The Art of Manliness - #347： The Science of Social Awkwardness

00:00:00.000 brett mckay here and welcome to another edition of the art of manliness podcast you've likely

00:00:18.820 experienced an awkward moment or two in your life you say or do something that's socially

00:00:22.260 out of sync leaving the person you're interacting with bemused and confused and you feeling like

00:00:26.700 running and hiding under a rock while awkwardness is an uncomfortable feeling it can hurt us socially

00:00:31.000 my guest today argues that there is some upside to it his name is tai tashiro he's a psychologist

00:00:35.200 and the author of awkward the science of why we're socially awkward and why that's awesome

00:00:39.140 today on the show tai highlights his research on awkwardness he explains what exactly we feel when

00:00:43.380 we feel awkward and what triggers the feeling he then digs into why some people are more awkward

00:00:47.820 than others and the detriments that come with being socially awkward he then shares things chronically

00:00:52.020 awkward people can do to be less so like developing social algorithms and studying manners and we end

00:00:57.160 our conversation discussing the upsides of awkwardness and how to balance it with the downsides if you

00:01:01.820 struggle with social awkwardness or know someone who does this episode will provide you with a lot

00:01:05.380 of actionable advice and insights on both embracing and mitigating your propensities after the show's

00:01:09.940 over check out our show notes at aom.is slash awkward where you find links to resources we can delve deeper

00:01:14.880 into this topic all right tai tashiro welcome to the show hey thanks so much for having me on so

00:01:24.320 you're a psychologist and you've specialized in researching something a particular it's a weird

00:01:29.700 it's not i wouldn't say it's weird it's different you research awkwardness uh how does a psychologist

00:01:35.400 get into researching awkwardness well uh that's a good question i got interested in social awkwardness

00:01:42.260 about three years ago and it was just one of these life experience things where i had a lot of friends

00:01:48.580 who had moved to new cities or were in new jobs just kind of coincidentally at the same time and some of

00:01:56.040 these folks were socially awkward and i knew them to be great people they had great character and were

00:02:01.820 really interesting and had a lot to offer but they did have that awkwardness where they stumbled around

00:02:08.360 and were a little bit clumsy in the initial parts of social interactions and i thought to myself if

00:02:14.380 they could just skip the first five minutes of social interactions they'd probably be a lot better

00:02:19.560 off and i thought it was really too bad that other people weren't giving them a chance based on some of

00:02:26.160 these small social graces that they had difficulty handling and so i got into the research literature and i

00:02:33.060 thought people must be looking at social awkwardness it turns out nobody in the research community calls

00:02:40.100 social awkwardness awkwardness they have all kinds of other terms for it but there's been about over a thousand

00:02:46.700 studies that are related to social awkwardness that can tell us why people are awkward and also reveals

00:02:51.980 this surprising upside to having an awkward disposition yeah so what what do researchers call awkwardness

00:02:58.240 oh they have all kinds of things so social psychologists will call it a social skill deficit

00:03:03.220 um you have behavioral geneticists who will call it the broad autism phenotype which is a very jargony term

00:03:11.000 to say that you have social skill deficits some troubles communicating and you tend to get these

00:03:17.420 obsessive interests where you really get narrowly focused on something that you really love so okay let's

00:03:24.260 so awkward let's describe what it's just a feeling of ineptitude in small social situations like what

00:03:30.560 causes us to feel awkward yeah so we can think about a lot of different ways uh there is that emotional

00:03:37.040 component to it so people will say this feels really awkward and you get that visceral sensation of

00:03:43.640 discomfort if you're the one being awkward in a moment then it feels like walking nose first into a glass

00:03:51.260 door and kind of catches you by surprise you're really disoriented it's what psychologists would

00:03:56.920 call a high activation emotion meaning that your heart rate's really going you're sweating your muscles

00:04:02.400 are tense and it's not a great emotional state actually to problem solve so people have probably

00:04:08.360 had the experience of doing something awkward and then whatever they do to try to fix it actually

00:04:13.480 makes the situation worse so it's because we're so panicked we want to make the situation right

00:04:19.600 so awkwardness can be emotional one of the favorite definitions for me is the root of the word awkward

