The need to fill in silent moments...

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This is something that all people experience regularly enough. I'm wondering why people feel the need to speak when there is a moment of silence with someone that you have just met or don't know very well.

Is it to feel comfortable? That's what my answer is, but why? why must we absolutely speak as soon as there is a moment of silence with the person you converse with? This is a mystery.

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@Kontrover-c,

Kontrover-c;93394 wrote:

This is something that all people experience regularly enough. I'm wondering why people feel the need to speak when there is a moment of silence with someone that you have just met or don't know very well.

Is it to feel comfortable? That's what my answer is, but why? why must we absolutely speak as soon as there is a moment of silence with the person you converse with? This is a mystery.

One of my favorites dealing with human behavior. I personally think it goes back to when we were hunter/gatherer survivalists that had to compete for resources.

Imagine if someone was sneaking up on you, they could take advantage of you quite easily. But if someone is communicating, making verbal gestures it is much easier to determine their motive.

Now I don't think we think in these terms of being taken advantage of if someone is not talking. I think it just triggers our instinctual impulse when silence around others occurs. We instinctively want to know what that person is up to, so we feel the need to spark conversation to settle the curiosity.

So one way you can look at it (if you consider this as a possibility) is that we are in a sense programed to react this way. When it doesn't happen we feel there is something wrong with the situation.

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@Kontrover-c,

It is a mystery and it isn't. The reason why we feel pressured to fill silence is a sociolinguistic one based on the arbitrary rules of pragmatics and prosodics in our language/culture. To assume that avoidance of silence is the human condition is a gross generalization based on experience of a limited sample. The commonality and acceptable tolerance of silence varies greatly from culture to culture, much the same as the rules for conversational turn taking and personal space vary. I've worked with groups of people who did not talk directly to me for days when first introduced, although I was right there working beside them. When finally I was acknowledged and trusted they explained that its just how they do things, and they would have felt really weird talking to me right off hand. In other words they didn't know why, just like we really don't know why we avoid conversational silence. In another group of people with whom I worked, it was rude to answer a question without giving it a good while of thought, and the the duration of that silent time was dependent on several factors, difficulty of the question, complexity of the question, the impact of the answer etc... A conversation took ages, it seemed to me, but there was hardly ever any ambiguity in it. Basically what I'm trying to say is that we are conditioned for some reason to fear the akwardness of silence. Its not an inherent fear of ourselves or our minds, its fear of violating social protocol. The mystery really is, why did the varying rules governing these things happen so differently in different places?

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@Kontrover-c,

Hmm that's really interesting, I had no idea it could date back to those times but I still have confusion about it, perhaps its because I forgot to mention that this feeling we get when there is a silence is awkward. Why awkward? Ruling out all social phobias, there is no visible social "faut pas" that would demand speech when these moments of silence occur.

---------- Post added 09-24-2009 at 05:13 PM ----------

"we are conditioned for some reason to fear the akwardness of silence. Its not an inherent fear of ourselves or our minds, its fear of violating social protocol."

Ahh! really good point. I guess this would the closest thing to a conclusion about WHY we do this, but now, what about awkwardness, why couldnt a feeling of shame be felt when this happens, on what basis do we conclude that fearing the violation of social protocol makes us feel awkward? Is there an answer to that?

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@Kontrover-c,

Because in Western society, you have to play the game. And playing the game means being a witty conversationalist, a master of small talk, who's never without an interesting remark.

If these people would just shut up every once in a while, the whole thing would go away.

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@rhinogrey,

rhinogrey;93454 wrote:

Because in Western society, you have to play the game. And playing the game means being a witty conversationalist, a master of small talk, who's never without an interesting remark.

If these people would just shut up every once in a while, the whole thing would go away.

The thing about it though is that it's not just a western cultural happening. It is a pretty common behavior in many different cultures.

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@Kontrover-c,

I find it's only in certain situations where I feel pressure to fill in the spaces. For a good number of people I know, it feels perfectly comfortable without.

Perhaps this speaks to our perceived roles? ... don't know

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@Kontrover-c,

Kontrover-c;93394 wrote:

This is something that all people experience regularly enough. I'm wondering why people feel the need to speak when there is a moment of silence with someone that you have just met or don't know very well.

Is it to feel comfortable? That's what my answer is, but why? why must we absolutely speak as soon as there is a moment of silence with the person you converse with? This is a mystery.

Some people I know find silence deafening. They've learned to have noise around them. It may be because the first thing many people do when they enter an empty house, or a quiet house, is to switch on the TV set. It doesn't matter what is on at the time, either. And, of course, in the streets you constantly hear crappy music (especially the boom-boom of the bass). People just get used to noise, and are made uneasy by the sound of silence.

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@Krumple,

Krumple;93506 wrote:

The thing about it though is that it's not just a western cultural happening. It is a pretty common behavior in many different cultures.

It's not a common issue in Southeast Asia, but other than that, Western culture is all I can speak familiarly about, so that's why I limited it to that.

Quote:

Some people I know find silence deafening. They've learned to have noise around them. It may be because the first thing many people do when they enter an empty house, or a quiet house, is to switch on the TV set. It doesn't matter what is on at the time, either. And, of course, in the streets you constantly hear crappy music (especially the boom-boom of the bass). People just get used to noise, and are made uneasy by the sound of silence.

People are afraid most of all of having to be with themselves.

What do we do when there's no distractions left to divert attention from ourselves? No more meaningless words and jokes, no more classroom propaganda, no more work-place slavery? We fill in the silence with more distractions.

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@rhinogrey,

rhinogrey;93546 wrote:

What do we do when there's no distractions left to divert attention from ourselves?

Hmm, this reminds me alot about feeling the need to smoke when your standing alone doing nothing in public. even though you have just smoked and feel no nicotine craving, you feel the need to have one between our fingers.

Of course this is an easy one, it's to feel like your doing something alone, a fear of being seen as a lonesome loser.

Thank you for your comments, I'm enlightened :a-ok:

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@Kontrover-c,

Kontrover-c;93394 wrote:

This is something that all people experience regularly enough. I'm wondering why people feel the need to speak when there is a moment of silence with someone that you have just met or don't know very well.

Is it to feel comfortable? That's what my answer is, but why? why must we absolutely speak as soon as there is a moment of silence with the person you converse with? This is a mystery.

When we know each other, then I don't feel a need to fill in silent moments (read: moments, not several minutes of not talking).

When you don't know the other person, it might be because you want to be able to control what the other person thinks of you. Talking with the other person creates more time for the person to get to know what you like to talk about, and less time for the person to form opinions about you in silence.

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@Victor Eremita,

Victor Eremita;93643 wrote:

When you don't know the other person, it might be because you want to be able to control what the other person thinks of you. Talking with the other person creates more time for the person to get to know what you like to talk about, and less time for the person to form opinions about you in silence.

Haahaaa, good one, as a matter of fact I went through that today. As a silence came up, I looked at the other person wondering what opinions she had of me. I didnt pick up on your theory because the silence was not awkward, we were in class. But yes very good point. Very Happy

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