Am I Normal?social
I've pretended not to see someone I know to avoid having to talk to them
Strategic non-acknowledgement is a universal social avoidance behaviour. It requires a delicate balance: making your non-seeing convincing while not appearing rude if caught. Most people have an intuitive understanding of the social contract — that both parties can, under certain conditions, accept the fiction that they didn't notice each other.
Have you ever done this?
Be honest — have you ever done this?
Related fact
Sociologists call this a 'civil inattention' norm — the agreed-upon social convention that in certain public spaces, people pretend not to see each other to preserve mutual privacy and avoid the transactional cost of interaction.