[HN Gopher] When we learn more about a stranger, we feel like th...
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When we learn more about a stranger, we feel like they know us
better too
Author : amichail
Score : 144 points
Date : 2022-05-22 12:24 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (digest.bps.org.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (digest.bps.org.uk)
| jedimastert wrote:
| Oddly enough, I have a surprising amount of experience with this.
| I used to play piano for a church of ~500 where my dad is one of
| the pastors in my hometown, and played a lot of music around town
| as well. All of those factors together meant that a _lot_ of
| people knew way more about me than I knew about them.
|
| In my experience, many of these folks thought they have much more
| of a relationship than I did. People who knew my name and would
| strike up conversations in the grocery store like I knew them at
| all outside of these conversations. The worst part is that I got
| used to pretending like I knew people and navigating very fake
| conversations, in a way that I was not a fan of. It's a form of
| masking that I got very good at.
|
| I'm moving back to my hometown soon because I've gotten a remote
| job and my family needs the support system right now. This is an
| aspect I'm not very excited to get back to.
| paraph1n wrote:
| I'm confused as to why this is being framed so negatively.
|
| What's wrong with people being more friendly with you? Is it
| that they waste too much of your time?
| robocat wrote:
| It is common for people to take offence if they recognise
| you, but you don't recognise them. It is not pleasant to
| unintentionally cause offence when you don't recognise
| someone.
|
| I suspect feeling offended has something to do with reacting
| to perceived social hierarchy signals.
|
| Although I had someone take offence the other day because
| they had got fatter, and I didn't recognise them, and they
| were over-sensitive about their body figure.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| I wonder if this is an opportunity to start fresh with these
| people. I.e., just openly announcing what you told us?
|
| No idea if it would work, but IME most adults are understanding
| about the challenges of adolescence.
|
| And I'm just guessing here, but I'll bet you're more likely to
| get some _real_ friends by being open.
|
| (I'm not saying it's easy. Just throwing the idea out there for
| your consideration.)
| softfalcon wrote:
| Alright, same thing here, but a bit smaller, cause my Dad was
| just the troop leader of a large contingent of scouts. Hundreds
| of parents and kids knew me, but I mostly just "pretended" to
| know them like you did.
|
| I've met up with these people, didn't know a single one of
| them. You just plainly say, "sorry, it's been quite a few years
| how do we know each other?"
|
| If they push harder, just say, "sorry, my Dad knew a lot of
| people, it's all a flash of faces when you're a kid."
|
| Trust me, people will get it and not give ya a hard time. When
| one person did, the others told him to bugger off and stop
| being so self important.
|
| From there on, you can start anew. Just ask them their names
| and move on.
| tomcam wrote:
| Yes. This is the answer. Harder up front but works out better
| for everyone in the long run.
| deebosong wrote:
| Without trying to gas you up or make you feel one way or
| another about it via the associations of these words/
| definitions/ lables, this sounds like a textbook example of a
| parasocial relationship, or a microcosm of what celebrities
| must experience.
| jedimastert wrote:
| > this sounds like a textbook example of a parasocial
| relationship
|
| I really had to try and not use that word, but it very much
| was.
| lupire wrote:
| Parasocial is a bit different. Parasocial is when the
| celebrity fakes engagement with stuff like mass messaging
| that pretends to be personal.
| flycaliguy wrote:
| I have a similar experience in my neighbourhood. I live on the
| corner and have no privacy across my backyard. I spend a lot of
| time playing with my young kids. Needless to say all the
| boomers 'round here know everything about me.
|
| My advice is to accept it, don't "over mask" but don't forget
| that there are a handful of benefits to the situation. Lean
| into the benefits.
| p-e-w wrote:
| I'm not a fan of the "duh, your monkey brain gets everything
| wrong all the time" vibes that articles like this one tend to
| give off. The very first sentence already labels this cognitive
| pattern as a "mistake". It's not a mistake, it's a heuristic.
| Psychologists would do well to learn the difference between the
| two. You haven't found a flaw in the brain, you've found a
| mechanism the brain uses to navigate the world in the absence of
| unlimited knowledge and cognitive resources.
| amelius wrote:
| When you learn about a celebrity and then you assume they know
| you too, you are clearly making a mistake. And the heuristic
| probably doesn't work well in the digital age.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| I would say that is still applicable and valid. like any
| huristic, there is opportunity for abuse, but this isn't new.
|
| I think what the huristic gets at is the idea of like
| mindedness and similarity.
|
| It would be interesting to explore the opposite effect, whee
| the information shared is hostile or unrelatable. Would
| people still feel more understood or less?
