Abstract
A self-regulatory systems model of socially awkward situations was assessed through a mixed-methods analysis of an ecologically valid simulation. Specific hypotheses were that introducing social novelty and inducing explicit social attention would increase reported feelings of social awkwardness. Participant awkwardness ratings, recorded from continuous measurement devices operated by participants viewing taped simulations, were analysed and results were consistent with hypotheses. Further exploratory analysis revealed that events associated with extreme increases in awkwardness ratings included non- and counter-normative situations and behaviors, negative social judgments, and events that made social processes explicit. Events associated with extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings included social acts that emphasized common, shared or familiar interests, helping behaviors, acts of positive social evaluation, and acts that diffused social awkwardness through humor. These findings were interpreted as offering general support for the model and suggesting its utility in distinguishing dispositional and situational factors involved in alienated social functioning.
Introduction
Imagine yourself in a room with strangers, music playing loudly. The story you are telling to the person next to you is barely audible over the din. Just as you reach the part where you quote your misogynistic boss, the music stops. As the whole room fills with your voice and his words, you wish nothing more than to be elsewhere. It is likely that such socially awkward moments are a near-universal human experience but they have seen little formal research—to the author’s knowledge, there is only one book chapter detailing awkward interactions between stigmatized and non-stigmatized individuals (Hebl, Tickle, & Heatherton, 2000) and a pair of communication studies on long awkward silences (Dindia, 1986; McLaughlin & Cody, 1982). It seems likely that the apparent relative benignity of such experiences contributes to their under-representation in the scientific literature but some recent descriptive research on socially alienated life experiences suggests that socially awkward experiences may actually be significant sources of distress (Clegg, 2011).
Though empirical research that explicitly addresses the socially awkward situation is uncommon there is, of course, a wealth of theory and research in social and clinical psychology that sheds light on this phenomenon and that has contributed to the preliminary model investigated in this report. There are large bodies of research on ostracism, rejection, shyness, social anxiety, attachment, loneliness, and belonging that examine the nature, causes, and consequences of various forms of both situation-specific and more generalized social alienation.
Theory and findings from this large body of research suggest a number of general assumptions that can be related to socially awkward situations, including: 1) an equilibrium model of social regulation, where 2) acceptance functions as a primary goal-state, 3) social anxiety functions in a regulatory capacity through the inducement of heightened social monitoring, and 4) such monitoring provides information that can be used for social threat reduction behaviors.
The general notion of a kind of social equilibrium or homeostasis is reflected in many social psychological theories of social function. Leary (Leary, Haupt, Strausser, & Chokel, 1998; Leary, Tambor, Terdal, & Downs, 1995), for example, has suggested that social relations are governed by what he calls the ‘sociometer’, a self-regulating feedback mechanism where continual evaluations of others’ judgments serve to inform social behavior. Aanstoos (1987) also proposes a self-stabilizing model of social relations, arguing that affiliation is constituted in a pre-theoretical mutuality whose disruption, or disequilibrium, leads to an unstable sense of self and an attunement to social disruption. Peter Ashworth (1997) has suggested a similar model, arguing that when an individual is not attuned to the needs, emotional states, and tacit understandings of a group, social participation becomes difficult and sometimes impossible.
These models suggest that many social processes may function in this self-regulatory way and the model of socially awkward situations proposed here makes a similar assumption. There are, or course, many possible equilibrium, or “goal,” states in such a model but research on belonging, ostracism, social rejection, embarrassment and social anxiety suggests that social acceptance may be the most important of these goal states. A large body of research on belonging, for example, suggests that most individuals have a desire to belong to a social group and that, to the degree that they are unable to do so, feel and perform worse in most aspects of their lives (see Baumeister & Leary, 1995 and Osterman, 2000 for extensive reviews), a body of findings suggestive of acceptance as a primary goal-state.
This contention is given weight by an extensive body of research on ostracism (e.g., Smith & Williams, 2004; Williams, 2007; Williams, Shore, & Grahe, 1998; Wirth & Williams, 2009). Williams and colleagues have repeatedly, and across multiple modalities, shown that ostracism compromises an individual’s sense of belonging, control, meaningful existence, and self-esteem. Ostracism, their research suggests, is painful, destructive, and dissociating, effects which are particularly pernicious, as they appear to occur before any deliberative action can mitigate them (Williams, 2001). So, in research on ostracism, as in other traditions, alienation from social groups can be deeply, even pre-deliberatively, aversive and thus maintaining social acceptance is likely a high-level goal.
In the model proposed here, then, social acceptance is considered the primary goal state in most social interactions, including those that are experienced as socially awkward. Theory and research focusing on maladaptive social functioning suggests that a possible regulatory mechanism by which this goal-state is maintained is social anxiety and anxiety-induced social monitoring. Research on Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD), for example, suggests that socially anxious individuals are more vigilant to the socially threatening behaviors of others (Gilboa–Schechtman, Foa, & Amir 1999; Mogg, Philippot, & Bradley 2004; Pishyar, Harris & Menzies, 2004), though that vigilance may later become avoidance (Amir, Foa, & Coles 1998; Wenzel & Holt, 2002). This vigilance-avoidance pattern has been reported in attention to threat words (Vassilopoulos, 2005) and to faces displaying emotion (Garner, Mogg, & Bradley, 2006).
In participants with SAD, this social monitoring is likely both anticipatory and retrospective. Socially anxious individuals are more likely to anticipate social threat (Taylor & Wald, 2003), to judge social interactions as socially threatening (Amir, Beard, & Bower, 2005; Christensen, Stein & Means-Christensen, 2003; Foa, Franklin, Perry, & Herbert, 1996), and to remember social interactions as threatening (Amir, Bower, Briks, & Freshman, 2003; Kocovski, Endler, Rector, & Flett, 2005). This consistent pattern of interpreting social interactions as threatening is, not surprisingly, associated with an intense attentional focus on the self (Pineles & Mineka, 2005; Spurr & Stopa, 2002), particularly as viewed from the observer perspective (Hinrichsen & Clark, 2003). SAD research, then, suggests that social anxiety is likely to illicit attention to social cues in both self and others. Of course, this research generally involves a clinical population but these findings still show how social attention can serve in the capacity of a regulatory, or monitoring, function even if that monitoring can become hyper-regulatory and thus maladaptive.
