The vacation season is right here, and with household gatherings, work events, and meetups with pals you haven’t seen shortly, you might expertise extra snoobs than common. You might not have heard of a “snoob” (no, it’s not aspect boob), however you’ve definitely skilled one—it’s that awkward silence that pops up and kills the momentum of a dialog. They’ll pop up in small discuss with co-workers, intimate discussions with a accomplice, and even informal convos with shut pals.

Consultants in This Article

Dean McKay

professor of psychology at Fordham College and a cognitive-behavioral psychologist at Wellness Associates in White Plains

Susan Albers

scientific psychologist at Cleveland Clinic

For many people, a snoob seems like a social alarm bell that causes a little bit of panic and our brains rapidly go into overdrive. Nonetheless, the psychologists we interviewed say a snoob is a pure pause in an interplay, and it’s regular to really feel uncomfortable. In reality, we are able to study to turn into extra comfortable with it. Forward, extra on the right way to take care of the snoobs:

The place did the time period ‘snoob’ come from?

The time period originated on the Fifty Phrases for Snow podcast, the place hosts Maggie Rowe and Emily Garcés discover distinctive phrases, and in one in every of their common segments, talk about phrases that don’t exist, however ought to.

“Just lately, my pal Eric Giancoli joined us [on the podcast] to introduce a time period he created for this awkward weak hole in dialog: the snoob,” Rowe writes in a chunk about embracing silence for Psychology As we speak. As Rowe explains, totally different character varieties reply otherwise to the snoob, however for most individuals, uncomfortable silences are disconcerting. We get it: these moments can really feel like they final perpetually, and we begin assuming every kind of issues.

Why can’t we embrace the silence?

Issue with silence in dialog is frequent and intuitive, explains Dean McKay, professor of psychology at Fordham College and a cognitive-behavioral psychologist at Wellness Associates in White Plains, New York. Throughout a snoob, “We begin to have an inside dialogue fairly quick the place we ask ourselves, ‘Why is nobody talking?’ ” he says. “When you go searching and everyone seems to be all of a sudden quiet, you attempt to make an interpretation as to what it means.” It’s adaptive habits: we’re making an attempt to deal with some uncomfortable emotions. “From an evolutionary standpoint, it’s necessary to know what individuals’s intentions are, and that’s tougher in the event that they’re not talking.”

However the conclusion that the silence is “awkward” is extra subjective, he says. “Some individuals are content material to take a seat silently with one other particular person. You would possibly go on a drive with somebody like that, the place they’re completely high quality to take a seat there with no dialog, and in case you really feel awkward about it, it’s extra of a ‘you downside’ and fewer of a ‘them downside,’ ” he says.

A snoob could also be more difficult for some 

Folks with anxious tendencies could discover silence particularly tough, since they might be extra more likely to assume {that a} pause in dialog is unfavorable or someway displays poorly on them, McKay says.

commercial

People who find themselves anxious will usually reply to silence with “thoughts studying,” McKay explains. “Thoughts studying is the place you’re making an attempt to make a guess about what the opposite particular person is pondering to assist clarify why they’re being quiet or why they did one thing.”

Whereas this course of is regular and one thing most individuals interact in once in a while, individuals with anxiousness are extra vulnerable to unfavorable assumptions—that there’s something unsuitable with the scenario or with them. Am I boring? Did I say one thing offensive? Do they not need to be right here? 

McKay says it may be useful to query and problem this tendency since our presumptions are sometimes unsuitable.

“If you end up sitting quietly with somebody, and also you’re saying to your self issues like, ‘they’re not proud of the dialog, they’re not proud of me, they’re bored,’ the follow-up query to oneself is, ‘What proof do I’ve that any of those conclusions are affordable?’” Mckay says.

The upside of silence 

Though discomfort could also be an evolutionary response to silence inside a bunch, we are able to study to embrace a dialog pause and settle for extra common, prolonged silence inside sure shut relationships. It might assist us to turn into higher listeners, in addition to to be much less more likely to say issues we don’t imply.

McKay says that getting snug with silence might help us “develop that filter” to stop us from saying issues that aren’t helpful and even dangerous.

Susan Albers, a scientific psychologist at Cleveland Clinic,  agrees. “I believe it’s extremely necessary to get snug with silence,” she says. “It permits individuals time to digest and reply as a substitute of react.”

Additional, in case you’re speaking about emotions, a pause or second of silence might help the opposite particular person really feel that you simply’re holding that feeling with them as a substitute of throwing it apart. “It creates intimacy,” says Albers, noting that people who find themselves in a position to maintain silence are sometimes perceived as being assured and guaranteed.

However how can we study to embrace the snoob if it feels so awkward to most of us? “Asking individuals questions generally is a method to spark dialog and preserve the dialog going, and listening nicely lets you be extra snug with silence,” Albers says.