niceness

[da]

A philosophical question for the weekend (yeah, I hear you shuddering. But I like thinking on the weekends!)

The other day I listened to a This American Life episode on The Allure of the Mean Friend. It included the following question:

"Does Niceness Pay? In which we conduct a little scientific experiment – on tape – with hidden microphones - about whether niceness pays. We wire two waitresses with hidden microphones. They're superfriendly to half their tables; and aloof to the other half. They examine their tips to see which generates more profits."

...The experiment has inconclusive results. On one day, aloofness paid; on the other, both aloofness and niceness come out the same. Their conclusion wasn't terribly useful at proving or disproving the hypothesis.

So, I'd like to know: is there truth to aloofness or meanness paying? I know that to a point, assertiveness pays. And I've occasionally watched friends get taken advantage of by being too nice. (I know I've gotten stomped on for being too nice).

I want to differentiate between "meanness" and "assertiveness". I think there isn't a single continuum:

(<---- mean ---- assertive --- passive ---- nice ---- >).

Thinking about it now, I prefer two sets, mean/nice, assertive/passive. I think you can be extremely nice, and still be assertive; though I'm not totally sure what that looks like all the time. But I do try to vary my own behaviour on the assertiveness/passiveness continuum while still staying at the nice end of the mean/nice continuum. But is it possible to be "very nice" while still being assertive?

The best overall strategy I've seen (for myself, and for others) involves being as nice and helpful as possible, except when prevented by self-interest... But there are arguments against flat-out niceness:

Morally, people sometimes need to be told things they don't want to hear. melted_snowball and I have talked fairly often about Quakers and an idea proposed by a mutual friend who says Quakers often have "a false testimony of niceness." That can take the form of not pushing an issue in order to preserve "peace". Also, being too nice can be a form of lying, trying to save somebody from a hard truth. It's a form of paternalism, and also laziness, and probably also fear.

It seems to me that being as-nice-as-possible implies valuing everyone else's time and opinions over your own. With no chance of being assertive at the same time.

The episode of TAL mentions how people are attracted to mean people; how, despite ourselves, we want to be manipulated, at least a little bit. I haven't thought it through all the way, but it seems that mean is less boring than nice; and we'd generally rather have interesting, than 100% nice.

So: is meanness a good interpersonal strategy?

Comments

[dr-tectonic.livejournal.com]

My short and unhelpful answer is: I think it depends on what you mean by "nice" and "mean", and I think it depends on what part of the universe you live in.

With regard to the issue of niceness vs truth, it seems to me that that's more about approaching niceness in a short-sighted fashion. Miss Manners identifies it well when she addresses the issue of dating and rejection: often, people feel will at a loss for how to tell someone that, no, they're not interested, because they don't want the person to feel rejectec. But, Miss Manners counters, actually, rejected is exactly how you want them to feel, because the alternative is for them to think they've got a chance with you and to keep trying. Stringing somebody along is far crueller than disappointing them up-front.

I agree that nice/mean and passive/assertive are generally orthogonal to one another, and I see no problem in being both nice and assertive. "Nice", I think, isn't so much about putting other people's needs before your own, but in recognizing that other people's needs are as valid as your own, modulo context.

With regard to the "where you live" aspect, it all depends on what the people around you are like. Meanness is probably a lousy default policy unless the large majority of people you interact with are also mean, in which case it's defensive.

In some sense, it's all iterated prisoner's dilemma, after all, and the Axelrod tourney shows that the best strategy is tit-for-tat, defaulting to nice. The only thing that beats tit-for-tat is elaborations on it that allow for error and can infer the other player's strategy. We have a much more complicated payoff matrix, of course, but what it comes down to is that in most environments, in the long run, being nice will get you further than being a bastard will.