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

[dpolicar]

Hm.

I think I operate on something like these definitions:
* "Mean"-"nice" is about whether behavior hurts people (mean does, nice doesn't)
* "Assertive" -"Passive" is about whether behavior gets me what I want (assertive does, passive doesn't)

I don't claim those definitions apply generally, they just seem to be what I mean when I classify behaviors this way. (I also have a meaning of "nice" that roughly maps to "civil, pleasant, friendly, mannerly" but it's a different use. As is the one that means "unnecessarily precise," as I'm being now.)

It follows that "assertive" and "nice" are opposed only if something I want _cannot_ be achieved without someone being hurt. (There are other dimensions as well, and they interact, but I'm taking a single slice for the moment.)

I _think_ the problems emerge, not from difficulties with "nice", "mean", "assertive" or "passive", but with confusion about "hurt." More specifically, I suspect the problem lies with an insidious assertion of the form "It hurts people to not get what they want."

If I buy into that assertion, then things get messy. In a situation where resources are constrained and we can't both get everything we want, then in order to get everything I want (maximally assertive) I have to hurt you (be mean). I cannot be both maximally assertive and maximally nice.

But of course, that assertion is false. People want all kinds of things that it doesn't actually hurt them not to have.

One of those things is my time and energy. So if I buy into that false assertion, the desire to be non-mean interferes with my ability to refuse people's requests for my time and energy. If I reject that assertion, I can actually look at the situation and decide whether rejecting that request hurts the person or not, on other grounds. (Eg, if a starving person wants some of my money to buy food, that's one thing. If my neighbor wants some of my time so he doesn't have to pick up his own son at the airport, that's a different thing.)

One of those things is to be comfortable in their own view of the world.
One of those things is to control the independent behavior of others.
And so on and so forth.

So if I buy into that assertion, then as you say, "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."

Now, of course, if I reject that assertion, nothing stops me from volunteering these things. But now we've moved away from "mean"/"nice" and onto "generous"/"stingy."

Being mean has consequences on my psyche I don't care for, and choosing to be nice avoids those consequences. And choosing to be generous has genuine rewards. But they are different choices (not opposed, but distinct). I am sometimes generous, I am often stingy, I try hard to be nice.

And of course, even if I eliminate all the false-hurt scenarios, there's still an effectively infinite amount of draw on my resources. There's an effectively infinite amount of pain out there. But I find that when the question of "being taken advantage of because I'm too nice" comes up, people are rarely talking about the time and effort they expend to alleviate genuine suffering. Perhaps that's just a side-effect of my experience.

All of which is rather tangential to the question of whether being mean is an effective interpersonal strategy (leaving aside whether it's an ethical one, and leaving aside whether it's an effective personal strategy). And I'm not really sure.

I suspect in most cases one can get what one wants without hurting anybody, if one is sufficiently creative and has enough resource-buffer to play with. So I'm inclined to say that (mean+assertive) is the simplest strategy. For people who aren't creative or don't have the buffer, that may make it the most effective strategy, in much the same sense that for some people, hitting me in the head with a stick is the most effective interpersonal strategy available to them.

I also suspect that for people with a conscience, being mean is damaging. So for reasonably creative people with consciences who control a reasonable set of resources, (nice+assertive) is probably the most effective strategy.

But I'm kinda talking out my bald spot now.

[da-lj.livejournal.com]

By any chance have you read The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity? Your response brought up some interesting connections to this article for me; especially if we say that "assertive" means "helps me" and "mean" means "hurts others". It turns my questions into a sub-problem of the other one, perhaps.

If we argue that the overall problem is the definition of "hurt" to include "false-hurt", I think we're in a tough spot deciding what's a real hurt.

Is it a real hurt to make them lose face? Just between you and them? In a larger group? Is an ego-bruise a real hurt? I don't know.

[dpolicar]

Hadn't until you pointed it out to me.
I can see the similarities.
I'll have to reread my response at some point with it in mind.
Off the top of my head, my impression is that the author presupposes the idea that my gain is someone else's loss in a way I don't think is necessary.

I also agree with you that deciding what is real harm is tricky. But I don't think the way out is to assume that everything everyone claims is harm actually is. There are contexts where I'm inclined to err on the side of the claimant... mostly, where the claimant is on the low end of a large power-disparities. Beyond that, I dunno.

I'm inclined to say that yes, damage to reputation or ego are real harms, albeit relatively minor ones. But I can't really quantify that.