|
| What would the reaction be if the information shared was "I
| am from a hostile tribe and hate people like you"
| p-e-w wrote:
| But the underlying thought pattern isn't a mistake or flaw.
| It's a perfectly reasonable baseline assumption that's
| hardwired into our brains for good reason. When you travel to
| the Sahara and you assume that it's not going to rain, you
| will sometimes be mistaken. But that doesn't mean the
| _assumption_ is a mistake.
| amelius wrote:
| The assumption can be a mistake if you have more
| information.
| [deleted]
| nn3 wrote:
| I guess that's why democratic elections work. We believe the
| elected politician knows us because we know some things about
| them, even though they have no clue about nearly all of their
| constituents.
| [deleted]
| weeksie wrote:
| This is one of the reasons why I have pulled back from social
| media. In feeds I see a random sample of the most anxious people
| I grew up with and find myself knowing more about their lives
| than I do about people I care about. I'd prefer to spend my
| finite attention on relationships that are actually important to
| me.
| lupire wrote:
| The solution for that is probably to spend time with your close
| friends, not hide from everyone else.
| Ecstatify wrote:
| When I see articles with no mention of sample size and no figures
| I just assume it's junk science.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Apparently they openly published the data from the study:
| https://osf.io/mkgwr/
| marcosdumay wrote:
| It's science reporting. Unfortunately, the phrase "junk science
| report" is redundant nowadays, but it tells you nothing about
| the actual science.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Reasonable. But amusingly, I have the additional heuristic that
| sample size complaints mean that commenters don't understand
| statistics.
|
| Not making fun of you. Just sharing what I thought was an
| interesting reaction I had to your comment: after all, it's a
| reasonable comment where this heuristic fails.
| [deleted]
| gumby wrote:
| Not a terrible heuristic, but it could just as well be simply
| crappy reporting, which is common, especially in the sciences.
|
| They do at least link to the original paper, but unfortunately
| it's not yet in sci hub and the abstract contains none of those
| details.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| The co-author tweeted a link to an open full-text pdf:
|
| https://rdcu.be/cH5lt
| wolframhempel wrote:
| This exact topic was discussed today on the "no stupid questions
| podcast" by "Freakonomics" author Stephen Dubner and "Grit"
| author Angela Duckworth:
|
| https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/100-is-it-weird-for-ad...
| jstx1 wrote:
| I was just about to ask OP if they listened to NSQ this
| morning.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| According to one of the co-author's tweets[0], the full-text PDF
| is openly available[1].
|
| [0]:
| https://twitter.com/michaellafores/status/149978283377425204...
|
| [1]: https://rdcu.be/cH5lt
| wunderlust wrote:
| This title sounds like something written by a robot.
| danschumann wrote:
| So to combat falling into parasocial not-really-relationships, we
| should see their content as not really them, not really
| indicative of who they are, anything we have to tell ourselves to
| not feel as if we're connected when we're not. False connection
| is worse than no connection at all, like believing lies is worse
| than "I just don't know".
| gunfighthacksaw wrote:
| As someone who struggled with and had to 'first principles'
| social skills, I feel this even in many mundane interactions.
|
| People wear masks all the time because sometimes their true
| self is not conducive to what they are doing at that time.
|
| For a celebrity entertainer who needs to appeal to a crowd of
| tens of thousands, their Dunbar's number, even optimistically,
| will be orders of magnitude smaller.
|
| Therefore, the gap of inner circle-audience will be made up by
| an act relying on their ability/looks/charm which is
| necessarily contrived and not reflective of their true self.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| When we learn more about a stranger, we feel like they know us
| better because they do know the most important thing (to them)
| about us: that we are capable and willing to learn more about
| them.
| theknocker wrote:
| boondaburrah wrote:
| "without increasing the number of potentially fraught officer-
| citizen interactions"
|
| My dude, this /is/ a potentially fraught officer-citizen
| interaction. The police have done something unusual, therefore a
| chilling effect is going to kick in.
| teekert wrote:
| Yeah, just listen to a podcast of some dude or dudette for
| several years and man they become part of your life.
| random-human wrote:
| Had a friend vent about their parents cutting a phone call off
| cause the parents were 'having breakfast with friends' and they
| were about to be on again. on tv. friends == fox & friends.
| loceng wrote:
| How does this relate to parasocial relationships with online
| streamers or NSFW content providers on places like OnlyFans?
