Mitigating Social Awkwardness

As I understand it, this is to some extent a cultural thing: different cultures have different expected latencies of verbal response... that is, different lengths of expected inter-utterance pauses.

I learned to speak in the Northeast United States, in a Hispanic Jewish household: my LVR was negative for most of my life * (that is, the rules I grew up with say it's OK to start talking a little bit before the other person has finished, which has its own set of difficulties), which I imagine is incredibly frustrating for folks who are actually waiting for a pause.

(* -- My LVR increased a fair bit after my stroke but is still pretty low.)

To me, it seems like person B magically knows when person A is about to stop talking and takes up the conversation the second A stops, no pause in between.

From my own observation of conversations, it looks to me like a cooperative thing. Usually, A doesn't simply stop talking, having said her piece, after which B takes a turn. The handoff from A to B (or to C, or to D) is an interactive process involving both voice and body language extending for a perceptible interval (below one second) around the moment when one stopped and the other started. B does not know when A is going to stop. Neither does A. Instead, B has something to add and sees a juncture at which a handoff can happen. There are many places in a conversation where it could occur, but doesn't, or did, but might not have done.

I'd draw an analogy with improvisational dance or music, if I had experience of those -- maybe someone who has could comment. Or perhaps friendly sparring in martial arts. Or sex.

ETA: Which is why it can be a mistake to wait until A has "finished". Depending on A's conversational style and the subject matter, "finishing" may simply be the wrong concept to apply. In a one to one conversation it may seem to you like you can't get a word in edgeways, while A is wondering why you aren't saying anything and she's having to do all the work.

I believe one of the greatest benefits of interactive conversation is ability to interrupt, so that less effort is spent on crafting words that don't help, and efficiency improves dramatically, allowing to communicate more novel ideas faster, to a point where some things get communicated that wouldn't at all otherwise. If you aren't allowed to interrupt, this benefit largely goes away.

(Another is in reducing trivial inconveniences that can otherwise prevent you from getting the ideas out, and here audio conversation trumps text chats.)

You might try to add nonverbal cues such as leaning forward or a slight hand gesture to draw attention to yourself when you have something to say, before the current conversational chunk is done. This will help warn others that you would like to speak. Watch other people in the conversation to see if you can identify other cues, since people probably are more receptive to cues that they use themselves.

It's particularly annoying when I come up with a comment to something that's being said, but by the time I'm able to say anything the conversation has shifted to something else entirely. This happening once or twice wouldn't be an issue, but half a dozen times during the same conversation starts to get frustrating.

I may be completely wrong, but this suggests the sort of conversation where the point is displaying your quick wits and facility with small talk, and keeping up with the flow is most of the point. Is this with one particular person, one particular social group or something that you find happens lots in many situations?

I have problems when I'm the speaker. Perhaps I pause to much and am a bit of a passive type, as I have noticed I get cutoff a lot and don't get to finish my train of thought. And yes, having my "train" then derailed to something different is a bummer as I can't even get to the point after laying the preamble :)

I like the way you think!

Most people are fascinated by other people, and so will learn about them without prompting. I think the problem with socially awkward folk is that they find humans and social situations uninteresting and thus not worthy of study.

I think this is a big part of it in most cases! (It's also somewhat self reinforcing.)

This is one of the things I have planned for my IA meetups, when the random walk takes us to a crowded area.

I assume Systems 1 and 2 here refer to this Elephant and Rider article.

I suspect this is one of those things where both ways are true. I do believe that at least to some extent, social skills are hard-wired into human brains, and spending too much conscious thought on social actions can actually impede them.

For a bit of anecdotal evidence, I fairly often experience difficulty finding the "right" moments to insert a comment into a conversation among several people. But at other times, in a very similar conversation I can easily join in the conversation in a way that feels natural and doesn't appear to startle or annoy anyone.

One obvious factor correlated to the difference is familiarity with the group. So possibly my Mind 1 / Elephant knows more about their particular cues for attention-sharing, and/or they know more about my own semiconscious signals for having something to say. But I can also experience different degrees of ability to speak in conversation among the same group of people. A second factor which correlates to that ability is whether I feel comfortable, or anxious. I would describe the effects of anxiety (at least on my mind) as preoccupying the Mind 2 / Rider with unproductive thoughts. So it seems this might be a simple example of overthinking interfering with social skills I do have. (Though sadly, I can't "switch modes" at will, nor easily take precise measurements of what happens when I am doing it "right". And yes, these two "factors" are themselves very correlated.)