The model being proposed here suggests that this anxiety-induced social monitoring provides information to a social regulatory system such that social threat reduction behaviors can be effectively employed. A large body of research on rejection suggests that such a process may be common to many social situations. Research by Maner, DeWall, Baumeister, and Schaller (2007), for example, found that rejection can lead to increased social monitoring and to social appeasement behaviors. Similarly, research on embarrassment suggests that the uncomfortable (Miller, 2001) and unwanted exposure (Robbins & Parlavecchio, 2006) of embarrassment focuses intention on apology and appeasement (Keltner & Anderson, 2000). This appeasement is expressed in behaviors like averted gaze or blush (Lewis & Ramsay, 2002) as well as in explicitly ameliorative behaviors like apology, explanation or humor (Keltner & Buswell, 1997).
There are, of course, less pro-social kinds of threat responses,including both aggression and avoidance. A number of studies suggest that perceived or feared social rejection can lead to increased anger and aggression (Ayduk, Mischel, & Downey 2002; Bourgeois & Leary, 2001; Buckley, Winkel, & Leary, 2004; Twenge, Baumeister, Tice, & Stucke, 2001) or to increased hesitance, avoidance, or behavioral inhibition (Leary, Atherton, Hill, & Hur, 1986). Other research suggests a threat response akin to self-numbing, so that rejection may issue in decreased effortful logic and reason (Baumesiter, Twenge, & Nuss, 2002), self-regulatory behavior (Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Twenge, 2005), sensitivity to physical and emotional pain (DeWall & Baumeister, 2006) and pro-social behavior (Twenge, Baumeister, DeWall, Ciarocco, & Bartels, 2007).
Considered together, these theories and empirical findings suggest a coherent self-regulatory mechanism for socially awkward situations. In what follows, these insights are formalized into a basic self-regulatory systems model. The principle assumptions of this model (see Figure 1) are, first, that, as implied by research on belonging and ostracism, acceptance is a primary goal-state in most individual social functioning. Second, in socially awkward situations, perceived or expected threats to that goal-state activate a self-regulatory system—a system directly experienced as “social awkwardness”—where, as implied by SAD research, social anxiety drives a social stabilization process. Third, in this process, the implicit social monitoring of stable social interaction is transformed into an explicit state of vigilant, regulatory social monitoring. This kind of explicit social monitoring permits, as is also implied by SAD research, the collection of information about the perceived state of acceptance and the comparison of this information against the goal state. Fourth, this comparison information guides individual action in ways that are, as suggested by research on rejection, functionally (though not always intentionally) directed towards goal-state stabilization—stabilization either through the modification of the state of perceived acceptance or through modification of the goal-state itself. Finally, this process is self-regulating such that stabilizing social actions reduce social anxiety and so return social monitoring to its implicit, non-regulatory state.
Self-regulatory model of socially awkward situations
This model assumes goal-directed behavior and so reflects the basic structure of any self-regulating system (Karoly & Ruehlman, 1995)—i.e., the individual-in-context constitutes social goals and expectations and so provides the directive function, a function which involves creating the “set point” or goal orientation of a system—in this case, social acceptance; the regulatory function, which involves system monitoring, information collection, and system state comparison, is manifested in explicit attention to social processes and relations; the control function, which involves acting to reduce discrepancies between system states and goals, is reflected in particular social regulatory behaviors; and social anxiety serves as the system energy source.
Though this model is based on research in other domains, some preliminary descriptive research on socially awkward situations (Clegg, 2011) suggests that the kinds of regulatory processes proposed may also be central in socially awkward encounters. Such regulatory processes, however, have yet to be directly evaluated. The purpose of the research reported here was to test the most basic assumptions of this model in an ecologically valid simulation of socially awkward situations and also, since so little is known about this phenomenon, to document observed behaviors in a more idiographic way. As such, the research design employed a combination of confirmatory and exploratory methods. In the confirmatory phase of analysis, the model was tested at the two principle points of state change: the transition to goal-state destabilization and the transition to explicit social monitoring. The specific hypotheses tested were, first, that introducing social novelty would result in increased reported feelings of social awkwardness. The basis for this hypothesis was the assumption that social novelty would leave participants without any reliable information about their presumed goal-state of acceptance and that this would, in turn, activate the social regulatory process experienced by the participants as social awkwardness. This hypothesis was tested by inducing novelty, first, by placing three participants in a room with essentially no researcher direction, and second, by introducing a confederate midway through the simulation. These manipulations modeled typically anxiety-producing, or destabilizing, social scenarios—i.e., the preliminary interaction with no specific rules or avowed purpose is an (imperfect) 1 analogue of the social novelty involved in undirected “milling” at a social gathering, and the unexpected introduction of the confederate following the preliminary group formation reflects the disruption, and thus social novelty, of changing group structures.
The second hypothesis was that inducing explicit social attention or social monitoring would temporarily increase reported feelings of social awkwardness. The basis for this hypothesis was the assumption that explicit social monitoring serves as the primary regulatory function in the management of socially awkward situations, and so feeds information into the regulatory system in the same way that anxiety feeds energy into that system. Inducing such explicit social attention, then, should activate the regulatory process experienced by the participants as social awkwardness. This hypothesis was tested by simulating the increased social attention or monitoring created by “ice-breaker” games—specifically, a game that required participants to introduce one another.
The exploratory phase of this research involved a systematic, guided idiographic analysis of recorded participant behaviors. This analysis focused on a broad range of behaviors but, because there are so many possible control processes (e.g., avoidance, aggression, monitoring, appeasement, etc.) in the proposed model, analysis was particularly focused on those strategies employed by the participants as responses to researcher-induced socially awkward situations.
