Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert lamp and I'm Julie duxas Julie.
Speaker 1: You go first, let me go first. You go first. Oh,
Speaker 1: you're so polite. Thank you. Uh. And which is of
Speaker 1: course the topic that we are talking about today, because
Speaker 1: we're talking about how opening doors, holding the elevator, all
Speaker 1: those little things, those pleased and thank you, the niceties
Speaker 1: that can make all the other little indignities of life
Speaker 1: seem not so much of a big deal. The elevator.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad to not use an elevator anymore every
Speaker 1: day to get to the office in our new building, right,
Speaker 1: I just take the stairs. It saves me that that
Speaker 1: that feeling you get when you rush ahead onto the
Speaker 1: elevator and then you realize there's someone else coming. But
Speaker 1: if you don't look at them, then you're not obligated
Speaker 1: to keep the door open. Yeah, there's a whole we've
Speaker 1: talked about this, we actually did. Yeah, elevator elevator etiquette,
Speaker 1: and how a lot of that, like your politeness, is
Speaker 1: probably tied to the algorithm of that elevator because if
Speaker 1: you know that that elevator is only gonna come every
Speaker 1: two seconds, you're not probably gonna hold the open door
Speaker 1: button for that person. Yeah. The algorithm for the stairs
Speaker 1: is pretty simple, and that's if I slip and fall,
Speaker 1: probably nobody will find me in there because no one
Speaker 1: uses those stairs. And that's that's you know. That's the
Speaker 1: interesting thing about politeness too, is that, um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: hope that you don't have something fall by the way,
Speaker 1: that would be terrible. Um. That's the interesting thing about
Speaker 1: politeness is that it seems like at face value it's
Speaker 1: pretty straightforward. But as we will get into there is
Speaker 1: a kind of algorithm in place that dictates our levels
Speaker 1: of politeness, and when we engage in it, Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: constantly tuning our politeness level to meet every face, every situation.
Speaker 1: It's ultimately, I keep thinking of this this massive spider web,
Speaker 1: and it's holding us all in our place, our place
Speaker 1: in society, our place in our interpersonal relationships, and just
Speaker 1: and and and we depend on that wedding just to
Speaker 1: hold it all together. It sounds kind of dastardly, the
Speaker 1: web of polite, Yes, because there's a big spider there somewhere,
Speaker 1: right indeed ready to gobble us up. Um. But you know,
Speaker 1: one of the things that we came across in our
Speaker 1: research is that politeness, as well intentioned as it can be,
Speaker 1: can sometimes be misconstrued. And a good example of this
Speaker 1: is holding doors open for men. Oh yes, yeah. And
Speaker 1: there's a research paper entitled When Door Holding Harms Gender
Speaker 1: and the Consequences of non Normative Help by Megan McCarty
Speaker 1: and Janice Kelly. And I think that title kind of
Speaker 1: says it all. Non normative help. Um. So what we're
Speaker 1: talking about here hundred and nineties unsuspecting men and women
Speaker 1: stepping through two portals into a Purdue University building. But
Speaker 1: first they were a by a male member of the
Speaker 1: research team as they walked toward the building. For half,
Speaker 1: the research associate quote took a step in front of
Speaker 1: the participant, opened the door and let the participant walk
Speaker 1: through the front door first. Very chivalrous. Right. For the
Speaker 1: other half, he reached for the adjacent door, so that
Speaker 1: the two opened their doors more or less simultaneously. Would
Speaker 1: you think that there would be weirdness from this? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think I would think there would be. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: initially I wouldn't have thought so, but once those people
Speaker 1: got on the other side of the door, there was
Speaker 1: a female research associate and she approached each subject and
Speaker 1: asked him or her to complete a short survey and
Speaker 1: on a one attend scale, they indicated UH their agreement
Speaker 1: with three statements measuring self esteem, including quote I feel
Speaker 1: that I'm a person of worth um at least on
Speaker 1: an equal plane with others, and three measuring self efficacy,
Speaker 1: including I can usually achieve what I want if I
Speaker 1: work hard for it. And the results is that male
Speaker 1: and only males, reported lower levels of self esteem and
Speaker 1: self confidence if the door had been held open for them. Oh,
Speaker 1: so it comes down to like the basic power to
Speaker 1: enter a space and and your your self worth in
Speaker 1: entering it. If someone is opening the door for you,
Speaker 1: then your masculine reptilian brain can't handle it, or your
Speaker 1: gender performing self can't handle it um And that's the
Speaker 1: gender performing part. Is interesting because there's a guy named
Speaker 1: Irving Goffman, a Canadian American sociologist, and he viewed society
Speaker 1: through what is called symbolic interaction perspective. So this is
Speaker 1: kind of like everyday behavior in the interactions between people
Speaker 1: to help explain why society is the way that it is.