00:04:27.860 which is an old norse word afugur and that means facing a different direction and i really like that

00:04:35.440 because it tells us a lot about what the psychological research shows us with awkwardness which is that

00:04:41.360 awkward people see the world differently they might miss social cues or social expectations that are

00:04:48.540 in plain sight to everybody else but it also means that they're looking at something unusual or

00:04:53.460 different and that might be valuable or interesting in the long run yeah and we'll get to those upsides

00:04:59.600 of awkwardness so like why like why do we have that feeling right like there's you know evolutionary

00:05:04.980 reasons why we we feel happiness why we feel depressed why feel awkward yeah i think oh i feel awkward and

00:05:14.400 there's also why i feel awkward so strongly because a lot of times awkward situations are not life or

00:05:20.420 death situations if your fly is undone that's not going to kill anybody you know it's not going to hurt

00:05:27.140 you or but boy we get really worked up about it and it probably goes back to the idea that we're such

00:05:35.000 social animals as humans and it's you know if you look back at hunter gatherer times which was the

00:05:42.100 majority of human history those were social groups of under 50 people and everybody knew everybody

00:05:47.940 and your survival was not guaranteed so life expectancy for most of human history up to about 150 years ago

00:05:55.040 was under 40 years old and so it was a life or death battle every day and you needed everybody to be

00:06:02.920 focused on the same long-term goals like getting food or shelter protecting each other and so you needed a

00:06:10.560 really cohesive efficient social unit and that's why we're so attuned to small social behaviors that

00:06:17.880 are out of place because you didn't want to find out that larry was stealing food from the storage shed

00:06:23.640 when everybody is starving or that someone was going to betray you in a battle uh once you're involved in

00:06:29.680 it you needed to know beforehand if people were going to deviate from the larger social expectations

00:06:35.580 gotcha and you argue in the book that feeling awkward right we felt it you know since caveman

00:06:40.900 times you argue that feeling awkward is more common in our modern day why is that yeah there's been a lot

00:06:48.080 of large sociological changes that have made all of us feel a little bit more awkward uh one of the

00:06:54.500 obvious ones that's easy to overlook is that we're more urban than we used to be so we interact with

00:07:01.280 certainly more than 50 people on a daily basis oftentimes and a lot of those folks are strangers

00:07:07.040 so when we go to the coffee shop or the grocery store we don't know most of the people we're

00:07:12.440 surrounded by that's actually unusual in the course of human history and all these different folks might

00:07:18.800 have different cultural expectations or social expectations and that puts us in this state of

00:07:24.500 unknowing and the state of trying to connect with people when we don't really know where they're coming

00:07:30.180 from or what their background is and so that can make us feel awkward i think another thing is

00:07:35.200 technology is just something that we're getting used to still and there's so many different forms so

00:07:41.320 your etiquette over text versus facebook versus instagram or linkedin there's all different social

00:07:48.520 expectations for what you do in those different mediums and also how you behave and so that's a little

00:07:54.220 bit tricky to figure out how to navigate these things right yeah curb your enthusiasm when you said that

00:07:59.360 you know the idea we're surrounded by strangers who have different ideas of what's appropriate like

00:08:03.640 curb your enthusiasm is basically the show that highlights that yeah that is so true i mean he does

00:08:10.200 such a great job of pointing out that there's all these little mysteries into social life on a daily

00:08:15.240 basis some of which strike us as quite odd but we don't really want to ask anybody else if those things

00:08:20.340 are odd but i think a lot of us feel that and it's good to know actually that hey most of your fellow

00:08:26.580 human beings are feeling uncomfortable in a lot of these same social situations that feel ambiguous

00:08:32.420 or nebulous to you right and going back to the technology one of the things you talk about in the

00:08:36.360 book is that with technology um you miss out on nuance right you don't have that face-to-face where

00:08:42.020 you can look at facial expressions body language so it's hard to detect okay was he being sarcastic

00:08:47.640 or was that a joke yeah that is so true it's so easy to misinterpret what somebody else is saying

00:08:53.640 and it creates a lot of anxiety and the person on the other end or even if someone doesn't text you

