When my rhythm goes to pot

It’s not as though I don’t have rhythm, but I find myself doing the most peculiar thing when I’m watching a dance jam. I wonder if I’m alone in this?!

So, to set the scene... There I am on the edge of the circle, messing around, clapping on beats two and four, swaying and bouncing, with maybe a bit of sympathetic foot-shuffling. The dancers are going in and out of the jam. Everybody is having fun. The music is great. The moves are great. It is all going swimmingly. And then, the moment I can sense that a couple of dancers are going to try an aerial or something challenging for their evident ability, I start clapping out of time like a right spanner. Irregular, mindless flapping of my clapping hands... no rhyme nor reason to the rhythm. What has happened to me?!

And exactly the same thing comes to pass when the bouquet is handed to the soloist at the end of a concert. It looks as though they are going in for The Kiss and the rhythm of my clapping becomes erratic, or even stops all together, as I wait in the agonising suspense of seeing whether it will all go horribly wrong and become embarrassing for them. One kiss? Two kisses? Are their glasses going to clash? Do they hug as well? There are just too many variables which could be uncomfortably out-of-sync.

Is it my anticipation of public humiliation overwhelming and suppressing my physical rhythm (but not my sense of rhythm, because I am painfully aware of my crappy clapping)? I reckon this would make for a fascinating scientific investigation. If anybody can explain this phenomenon (or if you do exactly the same thing as me!), do get in touch!