Re:Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t
by smsm42 on Monday August 21, 2017 @02:33PM
(#15066592)
I have a feeling we by now have way too much "tell something about the mentality" things. People seek most minute and irrelevant details about somebody's life and blow them up into the whole narrative about how it reveals the darkest depths of somebody's psychology, all while ignoring the open history of behavior, speech, accomplishments and so on. The idea that all the observable behavior is just a facade and only this one or two particular details about something that was said or done once 20 years ago reveals somebody's "true character" is bewildering in its irrationality, and still seems to be widely popular.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
Re:Ellen Pao: My lawsuit failed. Others won’t
by forgottenpass on Tuesday August 22, 2017 @10:28AM
(#15072722)
It's projection. Not the "I'm ascribing my attitudes to the other" flavor of projection that most people think of. It's the kind that makes someone go "Oh, of course this other has this set of attributes that make them exactly the kind of person I already have a stereotype for and opinion of."
Secondly, there are people that spend a great deal of mental effort concealing what they consider to be their "true personality." Whether or not that is in reality who they are is tangential to the point that concealment becomes a big part of their life, and they start assuming others do it to. Or if someone was burned by a person that practices concealment, they'll be on guard for it. And that is again tangential to either's _ability_ to read a concealed aspect of another, which are often no closer than the projection described above.