Method
Participants
Thirty research participants were solicited in undergraduate Psychology classrooms at a small University in the American Northeast. Sign-up sheets were circulated and appointments were later coordinated through email and telephone contact. Some participants were also actively recruited by researchers providing the same study description in stairwells and hallways on the same campus.
The participants in this study were fairly demographically homogenous. The majority were college-aged (19–24 years of age) with some exceptions—Stewart (all names have been changed) is an elderly gentleman and both Diego and Tom are older graduate students. Most of the participants were also Caucasian, with the exceptions of Jenny and Jacqueline, who are African-American, Diego and Maria, who are Latino, and Virginia, who is Asian. Seventeen of the participants were women and 13 were men.
Most of the participants shared a small University community, and a few of them were friends or acquaintances. Such pre-existing relationships were not considered problematic as they only created more ecologically valid social groupings from the otherwise artificial groupings that resulted from arbitrary scheduling. The possibility of assuring only stranger groupings was considered, but this was rejected for two important reasons: first, because most public social gatherings will involve varying groupings of friends, acquaintances and strangers, testing only stranger groupings would limit the ecological validity and general relevance of the findings; and second, given that this is the first test of the proposed model, only the most general and presumably universal features of the model were being assessed and so, though in some respects we might expect quite distinct behaviors between stranger and friend groupings, in the more general features of the model being tested here, no differences between groupings were predicted. In fact, allowing different groupings served as a test of the generality of the assumptions under investigation.
Materials
Facilities and equipment
All trials were conducted in a suite of research rooms on the aforementioned campus. In the main research room three chairs were placed equidistant from one another in order to avoid any artificial (i.e., procedure-produced) implicit social groupings and they were positioned facing one another in a triangular fashion to indicate the social nature of the simulation. The room itself was small and furnished with gray carpet and white walls. The arrangement of the rest of the items in the room was intended to provide some social and environmental structure with which participants could interact and which previous research had suggested might produce some awkward interactions. It was assumed that such interactions would provide descriptive information about possible socially stabilizing actions and so serve the more exploratory aims of the study. One chair, for example, was faced toward a large two-way mirror and the other two were perpendicular to the mirror, providing participants with differential but constant exposure to the mirror. Existing research suggests that exposure to mirrors may increase self-presentational concerns (Hofmann & Heinrichs, 2002; Ginis, Jung & Gauvin, 2003) and social anxiety (Focht & Hausenblas, 2004) so the two-way mirror provided the opportunity to assess (in a descriptive rather than confirmatory way) whether, as the model proposed here suggests, such effects would also be associated with feelings of social awkwardness.
Below the mirror, was placed a table with a microphone in the center and on the edges, a pitcher of water, cups, and a plate of five cookies. The food and water were also provided as an opportunity for unplanned interactions, as previous research has suggested that food can be associated with anxiety (Schneider, Appelhans, Whited, Oleski, & Pagoto 2010), possibly through particular social norms, like those concerning eating more than others (Leone, Pliner, & Herman, 2007). The possibility of awkwardness over food-related social norms was increased by providing an uneven distribution of food (3 people and 5 cookies) and by placing the table within reach of two of the participants but not the third (so participants would be more likely to ask for or offer food).
In the room adjoining the main research room, a camera was set up to film through the two-way mirror and to record the participants through a speaker connected to the microphone. The fact that the interaction was being recorded was not disguised, primarily because mere participation in a psychological study (not to mention the presence of a large mirror) made it highly unlikely that participants would believe themselves unobserved, and so informing them, at the consent stage, that they would be filmed gave the participants more time to become accustomed to observation, a technique common to methods of naturalistic observation. Filming was conducted behind the mirror to foment this process of accommodation.
In another room across the hall, three numbered slider boxes were connected to a computer running Biopac software. These boxes were rectangular hand-held devices with a small toggle that could be moved horizontally. Above the toggle was printed a line with hash-marks at either end. Above the left hash-mark was written “no social awkwardness” and above the right hash-mark was written “extreme social awkwardness”. The real-time position of these toggles (between 0 and 10 cm, with intervals measured to 6 decimal places) was recorded through a lead connected to a computer. A fair amount of research employing such manual continuous emotion rating devices has been conducted (see Ruef and Levenson, 2007 for a review) and their chief strength is that they can provide dynamic representations of self-reported emotion across time. Dynamic ratings are particularly important for the current study as these allow for both the aggregated change indices helpful in confirmatory analysis and the more temporally nuanced real-time self-reports helpful in idiographic analysis. A small television was placed in the corner of this room, and facing it were three chairs. A fourth chair was turned toward the computer.
Measure
Participants completed a short open-ended survey asking them to identify the moments of the most and the least awkwardness during the simulation as well as to indicate why those moments were or were not awkward.
Procedure
As participants arrived, they were escorted to a small room where the study was explained and consent obtained. Participants were then escorted, in the order they arrived, to the main research room, they were instructed to take any seat they wished, and filming began. Participants were told only that they were being filmed through the two-way mirror, that they needed to keep their chairs in their current configuration, and that they were not to move the microphone. The purpose of these instructions was both to ensure consistent audio and video recording as well as to maintain the intentional spatial arrangements explained in the previous section. The door was then closed and the participants were given no further instructions.
After approximately 3 minutes of this undirected conversation, a confederate entered the room with a fourth chair, sat down, and joined the conversation. In order to encourage relatively natural conversational interactions, the confederate was unaware of hypotheses, was only given minimal instructions concerning when to enter, where to sit, and when to leave, and did not participate in other elements of the study. After another 3 minutes, the researcher entered the room, the confederate said “I have to leave,” and then left the room. The researcher then explained an “ice breaker” activity to the participants:
We’d like you to spend a few more minutes getting to know one another. So, in 3 or 4 minutes I’m going to return and ask each of you to introduce one of your companions. Decide who will introduce whom and then find out enough information for a brief introduction—name, interests, etc. Any questions?