00:08:59.440 back right away you can feel anxious about gosh did i say something stupid or are they mad at me

00:09:05.100 oftentimes we find out that was just needless anxiety but that's what happens with technological

00:09:11.600 communication we don't have things even like how far you stand from somebody sends a lot of social

00:09:18.040 information or the amount of eye contact uh tactile you know touch is a huge thing and even the

00:09:26.200 intonation of somebody's voice conveys a tremendous amount of social information if you're on email or

00:09:32.020 text you're missing out on these wide variety of cues that were actually wired to be attentive to

00:09:38.300 to decode what somebody else might be thinking gotcha so uh you mentioned earlier that awkward people

00:09:44.500 the the word awkward comes with that uh norse word for like you know looking a different direction

00:09:49.020 so they awkward people see the world differently so how do they see the world differently compared to

00:09:54.920 non-awkward people you know i like to use this uh spotlight analogy uh to explain how awkward people

00:10:01.180 see the world so imagine you see life unfold before you're on a stage and that stage is broadly

00:10:08.620 illuminated so you could see people coming on stage exiting the stage uh you'd see probably spend most

00:10:15.640 of your time center stage because that's where most of the central interactions would take place

00:10:19.860 but you could also gather social context and that's how most people see the social world is broadly

00:10:26.540 illuminated now awkward people on the other hand see their stage spotlighted and that spotlight

00:10:33.220 tends to fall a little bit left of center by thought experiment and so that means they're going to miss

00:10:39.100 out on some of the key social information this template center stage but it also means that they're seeing

00:10:45.560 other aspects of what's going on in a great degree of detail and so they tend to have tremendous focus

00:10:52.480 uh whatever they see under that spotlight is seen with brilliant clarity and so that can be a good thing

00:10:59.220 but what you have to do when you're an awkward person is you have to learn to one recognize that

00:11:04.660 you're prone to missing certain social cues or social expectations and you have to learn to move that

00:11:10.760 spotlight to the right places at the right time so it takes a little bit more choreography in your mind

00:11:16.940 right so this attention to detail that awkward people have in this focus and missing social cues it

00:11:23.320 sounds like when you hear that it sounds like that's the traits of like the autism spectrum

00:11:27.060 is awkwardness simply on the autism spectrum or can you be awkward and not be on the spectrum

00:11:33.280 yeah you know as i got into the research i actually realized that was an important distinction to make

00:11:39.360 because i think it's something in broader popular culture that we get a little bit confused about

00:11:45.160 so it turns out that autism symptoms which are also asperger's symptoms there's three components

00:11:51.840 there's the social skill deficits there's the communication problems and then these obsessive

00:11:56.680 interests so those symptoms fall along a bell curve in the general population which means that the

00:12:03.600 average person in the middle of that bell curve actually has a few autistic characteristics actually

00:12:09.920 now as you get further out towards the edge of that curve let's say the 85th to 98th percentile

00:12:16.800 that's kind of where the awkward people sit and then once you cross the 99th percentile

00:12:22.580 that top one percentile that's where you diagnose somebody is autistic or with asperger's

00:12:28.360 gotcha so the spotlight effect that people who are awkward tend to have like what else is going in

00:12:35.780 what else is going on in their brain with that spotlight effect does it cause them to

00:12:40.140 what do they miss specifically whenever they're interacting socially is it body cues is it you know

00:12:46.600 meaning behind words what's going on there yeah you know if you talk to an awkward person a lot

00:12:51.920 of times they'll say they're drawn to whatever sparkly in a room which you would think that

00:12:56.200 they're kidding about that but it's actually sometimes true they they tend to focus on these

00:13:00.980 peripheral sorts of things uh when you know not awkward people walk into a room let's say at a

00:13:06.640 cocktail party or some kind of mixer what not awkward people do is they instinctively look

00:13:13.600 for the most powerful person in the room and they're really good at identifying that without even

00:13:19.060 having to think about it and then what they'll do is they'll look that person directly in the eyes to

00:13:24.660 try to figure out what's their mood or what are they thinking and so non-awkward people do that

00:13:29.260 without having to think twice about making sense of the social scene awkward people walk into a room

