Perception of you

[vastatuuli]

This is something I've been pondering on for a few months.

Poll Perception of you

I use 'better' and 'worse' to represent a scale from good to bad in anything. Whether it's your skill in any activity, your moral/ethical goodness or another quality of your character. It doesn't matter if the scale isn't objective; just pick the most suitable alternative for you

Comments

[werdnus]

Oh, there's one more interesting point, beyond what palvana wrote. If you choose "Better" for the quiz, you're making everyone that reads it think you're actually worse than they did before, so you're making them think worse of you. So, than you must want them to think worse of you. So you ought to choose worse. But if you do that, they'll assume that you better than you seem, because you want to seem worse than you are. And that makes you look better to them. So how can you answer honestly?

My (honest!) thought is that most people, me included, want, on some level, to be seen as better than they actually are, not because they want to fool people, but because they actually want to be better people. Does that make any sense? I want to be seen as I am, but I want to be better than I am, so I try to be seen as I'd like to be, so that I must then live up to the way others see me. A method of self improvement, if you will.

But I do think it's deeper than that for many people, to the point of unconsciousness. It's evolutionary, in a sense: there's advantage in being seen as (and being!) "better," so people present the image, and try to live up to it. The problem comes in that there is also some evolutionary advantage to selfishness and greed, and we have the root of life's great conflict, all in this one tiny question.

Hahahahaha. Wow, I must be in a really verbose mood (not to mention a bit bored). Sorry.

[vastatuuli]

Heh, very true! I tried to be honest and think about this outside the entry and the poll - which I did, having thought about it before saying anything... Well, deep inside everyone knows whether their conscience is clean or not.

It does make sense. I'm not sure if it'd work for me, though... I'd like to seen as good, sure, but I'd also like to be just that good. If someone always expected more and better from me, I'd go mad, though I agree that it'd be efficient self-improvement for a while.

Probably evolutionary, yeah, another good point. I think it could be cultural, too. Modesty is an old Finnish virtue, but we're constantly told by foreigners to show our abilities more. Writing a letter of application (especially if you're applying for a job abroad) can be tricky, because presenting ourselves as incredibly enthusiastic and more than competent workers seems shallow (even when it's true!). I know Americans and Brits are better at marketing themselves. :]

Speaking of verbose... Oops. I do have the knack of rambling too.