Awkward Silences: 4 Seconds Is All It Takes to Feel Rejected（adj.被拒绝的）

It's the pause that doesn't refresh（v.使精神振作，使精力恢复）, 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.

New research from Holland suggests that good conversational flow has a powerful effect on people's feelings of self-esteem（n.自尊心） and belonging（n.归属感）, and that even brief — just four seconds long — silences during a conversation are enough to, as Tom Jacobs puts it in Miller-McCune:

...elicit（v.引起） primal（adj.最初的，原始的） fears, activating anxiety-provoking（adj.焦虑） feelings of incompatibility（n.不相容） and exclusion（n.排外）.

"Conversational flow is associated with positive emotions, and a heightened（adj.被提高的） sense of belonging, self-esteem, social validation（n.确认） and consensus（n.认同）," a research team led by psychologist Namkje Koudenburg writes in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. "Disrupting（v.使中断） the flow by a brief silence produces feelings of rejection and negative emotions."

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（n.失礼，失言）. Not surprisingly, they reported feeling more anxious, rejected and less self-assured（adj.有自信的） in the scenario with the awkward silence than in the alternate version.

The researchers suggest that sensitivity（n.敏感） toward signs of rejection and exclusion arose during our evolutionary history（n.进化史） — 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（adj.可怕的） — even if it doesn't feel that way at the time.

【参考翻译】

尴尬的沉默：4秒足以使人有被拒感

谈话时的停顿令人沮丧，而在你终于意识到自己做错了之前，你会反反复复经历这种尴尬时刻。

一项来自荷兰的新研究表明，愉快流畅的话语交流对人的自尊感和归属感有重大的影响，即使谈话中短暂的沉默——即使只有4秒钟——也足以产生影响，正如汤姆•雅各布斯在米勒麦昆网上提到的：“刺探出原始的畏惧感，触发了一种互不相容、排他的焦虑感。”

“话语交流与一些正面情绪、强烈的归属感、自尊感、社会认同感和意见一致感息息相关，”由心理学家纳姆克杰•柯登伯格领导的研究团队在《实验社会心理学期刊》上发文提到，“被短暂沉默打断的话语交流使人产生被拒绝感和其他负面情绪。”

就这一研究论文，研究者进行了两组实验以观察受试者对尴尬沉默的反应。在第一组中，102名大学生要在两则故事里选一则来阅读。在第一则中，某人说了句不友善的话“我认为肥胖人士坐公共汽车时应买两张票”，接着是明显的沉默。而在另一则故事中，这句话之后没有停顿，对话继续进行。

然后，研究者让学生们想象自己就是那个失言者。令人毫不惊讶的是相较于没有停顿的版本，在出现尴尬沉默的版本中学生的焦虑感、被拒感更强，自信度更低。

研究者认为，人类对于拒绝和排斥的敏感度是在进化的过程中出现和发展起来的，那时一个人被驱逐出群体就意味着面临生与死的考验。幸运的是，现今社会排斥的后果已经不那么严重了，纵然不是一直这样。