This experiment offers an opportunity to learn how much our own behavior and mood can be affected by altering how we approach the world even for just one day. It also helps explain the power of likability, because being likable changes not only how people treat us, but ultimately how we grow and develop over the course of our own lives. Stated simply, likable people are treated very well. And not just for a single day, but every day.
Of course, this may be true for people of high status as well. Like those who are likable, those with the other type of popularity are the objects of a great deal of positive attention. But that’s where the similarities end. Unlike those high in status, it is those high in likability who have more friends, fuller social calendars, and more genuinely positive interactions.
From the perspective of the transactional model, each of these friendships and social engagements offers another opportunity to practice and learn increasingly sophisticated interpersonal skills. Research demonstrates that likable children indeed develop advanced social skills faster than their peers. Among nine- to ten-year-olds, for instance, likable kids are the first to form emotionally intimate friendships while others are still engaged in juvenile play. When they are a few years older, likable youth are among the first to participate in monogamous romantic partnerships, while their peers are still experimenting with fleeting teen crushes. Of course, developing refined social skills makes these adolescents that much more likable, thus advancing the cycle even further.
The same transactional model explains why being disliked can result in a lifetime of thwarted opportunities and disadvantage. Research reveals that there are many behaviors that lead to being disliked. We can alienate others by acting aggressively, breaking social norms egregiously and unapologetically, acting selfishly, or “oversharing” our own problems in a manner that places self-interest over the needs of the group. But as much as these behaviors can affect a disagreeable person in the moment, it is their impact on other people—the transactions they initiate—that are responsible for the enduring problems experienced by dislikable people.
This can be a difficult concept to accept. It’s easy to blame being rejected on circumstances beyond our control, like our victimization by others or the general unfairness of life. Certainly, that can be true. But the transactional model suggests that some of our happiness and success, or misery and failure, are the direct result of how we’ve conducted ourselves in our daily social interactions.
While likable people live in a world in which they are treated well, unlikable people are avoided, ridiculed, or victimized. In early childhood, Rejecteds are less likely to be invited to playdates and birthday parties, or even to take part in games. Each time this occurs, it represents a missed opportunity to learn new social skills. Of course, lacking social skills only makes them that much more unlikable, perpetuating a sad and damaging cycle. Not surprisingly, by middle school, Rejected children are less adept at following group rules, negotiating conflicts with friends, or knowing how to take turns in large conversations. By adolescence, they are among the last to begin dating and often have limited their friends only to others who were similarly rejected in childhood.
This cycle can start as early as kindergarten. A study by Jennifer Lansford of Duke University examined the transactional model within a group of 585 children who participated in her research between kindergarten and third grade. Over this four-year period, the investigators interviewed participants and their peers a total of twelve times, which offered a chance to study rapid transactions during a critical time in these children’s development. Their research tested the notion that our behavior is not only a product of how others treat us, but also a major influence on our future social success.
Lansford and her colleagues asked peers to report the likability of each child in her study, and teachers were asked to rate each child’s aggressive behavior at school. Her team also interviewed each child to learn about one of their social skills. Specifically, the researchers examined a type of bias that leads some people to see the world as aggressive and hostile in contexts in which most don’t perceive it that way at all. (More on this bias in Chapter 6.)
The results demonstrated just how powerfully likability can affect long-term growth and development. As one might expect, Lansford found that the more children behaved aggressively, or saw the world through “aggression-colored” glasses, the more rejected they were by peers by the next study time point. But importantly, she also found the reverse was true: the more rejected the children were, the more aggressive they became over time. Of course, this in turn led them to become even more alienated from their peers, causing these Rejected children to see the world as even more hostile than they had before. For instance, when shown video scenes that most of their peers thought were benign, those who were rejected became increasingly likely to see acts of cruelty, while those who had been accepted had an increasing tendency to see the same videos more favorably. Naturally, this difference in social skill was related to even greater differences in likability in the following years, and so on.
The transactional model also explains how Jeff became a much more competent and content attorney than Steve. His character was evident even as the two men sat together in the crowded auditorium on the first day of law school. While Steve seemed oblivious to the people around him, Jeff was all introductions, smiles, and handshakes. Standing to reach the rows in front of and behind him, he had brief conversations with many students that day.
“You’re from Chicago?” he asked one. “My uncle lives there!”
“I play soccer, too!” he said to another. “We have to find a league around here!”
Jeff has always been naturally helpful, happy, and kind. He is one of those individuals who can say almost anything to anyone, no matter how difficult or potentially painful, and do so with a genuine grin, some charm, and a self-effacing chuckle. Merely being with him makes a person feel as if they are among the most likable, interesting people in the room.