Speaker 1: And Goffman applied something called dramaturgical analysis and already too
Speaker 1: in order to study this kind of social interaction. Um
Speaker 1: so he looked at this as really theater performance. In
Speaker 1: his book The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, he
Speaker 1: looked at self as an image deriving from the perceptions
Speaker 1: and responses of others that create the face of the person,
Speaker 1: and two as the actor, as a player in a
Speaker 1: game or a set of rituals. So, for self preservation's sake,
Speaker 1: the self, especially the actor representing yourself right, would be
Speaker 1: interested in cooperations, signs and symbols and well understood practices
Speaker 1: in society, like hey, you don't hope open the door
Speaker 1: for me. I'm a strong man. I don't need another
Speaker 1: man to do that. Right. So, in other words, for
Speaker 1: most of us, we inhabit these actor selves on stage
Speaker 1: responding to an audience, whoever the audience is, and we
Speaker 1: try to guide the impression and form the identity through
Speaker 1: the gaze of others, and our backstage selves are hidden away.
Speaker 1: And this is where a lot of this idea of
Speaker 1: politeness and how we perform it comes into play. I
Speaker 1: like the use of signs, symbols and ritual in this
Speaker 1: because it makes it sound like every interaction we have,
Speaker 1: every little polite interaction is is ultimately just a ritualistic
Speaker 1: activity UM dealing with an abstract self, which show which
Speaker 1: kind of mean because everything has some sort of context
Speaker 1: to it that we all understand the game rules to write, Like,
Speaker 1: if you were just given this object and you had
Speaker 1: never seen it before, you wouldn't know what to do
Speaker 1: with it or how to interact with it. You would
Speaker 1: need someone to tell you, like, this is uh, this
Speaker 1: sphere and you can open up one of the compartments.
Speaker 1: I'm holding the actual like sphere like thing um and
Speaker 1: it's empty and you can put paper clips in it.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you'd be if you've never seen it before, you
Speaker 1: would be like, what is this alien thing? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean every every little interaction, particularly the holding the door
Speaker 1: scenario that we've been discussing here, it's it's kind of
Speaker 1: its own little micro reality. It's it's own little game
Speaker 1: with a set of rules and expectations. And no matter
Speaker 1: what else is going on in the office building, or
Speaker 1: the environment, or the country or the personal lives that
Speaker 1: are going on, you have to enter that micro reality
Speaker 1: at least for a few seconds to deal with it.
Speaker 1: Full disclosure here, um, Over the past couple of years,
Speaker 1: myself and a couple of the other house staff works
Speaker 1: female staff workers here have been holding doors open for
Speaker 1: men and then just seeing if they have a certain
Speaker 1: kind of body language afterward. And just for the record,
Speaker 1: the only person who has not allowed us to open
Speaker 1: the door for him and not knowing what was going
Speaker 1: on at all, with Scott Benjamin of Carson. It was
Speaker 1: the nicest, most polite person in the world. He knows
Speaker 1: the rules of the game and he's not gonna allow
Speaker 1: you to break them. Noop alright, so Goffman theory that
Speaker 1: was nine early sixties that comes out. The next step
Speaker 1: in this study of politeness comes from with politeness theory
Speaker 1: from husband and wife researchers Steven c. Levinson and Penelope Brown.
Speaker 1: The basic concept here is that people have a social
Speaker 1: self image and they consciously projected. Okay. The self image
Speaker 1: is called face, as in you know, to save face,
Speaker 1: and it has a dual nature positive face and negative face.
Speaker 1: Positive face seeks approval, while negative face wants to be
Speaker 1: left alone, doesn't want to be imposed upon. Now what
Speaker 1: face do you have? What face are you dealing with?
Speaker 1: I mean it all, it all depends, especially when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with a face threatening act or an f t
Speaker 1: A where the face that you're you're wearing is essentially challenged.
Speaker 1: And of course there are two shades of this as well.
Speaker 1: Positive f t A s are a direct challenge to
Speaker 1: face or self image. You can think of this in
Speaker 1: terms of an insult, a socially inappropriate comment, something of
Speaker 1: that nature. Meanwhile, negative FDAs are far more confrontational. Uh,
Speaker 1: somebody has to budge, somebody has to act, and an
Speaker 1: imposition is being made. The example that that keeps coming
Speaker 1: to my mind on this one on the negative FDA
Speaker 1: is Dr Seus's story The Zacks from It was. It's
Speaker 1: a very short little story in the book The Sneeches.
Speaker 1: And you have a north going Zack and a south
Speaker 1: going Zack and they neeed together, and I believe the
Speaker 1: desert of packs, and neither one is gonna budge, like
Speaker 1: the one is saying you have to get out of
Speaker 1: my way because I'm going north and that's the way
Speaker 1: I roll. And then the south going Zack says, no,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm going south and you're in my way, and
Speaker 1: you've got to get out of the way, because that's
Speaker 1: how I roll. And they neither one budges, and civilization
Speaker 1: builds up around them and roads are built over them
Speaker 1: in the highway and packs. But but yeah, so that's
Speaker 1: that's not engaging in the act of cooperation, right, And
Speaker 1: that's ultimately what it what what is happening in in
Speaker 1: in a negative f t A is somebody has to budge.
Speaker 1: And I was thinking about the term f t A
Speaker 1: this this facial threatening act that sounds so dramatic, But
Speaker 1: have you ever been in a situation where you've been
Speaker 1: with another person or a group of people and everything
Speaker 1: is pretty light and then one person's face falls and
Speaker 1: has and drops out of that sort of cooperative thing.
