Awkward: The Science of Why We’re Socially Awkward and Why That’s Awesome

267 Pages·2017·1.57 MB·English

by  Ty Tashiro

DEDICATION
For my brother and sister,
who illuminated a better way
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Preface
PART I: SO THIS IS AWKWARD
1: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE AWKWARD?
OUR FUNDAMENTAL NEED TO BELONG
WE ALL HAVE AWKWARD MOMENTS
SQUARES, GEEKS, AND NERDS
SEEING THE WORLD THROUGH AWKWARD EYES
2: IS THERE ANYTHING WRONG WITH BEING AWKWARD?
STRANGE AND INTENSE
IS AWKWARDNESS ON THE SPECTRUM?
EXTROVERTED, CONFIDENT, AND TOTALLY AWKWARD
DREAMING OF SOCIAL FLUENCY
3: LOOKING FOR SOME SWEET SKILLS
THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON AWKWARDNESS
GET A CUE
CAN YOU REALLY “SEE IT IN THEIR EYES”?
HOW DID MY FOOT GET IN MY MOUTH?
WHEN MINDS MEANDER
4: EMOTIONS MAKE ME FEEL FUNNY
CAN WE JUST SKIP THE EMOTIONAL PARTS?
AN INTENSE WORLD OF EMOTIONS
THE FUNCTION OF FEELING AWKWARD
BROADENING A NARROW FOCUS
WHY ARE YOU MAKING THAT FACE?
5: UNLOCKING THE MINDS OF LIKABLE PEOPLE
THEORY OF AN AWKWARD MIND
A THEORY OF BEING LIKABLE
THE SURPRISING SOCIAL SKILL OF BULLIES
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
THE VALUE OF SOCIAL EQUITY
PART II: THIS IS GETTING AWKWARD
HOW MODERN SOCIETAL SHIFTS ARE MAKING EVERYONE FEEL
MORE AWKWARD
6: NURTURING AWKWARD CHILDREN
THE NATURE OF AWKWARD FAMILIES
AWKWARD IMPULSES VERSUS SOCIAL EXPECTATIONS
THE PLEASURE IN BEING AWKWARD
A SUPERCHARGED SUPEREGO
HELPING AWKWARD KIDS BUILD SOCIAL FUNDAMENTALS
BAKE A SECOND BATCH
7: THE AWKWARDNESS OF MAKING FRIENDS
HOW MANY FRIENDS ARE ENOUGH?
THE DEMISE OF SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS
NEVER MIND MY P’S AND Q’S
MAKING FRIENDS WHILE AWKWARD
TRICKLE-DOWN SOCIAL ECONOMICS
8: DATING AND SEX ARE SO AWKWARD
WHAT HAPPENED TO THE “ROMANTIC” IN ROMANTIC
RELATIONSHIPS?
GERRYMANDERING THE FRIEND ZONE
ONLINE DATING CAN BE AN AWKWARDNESS INCUBATOR
SEX IS SUPER-AWKWARD
INTIMATELY AWKWARD
THE AWKWARD PATH TO HAPPILY EVER AFTER
PART III: HOW THE AWKWARD BECOME AWESOME
9: PRACTICALLY PRODIGIOUS
WHEN AWKWARDNESS IS ADAPTIVE
GIFTEDNESS IS SINGULAR, NOT PLURAL
A RESTLESS MIND
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN GIFTEDNESS AND
AWKWARDNESS
BEING TRUE TO YOURSELF AND FITTING IN
10: GROUNDBREAKING INNOVATION
THE FUTURE PERFECT
THE COMFORT OF EXPERTISE
WINNING THE INNOVATION LOTTERY
IMPERFECT BRILLIANCE
Afterword
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
PREFACE
I
can feel everyone staring. The sharply dressed guests, all sipping their
cocktails a safe distance from the pool, are surely wondering what I plan to do
about the frail six-year-old struggling to stay afloat in front of me. I’m
wondering the same thing.
Every time I extend my arms toward the flailing child to offer help, my
gesture is refused by his grating scream: “Let me do it!” I feel an uneasy sense of
responsibility, but I want to respect his efforts, so I continue to let him struggle.
The tension between the adults’ judging glances and this scrappy kid’s
determination to persist has me caught in a seriously awkward position. And
he’s not even my kid.
Spencer was the son of my friend Zak, whom I had met in graduate school at
the University of Minnesota. Zak and I had kept in touch and in the fall of 2013 I
had a chance to stay with him and his wife, Lydia, while I attended a psychology
conference in Florida. The day I arrived in Florida they happened to be throwing
a birthday party for Lydia in their backyard. For some reason, Spencer instantly
latched on to me as his new buddy, which was apparently a departure from his
normally aloof disposition.
As people arrived at the party, they did the typical things adults do with six-
year-olds. In their best “kid voice” they asked Spencer his age, gave him extra-
cuddly hugs, or wondered aloud, “Do you remember me, Spencer?” They were
being lovely, but this small talk in a party setting was like kryptonite for
Spencer. I watched his body language slowly shrink while a palpable sense of
anxiety began to overcome him. After a well-intentioned guest asked Spencer,
“Well, how did you get so handsome, young man?” he abruptly turned toward
me and said, “I want you to help me with my swimming.”
When Spencer and I looked toward Zak and Lydia for permission, they said
it would be great if I could occupy Spencer while they attended to their arriving
guests. As we prepared to get into the pool, Spencer told me, “Yesterday, at my
swim lesson, I practiced jumping into the pool and swimming back to the side.”
He demonstrated this feat two or three times, but then grew bored with his
success. As he adjusted his Spiderman goggles, he proclaimed that he would try
to swim the entire sixteen-foot width of the pool.
Spencer directed me to stay two feet in front of him while he dog-paddled his
