{"id":35288,"date":"2018-02-24T01:00:51","date_gmt":"2018-02-24T06:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=35288"},"modified":"2018-02-04T09:10:57","modified_gmt":"2018-02-04T14:10:57","slug":"qotd-the-use-of-the-awkward-silence-in-conversation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/02\/24\/qotd-the-use-of-the-awkward-silence-in-conversation\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The use of the [awkward silence] in conversation"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>And then there\u2019s [awkward silence]. I learned this one from the psychoanalysts. Nobody likes an awkward silence. If a patient tells you something, and you are awkwardly silent, then the patient will rush to fill the awkward silence with whatever they can think of, which will probably be whatever they were holding back the first time they started talking. You won\u2019t believe how well this one works until you try it. Just stay silent long enough, and the other person will tell you everything. It\u2019s better than waterboarding.<\/p>\n<p>The only problem is when two psychiatrists meet. One of my attendings tried to [awkward silence] me at the same time I was trying to [awkward silence] him, and we ended up just staring at each other for five minutes until finally I broke down laughing.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI see you find something funny,\u201d he said. \u201cTell me more.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scott Alexander, <a href=\"http:\/\/slatestarcodex.com\/2016\/07\/12\/34\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;3\/4&#8221;, <em>Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2016-07-12.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And then there\u2019s [awkward silence]. I learned this one from the psychoanalysts. Nobody likes an awkward silence. If a patient tells you something, and you are awkwardly silent, then the patient will rush to fill the awkward silence with whatever they can think of, which will probably be whatever they were holding back the first [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[66,41],"tags":[906,139],"class_list":["post-35288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health-science","category-quotations","tag-mentalhealth","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9ba","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35288"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35288\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35290,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35288\/revisions\/35290"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}