00:13:35.520 and they tend to focus on the non-social aspects of the situation so they might look at the art or the

00:13:41.960 architecture or the lighting or anything except what's social and in a social situation obviously

00:13:48.460 you should probably be devoting your attention to those kinds of cues so right off the bat they're

00:13:53.900 missing all kinds of contextual information when they enter a social scene um do do awkward people

00:14:00.300 know that they're awkward easily yeah so most of the time they know that i kind of struggle here in

00:14:07.460 certain social situations and can be a little bit off i don't know that it's always something that

00:14:12.640 they want to think about a lot but if you get to a real honest conversation with an awkward person

00:14:18.520 they'll say yeah i'm pretty awkward sometimes in rare cases if someone's really awkward you actually

00:14:26.300 might get a lack of social awareness in those situations but most people do know right and are

00:14:32.540 awkward people like are they socially anxious like do they have social anxiety like are they afraid to

00:14:37.100 interact or they don't they're not afraid they just don't have the skills to interact you know

00:14:42.760 adeptly or jointly yeah that's that's a really good point because the key component to social anxiety

00:14:50.260 is that the worry is irrational or unfounded and i i think to tell the truth with awkward people

00:14:58.360 they probably should be a little bit more worried than the average person about how they're going to

00:15:03.880 handle a social situation because they have evidence that they mishandle social situations

00:15:09.580 more often than the average person so i actually think as long as it's not debilitating as long as

00:15:15.600 it doesn't keep them from being social or doesn't compromise their ability to interact calmly in a

00:15:23.360 situation some of that social anxiety might be helpful because it motivates you to think ahead about

00:15:30.100 okay what's what's this event and what are the expectations and how can i prime my brain to

00:15:36.100 think about the things i need to do which is one of the good things about social awkwardness which is

00:15:41.400 when awkward people think deliberately ahead of time about how to handle a situation they do

00:15:49.880 significantly better and compared to people who aren't awkward who can just walk in and automatically

00:15:55.760 be social awkward people have to do do some of that forethought to have a good interaction right

00:16:01.740 yeah you talk about if you have a child that's awkward or if you yourself are awkward one of the

00:16:05.880 things is like kind of create uh basically their algorithms for social interactions like if then

00:16:11.360 i guess implementation intentions is what they call in the psychological field

00:16:15.120 so can you give us like an example of those yeah well i can give you one from personal life

00:16:21.480 actually so when i was a kid when we would go to the windys to get something to eat and this would

00:16:29.400 go on for a long time so imagine you're 10 11 12 years old you know most most families would just go

00:16:35.900 to the windys and go inside my parents would park the car they'd turn around and they'd say ty it's time

00:16:42.720 to mentally prepare i'd say okay i knew exactly what that meant and they were going to walk me through a

00:16:49.780 socratic dialogue about the kinds of social expectations i'd encounter inside and have me

00:16:57.000 talk through how i was going to handle those so they might say what's the first thing you need to

00:17:02.280 look for when you walk inside and i'd say well i should look for a line yeah that's right because

00:17:10.260 sometimes i'd walk in and i'd cut to the front of the line not because i wanted to cheat or get ahead

00:17:16.620 of anybody else just because i didn't see it or i didn't think about it and so okay so now i'm at

00:17:22.720 the back of the line now what do you need to do i should think about what i need to order i should

00:17:27.800 get my money ready when i get to the cashier i should say thank you when i turn around i should

00:17:33.720 be careful not to hit anybody with my tray because i'm going too fast so we would go step by step through

00:17:39.820 these things and we would do these mental preparation drills for these different situations

00:17:44.740 dozens and dozens of times and eventually i would get it and i can happily walk into a wendy's now

00:17:51.220 and order from myself and make the whole thing go smoothly but that's how awkward life goes and

00:17:57.380 it takes a tremendous amount of patience and persistence from parents and i think kindness

00:18:03.840 too to understand that their kid doesn't love being in this kind of situation and that kind of

00:18:10.840 extra coaching is really vital to them being able to navigate social life so you were an awkward kid

00:18:16.280 growing up oh yeah super super awkward um i'm you know i've been awkward for as long as i can remember