The researcher then left the room and closed the door. After another 3 minutes, the researcher returned, sat in the fourth chair and said “so, who wants to start?” Participants then introduced each other and the camera was stopped.
After stopping the camera, the researcher explained to the participants that they would now be watching the tape of their conversation in an adjoining room. The participants were escorted to the adjoining room and were asked to sit in one of the chairs and to pick up one of the slider boxes. The researcher then explained the procedure:
We’re now going to watch the tape we just made of your conversation and we want you to use these boxes as a way of rating your feelings of social awkwardness during the events shown in the tape. We know that watching a tape of yourself is always a bit awkward, so please try to focus on how you felt in the situation being shown on the screen and not on how you feel now. The slider on each box is arranged so that moving it to the extreme right indicates that, in the moment being shown on the tape, you felt extreme social awkwardness and moving it to the extreme left indicates that you felt no social awkwardness, with intermediate levels of social awkwardness in the middle. In a moment we’ll begin the tape and when you see yourself appear on screen please move the slider to the level of awkwardness that you felt at the moment being shown. As you continue watching the tape, continue to move the slider as your remembered feelings of social awkwardness increase or decrease. Any questions?
The lights were then turned off, the rewound tape was connected to the television and played, and the researcher started the program recording the output from the slider boxes (the signals from these boxes were synced both to one another and to the videos). Research employing such real-time emotion ratings has been conducted using both concurrent and retrospective approaches. The advantage of concurrent approaches is that these may be less likely to suffer from the effects of “memory biases or defense mechanisms” (Mauss, Levenson, McCarter, Wilhelm, & Gross, 2005, p. 177), as well as possible distortions resulting from general observer bias. Despite these advantages, however, retrospective approaches have remained dominant because “it has been difficult to assess emotional experience online and moment-by-moment without impeding emotion induction” (Mauss et al., 2005, p. 177). The possibility of such procedural interference seemed particularly likely in the current study as real-time ratings would so disrupt and re-frame the social interaction that meaningful social behaviors, as well as meaningful ratings, would likely be impossible. There was, undoubtedly, retrospective framing and interference in the method chosen for the current study, but existing research suggests that the effects of such interference are relatively small—the video-based retrospective real-time rating scheme employed in the current study has been extensively validated (Gottman & Levenson, 1985; Levenson & Ruef, 1992) and direct comparisons of concurrent and retrospective real-time emotion ratings show these to be highly correlated (Mauss et al., 2005).
When the tape finished playing, participants were given a short survey asking them to identify the moments of most and least awkwardness and were told to write their name and the number of their slider box on the top of the sheet. After completing the survey, participants were debriefed and their names were entered into a drawing to win $20.
Findings
Assessment of general hypotheses
The two principle hypotheses were assessed by comparing the aggregated participant awkwardness ratings against the ratings predicted by the null hypothesis. Such aggregation of real-time ratings is fairly standard (Ruef & Levenson, 2007), though the specific statistical procedures reported here are, like the overall design, unique to the special requirements of the model being tested. Participant ratings were analysed by calculating difference scores (in cm) between successive 1 s intervals in each set of ratings and by then aggregating any per s increases in rating levels that were at least 2 SD more extreme than the mean per s increase for each participant. This analysis focused on standardized per-second changes in levels of awkwardness rather than on the absolute values of the ratings themselves because, as in most self-report rating scales, there was no absolute scale for comparing particular values—different participants used different ranges within their rating instrument. Analysing ratings in terms of standardized rating increases, however, allowed for a measure of awkwardness relative to a participant’s own rating scale and so permitted the aggregation and comparison of values across participants.
These extreme (greater than 2 SD) increases in rating levels are grouped according to the stages of the simulation and are summarized in Table 1. Included in the table are the number of such extreme increases in each event period, the percentage that this number represents relative to the total number of such increases across the entire simulation, the average amount of time (in s) of each event period, the percentage of the total simulation time occupied by each event period, the standardized residual for each category, 2 and the relative contribution of each category to the omnibus chi-square test. 3 The first 30 s of each stage, (initial period, confederate stage, and ice-breaker stage), as well as the periods of the ice-breaker game involving its explanation and the formal “introductions” were analysed as separate categories under the assumption that these periods represented those portions of the simulation wherein the effects of the primary manipulations would be apparent.
Event category statistics
“Extreme Increases” refers to increases in awkwardness ratings greater than 2 SD.
The distribution of aggregated extreme increases in awkwardness ratings was compared against a distribution of expected values based on the null hypothesis that such increases would be evenly distributed across the simulation. The actual distribution of frequencies differed from the null hypothesized distribution at greater than chance levels (x2(7) = 268.78, p < .0001). A consideration of the descriptive statistics and post-hoc measures for each event category shows that, as predicted, the event periods directly following researcher-induced social novelty accounted for the largest number of extreme increases relative to time across the simulation. In the first 30 s of the simulation, 21% of the total extreme rating increases occurred in 5% of the total time, producing by far the largest positive standardized residual (R = 14.9), and relative contribution (82.61%). Similarly, in the first 30 s of the period involving the introduction of a 4th group member, 8% of the total rating increases occurred in 5% of the total time, with R = 2.76, and a relative contribution of 2.83%.
The only other statistically significant positive standardized residual (R = 2.59, relative contribution of 2.5%) came in the “introductions” period that constituted the formal portion of the ice-breaker game. Again, this result coincides with researcher expectations concerning the effects of induced social attention.
