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Overconfidence May Be a Result of Social Politeness
An anonymous reader writes "Joyce Ehrlinger from Florida State University has researched this very phenomenon, and has led her to present a paper called 'Polite But Not Honest: How an Absence of Negative Social Feedback Contributes to Overconfidence' at the American Psychological Association's annual conference in Orlando on Friday. Social norms, Ehrlinger says, are the reason that we are averse to giving negative feedback. Her research recreated everyday social situations in which we hold back from giving our own negative views."
You mean if no one tells me I suck, I won't think I suck?
where anything goes!
negative feedback is acceptable if given constructively and pleasantly
nobody's perfect
It's been just about impossible to criticize the religious beliefs of anyone for decades, and it's almost impossible to curb inappropriate and in-your-face religious behaviors because of the sacrosanct rule that religion is somehow immune to interference from the secular world, and that's why religious craziness around the world is on the rise.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Joyce Ehrlinger from Florida State University is stupid! She has absolutely no idea what she's talking about! Pure rubbish! She should just drop out of the American Psychological Association right now and save us all a bunch of pain and headache! She has no idea what she's talking about! None! Pure bullox!
Anonymous Coward: FROST PIST
What the Moderators do: -5 Off Topic
What the Anonymous Coward sees: +5 Attention.
This is not how negative feedback was supposed to work.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Well your faith in your friends is yours.
"Politeness" does not mean no negative feedback... and never has.
One can be polite, and even friendly, while still giving negative feedback. This "no negative feedback" bullshit is a result of those defunct social theories that we had to bolster kids' self-esteem at the cost of truth.
As far as I am aware, this is the first time this has been a significant problem. As polite as societies have been in the past, negative feedback has never, to the best of my knowledge, been a problem.
Then use sarcasm, which is a form of irony everybody understands. Be prepared to get your teeth knocked out regularly though, because good sarcasm usually insults the intended recipient a lot more than plain statements.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
But what's the alternative when you're running an empire? Faith in your friends?
I don't think so.
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. --Will
Joke aside, that's because your fellow slashdotters can destroy your comment reputation *anonymously*. You'd be surprised how ordinary, polite folks can turn into nasty, mean sonsabitches when they can hide their names and faces. TFA was dealing with people who know and see each other, and go out of their way to avoid social confrontation.
This said, you deserve your comment reputation ruined :)
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
No, I think it means that people are going to generally be nice and say good job when you did actually suck. Therefore making you overconfident.
This is why i always speak the truth, no matter how blunt.
That is where the phrase, "Honesty doesn't always win friends, but it influences people." comes from.....I think
"That's right...I said it."
You mean if no one tells me I suck, I won't think I suck?
Please tell that to Hillary Clinton
No, Hillary was his wife. You're thinking about Monica...
Relevant:
http://www.cracked.com/article_15231_7-reasons-21st-century-making-you-miserable.html
The right to offend is central to the right to free speech.
I have noticed two things related to this:
1. The term `irony` is often used to refer to heavily-veiled passive aggression.
1a. I think Millon provides a great description of the sort of behavior we all have encountered, although no longer (as of DSM-IV) considered a personality disorder: "They cannot decide whether to adhere to the desires of others [...] or to to turn to themselves [...], whether to be obediently dependent on others or defiantly resistant and independent of them, whether to take the initiative in mastering their world or to sit idly by, passively awaiting the leadership of others; they vacillate, then, like the proverbial donkey, moving first one way and then the other, never quite settling on which bale of hay is best. [...] ...only one essential trait is specified in characterizing the passive-aggressive personality type, that of resistance to external demands" (Millon 1981, Disorders of Personality, 244-245).
1b. I think (1a) is part of the reason why you might say that "Americans don't get irony... [a]t all". You might be confusing their lack of appreciation for irony with their recognition of and consequent disregard for passive aggression. Also, irony is highly culturally dependent.
2. My preferred method of dealing with the chronically overconfident is to ask kind and honest questions. I do not use irony; I do not use passive aggression; I do not throw punches. Instead, I assume that these people are telling the truth or overcompensating b/c of some hidden anxiety. In the first case, I think they're wrong; in the second, I think they're in need of growth. For either, I've found that the best response is to be gentle and to learn about their presuppositions.