Speaker 1: And it's really a very unsettling thing to see that
Speaker 1: because it's so clear that that person is upset or
Speaker 1: feels threatened or is threatening another person. Yeah, Like the
Speaker 1: classic example would be you accidentally make some sort of
Speaker 1: faux paw you make, you make an off color joke,
Speaker 1: and unknowingly it affects somebody on a personal level. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So politeness theory essentially is driving home the idea that
Speaker 1: politeness serves to both reflect and regulate our social distance. Now,
Speaker 1: politeness theory identifies for politeness strategies that a speaker uses,
Speaker 1: and the first is what is called a bald On strategy,
Speaker 1: and it's a direct approach that you would use with
Speaker 1: someone that you know really well, so like a family
Speaker 1: member or a loved one. So for example, you're at
Speaker 1: home visiting your parents, you might say, I want pizza
Speaker 1: for dinner. Right, very direct the second strategy because by
Speaker 1: the way, you don't have to worry about their faces
Speaker 1: falling so much, right they from the child on the pizza,
Speaker 1: sure is right? Right um, But again you don't have
Speaker 1: to worry worry about the ft A factor too much.
Speaker 1: The second strategy, the positive politeness strategy, shows you recognize
Speaker 1: that your audience or the person you're talking to, has
Speaker 1: a desire to be respected. It also confirms that the
Speaker 1: relationship is friendly and expresses group reciprocity. So perhaps the
Speaker 1: request would be something like, is it okay we have
Speaker 1: pizza for dinner tonight? You know, it's just a little
Speaker 1: bit softer of a lab there the negative politeness strategy.
Speaker 1: The third strategy also recognizes audiences faces, but it also
Speaker 1: recognizes that you are in some way imposing upon them. Okay,
Speaker 1: So again we're seeing degrees of relationships removed here. So
Speaker 1: maybe this is someone I wouldn't normally have dinner with,
Speaker 1: and I don't know what the preferences are, so you
Speaker 1: could say something like, um, you know, I don't wanna
Speaker 1: impose upon you or anything, but I was thinking that
Speaker 1: pizza would be great. Okay. So semantically you're throwing in
Speaker 1: some more stuff there to create that distance. And then
Speaker 1: the final strategy is called the off record indirect strategy,
Speaker 1: and this super I love this because it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of the pressure off of you. Um, because you're
Speaker 1: really trying to avoid this direct, face threatening act of
Speaker 1: asking for pizza or whatever it is. Right, Um, So
Speaker 1: what you do is you say something along the lines of, um, hey,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's national pizzaday. I heard that restaurants are
Speaker 1: giving ten percent of their profits to you and a stuff,
Speaker 1: And you're trying to make that person anticipate what you're
Speaker 1: saying and make the decision for you. Yeah, almost make
Speaker 1: them decide to do the thing you want them to do.
Speaker 1: Almost Jedi mind trick them, right, Yeah, Yeah, all all
Speaker 1: in an attempt to avoid the dreaded f t A
Speaker 1: right and in an attempt to secure cooperation. Now, I
Speaker 1: made the analogy of a web earlier, about everyone being
Speaker 1: suspended in this web, and I keep coming back to
Speaker 1: that in part because distance is such a key aspect
Speaker 1: of all of this. And when I talk about distance,
Speaker 1: I'm talking about not only spatial distance as as definitely
Speaker 1: space plays into any polite interaction how far am I
Speaker 1: away from that individual, but also psychological distance, semantic distance UM,
Speaker 1: temporal distance. Uh. It was we'll get into especially when
Speaker 1: you think of in terms of sending a letter or
Speaker 1: an email to somebody, when is it going to be received?
Speaker 1: When in time are you addressing someone? So. Politeness theory
Speaker 1: suggests that three aspects of interpersonal situations are universally related
Speaker 1: to politeness. Number one the relative power of the address
Speaker 1: see over the speaker. Number two the degree of imposition
Speaker 1: of the to be performed act, and number three the
Speaker 1: social distance between the speaker and the address see as such,
Speaker 1: According to the theory, speakers use more polite language when
Speaker 1: addressing individuals with a higher higher status UM than individuals
Speaker 1: with equal or lower status uh. They use more polite
Speaker 1: language when asking for a bigger favor versus a smaller one,
Speaker 1: and when addressing strangers versus familiar people, none of that
Speaker 1: should come as a surprise. Right. You're you're you're dealing
Speaker 1: with a police officer that just pulled you over. You're gonna, generally,
Speaker 1: you're gonna roll out all the polite, polite niceties, right,
Speaker 1: far more than you would um with just you know,
Speaker 1: a teller at a local store. Right. So. A two
Speaker 1: thousand ten paper from a Tel Aviv University Department of
Speaker 1: psychology investigated how politeness affects and is affected by the
Speaker 1: level of constroal temporal distance, of constroal distance, temporal distance,
Speaker 1: and spatial distance, and they predicted that greater politeness would
Speaker 1: be associated with higher levels of greater temporal and spatial distance.
