Here’s Why You Pace Around While Talking on the Phone
It seems like a trope from movies, an instruction given to actors to liven up a scene. When someone’s having a conversation on a phone, especially an intense one, they’re bouncing back and forth on an invisible line segment drawn on the floor. It’s not simply a blocking note, though, since people do actually do it, often subconsciously, in real life. You may do it yourself, or be thinking of someone in your office that drives you crazy wandering around. According to science, it’s not just because we want to take a little mini-tour of our living room, but a bit of compensation coming from upstairs.
Our brain learns through life how to handle conversations. In person, as anyone with social anxiety can tell you, that includes a staggering count of physical cues. Body language, gestures, movement, these are all tools we use to get our point across when talking face-to-face. Most of the time, unless you’ve maybe consumed an especially powerful edible, you’re not even aware of all the movements your body is making. So when we talk on the phone? Our brain boots up talking.exe, with all the background processes intact. Even though, on the phone, the conversation is purely audio, our brain still feels the need to pair it with physical activity.
Given that there’s not actually someone present to direct all that energy at, it instead puts it nowhere useful. Whether it’s fiddling with a pen, absentmindedly doodling or stalking in front of your couch, it still tells your body to do something.
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It’s like one of those videos of a tiny dog being held above water, where their legs are paddling at nothing. Basically, if the water in the following video was genuine human contact, it has the same effect on your human legs.