00:18:23.920 i think when i was younger you don't really realize it because you know when you're in grade school

00:18:29.560 your peers are pretty pretty forgiving about things but as junior high started to approach

00:18:35.360 i had an internal realization that i need to pull it together my parents certainly did too and

00:18:41.840 i'm really thankful that i had folks teachers parents coaches who saw that i just needed a little

00:18:48.820 extra encouragement and instruction and that made all the difference in the world yeah i love the

00:18:53.460 the story when you went to junior high for the first time and you the first day of school

00:18:57.440 you dressed like an accountant uh i still do actually but uh yeah no i like khakis pleated khakis

00:19:08.460 button-up starched oxford and these enormous square glasses that look like bifocals i'm going to my

00:19:16.800 first day of seventh grade but i mean i love it because it's so relatable because i think everyone's

00:19:20.460 done that at some point like they thought they were doing the thing that would make them look you know

00:19:24.740 fit in and make them look awesome but we kind of find out now yeah kind of the harder we try

00:19:31.820 sometimes right the worst it goes but um yeah you know i thought my my thinking behind that was

00:19:38.540 and i thought all summer about this but uh i thought i need to be convey a mature and professional image

00:19:46.180 in junior high because i was you know stepping up to this more mature environment which

00:19:51.280 turned out to not be true right but uh so i thought yeah if i if i look the part then that

00:19:57.740 now my awkward story from like when i was a kid it was in elementary school i think it was like

00:20:02.240 third grade maybe and like my sister at the time she was in high school and this is when like new

00:20:07.000 kids on the block were big and so she's she was a big new new kids on the block fan i thought okay

00:20:11.960 my sister she's in high school i must like new kids on the block too because that's what middle i

00:20:17.360 she was in middle school at the time and so i got a new kids on the block lunchbox and i remember i

00:20:22.020 brought it to school i thought this is gonna be the coolest thing ever and i could pull it out and

00:20:26.480 like everyone's like what in the world why do you have a new kids on the block and so you know i remember

00:20:31.760 like the kids what you do at the lunch you set your lunchbox up so like you know it was on its side

00:20:36.520 so you had like you know people could see your the cover of your lunchbox and you'd like hide behind it

00:20:41.220 i didn't do that i would like hide it and i think i just stopped i went to i just told him i want a

00:20:47.180 paper sack from here on out because i can't i can't do this retreat full retreat from the yeah yeah

00:20:54.080 yeah i think uh well hey i can respect the thought behind it though it seemed like it should

00:20:59.940 have worked but it did not um okay so you know being thoughtful about your social interactions and

00:21:05.920 really breaking down every interaction into component parts can be very helpful you also talk

00:21:10.320 about being less awkward with friends i know we've had people on the podcast talk about you know

00:21:17.120 men in their 20s and 30s it gets hard to make friends it's easy to make friends when you're a kid

00:21:21.940 for some reason it gets hard to make friends as an adult why is it so awkward um as an adult to make

00:21:29.420 friends like when you're a kid like you just like hey let's be friends and you guys did but like now

00:21:33.360 it's like it feels weird trying to make that connection with somebody else yeah it totally

00:21:40.280 does and uh some of the demographic data about loneliness supports this in fact for men men are

00:21:48.440 more lonely than women on average but the loneliest group demographically in the united states are young 1.00

00:21:55.680 adult men actually and they have a really hard time connecting with each other and that changes

00:22:01.920 dramatically from high school and and the college years so you know i think part of the problem

00:22:06.840 is just this broader cultural belief that we need to be cool you know gino ariema the coach for

00:22:15.120 uconn women's basketball he had a great press conference a while ago and they're asking him

00:22:21.340 you know why have you been the most successful program um you know maybe in college basketball period

00:22:26.720 and he said the key is that we recruit kids who are enthusiastic he said it's so hard to find people

00:22:34.700 who are unapologetically enthusiastic about what they love because there's so much pressure to be

00:22:40.920 cool and kind of aloof and detached and i that really resonated with me and i think that's really

00:22:45.960 consistent with what we see in the psychological data which is that when we move to young adulthood