Speaker 1: So in in examining this, they conducted no fewer than
Speaker 1: eight separate studies, and most of these were written evaluations,
Speaker 1: test quizzes. Uh. Pretty un um exciting stuff. But uh,
Speaker 1: but at the end of it, they had some some
Speaker 1: pretty key findings that shed some light on just how
Speaker 1: politeness works within a cultural construct. Uh. They said people
Speaker 1: were more polite when they addressed a person they construed
Speaker 1: in terms of abstract goals and dispositions rather than concrete
Speaker 1: means and situations. So this would be an example. This
Speaker 1: would be, um, uh, you know, a general meeting with
Speaker 1: the boss, as opposed to a we've got to hit
Speaker 1: this deadline? Where are you standing on this project meeting
Speaker 1: with the boss? Okay. They were more polite when they
Speaker 1: expect did the target to receive the message in the
Speaker 1: relatively distant future, when they referred to relatively distant future actions,
Speaker 1: and when they addressed individuals in relatively distant locations. And
Speaker 1: they found that a request to generate polite statements prompted
Speaker 1: participants to use abstract verbs. So the example here would
Speaker 1: be can you help me with some lecture materials is
Speaker 1: coded as more abstract than can you show me some
Speaker 1: lecture materials? Okay, so show is more of a demand. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, the difference between hey can you help
Speaker 1: me with this? And hey, can you do half of
Speaker 1: this for me? You know, right? Um. They found that
Speaker 1: the polite utterances were judged as pertaining to the relatively
Speaker 1: distant future and were judged as directed to addresses and
Speaker 1: relatively remote locations, which, um, which is internet. You know,
Speaker 1: we can all think of examples where we've may have
Speaker 1: addressed someone and said, hey, if you have time to
Speaker 1: get to this, and no rush on this, but if
Speaker 1: you have a minute, can You may be unloaded dishwasher,
Speaker 1: and you're all heady, sort of pushing that event, that
Speaker 1: unloading of the dishwasher into a more distant future. You're
Speaker 1: you're establishing more temporal distance between you and the person
Speaker 1: you're addressing, even if the dishwasher really needs to be
Speaker 1: unloaded in the immediate future. Yeah, and you are employing
Speaker 1: that negative politeness strategy to right the opposing part. The
Speaker 1: Tel Aviv study um also said that when instructed to
Speaker 1: use polite language and addressing another person, participants preferred a
Speaker 1: relatively large spatial distance from that person. So they're they're
Speaker 1: actually preferred to stand a little a little farther away
Speaker 1: from the individual, or perhaps uh, you know, be isolated
Speaker 1: from them across a larger desk. So, but politeness and
Speaker 1: distance seem to go hand in hand. It's uh, it's
Speaker 1: almost the equivalent I keep thinking of. You know, we
Speaker 1: can't help it make Caveman analogies with any of these
Speaker 1: sort of basic underpinnings of human behavior studies. But I
Speaker 1: think of like of of somebody encountering like an enraged
Speaker 1: ape and you don't want to make eye contact with them.
Speaker 1: You don't want to establish that closeness with them because
Speaker 1: there's danger, so you would do more to distance yourself
Speaker 1: from the danger and employ more politeness. And that's where
Speaker 1: the f t A comes from. Right, That's where the
Speaker 1: drama of that comes from. So that's on the request
Speaker 1: side of things, right, that kind of shows how tentative
Speaker 1: or sometimes how we kind of loathe to even ask
Speaker 1: for help, right, how we do it. So if you
Speaker 1: are on the flip side and someone's asked you something, um,
Speaker 1: how effective are sweet little nothings like thank you? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: Adam Grant and Francesca Gino ran four experiments looking at
Speaker 1: how the thank you sentiment played out with helpers and
Speaker 1: the research, by the way, It is published in the
Speaker 1: June issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Speaker 1: In the first study, they had sixty nine participants who
Speaker 1: were asked to provide feedback to a fictitious student named Eric. Now,
Speaker 1: the participants didn't know this was a fictitious student. They
Speaker 1: just got some feedback or they just got an email
Speaker 1: from him and so he asked for a little bit
Speaker 1: of feedback on his cover letter for a job opplcation. Now,
Speaker 1: after sending their feedback through by email, that got a
Speaker 1: reply from Eric asking for more help with another cover letter.
Speaker 1: Half of them received this follow up with a thank
Speaker 1: you incorporated into it, and half of them received a
Speaker 1: follow up from Eric that was neutral with no thank
Speaker 1: you in it. So the results were that helped Eric
Speaker 1: in comparison to sixty six when those people received a
Speaker 1: thank you, so already you can see that thirty two
Speaker 1: to sixty six that that was. That's a pretty big
Speaker 1: impetus for trying to help someone again if you receive
Speaker 1: that little small token of gratitude. And this has a
Speaker 1: kind of pay it forward aspect to it, because the
Speaker 1: next day, the same participants received an other um request,
Speaker 1: this time from a fictitious person named Stephen, who asked
Speaker 1: if they could help them, And the percentage who offered
Speaker 1: to help Stephen was twenty five when they had received
Speaker 1: no gratitude from Eric, but this shot up to when
Speaker 1: they had been thanked by Eric. So the politeness of
Speaker 1: Eric's billed over into their willingness to help Stephen exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it affected that in as that sort of pay
Speaker 1: it forward aspect to it. Now. The third and fourth
Speaker 1: studies yielded similar results, but they used face to face
Speaker 1: scenarios and all had the same idea that the simple
Speaker 1: act of gratitude was helping to ratchet up the feelings
Speaker 1: of self worth in the respondents. In the participants, So
Speaker 1: it's not just a you know, nicety of saying hey,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. It's actually kind of feeding into
Speaker 1: the ego a bit. Yeah, it's interesting to how then
Speaker 1: each interaction is kind of helping to maintain the social
Speaker 1: order of the politeness h algorithm. Yeah, because it's basically saying,
Speaker 1: I'm imposing upon you my apologies. Can you help me?
