The undergraduate student was very apologetic-and very sweet. "I'm so sorry, Dr. Hays," he said. "I didn't mean to embarrass you!"
Hmmm, I thought: Embarrassed? What am I missing here? Actually, I felt intrigued.
I had just completed a guest lecture, addressing an audience that consisted of a couple hundred undergraduates and a few faculty. I had received some questions from those faculty members-and from this young man (I'll call him Ted). Likewise, when the room cleared, only they and he were left, for follow up conversation.
I knew exactly the moment he was referring to. Ted's question had been one I'd never received before and one I'd not thought about.
So I had paused. And reflected. And then responded.
As a matter of fact, I wasn't embarrassed. Nor (I checked later with a colleague) did I come across to others as embarrassed.
Beginning in the 1950s, Canadian professor and author Robertson Davies wrote wonderful novels of manners. In A Mixture of Frailties, a young singer reflected on the "dual consciousness" that occurred as she was performing: "She maintained the mental discipline-the dual consciousness of the actress, which enabled her to give herself to her part, and at the same time to stand a little aside, criticizing, prompting and controlling."
In 2010, that is what I was doing: both being aware of and responding to the question and at the same time, maintaining an awareness of how I was presenting myself as a performer. It's a fine balancing point. Slipping to either side can become troublesome.
I've now had the opportunity to look at a video of the lecture and the Q&A that followed. The pause lasted-I've timed it-14 seconds. Fourteen apparently excruciating seconds for Ted.
Why was Ted concerned for me? One possibility is that he was positively over-identified with me. For a number of years, social psychologist Elliot Aronson and colleagues conducted experiments about the ways that people view leaders. If competent leaders make an error, we tend to like them better-they seem less distant from us. (On the other hand, with someone mediocre, an error is likely to leave us even less impressed.)
Maybe Ted "felt my pain"-even if I didn't feel pain.
Or you could overlay gender on these observations: In public situations, people feel more warmly toward a high status male who does some self-discounting. A female saying the same things? People become uncomfortable.
Again, perhaps Ted interpreted the pause as uncomfortable for me.
Which gets us to another aspect of gender: Ted may have "male answer syndrome" or MAS. (MAS, btw, is a TLA...a three-letter acronym.) This label has been used to describe the tendency, particularly among men, to feel that if a question is asked, they have to produce an answer. For me to have paused may have seemed, to a bright, achieving young male...unthinkable.
Ted has an excellent future in front of him. He's thoughtful and has a great capacity for empathy. Along the way, I'm sure he'll figure out where he leaves off and other people begin.
Me? I'll continue to be aware of that dual consciousness necessary for optimal performance. Both art and science are intrinsic to being in the moment and maintaining an awareness of the moment.