00:22:52.080 for some reason that aloofness and that detachment we think that's the way that we need to present

00:22:58.440 ourselves and interact with people but of course if we take a step back from it that's a really good

00:23:03.540 way to not have friends so if somehow we could sign a treaty among all uh adults and just say hey

00:23:12.340 let's drop the pretense and let's just say that we don't have friends and we're a little bit lonely

00:23:18.600 and let's hang out uh things would go a lot better uh for each other but you know i think also part of

00:23:24.640 it's being urban the more concentrated an urban population is the more aloof and detached people come

00:23:30.620 across and it's partly that we don't want to get overwhelmed with too many friends or you know

00:23:35.980 friends that we're stuck with that we didn't really want maybe right and so we err on the side of being

00:23:41.060 overly cautious yeah yeah and one thing i've learned too is that people are reluctant to make the first

00:23:47.280 move but i noticed i think that everyone's waiting for everyone else to make the first move right like

00:23:52.600 just like invite yeah and you be like they're waiting for someone else to invite them to do the thing

00:23:56.860 so yeah you might as well be the person that does the inviting yeah yeah you know i think we're so

00:24:03.140 especially among men like we can be nervous about asking another guy to do things sometimes but uh it

00:24:10.440 doesn't have to be weird you know you can just uh find a point of common interest that's you know

00:24:16.380 there's there's just a few things that really predict how people become friends and one of them is

00:24:21.480 proximity so you know put yourself in situations where you're nearby other people that you could

00:24:27.040 become friends with and that sounds so common sense but we don't do that all the time sometimes

00:24:33.320 we're at home with our netflix or our xbox or whatever else and that's okay but if it's taking

00:24:39.820 us away from interactive situations then that's a problem and the other thing is a similarity so birds

00:24:47.440 of a feather tend to flock together more often than opposites attract and so a real great way to

00:24:53.640 ask somebody to hang out is just to go back to something where you found out that you shared a

00:24:58.800 common interest and say hey you want to go watch the football game or you want to go golfing or

00:25:03.580 whatever else that's a really easy way to make that initial i thought it was you talk about you

00:25:08.040 highlight research that that was interesting uh about millennials and manners like how they're really

00:25:13.040 into manners what's going on there why why has this been this uptick in interest amongst 20 somethings

00:25:19.640 about you know emily post yeah right it seems a bit odd right uh i'm a gen xer and i remember being

00:25:28.380 really bitter when people tried to impose manners upon me um and i think that was actually common for

00:25:35.060 boomers and and gen xers millennials interestingly enough are going a lot to youtube and they're watching

00:25:42.680 these videos about how to go to a nice restaurant or you know how to dress appropriately for a work

00:25:50.200 event and they're really interested in picking up on these social graces that they've apparently not

00:25:55.940 picked up uh while they were growing up and it's it's really kind of neat because they're saying hey i want

00:26:02.300 to be sure i'm respectful i want to be sure that i'm not stepping on anybody's toes and presenting myself

00:26:08.480 in a respectable manner so um i think it's actually a really neat thing but the implication there i think

00:26:14.580 is that for whatever reason social life got so laid back when they were kids that they did pick up

00:26:19.820 these social graces that they really want because that helps to structure a social interaction and take

00:26:26.140 some of the anxiety and awkward manners are algorithms to combat awkwardness they totally are you

00:26:34.000 know i uh most awkward people i know uh when they you know really want to do well socially

00:26:40.100 uh they study manners and so sometimes you'll run into awkward people who are like overly rigid

00:26:46.180 with their manners or overly formal and it's actually an endearing quality because what they've done

00:26:52.920 is they've tried to prepare themselves ahead of time to interact in a way that was you know respectable

00:27:00.160 and socially right yeah you talk about the people who uh like read the 1950s etiquette guides

00:27:06.340 they try to bust that out it's like yeah and then it just makes it even more awkward

00:27:10.800 i had a couple students who did that because i think i had given a lecture one time uh you know

00:27:18.500 about hey if you're a little bit awkward you can study manners and that's a good thing to do

00:27:22.000 i forgot to say you should get the most recent edition of the manuals and so i had a couple students