Speaker 1: Because we live in this cooperative society and that's how
Speaker 1: we've survived as a species. How about it? And the
Speaker 1: other person says, sure, here you go on. The other person,
Speaker 1: thank you for doing that. I know you didn't need to.
Speaker 1: All right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we're going to discuss what's the most
Speaker 1: polite country in the world, what's the least polite country
Speaker 1: in the world, and can you be too polite? All right,
Speaker 1: we're back. What is the most polite country in the world. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm sure everyone has their own sort of individual take
Speaker 1: on this based on their own individual interactions with other
Speaker 1: cultures in other countries. But generally speaking, when people talk
Speaker 1: about polite cultures and phenomenal politeness, they talk about Japanese politeness.
Speaker 1: They are famous for it, yes, and and indeed, when
Speaker 1: we say phenomenal it is studied as a phenomenon um
Speaker 1: by researchers UH. Linguistic politeness in Japanese culture UH has
Speaker 1: especially been an item of study by Stanford's uh Yoshiko Matsumoto,
Speaker 1: Professor of Japanese Language and Linguistics. In her work in
Speaker 1: the late eighties and early nineties, Matsumoto argued that the
Speaker 1: themes of Anglo Saxon individualism in politeness theory doesn't even
Speaker 1: really work with Japanese culture. That the end that the
Speaker 1: very concept of face, particularly that of negative face, is
Speaker 1: is ultimately just kind of alien to the Japanese. She said,
Speaker 1: quote what is of paramount concern to a Japanese is
Speaker 1: not his or her own territory, but the position in
Speaker 1: relation to others in the group and his her acceptance
Speaker 1: of others. Loss of face is associated with the perception
Speaker 1: of others that one has not comprehended and acknowledged the
Speaker 1: structure and hierarchy of the group. Mm hmm. So an
Speaker 1: example of this that we see in in just the
Speaker 1: linguistics of the whole scenario. In English, when we meet somebody,
Speaker 1: what do we say, nice to meet you, Nice to
Speaker 1: meet you, which, of course, is such such an empty statement.
Speaker 1: It's nice, like nice? What is even like it's a
Speaker 1: pleasure to meet you? Is it a pleasure like chocolate
Speaker 1: is a pleasure? Yeah, yeah, it's it's such an empty statement.
Speaker 1: But you're you have to say it. You have to
Speaker 1: say something or some version of it, because it's just
Speaker 1: start part of the contract, part of the back and
Speaker 1: forth is the rules of the game. Okay. Uh. But
Speaker 1: it's certainly a phrase with a lot of distance in it, right,
Speaker 1: it's just merely nice to meet you, to make your acquaintance. Uh,
Speaker 1: lots of spatial distance, lots of symbolic distance, lots of Hey,
Speaker 1: let's start this on a positive foot. Yes we are.
Speaker 1: This is very clinical. Really. However, in Japan, a typical
Speaker 1: form of greeting is the following, and I apologize to
Speaker 1: our our our Japanese speaking listeners. I'm I'm sure I'm
Speaker 1: not going to hit this correctly. Dozu your oshako agamash
Speaker 1: which means I ask you to please treat me well,
Speaker 1: take care of me, which to to foreign ears, uh,
Speaker 1: it might sound a little personal. It sounds very vulnerable
Speaker 1: and very honest. Right, yeah, it's like, hey, take care
Speaker 1: of me, suckle me. You know, I don't think the
Speaker 1: suckle me is okay, but it does have an aspect
Speaker 1: to it that's like, hey, I'm meeting you, I'm I'm vulnerable,
Speaker 1: and um, treat me well. I mean, that's that's much more.
Speaker 1: That resonates a lot more than nice to meet you. Now,
Speaker 1: if you were going to go strictly by politeness theory, however,
Speaker 1: this would be a bit of a negative face and position. Right.
Speaker 1: It lacks the distance of that in that English language politeness,
Speaker 1: But in this we see that the But in this
Speaker 1: it really zeroes in on the focus on inter dependence
Speaker 1: in Japanese culture um and that interdependence even has a
Speaker 1: special name in Japanese culture um Amaru and it uh.
