I think most people are decent, honest, hard working, good people. At least, the ones that I’ve encountered are. Fifty years of interviewing and writing about people and 20 years of teaching teens reinforce my belief.
I am not naive. Those 50 years of working for a newspaper make me skeptical enough not to trust anything that appears too good to be true, people who stumble over their own lies, any phone caller who does not leave a message because I refuse to pick up if I do not recognize the number, nor any sales person who tries to pressure me into buying something immediately. However, I can honestly say that my journalism experiences have not turned my skepticism into jaded cynicism, supposedly the fate of many journalists.
A recent article, “The Truth about Lies,” by Douglas Shadel in the AARP Magazine prompts my declaration. Shadel, the AARP state director for Washington State, says, “All scams fundamentally rely on getting the victim to believe in a lie.”
Various studies have been conducted on how people see themselves. Shadel reports from one Stanford University study, “The more subjects self-reported lying in text conversations, the more they believed that their partner was lying, too. So if I lie to you, I assume you are lying to me.”
What a terrible way to choose to live.
The study also supported a similar conclusion with honest people. Those who lie less assume their partners and others around them also lie less, making them more vulnerable to cons.
Shadel concludes, “This is an important point. If you are like most people, you assume that those around are roughly as truthful or deceitful as you are, and you act in accordance with that belief.”
A research study out of Wake Forest University, appearing in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology takes the observations about how we observe ourselves in others another step forward.
“How positively you see others is linked to how happy, kind-hearted and emotionally stable you are,” says Dustin Wood, assistant professor of psychology at Wake Forest and lead author of the study.
This study also found that how positively you see other people shows how satisfied you are with your own life.
My tendency is to say “be happy” and end this column here. However, in researching this topic about seeing ourselves in others, I kept bumping into the other side of the coin, the negative side.
According to Wendy L. Patrick J.D., Ph.D., writing for Psychology Today, badmouthing others may have consequences over and above the obvious risks of having your unflattering remarks come across as bitter, jealous or vindictive. It turns out that the traits you publicly assign to others are likely to be attributed to you.
In other words, what we find disgusting in others are often traits we possess. Whoa. That’s certainly fodder for thought before we step forward to criticize someone. Life coach Sharon Lamm calls this trait, “you spot it, you got it.”
Dwelling on the faults of others may be reflective of our own flaws. If so, hopefully we can begin self examinations about why we entertain negative thoughts about others. Rarely does putting down someone really make us feel better about ourselves. If it worked, we wouldn’t keep repeating the futile effort time and again.
There’s a fine line between criticizing another’s imperfections when we are prone to make the same mistakes and taking a public stand against immoral or unethical wrong doing. Society owes the most vulnerable protection against criminals. But nitpicking someone’s vulnerability, especially anonymously, definitely underlines the critic’s own shortcomings.
I appreciate the advice of author Alex Hailey. “Find the good and praise it.” It became my mantra in grading papers when I returned to the classroom. And when I looked for something I could praise in each paper a student wrote, the better he/she wrote.
True, excessive flattery is no more genuine than those who can talk a good game, but not play it. I think the secret lies in the first part of Hailey’s quote. Find - look for, search out, seek.
Motivational speaker John Spence summarizes it best. “When you choose to see the good in others, you end up finding the good in yourself.”
As we look face to face, still masked because of COVID-19, let us consider how our own image is reflected in someone else’s eyes.
2021
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