00:27:27.960 doing these yeah old-timey kinds of manners and found out that they'd gotten the used copy from

00:27:32.720 30 years ago well you also talk about dating and dating's always been awkward courtship right but

00:27:38.820 you argue that it's more awkward than ever and why is it is it what we've talked about before it's

00:27:43.100 like there's more strangers it's like more ambiguity about what's acceptable technology is that what's

00:27:47.380 all going on there yeah you know that's that's part of it i think one thing that's happening is

00:27:53.760 people aren't marrying as much or aren't married period and so the rate of single people in the

00:28:00.280 united states is higher than it's ever been so we're dating a lot more than we used to so that's

00:28:05.220 part of it if someone's never been married then they're dating for longer than any other generation

00:28:10.740 has uh millennials compared to baby boomers are waiting basically twice as long to marry uh compared to

00:28:20.820 boomers who are married by 22 23 years old so you're just dating a lot more i think the second

00:28:26.800 thing are the dating apps so here's a new cultural medium where you need to interact with people and

00:28:32.900 i think apps are great and fine but there's new rules there and so it can be pretty uncomfortable

00:28:39.600 knowing how to be appropriate or how to handle other people's inappropriate behavior uh in in these

00:28:46.380 online forums so yeah it's it's really kind of ambiguous it was easier in some ways for boomers who

00:28:53.640 you know they were married by 22 uh 23 and so that kind of took care of it but now we're 27 28 29

00:29:00.700 still dating and it's a little yeah i guess when when there was an end goal of marriage like you were

00:29:07.320 able you had this end goal where you could define the relationship right and now it's like well

00:29:12.360 what are we what's going on here and people don't really have those explicit conversations and they

00:29:17.400 end up you know just awkward yeah i tried to look at the research on the different types of

00:29:24.000 relationships so you know serious married single friends with benefits there's all these different

00:29:29.440 categories and the way it looked visually was like a voting map of districts for voting so i actually

00:29:37.500 called one of the sections in that chapter gerrymandering the friend zone because it's

00:29:42.940 kind of ambiguous are we just friends or friends with benefits or you know what is this thing that

00:29:47.340 we're doing so uh we've been talking about the downsides of awkwardness right because you get in

00:29:52.360 the way of social interaction and like you know a lot of your success in life and happiness in life

00:29:56.220 depends on your social you know fluidity like how you're able to manage that but you you talk about

00:30:02.760 that while there's some downsides to being an awkward person there are some upsides what are

00:30:08.600 the benefits to being awkward yeah you know one of the things to know i think is that although awkward

00:30:16.440 people can struggle with some of these social skills or social expectations um it doesn't mean that

00:30:22.220 they're not likable and so i think as long as people can show can convey that they're fair and they're

00:30:30.620 kind people who would be loyal friends then they can have a really rich social life so i've been

00:30:37.740 really lucky pretty much throughout my life that i've had really rich gratifying social relationships

00:30:43.520 and people were willing to overlook my social awkwardness uh because i was able to convey that

00:30:49.620 hey i've got i've got a good heart and i'm trying to do the right thing here it might be a little clumsy

00:30:54.200 at the start but uh but we'll get there so i think that's one thing for awkward people to know

00:30:58.720 i think a second thing that's really interesting is the spotlighted focus if we come back to that so

00:31:04.600 you know you have the sharp focus and you see things with a great degree of detail and awkward

00:31:12.480 people tend to really love whatever it is they're interested in they just take it next level so like we

00:31:20.040 might like star wars for example but that doesn't necessarily mean we'll dress up like chewbacca

00:31:24.360 you know and go walk around the streets or um you know we might like video games but we don't

00:31:30.620 necessarily get in chat rooms and you know go to conventions and awkward people are kind of nerdy

00:31:36.140 in that way so they're they're really enthusiastic about the things they love and i think that alone

00:31:41.200 by itself is a great quality but if you combine the sharp focus and this attention to detail

00:31:47.280 and this great enthusiasm those are actually ingredients for what psychologists would call

00:31:53.800 deliberate practice and you might have heard that in the popular press with the 10 000 hours

00:31:58.700 people need to devote to become expert or good at something and you know the qualities awkward people