Speaker 1: It's all about placing yourself in another's care as a
Speaker 1: sign of respect. Um also respecting your elders and realizing
Speaker 1: that you're you're ultimately under their protection, under their guidance,
Speaker 1: and therefore it's a it's a sign of respect, and
Speaker 1: you're you're recognizing the existing social hierarchy by saying, please
Speaker 1: take care of me. Okay. So instead of denying the
Speaker 1: threat as hey, nice to meet you. Everything's good here, right,
Speaker 1: there's no threat, it's more an acknowledgement of a possible threat. Yeah, right, hey,
Speaker 1: take care of me. I know you that you could
Speaker 1: not do me a solid here, right, but please do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And if you fail to recognize this hierarchy, um and
Speaker 1: and the ranking here and the interconnectedness, then you're creating
Speaker 1: an impression of ignorance or lack of self control, and
Speaker 1: then you lose face for real. Huh. Okay. Now, in
Speaker 1: terms of the least polite country, this one is a
Speaker 1: lot harder to get to a lot of people. When
Speaker 1: it's represented in the media, at least frame it as
Speaker 1: sort of a tourist goes to this country and they
Speaker 1: find these people to be rude. Well, that's erroneous in
Speaker 1: terms of logic anyway, because it's you know, that sort
Speaker 1: of experience is freighted with cultural expectations and violations of norms. Right,
Speaker 1: So my norm in the United States is gonna be
Speaker 1: different this one else's norm in France, for instance. So
Speaker 1: the best way to get at this is again to
Speaker 1: go more towards that direct indirect nature of language. And
Speaker 1: this is really plumped by Eva Ogerman's excellent article Politeness
Speaker 1: and Indirectness Across Cultures A comparison of English, German, Polish
Speaker 1: and Russian requests. Again interact direct and requests that we're
Speaker 1: dealing with here, and she writes that English and German,
Speaker 1: for example, tend to contain the more distancing and polite
Speaker 1: indirect request, whereas Russian and Polish is more direct. She
Speaker 1: writes quote. What Brown and Levinson's theory does not account
Speaker 1: for is that some cultures appreciate pragmatic clarity while associating
Speaker 1: directness with honesty. Indirect requests, on the other hand, not
Speaker 1: only increase quote the interpretive demands on the hearer. Uh.
Speaker 1: In other words, you have to really listen carefully if
Speaker 1: I'm saying, hey, it's National Pizza Day, to try to
Speaker 1: figure out what it is that I'm hinting at, she says,
Speaker 1: but can also quote make the speaker sound devious and
Speaker 1: the nepulative. Indeed, coming back to the Jetti mind trick thing,
Speaker 1: why are you trying to trick me into thinking pizza
Speaker 1: is a great idea when really you just want me
Speaker 1: to you just want pizza. Right, So she's saying in
Speaker 1: this example, um, you know, the Russian here isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: discounting that direct approach because that feels more honest. And
Speaker 1: she also says, a Russian here or does not necessarily
Speaker 1: regard a request as an imposition on her or his
Speaker 1: personal freedom and a potential refuse. It involves less face
Speaker 1: loss for a Russian speaker than it does for somebody
Speaker 1: with an Anglo Saxon cultural background. In other words, if
Speaker 1: you make a request and the person says no, then
Speaker 1: it's not as heart wrenching as it would be in
Speaker 1: in an Anglo Saxon exchange. It's interesting too, uh. You know,
Speaker 1: when you think of Russian culture, one of the sort
Speaker 1: of stereotypes that comes to mind is very close personal
Speaker 1: interaction during greetings, right, kisses on the face even uh,
Speaker 1: you know one one man kissing another on the face,
Speaker 1: or or you know Vladimir Putin kissing a small boy,
Speaker 1: and it's it's all perfectly acceptable. Well, you're right, So
Speaker 1: you see that correlation with there's a directness with language,
Speaker 1: and there's a directness with personal space. So the nonverable
Speaker 1: a viable matchup. Yeah. Meanwhile, in the in Japanese cultures,
Speaker 1: you definitely see more of a uh a spatial distance
Speaker 1: in interactions as a whole. And yet both of them
Speaker 1: you would think of them as being completely different, but
Speaker 1: both of them are treading on the concept of honesty
Speaker 1: and and ultimately, like no, no no matter what particular culture
Speaker 1: you're looking at, and their various levels of politeness, their
Speaker 1: various semantic systems of politeness, I mean, it's all coming
Speaker 1: down to maintaining that webbing, maintaining that system of interactions
Speaker 1: that keeps everyone sane and uh and uh and and
Speaker 1: and functional. Right. So, in this respect, there's a worth
Speaker 1: to being agreeable, right to putting yourself out there, to
Speaker 1: being polite. But the question then comes up, could you
Speaker 1: be too agreeable? Could you be too almost obedient? Ah? Yes? Uh?
Speaker 1: And in this week get into Stanley Milgram's obedient study,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with already,
Speaker 1: at least you know surface level and of course, this
Speaker 1: is where we end up discussing the Holocaust while examining politeness. This,
Speaker 1: uh this study from Milgrom came up in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: particularly the experiments began in July ninety one, just three
Speaker 1: months after the start of the trial of nerds of
Speaker 1: German Nazi war criminal Adolf Aikmann in Jerusalem. So the
Speaker 1: idea here, of course is we're millions of indige of
Speaker 1: individuals just following orders when it came to the Holocaust,
Speaker 1: or were they actual accomplices? Could could you essentially just
Speaker 1: be so polite and fall in line and in doing so,
Speaker 1: you know, lead straight to the gates of hell. Uh So,
Speaker 1: that's what he decided to examine in a series of experiments.