way toward the other side. During his initial attempts, he was having trouble
making it past the midway point, and each time he began to flounder he rejected
my attempts to help. Eventually he would relent, ask me for help, and I would
carry him back to the ledge. After a minute of rest, he would say, “Let’s try
again.”
I’m no Olympian, but even for a six-year-old Spencer did not appear to be
gifted with much strength or coordination. His swimming had a decidedly
spastic vibe and seeing it gave one a visceral sense of discomfort, which was
accentuated by his loud gasps. I appreciated his chutzpah, but also worried about
his ability to stay afloat. I looked to Zak and Lydia for some guidance; they
nodded their heads as if this spectacular struggle was completely normal.
With each failure to reach the opposite ledge, Spencer became more agitated,
and after his fourth failure he appeared to be on the brink of tears. When I sat
him on the ledge I pointed out the tremendous progress he had already made and
suggested that we try again tomorrow. But he was not looking me in the eye and
in fact I don’t think that he heard much of the easy out I provided for him. He
appeared lost in his mind, replaying the causes for his failures and trying to think
of better ways to approach the problem. He looked at me intently, though not
quite in my eyes, and in a matter-of-fact tone said, “One more try . . .”
To understand Spencer’s ambition, it helps to know a little about his parents.
During graduate school, Zak was one of the star students in applied mathematics.
When he graduated, he took a job at NASA, where he was technically a rocket
scientist. Lydia was one of the top intellectual-property attorneys in the country.
Together they were a remarkable couple with high-powered intellects and
ambitions, but they were also humble and generous people who had always been
loyal friends to me.
While Zak was driving me back to their house from the airport, he told me
that he had been deeply concerned about Spencer. During kindergarten, he
showed little interest in playing with other kids, but when he did try to interact
with his peers his efforts came across as overly intense and other kids found him
to be odd. It’s not unusual for children to be interested in space travel or trains,
but Spencer was obsessed with questions such as planetary orbits and the
mechanisms of combustion in different types of engines. The combination of his
unusual interests and intense manner made it hard for him to play very well with
others. Spencer was bored by his schoolwork and his teachers described him in
terms usually applied to much older children, including “bright, but disengaged”
and “underachieving.”
When Spencer launched into a monologue on planetary orbits or explained
the mechanisms of steam engines, he sparkled in a brilliance that fascinated
adults. His mind was always at work, generating observations by combining
information from his large catalog of facts. Spencer was like a forty-year-old
professor caught in a six-year-old boy’s life. But his social skills deficits were
just as glaring as his precocious ability. His eye contact was erratic, his
nonverbal behaviors were muted, and he generally played alone during recess.
The school counselor suggested that a child psychologist should evaluate
Spencer for a disorder like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder or a learning
disability. One night after Spencer had gone to bed, Zak asked if I would take a
look at the report, which had come back with nebulous recommendations. He
knew that I couldn’t act as Spencer’s psychologist, but he was desperate to get
some insight into his son’s mind and hoped that as a psychology professor I
might have some advice on how to best support him.
The school psychologist found that Spencer’s IQ scores put him well into the
top 1 percent of kids his age. His psychopathology test scores never crossed into
the diagnosable range for disorders including ADHD or oppositional defiant
disorder, but I saw a pattern of unevenness in his profile. His scores for self-
control were in the bottom tenth percentile compared to those for kids his age,
and his scores for obsessive tendencies were in the top fifth percentile. Spencer
was a boy who did not fit neatly into a diagnosable category, but instead seemed
to occupy a limbo in between normal and diagnosable. The psychologist gave
Spencer a diagnosis of “Pervasive Developmental Disorder—Not Otherwise
Specified,” which I usually read as psychologist speak for, “Something is
socially problematic, but I’m not sure what.”
After we discussed the report, Zak and Lydia asked me a perfectly logical
follow-up question, “So what should we do?” After a long pause, I replied, “I’m
sorry, I don’t know.” My reply activated Lydia’s litigation mode and she began
marching down a line of interrogation:
Why is he awkward? What makes him awkward?