On further thought I think it’s less about the time than about the number of operations involved. For you a typical polite sentence probably looks more like [concept expressed politely], while to me it looks more like [[positive opener][compliment to audience][concept][indicator that my opinion is subjective][self-deprecation/joke]]. At least that’s my best guess as to why direct types complain endlessly about the effort and inefficiency of politeness while nice types don’t see what the fuss is about. It’s the difference between being able to speak the dialect fluently versus having to string a sentence together out of smaller components. Of course, my model of how you communicate may be completely off too :)
Hmm. I think you’re onto something, but that doesn’t quite fit for me. Off the top of my head, I think I do something more like this:
I run the words I’m considering saying through my mental simulation of the person I’m talking to—which is going to have “like me” or “like normal” as defaults where I lack details—and check for snags like “does not acknowledge hearer’s agency/competence” or “implies hearer smells bad.” If I find one, I’ll either remove/change the problematic wording or add words to counterbalance them.
Of course, as I get better at it, I also improve a lower-level filter on “things to not say at all,” like giving advice to people in any situation where I don’t actually have more knowledge or experience than they do. That’s another kettle of worms, though.
The difference between that and your model of me is that it’s also a multi-stage process; it’s just fast. It may bear noting that I find it really interesting how much small word choices affect implication and connotation, which probably helps a lot with not being frustrated by the task. It’s work, but it’s fun work—like a productive debugging session.
The difference between the above and your model of you is that rather than taking a concept and adding semantically null politeness indicators around it, I’m making small adjustments to the presentation of the concept.
We may not actually be doing or imagining such different things, but I think that difference in our perception of the task is very telling. Your second model definitely lends itself to descriptors like “fluff” and “inefficient” and “time-consuming,” whereas even in cases where it actually is noticeably time-consuming, the model I described above feels much more like an intellectual puzzle.
But then the question becomes: is it our different models of the mental process of diplomacy which causes us to have different feelings about it, or is it the other way around? The former seems like it would be easy to change in one’s own mind, if one wanted; the latter puts us back where we started.
Something else I notice on rereading my description is that my model depends on having fairly reliable simulations of listeners, and fairly robust defaults when a specific data is not available. I expect that being able to build those simulations is an improveable skill. Empathy is a good head start on it, but one can care enough to try and still not have enough practice to do it well. As for the defaults: as I mentioned, I’ll use myself when I don’t know any better, and the accuracy of doing so would logically correlate to neurotypicality and otherwise being more like more potential listeners.
Summary: More agreeable models of what diplomacy requires may lead to more agreeable feelings about it, or vice versa. Some skills which make it easier can probably be learned; being empathetic and being neurotypical probably give you a leg up. Nothing earth-shaking, but an interesting puzzle nonetheless.
First off, I’m not sure I agree with your argument that it’s easier for you to be polite because you find it to be an interesting puzzle. There are many things that I find interesting or rewarding but that I often don’t have sufficient patience to do all the time—eg. certain types of maths problems, linguistic translation puzzles (where you get a bunch of phrases and translations and need to tease apart the meanings of the words and affixes), and really challenging computer games. Politeness falls into the same category of interestingness, but because it’s usually mandatory it’s a bit like having to complete a captcha every time I open my mouth—I know why it’s there, it’s not that onerous most of the time, but all the same I would prefer not to have to do it.
Hmm, there’s a lot more rambly stuff I’ve been thinking about on the topic but I’m not sure how well it relates to our main discussion. Anyway, relevant bits: I’ve done enough reading and observed and participated in enough interactions to have a good idea of how to gauge politeness levels and how to achieve them (which is to say, I’m neurotypical and have average or above-average levels of empathy. I’m just lacking several years of socialisation experience to make it automatic). I think that most of the time I succeed in saying nice things and not saying offensive things. But it still feels like a lot of effort. I wouldn’t expect someone to go to that level of effort for me and in fact find it annoying and tedious to endure thanking-for-thanking, long buildups to requests, apologising for things which are clearly not the other persons’ fault, and other highly ‘polite’ behaviour. How much have you considered the level of politeness you prefer to receive as opposed to the potentially interesting/fun problem of working out what to transmit?
thanking-for-thanking, long buildups to requests, apologising for things which are clearly not the other persons’ fault
I find it utterly mystifying when people apologise to me for things that are not only clearly not their fault, but probably mine. I have no idea if this sort of thing is expected in polite company but people seem to do it all the same. I assume it’s probably involved with status signalling of some sort, but that doesn’t make it make sense to me.
I guess this is why I prefer to be in a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness. Politeness brings status into everything, introducing complicated rules that seem to just make it easier to cause unintentional offence.
Actually I’m reminded of the rather extreme example of the culture of elves in Eragon. Because of various factors including low fertility and their expertise in killing, they decided they couldn’t afford to have elves fighting amongst themselves. Apparently they then decided to introduce a complicated system of honorifics and greetings depending on the status levels, genders and occupations of the people involved.
