human nature?
Jul. 29th, 2004 01:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kellinatorExpanded from my last post...
Why is it that we gravitate to people who treat us poorly and frequently ignore people who treat us well? I'm not just talking about a romantic context, either. Think of the really nice person at work. The one who always asks how you're doing, bakes you cookies. In other words, the one who drives everyone crazy. In your school days, were the popular kids the nice kids? In my school, they usually weren't. That was reserved for the rich kids, the good-looking kids, the athletic kids. Why do we want to invest time and energy in people who obviously aren't interested in doing the same for us?
I'd love it if somebody could prove me wrong here, that people don't actually do this all the time, but I don't have that much faith in human nature.
Why is it that we gravitate to people who treat us poorly and frequently ignore people who treat us well? I'm not just talking about a romantic context, either. Think of the really nice person at work. The one who always asks how you're doing, bakes you cookies. In other words, the one who drives everyone crazy. In your school days, were the popular kids the nice kids? In my school, they usually weren't. That was reserved for the rich kids, the good-looking kids, the athletic kids. Why do we want to invest time and energy in people who obviously aren't interested in doing the same for us?
I'd love it if somebody could prove me wrong here, that people don't actually do this all the time, but I don't have that much faith in human nature.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-07-29 11:28 am (UTC)On those occasions I've done this, it's because I did not see the "obviously" or I really hoped they'd find the "interested."
But yeah, you're right. If you took a straw poll 'round my office, I guarantee you'd get a unanimous report that a fellow called W., who has some mild mental disability, is the nicest, sweetest, most spectacularly giving person in the office by leagues. He really is a super guy...
...but I swear, I'm really damned tired of him giving me agonizingly long reports of progress from Falcons training camp twice a day. *groannnn*!