individuals are genuinely unaware about proper etiquette or are unsure about why their behavior was perceived by others as rude. This has a way of getting awkward people off on the wrong foot with new acquaintances because the early social expectations are put into question, which can distract from awkward individuals’ good qualities such as a fair or kind attitude.

  MORAL CATEGORIES

  MANNERS RELATED TO EACH MORAL CATEGORY

  Do no harm

  Don’t bully, don’t publicly call out a mistake.

  Be fair

  Share, take turns doing favors, don’t cheat.

  Support your group

  Don’t gossip, celebrate people’s successes.

  Respect authority

  Be on time, dress appropriately, respect tradition.

  Don’t be gross

  Shower, chew with mouth closed, don’t groom in public.

  Table 7.1 Five categories of moral behavior and examples of manners that show compliance with those moral expectations

  From the few studies available about awkward people’s friendships, the results generally suggest that awkward people have a harder time making and maintaining friendships in childhood and early adulthood. In one study of awkward individuals’ friendships, Lisa Jobe and Susan Williams White at Virginia Commonwealth University surveyed a group of university students to investigate whether awkward individuals were any different from non-awkward individuals regarding close friendships and loneliness. Jobe and White found that the length of awkward participants’ close friendships was significantly shorter (4.5 years) than those of non-awkward participants (8 years), which suggests that it takes longer for awkward individuals to form close friendships, sustain them, or a little bit of both. They also found that participants’ degree of social awkwardness was strongly associated with higher degrees of loneliness, which was explained by their difficulty understanding social situations and social skill deficits.

  The good news for awkward people is that manners are like most social scripts and follow “if-then” rules that can be applied to common social situations. If a friend makes dinner for you, then you should offer to bring something and offer to help clean up. If you are a woman going to a wedding, then you should not wear white. Being well-mannered provides a relatively unambiguous way to navigate the early stages of social interactions, which are usually the parts that are toughest for awkward people. Unlike the challenge to be charismatic or funny, manners are predicated upon predictable rules that can be studied and rehearsed in between social interactions.

  For awkward people, the study of etiquette provides a structured way to improve their social skills, but more importantly, to think ahead about what will be fair or kind in a situation. If awkward individuals turn their natural preference for routine and systems to the task of mastering etiquette, then they gain a method for anticipating the early stages of an interaction that might alert them to questions about how to handle those expectations. Etiquette decreases the proportion of unpredictability in social situations, which allows awkward people to focus on actually being in the moment and frees mental resources to better improvise the unpredictable aspects that eventually occur in most social interactions.

  Some manners are antiquated or vary across different subcultures, so people want to find the sweet spot between considerate versus overdone. Anthropologist Frank Boas captured this notion well when he wrote, “. . . what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal.” You may encounter awkward people whose awkwardness owes partly to their rigid application of formal behavior when the expectation is to be casual. They may show up to beach parties in overly formal attire or use phrases that sound like they came from the 1950s. Sometimes you discover that they use those phrases because they actually picked up a book about manners without considering the publication date and that some of the advice might be outdated.

  Perhaps the biggest omission from manuals about manners published even fifteen years ago would be how to handle online socialization. Email, social media, and other online platforms have made social interaction through our cell phones and computers ubiquitous. This ever-emerging way of socializing has come with a new set of expectations to learn and has created some confusion about how to merge what others expect of us in real life and online. But online socializing has also opened up new opportunities for awkward people to connect with those who share their unique and passionate interests.

  In 2011, there were 372 million monthly users on Facebook, and by 2015 that number grew to over one billion daily users. Over one-third of the world is on Facebook and about half of millennials check their Facebook page as soon as they wake up. Although people sometimes lament our reliance upon social media, many of us cannot help but pull up the latest Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or Snapchat post for fear of missing out. Social media has made an unprecedented amount of social information available, which can feel like a lot for someone who has a hard time sorting out which information is relevant and difficulty knowing exactly how to respond.

  The primary complication with online socialization is that many of the social cues humans have relied on for thousands of years are absent online. It’s commonplace for us to wonder exactly what people are trying to tell us when a message is delivered online versus face-to-face. You may have wondered whether you did something wrong when a friend who always ends her text
messages with “!!!” suddenly decides to end a message with a period. At work you may have wondered whether your boss wrote a word in caps for EMPHASIS or to express that he is feeling PISSED. Justin Kruger at New York University and his colleagues found that when people were asked to discern whether someone else was being serious or sarcastic in email messages versus spoken communications, participants correctly differentiated serious versus sarcastic intent only 56 percent of the time when the message was sent through email, but correctly differentiated intent 73 percent of the time when messages were spoken. There is nothing wrong with the evolution of social networks, but like any new frontier there are clearly unknowns about how to best use this medium for socializing with others.

  But the Internet has also been a boon for awkward people who felt passionate about interests that were less common before widespread social media. Gaming, comics, and other interests were once considered fringe and people could have difficulty finding others with like-minded interests and passion for them. For example, kids in rural areas who wanted to learn about filmmaking or how to code were hard-pressed to find world-class advice or supportive communities, but online communities allow people to gather troves of information and make connections with others. When one’s Internet life is working well it can be a place of affirmation and spark feelings of connection. Some awkward individuals find initial meetings more comfortable online because they do not have to deal with the social cues, such as nonverbal cues, vocal cues, and facial expressions. When these social cues are removed for everyone, it can actually simplify interactions for awkward people because there is less social information that needs to be processed.