For honest feedback, there is nothing like anonymity. You guys all suck ass by the way...
Depends if you want volume or quality, like everywhere else!
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
My interpretation: Social politeness did not spring up out of nowhere accidentally. There are good reasons for it. One is: The expected value to myself, if I were to correct some total stranger -- and risk their displeasure, argumentation, lost time, possible hostility -- is pretty much nil.
What do I care if some doofus loudmouth on the bus, or a convenience store, or a random psychological experiment I got thrown in, thinks they're funny or has nutjob political or religious beliefs? The chance of my opinion changing them is close to zero. Aside from that, the time and hassle expense to my day is probably significant; the chance of their reacting in a defensive and hostile manner is pretty high. Aside from that, my chance of running into them again ever in my life, such that I receive some later benefit is also nil. Hence the politeness protocol of smiling noncommittally and getting the hell away from them.
(Side issue: I've never understand "road age" of the ilk "I'll teach that bastard a lesson!". Given someone that cuts you off, you'll never see them again, so any lesson you could conceivably give won't generate you any benefit. Let 'em go and maximize your distance from the crazies.)
Now, if someone is being truly irrational and is an intimate of yours, such that you have to deal with them all the time, then the equation changes; being honest with them will hopefully improve your mutual relationship and time spent together. Conjecture -- Perhaps a society which increases mobility, depersonalization, and time spent with strangers has a propensity to become more and more dishonest and delusional.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
Any conversation over the internet should quickly solve that problem.
According to this theory, if you are dont get negative feedback it makes you confident so you act polite and dishonest then conversely if you get a lot of negative feedback it makes you unsure of yourself so you are rude but truthful. I get a lot of flack for pointing these kind of things out but this this theory is total bunk.
OH SHIT! PARADOX!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Always? That's a good way to end up unemployed and with no friends to be blunt with.
Which is why he's obviously lying.
It is the bigger pussies face to face that are the bigger dicks online.
You'll like this then: :)
Nobody better ever mess with you online!
In the distance you hear an ominous moo.
I agree with always being honest, but disagree with the need to be blunt. I have learned over the years that it is better to work with people than against them.
George Carlin totally warned us.
>>"You mean if no one tells me I suck, I won't think I suck?"
>"Please tell that to Hillary Clinton"
No, tell that to Monica Lewinsky. Because she did suck. Or at least the president told us so, and, he was the spouse to Hillary Clinton at the time.
You mean if no one tells me I suck, I won't think I suck?
Please tell that to Hillary Clinton
No, Hillary was his wife. You're thinking about Monica...
Suckers...
At my job, I guess I'm not socially polite at all. I give negative feed back all of the time. There's no positive way to tell someone that they did a horrible, horrible job, and they need to re-do it after formulating a coherent plan.
You mean if no one tells me I suck, I won't think I suck?
Please tell that to Hillary Clinton
No, Hillary was his wife. You're thinking about Monica...
Suckers...
Hillary too?
In my experience this overconfidence as a result of politeness is true in my workplace, and in past workplaces as well.
Being generally polite, and not giving explicit negative feedback to annoying, unfunny, awkward, disrupting people finds justification in a kind of tacit, unconscious consent to be accepting and tolerant of everyone.
This works kinda all right, and makes it for a peaceful, sometimes even happy environment, and reduces the chances for conflict.
I have witnessed two scenarios where this politeness strategy fails utterly to both create a pleasant environment and to avoid conflict.
One scenario is that of a massively disrupting individual, who is not aware of the consequences of his words and actions.
Sometimes, like a current temporary colleague of mine, the guy is actually not a bad person at all, he is just not very perceptive of subtle signals (like awkward silences etc), looks very much emotionally vulnerable and unstable, which makes it undesirable to confront him about the issue, and has probably never been explicitly and seriously criticized for his disruptive behavior, resulting in a combination of fragility and overconfidence.
Responding to such an individual seems to cause problems whichever strategy is employed (honesty, politeness, etc).
The other scenario is that of a smart, socially-aware, perceptive, self-serving truly evil person.
