Re:Making Yourself Likable
by silentbicycle on Sunday April 12, 2009 @05:37PM
(#558922)
> but it takes too much mental overhead to figure that out at every such stage in every conversation
This is the heart of the matter, I think. A large part of the brain's power seems to be tuned for sensing status and other social friend-or-foe questions. It's a genuinely complex problem, and it's hard to do while you're also thinking hard about something else.
(The flip side of this is that sometimes it's useful to anthropomorphize the elements of the problem, and that explaining a problem to someone else often brings out aspects you've overlooked.)
This is the heart of the matter, I think. A large part of the brain's power seems to be tuned for sensing status and other social friend-or-foe questions. It's a genuinely complex problem, and it's hard to do while you're also thinking hard about something else.
(The flip side of this is that sometimes it's useful to anthropomorphize the elements of the problem, and that explaining a problem to someone else often brings out aspects you've overlooked.)