Our hero perceives, of course, that this is exactly the wrong way to go about it. The existence of a right greeting for a particular situation out of 30 implies the existence of 29 wrong ones: 29 new ways to give offence.
I think I’ve broken the habit, but I used to apologize for things which were clearly the other person’s fault and as far as I can tell, my motivation was a strong feeling that an apology was supposed to happen, and if the other person didn’t supply it, I would.
This was a fairly strong and very fast reflex.
It seems plausible that it was the result of niceness training done a little too young or unthinkingly.
You make it sound like the alternative, where everyone has idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable and there’s no way to generalize from one person to another, leads to less offense being taken.
I guess that would be true if everyone treated every possible utterance as inoffensive. Which, OK, if you can get a community to actually do that, great… but it’s far from easy to pull off.
Otherwise, not so much.
The point of etiquette is to avoid giving offense unintentionally.
When everyone knows the rules, we don’t think of it as following rules of etiquette, we think of it as not being a jerk.
The point is that in a culture where one is expected to greet someone by saying X if the other is male and above you in status, Y if they are female and above, Z if they’re a blacksmith… etc. it is much easier to give offence by accidentally using the wrong greeting than in one where you greet people with X regardless of the situation.
How does having simpler rules lead to “idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable”? We seem to do fine without a rule on how to greet a one-legged chess player on a tuesday.
Sure, if what you mean by “a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness” is one in which there is one standard greeting, X, with which you greet people “regardless of the situation,” then you’re absolutely correct: that is not at all idiosyncratic.
I guess I misunderstood you: I thought you were proposing an approach where people just greet one another however they wish and they don’t worry about etiquette at all, rather than an approach where there is a single approved way of greeting everyone.
The former I think does lead to idiosyncratic standards; the latter I agree does not.
Sorry for the confusion and thanks for the clarification.
thanking-for-thanking, long buildups to requests, apologising for things which are clearly not the other persons’ fault
(Assuming you mean “not the apologizer’s fault” in the last one.) I don’t do these things, and I don’t think they’re necessary forms of courtesy, at least in a peer situation—customer service calls for jumping through hoops sometimes but I don’t think that’s what we’re discussing.
How much have you considered the level of politeness you prefer to receive as opposed to the potentially interesting/fun problem of working out what to transmit?
I suspect that I’m similar to most people in that I notice mostly when someone uses a politeness level which is not what I wanted. ;) I’m not sure what terms I could use to clarify what that level is, though.
On further thought I think it’s less about the time than about the number of operations involved. For you a typical polite sentence probably looks more like [concept expressed politely], while to me it looks more like [[positive opener][compliment to audience][concept][indicator that my opinion is subjective][self-deprecation/joke]]. At least that’s my best guess as to why direct types complain endlessly about the effort and inefficiency of politeness while nice types don’t see what the fuss is about. It’s the difference between being able to speak the dialect fluently versus having to string a sentence together out of smaller components. Of course, my model of how you communicate may be completely off too :)
Hmm. I think you’re onto something, but that doesn’t quite fit for me. Off the top of my head, I think I do something more like this:
I run the words I’m considering saying through my mental simulation of the person I’m talking to—which is going to have “like me” or “like normal” as defaults where I lack details—and check for snags like “does not acknowledge hearer’s agency/competence” or “implies hearer smells bad.” If I find one, I’ll either remove/change the problematic wording or add words to counterbalance them.
Of course, as I get better at it, I also improve a lower-level filter on “things to not say at all,” like giving advice to people in any situation where I don’t actually have more knowledge or experience than they do. That’s another kettle of worms, though.
The difference between that and your model of me is that it’s also a multi-stage process; it’s just fast. It may bear noting that I find it really interesting how much small word choices affect implication and connotation, which probably helps a lot with not being frustrated by the task. It’s work, but it’s fun work—like a productive debugging session.
The difference between the above and your model of you is that rather than taking a concept and adding semantically null politeness indicators around it, I’m making small adjustments to the presentation of the concept.
We may not actually be doing or imagining such different things, but I think that difference in our perception of the task is very telling. Your second model definitely lends itself to descriptors like “fluff” and “inefficient” and “time-consuming,” whereas even in cases where it actually is noticeably time-consuming, the model I described above feels much more like an intellectual puzzle.
But then the question becomes: is it our different models of the mental process of diplomacy which causes us to have different feelings about it, or is it the other way around? The former seems like it would be easy to change in one’s own mind, if one wanted; the latter puts us back where we started.
Something else I notice on rereading my description is that my model depends on having fairly reliable simulations of listeners, and fairly robust defaults when a specific data is not available. I expect that being able to build those simulations is an improveable skill. Empathy is a good head start on it, but one can care enough to try and still not have enough practice to do it well. As for the defaults: as I mentioned, I’ll use myself when I don’t know any better, and the accuracy of doing so would logically correlate to neurotypicality and otherwise being more like more potential listeners.
