Comment on Open Thread for January 8 - 16 2014

Fri, 10 Jan 2014 14:15:16 GMT

That analysis is self centered. It can often be much more useful to ask yourself: "What does this person want? How can I act in a way to help that person to get what they wants?" than to ask yourself: "How will that person judge me for what I do?"

If you interact with me and make a social blunder that makes you appear inconfident, so what if I get the outcome from the interaction that I want?

The outcome might not even be self centered. I like effectively helping someone else improve themselves. If someone asks me advice on something and comes back a week later and tells me he implemented my advice I feel good because something I did had an effect even if it produced no direct personal benefit.

Different people have different goals. One person might want to hang out to avoid being lonely. Another person might want to hang out to with someone have an audience for his jokes. Some people might want to hang out with cool people because then other people will think they are cool.

Traits like confidence do have some effects but you will never make sense of people actions if you don't think about their goals.

Goals also change. Two years ago I engaged in a lot of actions to prove to myself that I'm confident. I satisfied that need and moved on to other topics.

I did things like walking in my dancing course with a 3 people film crew who were filming a documentary about Quantified Self and this was part of a story about how I measure my pulse while dancing Salsa. In some sense that's supposed to be a high status signal.

On the other hands that's not how it works. Having genuine connections with people and caring about what they want matters a lot more than engineering the right status signals and right impressions.

There might be people that you can effectively impress over a long time with a carefully engineered high status first impression but in general that's not the kind of people I want to hang out with. Most people care about whether they have a genuine interaction with you. If you give a high status impression it might they might more likely find the fault at first with them and give you a bit of a benefit of a doubt to develop connection but if no genuine connection develops all your first impression of being confident or otherwise high status won't help you with developing friendships.

Discuss