These people analyze these social situations carefully and are able to detect these weaknesses in the social construct, and take advantage of them. They are therefore able to belittle, disrupt, take advantage of, subvert, out-compete their co-workers, because they know that if they are subtle enough, if they target their attacks carefully enough, nobody will directly accuse them of anything.
Note that I know that I myself have issues with detecting more subtle messages, and I know that my ego is vulnerable to lack of negative feedback as well. I try to ask people around me for truthful advice when in doubt, but in general I profit from this tolerant, polite social construct as well.
I am not sure about how to organize a better social construct that is both honest and peaceful and tolerant, and I am not sure it is possible to do it in a perfect way for all situations and for all compositions of individuals.
It seems to be a long standing problem with establishing and enforcing norms in societies.
In every office, standing by the water cooler, there is a person. Let's call him Joe. Joe tells stories about his weekend, followed by jokes about his in-laws, and everyone politely laughs as they shuffle around him to get their cup of water. "Why does Joe continue telling these jokes?" everyone wonders.
That's the first few lines of TFA.
Later:
Since society has taught us not to hurt other people's feelings, we rarely hear the truth about ourselves, even when we really deserve it. And sometimes that politesse can have negative ramifications.
Now, let's translate them to other people who do not share your understanding of Islam:
In every office, standing by the water cooler, there is a person. Let's call him Achmed. Achmed tells stories about his religion, followed by assumptions about how it is a religion of peace, and everyone politely agrees as they shuffle around him to get their cup of water. "Will he cut my head off if I tell him I think that is total BS?" everyone wonders.
[...]
Since society has taught us to expect our head to be cut off by any muslim we disagree with, we rarely hear the truth about ourselves, even when we really deserve it. And sometimes that fear can have negative ramifications.
Except that you didn't read TFA and just shat a comment out of your hate filled mouth (keyboard).
Why should I care (and why am I feeding the troll)?
I'm not a muslim/theist anymore, but I was born muslim and have some family and friends who still are.
None of them have ever cut my head off or that of any other person who disagreed with them. Nevertheless everyday I see scum such as you spewing hate left and right about shit you don't even care to try to understand and getting ignored (at best) or modded +1 I-too-hate/fear-muslims.
(Yea I'm new here, I expect people to RTFA)
Problem is, many (if not most) "internet haterz" are just trolling, acting out, and generally trying to be disruptive. They're not being honest, just spiteful.
I'm sorry; I don't know what I was thinking!
"It's been just about impossible to criticize the religious beliefs of anyone for decades"
Try millenia, "blasphemy" at least in western Europe is very old, with punishment varying depending on the century & country.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Sir, you are irrational...if every third post you make is to confirm that you don't regard large swatch of people individuals because it dosent fit the narrative of the social hysteria you and your circle jerk keeps howling.
Then you are an extremist, I'm sure you and the rest of your "band gallant knights of western civillisation" are proud to hold the line and have uncovered the great of leftist establishment driving the nation to suicide.
You are probably frustrated, by the creeping horde you keep see being blocked out by the sheeple, people calling you a moron and epithets.
To think...calling you...a concerned citizen born rightwise...with the rest of your nationborn...that hold their head high.
Must irritate you...make you stubborn and thus irrational.. must take a strong will to break out of that cycle.
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.
Or you'd end up with politicians who reluctantly take upon themselves a big responsibility instead of a sociopath's powergrab.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
This is especially annoying when learning a language. I *want* people telling me all the time when I'm saying a word wrong or phrasing something poorly. But for most people, if they can understand what you meant to say, they just leave it at that. I just found out recently that after all this time, all of the times I had meant to say "I have been (verb-ing)" I'd instead been saying "I had been (verb-ing)". That's not a little mistake! Geez, people, why didn't anybody call me on it until now?
The chloride owes the sodium money.
Then use sarcasm
My gods, it's Doug Pirhana!
I am officially gone from
Obligatory Penny Arcade: http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
It depends on where you are. In the Netherlands, social norms do not prevent people from giving negative feedback. But most men are still overconfident.
no, I don't have a sig
Yeah, phrasing is important. I once told an author who had me proofread their work that my main critique was that it was an Idiot Plot. It's a technical term, but the author sure didn't perceive it that way, and was very much not happy with me... It would have been much more effective to simply say, "Now why didn't character X do the logical course of action, Y, and completely avoid this whole mess?"