Idiographic event analysis
A more detailed analysis of the simulation was performed through careful, repeated observations of the recorded interactions. This analysis involved, first, several viewings of the video recordings in order to note general trends. A more systematic analysis, informed by the time-synced awkwardness ratings, was then performed. The 10 s preceding and following each extreme increase in awkwardness ratings as well as those for each extreme decrease (also greater than 2 SD, as outlined above) were repeatedly observed and careful notes on the behaviors of each participant were recorded. These notes were then analysed for identifiable patterns of behavior. Only behaviors that occurred within 2 s of any given extreme increase or decrease were included in the final analysis. In general, then, this analysis is idiographic, consistent with procedures typical of naturalistic observation, but the awkwardness ratings, as well as the participant surveys provide additional context and support for any inferences made. Reported below is a summary of all observational events that were marked by—that is, occurred within 2 s of—extreme changes in awkwardness ratings. The particular events associated with extreme increases in awkwardness ratings are classed in three general categories: events that involved either non-normative situations or counter-normative behaviors, events that involved implicit or explicit negative social judgments, and events that made social processes explicit.
Events that involved either non-normative situations or counter-normative behaviors
The first few moments of the encounter were among those most marked by extreme increases in awkwardness ratings—20 of the 30 participants marked an extreme increase in awkwardness upon their entering the room with the other participants. Beatrice described the uncertainty of these early moments: “No one was talking; we didn’t know what to do; we felt pressure.” That pressure originated, first, in the “lack of prompts” (Cory), in “not knowing initially if there was a specific conversation to be had” (Tom). Pressure also came “because I didn’t know what to do, not knowing the people” (Jacqueline). Participants were “unaware of what to do in a room with a stranger” (Virginia). In short, Participants felt an absence of situation-appropriate norms for social behavior.
Upon first being seated, for example, Cory said “are we gonna get some kind of prompt if this is what we’re supposed to be doing?” after which Bob (one of his co-participants) looked at the mirror and said “I have no idea” [I, F, Bob]. 4 Beatrice and Maria’s interaction also demonstrates the awkwardness of this non-normativity:
What are we supposed to do?
I think we’re supposed to be talking.
Do we have any instructions? [Pause] This is awkward [I, F, Maria, Demetrius, Beatrice]
Much of this non-normativity, then, seemed related to the initial lack of instructions, though it is clear from participant comments that the resulting awkwardness was connected with uncertainty, not only concerning researcher expectations, but also concerning appropriate social behavior.
Counter-normative behavior was also associated with increases in awkwardness ratings and a particularly common kind of counter-normative behavior came in the form of difficulties with speech flow and order. Not including pauses (discussed below), there were 31 such events. Saul and Gordon, for example, attempted to address Xavier at the same time and then engaged in a short series of colliding speech attempts and abrupt stops [I, Ic, Saul, Gordon]. Being interrupted was often marked by an extreme increase in awkwardness ratings. Steven, for example, marked two different interruptions from Corrine, both when they were discussing her place of residence [I, F, Steven], [I, F, Steven], and Maria marked two different interruptions from Beatrice [I, Ic, Maria], [I, Ic, Maria].
Another example of difficulties with speech flow were those instances that included halting or stumbling speech. Heidi, for example, was speaking about her friend and said “she’s so funny …and… she’s, kind of… nice”, after which she bowed her head and stopped speaking [I, Ic, Hillary]. Corrine ran out of words in a similar way, ending with a “so…” followed by silence [I, C, Corrine]. Examples of stumbling speech included Diego’s discussion of a social event—“yeah, he brought some ov… yeah… some over” [I, F, Diego]—and Diane’s discussion of her minor—“I was gonna do a ma … yeah, well … I was gonna still minor in soc” [I, C, Diane].
The most common difficulty with speech flow was long conversational pauses—what Bob called “awkward silences”. There were 43 places where participants marked an extreme increase in awkwardness following a conversational pause of at least 2 s and 22 of the 30 participants marked at least one such pause. Beatrice described her state of mind during one such silence: “No one was talking; we didn’t know what to do; felt pressure.”
Another significant opportunity for counter-normativity was provided by the presence of food. There were 16 extreme increases in awkwardness that were associated with uncertainty over food consumption (i.e., manners). For example, making the decision to take a cookie, particularly the first or last one, seemed to be awkward for some participants, as Victor indicated: “didn’t want to overstep my bounds by eating too much.” Jacqueline demonstrated this uncertainty when she looked at the cookies and said “I wonder if anyone has eaten those cookies?” after which Diego said “they look pretty good” [I, Ic, Jacqueline].
The presence of food provided other opportunities for the violation of eating norms. Diane indicated that one of her most awkward moments was “when I was eating the cookie and getting crumbs all over the place.” During a round of introductions, Jenny was eating when her turn came, and before beginning her introduction, said “now that I’ve taken a big bite” [I, Ic, Jenny]. Other instances of food-related counter-normativity included Maria spilling some food from her mouth while speaking [I, C, Maria], Wendy trying to remove some food from her teeth [I, C, Wendy], and Nancy trying to clean melted chocolate from her fingers [I, C, Nancy]. Hillary expressed this pattern succinctly: “eating is messy and messy is awkward.”
An additional potential source for counter-normativity included norms about personal space and contact. There were four extreme increases in awkwardness following the very close proximity of two participants—the confederate touching Cory’s shirt [I,C, Cory], Linda reaching across Jenny to reach a water pitcher [I, F, Jenny, Linda], and Nancy standing close to Heidi and Diane while waiting for water [I, C, Diane]. It seems reasonable to suppose that there were a relatively small number of such events because participants were told to keep their chairs in their initial positions and so there was little opportunity for violations of space norms.
Events that involved implicit or explicit negative social judgments
Another primary context for extreme increases in social awkwardness ratings, particularly in the final event period, was the expression of either implicit or explicit negative social judgments. Explicit negative judgments were fairly rare—participants recorded 12 extreme awkwardness increases following an explicit negative judgment of either an individual or of something clearly associated with that individual. Following a comment by Kim, for example, Alicia said “Oh! [Pause] that sounds so bad” [I, F, Alicia]. A few minutes later Alicia suggested that everyone share a “fun fact” about themselves and Kim made a disgusted face, stuck out her tongue and shook her head [I, Ic, Kim]. In a similar way, Sandy spoke very negatively of a University meal plan used by Linda [I, F, Linda] after which Linda defended herself: “I’ve yet to have a hamburger or anything like that” [I, F, Linda].
