On Unwanted Compliments
Everyone wants to be complimented now and then right?
Something that has struck me as odd for a long while is that it is not that simple. One would think that if someone tells you that something about you is nice, say, your hair, you would get a little boost to your self-esteem and be very thankful to the person who complimented you. However, I have observed that this is not often the case. What really happens is that someone comes up to you whom you find unattractive or weird or "scary" and he or she compliments you. For some reason, his or her compliment is counted as almost invalid. It does not make your day; it weirds you out. It does not make you like the person more who complimented you; it makes you find him or her even odder. You get no boost in self-esteem; you actually feel like it must be a lie or something.
Why is this? (Well, first I should perhaps get a confirmation that other people have observed this trend....) How is it that someone you find unattractive either physically or personality-wise cannot give an honest objective opinion about you qualities. Is his or her unattractiveness to you somehow an indicator of the reliability of his or her judgment?
I noticed this a lot in college among girls who would complain that no guys ever noticed them. Yet they would ignore the guys who did. This hardly seemed fair. But I'm guessing this is not just a girl issue; my guess is that it is a human issue. Not only do we want to be liked, we want to be liked by people we like.
Something that has struck me as odd for a long while is that it is not that simple. One would think that if someone tells you that something about you is nice, say, your hair, you would get a little boost to your self-esteem and be very thankful to the person who complimented you. However, I have observed that this is not often the case. What really happens is that someone comes up to you whom you find unattractive or weird or "scary" and he or she compliments you. For some reason, his or her compliment is counted as almost invalid. It does not make your day; it weirds you out. It does not make you like the person more who complimented you; it makes you find him or her even odder. You get no boost in self-esteem; you actually feel like it must be a lie or something.
Why is this? (Well, first I should perhaps get a confirmation that other people have observed this trend....) How is it that someone you find unattractive either physically or personality-wise cannot give an honest objective opinion about you qualities. Is his or her unattractiveness to you somehow an indicator of the reliability of his or her judgment?
I noticed this a lot in college among girls who would complain that no guys ever noticed them. Yet they would ignore the guys who did. This hardly seemed fair. But I'm guessing this is not just a girl issue; my guess is that it is a human issue. Not only do we want to be liked, we want to be liked by people we like.