Speaker 1: And it's it's worth noting that there were nineteen of
Speaker 1: these in all. This wasn't just one single experiment, but
Speaker 1: they were all kind of shades of the same the
Speaker 1: same um. But they are all sort of shades of
Speaker 1: the same format. Okay. Uh So, basically, particularly with the
Speaker 1: most well known example of the experiment, which I think
Speaker 1: was Experiment five. Yet forty men recruited using newspay of
Speaker 1: her ads, paid four dollars and fifty each. They were
Speaker 1: brought in uh and divided into groups. So you had
Speaker 1: teachers who were asked to pull a lever and administer
Speaker 1: a shock every time a learner answered a question incorrectly.
Speaker 1: Learners were heard but not seen, and uh they were
Speaker 1: part of the experiment. There wasn't really somebody being shocked
Speaker 1: in the next room. They were just pretending to be shocked,
Speaker 1: you know. All the while the learners are complaining about
Speaker 1: the shocks, which increased by fifteen volts for each wrong answer.
Speaker 1: At the three volte level, the learners bang on the
Speaker 1: wall for release, and beyond this there's only silence. And
Speaker 1: at this point the experiment or the authority figure in
Speaker 1: the scenario instructs the participant to treat this silence as
Speaker 1: an incorrect response and deliver a further shock to the learner. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's a pretty kind of diabolical scenario. Going into this,
Speaker 1: it was predicted that no more than three out of
Speaker 1: a hundred participants would actually deliver that maximum shock to
Speaker 1: a silent learner. Only three. That was that was one
Speaker 1: of the predictions going in. In reality, six of the
Speaker 1: participants in Milgram's best known study again experiment five delivered
Speaker 1: the maximum shock thirty five percent. Then we're refusing to
Speaker 1: administer that highest shock level to this individual who is
Speaker 1: presumably unconscious or even dead following these previous shocks. Now,
Speaker 1: the obedience rates were different depending on the experiment. Again
Speaker 1: there were there were nineteen of them, and they be
Speaker 1: varied with the scenario a bit. In each one, obedience
Speaker 1: rates dropped to forty seven point five percent in a
Speaker 1: Rundown apartment building environment versus a gale campus environment for
Speaker 1: for experiment number five. And then there was yet another
Speaker 1: experiment in which the learners only had to take notes
Speaker 1: about the shock, they didn't have to actually administer it,
Speaker 1: and in that obedience rates hit ninety two point five percent.
Speaker 1: So they were just bureaucratically a part of the shock,
Speaker 1: and therefore they were more obedient. So the more distance,
Speaker 1: the more they could sort of objectify that person, yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and then carry that out. So how this plays into
Speaker 1: politeness theory and politeness across cultures. Milgram was essentially an
Speaker 1: evolutionary psychologist, and the central idea here is that there
Speaker 1: is a survival advantage to submitting to authority. He recognized
Speaker 1: the humans evolved a psychological mechanism for obedience, which he
Speaker 1: called the agentic state. And in this state, normal moral
Speaker 1: inhibitions are bypassed and we become a mere agent of
Speaker 1: an authority. So the idea here is that there is
Speaker 1: there's an evolutionary advantage to politeness, there's an evolutionary advantage
Speaker 1: to staying in line with the social norms and obeying
Speaker 1: the authority figures that are sending you orders, suggestions, what
Speaker 1: have you okay now? To explore this, u there was
Speaker 1: an extension of the Milgram study by researchers at the
Speaker 1: University of Graham Noble Alps in France, published in the
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen edition of the Journal of Personality.
Speaker 1: And they wanted to see which personality types were more
Speaker 1: or less likely to obey orders that resulted in pain
Speaker 1: to others. And so participants were thirty five males, thirty
Speaker 1: one females fifty four from the general population and they
Speaker 1: were contacted by phone eight months after their participation in
Speaker 1: a study transposing Milgrom's obedience paradigm. And these interviews were
Speaker 1: presented as opinion polls with no stated ties to the
Speaker 1: earlier experiment, and the personality was assessed by the Big
Speaker 1: Five Mini Markers questionnaire, which was also used in the
Speaker 1: Millgram studies, and this includes categories of personality like conscientiousness
Speaker 1: and agreeableness. Now, political orientation and social activism were also measured,
Speaker 1: and the results confirmed hypotheses that the conscientiousness and agreeableness
Speaker 1: would be associated with willingness to administer high intensity electric
Speaker 1: shocks to a victim. Um. The subjects what we're seeing
Speaker 1: here again had a more agreeable and conscientious personality the
Speaker 1: sort of disposition, and they were more likely to follow
Speaker 1: the orders given to them, um, even if it meant
Speaker 1: delivering these painful shocks so that they didn't go against authorities.
Speaker 1: So just sort of underscores all of what you were
Speaker 1: talking about with the Milgram studies. Uh, now this is interesting.