On the other hand, many social skills can only be learned. The ones we don't get for free with our brains, we can train with conscious effort, and with luck engrain them into the semiconscious "System 1".

You have a good point there. (But for me the reference to arbitrary 'System 1 & 2' designations was annoying and potentially misleading.)

This is interesting because my initial response is to disagree, but I don't think I have good reasons or evidence.

To drastically oversimplify: You seem to be saying that intelligence is primary and social skills are learned. You're born smart or dumb, and if you're smart, you over-analyze social situations and become afraid.

My initial reaction is the opposite: Social skills are primary, intelligence is learned. You are born with or without good social skills, and if you don't have them, you read a lot (by yourself) and hack computers or whatever, so that you become smart.

How loud are you?

Seriously, I just completed a voice training class, and it's really astonishing how bad I was at guessing my decibel level (although I was as likely to be too loud as too quiet). Some other people in the class were barely audible even when they claimed it felt like they were shouting.

Get a webcam or smartphone camera, record your normal volume range (from "mouse" to "shout"). If you're hard to hear, get in the habit of taking a breath and using your diaphragm (to me this feels like tensing my stomach to get punched) when speaking. Overdo it for a while.

If you do this and still get ignored, then at least you can cross off the "Too Quiet" hypothesis and keep exploring.

Try instead to 'ping' the other person. Once you've communicated a concept, ask "does that make sense?" or something similar, and see what they say. (This also has a way of forcing people to pay closer attention to you, since passive listening may not be enough... I have this habit. Is it Dark Arts?)

I'm not completely certain, but it seems likely that they're just not paying attention. Do you have a good detector of other people's attention? Do you know on a gut level how to grab their attention first, before you even begin to say anything, and then keep it focused on yourself as you're talking? If someone is paying attention, they will feel "socially forced" to react to your words afterward, at least say "hmm" or shrug.

Even so, the approach should be the same: keep going, don't break the flow.

If they really didn't hear you and they are interested in the slightest about what you said, they'll eventually ask you to repeat, if not on the spot then when their turn to speak comes.

If either is untrue, demanding confirmation from them is going to sound annoying.

Also, I'm reaching out a little here (I'm no social wizard), but I get the impression that, in a conversation, taking the job of making sure that the communication went through correctly places you on a slightly lower status.

On many occasions I get a similar reaction, most often at work. At the appropriate place in a conversation for interjection, I will start to speak. In the middle of the first syllable, I will be interrupted and the participants in the conversation will continue as if I was not about to speak.

• Perhaps I am unheard.

• Perhaps I am considered of lower status amongst the peer group represented.

• Perhaps the participants predict my comment will be off topic.

• Perhaps there is a physiological cause. Specifically, auditory processing delay. {The time span it takes your conscious mind to become aware of a noise.}

Auditory processing delay is the one I find most interesting as I have accepted the outlier social role, perhaps too well.

The role of auditory processing delay in speech, I suspect, is the initial cause of the interruption. For some time, I have been cognizant that I often reflexively react to sound before I "hear" it. Otherwise, why would I have tensed muscles when the unexpected noise occurs. The delay seems perceptible, perhaps .1 to .5 seconds by my estimation. This large a delay in a conversation may be atypical.

This paper suggests a number of symptoms of high auditory delay and traits associated with it. These also suggest that I may the one experiencing an above average auditory processing delay.

Note that sometimes people don't reply when they have heard someone not because they think the comment is valueless but simply because they don't have any immediate, obviously relevant reply to make.

Jokes are overrated. Stories in general are overrated. Approximtely no-one cares about my fascinating stories. I keep pointing this out to myself in the hope it will sink in.

So when I get zero feedback of any kind for an utterance, my impulse is to repeat it, perhaps in different words, until someone reacts, but by then the reaction often seems to be annoyed. So this is obviously suboptimal, but I need to be able to distinguish between "I am inaudible/incomprehensible" and "my utterance has been deemed valueless". (Ideally I'd be able to tell why my utterances have been deemed valueless but that's a secondary issue.)

Fortunately it is a no-lose situation. The people who are going to be annoyed by the repetition are those that heard you the first time and deemed your words valueless. And those people sound like assholes with poor judgement so who cares what they think?

This is true. If the other person moves close enough that you end up wanting to back away, this might be what is at play.

Note that it is natural for people to move slightly closer to each other in an active conversation as well.

All this is extremely context-dependent. On some of the most fun occasions when I told jokes or funny stories, I was barely able to tell them comprehensibly because I was unable to suppress spasms of laughter. Of course, if the audience and the atmosphere is not right, this can make you look like an idiot or extremely annoying.

