Welcome back to the savvy psychologist. I'm Dr. Ellen Hendrickson and every week I'll help you meet life's challenges with evidence-based research, a sympathetic ear, and zero judgment.

Okay, for the past few weeks we've been talking about all things introversion, shyness, and social anxiety to celebrate the publication of my first book, How to Be Yourself. Quiet your inner, and rise above social anxiety.

So this week, to close out the series, we will collectively push up our glasses and talk about

social awkwardness. And to guide us along this awkwardness,

and to guide us along this awkward journey,

we are lucky to have with us Dr. Ty Tashiro.

Dr. Tashiro is a psychologist and the author of Awkward, the Science of Why We're

Socially Awkward and Why That's Awesome. He is also the author of the Science of

Happily Ever After what really matters in the quest for enduring love.

His work has been featured in the New York Times, The Washington Post, Time.com, The Atlantic.

and on NPR, plus he's addressed Ted at NYC, the Harvard Business School, MIT's Media Lab,

and the American Psychological Association.

Ty to Shiro, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me on.

Absolutely, so we are here to get awkward.

So first let's define what we're talking about.

So who is awkward and what are some characteristics of awkwardness.

Yeah, you know, to define awkwardness, I like to start out actually with the root of the word and the

root of the word awkward is an old Norse word

Afugur. And Afugur means facing a different direction.

And I really like that as a way to introduce the concept of awkwardness because it explains why

awkward people might miss social cues or social expectations that everybody else seems to see.

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