00:32:04.480 have actually dispose them towards deliberate practice and that can lead to some extraordinary

00:32:10.280 outcomes or even innovative breakthroughs yeah you called that i love that phrase i never heard it

00:32:15.440 before but like the rage for mastery yes a lot of people have yeah so uh you know a separate line

00:32:22.380 of research on gifted children uh done by ellen winner she's a great researcher at boston college and

00:32:27.980 she coined this phrase the rage to master and what she found was these chess geniuses or mathematical

00:32:35.080 geniuses or precocious ballerinas they all had this kind of obsessive quality to perfect the different 0.62

00:32:43.080 skills and components that were necessary to become great in their field and they importantly one of

00:32:49.700 the things that they do these kids with this rage to master is that they spend a disproportionate amount

00:32:56.580 of time on the things that they're worst at so if they if they love football or something like that and

00:33:04.680 they're not a great tackler let's say they will spend extra time working on that thing that's actually

00:33:11.420 their weakness and that's part of why they end up becoming really good at something in the long

00:33:16.200 right but then the downside is they might alienate themselves from others so you have to it's like

00:33:22.060 you have to balance that out with being intentional about your social skills as well oh yeah yeah i mean i

00:33:29.940 you know probably everybody knows someone who is very successful and who just can't shut it off

00:33:35.900 you know they're working at all times um even when they come home they're still on their phone or

00:33:41.980 they're still obsessing about work and yeah yeah that's one of the tricks is you have to find a way

00:33:46.700 to compartmentalize these things so that when you are working you're going 120 and giving it your best but

00:33:54.680 there have to be hard stops where you say okay i'm putting that away and now's the time to devote

00:34:00.980 100 of my energy to being social and being present especially for awkward people who you know might

00:34:06.740 have trouble with the social interaction anyways they need to bring 100 of their effort to these

00:34:12.040 social situations yeah because you talk about this in the book this is the upside of awkwardness this

00:34:16.620 intense focus that can make you very skillful what you do but as you talk about the book a lot of

00:34:21.540 success in life is being able to persuade people that you have a product or a skill that is of use to

00:34:28.680 them and so you have to balance your intense focus your math your rage to master with the ability to

00:34:35.900 socialize as well yeah absolutely true and you know that was another great message i got when i was

00:34:41.860 growing up from from mentors and parents they said hey you can be as clever as you want to be you know

00:34:48.480 but if you can't connect your ideas to people in a way that's understandable and useful then it's going

00:34:55.320 to be really hard for you to get to where you want to go and that really resonated with me and i'm

00:35:01.540 really glad that they emphasized that you need to take a step back time you need to think about

00:35:06.240 how you're going to make yourself a broader more well-rounded person because that wasn't something

00:35:11.740 that came naturally to me well hitai this is a great book and it's been a great conversation where

00:35:16.480 can people learn more about the book and your work yeah well they can go to awkwardbook.com

00:35:22.660 and i'll take them to my website and it's available on amazon barnes and noble all those

00:35:28.800 places and uh yeah i really appreciate people checking it out ty to shiro thanks so much for

00:35:33.580 your time it's been a pleasure hey thank you my guest today is ty to shiro he's the author of the

00:35:38.520 book awkward the science of why we're socially awkward and why that's awesome it's available on

00:35:42.220 amazon.com and bookstores everywhere you also find out more information about his work at

00:35:45.900 ty to shiro.com also check out our show notes at aom.is slash awkward bring fine links to resources

00:35:51.720 where we delve deeper into this topic

00:35:53.260 well that wraps up another edition of the art of manliness podcast for more manly tips and advice

00:36:09.700 make sure to check out the art of manliness website at artofmanliness.com if you enjoy the

00:36:13.100 podcast got something out of it i'd appreciate if you take a minute to give us a review on itunes or

00:36:16.880 stitcher helps that a lot and if you've done that already please tell a friend or two about the podcast

00:36:20.540 that helps out too as always thank you for continued support until next time this is brett mckay telling

00:36:25.080 you to stay manly

00:36:26.340 you

The Art of Manliness - October 12, 2017

#347： The Science of Social Awkwardness

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