I was at a public lecture and later saw photos of it. In one photo I held my index finger across my lips. A guy sitting before me, whose face I couldn’t see at the time, did the exact same gesture, and the resulting photo looks pretty funny, as if we’re all consciously posing to signal that we’re thinking real hard.
There are other poses of this sort, the thinking monkey meme, Rodin’s Thinker statue… even the sidebar of this very sub has a picture of a lemur whom we recognise as “thinking” because it has its hand on its mouth.
Are these gestures just culturally conditioned? But regardless of whether they’re just cultural or universal – why do they exist?
I hope someone with expertise will provide a better answer, but since there’s none yet I’ll give my intuition.
It’s a signal. It tells whoever you’re interacting with that you’re doing stuff in your head, so they know you’re listening, that you’re thinking of an answer or something like that.
Imagine how weird it’d be if we didn’t do that. You say something to a person and they just stare at you without moving a muscle for a few seconds before reacting. You’d think there’s something wrong with them
I know several autistic people who do that because they aren’t putting on a show of thinking in the opposite way of my ADHD self fidgeting with something unrelated to help me think.
Oh shoot, was the “hmm” emoji real this whole time? 🤔 I think the people around me just got used to the blank thinking stare though.
Well then. This might be why people who are less intelligent than me talk to me like I’m an idiot.