Why Do I Replay Social Situations in My Head?

After every seminar, every dinner, every meeting with someone she wants to impress, she conducts a debrief. Not consciously – it begins automatically, usually on the way home or just before sleep. What she said. What they said. What her facial expression must have looked like when she said the thing she now wishes she had not said.

Social replay is one of the most common forms of rumination. After a social event, the mind reviews the performance: was it good enough? Was there anything that might have been taken badly? Was there anything she missed in what others said that might have been significant? The review is thorough, the criteria are exacting, and the verdict is rarely satisfying.

The unsatisfying quality of the review is structural. The evidence available – memory of how the event felt, what was said, how people reacted – cannot definitively answer the questions the review is asking. How did I actually come across? Nobody knows. The uncertainty is exactly what keeps the review running.