Sort of like this. ;)
The chloride owes the sodium money.
I hate to bring up something like Americal Idol (and its predecessor Pop Idol) in somewhere like Slashdot, but I think it's relevant.
In the UK Pop Idol, the judges were always honest - if they found someone who couldn't sing, they told them they couldn't sing. They told them to not give up the day job, to abandon their dream of being a pop star. On the flip side, if they were good, the judges said so - and because of that it really meant something.
In the few bits of American Idol I've seen, it's totally different. The judges (I seem to remember Paula Abdul and Randy Jackson in particular) when presented with someone who clearly didn't have a hope in hell of becoming a star of any kind, tied themselves in knots trying to say something positive. They just didn't ahve it in them to say "You're not a singer, forget about it". They'd say "You need to work hard to improve your rhythm" or " You're great but you're just not what we're looking for", and so on. Simon Cowell gave much more honest opinions and built a huge business out of doing it - but he was seen as Captain Negativity, the joke one, with the other two encouraging the no-hopers to keep their dream.
The result? People in the UK who got that negative feedback accept (sometimes reluctantly) that they won't ever be a star and go back to singing in the shower and leading a normal life. People in the US don't have that reality check, so keep on trying, making themselves look more and more ridiculous, desperate and above all untalented.
This may be US specific. As a French student in the US, I was amazed at how much attention was paid to feelings, and how little was paid to, you know, tangible reality, such as who was right or wrong in clear-cut cases where there *was* a right and wrong answer.
Constant praise and tip-toeing around issues not only inspires overconfidence, it also deprives people from a chance to correct their mistake, and to learn to handle failure. And since people are not *that* stupid, it also gives them a strong sense that everything is fake. Constant praise is very much like no praise.
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
If the goal is to get the other person to listen and reflect upon the criticism, then saying it "straight forward, no sugar, no BS" is counter-productive in the vast majority of cases.
So how, exactly, is it better for me to have been going for a long time saying "had been" when I meant "have been", instead of being corrected once and that being the end of it?
Nothing sticks in the brain so well as being corrected. The more embarrassing or humiliating the correction, the more it sticks in the brain. I'm never going to forget saying "defective pants" (instead of jeans) or saying I eat "moldy potatoes" (instead of "lots of potatoes") or things like that. Because the mistakes were dramatic enough that people took the time to correct me.
Of course I need to know how to roll past mistakes. But I also need to know how to speak correctly!
FYI, I have no classroom.
The chloride owes the sodium money.
When I first started learning Japanese (not my current language of study) and was traveling in Japan, I was taught an important rule by another person learning the language: you know you're getting good at the language when people *stop* complimenting you on how well you speak it.
Over here, the rule is a bit different: you know you're getting good based on how often strangers try to switch the language of the conversation to English.
The chloride owes the sodium money.
Yes there is. You can verb a noun, and you can noun a verb.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
Joke aside, that's because your fellow slashdotters can destroy your comment reputation *anonymously*. You'd be surprised how ordinary, polite folks can turn into nasty, mean sonsabitches when they can hide their names and faces. TFA was dealing with people who know and see each other, and go out of their way to avoid social confrontation.
This said, you deserve your comment reputation ruined :)
How do you know they're only nasty mean sonsabitches when they can hide their names and faces? I'm a nasty mean sonofabitch to talk to all the time, and if anyone discovers they have a problem with that, I'm happy to knock their teeth out and fuck their sister.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
In every office, standing by the water cooler, there is a person. Let's call him Joe. Joe tells stories about his vacation to the Middle East, followed by racist jokes about Muslims, and everyone politely laughs as they shuffle around him to get their cup of water. "Why does Joe continue telling these jokes?" everyone wonders.
Well, you are very quick to criticise me for saying that Islam isn't peaceful. I bet you don't criticise Muslims who say that apostates should be killed, support honour killings, oppress women, etc.
The US is perhaps a good place to be polite. Robert A. Heinlein noted, "An armed society is a polite society." Okay. That may be a bit of hyperbolic humor. But, whatever the reason, in my experience your cross-cultural observation is correct.