Because he was so well liked in law school, Jeff was invited to join many study groups, where he encountered a wide variety of perspectives. His likability also led professors to initiate discussions with him outside class, which is how Jeff learned more details about course material than had been presented in lectures. With this additional knowledge, he felt more confident to speak up, which elicited even more opportunities to study with other students, meet with faculty, and so on. Within a year, he was selected as the student representative to faculty meetings, and later became a representative to a national conference of attorneys. All these interactions had a major impact on how Jeff experienced law school. His initial likability as a student started the cycle that led to his success and happiness many years later.
Steve also was enrolled at Emory but didn’t seem to be attending the same law school at all. The academic world he occupied did not involve study groups, meetings with faculty, or leadership positions. When he was asked by classmates for his input, he was evasive and cold, fearing that their success might come at the expense of his own. Students felt tense around Steve and before long just avoided him altogether. When he disagreed with something in class, his hand launched up like a missile, and his comments were more focused on demonstrating his own knowledge than recognizing valid points made by his peers. When assigned to a group project, Steve asserted his ideas without regard to how he might have disrupted an emerging consensus. Ultimately, with decreasing opportunities to study with others, his first-year grades were lower than he expected, and his confidence was shaken. This contributed to a cycle of decreasing engagement in school, further drops in performance, and so on. Steve’s dislikable nature made law school a lonely place without many opportunities to learn, which ultimately affected the lawyer he became.
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The Steves of the world might find this chapter depressing. It may seem to offer confirmation of their belief that the deck was stacked against them, starting
with those first awkward social encounters as children. Now, after a lifetime of negative transactions and lost social opportunities, the challenge to behave more likably may seem insurmountable.
That’s not quite right. The transactional model may tell the story of how Steve reached his unhappy outcome, but it also suggests a path toward change that can be easy to follow.
It may offer some comfort to know that being disliked in the past will affect us only insomuch as we allow it to dictate how we behave today. Even the smallest adjustments in our current behavior can change our future—a friendly overture to a passerby, a single act of kindness, or even something as simple as a smile. It may seem trite, but there’s now compelling evidence to suggest that transactions occur at a level that is beyond our conscious awareness. Without us even realizing it, we are tuned into even the smallest of social cues and being influenced by others’ likability all day long.
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Imagine walking into a research lab to take part in a psychology experiment. You meet someone in the waiting room about your age who is there to participate in the same study. You try to strike up a conversation, but she barely makes eye contact. She grudgingly answers your questions, but her arms are folded across her chest, and she seems unemotional, sour, flat. After a while one of the researchers comes in and tells you it’s your turn to begin. You are accompanied to the lab and are asked to discuss your own feelings and interests as the experimenter evaluates you.
Now imagine the same experiment, except this time the person you meet in the waiting room looks you in the eye, smiles, speaks easily, and answers all your questions in a friendly manner. The content of your conversation is not any different, but she now projects confidence and enthusiasm—she is, in short, likable. After a few minutes you are summoned to the lab, where you are evaluated by a researcher just as described above.
It turns out you’ve been tricked—the person you met in the waiting room isn’t a fellow participant in the study but is an experimental “confederate,” instructed how to act by one of the researchers. The ruse is designed to covertly test how a social interaction with a person, likable or unlikable, affected you. Depending on which version of the experiment you took part in—the one with the confederate being likable or with her being dislikable—your own behavior, your mood, and even your interests will have been affected.
How could a mundane encounter with a total stranger have such a striking effect? It is the result of a phenomenon known as “social mimicry,” which is the tendency to instantaneously copy others without meaning to or even being aware that we’re doing so.
Social mimicry has subtle yet pervasive effects on us. Studies like the one above have demonstrated that if you were placed with the confederate who kept her arms folded, you would be significantly more likely to fold your arms yourself. If she frowned, you would likely do so as well. The same is true for the speed and tone of your speech. Neuroscientists have found that such inadvertent mimicry is likely due to significant overlap in the parts of our brains that are involved in perception and physical action. This explains why mimicry also occurs after simply asking people to think about how others behave. In one experiment, participants who were asked to imagine elderly people even walked more slowly afterward.
Perhaps most interesting, social mimicry can also unconsciously affect our emotions, which helps explain why we prefer to spend time with likable people and avoid those who are awkward, mean, or sad. We’ve all had the experience of meeting a negative mood magnet—someone who radiates despair and pessimism wherever he or she goes. Even after they depart, we find ourselves feeling down, too, maybe wondering why we’re in a bad mood. Scientific studies have confirmed this phenomenon as well. After just a few moments interacting with sad, socially awkward confederates in experiments, participants commonly report feeling the same way themselves. Their shift in attitude is not simply a matter of having sympathy for the confederate, either. In one study an experimenter read a boring text in a sad manner, and that was sufficient to make participants feel sadder as well.
The effect occurs even when we are trying our best to be upbeat and friendly. At a speed-dating event in Belgium, experimenters asked participants to rate their own mood and their interest in being matched up after each of ten rapid (four-minute) dates. Findings revealed that after dates with an awkward, sad individual, participants themselves reported a decrease in their own happiness and energy, as well as far less interest in meeting for a second date.
