Page 400 - The Social Animal

382 The Social Animal

you. So, naturally, you pause to listen. Clearly, the things she says
about you will have an impact on how you feel about her. It is obvi-
ous that she has no ulterior motives; indeed, she doesn’t even know
you are eavesdropping. Thus, if she tells her partner that she was im-
pressed by you, that she liked you, that she found you bright, witty,
charming, gracious, honest, and exciting, my guess is that this disclo-
sure will increase your liking for her. On the other hand, if she indi-
cates that she was unimpressed, that she disliked you, found you dull,
boring, dishonest, stupid, and vulgar, my guess is that this revelation
will decrease your liking for her.
So far, so good. But I’m sure that’s not very interesting to you;
you’ve always known that the more good things we hear about our-
selves, the better we like the speaker (unless that speaker is trying to
con us), and the more bad things we hear about ourselves, the more
we dislike the person who says them. Everybody knows that—but
it happens to be untrue. Imagine this: You have attended seven con-
secutive parties, and miracle of miracles, the same general event has
occurred each time. You chat with a person for several minutes, you
leave, and when you come back, you overhear her talking about you.
It’s the same person each time. Her responses might remain con-
stant throughout her seven encounters with you, or they might vary.
There are four possibilities that are particularly interesting to me:
(1) You overhear the person saying exclusively positive things about
you on all seven occasions; (2) you overhear her saying exclusively
negative things about you on all seven occasions; (3) her first cou-
ple of evaluations are negative, but they gradually become increas-
ingly positive until they equal her statements in the exclusively
positive situation and then level off; and (4) her first couple of eval-
uations are positive, but they gradually become more negative until
they equal her statements in the exclusively negative situation and
then level off. Which situation would render the person most attrac-
tive to you?
According to a simple reward-cost idea of liking, you should like
the person most in the first situation, in which she says exclusively
positive things, and you should like her least (or dislike her most) in
the second situation, in which she says exclusively negative things.
This seems obvious. Because positive statements are rewarding, the
more the better; because negative statements are punishing, the more
the worse.