I once had a French boss. An editor to be exact. He was blunt to the point of cruelty from my point of view. Others also found him so -- especially the Americans. But we published a damned good magazine. And I learned a lot from him. And, to be fair, he was as hard on himself as he was on us. Brits are also a bit more blunt than Americans I have observed.
Personally, I make a distinction between constructive honesty and brutal frankness. That said, people in a workplace need to develop a thick hide or standards never get raised. However, create too much of a negative atmosphere and potentially good ideas are suppressed. Finally, when finishing a product you need somebody in charge with a sharp eye and a sharp tongue.
"Woolman, if you don't come in Sunday and fix this copy, then don't bother to come in Monday. Now get out."
"No fear. No envy. No meanness." Liam Clancy
To others, anyone who cuts religion any slack is automatically the Bad Guy.
Unless it's the Church of the SubGenius, of course.
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
Is it any wonder why rarefied blunt appraisal is so highly rewarded? Perhaps underconfidence is responsible for this incessant need to be liked?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
The UK is by far the most hypocritical place I've ever lived in with regards to honest feedback - around here the feedback you hear is always a 7 or an 8 on a scale of 10 (everything is great or wonderful, even when it's shit), to the point that if you comment that something was "nice" (i.e. a 6 out of 10), people feel insulted (you see, "nice" is what people say around here when they mean "not nice").
Coming from Holland (home to some of the most direct, straight-talking people in the face of the planet), the whole British Politness sounds majorly deceitful.
The worse thing is that they do this to the kids at school: every kid is a special person and they can't be told negative things, so they're all told how great they are and get good grades for bad work (around here, there is a huge amount of grade inflation in the national tests, to the point that getting the highest grade is common).
Unsurprisingly, the UK produces nothing, has the highest debt levels in the world, specializes in Finance and Lawyering and has huge levels of white collar crime (of which the LIBOR scandal is just the tip).
Don't say that about the US! You made me feel bad. ooooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhh
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Perhaps more apropos: Do new architects overdo structural integrity?
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
You wooshed the point.
People are being polite because they fear something. One company I worked with they actually held classes on how not to offend people. Why? 1 or 2 dicks took advantage of the negative feedback sort of thing to be just jerks. Companies got sued. So they swung to the other end of the spectrum. Being very polite... The whole I have bitten in my lip is starting to heal after years of nearly biting it off... Oh and you get off the PC bandwagon? Oh its sensitivity classes for you. Being branded a dick. Then eventually they fire you for 'not being a team player'. THAT is why people do it.
Would you rather have a visit from your boss or 3 HR people who flew in just to talk to you? So you keep your mouth shut and head low and jump somewhere else if it gets bad enough...
This phenomenon is likely behind the fact that US kids think they are great at math (but they aren't) and Asian kids think they are not good (but they are). This has been well documented in the education literature. Just another consequence of the "trophy for everybody" mentality of the USA.
A: Konnichiwa :)
B: Waaa, nihongo jouzu desu ne!!!
There isn't much difference between 'etiquette' and 'codependency.'
I don't mean to insult you but your tombstone teeth are not your best feature.
I jest. I don't know you from Adam. I'm sure your tombstone teeth fit your mouth perfectly.
Oops, I did it again. Honestly, I'm jesting. I did start with "I don't mean to insult you"
People of adult age rarely get their teeth kicked in. You'd break their shoes for starters.
Sorry, honestly, I really am. Your other posts on this thread have been very thoughtful for someone with a mouth like a graveyard.
Seriously, being sarcastic in the UK doesn't get your head kicked in. Being nasty doesn't either. It's preferable to silence. My european colleagues all think we tease too much, and I don't think we tease enough. What's my point? I dunno, I just like teasing people. I like to see if they have thick skin.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
We like that though. We being the intelligent English people from England. We like the way you make words up. It wasn't that long ago that making up English words was fashionable. OK, it was a long time ago, but it still happens today and we still like it.
My German friend used the word "Prepone" in conversation not so long back. The opposite of "Postpone", he meant. He made it up. I knew what he meant, but it's not an English word. It turns out that the Indians made it up too. Great. Fantastic. Not a word I'll ever use, but who cares?
