At a guess, I’d say it’s confirmation bias

I think most people do it, too. Probably just one of those weird human things.

On one hand, it’s a bad to look “desperate” and on the other hand, I assume that if they’re taking a while to respond, they’re probably busy and I should hit them up later.

Because you probably think that your friends behavior is their way of showing the world what they each think is reasonable, and what they probably expect in return from others. And you are probably right. You are meeting people where they are and trying not to disappoint them based on what you know about them. This is emotional reasoning so it’s not surprise that it’s unconscious.

I tend to do this as well, I’m not sure why but I generally respond proportional to how long it took for my friend to respond

I think it might just be human nature, because I had a friend who I would talk to and we would respond back very commonly Within two or three minutes of sending the message, and then they went into a mental Funk where they weren’t looking at Discord anymore. Due to this they started being hella delayed in responding, and I found that the longer delay that it took them to respond the longer that it took me to respond. The counterpart is also true, when she came out of being in that funk the delay went away again I’ve never actually noticed that before and it’s really weird

I think it might just be something that is common nature for socialization, I think we subconsciously use how long it takes them to respond as a judgment of what is considered appropriate for response time and then without realizing it partake the same way