Implicit negative social judgments were far more common than explicit ones, though more difficult to clearly analyse, given the speculative nature of any assumed implicit judgments. There were 44 extreme increases in awkwardness that seemed related to some implicit negative judgment of others. Of those 44 increases, 26 were related to a failure of social attention or memory (e.g., forgetting someone’s name).
Victor indicated name forgetting as one of his most awkward experiences: “I felt inconsiderate in not knowing others’ names” as did Corrine: “I was extremely embarrassed that I had forgotten the name of one of the participants and thought he would take offense.” There were 11 Occasions when name forgetting was marked by an extreme increase in awkwardness, as in the case of Gordon when his turn came to introduce Saul and he said (with some desperation): “I don’t care; I don’t even remember your name” [I, In, Gordon, Saul]. Saul, referring to this circumstance, showed how such events can function as implicit negative judgments: “if it had been important for that person to remember my name, then he would have.” Gordon expressed a similar feeling, when he indicated one of his most awkward moments: “Not remembering Saul’s name; because I felt bad.”
Another social attention failure involved inattention to the entire person. Linda related one such event: “I went to high school with one of the participants but I don’t know if she has put that together. But we haven’t spoken since we’ve been here at all. So, I didn’t know exactly how to interact with her.” During their trial, Jenny (the other participant from Linda’s high school) indicated that she was from [home state] and Sandy (the third participant) said “wow, what are the odds?” Jenny then responded as if this were an amazing coincidence [I, Ic, Linda]. In a similar vein, Heidi, after hearing the location of Nancy’s residence hall, said “yeah [Pause] are you across the hall from me?” Nancy then laughed and said “probably.” Heidi then said, with head down, “I think I saw you” [I, F, Hillary, Nancy].
Another kind of implicit negative social judgment was what appeared to be intentionally ambivalent responses to another participant. For example, Virginia indicated her college major after which Kim said “I see … interesting … um” and then Virginia laughed nervously [I, Ic, Alicia, Virginia]. Similarly, Naomi described a vegan thanksgiving that she was planning on attending and Heidi said, with a skeptical air, “vegan thanksgiving food?” Naomi then said “yeah” and Lauren pursed her lips, nodded, and said “hmm” [I, F, Naomi].
Events that made social processes explicit
A final category of events marked by extreme increases in awkwardness ratings corresponds to those circumstances or events that made social processes more explicit. The event most responsible for such experiences was the period of formal introductions. There were 20 extreme increases in awkwardness ratings corresponding to the period when one participant was introducing another—14 registered by the person doing the introductions and 6 by the person being introduced. These formal introductions were awkward partly because “it disrupted the casual atmosphere … It reminded me that it was a study” (Christian) but also because “introducing someone else, being introduced and talked about, put me on the spot, in the spotlight” (Kim). Other events that put the participants “in the spotlight” included the more informal introductions at the beginning of the study, extended periods of either speech or questioning, and being discussed by others.
Formalized social activity (particularly associated with the ice breaker activity) was another way that the social behaviors of self or others were made explicit or salient. There were 13 times when explicit legislations of formal social activities were marked as extremely awkward. For example, Jacqueline began reviewing the names of the other participants in preparation for the forthcoming introductions [I, Ic, Diego, Jacqueline]. During that same pre-introduction phase of the trial, Kim turned to the other participants and said “so, what else do we have to know about each other?” [I, Ic, Virginia, Kim] and a few moments later Alicia said, hesitatingly, “I’m thinking of, like, ice-breakers” [I, Ic, Kim].
A final way that social behavior was made explicit was through the unique circumstances of the research situation. Participants knew that they were being filmed—“knowing that I was being video-taped made me a bit nervous” (Peter)—and were regularly reminded of the study by the continual interruptions—“when experimenter walks in it’s just more awkward because we become silent and become more aware that our behavior is being scrutinized” (Steven)—and by the presence of the microphone. In addition, in each trial one of the participants was seated directly across from a large two-way mirror and was thus continually made aware of him or herself –“Looking at myself in the mirror was awkward. I was very self-conscious” (Maria). There were 15 such instances of study salience where participants registered an extreme increase in awkwardness.
Events that were associated with extreme reductions in awkwardness ratings
Events associated with extreme (also greater than 2 SD) decreases in ratings of social awkwardness can be classed into five basic kinds: acts that brought to the foreground common or shared interests, acts that focused on personal interests comfortable or familiar to the participants, helping behaviors, acts of positive social evaluation, and acts that acknowledged and diffused social awkwardness through humor.
There were 25 occasions when participants marked an extreme decrease in awkwardness accompanying the discussion of common interests. Often, these were commonalities associated with shared University life—e.g., discussing classes [D, F, Bob], an exam [D, F, Virginia], residence halls [D, F, Steven], this study [D, F, Peter], etc. Steven described the value of such common ground: “When we didn’t have a good flow of conversation it was awkward, so after the first couple of minutes when we had started talking about [University name] things, it got less awkward.”
Participants also uncovered commonalities outside of their shared University context. For example, Alicia and Kim discovered that they were from the same area [D, C, Alicia, Kim] which led to further conversation about their home towns [D, Ic, Alicia, Kim]. Both of them listed this event as one that reduced awkwardness, as Alicia indicated: “learning that one person was also from [home state], we had a few things in common to talk about.” Similarly, Hillary and Diane discovered that they had a common friend, about whom they were able to reminisce [D, Ic, Hillary, Diane]. In general, being able to relate to others seemed to create a sense of comfort and belonging: “You felt accepted by the people in the room. You have something to talk about if there are similarities” (Jacqueline). Sharing histories or experiences gave participants “a sense of being part of the social circle” (Heidi), of being “more connected to one another, rather than being total strangers” (Wendy).