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It seems like it would largely apply. Part of the attraction is
| the reciprocal positive feedback and sense of familiarity.
| loceng wrote:
| This obviously could allow for a widening misalignment on a
| deeper level than we can easily observe.
|
| I'm curious how this misalignment may manifest for the
| person's mental and physical health - as well as greater
| societal health in the long-term. If a person isn't bonding
| in reciprocal way with others ideally and in-person, and to
| use or have those people as a "soundboard" or counterweight
| to themselves.
|
| If they are mostly with their own beliefs or current
| understandings of things without them being challenged by
| enough social interaction - then beliefs won't be kept in as
| much check as otherwise would be, where there's more chance
| that you'll be around peers that will question or challenge
| your beliefs on a deeper level; not thinking even anything
| super nefarious but we learn and organize our own
| brain/thoughts by talking with others, and how critical
| thinking is developed.
|
| If using a parasocial relationship as a crutch without
| realizing it, nor being guided towards not needing it as a
| crutch, then there's going to be a growing imbalance for the
| individual and society's function.
|
| I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with online
| streaming of games or OnlyFans NSFW content - it becomes a
| problem when it's more than just entertainment and more of an
| addiction.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| If your hypothesis is that parasocial relationships are not
| a healthy substitute for social relationships, I think most
| people would intuitively agree.
|
| I think the bigger question is the degree to which
| Parasocial relationships replace or compete with social
| relationships. I am more skeptical on this point.
|
| I thought this paper was an interesting introduction and
| exploration of the topic:
|
| _The one-and-a-half sided parasocial relationship: The
| curious case of live streaming_
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S24519588
| 2...
| Traubenfuchs wrote:
| This is probably a part of stalking. You learn a lot about
| someone who doesn't care or even know about you.
| danwills wrote:
| I'm not sure that it's an unreasonable thing for humans (or more
| generally: communal conscious agents) to work this way. Indeed we
| should probably just accept it for now and make use of the
| phenomena as the article suggests by connecting people with more
| details about others in-authority around them.
|
| Once a person knows more (relevant, accurate & truthful)
| information about another person then they will have a better
| mental-model of them, and I think that this will often make them
| feel like the other person _could_ know them in better detail in-
| response as a person (even though there has only been one
| direction of information-flow so far).
|
| The error could be huge if the base-assumption is wrong, but if
| it's not wrong then we could already know some specific details
| of the other person's mind quite well indeed (meme-complex-
| detected!).
|
| In certain cases, especially around the description of qualities
| such as approachability and humility, hearing of these things
| from a speaker and in particular if they are common with the
| listener, could reasonably suggest that the speaker might also
| recognize these same qualities in the listener, and this could
| imply a possible connection without any bi-directional
| information transfer needed.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| Unfortunately such concepts are widely exploited for rather
| dubious purposes. I'd generally hope that people could learn to
| separate the informational content of communication from the
| emotional content of communication. The advertising technique
| of 'the trusted third-party spokesperson' (independent doctors
| recommending pharmaceuticals, etc.) relies entirely on this
| sense of trust and tribal identitarianism.
|
| During the run-up to the 2008-2009 subprime crisis, there were
| housing brokers who relied heavily on identitarianism and trust
| to market adjustable-rate mortgages to various groups. Matching
| up sellers to buyers by race/religion/gender etc. was a pretty
| effective technique for getting signatures on loan agreements.
| The result was many trusting people ended up with loans that
| blew up on them a few years later, resulting in many loan
| defaults and resulting economic collapses.
|
| On the other hand, using such tactics is helpful in getting
| accurate information to people. If you ran a public health
| campaign aimed at reducing infectious disease transmission, a
| positive goal by almost any measure, then matching the message
| to the group would likely improve adoption of various effective
| measures (handwashing & general sanitation, for example).
|
| In general, though, people are better off if they can extract
| the information from a sales pitch and make their decisions on
| the basis of rational analysis, not on emotional resonance.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Exactly this. If you learn that someone is from your same
| tribe, shares the same experiences, or shares the same values
| this transmits real information.
|
| The information can mean that the other does in fact understand
| you better, even if they don't know you personally.
|
| I would argue that it's a valid heuristic and not out of place
| in the modern world.
|
| You see it all the time in social interactions where
| individuals want to be relatable. Of course I can be
| manipulated, but that doesn't mean it isn't of value
| glacials wrote:
| > The officers themselves also dropped off cards to local
| residents containing similar information...The team found that
| residents of the developments that had received the intervention
| believed it more likely that local officers would find out about
| illegal activity than residents of the control areas (though
| there was no significant effect on residents' perceptions of how
| well police officers knew them).
|
| This seems like a leap--couldn't these folks instead be thinking
| "oh the police stopped by my building, they are paying
| attention"? The real study is behind a paywall so I'm curious if
| this was controlled for.
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