Everyone’s experienced those awkward social moments when there’s an overly long pause in the conversation or you’ve inadvertently interrupted the other person. These social gaffes can occur in face-to-face interactions, but are far more likely to happen when you’re on the phone with your conversation partner because you can’t read nonverbal signals of facial expression or body language. Even video chats can be punctuated with uncomfortable silences and the feeling that you’ve spoken too soon, again because you’re not able to take advantage of the cues you would get by being in the room with the other person.

According to University of Groningen’s Namkje Koudenberg and colleagues (2017), these conversational hiccups, all too common, can have serious life consequences. They cite the example of a video call interview with a job applicant. The applicant may get all the questions “right,” but still not get the job because of lack of conversational flow so that you don’t feel you’ve clicked: “She seems a bit distant or aloof and does not seem very enthusiastic as it takes her some time to respond—or laugh about your jokes” (p. 50). As the authors point out, conversational flow, that sense of clicking with the other person, is essential to developing “a close social connection” (p. 50).

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