by Ty Tashiro
Here’s what loyal friends believe about you. Loyal friends believe that you contribute something unique to their lives. They value you not for extrinsic things like wealth, social status, or power. They believe that you will rise from your toughest times. They trust that you will emerge through adversity as a better person. They have faith in not only who you are, but who you will become. There are few things better in life than having loyal friends, people who have stubbornly committed to making a long-term investment in you for who you are.
Figure 5.1 Network representation of friendship quality
If we had mind-reading superpowers, then we would see that the minds of likable people are organized around three pro-social values: be fair, be kind, be loyal. These three core values are what likable individuals use to evaluate other people. They also drive likable people to act in ways that are consistent with these values. Of course, this empirical approach to friendship is only one way of searching for answers, and there are many other spiritual or cultural traditions that might prescribe a different set of values. But these three pro-social values seem to transcend spiritual and religious traditions across cultures.
For awkward individuals who are trying to solve the problem of what is running through other people’s minds, these three core values provide a way to work backward in the problem. Instead of piecing together individual cues to formulate an idea of other people’s intent or underlying meaning, awkward people can begin with the assumption that likable people are evaluating them through these three criteria, and that the likable person is acting with the intent of embodying fairness, kindness, and loyalty.
But not everyone is invested in being likable. Some people are driven by power or greed, or try to take advantage of others’ good-will, and this creates some complications that deserve careful consideration.
The Surprising Social Skill of Bullies
BULLIES EXIST AT all ages. The prototypical playground bully pushes other kids out of the way in line, steals their lunch money, or mocks their differences. In adolescence, bullies might publicly insult peers lower in social power or spread gossip about those higher in power. Even in adulthood, there are bullies who try to take more than their fair share, manipulate others for their personal gain, or pick on people they perceive as less powerful. A survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute found that 35 percent of employees had been bullied at work and another 15 percent witnessed workplace bullying, which was defined by repeated mistreatment and included behaviors such as threats, humiliation, and sabotaging employees’ work.
One of the most disconcerting findings about bullies of all ages is that they are not naive. The results of a number of studies suggest that bullies have a better-than-average capability to mind-read and use their social fluency to manipulate others to achieve selfish ends. Gianluca Gini and colleagues at the University of Padova investigated the assumption that bullies have poor moral reasoning, which is to say that they have trouble differentiating right versus wrong. In a sample of more than 700 nine-to-thirteen-year-old children, they looked at the differences in moral reasoning among bullies, victims, and defenders who intervene with bullies. They found that bullies’ moral reasoning capabilities were just as sound as defenders’ and that both groups had moral reasoning scores that were higher than victims’. However, bullies showed significantly lower levels of compassion and they were more likely to rationalize away their immoral behavior by seeing their selfish gains as taking precedence over the emotional costs incurred by victims.
Bullies use their social fluency to target people who are less likely to retaliate. In a meta-analysis of 153 studies, Clayton Cook from the University of Washington and his colleagues from the University of California, Riverside, reviewed dozens of risk factors for being bullied, including gender, race, low self-esteem, and stressful family environments. Although a number of factors were associated with the risk of being bullied, the strongest risk factors were low social competence and low peer status. For the awkward kid with low social competence and low peer status, it’s an unfortunate circumstance because even though bullies might not be well liked by their peers, they often possess a good degree of social power and influence and tend to have a good understanding of social dynamics and the ability to be selectively charismatic.
Awkward kids already have trouble navigating normal social expectations, so to go against the sophisticated manipulations bullies incorporate can feel entirely bewildering to them. Awkward children may not speak up about being bullied because bullies use methods of harassment that intentionally blur the lines between right and wrong. The awkward child might be uncertain about whether she is being wronged and even more uncertain about what to do.
If bullying victims are lucky enough to have a defender stand up for them, then it’s important they acknowledge the social capital the defender risked. Rashmi Shetgiri at the University of Texas Medical Center found in a study of 354 sixth-to-tenth-grade students that defenders significantly increased their risk of being bullied by the bullies they confronted. This suggests that there are likely a limited number of times peers can intervene with people being bullied before they put themselves at risk for being bullied as well. It’s important for victims to consider that the defender selectively spent his social capital. This means that awkward kids cannot rely upon defenders to continually absorb the social costs of defending them. The awkward kid has to figure out how to bolster his social competence and peer status, which is easier said than done. Also, in the interest of fairness and showing gratitude, awkward individuals would also do well to find subtle ways to return the favor or at least privately express gratitude to their defenders.