Another source of comfort for the participants was the opportunity to discuss, or hear others discuss, personal interests. As Naomi indicated, “It was comfortable to talk about something I already knew.” There were 31 instances where such discussions were marked by an extreme decrease in awkwardness ratings. Many of these discussions centered on hobbies—e.g., Diego discussed his cooking [D, Ic, Diego], Christian talked about his meditation group [D, F, Corrine], and Xavier asked Gordon about his piano playing [D, Ic, Xavier]. Other discussions focused on work—e.g., Stewart discussed his work as a psychologist [D, Ic, Cory], and Nancy discussed her desire to be a journalist [D, Ic, Diane]. Peter outlined how such discussions helped reduce awkwardness: “when a subject came up, like ping pong and research methods, that I knew something about I felt more comfortable; because they were something that I felt confident that I could contribute to the conversation in a constructive way.”
Both speakers and hearers, then, seemed to feel less awkward when someone spoke of familiar things, particularly if it was done in a more narrative form: “I told stories to relieve my social awkwardness” (Jenny). Stories like Christian’s about a play he had seen [D, F, Christian], or like the stories that Xavier [D, C, Xavier] and Cory [D, C, Cory] told about finding particularly distinctive elements of clothing were all associated with extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings.
A third kind of event associated with extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings was helping behaviors. There were 18 occasions where helpful behavior was marked by decreases in social awkwardness. One common way that participants helped each other was by providing opportunities to join the conversation. Amy and Peter, for example, had been discussing a course while Victor looked around the room. Amy then looked toward Victor and began explaining the topic they had been discussing [D, I, Victor]. Similarly, Sandy helped the confederate to understand the ongoing conversation by explaining “so, we were talking about food” and then continued with the discussion [D, C, Sandy]. An act of helping that both Nancy and Diane marked with an extreme decrease in awkwardness was Nancy’s request for a place to put her gum and Diane’s offer of a piece of paper from her purse [D, F, Diane, Nancy]. Offers of food, in particular, were often accompanied by extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings—e.g., Heidi and Naomi poured water for the whole group [D, F, Heidi], Beatrice offered Maria a cookie [D, F, Beatrice] and Jenny offered water and cookies to everyone [D, C, Sandy]. Jenny discussed the importance of the food: “we all bonded over food; when we felt uncomfortable, we knew we could communicate on that level.” As Sandy put it, the “presence of food gave us something to discuss, offer, etc.,” something to “focus on, rather than the situation itself” (Wendy).
A fourth event often marked by extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings was the positive evaluation of an individual or something clearly associated with that individual. There were 15 such occasions, only a few of which were positive evaluations of a particular individual—e.g., while introducing Xavier, Saul referred to him as an “eccentric” [D, In, Xavier]. More often, the positive evaluations were of something clearly associated with the individual. For example, Diane mentioned that she was from New York and Hillary talked about how much she loved her first visit to that city [D, F, Hillary, Diane]. Similarly, Sandy spoke about her love for cheese and Jenny said “cheese is the best thing in the world; I did my sixth grade science project on cheese; been obsessed with it ever since” [D, F, Jenny].
The final event associated with extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings was the acknowledgment of awkwardness through humor. Of the 37 such occasions, many involved joking about the awkwardness induced by the research situation. Sandy, for example, joked about hating to watch herself on tape [D, F, Linda, Sandy], and Demetrius joked about the possibility of the cookies being electrified [D, F, Maria]. Linda joked with the entering confederate “we were talking about you” [D, C, Sandy]. Much of the humor was also related to the potential awkwardness of food consumption. Jenny joked about spilling food on her shirt [D, F, Linda], Wendy joked about drinking the water even though Naomi had found a hair in it [D, F, Wendy] (Wendy noted this event as one that most reduced feelings of awkwardness), and Beatrice joked about the cookies being someone else’s lunch [D, C, Beatrice].
Many of the humorous acknowledgements of awkwardness were related to particular awkward events. For example, while introducing Christian, Corrine said that he did “mediation”. Christian then corrected her: “meditation; I only mediate when I have to” [D, In, Corrine]. On another such occasion, a confederate and Diane were trying to convince Hillary to take the last cookie but she kept refusing. Hillary then joked “what is this, peer pressure?” [D, C, Hillary]. Humor, in general, seemed to make these participants feel less awkward—“By joking it made the situation seem like a more comfortable situation” (Corrine)—but, more than that, humor and laughter was “a social acknowledgement of potential awkwardness itself” (Cory).
Summary of findings and Discussion
In general, across the simulation, the largest proportion of dramatic increases in awkwardness ratings relative to time occupied occurred, as predicted, during the uncertain focus of the first few moments of the simulation, during a similarly uncertain period following the entry of the confederate, and during the explicit social focus induced by the “introductions” of the ice-breaker game. These general trends can be visualized in Figure 2 below where, superimposed over the Z-score transformed awkwardness ratings for the three participants in trial 7, is a line representing the average number of extreme rating changes per s for each of the eight event periods, aggregated across all participants (transformed to fit the Z-score scale).
Aggregrate trends superimposed on awkwardness ratings x time (in s) for Trial 7
These results show that the primary reported sources of awkwardness were, generally speaking, closely related to researcher expectations. Participant comments (gathered from the post-observation surveys) reflect this consonance. When asked to indicate her most awkward moments, Virginia wrote:
It was most awkward when I first entered the room. Other awkward moments were when an additional person joined the group, when we were asked to learn enough about the other people in order to be able to introduce them and, finally, when we were asked to introduce another person in the room.
Though few participants made comments so wholly reflective of researcher expectations, participant comments as a body reflect this pattern.
