Are you sick of banner ads, commercials, and brand names depicted everywhere? You might think this way of advertising is pointless since it will not influence you anyway. However, psychological research has identified how branding hacks into your mind and how you can prevent this.

We all know the awkward feeling when a conversation is suddenly disrupted by a brief silence. These moments can be pretty unsettling. Because people are generally so well-trained in having smooth conversations, any disruption of this flow indicates that something is wrong, either on an interpersonal level or on the level of consensus in a group. The question we aim to answer in this paper is: Why do we feel comfortable in conversations that have flow, and why do we get nervous and distressed when a conversation is interrupted by unexpected silences?