<story><title>People Like You More Than You Know</title><url>https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/people-like-you-more-than-you-know/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DoreenMichele</author><text>&lt;i&gt;This is why you shouldn&amp;#x27;t be afraid to give out (truthful) compliments folks&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been seriously and repeatedly burned for doing that. I then spent years dialing it back. I&amp;#x27;m 53 and only just now working on figuring out how to do that again without letting it turn into some shit show where everyone treats me like I&amp;#x27;m their bitch.&lt;p&gt;Every single guy I have ever gushed at about how keen he is has, without fail, promptly turned into a psycho asshole monster and made me wish I never met him.&lt;p&gt;Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just doing it wrong. But my feeling is there are reasons most people don&amp;#x27;t gush at you until your last day in their life as you leave: Because so many people promptly act like monkeys do if humans make the mistake of feeding them and just make your life a living hell over the crime of trying to be nice.</text></item><item><author>davemp</author><text>This is why you shouldn&amp;#x27;t be afraid to give out (truthful) compliments folks. For a small communication effort, you may make a big enough impact for your compliment to be remembered for years. Maybe the person will even smile to themselves and write a nice HN comment about it! (or not quit your company)...</text></item><item><author>sureaboutthis</author><text>These are true stories. I don&amp;#x27;t wish to come across as bragging.&lt;p&gt;The last day of a job I had for seven years, the director of engineering told me I was the best engineer he ever knew. And he worked for some pretty well known engineering firms. If he had told me that before, I might not have left.&lt;p&gt;A woman came into my office--someone who didn&amp;#x27;t seem to want to give me the time of day--and the conversation got around to her telling me how depressed she was about her life and loves. After maybe 10 minutes, she thanked me for being such a good listener and said something about I was just so charismatic. I almost fell out of my chair.&lt;p&gt;I taught electronics at a trade school to a morning class for a couple of years. There were hundreds of students, and I knew I was a good teacher, but I didn&amp;#x27;t think the students thought once about me when they went home. On my last day of work, one of the guys asked me to give a special last lecture on a topic. As I walked into the room, I was followed by students from my class, the afternoon class and the evening class! They filled the room and presented me with a fairly expensive bottle of whiskey.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve had a few girls tell me, after it was too late, that they always had a crush on me. Well, I was interested in them, too.&lt;p&gt;If someone would have just said something sooner, life, for me, would be totally different now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ianai</author><text>People also readily undervalue things that come to them easily - relationships, friendships, money, power, etc. I work at a multi billion dollar facility that is routinely taken for granted by workers. “Oh it’s just this place” sort of thing. I’ve known men and women to undervalue relationships that came to them easily. That exact concept was on display in Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. I think the “struggle” really does make people value things and others more highly and the lack thereof less.&lt;p&gt;My working hypothesis is our brains are always learning - literally everything. We learn our concept of time from our experience with it. We learn our concept of a relationship with another person from our experience with them. If someone comes into our life easily - relative to other relationships - our brain associates them with less value. It’s also horrible logic.&lt;p&gt;Edit- as for whether someone likes you: people accept, overlook, and tolerate more aberrations from normal&amp;#x2F;good treatment from people they value or like. If they’ll accept little of your aberrations then they’re unlikely to ever like you - run for the hills. That’s one of my tricks for likeness.</text></comment>
<story><title>People Like You More Than You Know</title><url>https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/people-like-you-more-than-you-know/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>DoreenMichele</author><text>&lt;i&gt;This is why you shouldn&amp;#x27;t be afraid to give out (truthful) compliments folks&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve been seriously and repeatedly burned for doing that. I then spent years dialing it back. I&amp;#x27;m 53 and only just now working on figuring out how to do that again without letting it turn into some shit show where everyone treats me like I&amp;#x27;m their bitch.&lt;p&gt;Every single guy I have ever gushed at about how keen he is has, without fail, promptly turned into a psycho asshole monster and made me wish I never met him.&lt;p&gt;Maybe I&amp;#x27;m just doing it wrong. But my feeling is there are reasons most people don&amp;#x27;t gush at you until your last day in their life as you leave: Because so many people promptly act like monkeys do if humans make the mistake of feeding them and just make your life a living hell over the crime of trying to be nice.</text></item><item><author>davemp</author><text>This is why you shouldn&amp;#x27;t be afraid to give out (truthful) compliments folks. For a small communication effort, you may make a big enough impact for your compliment to be remembered for years. Maybe the person will even smile to themselves and write a nice HN comment about it! (or not quit your company)...</text></item><item><author>sureaboutthis</author><text>These are true stories. I don&amp;#x27;t wish to come across as bragging.&lt;p&gt;The last day of a job I had for seven years, the director of engineering told me I was the best engineer he ever knew. And he worked for some pretty well known engineering firms. If he had told me that before, I might not have left.&lt;p&gt;A woman came into my office--someone who didn&amp;#x27;t seem to want to give me the time of day--and the conversation got around to her telling me how depressed she was about her life and loves. After maybe 10 minutes, she thanked me for being such a good listener and said something about I was just so charismatic. I almost fell out of my chair.&lt;p&gt;I taught electronics at a trade school to a morning class for a couple of years. There were hundreds of students, and I knew I was a good teacher, but I didn&amp;#x27;t think the students thought once about me when they went home. On my last day of work, one of the guys asked me to give a special last lecture on a topic. As I walked into the room, I was followed by students from my class, the afternoon class and the evening class! They filled the room and presented me with a fairly expensive bottle of whiskey.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve had a few girls tell me, after it was too late, that they always had a crush on me. Well, I was interested in them, too.&lt;p&gt;If someone would have just said something sooner, life, for me, would be totally different now.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>jacobolus</author><text>&amp;gt; &lt;i&gt;Every single guy I have ever gushed at about how keen he is has, without fail, promptly turned into a psycho asshole monster and made me wish I never met him.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I have seen &amp;#x2F; heard of many guys getting complimented over the years (including myself a few times), and never heard of one of them turning into a “psycho”, “asshole”, or ”monster”. A couple times I saw a guy get complimented out of the blue and then kind of stammer something and hurry away looking embarrassed, because he didn’t have any idea how to respond. A couple times I have seen men brush off &amp;#x2F; refuse compliments it looked like because they wanted to seem modest (e.g. “oh it was really no big deal, please don’t think anything of it...” after someone had just directly said their action was very helpful&amp;#x2F;meaningful). Once I saw a guy get complimented and respond “yeah, everyone says the same thing”, which I admit is a pretty obnoxious response.&lt;p&gt;I have also heard plenty of stories of guys who were monsters (physical abusers, stalkers, spreaders of nasty rumors ...), but to my knowledge none of those came out of a compliment.&lt;p&gt;I believe you, but I’m having trouble imagining quite what happened. Maybe you can elaborate a bit? Do you mean that those men turned around and demanded something more from you? Stopped treating you with basic respect? Wouldn’t talk to you anymore? Chased you around? ...</text></comment>