Oh, yes. Smile, but do not actually laugh. I'm sorry, I missed that earlier.

I may qualify in some respects. I would say my biggest difficulty is that I often cannot make myself even pretend to be interested for a few minutes in what most people have to talk about. It is conceivable that I could carry such a conversation if I tried hard enough, which is why I tentatively answer your question in the affirmative. I am not sure I can do it though. I have a very difficult time paying attention to conversation that does not interest me.

My experience: If you are using deodorant but not showering, body odor is noticeable at a radius of approximately 1 foot per day. The first day, as long as you don't get within a foot of people (you usually shouldn't in most day to day activities), people won't notice. But by day 3, it'll be noticeable. (Note: this is for winter/air-conditioned days. Moderate exercise or hanging out in hot computer labs can accelerate this process. Hot summer days you absolutely should be taking a shower every day).

This is based off of approximate research with a limited number of friends (with a very small sample size so I could easily be wrong. And I probably came up with the 1' rule in particular because it seemed nice and elegant as oppose to was directly suggested by the data, but it seemed fairly close).

Soap is more necessary than you may think, as it can remove layers of oil and allow the deodorant to function more effectively. Also, body oils go rancid after a while, and some people are much more sensitive to that than others.

Why do you say this?

Not at all. I don't like the article editor much, and I was mostly concentrating on getting out the ideas.

I find that I can easily look at one of a person's eyes without discomfort.

A good technique is to not concentrate on any one feature, but keep looking at their face. I don't mean defocus, but instead focus alternately on different features.

Everybody has heard this. Not everybody has heard a clear explanation of how you learn body language. It's not a trivial thing, and most exhortations to learn body language come across as "Because you fail to operate your meat-puppet according to a long list of rules which I will not explain, many of which you don't know that you don't know, you are socially and morally deficient." I know that's not your intent.

What I really liked about this article is that it breaks down some of the basics into pieces small enough for someone to learn and follow. That's valuable.

I have trouble with this one. In general, what I'm doing with my body is largely determined by my efforts to maintain physical comfort and has little (albeit not quite zero) relationship with the interactions I'm having/emotions I'm experiencing.

My face also makes expressions without my permission that often have no obvious relationship with what I'm thinking or feeling, and I can't tell without looking in a mirror. (I can make deliberate expressions, too, but this is effortful. Also some of them seem to be wrong: I have been told that my attempt at "attentive" is more "terrified".)

My tone of voice is not quite as unruly, but sometimes misbehaves. And I'm not good at tracking when it's doing that if I'm using my own words in real time and therefore have to compose them while I speak. On top of all this I have an undiagnosed breathing disorder that makes me yawn, sigh, and gasp a lot when the semantic content of these sounds is inappropriate.

Is there anything I can do to make people pay less attention to these cues, short of demanding that people only interact with me via text? I tell people these things but, except for the breathing thing, they often outright don't believe me, and even the ones who claim to believe me seem to forget.

I am non-thrilled with the presentation of your example.

This is true. Learning to respect other people's personal space is an important component of this.

I highly recommend deodorants but I think that scents should be much more subtle. I'm fairly sensitive to perfumes and fragrances, and getting a nose-full of Axe is like being hit with a club. If I can smell someone's perfume/deodorant/aftershave/cologne from more than a meter away then I'll usually try to avoid getting any closer than that. I have met others with the same sensitivity.

This advice is totally personal opinion, not a rule of any kind.

Market research reflects people's preferences better than social memes.

I think that it reflects people's exploitable biases more than preferences in a lot of cases. The marketer's job is to convince you that you need his produce more than you need your money, and when it's true it's good... but a lot of times it isn't.

Market research reflects people's preferences better than social memes.

This sounds like it could be very insightful. Certainly there is going to be serious research where money is involved, and poor research will be eroded by selection pressures. I am not sure of the social meme that we may suppose to reflect people's preferences though - do you mean the mildly derogatory comments that people make in light of the heavy-handed advertising cliches?

It can be funny if the compliment was sincere.

If the compliment was at least in part out of politeness, however, you will come off as insufferable, not witty.

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That would be a good time to mangle an Oscar Wilde quote - namely "If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-eduacated." If they don't get it it's a joke, and if they do get it it's a double joke.

This really doesn't sound feasible. At a minimum you want to be able to not offend others in social situations.

Rules such as that lead "you" (of course I really mean "me") into terminal failure and despair from which suicide is the only escape.

I've been following rules like this for years, but they're inexorably leading me to the Superultimate Golden Rule: kill yourself.