The Importance of Feeling Awkward: A Dialogical Narrative Phenomenology of Socially Awkward Situations

Abstract

This study employed a dialogical narrative phenomenology to gather and analyze 16 narratives of socially awkward situations. These analyses revealed a characteristic pattern for socially awkward situations. The moment of awkwardness was characterized by a sense of moral or social transgression that magnified and intensified social experience and focused perceptions on social behaviors. Those social behaviors expressed awkwardness through anxious, hesitant, disjointed, or avoidant actions. Participants felt an imperative to transform the awkward situation and did so either by avoiding it or by directly addressing it and attempting to resolve it. Avoidant responses were associated with a magnification and extension of the effects of social awkwardness while direct responses were associated with a re-established sense of social harmony. The author interprets these findings to suggest that feeling and expressing social awkwardness can be meaningful and productive elements of social relationships. Feelings of awkwardness focus attention and intention on social relationships; when these feelings are expressed, others can take them up and become invested in the social transformation they engender.