Speaker 1: People with more left wing political leanings were less likely
Speaker 1: to deliver the painful shocks, and a particular group of
Speaker 1: study participants were described as holding study and refusing to
Speaker 1: harm others. And this group was women who had previously
Speaker 1: participated in rebellious political activism. And I think all of
Speaker 1: this kind of all the circles back to why why
Speaker 1: do atrocities happen? Does it? It's politeness? Really, factor that
Speaker 1: much into obedience. Can it be so extreme that, um,
Speaker 1: that it ties back to this revival instinct of authorities
Speaker 1: and obedience. Yeah, I mean, of course it's gonna it's
Speaker 1: gonna vary depending on the particular cultural situation as well
Speaker 1: as the political climate. Right, But it's all really fascinating
Speaker 1: when you when you look at politeness in this way.
Speaker 1: It's not just the pleas and thank you is that
Speaker 1: we try to instill in children, you know, for good
Speaker 1: reason because they will get more help. Um. But there
Speaker 1: there's a lot more going under the cover here of
Speaker 1: the semantics of it. Yeah. Indeed, I mean we are
Speaker 1: talking about something that kind of to to an extent,
Speaker 1: holds us all together, or at least allows us to
Speaker 1: work within a given culture. And I think that's why
Speaker 1: you see too in computer mediated communication, talking about email
Speaker 1: and talking about Facebook, Twitter, so on and so forth,
Speaker 1: you see less of a regard for the feelings of
Speaker 1: others because you don't have that sort of you know,
Speaker 1: face to face interaction. You don't have to see that
Speaker 1: the look of spoilage across someone's face when you've said
Speaker 1: something terrible. Indeed, Yeah, I mean, the uh, the modern
Speaker 1: world of email and online reviews and uh facebook comments.
Speaker 1: That really does skew everything a bit, especially when you
Speaker 1: start thinking again about those factors of of distance in space,
Speaker 1: distance and time, um, and how that factors into you
Speaker 1: thinking about the other person on the other end of
Speaker 1: a given email review. Yeah, and again it's it's occupying
Speaker 1: the headspace of the other person and kind of ties
Speaker 1: back to empathy as well. And I was thinking, um,
Speaker 1: even when when you're thinking about the cadence of UM
Speaker 1: two people talking, there are specific rules in place there,
Speaker 1: rules that even whales observe. Yes, this is pretty interesting
Speaker 1: course of Whales are known uh for some of their
Speaker 1: their whale songs right there communicating uh with each other
Speaker 1: across vast distances. Uh. And what happens when those calls overlap, right,
Speaker 1: those conversations overlap, while, as it turns out, the whales
Speaker 1: are actually uh doing what they can to remain polite
Speaker 1: and courteous of those other conversations. Yeah. Natalia Ciaro Viskia
Speaker 1: of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and her colleagues
Speaker 1: discovered that whales change the intervals between their echolocating clicks
Speaker 1: in a way that seems to prevent cluttering the echoes
Speaker 1: from these other calls, and she says, quote in other words,
Speaker 1: whales are polite listeners. They do not interrupt each other,
Speaker 1: which would be really important because there's there's uh information
Speaker 1: that's trying to be uh disseminated here, and if you
Speaker 1: don't get the information, well, hey, that might affect your survival. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it's the sort of the the Jinga tower
Speaker 1: of communication, and certainly the human Jinga Tower of of
Speaker 1: the intercommunication is far more complicated. Uh, but but the
Speaker 1: simplified whale model uh illustrates that that anytime there is
Speaker 1: uh there there's there's there's a social system in place,
Speaker 1: you have to have at least some level of politeness
Speaker 1: to make it work right or else you're going to
Speaker 1: be shunned. Yeah, and that's the really the crux of
Speaker 1: all of this, whether it's from an authority figure or
Speaker 1: from the group. Um, which of course led us to
Speaker 1: wonder if there are any whale jerks out there that
Speaker 1: have been ejected from the group because I keep talking
Speaker 1: over the other members. Yeah, because yeah, we were talking
Speaker 1: earlier about this, like, to what extent is whale society
Speaker 1: such that a rude whale just simply dies out and
Speaker 1: and therefore nature selects for polite whales, whereas in human culture,
Speaker 1: you you know, unmistakably you have individuals who uh don't
Speaker 1: really work well in polite society, but perhaps they have
Speaker 1: a skill that still makes them very valuable, you know,
Speaker 1: like that, you know, the guy at the prime primordial
Speaker 1: camp fire, and then maybe not primorial, like like some
Speaker 1: guy at a prehistoric campfire. Maybe he's not great about
Speaker 1: joining in with the post meal conversation, but he's the
Speaker 1: best at grounding down uh, you know, weasel bones into
Speaker 1: necessary paste. So you've got to keep around. And that's
Speaker 1: why we developed willful inattention, as we discussed in that
Speaker 1: episode about willfully ignoring someone. Indeed. All right, so there
Speaker 1: you have a politeness. You know, hopefully you have a
Speaker 1: more nuanced understanding and appreciation for all those little niceties
Speaker 1: to fill our life and to fill our interactions. Now,
Speaker 1: in the meantime, do you want to check out more
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