Someone across the road lifts an arm. You lift yours, delighted, with the broad, warm wave of a person who has just been recognised. Then you see her: the woman behind you, waving happily at the person in front of you. They are now having the nice reunion. You are a grown adult in the middle of a pavement, waving at a postbox.<\/p>\n
And you know what comes next, because you have a whole menu of recoveries. There\u2019s the Hair Fix, in which the waving hand becomes a hand smoothing your hair, as if that was always the plan. There\u2019s the Visor, where the hand shades your eyes against the sun, on a cloudy day in November. There\u2019s the Phone Check, which is a sudden, deep interest in a screen you hadn\u2019t opened. And there\u2019s the Stretch, where the wave develops into a full-body yawn with a slow roll of the shoulders. All performed with the face of someone who has absolutely not just made a fool of themselves.<\/p>\n
So why do we wave first and check afterwards?<\/p>\n
Part of it is that a wave from a distance is a surprisingly vague signal. An arm in the air could mean hello, could mean hailing a taxi, or could just be stretching. Faced with a vague signal, the brain picks the explanation that involves you, because you are the lead character in your own life and the person you have most information about. Psychologists call this kind of self-centred thinking egocentric bias, and it is entirely natural.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a practical side too. A wave you didn\u2019t need to return costs you a second of mild embarrassment. A wave you ignored looks rude, and you may have to live with it for years. So the brain plays the odds and says wave at everything. It is actually a sensible bet. You just lose it in public.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the comforting twist. In a well-known experiment at Cornell University in 2000, students were asked to walk into a room wearing a Barry Manilow T-shirt, chosen because they found it embarrassing. They guessed that about half the people in the room would notice. In fact, it was closer to a quarter. Psychologists call it the spotlight effect: we think the whole world is watching us, when everyone else is far too busy worrying about themselves.<\/p>\n
Which means the woman on the other side of the road has already moved on and is thinking about lunch. By the time you have finished the Hair Fix, you are the only person who remembers it.<\/p>\n
So wave first and apologise to the postbox later. If it was meant for someone else, you have still brightened the day of at least one stranger, and nobody will remember it by teatime.<\/strong><\/p>\n Go on, confess: what is your go-to recovery move when the wave wasn\u2019t for you? I want the ones I haven\u2019t covered yet.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Someone across the road lifts an arm. You lift yours, delighted, with the broad, warm wave of a person who has just been recognised. Then you see her: the woman…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[430,53,233],"tags":[292,617,619,517,238,80,330,616,618,435],"class_list":["post-1538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-everyday-psychology","category-humour","category-why-do-we-do-that","tag-awkward-moments","tag-egocentric-bias","tag-embarrassing-moments","tag-everyday-psychology","tag-human-behaviour","tag-humour","tag-social-awkwardness","tag-spotlight-effect","tag-waving","tag-why-do-we-do-that"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1538"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1540,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1538\/revisions\/1540"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davethomasonline.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}