Bullies don’t go away in adulthood. Although some people who were formerly bullies change their ways, there is a growing body of research that shows that kids who were bullies tend to grow up to be adults who are bullies. They manifest as manipulative managers in the workplace, emotionally abusive partners, or criminals who steal or aggress to get what they want. The severest form of adult bullies are sociopaths who look to exploit others’ goodwill for their personal gain while feeling no remorse for the people they harm. About 1 percent of the general population can be diagnosed as sociopathic, but roughly another 10 to 15 percent can be categorized as selfish rather than pro-social. Some people are prone to being self-absorbed, greedy, or power hungry and will readily take more than their fair share from others.
Of course, people who want to be kind and loyal have to be cautious about who they trust because bullies’ actions can produce consequences that are heavily weighted. Yet people also need to be careful about becoming overly guarded or too pessimistic about human nature. This can be particularly true about awkward kids who have been on the receiving end of extensive bullying. It’s easy to understand how children who are chronically bullied could develop a jaded view of others or become proactively aggressive to protect themselves, but that global resolve makes it hard to connect with the good people. For awkward and non-awkward people alike, it’s tough to figure out how to protect themselves while also preserving their commitment to making themselves vulnerable through kindness and loyalty.
The risks one takes while trying to strike a balance between self-protection and proactive kindness can be minimized by thinking about altruistic or kind behavior being delivered in measured doses while people get to know each other. This approach gives kind and loyal people a way to protect themselves while starting the positive cycle of altruism and gratitude with potential friends.
The Devil Is in the Details
JOHN GOTTMAN OF the University of Washington and his colleagues have conducted observational studies of positive and negative behaviors with married couples and grade-school children for decades. The focus of many relationship scientists has been on negative behaviors such as resentment or withdrawing from conflict, but the trick to understanding interpersonal behavior is about the ratio of negative to positive behaviors. It turns out that positive behaviors can be as small as tell
ing someone he looks handsome, attentively listening to a friend’s small triumph of the day, or surprising a coworker with her favorite cupcakes.
Gottman has found that people keep an informal count of behaviors. He calls this ratio of positive to negative behaviors an emotional bank account. To stay in good standing with others, people need to keep a balance of about four or five positive behaviors to every one negative behavior. Imagine that you do four good things during an interaction with a friend: give an enthusiastic greeting, compliment his outfit, share some french fries, and respond empathically to a concern. Then you inadvertently insult this friend by forgetting that today is his birthday. You would probably come out of this interaction with $0.00 in your emotional bank account with him, which is not bad considering that you could have left the interaction in the red had you not been so nice at the start of the interaction. It’s good to think about leaving interactions without a negative balance because people’s emotional bank accounts charge interest.
Gottman finds that negative balances are not wiped from other people’s minds at the end of the day, but instead carry over to your next interaction. This is bad news if you end the day in the red with someone, but good news if you end the day with money in the bank. When people leave interactions with a negative balance, it has a way of building corrosive resentment in others’ minds, which essentially adds interest to their emotional debt. The good news is that leaving interactions with a positive balance tends to build trust, which is like gaining interest on your deposit.
One strategy is to avoid mistakes, but a focus on trying not to make a mistake has a way of creating persistent anxiety, which is both unpleasant and unhelpful. The best way to leverage the concept of the emotional bank account is to commit to making small deposits of positive behaviors on a consistent basis. Instead of viewing the dozens of social situations and hundreds of cues that one encounters every day as an opportunity for failure, the mindset shifts to capitalizing on routine situations by contributing a little more than expected. Sometimes others view heroic efforts as a disproportionately large contribution, but typically positive efforts both big and small have about the same effect.
When you become the kind of person who first thinks about how to help people rather than how to get something from people, it builds a positive balance in your emotional bank account with others. Over time, that positive balance begins to build trust and eventually faith that you are a good-natured person. The key is to be subtle about your contributions. Most people feel tremendous gratitude when their grandparents slip a ten-dollar bill into their birthday card, but if their grandparents slipped a check for $10,000 into their birthday card, it would actually feel awkward for most people. Subtle deposits could be as small as being more specific when you say thank you or letting others go first when a line forms at a buffet. As a supplement to face-to-face deposits, it’s easier than ever to make “mobile deposits” through a kind text the day of someone’s big test or a follow-up message after dinner to say, “That was fun, thanks for getting together.”
CLOSE FRIENDS
TEACHERS AND PARENTS
1. Understand my feelings
1. Explain things when I’m confused
2. Stick up for me when others don’t
2. Try to answer my questions
3. Accept me when I make a mistake
3. Are fair to me
4. Make me feel better when I mess up
4. Help me when I want to do a better job
5. Spend time with me when I am lonely
5. Praise me when I do a good job
Table 5.1 Top five supportive behaviors from close friends and teachers/parents. Data comes from researchers at Northern Illinois University, who pooled data from more than 1,600 elementary, middle, and high school students. These students all perceived acts of loyalty and companionship from close friends as the most supportive behaviors. They perceived solicited advice and praise for good work from teachers/parents as the most supportive behaviors.