Results like these suggest that for gloomy, unlikable people, the world itself is truly quite dreary. Every interaction they have is a bit sadder than it has to be, without them realizing how their own behavior affected others’ moods and made it more likely they would be rejected again in turn.
Meanwhile, happy, likable people seem to be perpetually surrounded by positivity, cheerfulness, and acceptance. Their upbeat nature is so infectious that we feel they bring out the best in us, and we seek out opportunities to be in their presence—all the while unaware that their mysterious “positive energy” is simply the work of social mimicry. Even their laughter is contagious, which accounts for why TV shows have laugh tracks. Hearing others laugh makes us more likely to do so.
Can we use social mimicry to trigger a new pattern of transactions, perhaps even promoting a new chain reaction in our lives? It’s hard to say, as there hasn’t been much research examining the longer-term effects of mimicry. So I decided to try an unofficial experiment of my own.
As I sat at my computer drafting this chapter, my internet service was interrupted, and I ultimately realized I would have to call my service provider for help. As anyone who has reached a technical support line can guess, I spent the next several hours first navigating the touch-tone purgatory of automated menus and then ultimately arriving at my own personal hell—an endless series of customer service agents prepared to walk me through all of the obvious steps I already had attempted to fix the problem. Needless to say, by the time the first hour had elapsed, I was not behaving in an especially likable manner.
I wondered what would happen if I attempted to change the terms of the transaction. Over the next hour, as I spoke with at least another half-dozen technical support agents, I decided to systematically vary my behavior. With some agents, I acted like a Rejected: I was aggressive, impatient, and even oppositional. I’m quite certain those agents did not like me very much. With others, however, I responded like an Accepted: I was upbeat, helpful, and even took an interest in those with whom I spoke. They, in turn, took an interest in me.
Of course as one might predict, the more likably I behaved, the kinder the agent was in return. When I was more socially aversive, however, the agent was equally curt. My behavior didn’t only affect how each agent acted toward me but also the quality of his support. In each instance when I acted in a dislikable manner, agents listened less intently and were more error-prone. When the agents liked me, I received more helpful suggestions.
But there were also some results I did not expect. Being likable didn’t only affect the behavior of the agents I spoke with; ultimately, the transactions had a surprising impact on me as well. As I inquired and learned about the foreign on-call center, I became genuinely interested in my agents’ lives, felt more optimistic about a potential solution, and my patience with the process increased. This naturally promoted greater investment in seeking a solution from the agents, and the whole experience was suddenly far more tolerable.
When acting in a dislikable manner, however, I could feel my blood pressure rise and I even became annoyed with unrelated tasks I attempted while on the phone. I likely missed the chance to learn how to troubleshoot the problem myself, and I suspect it would have taken much longer for my service to be restored.
Being likable didn’t just change how others felt about me, it changed my happiness and success as well. Once I noticed this, it was amazing to witness how easily I could affect so many ou
tcomes—at work or home, among strangers or friends—simply by acting in the ways that make people likable. In each instance, the snowball effects were remarkable. Every compliment bolstered my mood and confidence in successive interactions, and the cycle could last for hours or days.
In our daily lives we are involved in a constant, complex series of transactions that involve rapid social give-and-take. We offer something to the world around us—a social behavior, an attitude, a desire for connection—and the world usually offers something back in kind. It’s an ongoing exchange that happens so quickly, and seems so automatic, that we often don’t even realize it’s happening. We simply think of it as life, rarely realizing how we have been contributing to its direction the entire time.
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Sometimes acting likably is not so easy, however. That’s because sometimes we don’t realize how much our behavior turns others off, and we never understand how we ultimately contributed to a self-fulfilling fate brought about by our desire to be popular.
Pam is a successful immunologist in her mid-thirties who has a vibrant social life and an upbeat disposition. Her calendar is fully booked with creative outings and activities. She is funny, attractive, and highly accomplished. She also has many friends and always seems to be hosting them at offbeat parties, like costume-themed get-togethers and whodunit murder-mystery dinners.
But despite her busy social life, Pam is lonely and often unhappy. She would love to get married and have a family someday, but she doesn’t think she has met the right man yet. That may well be the case, but it also might be a function of the fact that Pam is a generally likable person who occasionally engages in unlikable behavior. It doesn’t affect her in every relationship, but it could account for her dissatisfaction with her romantic life.
When she meets new men, it’s typically all fun, spontaneity, and affection. She and her dates go to art galleries, concerts, new restaurants. She is charmingly flirtatious, a master at witty banter, and the guys fall for her quickly. Inevitably, though, Pam begins to notice something they do, or neglect to do, that convinces her they might be losing interest. He might show up late for a date or pay more attention to his buddies than to her while at a party. He might stop holding the door open for her as often as he used to. At that point, Pam begins engaging in a type of behavior that is especially powerful in creating a negative transactional pattern.
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