I agree with you that the costs of deception are much lower for one-time events.
I think that lots of people do pretend for long periods of time to like someone they really dislike if they’re going to be spending lots of time with the person because he is a relative, friend of a friend, neighbor, coworker, or frequent customer.
I’m a professor and when a student comes to my office hours I always act as if I’m very happy to talk with her. Often this is true, but other times I would prefer to be doing my research rather than talking with a student. I currently intend to follow this deception strategy for the rest of my teaching career, and indeed I think I would be a bad professor to the extent that I didn’t follow it.
That approach may need some fine-tuning—I had a professor who seemed happier to see me than my actual friends.… but there wasn’t that much of a real connection.
Figuring this out wasn’t some huge trauma, but it was a little unnerving.
I agree with you that the costs of deception are much lower for one-time events.
I think that lots of people do pretend for long periods of time to like someone they really dislike if they’re going to be spending lots of time with the person because he is a relative, friend of a friend, neighbor, coworker, or frequent customer.
I’m a professor and when a student comes to my office hours I always act as if I’m very happy to talk with her. Often this is true, but other times I would prefer to be doing my research rather than talking with a student. I currently intend to follow this deception strategy for the rest of my teaching career, and indeed I think I would be a bad professor to the extent that I didn’t follow it.
That approach may need some fine-tuning—I had a professor who seemed happier to see me than my actual friends.… but there wasn’t that much of a real connection.
Figuring this out wasn’t some huge trauma, but it was a little unnerving.