Mateo Uy
Research Mentor(s): Elizabeth Trinh
Mentor Department: Management and Organizations
Authors: Elizabeth Trinh, Mateo Uy
Session: Session 2 (10:00am – 10:50am)
Presentation Type: Poster 83
Abstract
Awkward experiences, ranging from minor missteps to significant social disruptions are frequent in everyday interactions. Despite this, targeted empirical research that specifically examines awkwardness is limited. Especially in corporate settings, where effective social interactions lead to workplace success, awkwardness can be a limiting factor. Therefore, this research investigates awkwardness, defining it as discomfort arising from perceived violations of social norms or expectations. We hypothesize that people overestimate the magnitude of awkwardness compared to their lived experiences. As part of a larger study, which consists of five experiments examining different contexts from giving feedback to singing in front of a stranger, I conducted an experiment focused on public performance. In this experiment, individual participants performed an “awkward act†in high-traffic campus locations such as the Michigan Diag, Michigan Union, or Shapiro Library. Specifically, they did the chicken dance in public for 30 seconds followed by 10 seconds of free-styling dancing. Participants would rate their anticipated awkwardness before performing and their experienced awkwardness immediately after. Additionally, a target group was asked to write down an action they planned to take immediately after the dance to assess if it mitigated their experience of awkwardness. Across all experiments, results showed that awkwardness is often less intense than expected and that people overestimate how their feelings impact their work. Furthermore, writing down future actions did not correlate to any significant change in the participant’s experienced awkwardness, being discarded in later experiments. These findings suggest that individuals may unnecessarily worry about the negative emotional impact of social interactions, which can be applied to workplace interactions, especially for recent graduates transitioning into corporate environments.
