I think that a large part of this problem stems from how people think changing your opinion of someone works. An implicit belief that seems to exist in a lot of people’s minds is that when you break a commitment with someone, they can either decide to “hold it against you” or “let it go”. While there is a conscious part of your friend that is deciding whether or not your transgression was worth making a fuss over, I think that the more important change is that their mental model of you has been ever so slightly adjusted.
If you frequently show up late to meetings, even if your friends say it’s “okay”, they are still unconsciously updating their model of you to someone who isn’t reliably on time. This happens bit by bit, and is adjusted slightly each time you’re late or on time.
If you’re friend has slowly started blowing you off more often, and you keep saying it’s fine, you’re going to be slowly adjusting your model. At some point, the model of your friend that you use to control your anticipation will be at odds with your belief in the belief that your friend and you are “totally chill”. Then there will be one blow off too many, snapping your belief in belief, and it will appear to your friend like it all came out of nowhere.
It seems the best way to avoid these sorts of problems would be to create common knowledge on how we actual update our opinions of each other. I’m not sure of what would be a smooth way to add that into conversation.
I think that a large part of this problem stems from how people think changing your opinion of someone works. An implicit belief that seems to exist in a lot of people’s minds is that when you break a commitment with someone, they can either decide to “hold it against you” or “let it go”. While there is a conscious part of your friend that is deciding whether or not your transgression was worth making a fuss over, I think that the more important change is that their mental model of you has been ever so slightly adjusted.
If you frequently show up late to meetings, even if your friends say it’s “okay”, they are still unconsciously updating their model of you to someone who isn’t reliably on time. This happens bit by bit, and is adjusted slightly each time you’re late or on time.
If you’re friend has slowly started blowing you off more often, and you keep saying it’s fine, you’re going to be slowly adjusting your model. At some point, the model of your friend that you use to control your anticipation will be at odds with your belief in the belief that your friend and you are “totally chill”. Then there will be one blow off too many, snapping your belief in belief, and it will appear to your friend like it all came out of nowhere.
It seems the best way to avoid these sorts of problems would be to create common knowledge on how we actual update our opinions of each other. I’m not sure of what would be a smooth way to add that into conversation.