Dr. Yuki Tanaka

Assistant Professor of Response Latency

Department of Unfinished Actions

Biography

Dr. Tanaka's research focuses on why people wait before responding—to texts, to emails, to questions—even when they know the answer immediately. Her background in linguistics (Waseda University) and behavioral economics (LSE) gives her a unique perspective on 'strategic delay as social performance.' She is currently investigating whether read receipts have fundamentally altered human communication or simply made existing anxieties visible.

Research Interests

Strategic delay in digital communication
The semiotics of typing indicators
Read receipt anxiety disorders
Response time as social signaling
The '...' phenomenon in instant messaging

Selected Publications

The Three-Dot Anxiety: How Typing Indicators Changed Human Communication
Strategic Delay: Why We Wait to Reply When We Know the Answer
Read, Seen, Ignored: A Taxonomy of Digital Acknowledgment Failures
The Economics of Response Time: Signaling Theory in Text Messages
Blue Tick Blues: Read Receipts and the Transformation of Social Obligation

Education

Ph.D., Behavioral Economics London School of Economics, 2018
M.A., Linguistics Waseda University, 2013
B.A., Communications University of Tokyo, 2011