A study says there’s a reason you keep saying 'bye' but still don’t hang up the call

Have you ever been stuck in a situation where you are on a phone call and you know that the conversation is over, but both you and the other person are not hanging up the call out of politeness? It can be your parents on the other side, or your boss, but you decide to wait, allowing them to disconnect as are hesitant and feel it may send the wrong message or it may look rude.

You wait for a few seconds after saying, ‘Okay Bye” and then the call is still connected. You glance at the screen, the call timer is still running. Now you are waiting for the other person to hang up and a minute has passed. Now the situation has become more awkward than earlier.

The other person ends the call now, and you take a sigh of relief. Have you ever thought why you always hesitate to hang up, and whether it's just to be polite or something else?


As per research, if you hesitate to end the call, it can reflect that you are uncertain whether it is the right thing to do or not. You may feel that the other person is not ready to finish the conversation. You may also think that since a polite goodbye carries a social message you need to honor the last thing you said to that person so he or she may feel secure in talking to you the next time. Also, endings require coordination so your hesitation may mean you are just waiting for the other person to take the step this time and you may do it the next time.

Why is ending a conversation sometimes difficult?

A research was conducted by Psychologists Adam Mastroianni, Daniel Gilbert, Gus Cooney and Timothy Wilson on conversations and how people want to end them. The paper was published in 2021 in PNAS.

The above study involved 932 conversations between people. The basis of the research was when people exactly wanted the conversation to end or when they thought this is the right time to close the conversation.

The study was done with partners and they were unable to predict when the other person wanted to stop it. The research also showed that the conversation rarely ended when both partners wanted it. One or the other person would drag it on.

This was concluded to be a problem in coordination and not the conversation. Every individual kept thinking about what the other person wanted and the conversation kept going. This study was based on in-person conversations and not on who presses the disconnect button on a call first. But this gives a basic understanding of why people hesitate to end the call.

Could both people be waiting for permission to leave?

Consider an example at your workplace. You call your colleague to fix a time for a project discussion. Both of you agree on a suitable time and now the conversation is over. But you don’t hang up. Your colleague is also waiting on the other side, thinking you may have something to add. You are doing the same. This is how the coordination problem happens. Both people don’t know what the other one wants and assume they still have something to say.

According to the research by Mastroianni, people don’t want to stop caring and protecting others. They want to be considerate about others’ feelings. While they feel they are doing the right thing, unfortunately, it is making things more awkward.

Why can goodbye feel like a statement about the relationship?

An old study about goodbyes can also explain this habit of hesitation to some extent. Psychologist Herbert Clark and researcher J. Wade French examined telephone endings in their 1981 paper, Telephone Goodbyes.

The basis of this study was whether it mattered how people bid farewell to each other before disconnecting the call and if it made them feel better about their relationship when the person on the other end was warm and polite.

In one study, an operator recorded 530 telephone enquiries. People bid goodbyes mostly when it was a personal call rather than when they were simply asking for a phone number.

The research suggested that goodbyes are more than a mark to end the conversation. It is also about the social exchange. A warm “speak soon” may reassure someone that ending today’s call does not mean ending contact.

The study concerned particular American telephone interactions. It does not establish a universal rule about how long anyone should wait before disconnecting.

Can politeness explain the hesitation?

The final explanation is about hesitation. Politeness theory based on the research by Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson’s provides another perspective to the scenario.

Their research theme is around face value. It means how people build a social image for others and want respect for that. The major concern for this is getting accepted. Another point is having free will. People need freedom to act however they feel write without interference.

If we apply this theory to a phone call, someone may want to leave while avoiding the impression that the caller is unwanted. “I need to get back to cooking, but it was lovely talking” addresses both concerns.

The goodbye consists of warmth but adds a boundary as well. It expresses the wishes of the other person, so it is a better way to coordinate. The example is applicable in theory; it is not a tested explanation for every delayed hang-up.

Whether you are polite or not depends on your relationship with the other person and the culture you have been brought up in.