ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the authors develop a sociological theory of awkwardness, building on extensive empirical research. First, awkward feelings are the outcome of a social interaction going wrong and entail feeling uncertain, uncomfortable, and self-conscious. Second, such awkward feelings are often the result of the absence of a script in social interactions (e.g. how to greet in times of a pandemic), deviation from a script (e.g. accidentally neglecting to shake hands when meeting someone), or the failure to perform a script successfully (e.g. shaking someone's hand for too long). All of the cases above thus entail interactional awkwardness, which may also include people not directly involved in the social interaction feeling vicarious awkwardness. The degree of interactional awkwardness is also affected by the relationship – or lack thereof – between social actors; awkward feelings are more likely when one is not familiar with the other participants, when there is a hierarchical relationship between the participants, and when participants differ in terms of their cultural background.