These results, then, lend general support to the model of socially awkward situations being proposed here. The manifest uncertainty and self-reported awkwardness during periods of researcher-induced novelty, along with the fact that extreme increases in awkwardness ratings were often associated with implicit or explicit negative social judgments, provide support for the assumption that social awkwardness involves a destabilization of the relationship between perceived and desired acceptance. This destabilization was also evident in the fact that extreme awkwardness ratings were very often associated with violations of norms and normativity, violations which have been associated with decreased social acceptance (Prentice & Trail, 2010; Weber, 2003). The model also claims that the social processes experienced as social awkwardness involve explicit social monitoring as a primary element (specifically, as a regulatory function), an assumption supported by the fact that participants reported extreme increases in social awkwardness in situations where such monitoring was induced—both intentionally, in the formal “introductions” at the end of the simulation, and more organically, in self-conscious reactions to the mirror and other elements of the simulation that drew attention to self and to social relations.
Limitations and future research
The observational findings provide some suggestive themes for further research, particularly relative to the socially stabilizing behaviors proposed in the model and exemplified in the events marked by extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings. These events were not specifically predicted by the general model, but they reflect it in at least two ways: first, the importance of acceptance as a goal-state is reflected in several of those events associated with extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings. In particular, helping behaviors and positive evaluations imply at least some degree of acceptance and the association of these activities with extreme decreases in social awkwardness is consistent with the model. Second, the importance of stable social interactions is reflected in the fact that events like engaging in humor or in comfortable or familiar forms of speech and interaction were associated with extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings. Humor, in particular, may serve an important control function in socially awkward situations, not only because it was the event most often associated with extreme decreases in awkwardness ratings, but also because previous research (Clegg, 2011) suggests that acknowledgement of awkwardness, as opposed to avoidance, is associated with its mitigation. Of course, stable acceptance as a goal state in socially awkward interactions is not directly tested in the current study and future research is required to test this element of the model.
Another element of the model not directly tested through this simulation was the claim that social anxiety provides the energy that drives the regulatory process experienced as social awkwardness. Participants clearly indicated that something like social anxiety was central to their awkward experiences—they repeatedly expressed and later reported feeling “bad,” “nervous,” “anxious,” “pressured,” “crazy,” etc. in conjunction with some event that they rated with an extreme increase in social awkwardness—but, of course, future research will be necessary to assess the proposed relationships between such anxiety and the regulatory and control functions hypothesized in the model. The same can be said of all of the specific functional relationships between the various elements of the model. The events observed in the simulation reported here bear only on the structural elements of the model and not on the specific functional relationships between those elements (e.g., whether social anxiety directly induces explicit social attention). Future research will be necessary to assess such relationships.
It should also be acknowledged that, though the current study was designed as an ecologically valid simulation, there are elements of the procedure that are obviously contrived and so limit the degree to which these findings can be directly compared to naturally occurring events. In particular, the fact that the interaction was being recorded for research purposes and that it took place in a laboratory produced a number of instances of study salience (discussed in the findings above) which would not be natural elements of everyday social interaction. Some of the awkwardness experienced by participants was likely associated with the awkwardness of the research context itself and not necessarily everyday social awkwardness. Field research as well as archival and narrative approaches could address some of these limitations.
These findings also suggest possible research questions not directly related to the model under investigation. The apparent importance of uninterrupted speech flow, for example, carries possible implications for linguistic or narrative research and the socially stabilizing quality of implicit, rather than explicit, social regulation is a theme relevant to a number of social psychological theories of social functioning. Similarly, the fact that extreme changes (both positive and negative) in awkwardness ratings were roughly equally distributed across speaker and audience, helper and helped, social transgressor and target, etc. carries possible implications for research on both empathy and emotional contagion. Finally, many of these findings could point to fruitful new avenues of exploration for interventionist research on shyness, SAD, loneliness, and related literatures.
Such future research is promising primarily because it may be able to address a dearth in the kind of embedded and situational research necessary to draw distinctions between dispositional and situational processes in problematic or alienated social functioning. There is a wealth of research associating problematic social functioning with broadly dispositional factors, including research on attachment (Collins & Feeney, 2004; Collins, Ford, Guichard, & Allard, 2006; Downey & Feldman, 1996; Downey, Mougios, Ayduk, London, & Shoda, 2004), shyness (Zimbardo, 1977), temperamental reactivity (Kagan, 1997), loneliness (Ernst & Cacioppo, 1999; Gardner, Pickett, Jefferis, & Knowles, 2005; Jackson, Fritch, Nagasaka, & Gunderson, 2002; Nurmi, Toivonen, Salmela-Aro & Eronen, 1997), and self-esteem (Murray, Rose, Bellavia, Holmes, & Kusche, 2002; Sommer & Baumeister, 2002), but only a small proportion of this research (e.g., Sommer & Baumeister, 2002) permits us to distinguish these proposed effects from more situationally embedded ones.
In the process of drawing such distinctions, social awkwardness may be a particularly useful construct because it is a kind of minimal case for social alienation, an experience that is likely near-universal but that still reflects the basic features of destabilized social functioning. Consider, for example, the case of social attention in Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD). Research on SAD implicates attention to social cues in maladaptive behavior (see review above), but a careful analysis of the socially awkward situation suggests not only that social attention can be associated with social anxiety in non-clinical populations, but that such attention, and even the anxiety associated with it, can be functionally important in social regulation. It is probably very important to be able to feel anxiety in the face of social destabilization and to let those feelings focus intention and attention on social regulatory processes. A careful analysis of socially awkward interactions, then, suggests that processes long associated with dispositional traits can be seen as functional at the level of everyday small group functioning.
It is evident, then, that research involving the analysis of everyday group functioning in non-clinical settings is imperative for distinguishing precisely what is adaptive and maladaptive in social interactions and so more, and more naturalistic, research on socially awkward situations seems warranted. The large body of evidence for dispositional factors related to problematic social functioning can only be meaningfully interpreted against a comparable body of research on the situational processes and constraints that determine the meaning and effect of any given social style. Research on everyday interactions, like the socially awkward situation, may be an ideal context for illuminating such distinctions.