Summary: More agreeable models of what diplomacy requires may lead to more agreeable feelings about it, or vice versa. Some skills which make it easier can probably be learned; being empathetic and being neurotypical probably give you a leg up. Nothing earth-shaking, but an interesting puzzle nonetheless.
Related: Women apologise more because they have lower thresholds for what constitutes possible offense
First off, I’m not sure I agree with your argument that it’s easier for you to be polite because you find it to be an interesting puzzle. There are many things that I find interesting or rewarding but that I often don’t have sufficient patience to do all the time—eg. certain types of maths problems, linguistic translation puzzles (where you get a bunch of phrases and translations and need to tease apart the meanings of the words and affixes), and really challenging computer games. Politeness falls into the same category of interestingness, but because it’s usually mandatory it’s a bit like having to complete a captcha every time I open my mouth—I know why it’s there, it’s not that onerous most of the time, but all the same I would prefer not to have to do it.
Hmm, there’s a lot more rambly stuff I’ve been thinking about on the topic but I’m not sure how well it relates to our main discussion. Anyway, relevant bits: I’ve done enough reading and observed and participated in enough interactions to have a good idea of how to gauge politeness levels and how to achieve them (which is to say, I’m neurotypical and have average or above-average levels of empathy. I’m just lacking several years of socialisation experience to make it automatic). I think that most of the time I succeed in saying nice things and not saying offensive things. But it still feels like a lot of effort. I wouldn’t expect someone to go to that level of effort for me and in fact find it annoying and tedious to endure thanking-for-thanking, long buildups to requests, apologising for things which are clearly not the other persons’ fault, and other highly ‘polite’ behaviour. How much have you considered the level of politeness you prefer to receive as opposed to the potentially interesting/fun problem of working out what to transmit?
I find it utterly mystifying when people apologise to me for things that are not only clearly not their fault, but probably mine. I have no idea if this sort of thing is expected in polite company but people seem to do it all the same. I assume it’s probably involved with status signalling of some sort, but that doesn’t make it make sense to me.
I guess this is why I prefer to be in a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness. Politeness brings status into everything, introducing complicated rules that seem to just make it easier to cause unintentional offence.
Actually I’m reminded of the rather extreme example of the culture of elves in Eragon. Because of various factors including low fertility and their expertise in killing, they decided they couldn’t afford to have elves fighting amongst themselves. Apparently they then decided to introduce a complicated system of honorifics and greetings depending on the status levels, genders and occupations of the people involved.
Our hero perceives, of course, that this is exactly the wrong way to go about it. The existence of a right greeting for a particular situation out of 30 implies the existence of 29 wrong ones: 29 new ways to give offence.
So uh, make of that what you will.
I think I’ve broken the habit, but I used to apologize for things which were clearly the other person’s fault and as far as I can tell, my motivation was a strong feeling that an apology was supposed to happen, and if the other person didn’t supply it, I would.
This was a fairly strong and very fast reflex.
It seems plausible that it was the result of niceness training done a little too young or unthinkingly.
You make it sound like the alternative, where everyone has idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable and there’s no way to generalize from one person to another, leads to less offense being taken.
I guess that would be true if everyone treated every possible utterance as inoffensive. Which, OK, if you can get a community to actually do that, great… but it’s far from easy to pull off.
Otherwise, not so much.
The point of etiquette is to avoid giving offense unintentionally.
When everyone knows the rules, we don’t think of it as following rules of etiquette, we think of it as not being a jerk.
I don’t follow at all.
The point is that in a culture where one is expected to greet someone by saying X if the other is male and above you in status, Y if they are female and above, Z if they’re a blacksmith… etc. it is much easier to give offence by accidentally using the wrong greeting than in one where you greet people with X regardless of the situation.
How does having simpler rules lead to “idiosyncratic notions of what is acceptable and unacceptable”? We seem to do fine without a rule on how to greet a one-legged chess player on a tuesday.
Sure, if what you mean by “a culture with low levels of (expected) politeness” is one in which there is one standard greeting, X, with which you greet people “regardless of the situation,” then you’re absolutely correct: that is not at all idiosyncratic.
I guess I misunderstood you: I thought you were proposing an approach where people just greet one another however they wish and they don’t worry about etiquette at all, rather than an approach where there is a single approved way of greeting everyone.
The former I think does lead to idiosyncratic standards; the latter I agree does not.
Sorry for the confusion and thanks for the clarification.
(Assuming you mean “not the apologizer’s fault” in the last one.) I don’t do these things, and I don’t think they’re necessary forms of courtesy, at least in a peer situation—customer service calls for jumping through hoops sometimes but I don’t think that’s what we’re discussing.
I suspect that I’m similar to most people in that I notice mostly when someone uses a politeness level which is not what I wanted. ;) I’m not sure what terms I could use to clarify what that level is, though.