--- title: Awkward Silences: 4 Seconds Is All It Takes to Feel Rejected description: It's the pause that doesn't refresh, the awkward moment that you relive over and over and over after you've realized that once again, you've put... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7142979/awkward-silences-4-seconds-is-all-it-takes-to-feel-rejected/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2010-12-30T18:30:07.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-03-16T11:19:50.141Z article:section: Health og:title: Awkward Silences: 4 Seconds Is All It Takes to Feel Rejected og:description: It's the pause that doesn't refresh, the awkward moment that you relive over and over and over after you've realized that once again, you've put... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7142979/awkward-silences-4-seconds-is-all-it-takes-to-feel-rejected/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0509949ea08f73b4/698a94fbb21a9c1bcc51058a/307_silence.jpg?branch=production&width=640&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 307_Silence og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Awkward Silences: 4 Seconds Is All It Takes to Feel Rejected twitter:description: It's the pause that doesn't refresh, the awkward moment that you relive over and over and over after you've realized that once again, you've put... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0509949ea08f73b4/698a94fbb21a9c1bcc51058a/307_silence.jpg?branch=production&width=640&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Health](/section/health/) # Awkward Silences: 4 Seconds Is All It Takes to Feel Rejected by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Dec 30, 2010 6:30 PM UTC  Christopher Robbins/Getty Images by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Dec 30, 2010 6:30 PM UTC It’s the pause that doesn’t refresh, the awkward moment that you relive over and over and over after you’ve realized that once again, you’ve put your foot in it.more New [research](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6WJB-51PRYJ0-1/2/477446cf0f0e223d2cb79f3d93b74c74?&zone=raall) from Holland suggests that good conversational flow has a powerful effect on people’s feelings of self-esteem and belonging, and that even brief — just four seconds long — silences during a conversation are enough to, as Tom Jacobs [puts it](http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/the-deep-pain-of-awkward-silences-26246/) in _Miller-McCune_: --- > “” --- For the study, researchers performed two experiments in which they studied participants’ responses to awkward silences. In the first, 102 college students read one of two stories. The first version described someone making an insensitive remark — “I think obese people should pay for two seats on the bus” — which was followed by an obvious silence. In the alternate story, conversation flowed easily after the remark. The students were asked to imagine themselves as being the person who made the faux pas. Not surprisingly, they reported feeling more anxious, rejected and less self-assured in the scenario with the awkward silence than in the alternate version. The second experiment involved 60 undergrads watching videos of similar alternate scenarios, but in this case, the questionable remark took place in a conversation about relationships and involved the topic of sex between students and professors. In one case, the statement was followed by a four-second silence; in the other version, conversation continued to flow smoothly. Although the videos contained no other cues about the silence and viewers weren’t even consciously aware of the pause, students who viewed the version that contained the break in conversation again reported greater feelings of rejection and lower self-esteem. The researchers suggest that sensitivity toward signs of rejection and exclusion arose during our evolutionary history — one in which being excluded from a group could literally mean the difference between life and death. These days, luckily, the consequences of social rejection are typically far less dire — even if it doesn’t feel that way at the time. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7142979/awkward-silences-4-seconds-is-all-it-takes-to-feel-rejected/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7142979/awkward-silences-4-seconds-is-all-it-takes-to-feel-rejected/"},"headline":"Awkward Silences: 4 Seconds Is All It Takes to Feel Rejected","datePublished":"2010-12-30T18:30:07.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-16T11:19:50.141Z","description":"It's the pause that doesn't refresh, the awkward moment that you relive over and over and over after you've realized that once again, you've put...","url":"https://time.com/archive/7142979/awkward-silences-4-seconds-is-all-it-takes-to-feel-rejected/","keywords":["relationships","Love"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0509949ea08f73b4/698a94fbb21a9c1bcc51058a/307_silence.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"articleSection":"Health","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt0509949ea08f73b4/698a94fbb21a9c1bcc51058a/307_silence.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"307_Silence","caption":"","creditText":"Christopher Robbins/Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/health/","name":"Health"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/7142979/awkward-silences-4-seconds-is-all-it-takes-to-feel-rejected/","name":"Awkward Silences: 4 Seconds Is All It Takes to Feel Rejected"}}]}] ```