The reality is that awkward people are more likely to make small withdrawals from their emotional bank accounts with others because they are prone to mishandling minor social expectations. Awkward people may not notice that their large backpack swung into their friend’s head as they turned to sit down on the bus or they may accidentally disclose the surprise birthday party to the birthday boy. These awkward moments are done without premeditation or malice, but they are still negative and even if people do not say anything, their automated mental accounting system deducts a little bit from the emotional bank account.
These unexpected or accidental withdrawals make it imperative that awkward individuals make a concerted effort to maintain a positive balance through consistently making small deposits that move their balance farther to the positive side in others’ minds. It’s like contributing a little bit every month for social insurance.
Awkward individuals should not let their clumsiness with minor social expectations define them. As both awkward and non-awkward people get older, most of them will care less about surface qualities and instead evaluate people on their willingness to be fair, be kind, and be loyal. So long as good people feel as if you are trying your best to consistently contribute, then they are willing to overlook a little awkwardness. Whether it’s a commitment to a familial relationship, friendship, or romantic relationship, when awkward people make sure that they find a way to contribute to the broader good, it is the best strategy for creating sustainable social capital.
MEET EXPECTATIONS
DO NOT MEET EXPECTATIONS
Care
Likable
Awkward
Don’t Care
Manipulative
Malicious or Reckless
Table 5.2 The consequences of expectations when others perceive good intent versus bad intent
The Value of Social Equity
CARSON’S ADVISOR, PROJECTION cord in hand, maintained his death stare as he waited for Carson’s response to his rhetorical question, “Do you not get it?” Carson replied, “I don’t get it, I don’t know why, but I’m sorry.” That’s all Carson had to say to keep the faith of his advisor. Carson’s advisor was a wise man, someone who had learned an important distinction through his years of mentoring students who were talented, but often awkward. Yet while Carson’s advisor was unfazed by his students’ awkwardness, he did not see Carson’s tiny acts of self-absorption as awkward, but as willfully selfish. Carson’s narrow focus on becoming an academic star meant that he had showed little awareness about how he could contribute to the people around him. His advisor had noticed his unwillingness to help other students and his abruptness with the administrative staff in the department; therefore, the pop-up catastrophe was the last straw in a string of withdrawals Carson had made from his emotional bank account with his advisor.
I suspect that Carson’s advisor saw the goodness in him and he knew that Carson’s abrasiveness was a protective mechanism. From his earliest days in school, Carson had been an awkward kid and a loner who was frequently bullied. Like many awkward kids, Carson tried his best to figure out how to fit in, but despite his best efforts, he didn’t get what other kids wanted from him. He was given the standard advice, well-intended sayings from adults like “Just ignore them” or “You will be very successful someday while they are flipping burgers.” But ignoring bullies does not always work because bullies have a relentless mentality, and telling their victims that they will be “better” than their tormentors instills an adversarial “them against me” mentality. Telling awkward kids that they are better than other kids also implies that achieving academic or professional status is equated with being a better person. Awkward kids’ best chances of finding a meaningful and happy life are unlikely to come from being more professionally accomplished than their peers. Their best chance of eventually finding happiness comes from a patient focus on becoming someone who is inclusive and fair even when other people are not treating them the same way.
; In college, a confluence of events turned Carson’s fortunes around. By the luck of the draw he was paired with an incredibly kind roommate who genuinely enjoyed Carson’s intellect and sharp wit. In the lab where Carson worked, a group of older graduate students took him under their wing, which provided a place where he could talk as much as he wanted about physics with peers who were enthralled rather than bored. Carson felt less threatened in college and as a result was more himself, which made him a much more likable guy.
But Carson quickly found that being a graduate student at an elite program came with a more competitive environment. It was a dog-eat-dog world and when older students caught glimpses of Carson’s potential, some of them began to plot against him. They thought that his success could threaten their positions in the academic hierarchy, and this insecurity manifested in behaviors that re-created Carson’s playground nightmares of being teased and degraded. He was quick to raise his old psychological guards. From this protective position, he zeroed in on being competitive in his work, but by doing so lost touch with the people around him. Although it was true that Carson’s work was important and he needed to work hard to succeed, it was also true that his myopic focus and hyper-ambition had become so intense that he had turned into someone who was entirely unlikable.