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
An interesting implication is that, since people expect to be praised for a mediocre job, actually getting criticized means you must have done something beyond terrible. Basically you have to calibrate your response according to how people will perceive it. If the person did an slightly bad job, show disappointment. If they did a really bad job, show disapproval. If they did a really bad job, criticize it. If they did a catastrophically terrible job, then it's time to let lose hell.
But... the future refused to change.
I once told an author who had me proofread their work that my main critique was that it was an Idiot Plot.
A writer, on fact any artist, should welcome blunt honesty, because theres way too little of it, and is always constructive, whereas positive feedback is not. I get a swelled head sometimes from comments in my journals praising my writing, until I realize that ten times as many people who've seen it probably hate it than love it -- but the ones who hate it don't bother commenting or coming back, which is exactly what this researcher has found.
BTW, why did you link to an entertainment site that's firewalled off in many workplaces, when wikipedia has an entry on the subject?
Free Martian Whores!
I'll bet this research hits two singularities: politics and YouTube. Argue the difference between politeness and positive feedback as you like, but I rarely see either employed here.
This. Fake and insecure people annoy the piss out of me.
I have relatively few friends (51 if you ask Facebook, and that includes family; less if you count people I actually hang out with [or would if they weren't on the other side of the country]) and I recognize the reason for this as my blatant honesty. Those people who remain in my life appreciate the honesty, which is why I'm typically the first person they come to; everyone else did not, they were fake and they wanted me to be fake, as well, and I'm happier without them in my life. It's my nature to not try to screw people over and lie to them at every opportunity. If that's what someone wants, they'll be happier elsewhere and I'll be happier not trying to conform to that.
At every job I've ever worked, there has been that group of honest people, looking out for the customers and the company, shunned by those who would rather take what they can to get themselves ahead in life. I've always been in that group, because, like I said, it's just my nature to not try to screw people over and lie to them at every opportunity. There are companies out there, mostly startups and small businesses, that are staffed with similar-minded people. I've found a company like this and not only am I a lot happier at work, my honesty ("that idea sucks", "that product won't sell", "this guy just wants to rip us off", "that shirt doesn't make you look gay, but your boyfriend does") has helped steer the company to a position where they can afford to pay me more than anyone I've ever worked with at any other company has made.
Honesty really is the best policy and you're not doing peple any favors by telling them what they want to hear. Sure, everyone likes a "yes man" and your boss will promote you, give you bigger raises, and invite you to his birthday party, but when the bullshit backfires, don't think for a second that he's gonna take the blame; you'll be the first one out the door. Just provide an essential service (if you can't do that in your position, you're in too big of a company or too small of a position) and be honest when people come to you for advice. If your function in essential, preferably unique, they can't shitcan you for saying something they didn't want to hear; at worst, they simply stop asking you.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
You are an idiot.
Why did you assume that the language I was talking about was English?
Also, a lot of times, coined words are to try to express concepts that don't exist in other languages. For example, a common nickname for the bankers who caused the Icelandic financial crisis is the "útrásarvíkingar". Víkingar is, of course, "vikings", but there's no direct English equivalent for "útrás"; the term is generally translated as "outvasion vikings", since útrás is the opposite of innrás, "invasion".
The chloride owes the sodium money.
The problem lies in taking the judgement of others more seriously than reflection and criticizing yourself. Modern herd man has no self and is just flapping in the breeze. But of course, it's not polite to point that out towards a specific individual. We can all agree that it's generally a problem, or a problem of other people, but beyond that... "who are you to criticize me?"
Yet the more grounded and peaceful you yourself become, the easier it is to notice wobblyness in others, and I think if one keeps that up long enough, they might also find a way to criticize without making the other feel bad, that is, without them feeling attacked. There is a way of calmly stating things with strong, yet cleaminded conviction, that is pretty much impossible to fuck with.
We don't like to be criticized, but who doesn't love being schooled in a way that may be harsh in that it breaks previously held beliefs, but is still well-meant? We all do and receive that in little ways all the time (when someone pressed the wrong button at the elevator, it's no biggie to press the right one while smiling at them, is it.. and when someone dropped something, they also don't mind if you point that out to them, or even pick it up for them). It's just when it comes closer to the ego, or even lack of self, when it all can get hairy fast. But the principle is the same IMHO.
