How do japanese people return a greeting with a bow?

Abstract

The greeting is one of the most familiar communicative behaviors in everyday life. In this study, we clarified the features of spontaneous greeting interactions by focusing on the timing of bows and utterances. In particular, we focused on how the response changes with the timing of the greeting. In the experiment, we performed simulated interviews and analyzed spontaneous greetings before and after the interview. Our experiment showed that the responses did not change with the interviewer’s bows and utterances. It also revealed that there was a routine response pattern, appropriate for the people (i. e., greeters) involved.