The Silent Signal

"Imagine this: You turn to a colleague and say, "Could you make me a coffee, please?" They look at you and pause. Half a second passes. A second. Maybe two. And then they say, "Sure, I'll make you a coffee." How do you feel? Do you think they are happy to do you a favor, or are they agreeing reluctantly?"

"It turns out that these silent gaps in conversation-the small delays before someone answers-can carry significant social meaning. They shape how we interpret others' intentions, knowledge, confidence, and even their willingness to cooperate. But the picture is more nuanced: These judgments depend not only on the pause itself but also on who is speaking and what kind of question is being asked."

"In the first study, published in Languages, our team examined how listeners interpret the length of pauses before an answer. To do this, we played short Polish conversations to Polish listeners, in which one person made a small request such as, "Can you open the window, please?" The response came either after a very short pause (0.2 seconds) or a longer pause (1.2 seconds). Sometimes the respondent was a Polish native speaker; other times, a Chinese native speaker speaking Polish with a foreign accent."

Two experiments presented short Polish conversations with responses following either very short (0.2 s) or longer (1.2 s) pauses. Responses came from native Polish speakers or Chinese native speakers speaking Polish with a foreign accent. Listeners used pause length to infer speakers' cognitive states, treating longer pauses as indicators of lower knowledge, lower confidence, or reduced willingness to grant requests for native speakers. Non-native speakers received greater tolerance for longer pauses. Judgments about pauses also varied with who was speaking and what type of request or question was asked, giving pauses social meaning.

Read at Psychology Today