My slashdot post history proves what a shitty hypocrite I am when I say the above things, but they're still true as far as I can tell.
First hit on Google. And strangely not firewalled here.
The chloride owes the sodium money.
IMO the problem starts with a generation of parents that were told to only give positive feedback and encourage every little effort by their child to improve "self esteem". These children grew into adults that don't know how to handle *any* criticism, even when constructive. This resulted in social norms against being critical, even in a constructive way, because too many people were getting butt-hurt over every little criticism.
And that's how we get a generation of jerks who think they are perfect.
Why should it matter unless you're a loser who can't improve?
"That's pretty good" is a lie, and people who talk to you like that are not your friends. I'd get a new instructor if they talked down to me like that.
the perpetuation of obvious falsehoods within a specific culture or ideology, for lack of active (if impolite) correction.
My German friend used the word "Prepone" in conversation not so long back. The opposite of "Postpone", he meant. He made it up.
No, he didn't. That's a common word... in Indian English ("Indian" here to be understood as meaning "from India").
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_English#Vocabulary_and_colloquialisms
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/prepone
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
On good manners:
On the subject of honesty:
The point is, if you are going to treat someone with real politeness, you should be prepared to tell them the whole truth. Tell it objectively, tell it honestly, and with every consideration of how they might perceive the message. But tell the truth! Anything less does them a great disservice.
Makini Brice, I know you can write better ... if only someone would deliver the sad news: you have no brain, or your choose not to use it. You can't even come up with "bell the cat" or "free rider problem" while you pussy-foot through the bullshit slough? Not even the five-bell go-to cliches handed out as black-tie MSM fig leaves of faux decorum by the maitre-d' at the Michelin-rated nudist resort? Shame on you.
I've belled more than my fair share of cats in my day, including some with a history of emergency admission into psychiatric care. What happens when you offer a concerned a thoughtful glimmer of reality to a person who knows, deep down, that their own reality is a little thin on the ground? In simple terms, the person usually goes binary: either you have to sign up to provide the reality augmentation service 24x7 or they want you to fuck off as promptly as possible. These people crave little windows onto a stable system of reality like Heroin junkies. They aren't in it for a once-a-week booster shot. All or nothing, not much in between.
I've done this, too, at the other end of the spectrum: with fantastically sane and competent people who might have some bright ember of self-destruction that turns a small removable discontinuity--a pinhole of infernal blackness--into a swollen vortex of life sucking creosote-toffee. In this world, as you approach the center, the shortest distance between any two points is a spiral of infinite length. You kind of have to make a fire break by cutting down a lot of healthy trees and tossing them into the inferno, which will surely curl your toe hairs in response to the insult. Bonus: if you don't flinch, they come back for more. You have to stand there in the cross-hairs of the flame thrower attached to a gasoline pumper truck and go: let's get rid of the knife. What knife? The folded knife in your back pocket. What pocket? The back pocket that prevents your ass from bursting right through those insanely tight jeans. When dealing with the flame-thrower that burns like hell, you need to bear in mind that even a small penknife can cut your balls off. The trick is to fight over the knife and not the flame thrower. This is difficult and fraught--you need to dial your asbestos underwear up to 11 and keep it there for weeks at a time. At the end of the day your affection is carried off to the burn ward with 3rd degree burns over 80% of its body, but sometimes after it all blows over, a very nice memorial wreath is erected in your honour at Vimy Ridge.
I'm a bit of a writer at heart, so I sometimes dabble in the occult arts where "what's in it for me" has no answer a sane person would recognize. A sane person laughs at water-cooler Joe's latest bad joke and gets the hell out.
If that were really the case, then I suppose the Japanese must be most overconfident society that has ever existed.
You consider 51 friends to be few? Are you serious? That's way too many. Do you spend 5 minutes a week interacting with each of them? I assume you need some kind of scheduling software to deal with all of them. I have one friend and consider that to be way more than I need. If I found out that a friend of mine had 50 other friends I would stop being friends with him immediately. I would imagine being friends with 51 people must be pretty much a full time job. What a waste of time.
As far as "fake" and "insecure" being related, in my experience, overconfident, arrogant people are much more likely to be fake than insecure people. Also in my experience, confident people, especially in the US, tend to be overconfident about pretty much everything, consistently overestimating all their abilities and personality traits.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
As a teacher of ESL, I can tell you that your focus on having people correct your speech will not help you get better at speaking.
Counterintuitive. Citation desperately needed. If you are talking about correcting a student for less than perfect pronunciation then I can see how constant corrections would be harmful, but any major error in grammar, vocabulary, or even pronunciation should be corrected immediately before they become habits.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
"This is why i always speak the truth, no matter how blunt."
Good job!
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Obligatory link to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Although the Dunning-Kruger effect was put forward in 1999, David Dunning and Justin Kruger have quoted Charles Darwin ("Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge")[3] and Bertrand Russell ("One of the painful things about our time is that those who feel certainty are stupid, and those with any imagination and understanding are filled with doubt and indecision")[4] as authors who have recognised the phenomenon.
Meanwhile, people with true ability tended to underestimate their relative competence. Roughly, participants who found tasks to be relatively easy erroneously assumed, to some extent, that the tasks must also be easy for others.
Not only that, but I would imagine that overestimating your abilities may make it more difficult to improve, because you already think so highly of your skills. The only thing confidence, whether warranted by your skills or attributes or not, is good for is scoring chicks. Girls are compulsively attracted to confidence whether the confidence is justified or not. If you are not confident you pretty much have to fake it if you want an attractive girlfriend. For everything else confidence just makes it less likely that you will ever improve your skills.
I've often thought that women have a greater tendency to overestimate their attractiveness than men, and I have to wonder if they receive more positive feedback about their looks even if they are rather ordinary looking and less negative feedback because they aren't typically the ones doing the asking. I've certainly met more women who seem to overestimate how hot they are than men.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
I like people who speak their mind, it lets me know who they are. No surprises, no backstabbing, you get what you see.
"Social norms, Ehrlinger says, are the reason that we are averse to giving negative feedback. Her research recreated everyday social situations in which we hold back from giving our own negative views."
Somebody introduce her to the internet so she can test her hypothesis... perhaps on /. LOL
The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny - Aesop
I've noticed that, unlike Americans, Colombians have no qualms about telling someone he looks fat. "Man, you've gained a lot of weight, buddy -- better hit the gym." Polite Americans would not do that.
I've also met very few fat Colombians and a whole lot of fat Americans. And don't get your panties in a twist -- I'm a fat American myself, but I'm working on it. Yes, I said "fat" -- not "big boned", "overweight", "thick", or any other euphemism for fat. Fat is fat.
Maybe some honesty about being fat would make some fat people get off their fat asses and do something about it.
On a different subject with the same theme: Have you ever met anyone who thinks she can sing, but she really has at best a mediocre voice? Know why? Its because all her life, her mommy and daddy told her she had a beautiful singing voice. Then every time she sang for her friends, they would reinforce that fiction. Now she leaps out of her seat at every possible opportunity to sing, and just makes everyone embarrassed. If nobody had lied to her all those years, she could just make a fool of herself at karaoke like the rest of us, but instead she has to make us all cringe at every occasion.
In Reason We Trust
I think it means that people are going to generally be nice and say good job when you did actually suck.
I wonder if it is actually being *nice*, or just not wanting to enter into an uncomfortable social situation.
We do lots of things for selfish reasons while convincing ourselves it was the "nice" or "right" thing to do.
I agree with that. Speaking 4 foreign languages, I have the utmost appreciation for people who gladly assume the role of correcting me in real-time and in real-life conditions. Unfortunately, as the OP states, usually it's just the girlfriend that assumes this role consistently and that only after I make it clear multiple times that "I am not offended by it. If you really want to help me improve, please correct me all the time". And yes, the girlfriend is real and doesn't get paid for it or other services rendered.
hey I get this all the time. moved to non-english speaking country 12 yrs ago, and almost no-one corrected me when after I became more or less understandable. It's just because they don't want to offend you, or can't be bothered to correct you because it would interrupt the flow of conversation. In most cases it's unconscious.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman